Read From the Front

The request arrives by email on a Tuesday and it is entirely reasonable. An organization is running a campaign — drunk driving, detox funding, a shelter about to close — and would like it mentioned at the meeting. It is about alcohol. The people asking are decent. Two members are already involved and would be glad. So the secretary reads it out before the close, in the same voice she used for the coffee rota and the anniversary count. Every person in the room hears a group announcement, because that is the slot it was read in. Nobody said A.A. endorses this. The format said it. What follows is small and permanent: a newcomer who sees that campaign differently now knows what this room thinks, on his first night, before he has spoken a word. The Tradition's phrase is "in such a way as to implicate A.A." (Big Book, p. 565). Nobody in that room formed an opinion or voted on one. The room simply gave an outside cause the same two minutes it gives its own business, in the same voice, from the same chair. That is the implication, and it was read from the front.