Time and again we have these conversations AB!
Your experience in the rooms must be very different from mine. I've never been treated with anything other than the utmost respect by members of the fellowship. The BB was written seventy-odd years ago, by one bloke. It rings with his particular life experience - and also, nicely enough, with his illness. It is deeply
flawed, just like me. I love it. I have learned to love it even though there's lots I don't agree with. I have learned to love it primarily because it's a big part of a life-saving change in me. I have learned to love it because it represents that paradigm shift for me - that emotional alteration that happened when I learned to love things not simply because I agree with them or they validate me - there's a poster I've seen in one meeting, just once, made me think of you - I typed it in my pda -
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the refelction of ourselves we see in them
I love the fellowship and the principles that underpin it. I love the drama and magic of accidents and mistakes and grandiose plans overturned that brought the fellowship into being. I love it in spite of itself. And because it saved my life, in spite of me. And because, when push comes to shove I really want to be a good humanist, and that means engaging with everything that humanity has to offer me, regardless of whether I think it accords me due respect.
Peace out AB, I'm not going to engage with you any more. You know I love you dearly, but this fixation with a few words in the BB isn't going anywhere. I'm much more interested in joyously examining why it works, rather than cynically picking over why it shouldn't.