When people share the mess instead of the message, at meetings or elsewhere, I realize that I am not alone in getting things backward. ~ Voices of Recovery, October 23
What does it mean to share the mess?
What could happen at meetings
and be described as sharing the mess?
The suggested meeting format says,
"Please confine your sharing to your experience
with the disease of compulsive eating,
the solution offered by OA,
and your own recovery from the disease,
rather than just the events of the day or week."
Is it sharing the mess to speak of the events of the day?
Not if the event is tied to a solution discovered
that is sharing the message.
But yes, if you share by speaking of an outside matter
inherently divisive. Can you safely describe
a political event that seems relative to you
involving divisive political views?
To do that is to do as the Apostle Paul
when he said, "But not everyone
possesses this knowledge.
Some people are still so accustomed to idols
that when they eat sacrificial food
they think of it as having been sacrificed
to a god, and since their conscience is weak,
it is defiled." He's saying if the faith of the hearer
is not as strong as the speaker, that person is hurt.
Even if we believe a truth we must be careful
not to misguide someone else. We speak the truth
but we speak in love and like a doctor, first, do no harm.
