Recently, a service entity was asked to take a recovery meeting into a homeless shelter. Representatives went to the homeless shelter to determine the need and request. They didn’t want to be guilty of “rushing in where angels fear to tread.” At the following business meeting it was reported that they wouldn’t bring a recovery meeting into the shelter because of “safety concerns.”
This didn’t sit well with my recovery group. We had been asked for help, and we said, “no.” This seemed contrary to the principles of the program.
Where People in Recovery Need to Tread
I understand. I have been to some meetings, that initially upon arrival, the location or atmosphere seemed less than desirable. There was the recovery meeting I attended in a community center in downtown Baltimore where you could see your breath while speaking. There was a recovery meeting I attended near the space coast of Florida where the recovery meeting club had a three-degree list to it. I attended a recovery meeting at a veterans’ shelter in downtown Boston where the inhabitants seemed sad, lonely and lost. Each time I reminded myself that I wasn’t going to an MIT graduation party. I was going to a recovery meeting. In recovery meetings we aren’t bad people trying to get good, we are sick people trying to get well.”
Armed with these experiences, I went to the shelter to investigate for myself. In the military there is a phrase that says, “first reports are usually inaccurate.” At the shelter I found a group of people that seemed desperate, lost and out of options. It seemed like the perfect place for a recovery meeting. Some years ago I heard a speaker start his recovery talk with this question, “If you only had a few seconds to talk to someone about recovery, what would you say?” His answer was, “There is hope here.”
That’s what we ought to be doing, I thought. We ought to bring hope here, the kind of hope that is found in recovery meetings. I asked the management for permission to bring in a recovery meeting and they wholeheartedly endorsed the idea. I explained I had to get my group’s permission, but I would make a strong case for the meeting.
We’re Doing This
At my group’s next business meeting I brought up the idea of holding a recovery meeting at the shelter one half-hour after the closing of our regular meeting. My home group is only two miles from the shelter, and it would only take a couple of minutes to get there. Someone mentioned that a recovery meeting had been tried there before, and no one attended. I responded, “Yes, but this time the management of the shelter asked and when someone asks us for help, we say yes.” The group agreed and the recovery meeting was launched.
For our first recovery meeting no one came. The residents were pleasant enough and the staff were happy to see us. They had even set up a table and chairs for us to hold our meeting. We announced that we were going to hold a recovery meeting at the top of the hour, but no one made a move to join us. We waited for a half-hour and then politely exited.
The next week I made an announcement toward the end of our recovery meeting that a few of us were going over to the homeless shelter to bring a recovery meeting into the facility. I had already had one volunteer coming with me and I voluntold another newcomer to come. However, much to my surprise, two more volunteers stepped forward and said they wanted to come.
The five of us arrived in the parking lot and made our way to the facility. There were people milling around in front of the building and one of the volunteers announced that we were putting on a recovery meeting. Someone said, “Ya’ll in recovery?”
We smiled and said, “Yes.” He returned our smile and nodded approvingly.
"Let Them In There!"
This time we were met at the door by a staff member who said he had no idea who we were, and we couldn’t come into the facility. We explained who we were and that we had received management approval to put on a recovery meeting. He whipped out his cell phone and said, “Well, I’m going to call the boss.”
We stood there for a few awkward minutes before he reached the boss. I couldn’t hear what he asked his supervisor, but I could hear the supervisor shouting through his phone, “let them in there!”
We proceeded to our designated meeting spot and a young woman approached us and asked if she could join our meeting. We told her, “Of course.” With the six of us at the meeting, we didn’t have enough books to go around. I said that I had a digital copy on my phone, and I could read off of that.
Our newcomer said, “I think I have a digital copy too, I just don’t know how to open it.” She handed me her phone and lo and behold she had a recovery app on it that was full of recovery literature. I showed her how to open it, and we proceeded to read a story about an AA co-founder. It was one of the most powerful meetings I had been to in a long time.
When God Asks…
Afterwards, the volunteers asked me if they could go again. One of the volunteers told me he couldn’t always make the 6:30pm regular meeting, but he wanted to come to the recovery meeting at the shelter at 8pm. The other volunteer told me he had only been sober for a couple of weeks, but he really liked being involved in service work. They say there’s strength in numbers. We went into the facility as five, but we felt like ten when we left.
I don’t know how long our little recovery meeting will continue. I don’t know if we’ll continue to have volunteers to take a recovery meeting into the shelter. I don’t know if anyone will come to the recovery meeting once we are there.
What I do know is, “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail” (pg. 89, Big Book).
What I do know is, "As we serve others we are working on ourselves; every act, every word, every gesture of genuine compassion naturally nourishes our own hearts as well.” – Mother Theresa.
What I do know is, when God asks, we cannot hesitate to say, “Yes.”
