My usefullness to my fellows...

Consider Acts 2:42-47. 

Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends--this is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 89)

Fellowship. The three definitions you'll usually find include a group of people, like an association; the position in a university; and the one that I want to talk about. It seems oddly appropirate that the Big Book talks so much of our fellows. Of course it's an old-fashioned (and not politically correct) term to talk of friends or associates, but it emphasizes that aspect that's so hard to actually define. One attempt is "a feeling of friendship that people have when they are talking or doing something together and sharing their experiences." Another is "the companionship of individuals in a congenial atmosphere and on equal terms." (American Heritage® Dictionary) Yes equal terms, captain's table and steerage, all together.

This has been a draft on my computer for at least three days, to the extent when I opened it last night I wasn't sure where I had intended to go with it, what I was reading when I started it. I have remembered. Duh. It was that passage of the Big Book quoted at the top. But this morning I know where it's now going. I go through long spells when I tend to write books more than read them, but recently I've read (in the last five or so months) maybe ten novels for the heck of it. I picked up one at the grocery the other day. When I read the back cover blurb I knew I ought to put it down. It was a romance rather than the mysteries I normally gravitate to, but it still intrigued me and I bought it, and have read it in bits and snatches. This morning I read what I was supposed to read when I felt drawn to it. The book is Kay Hooper's If There Be Dragons and the passage is:

Brooke, who'd seen quite a few psychologists and parapsychologists in her time, knew what that was called: psychological visibility. It as a basic need of human beings, according to the theory, to be clearly seen by at least one other person.  

Exactly! That's what fellowship means. In the way I've been trying to grab hold of the word. That's the "Welcome to Overeaters Anonymous, welcome home!" line in it's depth of meaning. Finally after all these years, it's okay at OA to be clearly seen by not just one but lots of other people because in the most embarrassing and heart-wrenching way, they're just like us!

Hey, my fellows, thanks!