The Courage to Be Happy – Clint H.

Thanks Steve my name is Clint Hodges I'm an alcoholic feel like I've been doing this all day long but I'm glad to be here I'm delighted to be here. I didn't have a lot of information about really where we were going or what was going to happen. No, Steve wasn't driving. I thought the conference was in Sioux City. It excited me. I'm a lawyer and that excites me. Sioux City, it has a ring to it. But no, hell no, we come clear up here. Two and a half hours and then for the last hour of the trip it was dark, and Jan would say, now out there, just on the other side of that. And Steve and say, no, to your right, a little to your left. I don't know even if I... I didn't know who was speaking here this weekend. I'm glad that we have a lot of fun coming up for everybody at these other meetings. I understand the meetings so far have been absolutely wonderful. I've seen friends from long ago and I'm glad to report to you tonight, glad to be here with you, that sobriety in my life is wonderful. And my life ist wonderful. And if there are people that are new or relatively new in your experience in Alcoholics Anonymous, this has to just seem a little bit too weird for words, I would think. I just was sitting here thinking now, the theme of this conference is God as I understand Him. Oh boy! Get on it! I mean that doesn't, when you're new that doesn'T quite fire you up. You know. I got some understanding about God and it doesn'T fill me with anything but a certain low level dread all the time. My mom used to say, where are you going to spend eternity? And, oh, mom. Or she'd take a few minutes and tell us where we were going to spend eternity. Thanks. In Billings, we went to the Church of the Air in Billings. A very fundamentalist Bible-banging thing and there were lots of those kind of questions around. Lots of that kind of have you found God yet? No, I haven't found God. What will you do when you meet your maker? Apologize, I guess. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do. and my dad had one when are you going to be a man oh god what time is it now you know who knows well it's 6 15 by my watch And in school, you know I grew up in a home where there was a lot of goofy goings-on in our home. Here's my dad and the only power in his life is booze and here's my mom and the Only Power in Her Life is the church and my grandmother is this hovering, angry shadow behind everything and hit him harder, hit him hard. And we were not exactly the best kids in the world. When I was maybe about three or four years in Alcoholics Anonymous, I participated at a meeting back in Los Angeles at Ohio Avenue one night and gave a short little talk. And a guy came up to me afterwards that's still a friend of mine and in our group. And Karen and I are members of the Pacific Group in Los Angeles, and we share the same sponsor, a guy named Clancy. Don't get on me about that. No, I'm kidding. And so this guy came up to me after the meeting. He said, you said you're from Billings. I said, yeah. He said did you go to Broadwater Grade School? and I said, yeah. He said, did you live there on Yellowstone Avenue? And I said yeah. He said do you have a twin brother? And I say I do. And he said my dad told me to never play with you two guys. Richard said that. And didn't keep him from getting AA you notice that don't you? But we were kind of, if he didn't think of it, I did. And I had a little brother and a little sister. But what was going on in the house was stuff that makes it not safe in the House. It wasn't safe. The beatings were too often and too severe. And the first time I heard myself described as an abused child, I was shocked. You never think of yourself like that. But I know it was not safe there in that home. And the questions flew hard and fast, and you better be careful not to make the wrong answer. And it wasn't safe in school, and it wasn'T safe in church, and it WASN'T safe on the streets. And it's an interesting thing to be brought up in that kind of a household because when they asked us questions, we didn't answer the questions. And when we got to school, they thought we were stupid. They gave you a question and you know the answer, but if you're brought up like I was, you don't give that answer. You need more information. You need to know, do they know the answers? You need it. You need them to know why are you asking me that? Oh, who's going to get hit out of this thing? There's a lot. And by the time you mull all that through, they're on to the next person and they've marked you down as being kind of dumb. And that's kind of the way. So I grew up with an attitude and a chip on my shoulder and all of that. And my mother and I went to war at an early age. I decided for reasons that are just too tedious to get into that I couldn't trust her. And when I was 14, she died. I didn't cry. I didn' t do anything. I stopped breathing deeply. I remember I just lived on the surface then. I was fourteen years old and I just... And two years later at a party in high school, I was 16 years old and I got a hold of some vodka and I drank that vodka. And I began to breathe deeply again because I had found something that moved me. I had find something that I had been looking for. I had found something that this guy named Scott Peck, who wrote that book The Road Less Traveled and some other books, is fascinated by Alcoholics Anonymous. And he calls what we get out of booze, he calls that cheap grace, cheap grace. And it's a substitute to be sure. But it is better than anything I had known up until that time. Booze did something for me. and my mother had tried to teach us about belief and about faith in God and all of that business wanted us to embrace this fundamentalist religion wanted us really relish handing out bible tracts in the streets of Billings, Montana wanted me to be an evangelist you know that was tent revival stuff in those days it didn't look very interesting to me then nor now although it's more interesting now isn't it? Evangelism has kind of a... I might have had a real flair for that work. In fact, somebody told me that Jimmy Swagger said... Somebody said he started a magazine, he calls repent. But we're drawn, aren't we? I mean, there is something. Every time I hear somebody read a horoscope. I know they know there's something. Every time I see somebody act out a superstition, I have a friend whose mother throws salt over her shoulder and stuff like that. She knows. I mean, it's just like our nod in the direction of there's some power that we can't explain. And our understanding of God is meager at best, at best. But there is something, and I knew it sitting on the back pew in the church of Billings, Montana as a little kid. I knew when that altar call would come and that guy would be really bringing them down front. Boy, I braced myself. Oh, I've got to watch it like a hawk. I'll just slide down to the front and get saved and go. My uncle did that, and they sent him to China to be a missionary. Oh, you've got to watch it. I was at a meeting the other day in Los Angeles, and I was sitting across the table from a guy who said to me, my sponsor asked me to pray. His sponsor was sitting there. And I said, so did you pray? He said no. I said why not? He said I'm afraid to. Why? I'm scared. I'm not afraid to ask him for anything. Why? Well what if he gives it to me? Oh, you know he will, don't you? Yeah. We know. We know that's why you know it's so funny I don't really I have this terrible fear about making a decision a simple decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God because maybe I'll go to China maybe he wants me to stay in Los Angeles and pay my bills but what if he wants me to be happy who will I blame then if I'm happy how can I let my dad off the hook if I really have a sweet life how can i forgive my mother if I have a wonderful life and so you gotta watch it if you're new here I'll tell you I got bad news for you if you stick around AA your life is gonna improve and there's nothing you can do about it. You'd think that would be good news. I'll tell you, it takes courage to be happy. You know why? Because we're addicted to a drug called approval. We're addicted to a drugs called approval and then we date our dealer that makes for a nice tension free relationship but I'd rather have your approval than be happy isn't that interesting I'd better have my anger than be unhappy and so we creep up on this thing we know at some level, it says it in the book, that faith and belief in a power greater than himself are as old as man himself. It's as much a part of us as our feeling for a good friend. We come equipped with faith and believe. And we developed it early, not in God, but in booze. I believed in boozed. I believed it, not watching my dad drink. I didn't know why he drank, except I decided after a while the reason that he drank is because he didn't want to be with us anymore. And he'd be around the house for a while and then he'd get the bottle out and he would take that first glass and I knew that he was done with us. And within maybe 30 minutes there would be yelling and then furniture flying around and stuff like that, but I knew he was just taking his leave of us. Now that's not why he drank. He drank because, like me, he's restless, irritable, and discontented. he cannot when that is on him bring to mind with any force at all the havoc and heartache of an hour or a day or a week ago that the booze brought and I can't either we drink essentially because we like the effect produced by alcohol I remember telling people I like the taste of bourbon. Isn't that interesting? Can you imagine sipping whiskey if it didn't have any alcohol in it? You just were drinking something with that taste to it? Oh, let me sit around here all night and do this. We learn to tolerate the taste. I don't think that's what really draws us though, do you? But I believed in it. I believed in it after that first night. I was 14 years old. I was 16 years old that night and I had my first drink and I believed in booze. It didn't take long. I knew that night I was coming back to the well. I knew at night that I was not going to be long away from this stuff, that I wasn't going to be far removed from it. I knew it would be in my life because it brought me peace. It brought me a quiet and a sense of security and calm that I did not know before except when I was a little tiny kid. I longed for that. Frightened and alone and mad at my mom, mad at the only woman that I... You know, it's funny. When we were... I was maybe four. I adored her and she adored me. And we whispered our sweet secrets and we laughed and we prayed together and we went deep. And it all went to hell in a handbasket but the sweetness of those early years I missed them terribly and I couldn't even say that. I couldn' t say that standing at her grave when I was 14. I didn't cry. I didn' t do anything. But I missed her terribly. And I when I found booze it seemed to set me right. It seemed to take the fear and just put it away. It seemed to take that terrible restlessness and fear and it happened that night. It happened the first time I drank And I was quiet about it. I didn't tell anybody. I just knew I'd be back again. And I believed in booze. I had belief in boozed, and I went for it the second time and the fifth time and the twentieth time believing in it. And you know and I know that that ripens. See, a belief, if you look it up in the dictionary, a belief is an expectancy. And I expected it to work for me. And if you looked up faith, it says a confident trust born of experience. and after a while, without even knowing it, I developed faith. You know, I bought a bottle. Years went by, and I had a car, andI was in college, and I boughta bottle, and l couldn't drink it. I wasn't even old enough to drink it, and I put it in the glove compartment of the car for later, and I felt better. I didn't have to drinkit. All I had to do was have control over it for later and Ifelt better. That's called faith. That is faith. It's in my life and it's going to work and I feel better because it's there. That's faith. And so the faith and belief is in us. And our idea of God, as it says in the book, is obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things. What does that mean? My idea of god, my conscious awareness of god is obscured by pomp. That's just ceremony, the idea that I can do it, this pompous notion that I don't need it or by calamity when I get all worked up about the plight of people in other parts of the world and say there can't be a God or worship of other things. I worshipped everything else because my ego says the answer is everything but god anything but god must be the answer according to my ego there is a um i was touched in arizona i think tucson i'm told there is a halfway house there and in the foyer one of these wonderful paintings by francesco and he has captured the essence of a drunk. This guy has lost his shoes, his shirt's gone, his eyes are empty, the bottle is half gone and you can tell with every cell in your body if you're a drunk that he's a drunk. And somebody has put some verse on the side of this on the wall and it says it's true I'm a drunk and my soul lives in the shadow of my emotions and yet there have been songs for me and my life has had its meanings, but the hand that made me and all that I have ever been has deserted me. The last two lines knock me out. The author put this in. He said, Would anyone ever know that my life with all its ruined hours has been a search for him? Has been a research for him. There's no wonder that Scott Peck calls it cheap grace. I drink that booze and boy it brings me closer than I can ever get to a sense of sweet relationship and so I loved it and it's not long before we're trapped before we are stuck before we were beyond human aid a guy named Chuck Chamberlain who is dead now I've talked in California and around the world, really. And he touched me in a number of ways. One of them was he called this thing a trap. We're caught in a trap we cannot spring. And I was thinking about that one day. In fact, somebody and I were talking about it not long ago. If I understand anything about trapping animals in the woods, if a fox or a coyote is trapped in a trap that has that chain anchored to the base of a tree, he knows he is trapped. And he will, if he has enough time and gets desperate enough, chew off his leg and get away. And so they devised something to prevent that. They call it a snare trap. and it's just as firm and just as secure except it is attached to a branch with some give to it. And that animal gets caught by that trap but he doesn't know he's trapped. He'll take it out to the end refusing to believe and he'll exhaust himself trying to get away because there's just enough give in it that he knows he can get away and then it drags him back and he catches his breath and gets a little sleep and back out again thinking he's free or that close to being free a snare trap is what i got caught in because there were moments when i thought i can do it i am all right i can drink i can take the good and leave the bad and those were few and far between but somehow in my mind, I could make it work for me. I heard a story that compels me. It's not my story, but it's a story than a guy told in Colorado Springs. He said that there was a big arena, a boxing arena, and there was this big ring in the middle of it. And there was lights and action and a crowd and a festive air and high excitement because of this wonderful athletic contest that was coming on. He said in the ring were two fighters. In the white trunks in that corner, a fighter named Alcohol. In the dark trunks in this corner, me. And he said I saved seats around the ring for my friends and family so they wouldn't miss a thing. Wanted him to see everything because this was going to be a great fight. A wonderful sporting event. And the round bell went off from round one and they went out there and they felt each other out for a round. Came back feeling pretty good. Went out the second round, okay, there was more give and take and more blows landed. Third round more of the same. Fourth round he found himself flat on his back and he looked up and the guy said, always a gentleman, always a gentlemen. His opponent said lucky punch, just a lucky punch. And he said you bet and he got up and they finished the round and he went back and two rounds later, he was back on his back out there in the middle of the thing again. He said, another lucky punch. And the fighter said, you're damn right it's a lucky punch. I can beat you. And alcohol says, I know you can. I know You can. And around then and he went back in the next few rounds, all he saw was his opponent's feet, his shoes, and he got cut up badly. And he got back to the corner at the end of that round, and his family was getting up to leave. And his wife said, I've got to go. I can't watch any more of this. Your friends have already left. Stop the fight. And he said, let there be one more round, just one more around. I can beat him. I know that fight, and I know that snare trap. And I started my march when I was 16 at a party, and when the party was over, I was 29 and living in a garage in Glendale, California, and the party had been over for a while. And along the way, I picked up the standard ration of scar tissue that we do, and I had had the goofy experiences that we do I had been in I'd gotten to finish college I had opportunity I went to dental school at the University of Oregon for a couple of years till they threw me out I had high hopes for that I never wanted to be a dentist but I had told my dad one time he said what are you going to do with yourself? And I said, well, I think I'll be a dentist. And he didn't smack me. So I thought, well, i'll do that. I guess that's what i'm supposed to do. And I eventually got to dental school. But I hated it in dental school. By now, i'm full-blown alcoholic. And they've got some, it's expensive and it involves using your hands a lot. Everywhere you turn around, you're supposed to be doing something tricky with your hands. And on Saturday morning in the clinic, we had a live patient sitting in a chair and I don't want to see him. I made a set of dentures for a guy the first year I was up there and, God, that made me crazy. The second year he came back, he was bringing his wife and if he'd seen me in the clinic, he'd say, Say you. Oh, I hate to see them coming. Something wrong with my teeth, he said. But there was a guy in the dental school that I just adored. He was sort of my, he was a guy that drank worse than I did. And we'd be in there on Saturday morning hungover and sick and supposed to be doing something in the clinic. And he was the senior and I was the sophomore. And I'd look over there and he just looked, oh, he looked awful. AndI was thinking I'm glad he's here. You know it's like you go to a party and you've bitten the hostess on the leg, but somebody else high-centered his car in the rock garden and you're going, good to see you, Steve. This guy was that for me. I just loved having him around because I figured as long as he was there, they weren't going to throw me out. Turned out they threw me out and he was able to graduate. But I remember the story went around the school in about a nanosecond he was supposed to give some guy a shot one morning in that clinic and he was hungover and sick and he could and they just come out with that new high-speed air-driven handpiece and you could just you know raise a lot of hell twitching in there and uh he gave this guy a shoot and you're supposed to stick that needle up under the lip and hit and catch that branch of the facial nerve when it comes out of the maxillary frame there and you rub it in and you give him the shot and he did that and then he went back in the back and had a cigarette and threw up and he came back out and he said is your face numb yet and the guy said no not yet uh he went and had another cigarette and he came back and he says is your facetime and he said not yet and then he noticed little blood come down the guy's cheek and then And then he realized his left hand was numb. And I'm going, yes! Yes! Those dentures didn't look that bad that morning. Oh, Jesus. they threw me out I spent that summer drinking on skid row in Portland sign outside the post office says the Marine Corps builds men oh let's go back to Quantico back through their officer candidate program reassigned to the fleet marine force at Camp Pendleton commissioned Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. I loved it. And I thought my trouble was over. I was married now and had a little boy. This was my second marriage. And it wasn't over. I wanted with everything in me to be a good Marine. I loved that. but I kept drinking and I'm an alcoholic and I didn't get it and if you're new or relatively new here the tests are not terribly tricky there are several of them suggested in the book do some controlled drinking step over to the nearest bar and have a drink or two and then go home. And try that every night for a week and see how you come out. If you can do that without drinking more over a period of time, our hats are off to you. Or go without drinking at all for a year. See how that works for you. See how great you feel then. Remember all those promises? I'm going to knock off the drinking. I'm gonna start to work out. I'm gunna run every day. I'm guna get three jobs and I'm guana get a new white Lincoln and I'll drive it by and honk and wave at her. Oh, I'll be real nice. 48 hours later, I'm in jail someplace. There's a whole list of things in the book that don't work. You kind of have to chip them out of there, but it's interesting. In the chapter more about alcoholism, it gives us... Oh, and it says the third test you can make to see if you're alcoholic is take a look at the kind of drinking that precedes the first drink. I mean, if it was just about being allergic to booze, the idea is not drink and not set the terrible cycle in motion again. Wouldn't need this. wouldn't have to do any of this stuff just stop drinking except that doesn't seem to be what we can do cannot do that so it says if you want to really check it out without drinking and without going a year without drink take a look at the thinking that goes into that first drink that remark my somebody told me to write down the craziest things i ever did i made this list of things i was thought were cute i gave it to him he said you didn't even come close to writing down the craziest thing you ever did i said what is that he said you took a drink you decided to drink knowing the trouble it can cause you and not even being under and being physically dry you decided to take a drink that is not good that is not my sponsor told somebody he said think of your mind as if it's a bad neighborhood don't ever go in there alone Here's a guy in the book. I love this story in the book. This impeccable thinking. You know what they say in that book about my mind? They say, I can't think straight and I lack proportion. Here's Jim. Jim comes to work on a Tuesday morning. What happened to Mundy? Didn't you ever wonder what the hell happened to Bundy? We know what happened to Mondy. Mildly irritated that he was a salesman now for a car dealership he used to own. Don't you love that wonderful New England understatement? Mildily irritated. I'll bet. had a few words with the boss but nothing serious go get him Jim this is how he explains his last drunk he's not drinking yet had a lot of fun had a little bit of fun had a couple of words with the boss but nothing serious decides to go out into the country where he might find a prospect for a new car they're lined up out there all the time I'll stop for lunch at a roadhouse that I used to hang out at it's familiar and besides, I might find a customer in there oh jimmy jimny jiminy i'll bet he used to go there and he has lunch what could be safer than eating lunch and included in it is a glass of milk oh brings a tear to the eye just the health he's going to start working out any minute now yeah and then now that he's got it well set up I'll bet you and it doesn't say it in the book but I'll beat you he had a hundred in his pocket I don't know why I think that but I would have had a hundred in my pocket I'm not going to start this on a dollar ninety eight I'll tell you that no so it came to him that if you know if he ordered whiskey and put it in his milk what could the harm be and he tried that experiment and it worked so well he did it again and the next thing he knows they're visiting him in the hospital one more time but I just love Jim in his story. I understand that. Everything to lose, nothing to gain. I got a bad attitude and somehow or other I will find myself drinking without any examination of the consequences at all. And that is why I think they say in the book that I have placed myself beyond human aid. no human power can break that up none that we have ever come across and this part of chapter 5 that was read tonight was read in the I haven't heard it in a while in the original manuscript that language comes out of that original manuscript that Trish read and that sets it out the way they had it written before the book was published And I kind of like it. You know, it really lays down the gauntlet. If you don't like it up to this point, reread it or throw the book away. Sort of like, you know what? It's up to you. Sometimes we forget that. Sometimes in our haste to bring that new guy in, in our haste to not scare him away, we forget to tell him. This is up to me. This is all up to him. I'll tell you, if you are new here tonight, let me say this. I told you at the outset that I love my sobriety the last time I had a drink was on the 14th of August 1966 and so I've spent 28 years here and I love it and it's getting better for me all the time I just, I love it in AA and I love being sober and if you go out tonight if you're new here and drink my life will not change much And I'm not here to talk you out of that next one. I'm here to share my experience, strength, and hope. We don't have any... I was sitting next to somebody after a meeting one night. We were having dinner, and this lady was an attorney that came up from South America, and she was at the meeting. And she was very intrigued by AA. And she had gone to India to be with Gandhi and had studied Mother Teresa and had been with her and had done all of this stuff. and she was entranced by this thing. And she said, who's your guru? I said, well, you know, we do have one. We call him John Barleycorn. He teaches us much. Our teacher is alcohol before we get here. Teaches us that there is such futility in all of this. She said, well, what about these? shouldn't you have these there ought to be a way to even enlarge this more and I said you know what's interesting is that this is about one alcoholic talking to another she said what about the big picture and I think that's the big picture I think that's as big as it gets one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic and so if you're new here I really do welcome you But you must understand that this deal, if it's going to work for you, will work for you because you ask that it work for you. You must ask. You must ask. We think, you know, one of the ways that I understood God years ago, maybe not that long ago, come to think about it, is that if I go along doing my job, whatever it may be and lead an exemplary life that God will notice and help me out. It doesn't work. You know what's missing? I have to invite Him in to my life. I have to invite him in. All of the chugging along, hoeing my little row of corn is wonderful. all I have to do I don't even have to row the hoe the corn I have just to say direct my thinking all I've got to do is say manage my life I used to think that once I got the idea that God is inside us like it says in the book not out there he must be in there like a button is in a glass of water or like a raisin is in a bun. And a guy named Eric Butterworth one time touched me so much. He said, God's inside us like the ocean is in waves. And that is useful to me because it means that I'm an expression of God. It means that if I'm a wave, the person next to me is a wave and we are both expressions of God and we can stand there shoulder to shoulder on the fire line doing whatever is required of us, connected not by anything other than this subsurface marvelous power that touches us and is part of us both. Well, I didn't know all of that in those days. I'm just looking everywhere I can for a little peace of mind and I got out of the Marine Corps and they began to treat me like a common drunk because I had become a common junk. My uniform was gone, that commission was gone. I was selling encyclopedias door to door and I was living in a garage with three other guys and I wasn't doing real well. I had no sense of my powerlessness. All I knew was that I was confused and lost and about three weeks away from Skid Row. And out of all of that chaos, a bail bondsman brought me to Alcoholics Anonymous. He brought me here, never brought anybody before or since, and I stayed. I didn't get sober from the first. He brought my wife. He brought in July. I got sober five weeks later and that was the last time I drank. and I call him every year on my birthday and I thank him for that. I thank Him for bringing me here and our conversations at first were kind of funny because I'd call him up, I'd say, Don, it's Clint Hodges and he'd say yeah, Clint, where are you now? He couldn't believe it either. You know what I love about AA? I loved it then, I loved It Now. He says, where are you now? I can tell him. Isn't that great? I know where I am and I can say it. We like to say in our group one of the promises is you'll come to know your full name and address. Some of us do, some of us don't. I love it here. I wanted my own power. You know, it's so interesting. The choice is this. On the bottom of page 25, I can go on to the bitter end, living out my life in this terrible, frustrating idiocy on the one hand, or I can accept spiritual help on the other. Those are my choices. I can crawl around the floor of the garage or I can make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. I don't want to do either one. That's silly. That's crazy. I understood a guy real well one time. He was talking. He said he stood in front of the judge before he got to AA. The judge said, I'm so sick of seeing you here. You know the drill better than I do. I'm going to let you decide today. I'm either going to give you 60 days in AA or 90 days in jail. What's it going to be? And the guy said, what jail would that be, Your Honor? And when you say to me, it's so funny. We tell people, don't make any important decisions your first year. And about three weeks later we slide up and tell them, we'd like to see you make a decision to turn your will in your life over. What? Are you kidding? We tell newcomers all kinds of stuff that's really great. Like don't get emotionally involved your first time. Don't get involved your second year. we love that it's not in the book but we like to say it and I'll say it to you if you're new don't get emotionally involved you're first year give it a shot see how it comes out none of us have ever tried it we'd like to know how it works for you hey it may work we don't know I don't want to turn my will and my life over the care of God I don' t have any control over my life if I do that I sure don't wanna stay in the garage and puke all night and I don''t have any control there either and God removed that obsession to drink and I've still got alcoholism and I'm still restless irritable and discontent but now I have the relief of meetings and I thank God for that any relief is sweet relief or we need it and I have the relief of service so I have unity and I am going to get some power so I moved from Glendale out to the west end of town and asked Clancy to be my sponsor jumped in with that heard a guy in 1968 I was two years sober and I liked the way they played and i played with them and i just loved it and when i was five years sober i didn't feel like i had enough power going for me and somebody said you ought to go to law school so i did i thought that would give me some power and when I was nine years over the state of california gave me a license to practice law which is i like that they wouldn't give me a license to drive a car when I got here so we're making progress and it's interesting work and I'm good at it and it is something fun to do between meetings but it doesn't give you power it's just another set of people to report to and so I'll be a partner in the firm well that's nice it didn't ever occur to me that I would have an equal interest in all the firm debt as well as everything else. God. No real power. I'll get another relationship. I'll do that. Two at a time. We'll try that for a while. See how that goes. And sooner or later it gets pretty flat, you know. because I'm celebrating an event that occurred in 1966. I mean, that's the celebration. And I'm listening to people like Alan McGinnis say things like, the only time we can have a conscious contact with God is right now. But I don't have one. I know how Wilson felt when he wandered into Winchester Cathedral. deeply moved, he said, I wandered outside. And his attention was caught by some inscription on a tombstone. And later in his story he gets back to that and he says after he had had a spiritual experience he said I understood that thing in the Winchester Cathedral. I understood that for a brief moment I had wanted God and was humbly willing to have him with me and he came. And it was fleeting and soon lost. Those sweet seconds or a moment or two are quickly ground out by the clamor of worldly events, mostly those within myself. He's saying that his ego is just... And I've sat in meetings many, many times deeply touched by what was going on. But on the way home somebody cuts me off on the freeway and it's gone. Fleeting and soon lost. What happened to that moment? And can I get it back? And do I want it back Do I really want to be happy all the time? how can i have some choice in the matter what can i do and you know the funny thing about it is there is something we can do we can start at the beginning of this book called alcoholics anonymous and do what it says to do in that book isn't that something it's right there john h says if you want to hide something from an alcoholic, put it in that book. Here we are with this powerful, powerful spiritual program. I avoided it as long as I could, I'll tell you that. And you can avoid it for a while, running and doing and involved in AA and sponsoring people and imposing formulas on them. And it's great, you know. It's great for new people and it's good for me to sponsor people and it doesn't matter how much that goes. But sooner or later all of this activity seems to me that I'm backing away from hell. And I think if I'm going to have a sweet life I have to at some point turn, turn and face the light. turn and get in touch with, there is a relationship available to me. A relationship of my very own. There is a place inside me where I can go where God is. And the question gets to be can I find that place? Can I go in there? They say the great reality is deep within. He could not say it more plainly. and he comes up with a great sentence after that he says in the last analysis it is only there that he may be found and after I found that it was the last analysis, I never analyzed it again because I knew I was home but that comes from beginning at the beginning revisiting that whole issue is my life unmanageable and the next step revisiting this issue Not was I insane or even am I insane, but what would sanity look like? That's a great question. And since at step 10 it says that every day is the day we carry the vision of God's will into our daily activities, I can, at step 2, form my own vision of sanity. And if I can do that and if Ican take steps 3 through 9 by the time I get to step 10, I'll have no more, no less in my life than the vision I formed at step two. That's a powerful promise. It's simply at step one I say here's where I am. At step two I say here's what I want and here's where I want to go. I don't know what God's will in this is but here's what I want to be not to do to be and how am I going to get there? If I could do it I would be there so I know I can't do that. Will I believe Am I even willing to believe that there is a power that exists that will move me from where I am to where I would most love to be? And if I'm willing to do that, then I am on my way because years of prejudice are set aside. Prejudice is simply prejudging. I prejudge this by what happened in the past and I have to let it go. Ultimately, I must let it going and look again and again and again and when we draw close to him he will reveal himself to us there are more promises in that book every sentence is a gold mine in the first 164 pages at least there and so there's real power here not our power and as long as I can drop my objection to not being the source of the power I can tap into the power and what's happened with all of that yesterday morning this morning I woke up in my own home in Brentwood there is a lady there with me and I was glad she was there her name is Cindy and her name. I knew it the minute I woke up. I just, I knew her name Cindy yes thank you for being here dear lady she and I go deep down the hall is an eight year old boy Daniel is a old soul we kneel down at night by his bed the three of us with a dog licking everybody that they can reach i even like that dog and we say prayers the other day a couple of weeks ago daniel thanked god that he was at the top of the food chain i don't know what they're teaching him in school but i thought But that's kind of nice. I'm grateful for that. I don't want to be lunch for a cow today. But it's a family. You know, I never had a family and I have a family today and we live in harmony. There's a sweet peace there Cindy is 17 years sober. She has an old soul. She is just something. She's the one that pointed out to me what the dictionary says about willing. Do you know what willing means? Cheerfully ready. That's so rude when they tell you that. Just in case you decide to pray for willingness, be careful you'll be cheerfully ready one of these days to turn your will and your life over the care of god you'llbe cheerfullyready to have happiness as a way of life god's inside usand he's ever present and he's in me like the ocean is in a wave and we're connected we'reconnected see the old idea the world tells us all every advertising campaign you ever will see will tell you that we are our bodies and thus we're separate. And your body needs a new hat and some more clothes and a car to go around it and a house to live in because you're your body and we're not. We're not that. That body is where we live and we have to take care of it but it's not who I am. I am an expression of God and I know it because he has allowed his grace to be in my life in such a special way because these days my life is sweet I've been sober 28 years almost half my life I was 29 when I got here I'm raising a child I have a home I have people in that home men that I take through these steps as I was taken through I have a sponsor. I've good friends like you. I'm very grateful