The Basic 5

[dalin]

Chapter Nine

WICHITA LITERATURE CONFERENCE

The Atlanta World Convention was held at the Sheraton Biltmore near downtown Atlanta on West Peachtree Street. It wasn't Atlanta's biggest or Atlanta's finest yet its style brought to mind the old city. There were heavy velvet drapes in one of the conference rooms that reached floor to ceiling. The tables and carpet were old but had an antebellum gracefulness. Many attending members had never been to Atlanta before so when they read the warning on the program not to walk the streets around the hotel alone, they laughed and made dope fiend humor about robbers not knowing who they were fooling with in a stickup.

There had been recent incidents where businessmen in Atlanta for company conventions had faced armed robbers with at least one killing.

Only three hundred attended yet that was more than Houston. Less than a hundred came from California. Most were from the East and some from the Midwest. Over two hundred meetings started in nearby states during the six months following the Atlanta Convention. The Wichita conference was a month ahead in October.

The World Convention was important to the sequence of events leading to our Basic Text because it gave members a chance to visit and get to know one another. Ideas and the all important knowledge of our recovery process benefited all who came. Along with the other breakthroughs being made in N.A. at the time, the effort toward a Basic Text was discussed. Feelings were shared and thereby taken into account as the work went forward.

Many members show up at N.A. events in curious ways. One story stands out in memory. A member was hitch hiking to the World Convention from Los Angeles. As he crossed from Arkansas into Tennessee, a sudden rain storm began. A passing car picked him up and in the addict way they quickly established that they were both in the program. He was a member of A.A. When he found out that Dean was going to the World Convention of N.A. in Atlanta, he thought of an A.A. newcomer who had an interest in N.A. He dropped Dean by the members home and introduced him to Joseph.

After a few long talks, Joseph decided to make the drive and attend the World Convention himself. He gave Dean a ride to Atlanta. Joseph spent much of his time in his hotel room with 'convention blues'. Addicts become a lonely lot in their addiction and are usually uncomfortable around large crowds in the first months of recovery. Still, Joseph had background in social movements and what he found happening in N.A. was fascinating to him. His fascination overcame his fear. A month later, Joseph attended the First World Literature Conference in Wichita.

Like all World Conventions, members met members and recovery became more real. The knowledge that the problems experienced by members in each community were general occurrences raised spirits. The feeling that we were all in this together fired the enthusiasm of attending members. They learned a lot about starting new meetings, the service structure and most importantly gained understanding of our Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. With this information fresh in mind, they went home built up existing meetings and started many new ones.

Sunday afternoon, after the World Convention had closed, many members of the Board of Trustees came to Bo's parents house in East Marietta. It is a beautiful home with vaulted ceilings in the living room and a huge fireplace. Soon after they arrived, the lights went out. They speculated that it must have something to do with the disease of addiction. In fact, a young man died that night loaded. His car cut a telephone pole in half on nearby Lower Roswell road however they had no way of knowing this at the time. They spent the rest of the evening talking by candle light. When the time came, Bo carried them all to the airport in his funny old postal step van. Some of these members had over fifteen years clean. What a load of recovery!

Enroute, Bo was talking with Dennis M. who was a trustee from San Jose. At the airport, Bo was waxing thick with the subject of the Basic Text. He said the trouble had been that everybody had been waiting for somebody else to do something. Sort of a mass ego trip to do nothing when the Book would require something from everyone.

Dennis asked how much money it would take to complete the project. Bo said, what if ten thousand dollars stood in the way? What if it was twenty thousand? When Bo got to fifty thousand, Dennis said, "Enough." Curiously, that's approximately the amount of money raised and disbursed by the World Literature Committee (WLC) over a two year period of production, starting then.

The day after the World Convention was spent trying to get back to normal, Bo working in the basement of his house and Judy upstairs straightening things and cooking. She was nine months pregnant.

That evening, Bo found her carrying furniture around the house with a blank look on her face. He told her to call him when she wanted something moved. She just gazed off and said she would.

After they went to bed, she woke Bo up and told him the baby was coming. Bo had many dreams that year of chairing the World Convention and being called away because Judy went into labor. It almost happened that way. The following morning, Bo's second son Alex was born. He was named after Bo's brother Alex who died in a motorcycle accident earlier in the year while Bo was at the WSC in L.A. Bo got to watch the birth in the delivery room.

In the month that followed, preparations for the Wichita Lit Conference began. Bo was behind on his rent for nine months and the little family had to move. He took his wife to a mall near his parents and sat her down to watch some kids ice skating. He told her that while the dream of the Basic Text was taking form, it would be still be hard. Now they were having to move.

He told her that the disease of addiction as if it were a supernatural agency would not like what they were doing. Based on his experiences from the 'Strip' in Atlanta, he suspected that if the disease could not stop him directly, it would attack him indirectly and that meant her. He asked her if she was willing to move into the house on the same property where they had their small sign shop. She cried when she heard this because the place would be a mess to live in. He brought up the difficulty and importance of the work. There seemed to be no other way. After she thought about it, said she yes and they moved into 890 Atlanta Road.

*** *** *** ***

The Wichita Literature Conference took place in a community center set in a small shopping center in downtown Wichita. An early orientation meeting at the Ash House allowed members to share their feelings. The members were getting to know one another. By the time they started to work, they were ready. Seven or eight workshops of three to six members did the work. Discussions included ways members could contribute material, starting local literature committees, finances, paper work, how to start local newsletters, write IP's, contribute personal stories and work toward the goal of a Basic Text. A secretary selected by the group took notes on each workshop informally. Several times the group came together as a whole and discussed the progress of each workshop. Then they would break into workshops again. The Conference only lasted two days and only included about twenty-five members but they were the right ones.

Everything they had set out to do was completed by Sunday and they all went home feeling good. Bo promised to send a copy of the minutes and final report to each attending member. Each had paid a small registration fee to pay for copies and the token rent for the facility.

*** *** *** ***

As the months went by, two things troubled Bo.

First, the IP material that WSO was to mail hadn't come out yet. He kept calling the Office about it and they kept telling him that the approval forms of the IP's would be out any time. They never came out. Eventually, Jimmy told Bo that the originals couldn't be located. Did Bo have them? Bo got a funny feeling. Every dope addict knows what its like to give someone your money before you get the goods. Was this really happening? He lacked any real option but to trust them. He called Greg about it and all Greg knew was what the WSO staff told him.

Second, the minutes were late from Wichita. He had hoped to get them out by the holidays so members could go over them and enjoy sharing them with their friends. Also, additional ideas might come in which would help with future work. The local literature Chair said only that he was having trouble getting someone to type them. This seemed incredible and with the trouble about the IP's seemed like the hope for a Basic Text had taken a turn for the worse.

How could they have come so far to be stymied by such an unaccountable deadlock? Bo looked for the blessing in all this and found none. The good members who had showed up at Wichita would be let down when their promised reports did not come. He was still sending out the monthly letters. Progress was being made. Now, many new local literature committees formed. He had established the umbrella principle within World Lit by making every chair of a local lit committee, a co-chair of world lit. And with the formation of each committee, he added the chair's name to a call list used to work up the monthly World Lit letter. He was honest about all the problems they were having. The local lit committees were sending in new material and stories constantly.

Finally, he gave up calling the WSO about the IP's. It was out of his hands. He requested that the material from the Wichita Conference be forwarded to him and he would undertake getting it typed up himself. At first the Wichita lit chair balked at this because he felt it was his responsibility. Bo reminded him that he had done all he could and service like recovery involved getting used to receiving help from others. Bo set about finding a secretary as soon as the material arrived. Three separate secretaries, skilled at typing minutes, came to his house and took away the original copies of the material and later brought them back untyped. Bo knew they were good members and faulted them none. What was God up to with this?

Finally, the deadline for sending material out for approval before conference came and went. In total frustration, he sat down himself to type up the minutes to send out to the members who had attended Wichita so at least that promise would be kept.

What he found was chaos. The material was unreadable. Some of it read easy, like you would expect. Some was actually written in a code of numbers relating to a topic list. None of it was in useful form. No wonder the typists had trouble typing it!

They probably felt pity for these poor fools working on a book for N.A. Looking at the basis for the minutes, Bo felt sort of sick himself. Nevertheless, he knew from sitting in on the discussions and having direct access to those who had chaired the workshops enough to make some sense out of the material.

He put a blank sheet of paper in his magic typewriter and started with an introduction similar to the original letter that had gone out a year earlier. Then he went to the first workshops material. He had to paraphrase, complete sentences and occasionally contribute his inspiration of what they meant. At first, he tried to style the material like minutes taken at an area meeting. It was so hard to do and so much was being left out of the content. He tried writing it up like a set of stories based on the material from Wichita, but including all the basic details by the end of each section. Finally, he was satisfied. A printer friend who was not in the program but who printed up program flyers and other materials suggested that it wouldn't take that much to get it typeset. It would read easier and he was even willing to print up copies that could be put into a booklet form.

Experience with several N.A. newsletters made the idea of putting the Wichita material into a booklet form seem achievable to Bo. He checked with his people. They all said it sounded like a great idea. They put a two dollar price at the bottom of the front cover. If the WSC approved the material as a Handbook for the World Literature Committee, it would be a great fund raiser to meet Committee expenses! The cost of the ongoing monthly mailings were eventually reimbursed, but the money had to be raised as needed within the committee and out of Bo's pocket. Reimbursement always came later.

So Bo had it type set, printed and got together a group of members by putting out the word that the Committee needed help one Friday night. Fifty clean addicts filled the room collating, folding, stapling and addressing copies of the material entitled "Handbook for N.A. Literature Committees." The inscription in back read: "Dedicated to the continuation of the effort for new literature for the program of Narcotics Anonymous; that others may find the freedom of recovery we have found."

A Wichita gal named Annie had moved to Atlanta and had chanced to come by the house the day Bo was trying to work up a suitable inscription. He had about six choices written out and showed them all to Annie who said it ought to be something more simple and special, like this. Then she said the lines which Bo quickly jotted down. It turned to be the best choice. Much the material came through serendipity in a similar manner. You just had to be open to it.

The booklet was mass mailed to over two hundred members on the World Lit mail list two weeks before the WSC. The rest of the thousand copies went with Bo to the 1980 WSC.

They had done all they could. The Lit Conference had gone great except for the trouble with the minutes that the booklet had remedied. The loss of the IP material was sad, but at least it didn't cripple the Fellowship or the effort for the Book. It would have to be an item dealt with at Conference. The main concern was that a considerable amount of material was coming in almost daily now from all over the Fellowship. Mailing of photocopies to local literature committees let them know that they were a real part of the committee. Phone calls kept the lit people together working up the monthly letter that was read to them over the phone. Their responses added to the content of the monthly letter. They knew everything there was to know about whatever was happening. Bo remembered the days when he had been unable to find out anything definite about the happenings in the Literature Committee. He respected the feelings of other members who must be feeling the same need to know right now. He was sensitive and careful to answer each question clearly and keep everything out in the open. He knew the principle here from personal experience. If he trusted them, they would trust him. Without their trust, there was no hope for the Basic Text.



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[dalin]

Chaper Ten

1980 WORLD SERVICE CONFERENCE

The 1980 WSC met around the first of May. More members came than at any other Conference in our history. They came from all over the United States. A few had been coming back for the last few years. It was still the custom to recognize as a voting participant any member from an otherwise unrepresented state. These members had shown a good record of going home and somehow letting their Fellowship know that N.A. world service was a reality and welcomed them as participants. This built the spirit of trust and mutual respect among the members of the Fellowship everywhere.

The Conference was held at Valley College in a class room. There was a nearby college restaurant with tables under a protecting overhang on the other side of the same building.

After the call to order and some other initial statements and reports, the Chair called Bo forward to report for the Lit Committee. He had talked with many members about all sides of the Committee's work and felt up to the report although certain items were going to be awkward. How was he to explain the IP's that never got sent out?

Just before his report, a regional service representative (RSR) came up behind his shoulder and told him that Jimmy was sitting in the back of the room talking loud enough for everyone around him to hear. He was saying, "Bo's not going to blame this on me."

This mortified Bo. How had this happened? What could he do now? In giving his report for the World Literature Committee, he simply stated that they had not been mailed. The committee would have to set that as a main priority the coming year.

From what Jimmy had said and from his talk with others, the Literature Committee itself was being blamed for not sending out the Informational Pamphlet material for Fellowship Review. This was to prove a God send to the committee but as usual, it didn't look like much of a gift in the beginning. Through N.A., Bo had learned to look for the blessing in any adversity. With faith, the blessing would be there.

Bo took total blame for the failure and he said it should be a first order item for the literature committee in the coming year.

To complicate matters a little more, Jimmy found the missing IP's in his secret hiding place: a safe in his bedroom with a hidden chamber in the top. Jimmy had shown Bo some precious stones he had kept there during his last visit a year ago. In the moments before leaving for the airport, Jimmy must have put the papers in that special place and later forgotten where they were until he found them in the Spring.

They had been found too late to send out to the Fellowship. Bo hadn't found this out until the Conference. Rewritten copies of the IP 'Another Look' were being passed out to attending members. Jimmy had written the IP. Some members had been concerned that he might not like the piece being changed by the committee or anyone else. None of the other missing pieces ever came into the hands of the lit committee. Bo chose not to mention any of this in his report. He kept praying.

While these things were happening, the WSC reelected Bo to chair the Literature Committee. The WSC vice-chair who served under Tommy B. was elected to chair the WSC. She was a gifted lady from San Fernando Valley. The new vice-chair was Steve B. from Northern California.

The "Handbook for N.A. Literature Committees" was so well received that the WSC approved it because it contained only Committee related material, not general recovery material that had to go out for group conscience by the whole Fellowship for at least a year.

This was a compliment for the work of the Committee but a loss of a fund raising item for the Committee that would have used the material internally with or without approval. With WSC approval, the 'Handbook' would only be available through WSO. In those days, WSC Subcommittees had only token budgets and raised funds as needed on any basis they could. This was usually no problem because there was little work done and little or no funds raised during the year. Provision for reimbursement for expenses was clumsy and took place months after the actual Committee need. This is only information, not criticism. The WSC was young and there was little resource to meet any service objective.

Bo was getting his first taste of some of the curious mentality that sets into structural service at some level. What is simple and clear can become clouded by personalities. There is a warning to place principles before personalities as stated in the Twelfth Tradition. Trouble was, whenever Bo had seen members in a pinch he had noticed it was very hard for them to see this anonymous ideal with a flesh and blood friend who looked like they were in trouble. Very hard. All you could do was surrender and go on faith.

Again the entire voting body of the WSC, maybe about thirty votes that year, chose another World Literature Conference. The site was Lincoln, Nebraska, the week following the next World Convention that was Wichita, Kansas. The Conference had worked out the place and the timing and once again Bo was overjoyed at their wisdom. With six months, even more material would come in, the local lit committees would have plenty of time to get up additional input for the Book. Oh God, it was great!

*** *** *** ***

The real lesson of the Twelfth Tradition began to set in for Bo. Sticking to the fixed notion that a Book was possible for the Fellowship saved the Committee in a very touchy situation. Any move to the side would have cost him reelection. Any effort wasted defending himself or the Committee would have thrown the voting members off balance. Only sticking to the main goal had saved them all, and the then hidden blessings God had placed into the situation.

Bo had seen similar things in the past. The reversal that occurs when self-will tries to take over what only God can be expected to accomplish. Those who take matters into their own hands are confounded. Those who quietly keep the faith are rewarded in the end with success.

That summer Bo attended the First East Coast Convention in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. There was an unscheduled workshop for literature and members of the convention committee asked Bo to sit in on it.

Several of the members in attendance expressed disbelief that a real work was going on for a N.A. Book. They said they had heard such talk before and it had come to nothing. Bo sat out the discussion and let them get out all their questions. He knew better than to argue with these people.

They were quite right. The members in the room were the stalwarts who had built the program up East. The Eastern Pennsylvania Fellowship was one of the oldest in the world, second only to California. They printed their own literature. This was a practice that dated from a bad period for WSO during which they had been unable to fill orders.

The discussion culminated when Dean, a young man from Southern California, raged that he wasn't going to be a part of another wishy washy bureaucratic episode in the history of N.A. Bo raised his hand. Once he had the attention of the group, he told them that he was intently committed to the effort for the Book and that if anyone else could tell him of another group with a greater promise of success, he would resign as World Lit Chair and go with them. He pointed to the one difference between this time and the other times: material was being written.

This impressed the attending members. They picked up copies of the Committees work sheets as they filed out. Some, if not all played a role in the continuing effort for the Book. A few played major roles by forming and actively participating in the work through local literature committees. This unscheduled workshop informed and convinced enough key members from the East to pro- vide a human backdrop to strengthen and reinforce the reports that would be coming out in future months. More names were added to the WLC mail list.

*** *** *** ***

Monthly prayers at the mountain continued. Monthly communications with the growing number of local literature committees continued with an underlying excitement. Material started to flood in. Bo now emphasized the quantity of the input by weight in pounds! The number of registered committee members grew as did the mail list. Finally, active members from the growing Fellowship assembled in Wichita for the World Convention.

*** *** *** ***

It was something. A lot had been learned from the mistakes at Atlanta. While the Committee had been plagued with every sort of difficulty, it had distinguished itself by passing on the entire minutes including committee reports to the Wichita Committee. This helped them plan around some of the known problem areas. More and more members were finding all they needed to stay clean and grow in recovery in N.A. The past with its inertia and confusion about basic issues was sliding rapidly into the past, where it should be! This was today and N.A. said 'Today I Live'!

A work such as this cannot cover all the things that went on in these years. The growing numbers of members who showed up for these conventions bringing their hopes and troubles together to sort it all out once again. The growing depth of understanding of this thing we call N.A. The awareness that we were worth something and that our individual strengths could be combined to help us all and even more for those to come.

Dying, desperation, despair, loneliness, confusion, these were the states addicts were used to. Joy, hope, selfless concern for others, these were new to us. We practiced being the people we knew we were inside in our meetings. Even though we each had our right to individual belief, we share a special unity in our meetings where our message is strong.

At the Literature workshop in Wichita, the World Literature committee openly presented samples of the stories and recovery material that had come in over the past year and a half. Discussions of how we get together and go over material were developed by the members gathered together. While we were intent to make a good presentation, we did nothing to heavy up the story. We all knew the impossibility of what we were doing and there was an other worldly sense of 'this can't be happening now to us, for us'. Only the miraculous nature of our recovery, that we were all clean and gathered in one place to celebrate another year clean allowed us to believe in what we were doing.

Gina H. shared from the podium Friday night that our Book was coming. It brought tears to the eyes of many. Gina had a gift for speaking anyway. She shared in such a way that we could accept that since it had to happen sometime, it might as well be happening now. She had been running with a kid in Boulder, Colorado when they got busted. He ate his stash and died on the way to the police station. She never got over it. A lot of us had been motivated into recovery by the galvanizing death of a very close friend or lover. It taught us that the disease was real and untreated it would kill us all. Gina was a literature worker in Nashville and had sent in some of the best material we had re- ceived.

The speaker Saturday night was an old-timer who had at the time over sixteen years clean in N.A. When he approached what was happening in the Fellowship nowadays, he slowed down his talk. You could tell he had a sense of disconcertion but also wonder. Wonder that it was finally happening after all.

An odd thing happened Saturday morning. The meeting of the World Convention Committee was scheduled at nine. Bo and Joseph from Memphis were rooming together and though both had stayed up late talking, they both slept on blissfully through the wake-up calls and the alarm clock. At precisely twelve noon, they both woke up and sat on the edge of their beds and looked first at one another and second at the television left on overnight.

The documentary concerned a quadriplegic who had been injured in action during the Viet Nam War. He was taken in from the field as dead with both arms and legs blown off. He woke up in the body bag and was immediately dragged into the operating tent and kept alive by surgery. While the emergency procedures were being carried out, he was ranting on about the actions going on in the field. He named men wounded and described battle action that occurred not only when he was on the battlefield but as the operation was proceeding. His descriptions were later verified.

He said he was not alone over the battle field but that other dead soldiers were there and watching what was going on. He said he had felt the pain and passed out. Later, it seemed he had come to but was floating around the area. This episode was being described and only took about ten minutes on the TV.

Afterwards, it gave Joseph and Bo the idea that they were indeed getting help from a spiritual realm: that the spirits of addicts who had died from their addiction were around them and helping things to work out in a special way for the Basic Text to become a reality.

Neither Bo who was more or less a pragmatic believer in God nor Joseph who was agnostic were attracted to the idea that some help was coming from the spiritual world. Still, it added an especially weird touch to the whole effort. Both were good at keeping straight faces in uncertain circumstance and they carried on...

For many of the writers of the Basic Text, the entire work on literature during these years was a spiritual event and not the functioning of a mere Committee. The trappings of an organized committee were abundantly present but within the workings of the World Lit Committee itself, there was room for ideas, intuition, mutual criticism and humor. There was a friendly tone that gave members the feeling that if they failed at something, they would be helped not ostracized. This allowed them to open their hearts and give much more than they would have given to a mere 'committee'.

The hope of succeeding in writing book that would allow the N.A. message to be carried to millions was an enhancement but by itself cannot explain the spirit of the work. Dedicated people all sorts of motives from greed to sincere love of humanity had been working in many fields with billions of dollars of backing and the resources of national governments placed at their disposal. All those holy men and masses of money and academic credentials had failed where these sincere addicts were getting results.

While these considerations were discussed by some of the members of the WLC, they were not objects of focus for the Committee's work. The focus was on telling the kind of truth that would help others find what we had already found through N.A.

Some WLC members shared the feeling that they had been chosen for the work in some strange way. Many members who planned to attend some of the Conferences were unable to attend for various reasons. Others showed up and played effective roles in the work without knowing about the work more than a few days or weeks in advance.

Many felt they were being used as channels of God's love and wisdom that is the promise of the Twelfth Step of recovery. All the love in California spilled across America and the world and triggered the energy brought to bear on the Book. As instruments of a power greater than themselves, the members involved tried to keep their feet on the ground and their minds and hearts on the work at hand at any given point. Faith and this practicality brought them through to completion.

On the Sunday following the close of the World Convention, we loaded into our cars and went up the road to Lincoln. Outside the car Bo rode in, an older man gave us some apples and oranges to eat on the way. He was one of the old trustees, a lawyer named Carl B. Something gentle in his giving meant a lot to Bo and the others who shared the gift they ate on the road to Lincoln.

The members who showed up at Wichita were taking a big step for the Fellowship. They had been together for the World Convention that had been held in the very city which had hosted the First World Literature Conference one year before the World Convention. Being with other members all by itself produces a catalytic energy that is strong enough to translate into personality change and recovery from addiction.

Being with other members for a week and then going to a service conference is even more intense. By the time they got to Lincoln, they were ready to work.



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