Posted by
landerson in
Lane's Blog on
03 9th, 2010 |
no responses
Hi Friends,
I am still attending the Fellowship Hall meeting at Marina Pacifica. Every group has things to like and other things that challenge you. This fellowship hall has a child care room encased in glass but nearly soundproof. You can watch your kids while they watch sesame street. Although the fellowship hall morning meeting is often a hundred people, everyone introduces themselves before they start sharing. I’m kind of a “spectator bird” at the big meetings because everyone is in lively conversations and I don’t know anyone….so I watch for newcomers and try to engage them. On Saturday, the busiest day, I saw several across the room that came early and noticed that all the seats had markers on them and left before I could cross the crowded room. When the meeting started, one man picked up about a dozen markers at empty chairs and put them in his pocket. He had saved chairs for people who did not even make it. What really happened is that he denied newcomers that came early a place, hoping that he could impress his friends, and then when they did not come he had saved chairs for people who came late. Found a real good Men’s meeting there and have begun attending alanon there. My sons are showing symptoms and I was showing codependent symptoms (I’d fill the fridge with “healthy stuff” so that there was no room for beer
).
Fellowship hall on State St. in Santa Barbara was my first homegroup some thirty one years ago. I’ve attended harbor groups all along the way on this cruise. When I sailed in from Santa Cruz Island, Channel Islands Harbor assigned me a slip at Peninsula Park and my boat sat forty feet from the Peninsula Park group. In Marina Del Rey I found the Better Way to Start Your Day group a hundred feet from my boat in the building where they assign guest slips at Chace Burton Park. I have two home groups in Santa Barbara, Start Your Day Right, the original harbor morning meeting, and the Harbor group, the current one.
Jean and I started the original harbor morning meeting shortly after her birthday twenty years ago. I had anticipated celebrating the 20th with Jean as the featured Founder and speaker….I thought it a good idea to get her to stay alive until then. The way it worked was that for the original meeting 20 years ago, I had lost job with the postal service after almost twelve years of carrying mail and had to move out of my house onto my boat, so was living in the harbor. Jean and I both disliked the mood at the 6:45am alano club meeting and we had been both meditating together and studying books. When we decided to start the meeting in the harbor, I contacted Harry Davis, a harbor institution and the guy that managed the little shack at the entrance of the harbor. He let us use the room and we met, sometimes only Jean and I until Alan P. noticed us….he was kiosk sentry until 7am every morning and made good coffee in the kiosk. He began coming and bringing coffee and Jean brought donuts. Kevin was the fourth regular and after a few months when it was in the meeting guide, others came. Blackie was one from the first year I think. It moved first to the Navy Reserve Building when the shed burned down and then to the Veterans Memorial Building when the Navy gave the building to the city. The city promised us a room in the (now) Maritime Museum area….Gardiner and I both attended city council and got the committment….but they broke their word!
What is now the Harbor Group did not start until a Pacific Group powerhouse, Susan, took the Start Your Day Right group by storm. She retyped the format without asking the group and listed it as a Pacific Group meeting…and caused a resentment. It was Jean’s idea to move back to the harbor and she asked me to go to harbor management about it. I went back to Harry Davis and he found us a small room near where the shack had been…the little community room behind the Breakwater restaurant. It soon proved too small and we ended up with an agreement to use the harbor classroom unless waterfront business needed it. That is still the agreement.
Best wishes, Lane
For Today –
Patience, tolerance, understanding and love are the watchwords.
– Alcoholics Anonymous, page 118
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Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and
wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us
what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.
– Lydia M. Child
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As the day goes by, let me rejoice in the differences of others,
and remember that harmony lives in me, not through
agreement from others.
– Help for Helpers
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