Group Conscience and Trusted Servants – AA Service Workshop – 2025 – Part 26 of 27 – Billy N.

good evening everyone i'm billy i'm an alcoholic so someone asked a question which was the first thing i was going to talk about tonight um recordings if you need recordings just send me an email and i will explain it to you um there is a private facebook group called monday night service workshop the recordings are usually posted there by first thing tuesday morning only audio is recorded all the questions as you know are read by me from the chat so the whole meeting is recorded um so just so everybody knows that just a reminder when we get to questions uh we do not deal with any conference agenda items at this uh gathering it's extremely too close to the general service conference to be interfering with the process that is designed in each area to give feedback to your delegate which is especially important considering the concept we're going to talk tonight um but we don't take any even question that's remotely close to agenda items um so what else do i need to say um tonight we're talking um about i believe we are on concept two tonight am i right yes i am right um so um if you're new to us and you want to catch up you can send me an email we'll tell you how to get into that group um and you can listen to the recordings but you don't need to listen to me to catch you could just read yourself in uh the concepts in the service manual sometimes i i've had people say it's confusing because i mentioned something and they don't understand it so i just want to explain that there are actually two books with the concepts in it i have my old red book here but this is not a service manual this is actually item bm32 which is just the concepts you can buy a book that is just the concepts, or you can get the service manual. I tend to like this book because when the service module changes, the concepts will stay the same. The only thing I would say if you do buy the concepts book is the traditions are not in there, not even listed one to 12, short form or long form. And the conference charter is not in There, which makes it difficult to really understand the concepts without reading the conference Charter. But I just wanted to explain that but in the makeup time please get a service manual um i'm going to repeat what i said one time please email me if you need directions how to get a hold of the recordings the email is in the chat if you're going to catch up read the traditions illustrated the concepts illustrated and for the traditions please read the section na comes of age that deals with all the traditions It goes very clearly, 1 through 12, starting in like page 80-something, 90-something. That chapter is not called the traditions, but they are in there. So let's start with Tradition 2. We'll start with one of our favorite questions about Tradition 3. The long form of Tradition 4 is for our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority a loving god as we express himself in our group conscience first question we get is why is the short form longer because it uh adds some wording hold on one second while i put my email again in here for someone who's signed in right at the start of the meeting so they didn't see it um but it's a valid question why is the short form longer why is there that extra wording at the end our leaders of what trusted servants they do not govern the best research done on this topic was by frank m a past archivist who's now passed away of the general service office i got i knew frank he wasn't oh okay well i'll finish and then get to another thought um frank did a lot of research on this and i'm going to explain why the old-timers did not like this tradition but for the rest of aa they were afraid of believe it or not alcoholics who have a little bit too much fun with power and authority or like it a little bit too much or the old alcoholic ego. And so they added that line to take fear away from the fellowship that there was going to be some governing body that was going tell everybody what to do in AA. And so that's why they added that line, our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern. Now, what I forgot to say, and I apologize because I wrote myself like six notes today to talk about this and I forgot it so I just need to pull up an email just stay with me one second I just needs to pull up an e-mail that I received today which caused me to take about a 20 minute break from work because it was not good news but yet it was good news um i just need to find it and who from the general service office sent it okay passing of trusted servant jim estelle trustee emeritus i use his last name because he was a class a trustee who then went on to serve as the chair of the board says we recently received the sad news that trustee emeritus wj jim estelle passed away on february 13th 2025. attached please find a brief description of his legacy of service to ao at aa and a link to information regarding his memorial service and inside his obituary i'm just going to read a little of it to you jim actually uh a family of people who worked in corrections he actually lived in the housing for corrections officers at san quentin at one time when he was a boy um jim went on to work in the california department of corrections and then to montana department of collections and then into the texas department of correction where he was the director of all prisons and corrections in texans jim was probably one of the most pro-alcoholics anonymous wardens and director of prisons in all of america when people sometimes ask why was texas so far ahead of the rest of the country regarding active alcoholics anonymous meetings in correctional facilities that goes directly to jim estelle jim was a cowboy's cowboy he always wore his cowboy boots he always wore his belt with his buckle he always had his watch on that had whatever that blue stone is i'm forgetting what it's even called um jim was about six foot three or four jim always wore a cowboy hat um and jim sacrificed more of his life for alcoholics anonymous than probably many members including myself fair cause thank you somebody who said that I want to share something that Jim shared with me for anybody who may be new to service or new to a service position. So you could be brand-new GSR, you could do this, you know what I'm saying? You could be somebody who just took a new position, but I want to share some with him with you after I was a delegate my first position below the conference level at gso was serving as an employee member on the trustee conference committee i went to my first board weekend the july board weekend after i was selected i remember like saying to myself that i'm going to pretend like i have scotch tape over my mouth I'm just going to observe and watch and mind my own business. And I did an excellent job of it from my believe me, we're talking I'm talking about myself. So I'm being honest like I was quiet as could be. And the corrections committee met in the morning at that time during board weekend. All the trustees and directors all eat in the same room and get lunch. And Jim sat down right next to me. And I had known Jim since I was a delegate and before I was a delegate. And we talked conversationally for a little bit. And then he said to me, and he looked right at me, he said, what was that in the meeting? What happened? And I said, what part are you talking about? he said the part where you said nothing i said oh so you know jim i don't have a problem sharing my opinion so i just decided that i would come here and i would just like take a good look around and take it all in and not come out like right away and he said do you know how much aa paid for you to be here this weekend he said do you know how much money came out of the basket to get you pay your travel do you now how much money came outta the pit to pay for your two hotel rooms this weekend you know that much money came out of the basket for you to eat here this weekend he said if your plan is to waste days money maybe you should think about not coming back He said, we don't waste our money in Alcoholics Anonymous and we don t pick people or elect people to serve in positions so that they can just come and be a wallflower and stand up against the wall and not participate. He's like anybody who's been selected for an AA position from a GSR at their home group you here today somebody trusted that you were going to do your best to carry out aaa's group conscience he's like and you can't do that without participating and i have never forgotten that lesson that jim taught me and i am forever forever grateful um he was the giant among giants i cannot explain i cannot say that enough that he was a giant among giants so i wanted to give a big shout out to his family thank them for the sacrifice that they made you talked about a man that served nine years as a class a okay that right there is 27 board weekends okay nine one-week general service conferences then came back as a chair so 12 more board weekends and four more general service conferences then came back as the trustee emeritus and just never like interfered or tried to control but shared history when it was needed so when i add that all up and i think about the time and the debt that we probably have to his family i just wanted to mention him tonight so with that i'll go back to tradition two so let's talk about why tradition two was not really liked by old members it's not like they like the traditions to begin with or particularly this tradition put a bad taste in the mouth of many old-timers i was recently in pennsylvania this weekend which made me think of some of you may be aware of a treatment facility um that originally was well you probably know it as the karen foundation but originally it was called chit chat it was like one of the first uh, treatment centers out there when there weren't a lot of them. Um, Dick, uh, his last name was C um, started that, which has nothing to do with AA I'm just trying to tell you how much of a giant he was in the alcoholism kind of community if you've ever heard of a conference called Cook's forest, which claims to be the oldest conference in all of Alcoholics Anonymous, which might be true. I hate to say it is because in AA, whenever you use words like first or founder, they're kind of dangerous to use because we don't keep the best history, we try to. But Cook Forrest was started for the delegate from Pennsylvania to give their report. That's how Cooks Forrest started in 1951 after the first General Service Conference. And Cooks Forest is still today, twice a year, the weekend before Memorial Day and the weekend after Labor Day. And the reason I mention him is because I've read a couple of letters from Dick to Bill W. in the late 40s, and he was not happy about any of this going on. He didn't like the idea of the traditions. He didn't like the idea of a general service conference. He thought we were giving too much authority to all these newcomers who were going to come into AA and destroy it before they got good society. And that's what the old times were afraid of. You have to understand, I'm on my phone tonight because I'm traveling, so I have it set up on my desk in my hotel room, not my iPad. I can see some of the people that are in here. i can't see as many as i usually see um but i can see some of the people and i can tell you that a.a in the 40s like the early 40s was made up for like our kind of personality if you had five or six years in 1944 that was like having 50 years today you were an old timer you got to make all the aa rules you got to decide what nights the meeting met where they met whose house or what church you got, to decide who actually got to come to the meeting. You got to decide if before Al-Anon you had a gathering for family members and spouses before the meeting you made all the decisions for aa in your little part of the world So imagine how it went over when all of a sudden every AA member's vote was equal. That did not go over too well. Now, I want to give a big plug for the AA group pamphlet, which sometimes I call the owner's manual of Alcoholics Anonymous. the AA group pamphlet it's kind of like when you buy a car and rather than read the instruction manual that's usually in like a nice folded like velcro thing like in the wheel well or glove compartment that you never read because you'll just guess how it works but that's what the AA Group Pamphlet is it's really the owner's manual of Alcoholics Anonymous and inside that group pamphlet is the answer to lots of questions but regarding this tradition one of the most important i wonder if i want to remind somebody to please i just got an alert from one of our watchers if you are on camera and you have a phone up inside the screen you are in jeopardy of being removed i'm just letting you know because we take anonymity seriously here um so that's just a gentle warning i've instructed the person not to remove anyone because we didn't give that warning officially yet tonight um but inside the aa group pamphlet there is a section on what is a group conscience and one of the most important things it talks about is being informed and taking your time and having lots of discussion and on important matters not rushing things just um taking the time and letting everybody get their two cents out now that doesn't mean letting someone control the room or dominate the room sometimes people ask me what in their district or their area or their group they complain about one person who's always talking and i'm like well you could use the same principles that the general service conference uses that when you discuss one issue no one gets to talk twice until everyone who hasn't talked once and wants to gets to talk first but you got to make that part of your script you got to let people know ahead of time and the old AA adage of we want to hear everything we just don't want to hear it from everybody like if if what's been said already is what you are going to say perhaps you don't need to say it but this is how we've kept AA in the middle of the road to make sure that personalities don't dominate, to make sure groups make informed decisions. And believe me, if you're really new to AA or like you're new but like in the fascination stage um if i hate to wreck it for you if you think you have landed in the land and island of spiritual giants i just want to let you know that you might be a little disappointed from time to time you mightbe disappointed in some behavior that you witness it could even be for me you might be disappointed um but we have this and what's great about it is it's self-correcting a group conscience today might not be our group conscience tomorrow now let me put a little aa myth to the side there regarding the general service conference and the second tradition there is a common quote that people repeat that no conference action is binding upon another that is technically true however it doesn't mean that once the general service conference is over you don't have to believe that's our group conscience that's our group conscience until the conference votes differently two-thirds to go the other way like we have a plain language big book you don't get to show up and say well it's not binding because you know that was two years ago no it's binding until the conference votes again two- thirds to do it differently edition of the big book under works right now the conference has voted to make a fifth tradition you can't just say oh no conference action is binding upon another note this year's general service conference is the 75th general service confidence creating a fifth edition is binding on that conference unless they vote two-thirds to rescind it or do something different but the self-correcting aspect of alcoholics anonymous is our beauty now sometimes we take it too far depending upon what version of alcoholic you are because i'm guessing we still have some second edition members alive we have a lot of third tradition edition um uh alive a ton of fourth edition and soon fifth edition all those alcoholics are alive if you particularly are a third edition alcoholic you remember the great smoking debate the great smoking debate almost destroyed Alcoholics Anonymous at one point it happened between like 1988 and let's just call it 1995 you would sometimes go to a meeting that was smoking and you didn't go to the last business meeting and now it's non-smoking and then all the smokers will get together at a diner after a meeting and say we're all going to the next business meeting and they would change it back to smoking that's just the way it went but we've changed our mind on a bunch of topics in alcoholics anonymous and that's healthy and good but what I would tell you is the healthiest and take it from someone who is strongly opinionated one of the greatest spiritual exercises a service is to help carry out a group conscience that you are opposed to not just take your toys and run to the diner and text all your sponsees and God knows what else we like to do. The better spiritual exercise is to say, you know, I was against this picnic my group was going to have, but I'm going to join the committee. I'm gonna go along with what the group for me my personal experience is that has taught me a lot it's taught me about just being a member among members it's a very painful listen i know the general service conference is coming up i know we changed the preamble i know we have a plain language big book i don't think there's anything i'm not it doesn't matter how i feel about any of that um but what i would tell you is it's a very it's a very lonely place to be when you believe you are the smartest person in Alcoholics Anonymous and if they only listened to you, they would have voted a different way. And worse than that, it's also a very painful place to live. It's a painful place for you to be when you're so angry at the one place in the world that saved your life. it's just not a healthy good place to be and i would tell you to talk to anyone who's been in aa a long time and they'll share honestly when they've probably been in that situation it's a lot easier to believe the instructions which are god is in charge and god's will is shown through the group conscience so i want to read concept two if you're changing books i'll give you a second concept two one in 1955 the aa groups confirm the permanent charter for their general service conference they thereby delegated to the conference complete authority for the active maintenance of our world services and thereby made the conference except for any change in traditions 12 in the 12 traditions or an article 12 of the conference charter the actual voice of our whole society common question is why does it say 1955 when the first conference was in 1951 so that's because the first four conferences were a test actually the first five 51 52 53 54 and 55 after the 55th conference the international convention was in st louis and the aa groups ratified the conference charter and that the conference would be permanent going forward and that its actions would be binding on the board of trustees so concept two is about if concept one says the groups are in charge how do we carry out concept two um there's a couple of strong sentences in concept two that i don't want to forget it says the power of the groups and members to alter their world service structures and And to criticize its operation is virtually supreme. Now, as someone who served as a trustee, you're never going to be criticized more than being a trusty. But that's because the groups have that power. It says it in the first paragraph. To criticize its operations is virtually Supreme. the operation is really theirs. They really own it. From a legal point of view, which we'll get into in Concept 7, the trustees are our owners, but the spiritual owners are the groups of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's who the spiritual owners of Alcoholic Anonymous is. Now, let's talk about what's going on right now. like practical real deal concept two people tell me i don't like my delegate okay or people tell you know our delegates really not doing a good job and then i asked them was your delegate a good alternate delegate no he was horrible at that too i'm like well i hate to break it to you but if you're a bad alternate cookie coffee person at your group you're not going to magically become a great coffee cookie person at your group if you don't show up and are not prepared in the positions you had prior what's going to make you different as a delegate and so i just want to stress that every other year in your area you elect the delegate an alternate delegate and other officers don't elect your friends you might happen to elect your friends but not because they were your friends you elected him because you thought that she or him would be the best at it often if you really want to be honest with yourself this is my experience there are some of my friends i probably should never elect a delegate that's not their it's not their gift and there are some people that I don't agree with who make really good delegates like the importance of the election of a delegate, I cannot stress how important that is the delegate is representing all the groups in your area at the once-a-year General Service Conference. Now, your delegate is going to get feedback, and again, we talked about this last week. There's 93 different areas in the United States and Canada. They all do it a different way with the same goal of getting an accurate cross-section feedback to go vote at the General Service Conference. But you don't get to go with them and make sure they voted the way you want them to vote. You're trusting that that person is going to do the best job, but here's the kicker. Not the best job for your area. And not the best job for your district or group. the delegate's job is to vote for what's best for Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. Now, delegates should be fully transparent. Sometimes people say, well, my delegate said I don't have to tell you how I voted. That is not how I read the conference charter. it is not how I read concept three right of decision when we exercise the right of decision we owe complete open reports but I think that's the best learning lesson for an area if a delegate comes back to the area and says I know we really felt this way but I heard some information shared at the conference And it really caused me to think that what was best for Alcoholics Anonymous is me to vote this way. Now, I also hear people say all kinds of things about, I just hear so many things and I, I just have never met a delegate or a past delegate where even if you went to your, however your area gets the information back through the districts at a mini conference however you do it i don't know any delegate who would never take the time to talk to a group member for 15 minutes and hear them out and see why they're so concerned about a particular issue You know, as we talk about Concept 2 tonight, let's talk about the largest group of people in AA. Which unfortunately, I hate to let you all know how uncool you are, it's not the 122 people gathered together on a Monday night to talk about traditions and concepts. uh see there's a large group of people who don't have a gsr in that group or who have a GSR and don't give that GSR time to properly report or they think oh whatever happens at the general service conference that that service stuff isn't important now i would usually or for a long time say they have a right to believe that but since i have many general service conferences now in a row behind me i can tell you that every year and i mean every year somebody that i know that is a good member of aa calls me with the exact same phone call that i got the year before and it always starts out with you wouldn't believe what they did last week now because i've been sober a long time if it's an aa phone call i would believe anything so let's just say that there is nothing i would not believe anymore but when somebody calls me and says you know what out of the blue they just changed the preamble i'm like i hate to tell you this but we've been talking about it for a couple of years or you're not going to believe this they're making a plain language big book aa's ending probably within a couple of weeks it's going to destroy aaa like well i hate to tell you this but we've been talking about that for a couple of years too but i just want to stress to everyone who's in here that you will run into people like that and that's the in my opinion the week after the general service conference is the greatest learning opportunity we have in alcoholics anonymous every year the week after when we get a passionate very involved but totally pissed off member because they just heard that their favorite pamphlet was changed or we did something they don't like or we're not going to say the off father at the next international convention i could go on and on there is no better learning opportunity to seize on regarding our structure than the week after the General Service Conference. Those are the people we need to make sure their group has a GSR. Now, I do want to say something here about the GSRs that elect the delegate. We don't have a problem electing GSRs in AA. We have a problem getting GSR is to their first assemble. Now we have another problem. If the assembly is like so bad, they don't go back to that second. But we first got to get them there one time. And if the GSR who was just passed never went to an assembly, why would the new GSR go to an Assembly? And one of the things I want to share because I've learned this because it finally dawned on me, like at year 24, when I was at my own home group selection, I finally realized we elect GSR like second to last at our election meeting. If GSR really is that important, shouldn't it be one of the first couple of positions we elect because the further we put it down the list whether we say everything's the same or not everybody thinks it's unimportant we finally just elected the birthday cake person we just elected the person who cleans up the parking lot of the cigarette butts hold on we have one more the gsr we need to elect the gsa So, a way to empower your GSR is to move it up in the schedule how you elect them. And the other thing I want to say about this time of the year is how are you not going to be surprised about what happens at the General Service Conference if you don't give your GSR before the general service conference, time to talk to the group about what's going on at the conference. And if you're a new GSR here tonight, I'm going to tell you that probably even in the most patient and tolerant group in the world, you don't have time to review 81 agenda items with then. You need to take a hard look at that list, maybe ask your DCM or your delegate to help you and really identify the ones that your group is really going to be interested in. The ones that you know, that depending on how the vote goes, they're going to be all bent out of shape. Like you got to find a way to at least talk about them. The General Service Conference, it's the 75th this year. 75 years of General Service Conferences. In a blink of an eye, we'll be at the 100th General Service conference the general service conference is what is kept aaa but only because the delegates make up 93 votes of the 135 or so votes at the general service conference and we'll talk about that in concept four so with that i am going to go to some questions if you have a question please send it in let's see what makes you believe that god's will is voiced through the informed group conscience well that's a great question i guess the first thing i would say about that is that i have to ask myself how out of control is my ego if there's no need for a general service conference that i know better than everyone so that's number one i need to ask yourself that question but it took me a long time to believe in god even use that word after i was comfortable using higher power but for me i've had to exit the debating society our principle says that god shows himself through our group conscience and i've had to start to believe that that should be good enough for me i don't need to come on day three and say you know what this a8 thing's good it's worked for three days but i can make it a lot better which is right in my natural ballpark right yeah i know you've been doing it this way for 50 years but i have a good couple of ideas that'll be a lot better um and i've seen it work and maybe you have to be here for a few years to witness the group conscience to witness minority opinion which we'll talk about in a couple of weeks and also what makes me believe in it is that it's not permanent that as jim astell used to say we're the greatest self-correcting society in the world maybe that's as informed as we could have been that day and maybe in two years we'll be more informed let's see the wording in that first paragraph to alter their world service structure was this intended to today's world service outside of the u.s and canada or just for our structure so by the time the concepts were written there were other general service structures At the time the charter was approved in 55, there were not. But each of the 63 autonomous general service structures uses the concepts. Is AA trying to do too much too quick, not allowing Tradition 2 to work its fullest strength? 81 proposed agenda items for the last two years i don't want to talk about agenda items i'm not sure what that means um listen we can't forget one thing whenever we're doing something in aa it involves alcoholics which is usually a disaster from the start on many levels right all our alcoholic tendencies and personalities and egos yeah listen i won't talk about an agenda item this year but i'll talk about things in general and this is not only an aa problem it's a problem that a lot of non-profit organizations seem to have we love to come up with something new to do before we finish what we're working on now if you apply that to your life i don't want to be the judger and jury of your life but if i apply it to my life it just seems to be very fit in the alcoholic mindset rather than finish the project i'm working on let's start a new one it just seems that we're very good at that and so i don't know if that is what the question means but i do know that when you look at the general service board the aws board the grapevine board and the conference we do seem to always we're right on to the next new ideas instead of making sure that we finish the projects we're working on oh here's a good question have you found anything that works to make the sting feel less when you lose a vote on something you feel very strongly about hmm i think the honest answer to that would be the following I have found a way to make it does it still sting sometimes yes I think I've become better at the fact that it stings of having to make everybody else's life miserable I think i've learned that that just because I lost a vote or something I care about Do I need to let it dominate my head that I'm just going to get back my pound of flesh? That way, it's gotten better for sure. The other way, and I just want to share some experience is when something that I was not in favor of actually works out and turned out to be a good idea. once you've been through that a few times um you accept god's will through the group conscience like wow the last time i was really against it the group decided to do this and you know what it worked out really well it was a good idea so um but it's perfectly natural because we get all caught up in really being very attached to a particular thing. Why do we have short forms of the traditions and concepts? They often seem to sow more confusion than convenience, given the differences between the two formats. Yeah. We really wanted something to be in line with the steps to be able to fit on a shade and um to be less complicated but yes we have created some confusion for sure when we get to concept six you'll hear me talk about it the short form of concept six is a disaster the short the long form of concert six the first thing it talks about is how the conference is the final authority it left that out of the short form but it would kind of be like saying if you're familiar with the chapter how it works in the big book the 12 steps are laid out in that chapter would we tell somebody who's new oh yeah you're going to work the steps just read the 12 steps in that chapter don't start at the beginning of the big book don't even start at the beginning of that chapter i mean listen there's lots of things we could debate and they take it from someone. In today's world, based on the way I learn, I would have probably been called neurodivergent. The way that I particularly learn, the way that I read or remember certain tendencies that I have. I mean, I'm a guy that the first time I heard how it works, I was like, wait a minute. It says there are three pertinent ideas, but then you applied letters to them not a number how who wrote this like there's three pertinent ideas and then you have abc instead of one two three like what's going on like it's just best regarding the debate between the short form of the concepts and the traditions to just be glad somebody is starting to read them and then share the long form with them and then take them through our literature to help them learn some more but i admit they are a little short i have heard that the short form of the traditions was intended for public consumption and not for members of aa i do not know that to be true i have heard that i was told it was because earl t in chicago told bill w that for the membership he thought there should be a short form of the traditions not for people outside and earl had a lot of influence in alcoholics anonymous chicago was kind of you know we always talk about new york and akron But truthfully, the early power centers of Alcoholics Anonymous were New York and Chicago. If you read our history. Let me get to the next question. could you tell me what you think this year are some of the most important agenda items no i cannot tell you that thank you for the question uh but that goes in the category of none of my business um you should read through it if you have a service sponsor if you know your dcm give your delegate a call but i'm not comfortable with saying what i think is i can tell you a game i play every year to make your aa life a little bit more enjoyable i do go through the agenda and make a couple of notes about what am i going to get the phone calls on that people said they had no idea was going on i play that game with myself and i've become pretty good at that game like i can pretty much guarantee the phone calls that are coming about things that there was some conspiracy to hide from the fellowship that i've become very good at but it's better that i mind my own business and not tell you what i think are the really important ones this year uh here's another great question have you ever seen a group conscience go one way and it turned out not to be a good idea yes Yes, I have. I want to talk about unity versus unanimity. The greatest thing we have in Alcoholics Anonymous is diverse opinion. I'm even gonna cheat and steal a line from the end of concept four. Because sometimes I hear like, oh, the board, it really needs to be like, the board needs to unanimous, like they need to have unity. Unanimity is not unity in Alcoholics Anonymous service. what makes us have great group consciences is having diverse opinions where we reach a consensus in a group conscience it actually says in concept four um it says it is also noteworthy that in practice our trustees have never yet voted in a block and then i love this sentence it's the top paragraph on page 15 last page of concept 4 talking about the trustees and i think you all remember last year scott last week scott and i talking about it scott and i probably agree 98 of the time but the two percent we don't agree we really don't agree that's just as good as i could say that but listen to what it says here Their differences of opinion among themselves are nearly always as sharp and considerable as those to be found among the delegates themselves. That's what makes the Board of Trustees an effective unit. Different, diverse opinions. People who don't always agree with each other. There's nothing more dangerous than AA than when we all agree with each other. I can tell you this, of the group consciences that the question was have I seen something and it didn't work out even though the group voted to do it? More often than not usually when it's close to a unanimous vote because then people didn't take the time. like a railroad you know what group consciences always work out the close vote the differences of opinion the ones where we actually have to have a vote because it's those differences of opinion that makes us great it's just unfortunate that we're made up of alcoholics and And sometimes, like our differences of opinion, we don't know how to verbalize that in a non-ugly fashion, in a respectable fashion. Let's see. We have time for one more question if someone wants to send one in. I will say this, if anybody wants the information on Jim Estelle's funeral or where you can send a note or a card to his family, please email me and I will send that to you. is really something that's on the top of my mind right now because you know people in a service our loved ones and family they give up a lot for us to serve they give up a real lot they sacrifice and i was just talking to my friend tom about this who by the way is a trustee and me and him agree on like nothing right so just so you know like you can have friends but i can tell you one thing we do agree upon about a service and this is at the district area and u.s and canada level we do a very bad job at paying respects to people who pass away we forget about them we don't show up and say something to their family like remember you're talking about families that their person sacrificed time don't they want to hear from the people they sacrificed for how maybe it meant something and this has been on my mind lately with a couple of funerals i've been to um that we should do a better job paying respects and i'm not listen it's just something i've noticed and i've talked to some other people about it and they've noticed um you take a person who's 30 years sober and passes away they have a couple of kids maybe their kids sacrificed lost a little time with their parents because of aa service like it would be nice if some of us showed up um and uh some people are sending in ideas thank you for those ideas i'm going to send some into the general service office i have a couple of ideas as well of things we could do um to better you know remember people so with that i will uh all right if you i'm gonna do this one more time my email is going in there if you want the information for Jim's family who are taking cards or notes please email me and I will make sure that it gets to you so with that we will close with the responsibility statement I am responsible when anyone anywhere reaches out for help i want the hand of a always to be there and for that i am responsible thanks everyone have a great night