MSCA - Mid Southern California Area 09 of Alcoholics Anonymous

Delegate's Bulletin Board

Noble Grace 22 August 2020
Ed L., msca09delegate70@yahoo.com, (760) 964-0012

Personal Mission Statement: “I’m committed to being totally available and responsible to Mid-Southern California Area 09 members, to help provide a healthy infrastructure to communicate among individuals, Groups, Districts, Area, and the General Service Office, while using as few acronyms as possible!”

I was in Mariposa, California on August 16, 2020, when my phone rang, and I saw that it was Hiro S, our Area 09 alternate delegate. Likely he was returning my one call and several messages to inform him that an important date had been changed. I was among the blue oaks in the Sierra foothills, standing in the center of town, alongside Highway 140, about to attend my Mother-In-Law’s graveside memorial service when he called. I was quite relieved to see his name appear on my cell phone, having left an email, a text message, and a voice mail, saying that the Pacific Region trustee’s report was scheduled for tomorrow (not the day-after-tomorrow), that I’d given him wrong information.

Knowing that I would be absent, our trustee, Kathi F, had suggested that I invite our alternate to attend her August 2020 Trustees General Service Board Weekend Report via Zoom. In the eight months I’d been Panel 70 delegate and the half dozen-or-so Zoom meetings I’d attended with the other 14 Pacific Region delegates (and honorary Pacific Region delegate, Gail P from British Columbia/Yukon Territory), an alternate delegate had never attended as a replacement for an absentee delegate. But, in this case, I was backpacking in the Sierras with my wife, “for the mountains had called, and I must go” (to paraphrase John Muir). So, his attendance would be precedent-setting, like so many other things these days!

How many times have we been blind-sided by the random, intentional thoughtfulness of our fellow alcoholics? Those unforeseen, little-huge gestures that leave us knowing in our bones that we are living among the nobly-inclined? Whereas it had been Kathi’s insight to suggest that I invite Hiro to attend this delegates-only meeting, it was I who had the privilege and honor to be the messenger. And, I knew then as I do now, how honored he was to be invited. (As new delegates, we’ve likely missed numerous opportunities to engage our equally-new alternate delegates in the business of A.A. near the bottom of the triangle). I suspected that something special was happening, but I was totally unaware that something very special was about to happen. Call it Noble Grace: “Fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals bestowing unmerited favor.”

After explaining to him the string of senior moments that resulted in giving him the right date, then the wrong date, and now the right date again, he assured me he would still be able to attend, reemphasizing what an honor it was just to be invited. And, then he dropped the nobility bomb on me: Assuming he was elected as the Panel 72 delegate, assuming there would be an actual face-to-face Conference after two virtual ones, and assuming we were both alive and sober…would I be willing to accompany him to New York Conference in 2022 as his invited guest? It misses the point to say that a transformation occurred in me there on the side of that highway, as the revelation of his offer seeped into and then flooded over me.

If there was a drop of pleasure in my invitation to him, there was a gallon of bliss in his to me; the dawning realization that his invitation may allow what I’ve come to believe would never happen; a trip to New York to be part of the Conference (albeit as past delegate, limited to a fine opening banquet, and escorted on a six-day archival tour of A.A.’s historical monuments!) As one of only 45 delegates who (likely) will never be able to attend a physical Conference in New York, there was now a glimmer of hope for one more chance. And, even if the opportunity is never realized, I will forever be blessed with the very real, very loving Noble Grace of one alcoholic embracing another alcoholic!

In Love and Service,

Ed L

1. Prepared in preparation for an AA meeting in Area 05 on 7/21/2020 where I was asked to share on Concept 2