No Better Way The only way I know to work my program is to work my program. When something is disturbing me, I need to recognize what in me is niggled. Recently, I have been feeling less than serene about the lack of long-term abstinence at our small meetings. When we do get newcomers in the door, members who have been around for some … Read More
Principled Decisions Our intergroup is quite small and the same people seem to switch hats at election time. (This is quite common in some intergroups, I know.) But after I served two terms in one position, with a break in between to serve in a different position, I declined at election time to serve in the coming year. It was a tortuous … Read More
Many Ways to Serve There are so many ways to give service in OA and pay forward all we have so freely received. Not all forms of service require years of commitment or abstinence. Will service make you abstinent? No, unfortunately, it is not a magic cure. But it is one of the Tools you can use to work the Steps. Members can give … Read More
Lessons from the Fellowship My recent service as Virtual Services Trustee has taught me about: balance between service to others and self-care, the importance of what is good for OA as a whole instead of what I prefer personally, accepting help and direction and not taking it as criticism, how much there is to know and how little I do know, grounding my ideas … Read More
Feeling A Part Of I resisted doing service—the same way I’d once resisted writing out a food plan for the day. And I hated the slogan “service is slimming,” which some members chanted during the reading of the Tools in meetings. But my program was faltering in all areas: physical, emotional, and spiritual. I was forgetting all the important parts of the program, forgetting … Read More
A Better, Fuller Life Over the years, I’ve held a lot of service positions and learned so much in each one. For me, the rewards of service are many, including self-confidence, people skills, and friendships, not to mention the fact that honoring a service commitment has sometimes been the only thing that has kept me coming back. Recently, I’ve experienced unexpected perks from my … Read More
Giving and Living When I arrived at my first OA meeting in August 1999, a member greeted me at the door. When I walked into the meeting room, I saw OA literature laid out on the table. One woman sat and talked to me until the meeting started. The meeting started promptly and everyone paid attention to the meeting leader, who shared her … Read More
What Keeps Me Service is what keeps me in the program. There is no “as if” in it; my life truly does depend on it. Doing service at the group, intergroup, and region levels gets me out of my own head. Doing service for others enables me to be useful, and that is a positive feeling. When I do service, I feel like I … Read More
Keeping Focused I am grateful for sixteen years and six months of abstinence, by the grace of God and this Fellowship. It is a gift to serve as a sponsor and see sponsees go through the Twelve Steps to find abstinent, sane lives. Sponsoring helps me take the focus off my problems (a divorce, move, and new job), which could lead to … Read More
What Service Is From the very beginning of my time in the OA rooms, I heard that service is a Tool. However, I never thought about it as a way to connect to my Higher Power and preserve my abstinence until recently. I tended to think of service as a Tradition. It was, in my mind, a practice that was important to preserve … Read More