PO Box 1980

A meeting I go to recently spent three-fourths of the meeting discussing hand-holding during the closing prayer. This discussion came in the wake of one members' honesty about a disease he has, AIDS. I witnessed the group's sudden coldness toward this member, and I immediately became concerned. The following week, the member with AIDS was absent and another member introduced "hand-holding and coffeemaking" as the topic for our open discussion. People expressed their fears about getting "something" by hand-holding, and "Egad! What if he made coffee, would they all die of AIDS, too?"