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I went to a meeting last night where I pulled in and I saw the entire group gathered on the front steps and in the parking lot of the church. “Uh-oh,” I thought. “Somebody must have forgotten the key to the church.”
I immediately tried to figure out if anybody had seen me, so that I could possibly sneak out of there and tell myself, “Hey, I tried to get to a meeting but the church was locked.” Plus, you expect me to chase sobriety by standing or sitting on the ground? Are you kidding?
I decided to pull in and walk over, though. I was glad I did. We had the meeting outside (the guy with the key didn’t show up). It’s a meeting that reads from the book As Bills Sees It but we only had one copy. So the chairperson didn’t have a script to read from and we didn’t have books. But she picked out three readings and read them, then people took turns sharing.
As I stood there, I couldn’t help but marvel at the spirit of recovery. I was thrown off when I first got there that we weren’t in the basement like we always were. But like sober people always do, we tried to chase recovery the same way we chased booze. Trust me, if I had shown up at the bar back in the day and they had all the bottles sitting out front because the bar was locked, I wouldn’t have tried to slink my way out of the parking lot. I’d have laid on the ground to drink. I have to be willing to do that with sobriety, too.
So that’s what we did. We had a great meeting outside, with bugs flying around, some people standing and some people sitting, no books, cars coming into and out of the parking lot. It was a beautiful chaotic hour of spirituality in a parking lot setting.
It was a good reminder that sobriety can happen anywhere. During the pandemic, I remember some panic that first week when all of my in-person meetings closed up. What was I doing to do?
Then Zoom meetings came along. As far as I can remember, I had never even heard of Zoom before, and then all of a sudden, it was my lifeline to stay sober. That parking lot experience reminded me that whether I move, or the world shuts down, or I am bed-ridden, or church keys disappear, recovery will be happening somewhere. I just need to go find it.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
A middle-aged fellow lamented that, although he'd been in AA for several months, he was still living in a sober group house and riding a girl's bike to meetings. An old-timer replied, "I truly believe that if you don't drink, work the Steps, and carry the message, in no time at all you'll be riding a boy's bike."
(Credit: Grapevine, March 2008, by Kay K. of Redondo Beach, California)
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