I heard a sermon recently by one of our Church’s young associates that seemed more like an AA meeting Pitch than what you would expect to come out of the mouth of the average preacher.  The gist of what she was saying was to reach someone; you needed to put yourself in close proximity and be genuinely vulnerable.

As we emerge from Covid-19  in the last couple of months and resume in-person meetings, the message couldn’t be timelier.  Thank God for Zoom meetings that have kept our sober society of AA together.  But like most, I have missed the face-to-face connection both before, after, and during meetings.  Hopefully, we will be able to avoid the insanity of another round of lockdowns that will chain us to our technology screens

But the more powerful message of her talk was to reawaken me to what a precious commodity we have in our history of sharing our “experience, strength and hope” but also our weakness and vulnerability.  During the sermon, she shared a very personal vulnerability. I said that I had never heard a preacher be so open about a defect before.  That contrasts with my experience in which sharing a vulnerable place at almost every formal and informal AA encounter is commonplace. So unremarkable that it is easy to forget what a unique blessing it is.

Leading with vulnerability and weakness can take several forms.  One is “knocking down” the thin veneer of the polished exterior we use to protect ourselves in our world.  Another is the simple statement, “I don’t know,  what do you think?.” The admission that one doesn’t know something is the most potent opening gambit that might encourage sharing by others.

But for all of this to work, we need real connections with people, and that takes another dimension-Proximity.  We need to decrease the distance between ourselves and others, which Zoom can resemble but never truly deliver on.  Being in the same room with others in close physical proximity and giving our time to listen to others is indispensable. 

And finally, it’s making ourselves open to people that we would not usually hang out with.  Last week I spent an hour with a person who works six days a week running a gas station by himself.  I wondered about what we would talk about.  When I enquired about his education, I was almost blown over by his Master’s degree in Biological Science.  He shared how as an outreach from his Church, he developed a unique ministry in getting the homeless off the street, one person at a time.  There is no programmatic approach here. He was just talking and listening and teasing out a unique solution to each soul’s grab bag of problems.