Why the Human Ego Is Divinely Impossible to Satisfy – Chuck C.

Chuck C. from Laguna Beach. Thank you. My name is Chuck C., and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, sir. Hi. Hi. because of people like you a program like Alcoholics Anonymous and a God of my very own whom I found after I got to Alcoholics Anonymous I haven't had a drink or a pill for 36 years and 10 months That ain't bad for a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot. If you get the feeling tonight that I love this program and I love its people, you'll be right. This thing we've got here is big and all outdoors. would to God that it was possible to explain surrender. Would to God that it isn't. The more learned we are, the less likely we are to embrace surrender. Personally, I never surrendered once in 43 years. Not to God, man, woman or the devil. And when the time came, I was surrendered. surrendered. I didn't consciously surrender. I was surrendered. And I've had 36 years and 10 months of the easiest life that I've ever known, and the only good life that's ever ever been mine. It's a fantastic thing. I've totally concluded that the great significance of our surrender in Alcoholics Anonymous is to get rid of the human ego. I want, I don't want, I like, I don't like, aye-yi-yi. That's got to go. It's got to go." On Wednesday night of this week, I was yacking at Clancy's his 24th birthday. Clancy called me sponsor. He came down with Luann Sims when Koufax was pitching for the Dodgers, World Series game coming up, KouFax was going to pitch, and he came down with two tickets for me to go to that gig. Clear across town, my flat, down on Alameda Street. And he gave me those two tickets. And after I'd accepted them, he asked me to be his sponsor. I'd be damned if I was going to give him back the two tickets, I'll tell you that. So I told him he could call me a sponsor if he wanted to, but I wouldn't call him a baby because I neither sponsor nor have babies, which is just the reverse of Clancy. I've got a picture on my den wall with 168 people in it. And the only two people in the picture that aren't Clancy's babies are Clancy and myself. He's really got babies. And not only that, he has the biggest weekly meeting in the world today. The biggest in the word. world. 24 years ago, I knew that he couldn't even get sober. Wasn't a chance for him. He He was a dirty, stinking, no-front teeth. Egotistical son of a bitch! That's what he was. And he didn't even have any chance of getting sober. and I'll have to tell you tonight I've never seen anybody in 24 years that had made greater improvement he's something else now and he calls me a sponsor personally I never had a sponsor when I got here I didn't know what a sponsor was was. And when I found out what a sponsor was, I didn't think I was entitled to that much consideration from anybody. So I couldn't ask anybody to be my sponsor. And when the time came when I could have asked somebody to be my sponsor, I already had 500 and a God of my very own. So So I never had a sponsor. And I have never thought of anybody as my baby. Because I can't, I don't want to feel that I've had something to do with your sobriety when I couldn't even get sober myself. So I don' t go too much on that sponsor-sponsee thing. but I don't talk about much around Clancy because he is a sponsor man when he is asked to sponsor somebody he says I'll sponsor you if you'll do exactly what I tell you to do and if you won't promise to do that go get you another sponsor him. Now, I couldn't do that. But he does, and he does it well. He's a fantastic guy. So I talked at his 24th birthday on Wednesday night, and I told a little story that was wrong, and now I've got to apologize. Because I said down there that night that there is in our book, something before chapter 5 that said that if we be alcoholic we've lost the battle of life. And we can't get out of the thing alone and we have to have help and it has to be from a power greater than ourselves. Now it may be there because I haven't looked again But, actually what I was quoting was this. Prior to Alcoholics Anonymous, there was a fellow named Roland who was an alcoholic. And Roland went to Dr. Carl Jung, who was a great psychiatrist. psychiatrist, one of the big three. There were Freud, Adler, and Jung all at the same time, and they were big, big people in the psychiatric business. And perhaps Jung was was the only one of them that was really oriented with a power greater than himself. And so Roland went to see him, and he was in dire need of help. And it was Dr. Jung that told him that people in his condition had to have a spiritual awakening. Lest they die. That he couldn't get out of this thing alone. And Roland took it to heart, and he went back to his group. And he ran on to Ebby. Ebby was the chap that first went to Bill. Bill, told Bill about this deal with Dr. Carl Jung and how Dr. Jung said this was something we couldn't get out of by ourselves, that it was necessary that we establish a relationship Relationship with the power greater than ourselves. And this was the start of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, Ebby had trouble. Ebby Thatcher was his name. God rest his soul. And Ebby, after taking this message to Bill, spent 18 years on the Bowery. in New York until Dallas, Texas sent a little quartery of sober alcoholics up to the Bowery and kidnapped the old boy carried him off down to Dallas put him in the hospital little. Sobered him up. And on his first birthday, Bill Wilson left my house in Beverly Hills and went to Dallas to talk at Ebby's first birthday. And he did. Then he went on back back to New York. And maybe he was drunk before he got back to New York! But they sobered him up again, and he had eight years. And I spent quite a little time with him during those eight years when he was not drinking. And I think I saw his problem pretty plainly, because you see, he was the man that really carried the message to Bill. And nobody in the world knew Ebby after the years had gone by a while. And everybody knew Bill and Dr. Bob. and it was a matter of being hurt, you know. He thought that everybody should know him. Now he didn't say that, but he said this. I said to him when I was with him the last time, Ebby, will you ever be able to get over your resentment that Bill and Dr. Bob actually taking your deal that you'd given to Bill in the first place had taken this thing away from him and being the big people in Alcoholics Anonymous oh he says after a fashion fashion. After fashion. And I cried inside because Ebby was a sweet little guy. He was a sweet, little guy and I can understand it, you know, because here he was the guy that carried the message to Bill, and Bill and Bob were the big boys that nobody knew him. And so after eight years, Edward got drunk again, and And Bill sent for it. And he went up to Bill's house in Bedford Hills, New York. And he got over his drunk. He died sober. Not too long, you know. But it's nice that he did die sober. Now, that is a series of little circumstances that brought this thing of ours into being in the first place. And it's accidents like that that have been happening to us now for the last 47 years. You know? You know, most interesting things that could happen to anybody. Like somebody up in the Klondike taking the staves out of a barrel to burn and finding an A book in the bottom of the ice and getting a book out and reading it and getting sober, you know. These are just things that have happened with us. Now, it happened to me because in my first 43 years of life life, I never made a mistake. Nothing was ever my fault. It was your fault. I always always had some place to point the finger. No drunk that I was ever on until my last one was my fault. It was your fault, it was the boss, it was conditions, circumstances. It was the so-called civilization in which I was born. Never my fault, It was my wife's fault. But more specifically, it was her mother's fault There was a king-size reason for getting drunk Her mother had only one kid And I was married to her And in the last five years of my drinking She was living with us Her husband had died and she had a grandstand seat watching me crucify her only daughter. And she didn't like me very good. And I didn't like her that good. Because if she hadn't been living with us, I wouldn't have had to crucify our daughter. It was all her fault. We had a mutual hating society that was a beautiful thing to behold. She lived with us five years after I sobered up, and I could spend the rest of the week telling you people what this program did for her. she never went to a meeting and until she died she never would admit to herself or to me that you people had given me any help or that I'd gotten any help from God she'd come up and put her arms around me and she'd say oh son I always knew that you had it in you well I did too but she and I were speaking about two different things but she would not believe that I'd gotten any help from you or from God now this is the way it actually happened to me I told you that I never surrendered once Once in 42 years. I had an older brother, three and a half years older than I and three and a half year stronger. And we had one fight that lasted 20 years on the installment plan. He could always whip me, but he couldn't make me believe it. and I left home thinking I could whip him so I didn't learn very fast I became a periodic 11 years before coming to this program because I was not going to be beaten by a bottle that bottle could not whip me so it became periodic and I was dry as am tonight between every two drunks for 11 years and I always got drunk again it finally beat me in January 1946 1946. I woke up the Friday before Christmas, 1946, feeling pretty good. Christmas was coming right up, and New Year's was coming right up. And I had two weeks or three of pretty good drinking ahead of me. I could always get by with a little bit more drinking around the holidays than ordinarily. And I felt real good, and I went down to the office feeling good. But when I got to the Office, I found a note that says, See the Boss. And I didn't want to see the boss. I knew what he looked like. And And I also knew what he wanted with me. He was going to fire me, that's what he was going to do the Friday before Christmas. And I knew that because I knew I had it coming. But he said, see the boss and I went in and see him. And instead of shooting me he started talking, which was a good sign. And he said to me, Charlie, I was Charlie in business. he says you've had a lot of trouble this year he never mentioned booze but he knew that I knew what he meant when he said trouble and he says I think I know the reason for it I think it's because of the pressure you are under now says he I have looked at this thing and I have decided to take a little pressure off of you maybe next year you won't have so much pressure and you won' t have so much trouble and on the Friday before Christmas 1945 instead of shooting me he gave me $3,000 for a Christmas present to take the pressure off of me now if you don't think he took the pressure off of you you're nuts That's, there's one thing that's worse for an alcoholic than bad fortune. And that's good fortune. So I got drunk on the way home. Now this is the strange thing about it. I don't remember the first drink, the middle drink or the last drink. I don't remember anything until the 18th day of January 1947 the 18TH day of January now Christmas that is the Friday before Christmas in 1945 fell on the 21st day of December I did not know that until about a week ago go. I've got a black sun in San Bernardino that looks it up and sent me the dope on it. It was the 21st of December, so I had ten more days in December and eighteen days in in January, that I am totally vacant on. I don't remember nothing. Now, I had to go. I had the ability to go to the hospital. I had a job to be ambulatory because I had to get my drinking, my whiskey. That's what I had to get. Because for some reason, my family wouldn't bring it. and I went out and I got it and I drank and if my wife was talking right here now she would tell you unsuspecting people that I destroyed seven quarts of whiskey every three days in that entire time now my wife says that I do not I can't even argue with it because you see I wasn't there and she was furthermore I don't think seven quarts is too much for three days if you only go about 15 days But if you go 28 days, it's either too much or just enough. And in my case, it was just enough because I came to on the 18th of January with a clear head. and everything between me and me had burned out. All the I wants had burned out and all the excuses had burned out and there was nothing between me and me. And for the first time in my life I knew that I'd lost the battle of life. I did not know why, because I knew nothing of the disease of alcoholism. I knew much about jails. I know much about DTs. I new much about convulsions. I knew much dirty beds, but I didn't know anything about alcoholism. But I knew I'd lost the battle of life. And I knew that I had only one piece of unfinished business left in life, and that was to rub out as much of the record as they could before I died. And I also knew that I couldn't rub out a record drinking. And I said to myself, how am I going to not drink right now? Right now. Because I didn't know how not to drink right Now. You know? And the second miracle happened. The first one was that I came to breathing, you know. And the 2nd was that I remembered that morning that I had read Zach Alexander's article in the Saturday Evening Post. March 1st issue, 1941. Again, my good wife had found it, had read it and thought it might do me some good if I'd read it and put it on the left arm of the chair I sit in right now, open at the right place. And evidently I read it, but I hadn't thought about it one time in five years until the morning I needed it. How am I going to not drink right now? And I remembered I'd read that article. I only remember two things about it. That drunks help drunks and didn't drink. drink, and they called it Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said to myself, if I ever live to get out of this bed, I will find AA. And immediately my little period of sanity was gone, and I I was sickened to death, drunk and insane. And I had a lot of dying to do. But the strange thing is this. From the moment of commitment until right now, I have not had one conscious desire for a drink. I have no desire for anything else. I have never had a drink and I haven't had a sedating or tranquilizing pill. Nor have I wanted one. This is the thing that is so hard to talk about. Surrender! Surrender. We got to get out of our own way? The human ego cannot be satisfied. it is divinely impossible to satisfy the human ego. It's got to go. Because the human eagle is the father and mother of all the obsessions of the mind. I want, I don't want, or like, I do not like, ay-yi-yi, yi-yi. That's the human evil. Can't be satisfied, because it's all relative. For instance, in my last several years in the business world, I rubbed elbows with multimillionaires. I'd grown up with most of them. I was in the business of manufacturing, promoting, designing supermarket fixtures. And I grew up with all those big firms down there in Los Angeles in the market business. And they were very rich. All of them. But none of them had enough. For instance, I had one client from Phoenix, Arizona. He was a Syrian. He had a market chain. He'd gone from one head of lettuce to $35 million. That ain't bad, I think. I don't know, but I don' t think it is. And he'd come to me and he'd say, Charlie, how can I be like you? and I'd say Eddie you can't and he'd say why in the hell can't I I'd see Eddie who needs God when he's got 35 million bucks you can buy anything you want including women and you do now Eddie you go ahead and make yourself 150 million and when you've done that And you will if you stay in business, if you stay well. Because everything you touch turns to money. Make yourself a hundred and fifty million. And you will have then found out that it can't do for you what you have to have done right here. So then you can come to me and say, Charlie, how can I be like you? And I'll tell you and you can do it, but you can't do it until then. And he'd say, well, talk to me about it anyway. And we would drive all over the state of Arizona talking about what we're talking about tonight. But Eddie didn't make his $150 million. He got so much in his head that it exploded, and we had to bury him. But that little story is still true. Two, the chap that started one of the great big insurance companies of this country had a son. And I worked with his son. His son was a lawyer in Pasadena 35 years ago, I guess it was. was. And I was working with Jim, and he had a vendetta on with his dad. He was never going to speak to his dad in his life. And he was a struggling attorney over in Pasadena, and a drunk. And they got sober. And then I started kidding with him then, and when he got sober Well, I'd say, Jim, why don't you go back and see your dad? He wants to see you. He needs you. And it's not often that you can start as the chairman of the board. Usually you have to work up to being the chairman OF the board, but you can go and start as a chairman OF THE BOARD. Why don't she go see him? Ah, never, never. But after what he did, and he started as chairman of the board vice chairman as a matter of fact he's retired now as chairman but anyway this is the story he hadn't been with his dad very long until he said Dad you're drinking too much Dad says I can drink myself to death if I want to Jim says no you can't he says why can't I so and so did naming one of the other of the big men in the company. Jim says, yes, but he didn't want to. When you want to drink yourself to death, you can't do it. You die, but you don't get sober. Or don't drink yourself... No, you don' t die. You die of something else. You know? But you don''t get sober over. I've said that wrong, and I don't know what's wrong about it. But anyway, that's as much time as we can spend on it. The point of the story is all right, we can tell that. And that is that here's a man that started one of the great insurance companies in this country. Top drawer deal. Telling his son I can wring myself to death if I want to. You see, this is a subtle thing, this thing about us. So, there's no way to satisfy the human ego. No way. There's not enough money in the world to satisfy an obsession for money. There's no power in the earth to satisfy a man's obsession for power. power. There's not enough women or men in the world to satisfy an obsession for women and men. They're not enough. When I was a kid, there was a song that went, after you You get what you want. You don't want it. Do you remember that? No, you're not old enough. But it's the truth. There's no way to satisfy the human ego. If you can't beat them, join them. We've got to get rid of it. And it has to come by in surrender. Surrender. Now, when I came to the 18th of January, 1947, all of my I-wants were gone, and all of my excuses were gone. I had no place to point the finger. So when there's something wrong with me, and has been this way for 36 years and 10 ten months, when there's something wrong with me, I have to come to me. I can't point to you as I did in the first 43 years of my life. It's none of my fault. I have come to be and I have say to me, wait a minute, big boy. What have you allowed to get important enough to get between you and your program and your God? And whatever it is has to go. go. And many times I don't want it to go, because it's a 95-pound blonde and every pound is exactly where it's supposed to be. And you don't want to, you know. But you have to. You have to. There's a line in the other book that says, thou shalt have no other God before me. And when I allow anything to get important enough to be, to get between me and my program and my God, I'm in left field. And I don't like it in left field. I spent 43 years out there. So I get rid of it. Now, I have no problem with this because I failed in every department of life. When I came to back there in January 1946, 46. Looked the situation over, got my feet on the ground. I fired me. I said to me, look big boy, you've been calling the shots for 43 years and we have ended up behind the eight ball. We have lost in every department of life, husband, father, businessman, man and drunk, taking your counsel. So I'm firing you and I'm going to headquarters. And that's what he did. Now, I had for thirty years, I'd been a very diligent student of religion and philosophy because I had tried to get saved at thirteen. My family was half hard-shelled Baptist and half Methodist Church South, than which there's nothing witcher. And their treatment treatment was that we were born sinners. We didn't have to sin to go to hell. We had to get saved to keep from going to hell because we got here struck out. And it all sort of hinged on on something they called the original sin. Now there were six of us kids and we tried to get them to tell us what the original sin was. And they wouldn't tell us. And we decided the reason they wouldn'T tell us, it was something naughty. Or they'd have told us, wouldn't they? so we figured out what it was we figured that it had something to do with Adam rearranging Eve's leaves and you know something I still think we were closer to it than they were But they scared me bad enough that I tried to get saved at 13. Didn't make it. Read all the Bibles and the philosophies that there are and got very first in it, but didn't find out why I didn't get saved. I quit looking six years before I got the answer I quit looking for that answer and that's when I found you guys you see I had to find out how not to drink right now and that's the reason I had to find you because you knew how not to drink right now and I came to you and you told me the first night you told now I knew that the men that were talking to me in that meeting were alcoholics I knew they were drunks but they weren't drunk. Because, you see, that was 36 years and 10 months ago, and there wasn't anybody on the Pacific Coast over five years sober then in Alcoholics Anonymous. They were ten years sober back east, but on the Pacific Coast. Only five years sore, and they hadn't gotten rid of their headlights headlights, and the bags under the bags, and they exposed wiring. So I knew they were drunks, but they weren't drunk. And I was comfortable there. Now, I didn't go there to get sober and stay sober. I went there to find out how not to drink right now, so I could use the time to rub out the record. That's what I needed to do so my wife and kids wouldn't remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot. Because I couldn't live in the condition I was in. And I knew it. But it was comfortable and I kept coming back. And it's still comfortable. And that's why I'm here. That's why I'm here. Now let me tell you what's happened to me in 36 years and 10 months. Starting we get out of our own way. Because at six months, I discovered I'd never had a drink or a pill for six months. I was very, very pleased with it. And I started trying to give this thing away. I didn't know much about it, but I thought if it's this good and you don't have to drink or take pills, I'm going to try to give it to somebody else. And a a year went by, and I made another discovery. And that was that I had a family. And they were living like kittens. Now, they were legally divorcing me when I got here. But here it's a year later, and they're living like kids. You know? And I thought that was was pretty nice. And another year went by, and I discovered I was still down in the office trying to clean up my desk. And business was good. The boss came in to throw me through the window, but he didn't. And I was there, and business was still good. And was better than anything that I'd ever known in my entire lifetime. All of these discoveries, and six years came up, and I discovered that I had a God of my very own. Wherever I am, He is. And this is the great discovery. And it's a discovery. It's a discover. it's not something new it's we discover something that's already been but we didn't know it it was covered up with misinformation we uncover and discover in Alcoholics Anonymous and then we discard the crap that was laid on us that is not true this is AlcoholicsAnonymous and here the thing had come about out that I had tried to bring about for 30 years of my life, and it never came about in that. And I quit trying, and started doing these things one day at a time to the best of my ability, and discovered that it had happened. I had a God of my very own. Now, this is very significant to me, because I don't think any of us can find God looking Because what we're looking for, we're looking with. When you got him located out yonder someplace, you can't find him. You see, it says in our bookie something about God as we understood him. God as WE understood him. Well, that doesn't mean we've got to understand in God. What it means is we've got to find our own God, my God, your God. And we have to find him where he is. You can't find him wherever he ain't. You've got to find where he's at and that's right here, right in the middle of us. Now this this is worth everything that you paid to get in here. Don't forget this, because this is fantastic. This is fantastic We uncover and discover the thing we've been looking for all our lives. And this is absolutely contrary to all my conditioning as a kid. Not only at home, but in school and in church. My conditioning was that you had to get out there in the salt mine and outthink, outperform, and outmaneuver in order to eke out a miserable living out of an unfriendly universe. You had to be there firstest with the mostest, you know. The early bird gets the worm. The devil takes the hindermost. I was out there for thirty years doing that, ended up without two coppers. So I don't think much of that conditioning. I was conditioned to believe that we had to earn, be worthy of, merit God's grace. You know. and you better earn it and be worthy of it and merit it because you're a born sinner and if you don't get something done you're going to hell that's a hell of a thing to teach a kid I'll tell you that anyhow that ain't the way it is I never looked in the dictionary to see the meaning of the word grace until I was 60 years old and I'd been living in this program for a long time then and I finally just for fun looked in a dictionary and the very first definition of the Word Grace is a free gift that's the first definition in the Dictionary in mind how are you going to earn a free gifts gift. You can't. If it's free, it's free, isn't it? Okay. So, by accident, I discovered this. By the accident of total failure, as a matter of fact. And then doing the things that you people told me that you were doing. For sobriety only, not to get these answers, but the the answers came. Because when we get out of our own way, there is no roadblock between me and you and me and God. It's absolutely fantastic. Here is the way it happened to me. I'd been trying to get all my life, and I quit trying to get. And I got rich. That's what I did. I got rich. And I quit trying to go anyplace. I've been trying to go someplace all my life. My plant was in the curfew New District, to Watts down there, you know, in Los Angeles. And I couldn't even get to Watts. And here I'd been trying to go someplace all my life. And I quit trying to do it. I didn't want to try to go anyplace. And I've been all over the world where I wanted to go. All over the World. I haven't been to the Orient, but I didn' t want to go there, but I think I'm going now. know. My lad was over there to make shogun, you know, and he says there's some pretty places over there. So I may go yet. I don't know. I'm not going to cry if I don' t. But anyway, I've been all over the world where I wanted to go. And since I quit trying to to run my life, my wife's life and our kid's life. We have become a family. Now this is amazing to me because in my entire first 43 years I was the master of my fate. I was I was the captain of my soul. You know? The only trouble with that, I ended up failing every department of life. I didn't run a very good ship, did I, son? No. But the little dealies that that I was looking at when I fired me were these. something like fear not a little flock it's the Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom if that's true it's beautiful isn't it wouldn't that be nice if it were true I was looking at that I was lookin' at take no thought of tomorrow what you'll eat what you drink or whether with all you should be clothed do you have any Father knoweth what you have need of before you ask him if that's true it's fantastic wouldn't it be beautiful if it's true now the one I was looking at was considered a lily of the field how they grow they toil not neither do they spin and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these and I said to myself now how am I going to know whether these things are true or false. And this was my answer. You're going to have to act like it and prove it. Now, you act like that, you'll either prove that it is or is not. But that's the only way you're ever going to know. And it's just like our program. nobody nobody can know whether this program of ours works or don't work until he works it you know how many times have you heard people say I tried Alcoholics Anonymous, it didn't work for me of course it didn' t it don' t work for anybody it's not something to do something it's a way to do something when we do it something happens and when we don't do it nothing happens you see and that's the way with these cliches they're either true or false so how am I going to know I'm going to act like I can prove it and that is all I've done for 36 years and 10 months and I've had the only good life that's ever been mine the only easy life that's never been mine and I won't have an 80th birthday again it's behind me now what do you think of them apples? Now, back to the fun of the deal. In my last, say, 13 or 15 years, whatever it is, since I got out of the business world, I have been converting intellectual knowledge into conscious awareness. awareness. Because I found out that the more you know and the less you do about it, the more you have to suffer. Yeah. And it isn't because God's got a stick, it's just the way it is. And so I said to me, okay, we're going to have to run these things down. And I started converting the intellectual knowledge into wisdom. And you know where my teachers have been? Outside my window. I've got some blue jays. And I feed them. We're pretty good friends. friends. And we also have some more friends, the Blue Jays and me. We have some hummingbirds, and we feed the hummingbirds and talk to them, and they talk to us. So I got to look in those blue jays. Now, when my oldest kid, Bill, came home from the University of Indiana, he got messing around a bit and decided to go into the building business. And I financed him. And he lost all of his money. And i said to myself, well maybe i should have apprenticed him out to a builder and let him learn a little about building before I financed it. And then I said to myself, wait a minute, my Blue Jays kids, when they leave the nest, they go out out and fall in love and get married. And build them a nest. And they never saw anybody build a nest? They never saw their mother build a nest. They built a nest! And my hummingbirds, what a nest they built! They did a beautiful thing. Intricate. And they built it. And they didn't get a penis out. You see what I mean? Now the carpenter man said, in him we live and move and have our being. And that's what these people do. For instance, I've known for a hundred years that a salmon born at the headwaters of of the Klamath River. When he gets so big, he goes downstream, ends up in the Pacific Ocean. And before he goes back up to Klamoth River, which he does, maybe he's been to Japan and back. That's 9,000 miles of water. And back, that's 18,000. You know something? I get lost on the freeway with a sign every 90 feet. they go to Japan and back, and ride back to the headwaters of the Klamath River. And I said to myself, you're turning this stuff around, you know? Who's your travel agent? Who's a travel agent So I had to swim with them in my mind's eye and when I got back I knew that God's idea of a salmon included everything necessary for its complete fulfillment you hear me including going to Japan and back we've got another little phenomenon down our way every St. Joseph's Day the Swallows come back to the mission at San Juan Capistrano and they almost come back on the minute every year. And they winter in Venezuela. Now, who's their travel agent? You know? That's a fur piece down there in Venezuela and back. But they show up almost on the minutes every year of the world. God's idea of a swallow includes everything necessary for its complete fulfillment and I can give you a lot of other little things that I love but time's a-wasting I'm losing two people now okay Okay. Do you kids think that God would do more for a salmon than he has done for you? Do you think he'd be more generous with a swallow? than with you and me? No. Now, when we get simple enough to do these things, to go about our Father's business, and that's the only business I've had for 36 years and 10 months, we discover that underneath are the everlasting arms. We discover it. It becomes a fact in our lives. Now, I'm so grateful against C. This life is just not even akin to my first forty-three years when I was swinging the big bat, you know, trying to conquer the world, to be and and to do what I thought I should be and do. And I end up as a trader, as a husband, father, businessman, man, and drunk. And I haven't even got two coffers to rub together. That's what I accomplished on my own. and since I quit doing that since I started to go about my father's business which is helping his kids do things they need to have done because I want to all these things have come to pass and there's no God anyplace that would give me something that he wouldn't give you. You see? If one of us is God's kid, all of us are. If one of us is not, not one of us is. Now the wonder of wonders, kids, is that it don't make too much difference when you do these things this way. Because someday Someday, all of us have to come back home. Someday. The carpenter said it like this. Who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? Which means we can't change the reality of our own being. We can only change our experience in reality. I'm going to give you two more little things and sit down. And in 1953, you people sent me back to the Alcoholics Anonymous World Service Conference. As a delegate, you sent me to New York. and I was back there in 53 and 54 as a delegate and at the end of the 54 Bill came to me and he says Chuck you've been back here two years and you've never taken five seconds of my time and it's time we were getting together we got to know each other and I'm coming back to see you well he lived in Beverly Hills and I lived in Beverly Hills clear across the United States and I couldn't even answer him because he was the head man and I was a neophyte and when I could talk I said Bill if you if you're serious we got a place for you we'd love to have you now this was the middle of April in 1954 54. And in the middle of June 54, he was in my living room. And from then until he died in 71, I had the good fortune of spending lots of time with him. In 55, we had the second international conference in Keele Auditorium in St. Louis. And I was there. And And I met Father Ed Dowling and Sam Shoemaker there, non-alcoholics. Both of whom talked on Sunday morning at our Sunday morning meeting. And I fell in love with little old Ed Dowlin. I don't happen to be Catholic. And he was Jebby. And before his greatest and biggest audience that he would ever have in his life, which was the 17,000 people who were out in front of him there and the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He forgot his teeth. He didn't have a tooth in his head. And he came out there with a towel, tried to hold it over his face so you wouldn't see that he didn't have any teeth. Well, I fell in love with the little devil. And we spent a lot of time together. and these are a couple of things that he told me early on he said Chuck he says your cross was alcoholism he says my cross was lack of faith he says I went to school 18 years and was ordained a Jesuit priest and I didn't believe nothing now I can imagine that would hurt here he is supposed to believe and supposed to be a Debbie priest and he don't believe nothing And then he said something to me that I couldn't repeat until just lately without trying. He says, I came to believe watching what happens to you people in Alcoholics Anonymous. And he wasn't even a drunk. Now, I spent a great deal of time with him until 1960. He was supposed to come to our third international conference in Long Beach. in 1960, but he died before we heard it. And the last session I had with him was in St. Louis. And I talked and he had given a little prayer for those who had died in the program since they started in St.-Louis. And the thing was finally over and Mrs. C. and I were going for coffee And she says to me, Chuck, maybe Father Ed would like to go with us. I said, maybe he would. Why don't you ask him? You see, I'm a sensitive alcoholic. I didn't want to ask him and be turned down. Better not alcoholics is all right. So she asked him and he accepted. it. And he never drank much coffee. He just asked me questions for an hour and a half and he wouldn't quit. And I'd say, Father, I'd love to hear you talk. Talk! I'm sick of this. So he'd ask another question. And when we got through, he said this. And once you to listen to this, because he was a Jesuit priest. He says, do you know something, Chuck? And I said, what, Father? He says sometimes I have to believe that heaven is just a new pair of glasses. Do you hear that? And I say to my wife, what's the difference? I sit in In the same chair, I sat in for 15 years in hell. And now 36 years and 10 months in heaven. The same chair. Nothing happened to the chair. Nothing happened in the living room. Nothing happened with the wife or the kids. Something happened to me. And I moved out of hell into heaven. And it was a new motivation. A new action pattern. pattern, and the motivation for everything I do and the reason I'm here tonight is L-O-V-E love. I love you. You don't have to change nothing for me to love you, if you're drunk you don't even have to get sober, if your a liar you don' t have to quit lying, if a thief you don''t have have to quit thieving. I love you because I know who you are, because I know who I am. You're God's kid and nothing bad can happen to you in the ultimate. Someday we all have to come back home and the sooner we give it, the the quicker we start living. God bless you. Thank you very much.