"Meeting Drama"

About half a mile from my apartment is a huge city park. There are tennis courts, tons of picnic tables, huge grassy areas, a duck pond, baseball diamonds, huge wooden castles for kids to climb on, and--at the far end--a rose garden. I'm sitting on a bench there today, watching a wedding rehearsal. Okay, I'm also watching the occasional scantily clad jogger go by. Springtime really brings out the shoulders. Seriously, though, I pass this park many times throughout the week. It's on one of my main walk/run paths. Today, I have a lot on my mind, so I've sat myself down on a bench to calm my mind and see if I can slow down all thoughts and take stock of what I'm actually feeling. The air is pleasant. Not too warm, not too cool, and a hint of a breeze moves the leaves of the rosebushes and a nearby... whatever kind of tree that is. Bored little kids in the wedding party run and laugh and screech.

The program teaches us to simplify, but even if I simplified, I'm not sure how short I can make all that I'm thinking. How about this: at my homegroup last night, a member rudely interrupted another member while they were sharing. It was really inappropriate and I said so right then and there. He copped a resentment and bailed, saying he hated the meeting and everyone in it anyway. After the meeting, a third member came up and told me I was wrong to do what I'd done.

Actually, yeah, that is pretty well simplified. Here's the extra stuff I'm leaving out, though: the person who was rude has been warned before about it. He's been called on it, both outside of and in meetings. He's been reminded that it's a non-crosstalk meeting. It was still enough of a problem that there have been multiple complaints by other members--so many that we had a discussion about it at our last business meeting. It was decided that the way to handle it was to be very direct, to let this member know immediately when he was being inappropriate. As the General Secretary, the job fell to me. The other part that I'm leaving out is that the member who criticized the way I handled the situation was someone who I've had personal conflicts with before and was not at the business meeting where we discussed the situation. He and I didn't come to blows but it got heated enough between the two of us that the other folks standing around were saying, 'calm down'.

I've had a brief conversation with my sponsor about what happened, and he gave me some good prayer homework to do, but I'm waiting for a chance to talk to him about it some more.

The reason I'm having trouble sorting through my thoughts on this is I'm just having so many thoughts about it. I could write about the importance of maintaining the integrity of the meeting so that everyone has a place they know is safe. I could write about how we walk into the meetings without any sense of discipline or compassion and that part of going to meetings and listening to others' shares is learning to be respectful. I could write about my own issues with confrontation, how being assertive is something I've had to learn and that it is still difficult for me (very tempting). I could easily go off on this member I've had issues with, about what shoddy recovery they have and how judgmental and disrespectful their own shares are. Actually, that was some more good simplification.

But there is deeper stuff going on here. As I was walking over, and even sitting here in the rose garden, I thought about how I wish I had a girlfriend to support me in all this. As in, to stroke my head [re: ego] and tell me it's okay, that I did the right things, handled both situations well, etc. There were a couple of people last night who let me know my actions were very appropriate. Three of us had a coffee fellowship following the meeting and there was a lot of talk about how something needed to be done and, now that the situation has been dealt with, the vibe in the meeting is much better.

This happens from time to time in meetings. People are loud, rude, and disruptive. When they get called on it, they cop a resentment and leave. I know that I'm not responsible for this guy's feelings, and I'm not sure I feel too bad about letting him know he was out of line. I mean, how else can we learn when we're fucking up if no one tells us that we are? I depend on the people in my life to tell me when I'm in the wrong because I can't always see it. I wish I hadn't had to have said something to this guy, though. I wish he'd been able to hear when people talked to him before. I just hope that he finds another meeting that he wants to go to, a sponsor he wants to listen to, and learns how to listen when his friends call him on his bullshit.

Enough people expressed their support that I feel more or less okay that I did the right thing, and it was what the group had decided needed to be done. I still wasn't happy about having to do it, and I was really sorry to see him bail, but that was his choice--no one made him leave or even suggested to him that he do so. I can remind myself that he was the one who had been consistently rude. I can tell myself that I did my job as a trusted servant, carried out the will of the meeting as expressed by group conscience.

As for the personality conflict, I can counsel myself that even though I let somebody get to me (who gets to me far too often), I wasn't an asshole back to him; I was being attacked in a very underhanded way but I stood my ground without resorting to personal attacks back. It was choppy waters, spiritually, but I navigated it to the best of my abilities. Not perfectly, definitely not perfectly, but better than I would have in the past.

Progress, not perfection, I guess. That's all any of us get. It's the best any of us can do.