Sponsorship and 12-Step Work – Chance for Change Workshop – Part 3 of 3 – Myers R.

We've got 40 more minutes of this and maybe not even that long. So there is hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel. You know, it's a funny deal. I wanted to read you a quick letter. I didn't realize that I had it. But we're talking about this thing about 12-step work and let's talk about if there was ever an area in our fellowship that got trivialized quickly, it was this area of 12-stepped work, about sponsorship. and we tend to, I'll sponsor if it's convenient. I'll do 12-step work if it is convenient. Once I get all this other stuff, herding the cat part, once I get the AA Trinity all lined up, then I will do what I am supposed to do. And that is not the way our literature read and that was the first glaring thing that I saw when I got to primary purpose group, this big old den of big book thumpers. This is the first thing that i saw that was in direct conflict with everything that I thought I knew about Alcoholics Anonymous was this absolute necessity to get off our rears and go help somebody else. I didn't understand that that's what it was all about. I always bought into the party line BS that what it once was is that if it was convenient for you and if you couldn't think of anything else that you had to do, we could go try to help a drunk. And that's not what these guys were talking about. I wanted to read you this letter. I was in Australia doing a conference and it was like 3 a.m. Australia time And you guys are familiar with Skype and stuff. And I'm talking to my wife in the States. She's at work. And she says, oh, you know, I've got to believe this thing that just came in. I want to read it to you real quick. And she said, you're sponsoring a guy named Daniel, aren't you? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, he sent this to you from Ireland, from Dublin. And I asked, what? And she goes, yeah, here it is. Read this. so she sent it to me on my email and I couldn't believe what I read this thing says this is the revised service handbook in Dublin this is their national handbook that they have representing AA for what all it is there in that country it says regarding the big book study movement this is outside the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous in Ireland see what this says in case it went right over your head like it did me because I'm sitting here not understanding it and I had to read it three or four times and what I began to realize is that if I want to go to this particular country and it's not just this country, it's other countries too. If I want to study the big book I'm outside the confines of what they think is acceptable in AA but if I wanna talk about the dog crapping on the carpet, rock and roll. I can do whatever I wanna do And, you know, it's just that whole thing. Little did those cats know that another three months on down the road I would be in Dublin doing a workshop. And it was a bloodbath. It was really, it was pretty crazy. But we'll see. There was another thing that there was also this deal in the States that people said, well, how crazy could it get in meetings? And I said, this is how crazy it could get. In Texas, I know of two or three different groups, two in the Dallas area and one down around San Antonio, where they're charging money to listen to fifth steps. Charging money. Yeah. How whack could that be? Can you imagine? And on break, everybody wants to know, well, how much do they charge? And my answer's always the same because it's the way they told me, how good a fifth step do you want? It's like a sliding scale type thing. I know, but we stand back here and we look at this thing and we say, well, people say, why don't you just quit talking like you're talking and leave AA alone? It's fine. Nothing's happening. And I'm saying, wait a minute. We have a situation here where we've got a bunch of guys, a new generation of buckaroos coming up into this deal that aren't clear about what we're supposed to be doing. And we've Got a lot of weird things going on that we choose to ignore. You see, an intergroup in California around the Bay Area like this is out on a witch hunt for any groups that are out there carrying a message in a big book study. If you have a big-book study, they won't even recognize you as a bona fide group. But if you're charging money to hear a fifth step, they don't have any problem with it at all. Tell me that's not whacked. That's the craziest thing I've ever even... Yeah, fun though. But that's why I do this. This is why I get so frustrated with the big picture, the things that we choose to ignore and just look away from that we shouldn't be. So I want to paint this quick picture for you. I've been at Primary Purpose now for about two years. I came there when I was seven years sober. I stayed two years, what is it, nine years now that I'm in the deal. And I'm going around doing what we do 12-step work-wise. We have two meetings a week. They're both big book studies. and I'm learning lots and lots about the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm comfortable, again, sponsoring guys, and everything is okay. The trick is, though, is that I begin to understand and begin to realize as I sit in those meetings, I'd look around the room at all these people in there like this. We're all having fun. It's fun being there. But I'm just not... I'm still different from them. And I remember one night in particular, we were sitting around this big circle and I'M looking in the eyes of these people and IM going, huh you know how you get that kind of moment of clarity when you just see something and you go like it may have been there all the time but you finally just saw it and i realized i'm still different from everybody in this room and so i approached that crusty old guy cliff that's still my sponsor today and i said i said clifford uh if you've got just a minute i need to ask you a real quick question and we went and sat down in this little side room and i sad i'm still different from the rest of you aren't i and he said yes he didn't wait any either he said yes and i said can you tell me what i need to do and he i'll never forget it because it was his the way he handled it was important to me later at the time it just irritated me but what he did was he goes like this and he looks at the floor and then he looked at the ceiling and then kind of looks down at me and he kind of levels this gaze right at me like this and he says, I'm going to tell you one more time. And then what I really would like you to do is either submit to this process or go away. And I'm thinking, well, you mean go away until the Thursday meeting, right? And then I realize he means go away, go away He's drawing the line in the sand. I'll either do what I'm supposed to be doing. From his demeanor, it became really obvious that he had been telling me this for two years and I'm not listening to it. I'm still too busy making excuses why it is that I'm too busy to do 12-step work. I have a business to run, I have two more daughters that have come along since I sobered up, and I now have these three daughters and a wife to take care of and all this. You see what I'm saying? I've got a million reasons why I can't sponsor you and I've Got a million Reasons Why I Can't Go Out to Salvation Army on a Wednesday night and Carry a Message of Recovery. I have 1,000 excuses why I Can'T Submit. And Clifford looked at me and he said, I'll tell you what I want you to do. I want You, this is Tuesday night, Wednesday night I want you to go to Salvation Army and I want to carry a message out there I can't go that was usually his gig on Wednesday night for two years I've been hauling him all over creation I'd haul him everywhere that he went but I'd just sit there, I wasn't doing anything and I went wait wait wait you want me to do the meeting he goes yeah, you know it, you understand it read, that's what you're there for yes sir and I remember leaving that night and I was mad, I was angry at him I'm frustrated, I'm scared I'm just telling you I've got this anxiety that's just kicking my butt because I'm going to walk into a room full of people and I did Wednesday night I walk around the corner I clear security I walk all around the quarter and I walk into this big gymnasium and there's 160 black men sitting in this room all of them sitting there just like this about half of them have sunglasses on and they're leaning against the wall and I'm gone oh terrific what am I going to how am I going to relate to these guys what am i going to possibly say I already had it set up what I was going to do I walk up to the front of the room and I start reading and I read three pages of the big book illuminated it where I needed to we talked about some stuff like this and pretty soon, we're done the meeting's over and these guys are all sitting on the edge of their chair and they're just kind of watching me and I'm thinking, holy cow we get ready we're doing the Lord's Prayer I don't know if you've ever been in a room full of 160 black men doing the God's Prayer but it's powerful stuff I mean, I felt the hair on the back of my neck standing up just like this. And we're just kind of like this and we go, we get to the end of the prayer and I go break like this and they're hanging onto my hand, they're not letting go. And I went, oh, this is where they hit me. This is where... And I'm thinking, where do I get these ideas from? I have no idea. I'm just this weird little whack guy and I'm scared spitless about what's going on. So this guy says, hey, can I ask you a question? And I went, yeah. He said, can you come back tomorrow night? And I said, my first thought is, well, I've got a meeting tomorrow night. And then I thought, no way, but you just asked me to come back, right? And he goes, yeah, I said. You bet, I'll be back here tomorrow night, he says, super. They let me go and I split. And I walk out and I felt like I'd been pimp slapped. I thought I'm free. I didn't know whether I needed to go back or whether I need to just thank God that they didn't kill me and be done with it. I'd just be thankful that I'm alive to breathe another day. And so I think about it all day long. I think About It at Work all day. I'm just thinking about these guys and thinking about how that meeting worked out. And so sun starts going down. I'm heading to Salvation Army. It's a hall from where I live. I get over there, walk in, and I walk around the corner, and all of these guys stood up, and there was this guy that walks towards me, the biggest man I think I've ever seen in my whole life. I'm not kidding you guys. His shoulders were this broad. His legs here were as big around as my waist. And he starts walking towards me a little too fast. And I'm thinking, like this, you know when some guy walks up to you and gets in your space like this? Well, my space in that room was way out there. I don't want anybody coming that close to me. And he walks right up to me and gets like this. And I am just like this trying to keep from getting hit. And he just puts his arms around me and kind of pulls me into his chest and just as quiet as he could, I could barely hear him. He said I've been looking forward to you coming back all day long. And I just went holy and he's picked me up now he stood up straight and he is holding me close to his chest and my face is like this. I'm all pushed up against his guys You know it's a funny part. There was a part of me that's still trying to fight this guy. I'm trying to get my legs on the ground so I've got some running room underneath me I'm trying to get clear, and my arms are like this up next to him, and I'm tryng to push away from him like this, and he ain't having none of it. I might as well have been pushing him away with a soda straw. He didn't care. He could have crushed me if he wanted to. He didn' t care what I was doing. And finally it just occurred to me, Hey, stop fighting him. And I just relaxed. And he's holding me dead weight with my legs hanging straight down like this off the floor, and he's holdin' me. And my face is pushed into his chest, and if I lived to be a thousand, guys, I still remember the way his shirt smelled. I can feel the way it felt on my face. I can... It was like it was yesterday. And I've got to tell you from this old guy, I have never been held more tenderly in my whole life. I have ever, ever had a man show me such love and affection as that old guy did that night. He could have crushed me to death and I wouldn't have been able to do a darn thing. But he didn't. He showed me a bunch of love that I had never been extended to that extent. It was the craziest thing in the whole wide world. And years of bigotry and years of weird misunderstanding just sort of disappeared. And ironically, it's just kind of a side note, for the next two years, I never sponsored a white guy. All I sponsored were black men, and I sponsored 100 of them. And those men taught me more about life and about stuff than anything I've ever been through in my whole life. The greatest single experience of my life in AA was that year I spent with those guys at that Salvation Army. The greatest deal. And he sat me down and he said, let's have us a meeting. And we did, and we did. We had us a barn-burning kind of meeting. It was fun like you wouldn't believe. And we read, and these guys were all getting lathered up, and we were laughing a whole bunch, and мы were cutting up, and the techs kept standing in the room trying to find out what it was we were doing that was causing so much commotion. And it was just kind of pandemonium. It was kind of wheels off in the ring. and it felt really good to be in a room full of people that were enjoying sobriety like that. And at the end of the deal, we do the Lord's Prayer. I know the drill. I know when they're in, they're not going to let go of my hand, and they didn't. And we're just holding it like this, and we're просто kind of looking at each other. And you know, this guy across the room goes, hey, would you sponsor me? And I'm starting to say something, and about five other hands go up, and these guys, I go from sponsoring nobody to six men in one night. And I am thinking, now what? Now what? and that's the dilemma that all of you are going to find yourself into I promise you as you submit to this thing and as you get involved in doing 12 step work and in doing what we do that's exactly what you're going to fine yourself into how is it that I can get these guys through the work effectively so that I can get more guys through the work see the old idea that we used to sponsor three guys in our whole AA experience and they would become bosom buddies and we would love each other and die together and it would be just the greatest thing there's nothing wrong with any of that but there's nothing in our literature that said it would be that way. And my experience has not bore that out. My experience has been is that the more men I get involved with to try to help get through the work, the richer my life becomes. And some of these men I don't like. I know that's a shock, but you know what? I don'T. There's nothing in the literature that says that I have to fall madly in love with every man that I sponsor. The literature said that what I had to do is give them an accurate representation of what the big book said. An accurate understanding of what the steps were. I have to give them that fair shot and then we'll see what happens on the deal. Some of these guys I do become dear with. Someof these guys I absolutely, they're like my kids. An amazing, amazing deal. Watching how that stuff changed my life. We went to the Salvation Army, I mean Homeward Bound right after that. They opened up a suite of rooms there and they said we could begin having meetings there. And members of our group We sponsored hundreds and hundreds of men and women, later women when they added women to the deal out of that fellowship. And it was an amazing process to see, it was kind of like AA under a big magnifying glass and we were all looking at it from a different perspective. We were all thinking it was going to be one way and what we were taught was that it was something completely different. Listen to this. There's a deal here I want you to hear. I'm sorry, I thought I'd pulled it out. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I just kind of... I hate it when I do it. Oh, there it is. I did pull it out! I never said I was sharp, that's for sure. This comes out of when AA comes of age. Listen to this. You'll get a kick out of this deal. I want to set this up for just a second. They tell us in AA, one of the old ideas that I think ought to be left on the floor that we don't pick back up again is a new idea. One of these ideas was that we should not make any decisions for a year. Don't make any major decisions for years. The literature doesn't say that. It's interesting that at a third step deal, we're asking you to turn your will and your life over to the care of a God that you may not even know. I think that's a major decision. I think that's as big a decision as you're ever going to make in your whole life. Bigger than who you marry, bigger than who... It's a big decision. And we're going to ask you to make it maybe the first night you get here. It's pretty amazing stuff, you see? So look at this thing. This says, It was soon evident that a scheme of personal sponsorship would have to be devised for the new people. They're talking real early AA. Each prospect was assigned an older AA who visited him at his home or in the hospital, instructed him on AA principles, and conducted him to his first meeting. But in the face of many hundreds of pleas for help, the supply of elders could not possibly match the demand. Brand new AAs, sober only a month or even a week, had to sponsor alcoholics still drying up in hospitals. Dig? Guys, I am blown away by how often I see people going, well you can't sponsor, you haven't been sober a year. I'm telling you from my personal experience of watching brand new guys come into this deal, I could name you hundreds, I could name you names of hundreds of young guys that have come into this deal been plugged into a spiritual experience had an awakening as a result of these steps and are out there kicking butt and taking names three or four months after they got here they're sponsoring people effectively through that. Now would there be things that might come up in sponsorship that they couldn't deal with? Sure. That's why I'm here that's what I'm about. That'S why we spend so much time talking about this stuff. Guys here's the picture in a big picture We have two meetings a week at Primary Purpose Group. They're all big book studies. We have a step study on Saturday night, literature-based deal. No discussion meetings. And the reason I say that is that there's 1,500 discussion meetings a week in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. If you want to discuss, go discuss. But we don't do that. We're just studying the work. Now, every other night of the week people say, well, I don't understand. You have meetings Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Why don't you have them every night? Because we're busy every night. We have other things that we do called commitments in AA that we due. My last count on that bulletin board, we had 40 meetings that members of our group are conducting every week someplace else besides our meetings. 40 different places that we're going to carry the message. That's a lot of folks carrying messages. That is not counting other groups this is usually 40 or 50 times in a month that we're asked to go do our stories or do the steps someplace or do something else these are these are carved in stone every week we're going to that place help as possible wind up joint various places where we wind up to carry a message of recovery and the result of that guys is an amazing thing not only have we gotten really really healthy as a result of doing that but there have been thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people busted up in treatment centers and wind-up joints and halfway houses that may not have ever been able to hear a clear-cut message of recovery, but they got it like that. None of those meetings that we're conducting are discussion meetings. They're all just like this, more big what AA is and isn't, more lecture type deals, and these guys love the heck out of it because most of these guys are just like us. They are chronic relapsers who are just tired of getting the crap beat out of them. They re just tired of doing that. You see? For you guys, especially some of you guys that have been around for a while and you've already submitted to that process and you already know what it's like to go out and carry the message of recovery sometimes. You know that that's the secret handshake of recovery. That's the deal. Why would Bill Wilson spend a whole chapter? It's the only step in the book that got a whole character written about it. Chapter 7, Working with Others. Why would they do that if they didn't think it was important? You see? It was. Look in your book, and we'll be done with this part of this. On page 14, bottom of the page. Ebby's been dealing with Bill, and he says, My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity... I'm at the very bottom ofthe page on 14. My friend has emphasized the absolutely necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. Particularly was it imperative to work with others as he had worked with me. Faith without works was dead, he said, and how appallingly true for the alcoholic. And here it was. For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely drink again. And if he drank, he would truly die. Then faith would be dead indeed. We thought this is just like that. And it's funny when we read this, oftentimes we don't read the next three lines. My wife and I abandon ourselves with enthusiasm for the idea of helping alcoholics to a solution to their problems. Guys, have you ever paid any attention to the word abandon? How long has it been since you abandoned yourself to anything? Just absolutely careful. I'm in. I'm all in. Push. I'm All In. That's abandon. That's perfect. That's where we need to be. And yet we want to set the parameters for what 12-step work we do. And I understand every excuse. You couldn't come up with an excuse for 12-stepped work that I haven't heard or said. I'm the poster boy for that kind of deal but the reality of this deal is that the more we submit to that process the healthier we get and that's why it's so much fun. It's like if you ever there's a girl named Dara Vasquez who I love to death and I bust her anonymity every time I can just hoping that she'll hear it someday. Dara is the sweetest gal in the whole wide world and she's tough as nails as a sponsor and she we were out doing a 12-step deal one day, and I remember walking down out of this room. We walked down out of it like this. We'd been there for about an hour and a half, and we walked out. We're walking down this hallway, and it's perfectly quiet. All I can hear are her shoes and my shoes hitting this linoleum floor, and as we're walking out this thing like this, I look at her like this and she's going like this ,and she's looking at me and I'm going like this . And I said, did it get you too? And she said, man, it's just the craziest stuff. And my hair was standing up on the back of my neck, and i said, I think we probably I need to come back out here and do this some more. And she said, absolutely. And we did for many, many years. She and I were the dynamic duo out there. We had more fun. You'll just miss it if you don't do it. You'll simply miss the very best that Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer if you go do that. Some of you old guys know exactly what I'm talking about. Guys, if you've been sober for a long time and you're still here, God bless you. Thank you for staying. Thank you for being here to carry what we know about this deal. Thank you for being here today when it would have been a whole lot easier to follow the path of so many older AA guys who've just gotten tired of the battle and said I've done my share and they leave and you can't blame them. I used to judge them. I don't judge them anymore. I understand why they would be frustrated with the whole deal, the goofiness around singleness of purpose and how frustrating it is in some groups because they just get taken over by all kinds of other stuff. Guys, let me tell you something. If your meetings are, if you're having trouble with singleness of purpose issues in your meetings, open them up. Just quit trying to have closed meetings on the stuff because it's just a nightmare the other way. Just open them Up. We have three meetings a week. They're all literature meetings and they're all open. And they're open for a reason because I want the overeater to feel free to come and study with us. I want The Addict to feel free to study with Can the addict be a member of our AA group? No. Singleness of purpose is clear on that. However, that's the reason why all those meetings are open so that they will feel free to be there and to do whatever they're doing. And as they get healthier and as they gets a load of what this thing is about they can go back into their rooms, back into wherever they're going to end up in CANA or wherever there is and share some hope. And that's what we need is people that are willing to do that. One thing I want to cover real quick is guys ask me all the time, they say, Well, I don't understand how you sponsor more than one guy at a time. It's real simple. Once we get clear on what it is we're supposed to be doing, I am not in charge of your personal life. Although we've been sold that bill of goods, I am NOT. The literature tells me that I am supposed to give you a clear-cut message of what AA is about. I'm supposed to carry you through the work and make sure that you get that. My job is not to micromanage every aspect of your life. Big picture stuff, I'm going to be involved in the deal. But this deal of guys calling me up saying, Well, should I ask her out tonight? I don't know. I don' t know. It's not my job to know that. I don''t want that responsibility. But see, as we begin to take and peel off the things that we have accepted as our responsibility, when we beginto peel part of that stuff off, we realize that it's a lot easier to do this. This thing, instead of being a job, a big chore, isn't like that. It's like... How many of you guys have kids? Like little bitty kids? Remember when they were toddlers? Remember whenthey were little bity? and they were, they're walking this way and we go whoa, whoa, like this and they we're just okay I'm watching you I gotcha and we just kind of pay attention to them. You got them on a little short leash and you're paying attention to what they do and what they say. This is exactly the way it is with brand new guys. I'm sponsoring this man. He's brand new in the deal for a while I'm going to pay attention to him and watch him and I'm also watching what he's learning through the steps. What God's doing for him through the step and the funny part about this stuff is that is he gets healthier from a mental health standpoint. As he gets healthier, I can back away from him a little bit and I can stand at some distance. It's just that way with your kids, isn't it? By the time your kids get up to junior high, they better be kind of on the right track. By the times they get to high school, they'd better be young adults. They'd better be making smarter decisions. If you've got a kid in high school and he's still making boneheaded decisions, you need to go back and look and see what it is that's causing the problem. What is it I need to do to get this thing back on track? And it's the same thing. If we're six months down the road and this guy's still acting out, chasing women doing goofy things in the meeting, we're going to have a little meeting. We're going to sit down and say and we're going to look and see what it is that you're not doing. And the two things I'm going to ask him right off the bat, I've asked it ten million times. How much time did you spend with God today? And how much time did you spend working with one of God's kids today? That's it. That's what I want to know. Because the depth and degree and the wholeness of your sobriety depends on those two things. How much time did I spend every day in quiet time with God and how much time Did I spend helping one of His kids? And if I find that I've been a week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks and I've put some distance between me and prayer and meditation and I put some difference between me and the men that I could and should be sponsoring well no wonder you're getting sick again. Why shouldn't you be sick? Why shouldn' you be operating under the illusion or delusion that you can rest on an experience that you had way back there. Guys, I see this all the time in the men that I sponsor that are chronic relapsers and the guys that have gotten really, really... Let's say they've been sober 20, 25 years, 30 years, this kind of stuff and you watch them and they're just powder dry. They're just goofy as bedbugs. You've seen guys like that sitting in the meetings and you've got to ask yourself what is it that's really going on here? I'll tell you 99% of the time exactly what it is. These guys are trying to maintain an experience that they had 20 years ago in AA. They worked the work, they had an experience and they're trying to maintain it every day except they're not doing the things that we're supposed to be doing every day. They have no AA commitments. They haveno sponsorship commitments. They havenocommitment to sit and spend time with God every day, you see? And that's the reason why they get so sick and that'sthe reason why so many of us in this deal get way downrange and we let our arrogance sell us on the bill of goods that because we've been sober X number of years, that we're okay. Two things happen in this thing, guys, and then we'll close this thing down. One, this idea in our meetings that because we have a bunch of people in chairs that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing needs to be addressed and looked at. Because let me tell you something, guys. You can have a room full of people in AA that are sitting in chairs and still have a group that's off the page in terms of the message that they are carrying and the things that they're doing. That's the reason why I'm such a big fan of inventories, group inventories. If your group is not, if you haven't had an inventory in a while in your group, get one geared up. Get one started again and watch and see what happens. It'll take you two hours to do it. I can send you the forms on how to do het. You'll get somebody to do the thing for you. And I promise you, ifyou've been through a healthy group inventory, it's the most freeing, cool thing you've ever experienced to watch a group rekindle itself and get excited again and slowly understand the things that they need to be doing as a group. That's the reason why our traditions were written, guys, to keep the groups healthy because if the groups didn't stay healthy, we wouldn't stay healthily. I don't know any of us that could stay sober on our own. If it wasn't for Alcoholics Anonymous and the groups that we're involved with, I don' t know many of us. Maybe some of you could. I certainly couldn't. That'sthe reason why the traditions took on such a huge importance in our fellowship. That'she reason why Bill Wilson just about broke his butt trying to get them done and adopted because he could see what was happening. Remember, he was seeing all that was going on, good and bad. If you're involved in sponsorship and you're not teaching your guys about the traditions, learn them. Go back and reacquaint yourself. I can send you stuff too that will help you, get you back on track on this stuff so that you're comfortable teaching these guys about this thing. The sanctity and sacredness of that group is important. In one 15-year period in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, 50% of all the AA groups we had went out of biz. The proverbial tits up, they were gone. You see? Terrible. 50%of those groups went. And it's a funny thing, I listened to an old timer in a meeting one time say, well you know, maybe those groups, it was just time for them to go. What does that mean? I mean, they went to the trouble and the struggle to set it up, they went through the trouble to nurture it, to build it, to do all the stuff necessary to maintain a group and it was just time for them to go? The reality, once we looked at it, was that most of these groups went away because they failed to adhere to the traditions. They just picked and chose. And I guarantee you if we took a straw poll in here every one of you are going to be absolutely hunky-dory with the traditions I love the traditions right up to the point that you're not right upto the point that it says something you disagree with and then you'll begin to ignore it And to the degree that you ignore those traditions, that's how sick your group can become. The old-timers used to say if there was a circle and triangle on the door, God was there and everything was okay. I know a lot of people that still believe that. But in my travels around the world, there are a lot OF groups that have the circle and the triangle on their door that have gotten so toxic that nobody can get well. In Iceland they call them dark tunnel meetings. And they're ugly. They're ugly! The circle and triangle is still on the doors, but sometimes we have drifted so far south that we're not teaching what we should be teaching. Sponsorship is the easiest thing in the whole wide world. It takes a little bit of commitment time-wise, but once you understand what the deal is, I know many, many, many people who sponsor 20 or 30 guys at a time and have no problem at all. I've been doing it for 20 years. It just seems like forever that these guys have been there and it's just crazy stuff. Guys, today my life is so rich and so full and I get a chance to go do so much that I never dreamed that I would get to do. I've gotten to meet so many cool people in this deal. Let me tell you a fast story and then we're done. I love to garden. I do. And I spend a lot of time sitting in a garden and the garden seems to be my church these days. It's the damnedest thing. I'm on my knees picking bugs off some tomato plant. I just seem to be at one with God and everything about Him. And it's the best place for me to be. And I'm sitting there and I remember years ago before I'd gotten plugged in with primary purpose group I've been sitting there talking about this stuff and thinking about happened to sun's going down it's hot Texas day and the sun's going down and it's getting cool and I'm frustrated I'm irritated I just I can't seem to figure out what's going on in a few minutes I'm gonna have to walk back into that house and see that beast of a woman that I'm married to I'm not happy about any of this I got this daughter that's driving me crazy and we had another one by that length of time so there's two there that are driving me crazy. I got to go to a job that I absolutely hate. My name's on the building and I just can't stand being there. I walk in the door and I hate everything about it. I don't like my employees, I don'T like... I HATE IT! I gotta go AA and I'm not real thrilled with you. You understand, I'm just not feeling real good about anything. I finally unravel. I finally get hurt enough that I go meet this old crusty guy named Cliff Bishop. And Cliff, in two weeks, ten days, took me back through the work. I had a spiritual awakening as a result of doing that work. Didn't expect it, didn't even really want it to tell you the truth. It wasn't even a part of what I thought recovery was going to be about. But I had the experience and things began to change. He finally makes me get off my dead ass and go do some work with another drunk, which I didn't want to do and I fought at all costs, but he's meaner than me. And he made me do it and I said I would and I did. And the moment I began to submit to that process, everything in my life changed. Everything shifted. Did I stay sober? Yes. Did I get happy? Yes, but more importantly, I find myself in this same garden years later doing the same work on the same stupid tomato plants and I'm still anxious, but I'm not anxious because I'm not wanting to go inside. I'm anxious because I'm running out of time. I'm running out of time because I cannot wait to be in there with that woman that I adore. I cannot wait to be in the same room with that woman. I can't wait to see those daughters of mine, the brightest, sharpest, prettiest little girls in the universe. I gotta get in bed early because our guys start at 630 and I gotta be there to lay work out. I can't wait to walk through Guys, in this experience my wife didn't change one whit. My daughters didn't change one wit and that business that I've owned for 30 years obviously it didn't changed either. It didn't a bit. What changed was my perception of the whole picture. Intellectually I would love to be able to tell you that I understand why it is that submitting to that process changed everything in my life. In reality, I can't make sense out of it. It doesn't really make sense. When they told me that if I would submit to a process and go carry a message and try to help one of God's kids that my life would change immeasurably. That everything would shift. When they told me this, when they told me that, I went, yeah right. I don't really believe this. And today guys, I don' t really give a rat's patootie if you believe it either. I don''t. What I'm hoping is, my prayer is, is that at some point in time you will simply submit to the process. Simply do what the book asks us to do and watch how your life changes. And watch what it's like to walk into a meeting full of a bunch of people doing the things that we're supposed to do, and watch how the laughter is. Watch how funny everything becomes. Watch how free you get. Watch how anxiety slips away. Somebody that I work with said one time they thought my life was pathetic. They didn't come out and say it like that, but they kind of hinted around that they thought my life was pathetic. And I thought, you know what? The funny part about this is is that I don't give a rat's patootie about that either. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this busted up old drunk is real clear on what his purpose is. Tradition five. Our job is to carry a message of recovery to the drunk that still suffers. And as long as I do that my life is charmed. It's the coolest thing in the whole wide world. Come with us to do this. Come with this. Whether you ever talk in front of a podium has no bearing on this at all. It didn't say that in the literature. Step 13, speak from the podium. It didn' t say that. Go find you some buckaroos. I got guys I sponsored today like this that would not get up at gunpoint, would not be able to get up in front of a room. But they are effective, kind sponsors who know and understand the things that they need to do to get somebody from point A to point B. Nothing could be sweeter, guys. Thank you for letting me come do this. I appreciate it. Thanks.