Second Quarter 2007 Volume 17, Number 2    Page 2 of 2 Sponsorship Kit What's New From WSO Service and Traditions Workshop Manual Many Languages Available Didja Know? Update 2006 — 2007 Easy Access, Less Cost Nine Ways to Support Your Recovery and Lifeline Lifeline is OA-Approved Literature Border Guards: Tradition Four Issues Dateminder Sponsorship Kit Would you like to sponsor someone but need a little help and inspiration to get started? Or maybe you are already sponsoring and need some extra guidance. The new Sponsorship Kit can help. It includes stories from Lifeline magazine about sponsoring; the pamphlets A Guide for Sponsors, A Guide to the Twelve Steps for You and Your Sponsor, and the Tools of Recovery; and the article “Working with Others” from  A Step Ahead. Item #210, US$2.25 each; #211, US$20/pk 10, plus shipping. Top What's New From WSO Hearing Is Believing Excerpt Hear a five-minute excerpt from Hearing Is Believing, a 20-minute CD that recounts the journeys of several OA members from despair to recovery and serenity. Full version: Item #685 (cassette) US$5; #686 (CD) $6, plus shipping. Top Service and Traditions Workshop Manual A “soup-to-nuts” guide to planning and leading workshops, the expanded S&T Manual now includes two new workshop formats: Accepting Our Disease Without Feelings of Shame and Planning a Sponsorship Workshop. In addition, the Twelve concepts of OA Service have been enhanced with illuminating and whimsical illustrations. Item #773, US$9, plus shipping.   Top Many Languages Available Many service bodies have translated OA materials into other languages — Afrikaans, Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. Contact the World Service Office for information on obtaining copies of translations. Top Didja Know? Your intergroup may purchase literature at a reduced cost when hosting health fairs or professional exhibits. In most instances, the reduced cost of the literature is 50 percent of the retail price, plus shipping costs. A PDF version of the application and guidelines are available on the OA Web site. Your region trustee must approve all applications, so please allow at least one month for processing the paperwork and shipping your order. The WSO is here to help you carry the message to health fairs and professional exhibits. Top Update 2006 — 2007 Please check your meeting details! Does the WSO have the same information? Update online or email your information to lbaird@oa.org. Or request a Group/Registration Change Form from the World Service Office by calling 505-891-2664 in the USA. You can either fax the form to 505-891-4320 (USA) or mail it to the WSO, P.O. Box 44020, Rio Rancho, NM 87174-4020 USA. Thanks for your help! By keeping your meeting information current, you extend a hand to those who are still-suffering and searching for a meeting. Top Easy Access, Less Cost! Are you a computer lover, an OA loner without a meeting, a member in the boondocks with unreliable mail delivery, or a member who just wants to save some money? Then e-Lifeline is for you! At US$13 a year, it’s a bargain. E-Lifeline online has everything in the US$15 print version. You have access to the current issue on the first day of the month, and you can view the preceding 10 issues with a few clicks on your keyboard. It’s easy to subscribe online. Top Nine Ways to Support Your Recovery and Lifeline If you are an event planner for your group, intergroup or region, include at your event a Lifeline Tabletop Display. Encourage members to subscribe for themselves, a newcomer, someone who can’t afford a subscription, or a health-care facility. If you attend intergroup meetings, ask your intergroup to consider using funds from its Public Outreach Committee to donate a subscription to a doctor’s office. Be sure to contact the doctor first to see if he or she would welcome the subscription. To make your donation, use the intergroup subscription form. If your group or you want to donate a subscription, use the group and individual subscription form. If you are a featured speaker at an OA event, include as part of your speech the value of Lifeline to recovery and encourage members to subscribe or to donate a subscription. Be sure to have subscription forms on hand. If you have “techie” friends who love to do everything on a computer, make them aware of e-Lifeline, direct them to the Lifeline Sample Issue, and encourage them to subscribe to e-Lifeline. If you love Lifeline, spread the word. Talk about it with your friends in and out of OA and encourage them to subscribe. Direct them to the new Lifeline Through the Years Web page or the Lifeline sample issue. If you want to give service to your group, volunteer to be a Lifeline rep. If you are a sponsor, encourage your sponsoree to become the Lifeline rep for your group. If you want to see Lifeline filled with stories of experience, strength and hope, set aside a meeting (or more) to have a Lifeline writing workshop. Write about a topic from the Lifeline monthly topics (available online and in the July issues of Lifeline and A Step Ahead) and send the stories to Lifeline. Top Lifeline Is OA-Approved Literature Lifeline is OA-approved literature that provides a forum for members to express their views and their experience, strength and hope. While a board committee oversees each issue for possible breaks in Tradition, they want the authors’ voices to be heard. Just as members are free to express their opinions in face-to-face meetings, Lifeline, our meeting on the go, offers the same opportunity in writing. Lifeline may be discussed and displayed at OA meetings. Top May 2006 Border Guards: Tradition Four Issues Workshop Summary Leaders: Marilyn A., Region Five Trustee; Teresa K., Region Four Chairman; Di C., Region Ten Chairman; Charles A., Region Eight Trustee Tradition Four: Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or OA as a whole. Di opened the workshop with a reading of the OA Preamble. She then announced the purpose of the workshop: “To provide members with an opportunity to discuss what issues affect other groups or OA as a whole as opposed to being a group issue.”A favorite saying in Overeaters Anonymous is “There are no musts in this program.” As individuals we are responsible for ourselves and free to work (or not work) the Twelve-Step program however we wish. The same principle holds true for OA groups. Tradition Four — the Tradition of autonomy — gives OA groups the right and responsibility to operate as they see fit, free from any outside influence. Autonomy means that OA groups can have no affiliations other than with OA. It also means that no other group or service body — even inside OA — can dictate group action. There is only one limit to group autonomy in Tradition Four: Groups should not do anything that will injure other OA groups or OA as a whole. (The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, p.137).Di presented excerpts from “Autonomy Is Not an Excuse” from the AA Grapevine (April 1998) and talked about how this Tradition came to be developed by the early AA’s. She emphasized how the early AA’s came to see that every group had a right to be wrong and that allowing groups the right to be wrong came to be seen as a great service to the AA fellowship. Di asked two questions: Do we allow groups to be wrong? Do we allow groups to make their own mistakes and learn from their own experience? “Autonomy Is Not an Excuse” starts with “The Fourth Tradition seems to me to be the one of the least understood and most misinterpreted. During discussions of Tradition Four I’ve heard opinions expressed all the way from ‘Autonomous means we can do whatever we want’ to ‘AA as a whole is affected by everything a group does — it’s just a matter of degree.’ In my experience the truth lies somewhere in between these two.”Teresa discussed the article in the Second Quarter 2006 A Step Ahead titled “The Balanced Application of Tradition Four Throughout OA.” The complete article is available to read or download online. The article was provided as a handout to the workshop attendees.Charles and Marilyn shared some Tradition Four experiences from their local OA communities. There were stories about newcomers meetings before a regular OA meeting that closed the door, and people were not allowed in once the meeting started. This meeting has up to 60 attendees and has been going on for seven years. There were stories of OA meetings that did not abide by the Traditions that eventually closed down. It was stressed that the Traditions are not rules, but distilled experiences that guide our Fellowship.The workshop leaders then presented two propositions, and the attendees were invited to come to the front of the room and share. A scribe captured all of the sharing, and it is presented here. Proposition 1: Share some examples where a group has been justifiably autonomous. Attendees’ responses: Cross talk redefined to include interruption for unsuitable language Special interest groups okay if all OAers are included Food allowed in meeting Silent meeting — no attendance caused dissolution [of the meeting] Gender neutralization in introduction readings for meeting Tools archaic — abstinence instead of food plan [used in the tools reading] Read only Twelve Steps and not other readings such as “Our Invitation to You” Partial meditation meeting Dog-friendly meeting Use of Lord’s Prayer as the closing prayer [unless anyone objects] Telephone, online meetings Walking meeting Meeting with children or without children Calendar of restaurants for after-meeting meeting Step meeting — each Step from different literature, some not OA approved Proposition 2: How can you help a group find a balanced approach to autonomy? Attendees’ responses: Discussion of issues and concerns and come up with solutions in a group conscience meeting WSO literature and formats Stronger unity as groups begin to look deeply at what being a part of OA means Informed group conscience — Traditions meetings, use of long-timers’ experience, etc. One-on-one discussions resolving Tradition breaks and educating each other Abstinence requirements Group inventories Service and Traditions Workshop Read Beyond Our Wildest Dreams [and learn from the experiences of OA from the beginning of the Fellowship] Handouts: (1) “Autonomy Is Not an Excuse” from AA Grapevine; (2) pages 103-106 from AA Comes of Age (Tradition Four discussion); (3) “The Balanced Application of Tradition Four Throughout OA” from A Step Ahead Second Quarter 2006. The workshop closed with a circle of the nearly 100 attendees saying the Serenity Prayer. Attendees shared with the leaders many positive comments about the workshop after the meeting closed. Top DATEMINDER World Service Business Conference April 30-May 5 EACH GROUP HAS BUT ONE PRIMARY PURPOSE — TO CARRY ITS MESSAGE TO THE COMPULSIVE OVEREATER WHO STILL SUFFERS. Top Previous page Attention Intergroups: Please inform the WSO whenever you have meeting changes to your directory. A Publication of: Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. P.O. Box 44020 Rio Rancho, NM 87174-4020 USA Phone: 1-505-891-2664 Fax: 1-505-891-4320 E-mail: info@oa.org OA Homepage Registered OA service bodies may reprint articles crediting A Step Ahead and Overeaters Anonymous. © 2007 Overeaters Anonymous®, Inc. All rights reserved.