Hi new ASPer!

Welcome to A Serenity Place! 

I’m Cyndi, the List Administrator.  This note is to help acquaint you with our meeting at A Serenity Place.  Please read this note carefully as there is a lot of useful information about ASP in it—also save a copy of this note for future reference. 

Our guidelines are more than just a set of rules to follow. They are a description of the kind of meeting that we have at A Serenity Place.  If these guidelines describe the kind of regular face-to-face Al-Anon meeting that you like, you will probably enjoy your Al-Anon recovery in our meeting.  On the other hand, if you find this description too restrictive, you may prefer to look for another meeting that better meets your needs.

1.         A Serenity Place is a nice, quiet little meeting that follows the Al-Anon Steps, Traditions, and Concepts as they were written.  Like Al-Anon itself, this is not a meeting where “anything goes.”

2.         Conference Approved Literature: This meeting uses Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature (CAL).  We do not use ANY outside literature, regardless of its source or potential value.  In other words, submission of any quotations from any outside source is considered inappropriate at A Serenity Place.  This includes excerpts from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, other recovery literature, poems, etc.

3.         Meeting Format:  We have a simple and consistent meeting format at A Serenity Place.  Each day, a meeting chairperson opens the meeting by posting a specific set of readings which rotate on a weekly basis.  The Chairperson then offers some experience, strength and hope (ES&H) on their topic at the end of the opening message.  Other members share on the day’s topic, or the previous day’s topic, or . . . some other Al-Anon related topic.  Reading page 353 in the One Day at a Time book (ODAT) may provide some help in understanding this process.

4.         Crosstalk:  One definition of crosstalk is any dialogue between members during the meeting, and is generally considered inappropriate at an Al-Anon meeting and at A Serenity Place.  If you would like to “Reply” to a member’s share, please send your reply to them privately.  Another online form of crosstalk is resending the text of another member’s share—please to not include the text of another member’s share with your share.

5.         Business Section.  We have a private “members only” section at our web site.  The web address is http://www.asp-afg.org/ASP/MembersOnly/index.htm

Please make a note of this address!

There are many resources for ASP members at our web site.

•           Change your ASP subscription to ‘nomail’ for vacation or to Unsubscribe

•           List of Service Positions and our Trusted Servants

•           Weekly schedule of meetings

•           FAQ about Al-Anon and online meetings, especially ASP

•           Fliers for Al-Anon events

6.         Business:  We try to avoid posting business messages at A Serenity Place.  If you have a business issue that you would like to bring up, we suggest that you first send a note to a member of the Business Committee.  Perhaps the meeting has already addressed your issue.

7.         Complaints.  Occasionally, something happens at any meeting that bothers other members.  If you have any complaints or criticisms of A Serenity Place or of the behavior of one of our members, please write the List Administrator or any other member of the Steering Committee.

8.         Attraction rather than Promotion.  Please feel free to tell your Al-Anon friends about A Serenity Place.  If they wish to join after visiting our web site home pages, they may contact the Greeter Committee themselves; we do not subscribe new members by referral.

9.         Examples of Things NOT to do at A Serenity Place:                    PLEASE READ

a.         Send ASP shares to multiple recipients.  The server will reject any message that is also sent to any other addresses in addition to the ASP address.  In addition to being rejected, this creates a bit of a mess on the server that needs to be cleaned up by the List Administrator.  The best way to send a share is to create a listing in your email address book for “ASP” and send all shares to “ASP”. 

b.         Crosstalk (already discussed above)

c.         Comment on other member’s shares.  Good or bad.  Please share your compliments to other members privately.

d.         Include the text of a share that you are responding to.  Please delete the other member’s text or change the settings on your email program to do this automatically.

e.         Discuss of religion, politics or other outside issues that is inappropriate for any Al-Anon meeting.

f.          Attachments.  Do not send attachments of any kind.

g.         Fancy backgrounds, stationary, fonts, graphics, HTML or JAVA or any other script or executable file.  If you use any of these features in your other emails, please set your email program to send “plain text” to ASP. 

h.         Virus warnings.  Most are hoaxes, but if there is an imminent danger of a virus to the members of ASP then only the List Administrator will make an announcement.

i.          Test messages.  If you think there is a problem receiving ASP shares, please write the List Administrator at list_administrator@asp-afg.org.  You can also go to the Archives on the server to see the shares.  Instructions for accessing the Archives are at http://www.asp-afg.org/ASP/MembersOnly/index.htm

j.          If you would like your ASP mail temporarily held, then go to the server’s web site and select the “No Mail” setting.  When you want ASP mail to resume go back to the web site and unselect “No Mail”.  Complete instructions are at http://www.asp-afg.org/ASP/MembersOnly/index.htm It is not OK to put your subscription on ‘no mail’ indefinitely (over of 15 days).  We consider that the equivalent of saving a seat in a crowded meeting.

10.  If you are using some form of SPAM blocking you will need to add the domain “asp-afg.org” to your white list.  This is especially true if your SPAM blocking uses a challenge/response method. 

After you have been a member of A Serenity Place for a while, you may wish to make yourself available to do some service for the meeting.  Like many face-to-face meetings, our rotation and election processes are a little informal, and perhaps confusing.  It may help to contact a member of the Steering Committee.

If you have any questions about A Serenity Place, technical or otherwise, please send me a note and I’ll do my best to help. 

Love and SERENITY,

Cyndi

list_administrator@asp-afg.org