The New Horizons group in Bend, OR

The topic of our meeting today is the Home group. Traditionally, most a A members through the years have found it important to belong to one group that they call their Home group. This is the group where they accept service responsibilities and try to sustain friendships

and also they accept service responsibilities and try to sustain and. Although

all a A members are usually welcome at all groups and feel at home at any of these meetings, the concept of the Home group has still remained the strongest bond between a A member and the fellowship.

With membership comes the right to vote on issues that affect the group and might also affect AA as a whole,

a process that forms the very cornerstone of a a service structure. As we all group conscience matters. Each a a member has one vote and this is voiced through the Home group. Page 15 and 16

of the AA Group pamphlet.

Please vote. Please help me to welcome our guest speaker today.

Past Wyoming delegate broke or broke Broke C Welcome, Brooke.

Hello there, everybody. My name is Brooke and I am an alcoholic.

My sobriety date is on or about September 21st 1984 and my Home group is an AA group. I want to thank Kerry for asking me to do a little bit of sharing about this and before I get started, somebody want to tell me how much time I have? I was named Brooke because I Babble and I don't want to Babble too long.

So go ahead and talk until five. Yeah, that's fine, bro. Go ahead and talk until 5 minutes, until the hour. OK. Well, thank you very much. OK. Again, I really appreciate you all showing up. I am sitting in a parking lot surrounded by a whole bunch of snow in northern Wyoming, where it's been just a little bit chilly and stormy. And

I

really appreciate the fact that people have come to the meeting, even though

I think I couldn't remember who said it, but somebody said, you know, this is not a very popular topic. So I think it's a pretty important one. So for that, again, I appreciate you all being here. And thank Kerry for inviting me to talk a little bit about it. Because I got sober in a small town in Wyoming. I have maybe a little bit different experience than those of you that maybe got sober in larger towns.

First, I should let you know that I was in Al Anon and Alatine

before I figured out who the real drunk in my life was. I thought I could go to those two programs and quote UN quote, work the steps and drink and do other things and basically blame everything on the drunks of my life. And that worked until it didn't. And I got to that point where is really kind of interesting. My last drink. And I don't, I I don't exactly

know when my mind and body were cleared. So that's why I say I'm not entirely sure when my sobriety date is it's on or about,

but I do know that that last drunk I had was that I thought my problem really was that I couldn't get to enough meetings. And so I was going to a lot of Al Anon meetings. You know, things were really kind of going badly in my life and I didn't see drinking as being the big part of that. But I thought as an Al Anon, I wasn't making to enough meetings. And so out of town where I lived, there were some folks that wanted to start an A, A group and started a meeting. And

there came a point when they decided to be a group and they were going to have elections. And I was totally prepared to stand as the secretary treasurer of that group. I thought it might give me access to a little additional funding. And I thought it would be a really good alibi because people were starting to ask me if maybe I didn't have a little problem. And I thought if I could say that I was a secretary, treasurer of an A, A group, that they would get off my back. And

so I stood. They were about ready to elect me. And there was a

delegates in the room that said, wait a minute, she can't be your secretary, treasurer. She's not an alcoholic. So I wasn't elected. And it made me so mad. I thought I would go out there and get really good and drunk at that, that that that group and especially that delegate. And that was the one night that I couldn't quite get there. It was getting harder and harder to get there. You guys probably know what that is. That's any place but here. And no matter how hard I drank or how

or what, and doing my usual shucking and dive and I just, I was still stuck here. And it, it was, it was quite a dilemma. It's like I couldn't drink it could not drink. I couldn't get drunk enough

and that was my last drink. And then it gets kind of fuzzy for a couple weeks there. So I have no reliable witnesses to tell me what my sobriety date might be. But so I think it's somewhere there. In September,

I went into a meeting somewhere after I detoxed and I'd been practicing in the mirror saying my name is Brooke and I'm an alcoholic. And it was like, no, I don't want anybody to know. And really, I was hoping for some of the pain to go away and to get some people off my butt and went into this meeting and I accidentally said my name is Brooke. I am an alcoholic.

At that time, I was at ANDA and

I don't remember anything because it was like a piano dropped on me and I couldn't breathe.

And it didn't matter that I'd been around a A for 30 years. It was, it was something different because, yeah, I couldn't breathe. And the only thing I remember from that one meeting is that there was a guy over in the corner was like, it's about damn time. I really didn't think they know. They knew what I'd been up to. But that was because there were groups there in Cody where I, I got sober and

in talking about

Cody maybe being a little bit different,

they I got sober just about the time that we were getting some of the fruits of having a lot of treatment centers around and a time when we were not being very good at practicing our traditions. And that's kind of where things began to split a little bit. And

we would hear things like you need to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. And where I got sober, there weren't 90 meetings in 90 days. And we would try to go to more than two meetings a week.

And the way that we would do that is a bunch of us would get together and, you know, get into an old jalopy with, you know, I don't know, eight people and everybody smoking. And we would drive an hour to some other town and we would go to their meeting and then we would drive back. And it was really kind of an amazing thing. You know, it was like, get in the car, we're going to this meeting. And we would go to a meeting someplace. And

I really learned about the group because we did things together. We

after our meeting, we would go out and have coffee and some of us would stay in the country kitchen until we got kicked out late at night. And there was a lot going on in between meetings. And in that time, we started here in bizarre things like, no, all you need to start a new group is a resentment in a coffee pot. And looking back on that now, it's like, no, no, no, you need like a resentment and a big book because if you read your big book, you wouldn't need another coffee pot.

Learn how to deal with your resentment and stick there with your Home group. But it was a lot easier for us to just kind of take our ball and go someplace else and and start a new meeting. That didn't happen so much where I got sober. I got to witness that that later. And then we would have a lot of people saying, wouldn't it be nice for us to have another meeting and have another meeting and have another meeting. And the town where I got sober, it's probably got

18 meetings a week now and they're all one group. They never found it necessary to start sharding off into different groups.

And but it was during that time where we just had more and more meetings all the time that it got to where it was really hard for us to be able to tell the difference between a meeting and a group. And and because I'd come from a group with these meetings when I went other places as it was even more confusing to me because, you know, everybody would show up at this meeting and you know, everybody go keep coming back. It works if you work

and then everybody disappeared and I began really kind of understanding a little bit more about the group. And please understand that I've been in service work. Well, I tried to be in service work before I got sober, but

I've been involved in one form of service worker, another since since I got sober. I was around people that were like you need to go put the chairs up, you need to go put the chairs down. Why don't you do the coffee, stand there and greet people. So it would be a couple of years before anybody would invite me to look at being AGSR. But certainly I've always been involved with it and I understood from being involved in service about the group,

but I'm not sure that I really clarified that until sometime later.

And probably my favorite thing comes from the big book, where in a vision for you it talks about

there are many informal gatherings of these people happy in their release and trying to find some way to pass this message on to the next person. Then it says it became customary to set aside one night a week where everyone and anyone would be welcomed and newcomers could bring their problem. And so as I was really looking at that and started reading like Pass It On and Doctor Bob and the Good Old Timers

and really getting a better understanding of the traditions, I started really understanding how important the group is. And I've always tried to have a Home group. There been a lot of times what I didn't like my Home group, but I participated in it anyway. And I feel really lucky now because I have a three Legacies Home group. We are a hybrid group. That means that

we use one of these platforms. We're actually a teleconference call.

We have one meeting a week. We meet on Thursdays at 6:00. That's Mountain time, and you can call in from any place and take part in our meeting. So our meeting is hybrid and so far it's been pretty incredible and it's really nice. The Big Book says will help you to create the fellowship you crave. And so I'll tell you that it's been a lot of work, but we all really enjoy it.

So to kind of back up a little bit,

the group as at the top of the service structure, not the meeting, but a group.

And now I think when we still have things like, you know, go to 90 meetings in 90 days, we're really,

umm, undermining the importance of the group. We used to have directories of all of the groups and we've gone now to the meeting app, the meeting guide app, which kind of further undermines it because you can always find a meeting on the app. Well, most of the time you can find a meeting on the app, but it's hard to find a group. And because we have gotten to where it's really hard for us to understand the difference between a meeting and a group, I think it's, you know, that's kind of getting worse. So the group is at the top of the service structure, not the meeting.

And the best way for me to kind of describe that is that a group exists outside of the meeting. And so our group gets together, we talk about different things. We talk about public information, we talk about, we talk about cooperation with professional community. When we have a 12 step call that comes into one of us, we send out a text to everyone, but we get together in between times and talk about what happened on the 12th step. So those are our in the formal gatherings

and then we set that one time aside

to share with newcomers where anyone can is welcome. So we're carrying that message.

I've been involved in a lot of group inventories. And the one question I always ask is, you know, what is the purpose of this group? And everybody generally chimes in right along with the traditions and says, well, the primary purpose is to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. And the tradition says their message. So we're talking about the group's message. And so the next question I usually ask is, what is this group's message? And it is really surprising how many groups do not agree

on what their message is. And we'll hear everything from there's a better way of life to you can stop drinking to, you know, 3 legacy stuff. But the big thing is that that group of people has not spent time talking about what their message is.

For my current Home group, we actually

met as a group for six months before we had a meeting, before we actually had that time set aside to have a meeting where we invited everybody because we wanted to make sure that we understood and agreed on what our message would be and that we were making good decisions about what to put in the format. And that we did that in a way that it was the entire group. Because going to meetings is a marvelous thing, a love meetings, but a group is where I really had to learn how to grow up.

And I say that because when you're so mad at somebody, you just want to throw something at them and stomp off and leave. Only you have to come back because it's a matter of life and death to be connected to Alcoholics Anonymous. So I've got to find a way to get along with these people. And I'm really lucky because I got to watch that, you know, early in my sobriety, throughout my sobriety where you'd see, you know, like 2 old timers just like screaming and hollering at each other. And you thought, Oh my God, they're going to start throwing punches here.

And then they like hug afterwards and go out and have ice cream. And it was always just kind of a, a mystery. And so

I had to learn how to get along with other people in the group. And what I was taught was that I could do that if I would practice the traditions. And I promise you that learning how to practice the traditions in my Home group and then trying to carry that to like district and area has improved my life so much. And I hadn't thought about it until I had a new gal that I took to her first group conscience meeting.

And when we're all done, she said, I feel terrible. I want to get drunk. And I laughed. And I said, why is that? She said, it feels like I just spent Thanksgiving with my family. And I was like, yes, yes, that's kind of what having a Home group is, is like sometimes because we're all in different spots, we're in different places in the steps. We have different understandings of the traditions, but we stick together and stay together and try to hammer out these things

so that we can keep carrying the message. And so from the service structure standpoint, the group is the most important entity in Alcoholics Anonymous. And if the groups collapse, the entire service structure collapse as well. We can't put meetings in places of groups. But for me, personal standpoint, the opportunities I've had for growth because I've been a member of a Home group

just blow me away. And I learn more and more about that all the time,

learning that our common welfare comes first

with kind of a rude awakening for me.

And there's different hours, like there's our welfare when I'm talking about, you know, our group,

but there's also our welfare is in Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. And so there is a surrender that's kind of implicit in tradition, one that rivals the surrender that shows up in in step one because it's like, what do you mean? I'm just not going to be able to stomp around and get my own way on all this stuff and that I can't just be thinking about me.

I need to think about our group. And then that for me again, I'm so grateful for that because that's carried over for my family. Like when I'm in a difficult family situation, I can take a deep breath and say, OK, our family's welfare, common welfare comes first. And so I'm going to have to subjugate some of my own selfishness so that we can get through this as a family unit. Sometimes I, I laugh that

somebody will say, well, there's a workshop going on about the traditions and relationships and they kind of laugh at that because that's all the traditions are about.

It's about my relationship with my Home group members. It's about our groups relationship with your group. It's about all of the groups in the world and then certainly how we relate ourselves to the outside world. So those traditions I learned in the group and I think that that's the best place to learn it. And if we're not teaching each other and it's really kind of sad because we're like practicing on, on each other and sometimes we're not very good at that. But if we don't learn in the group setting, then how can we ask

DCM to try to bring the traditions into district when they haven't learned how to practice it in their Home group? And if somebody ends up in it as a delegate, it's like and has never learned how to practice those traditions in a Home group, then how are we going to get them to Start learning to do that at the conference level? So the traditions in the Home group for me tie very closely in with each other.

And why would you want a Home group? It's like, well,

because the the personal frustrations

translates into personal growth and so that's why I want a Home group. I also

umm, I don't want to be alone, umm, I know that umm, AA will do fine without me. I will not do fine without a A. And so it's in that Home group where I belong and can fight that sense of isolation and be with people who are like minded.

One of the things that I always thought Bill got wrong and

my first numerous readings of the big book, I think he.

I thought he got a lot wrong, but I've almost always found that he was right. There's a place in the vision for you where it says give freely of what you find and join us.

And I thought that that was backwards. It's like, no, it should be join us and then give freely of what you find. And what I've learned about Alcoholics Anonymous and you guys mentioned that in your format and it's quite lovely is like the real way that you join Alcoholics Anonymous is by giving freely of what you find. And it's like, if all you have found in an, a, a meeting is coffee and you can pour some coffee that will help you join us. So being a member of a Home group

really helps me belong and it gives me a place to start giving away

so that I can be part of.

It's also about those personal relationships. It's about people who know me well. It's about people who notice that I'm not at the meeting and call and say, are you OK? In my Home group now we have a tendency to text one another if somebody is not going to be at the meeting. It's like, hey everybody, sorry, I'm not going to be there. I'm doing this other thing so that we all know. And if somebody doesn't let us know, we all like to send on them. Go, are you OK? What's going on?

So it's really about having a place where I belong, where I can start giving and where I can learn how to grow. Because we're trying to practice those those principles.

And being a member of only one group is I can tell you it's hard enough in one group, little alone trying to do that in two groups. So that's kind of the spiritual aspect of it, but the practical aspect of it is that

that's the unit. The group is the unit that, again, is most important in a A

and so belonging to one kind of gives us a place where we can have a voice and a vote. And if you're an alcoholic like me, you want to spread your voice and vote around as many places as possible to influence as many people as possible. And we just don't do that. So we stick with one place where we're involved, where we participate, where we have a voice, where we have a vote. There are a lot of other places in the service structure where we can also have a voice,

but

that voice and vote in the Home group is really important.

So just having one means your vote isn't getting recorded in too many places. Just that one,

the other. Let's see the other piece of it. I mean, I don't know if you guys went through this during the smoking days, but one of the things that would happen is everybody would show up at a group conscience meeting,

people that weren't members of that group so that they could all vote to make things non-smoking. And that's pretty typically alcoholic, where we all show up and, you know, throw our weight around because we want people to do things differently. And we really shouldn't do that because it's up to that group to figure out how they want to do things. And if it turns out we don't like going to their meetings because of what their group has decided, that's OK. You know, hopefully everybody feels welcome in a meeting,

but if you don't like what's happening there, then you certainly don't have to go. And so that

limiting things to that one Home group and not getting involved with a group that doesn't belong to me keeps me from

arrogantly trying to change how everybody's doing things because I'm always right.

I'm not always right, by the way. I'm being facetious about that. So how to choose a Home group is probably a really

individual question. For me, it was about wanting to be part of a group that was willing to be a full AA group. And in that, I mean all three legacies, so that we would be involved with the 12 steps, the 12 traditions and the 12 concepts, that we would participate in the service structure and that we would all make whatever sacrifices that we needed to make to be part of all of that.

A lot of times that's not easy to find

because being part of a group takes a lot of time. We are not an open meeting and we are not a closed meeting. We decided that we had no opinion on whether we were open or closed. And that decision took us about an hour and a half to make because we just kept talking about it and talking about it. And that's also something that I learned from a Home group because I tend to be

impatient and again, arrogant. And we should be able to make these decisions really fast and get the heck out of here because I have better things to do.

And so being part of that group conscience process and taking as much time as we need to to discuss things is a really important aspect. And it's been great for me because I am impatient and because I need to listen to where everybody else is coming from and then talk about the principles.

And it comes of age. Bill talks about an informed group conscience, and that is a group that is informed of the facts,

the issues and the principles. And the only way for us to be able to do that is to actually take time to do that. And I think probably with our Society of kind of immediate gratification, that's coming more and more difficult to us. Our Home group has our group conscience meeting

on the 3rd Saturday of the month at like 434 o'clock. Sorry, I'd be late next week if I, if I say that

umm and pretty much we, none of us schedule anything for the rest of the day because as we go through things, we talk about things that are in the best interest of the group. We talk about anything going on at the district level. We talk about whatever is going on at the area level. We talk about anything that's come up from conference. We talk about anything that we've seen at the board level, which might be like the

the minutes from the board meetings

and then we talk about ourselves. And so our group conscience is actually closed. If you are not a member of our group,

then you wouldn't even know when and where we were having it. So a lot of times when somebody says, well, I'd be interested in joining your group, we, we've changed. We used to go, Oh yes, we want you involved in our group. And then they never show up. We've changed because we're like, oh, you want to think long and hard about that? Because

pretty much you can count on 4 hours for a group conscience on Saturday. And we are all committed to being there and

we're all committing to committed to showing up to our meetings and being responsible for the things that we're supposed to be responsible for. So unless you're ready to work, you don't wanna be a member of our group

because that time where we take

that seems to be the the hardest part. And it's like I have been given so many gifts and sobriety that the idea that I would have to, you know, that I would be begrudging about giving up four hours

a month for a group conscience, it's really kind of silly. But in the moment, it's like, you know, my favorite movie is coming on or something. So making that commitment is is kind of tough.

The other thing that takes time, and we do this on purpose, probably because of people like me, is we look at Concept 4, which talks about the right and responsibility by the way of participation.

And we do all of our things sharing session style, which means we go alphabetically on each one of those things that we're talking about. It's like, Brooke, do you know Bob, do you have anything? And Bob shares or passes and then it's Brooke. And like I said, we're going alphabetically. We go through all the way around the entire group of people

to see if anybody's got any feedback, and then we go around again in case somebody came up with something,

and then we go around again just to make sure we're done talking about it. The interesting thing about that, even though that takes a lot of time, is that really is the AA process.

And we rarely vote on anything. And the reason that we don't vote on anything is because by the time we're done

talking about it and everybody feels heard and everybody's addressed the facts, the issues and the principles, we are almost always unanimous on everything. So if somebody still has something that's kind of sticking in their crawl, they'll say, wait a minute, I got one more thing. But again, that takes time. And so a lot of people don't want to be a member of a Home group like that. A lot of people want to be a member of a Home group where

they don't have to go to group consciousness,

which kind of defeats the purpose of having a Home group. And again, there is a big difference between that meeting and the group. The group sets the tone for the meeting. And I, I think a lot of times again, that we're just kind of getting worse at worse at that. Because when you do talk a lot of times to someone about a Home group, they're like, well, I go to this meeting. It's like, right, Is that your Home group?

It's like, well, I don't know. And a lot of us have been at meetings where we said, I want to be a member of this group. When's our group? When's our group conscience? And they all looked at you like you were crazy.

And so the next thing you know, you start having a group conscience and then maybe there's a GSR and, and it takes time. So I think that if we're looking for an easier, softer way, that's the meeting the group is the difficult part and the neat thing for us. And I'm kind of all over the place. Sorry about that. Trying to cover a lot of different things. And I probably won't talk until 5:00 till because maybe there's some people that would like to share some of their experience or have some questions about it. But

the

Oh no, I just lost my thought. So maybe I'm going to be done faster than I thought I was. I was talking about choosing a Home group. I think that it's really one of those things where it says, we'll show you how to create the fellowship that you crave, right? And I didn't know that I craved fellowship. It's like I fell off of a bar stool into a group of people that already had that fellowship. And I just rode off of that for a long time until,

umm, I was asked to start being part of that and, and I boxed almost at all of it. And I boxed it trying to learn the traditions. I boxed it trying to learn how to practice the traditions. And I think that that's because those traditions point directly at my character defects, which is why they kind of are hard to deal with sometimes.

There are also a couple of places that describe a little bit about what that fellowship is

is about. And that fellowship is just really kind of

AI feel badly sometimes for people who are recently getting sober. I mean, the whole COVID thing is one thing, but the other thing where it's like, you know, I love the fellowship here. And it's like, what exactly is that? And it's like, well, it's, it's when you run into somebody at Walmart, you sit there and visit for a little bit. And I think about

really how that's

not nearly as deep and meaningful as maybe. And not that running into somebody at Walmart isn't good, but when we talk about a true fellowship and what that means. And I was just trying to see if I sure enough, I do. The best definition that I've ever found of fellowship actually comes from a a comes of age.

And it talks about,

umm, what that is. And it's a result of when

we are staying sober and sharing this message. And I'm actually going to read it to you because I do have a little bit of time here. It's on page 276 of a, a comes of age. And I always really love this because

I always wonder, is that the way my group seems when somebody walks in the door? Is that the way our meeting present itself? And if it's not,

then maybe we've got some work to do. One of the things I really love about the long form of Tradition 5 is it talks about each group ought to be a spiritual entity. And so when I started thinking about being part of a spiritual entity rather than just sitting my button meetings, things kind of started changing for me. So I'm just going to read this to you because this is something that's kind of a favorite of my Home group, and we revisited every once in a while and talk about whether or not

this is

how we are as a spiritual entity and as a group. So from 276, it says 3 conditions are necessary for true fellowship. The position of a common ideal involving a complete release from selfishness and division. And of course, that's something that I've always needed help with. The discharge of a common task big enough to capture the imagination and give expression to loyalty. The Kamraj, the comradeship, the togetherness thus involved. As we find out the joy and power of belonging to

organic society and engaging in a whole time service, we can find it at its fullest extent. Where the ideal is highest and most exacting. Where the task extends and integrates every ounce of our strength and every element of our being. Where the comradeship is so solid and deep that we respond one to another without conscious, conscious effort, realize the unspoken need and react to it spontaneously and at once. Under such conditions, all the vitality that we usually waste upon our jealousies,

vanities upon keeping up appearances and putting other people in their proper place becomes available for creative use. So that is one of the things that certainly my group talks about. There's some other stuff in the vision for you about, you know, how we, you know, that certain something of the in the eyes of the people. And it's like, that's how we want to be. And so we have to do the the work to make that happen. And it's like,

so hopefully that is is making some sense. And Carrie, I really am going to

stop a little bit early to maybe give everybody an opportunity to talk a little bit about

home groups. I mean, there's great ones that have been part of and terrible ones. And maybe somebody's got some questions and maybe we should use this time a little bit just to maybe talk, ask questions and talk some more. So I will just shut up unless somebody has a question for me. And I thank you again very much for letting me share with you today. Yeah, thank you so much, Brooke. So we're not going to be unmuting because we are recording today and I'm going to be recording the whole hour. But I

put a note in the chat that if anybody has a question for Brooke, please send your questions to me. I've already gotten one.

I think that question actually came to New Horizons, so I'm going to take that one. While I'm waiting for more questions, I posted a link to our welcome letter. When you join our Home group at New Horizons, we give you a new member kit. It is not the same as our newcomer packet. It is a new Home group member kit

and I posted that letter and the question is, is what else is in your Home group kit? The answer is the a, a group pamphlet which you're asked to bring with you to every, a, a meeting or to every, I'm sorry, business meeting because we open the business meeting by reading a portion out of that pamphlet. It's a different portion every every month.

And then we close the, the meeting, the business meeting by reading one of the two

declarations off at the back of that pamphlet

and hopefully we use the pamphlet

throughout the business meeting as well. And then the other thing that we put in that kit is a list of Home group members, contact information, our roster, our bylaws, a blank motion form in case you would like to fill out a motion and change something or you know, bring something to the business meeting which you would like to look at, you would have like to have looked at. And

the 12 traditions illustrated, which we encourage heavily for people joining our group to,

you know, acquire a working knowledge of the traditions. So that's the first question.

Umm, Mario, I don't know if people are maybe sending questions to you. I haven't gotten 1 yet. Oh, here's 1, Brooke, how to deal with, if at all, a member calling the question at a meeting.

That is a really great question. And so I think probably the 1st place I go is that something that my sponsor taught me, which is

tradition to always Trump's Robert's Rules of Order.

And so in my Home group now, we're not formalized enough that we make motions and take votes. Like I said, we actually talk about things until we're unanimous and we're all agreeing to go in whatever direction. And the only experience that I have with that

is as an area chair,

my first assembly, somebody called the question and I ruled them out of order. And then I gave a really good explanation of why they ruled, why I ruled them out of order. And it's because I think anything in Alcoholics Anonymous that stops the process of us fully discussing something

goes against our spiritual principles. And that even though

it can be irritating sometimes and it does take a lot of time, our spiritual principles really say that we're just going to keep beating the dead horse because that's what we do.

And then I also let the area know that they could rule me out of order if they wanted to as well. What ended up happening was that no one called the question for many years after that because everyone, everybody understood that we just needed to take the time.

So it's possible that whoever is chairing your meeting could remind the person that Roberts Rules of Order is not. It's something we follow, quote UN quote loosely, because tradition too, sometimes asks that we do things not in accordance with parliamentary procedure or Robert's Rules order. Hopefully that's helpful.

All right. Thanks, Brooke. The next question seems to be for New Horizons again. But you know, if you have a question for Brooke, please, there's a couple of questions. So I think the next one is for Brooke. So how long do you consider a person, a Home group member before they stop showing up? And for our group and every group and every group is going to be autonomous, right?

You remember when you say you are period

to be put on our roster at New Horizons, our bylaws read and you can get our bylaws right off of our website, newhorizonsgroupaa.com. And you go to the about our group page and at the very bottom of the page, there's a link that will take you to our bylaws. And what we, what works for our group is if you would like to be a member in good standing, which is a term that the a, A comes of age book uses.

Umm, you show up for a business meeting

and you put your name on our roster.

You don't have a voice that day, and you don't have a vote that day. But if your name is already on our roster, the next meeting you have a voice and a vote.

If you missed three business meetings in a row, you automatically drop off our roster. You automatically drop off the list that we send out for minutes, for an agenda every month, for all that stuff. And one of the reasons is, like Brooke, we want to make sure that our members are doing work.

And the other reason is we don't want to be spamming people who don't want to participate. Like, why would we want to continue giving you our minutes in our roster and all that stuff if like if we're bugging you, we're not telemarketers. So

hopefully that answers that question. And then, Brooke, how long

have you dealt with minority opinion? I heard you say you're unanimous.

That's also a great question. I am usually the minority opinion. So, yeah, so much

so

the minority opinion is really important to us. I mean, we really do look at Concept 5:00 and also the warranties which say that, you know, we're going to do things with substantial unanimity. So in the times when we do have a minority, because we always ask for that, it's like, OK, we're kind of feeling

that were like at 3/4 here, but not everybody's bought into this. So minority let you know, talk to us a little bit more

and we all just kind of listen really closely. And sometimes we say maybe it's not time for us to make a decision about this,

especially if the person,

it's like, we had one not too long ago that had to do with money, of course. And one of the people was just dead set against what we were talking about and it was just a holdout. And it's like, OK, so

until we can do this and be, I mean, substantial unanimity means substantially of one mind. And unanimous is all of one mind. And so we're trying to get that all of one mind saying. And so if the person has the ability to articulate it, more often than not, we'll just say, well, how about if you, you know, find some more material in our literature or pray about it or talk to somebody about it and we won't make a decision about it this time,