Too Quiet to Be Found

Here is the failure nobody feels guilty about. A group meets in a hall with no sign. Its listing has an old phone number that rings out. Nobody answers the email because nobody agreed to hold the account. The address circulates by word of mouth among people who already know it, and everyone involved believes they are protecting something. A.A.'s literature puts the cost plainly (A.A. pamphlet P-43): "Suppose a sick alcoholic never has the good fortune to meet an A.A. How is such a person going to find us? The search will be difficult if the local group thinks it should be anonymous, too." The group thinks it should be anonymous, too. That is the error stated exactly — personal anonymity read as institutional invisibility. The Tradition protects a member's name at the level of press, radio and films. It says nothing whatever about a meeting being hard to find, and a meeting nobody can find is not keeping a Tradition. It is just a room with the lights off.