A. Newcomers, and some old-timers as well, find it strange that people in meetings will chant in unison the last few words of some of the readings.
For example, at the end of the reading of “How It Works,” including the Twelve Steps, from chapter 5 of the Big Book, the meeting will recite in unison, “Could and would if He were sought.”
I don’t know if they pronounce the capital letter, but you get the point.
Similarly, when reading the list of things alcoholics do to change up their drinking and make it somehow successful, the members will chant “ad infinitum” at the end of that reading.
Or even more strangely, after the announcement that “who you see here, when you leave here, let it stay here,” the whole meeting will erupt with, “Hear, hear,” as if they had been suddenly transported to a Quaker meeting house in the eighteenth century.
So what’s the deal with all that? Why do people do it?
Clancy I., whom I’ve mentioned is one of the most influential old-timers in Southern California, offers the only sensible explanation I’ve ever heard. According to Clancy, many years ago, there was a drinking alcoholic, as opposed to a sober one, who attended meetings in the San Fernando Valley area just north of Los Angeles. He would chime in, all by himself, at the end of the readings, for reasons he never shared with anyone (possibly because he was drunk). So others in the group started to do it, to make fun of him.
Somehow, the concept spread, and now alcoholics across the fruited plain will chime in on the last few words of various readings, without ever even wondering why they do it.
And they certainly have no idea that they are emulating people who were making fun of a drunk in an AA meeting north of Los Angeles many decades earlier.
I bring this up for a reason. To my mind, anything that turns a Twelve Step meeting into a ceremony with wacky rituals is a bad idea. It’s hard enough for the newcomer to sit through a meeting without jumping out of his skin. Now on top of sitting there, we’re asking him to sit through weird rites that make the whole room sound like a bunch of automatons?
Isn’t that what he’s afraid of in the first place?
If I could change one thing in Twelve Step recovery,III well, it probably wouldn’t be this. But if I could change two or three, I would get rid of the chanting and the chiming in. It makes no sense.
Hear, hear!