[Magdalen] Heather Cook

[Molly Wolf]

Jim,

In a word:  bullshit.  Or moose poop, if I'm going to be Canajun.

Molly

The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain

On Nov 4, 2015, at 3:51 PM, Jim Guthrie <jguthrie at pipeline.com> wrote:

>> And once I was told (by the canvass chair) that a reasonable pledge should
>> be about the cost of a good bottle of gin a week. Where your treasure is ...
> 
> And as long as mere anecdotes inform the conversation,  I well recall a person in recovery berate a kindly prim and proper woman in one of the churches that opposes all alcohol whose yearly alcohol intake consisted of two cups of spiked eggnog at the annual Christmas Party as a drunk (along with anyone else who drank the stuff, whether they consumed alcohol otherwise. Ugly stuff, but should we take those anecdotes as universal truth?
> 
> I sense a lot of defensiveness here among a minority of list sibs who have disclosed they're in recovery.  I realize there's a distinct
> psychological need for this in order to support oneself (and others) in
> recovery, but it can be a bit much at times.
> 
> Some years ago, I had a broadcast engineer friend who was in AA accompany me to help
> broadcast a church service -- turns out it was one of those testimony-athons
> that some churches have. I joked that if the cops went to these things, they
> could clear fifty percent of their cold cases. He said, "Heck,  I know where
> they could find the other 50%."
> 
> I have the impression that in both cases there's an element of "Can You Top
> This?" going on, which is important to participants to be sure, but unbecoming
> in both cases if it spills out and scares the horses.
> 
> That doesn't negate the need for an alcohol policy to be sure, but it can’t work if the strongest advocates come off as over the top. And that would be a real tragedy, I think.
> 
> Cheers,
> Jim