A Priest Who Prayed All Day Could Not Get What the Bums in AA Had – Bob D.

My name is Bob D. and I am an alcoholic.
You could see the lack of power still was my dilemma.
Through the grace of a very loving God who I didn't believe in,
who I found is crazy about me and has no taste,
the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, good sponsorship,
and a commitment to this way of life,
I haven't had a drink or any mind or emotion-altering substances
since Halloween 1978, and for that I owe you my life.
You know, the thing with the program is that this was a spirituality meeting.
Every meeting is a spirituality meeting at Alcoholics Anonymous.
As a dear friend of mine says, there's two sides to the program,
the spiritual side and the outside.
And it's really, to label one meeting spiritual as opposed,
so it makes, the rest of the meetings will be selfish and decrepit, I think.
I want to talk about something that is dear to my heart,
because an experience that I've had in Alcoholics Anonymous,
that if I didn't have it and try to maintain it,
I probably would have died.
Probably by my own hands, years ago.
And that's this coming to believe and connect
and actualize a relationship with a power greater than myself.
I want you to know that I was the guy who came in and out of AA for a number of years,
and every time I heard someone talk about God,
it was like a steel door would slam in my,
and I didn't understand that I had a lot of prejudices in this area and a lot of fears.
Almost a sense that if there really was a God,
I was in a lot of trouble.
Because I grew up with these funny prejudices,
and I don't know they're prejudices.
And I work with a lot of guys that have prejudices about God
that they don't even know that are prejudices,
because you don't think it's a prejudice because it's just the way it is.
You don't get that it's a judgment that might be a little screwy,
that you don't even know where you got it.
But I had a bunch of those.
And one of them was a view of God.
Well, first of all, he existed to judge me.
He could see in the dark, which was not good.
That's not good for a guy like me.
He could read my mind, I was told.
And I, oh man, I'm always thinking stuff I'm not supposed to be thinking.
And somewhere along the line I threw,
I surrendered to an idea of prejudice that there can't be a God.
Because if there is, to me, it looked like a lose-lose situation
because I was never going to be good enough.
I was never going to be the guy I need to be.
And so it's easier to reject the whole thing.
And that is...
I think it's part of my nature.
I did that with people a lot of my life.
I came into Alcoholics-On-This and did it with a lot of you for a number of years.
I would just get this thing in my head that I would imagine you don't like me,
or if you really knew about me, you wouldn't accept me, so I'd beat you to it.
So I'd reject you first.
Right?
And I kind of did that with God because my fear was I'm not going to measure up.
On page 44, it talks about a condition that brought me
to the table in Alcoholics-On-This.
It's really one of the best descriptions of alcoholism.
It says, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely.
Honestly want to, not like the other 13, 15 times.
This time I really mean it.
Quit entirely?
What do they mean by entirely?
They don't really mean entirely, do they?
I mean, that's fanatical.
They don't mean everything.
I can quit alcohol for long periods of time, just like Dr. Bob,
if you keep me medicated, or if you give me an alternative.
But what I can't do is I can't quit entirely, and that's a painful thing to face.
And the second thing, it says, or if when drinking you have little control
over the amount you take, and that's always been true for me.
I don't know.
I always, no matter what my intentions are, as far as how far I'm going to go getting drunk,
I just, the minute I start drinking, I move the line.
You know, it just keeps moving.
I, because that's what alcohol does to me.
It just, every drink of alcohol I've ever taken has given me the single one reaction.
It's made me feel like I'd like to have another one of those.
I mean, every drink I've ever taken has done that.
So I have little control over the amount.
You take the book.
It says, if that be the case, if you're in this trap you can't spring,
or you can't stay away from it and every time you pick it up you burn your life to the ground,
even though you don't mean to.
If you're in this trap, the book says you may be suffering from an illness
which only a spiritual experience will conquer.
Well, that's not good news for a guy like me who has all the prejudices I have about God.
I remember sitting in an institution up in Maine.
It was just last year I got to go back there and visit some of those places.
And I was sitting in this institution and listening to an AA speaker talk.
And by this time, I had been around Alcoholics Anonymous.
I'd been in and out of AA meetings for five, six years probably by this time.
And I've heard a lot of AA speakers, been to a lot of AA meetings.
But this was the first guy I ever heard in Alcoholics Anonymous that I started to connect with.
And he was part of a trustees group from Thomaston State Penitentiary in Maine.
And they brought him and a couple other guys from the prison,
this group of trustees that were on good behavior with guards,
to this Mother Seton Hospital where I'm in the alcoholism treatment deal there.
And they bring this guy in.
And there's a speaker.
A 10-minute speaker.
And then there's this guy.
And I'm sitting there looking at this guy and listening to him.
And he's the first person in Alcoholics Anonymous I ever started to connect with.
And he had really long hair and a long beard and tattoos.
And tattoos were not big back in those days.
I mean, you had to be an outlaw motorcycle guy or a gangster to have tattoos.
I mean, that was – and this guy was a big guy, probably 300 pounds.
I think he killed a cop.
He was a tough –
Outlaw motorcycle guy.
The kind of guy, if you're secretly weak and pathetic and trying to pretend like you're not and you're tough,
the kind of guy you want to drink with because he'll watch your back.
I mean, this is the kind of guy I'd like to drink with.
And he's a man's kind of man.
The kind of guy nothing would bother.
This guy couldn't possibly be afraid of anything.
He started talking about his drinking and his emotions.
And he started saying things that just I connected with.
He started talking about coming to.
After maybe beating – pistol whipping some guy the night before.
Coming to in a fetal position like a terrified little kid.
Shaking at the memory of what he did.
And I'm sitting there going, whoa.
I mean, I understand I feel like that all the time because I'm weak and pathetic.
But you, you feel like that.
You – and I think, oh, my God.
And he started to talk about himself.
And I'll tell you.
I'm ready to sign up for AA.
I'm connecting with this guy.
And then he talks about going to AA, working the steps, and finding God.
And the minute he started talking about his relationship with God,
it was like a steel door slammed in my head.
And I remember sitting there thinking, oh, what have they done to him?
Oh, not him.
Oh, no, not this guy.
Oh, I know what he's – oh, he's – well,
he's became a Christian.
He's become one of them.
I had a running partner that became one of them.
You know, you drink too much wine.
You do a little bit too much drugs.
Your brain turns to a loaf of wet bread.
And you end up a sunbeam for Jesus at the airport giving out flowers.
I know.
I understand the dynamic.
And little did I know that there would come a time when I would be in –
I would be so sick.
I would be so stuck and so hopeless that all my prejudices wouldn't even mean anything anymore.
I would be willing to come to the table with something I fought against and threw away for years.
The book – Bill says something funny in the book.
There's a line in here that says,
to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis.
He says, for us are not always easy alternatives to face.
Now, I think that's a – it's a bizarre line.
But it's true.
Now, we're talking door number one, alcoholic death.
I've watched people die of alcoholism.
I know guys that have died of it.
I can't imagine a worse way to die.
I can't – I know there's not a way to die that we have more shame and self-loathing.
By the time alcoholism finally kills you,
and it's a long, tedious process for most of us,
you've wished you were dead for a long time.
By the time it finally kills you, you've been in hell already.
The death is just stepping – just finally stepping over the threshold.
You've already been there.
By the time it finally kills you, you hate yourself.
Everyone you've ever loved wants nothing to do with you,
and they're going to be glad you're dead.
As my mother, when I was a year sober,
and I – my first –
approached to making amends to them,
she broke down with tears in her eyes
because she loved me
to have to tell me that she used to wish I was dead.
And I did that to her.
How do you take a mother's love and do that?
Did an angel get its wings?
And I did that.
So we have alcoholic death.
The worst death there is,
or to live on a spiritual basis.
And Bill says,
guys like me,
that's not always easy alternatives to face.
It's like you come to meetings
and people want to tell you about the steps
and we're going to do God and all this stuff.
You start thinking, what?
How bad could that alcoholic death be anyway, really?
I mean, you know.
And if you –
when my mother –
my mother died of a terminal illness,
lung cancer,
and it was a very brutal, brutal deal.
And I got to talk to her.
I talked to a lot of doctors back then about terminal illnesses.
And do you know, if you went to a hospice
where people who have been pronounced terminal
and they're dying of cancer,
and there's no hope for them through human means,
and you were to say to them,
we got a deal here that if you'll just change your lifestyle a little bit
and do a few things,
there's over four million of us that have not –
that were terminal,
that don't have to die of this disease.
I'm telling you,
they'd beg you to tell them what to do and they'd do it.
I go in on a weekly basis for the last 28 years,
I've gone into places where people are dying of alcoholism every week
and you lay out this simple kit of spiritual tools at their feet
and most of the time they kick it away
because they can't make this choice.
And it's ludicrous.
But it's true.
There's something about alcoholism that it's almost as if –
I imagine sometimes like it has a life of its own.
And it wants you dead.
That's why there seems to be a resistance in a lot of us
that well up in anything that's going to take us closer to God
or freer from our disease.
Almost like the alcoholism will make you nuts not to go there.
Look at how many times,
some of us try to write four steps
and can't pick up that 5,000 pound pen or go wash –
I used to wash my car rather than write anything.
What is that?
It's crazy.
The book says after a while we had to face the fact
that we must find a spiritual basis of life or else.
And isn't it strange?
I just think it's strange that I and a lot of us fight this whole idea
of a spiritual experience or a spiritual awakening
and yet in reality spend my whole life seeking that.
I don't know about you guys.
I drank alcohol because it vitalized my spirit.
It gave me an awakening.
A guy who was locked up in himself, depressed, I can't fit,
I ain't doing too good could walk into a bar or a party
and have five drinks.
I could have five drinks and get connected.
I could come out and play.
I could be a part of.
I could feel plugged in.
It really was a spiritual experience.
Putting aside all my prejudices about religion and spirituality,
the truth always has been that in my early days of alcoholism,
no matter how sick my spirit is,
five shots of tequila would vitalize it.
Not at the end.
Not the last couple of years.
But for years it did that for me.
And especially in the years when the hook is set
and the obsession is put into place.
So I got a deal here.
I got to come to the table.
I don't want to come to the table.
Earlier in the book there's a place where it says that,
it talks about before we ever come to believe in God
or even that AA will work.
It says we will come to believe in the hopelessness
and futility of our life as we've been living it.
And I believed that.
Before I ever believed AA would work for me,
before I ever really started to believe in a power greater than myself,
I believed in that.
And isn't it,
I think spiritual growth,
it's a funny thing.
It doesn't come from education.
And I really know that.
I had a dear friend who died a few years ago
with a lot of years of sobriety.
He was a Catholic priest who had studied and taught theology at the Vatican.
And he was a drunk doing that for years.
And he said it wasn't until he came into AA
that he started to really connect with God.
And it really wasn't from,
educating himself more in spiritual things.
Because he was at the top of the food chain
as far as education and intellectual knowledge about God.
It came from throwing some of that stuff out.
But spiritual growth always comes from subtraction.
It never comes from addition.
Never.
And that's really my story in this subtraction
was that I got to the place where I believed in the hopelessness
and futility.
My best thoughts and ideas had failed me.
And I'm dying here.
And I've tried everything else.
There's a saying in AA that
Alcoholics Anonymous is the last house on the block.
I think within AA,
sometimes God is the last house on the block also.
It says on page 45,
it talks about something that's,
very interesting.
It says lack of power.
That was our dilemma.
Not lack of religion.
Not even lack of faith.
I've known some men that have tremendous faith in God
that have died of alcoholism,
drank themselves to death.
I've had the fortune or privilege
to have sponsored several members of clergy.
I've watched a guy drink himself to death
that prayed more in one day
than most of us will in a week.
Who knew more about God and scripture
and the Bible than most of us ever would.
And he died with more faith
than probably intellectually.
And he could give you tremendous arguments
to prove the existence of God.
But he could not connect.
He could not connect with the power,
with God's grace.
And he died.
He called me right before he died.
He was weeping
because he couldn't understand
why a guy who has served God his whole life
couldn't get what these bums in AA were getting.
Right?
But it's not lack of faith.
It's lack of power.
I live in Las Vegas, Nevada.
And in the summertime,
there are times when it will get up
over 115 degrees.
And if you were to come there and visit me
during that time of the year,
I could take you in my car
and we could drive out to Lake Mead,
which is one of the largest bodies of fresh water
in the western United States.
And I could show you the lake
and you'd know that the lake was there.
And then take you about 15, 20 miles away
and drop you off at the middle of the desert
with a map on how to get to Lake Mead.
And I'm telling you that if you don't follow
the directions on that map,
you will wander around that desert
and die of thirst
knowing that water's there.
Knowing.
And that seems to be the problem.
Is that I have to access this power.
And that's the dilemma.
If I don't, I'm going to die.
I...
I...
I struggled.
I remember when Frank died,
he was a priest.
That just blew my mind.
You know, because at the time
I was sober a little while
and I understood and believed
with everything in me
that I was only sober through God's grace
and I knew that.
I knew that.
And yet what was so baffling to me
is why would...
You know, you'd think if that's true,
a man of the cloth would have a leg up
on the rest of us.
Right?
And then at other times,
I've watched...
I had my own experience.
I was in a...
I came to in a jail cell
up in Maine.
And I was up there on a geographic.
I didn't know it was a geographic.
I thought it was just crossing state lines
to avoid incarceration.
But I...
The people at AA will educate you
about that.
And I was up there on a geographic.
And I had one friend left in the world.
This guy, Chris Morgan,
who I've tried to find
and keep trying to find him.
He's on my eight-step list.
Never been able to find him.
And Chris was a great guy.
And he helped me out,
put me up on his couch
and got me a job.
And I come to in this jail cell
and I don't know why I'm there
and I'm sick and I need a drink
and I'm shaking.
Wanting to jump out of my skin
and they take me into a room
and the detective tells me I'm there
because I took a Hutton knife
and opened up Chris's chest
the night before.
And I'm sitting there
in that detective's office
and I feel these emotions
like I'm going to start screaming
and if I start I'll never stop.
And I push those feelings down
and hardened up in the way
that some of us can.
And I'm...
They took me back to my cell
and I fell down on that concrete floor
and just came apart
and started sobbing.
And I did something that was out of character for me
in that moment of hopelessness and weakness.
I begged God
to please never let me drink that stuff again.
And I got drunk the day I got out.
So if you've had those experiences
and then you see a guy like Frank
drinking himself to death
who's such a good man,
it's scary.
And I didn't understand
and yet I'm sober by this time
longer than I've ever been sober in my whole life
since I started drinking at 12 years old.
And I feel pretty good about it.
And one night I was watching a movie
and it was an old movie,
old B movie
about World War II
and all of a sudden I connected the dots.
I understood what had happened to me.
And the movie is about the South Pacific
and in the South Pacific during World War II
there were so many islands
that the United States did not have enough troops
to station garrisons on every island.
So what they did
is that they would often parachute in
a guy whose job was to be an observer
and he would set up a base camp
and through radio
he would keep in contact with the U.S. fleet
and watch for Japanese troop movements
and ships.
And this story is about a guy who did that
but on landing on the island
the radio got screwed up.
And so he's setting up his camp
and he's trying to get the fleet
and he gets this weird kind of static
and he can't get nothing.
He's completely cut off.
And so he goes about the business
of surveying the island
and building his camp
and then one day
he's coming up over this sand dune
and there's the whole Japanese fleet
and they're coming towards his island
and he panics
and he runs back to the camp
and he's hitting the radio
and screwing with it
and trying to get the fleet in
because now it's desperate
and he can't get nothing.
And he remembers
he thinks, wait, wait a minute
there was a manual somewhere.
And he starts digging through this duffel bag
and the bottom of the duffel bag
and he pulls out this manual
and he starts reading the manual
and it starts describing the symptoms
of the radio, the weird static
and all the stuff that's going on.
And then it gives him some tests to try
and some things to do
and it leads him
into finding this tube
that's been knocked loose
and resetting it
and all of a sudden
there's the fleet.
And the reason he couldn't get the juice
couldn't get the power from the message
the deal from the fleet
was not because he was a bad guy
or he played with his knobs too much
or none of that stuff
it was just simply
that he had a broken receiver
and I started to get
that's it
that's the deal
God has always loved me
God is crazy about me
God exists to give me His grace.
But I got a broken receiver
and I can't receive it.
And I think that's why
people will die of alcoholism
knowing with absolute faith
knowing God's there
but they can't access the grace
because they're blocked from it.
And a couple little things
on page 46
it talks about two things
that are necessary
in order to
begin to connect
with this power.
The middle of the page
it says we found
that as soon as we were able to
first
lay aside prejudice
and with a lot of the guys I sponsor
I try to talk to them
we try to even sometimes get them to write down
what are your prejudices
what are your ideas
your opinions
your judgments
your notions about God.
Especially let's look for the ones
that at times may make Him
His love and grace
give you a sense of
that you're not worthy of it
or you can't access it.
And I'll tell you what one of mine was
and I think a lot of us have this
and it's unconscious.
That's the problem with most prejudices
I don't get that they're prejudices
it's just an unconscious stance
that I take.
Towards things.
And one of mine was this idea
that God would only help me
and love me
when I'm good.
That in my very worst day
when I've just done something
I can't stand myself for
that God wouldn't help be there for me
because I've rendered myself
unworthy of His grace.
When I've just got into a restaurant
and
because I haven't eaten all day
and I'm really hungry
and I'm nuts.
And the waitress doesn't wait on me quickly enough
and I knock the sugar thing off the counter
and read and start yelling at her
and storm out of there.
And then I'm sitting in my car
and I want to go out in the garden and eat worms.
Because I've become the guy
that I can't stand.
I've become the guy I can't stand.
If I don't have a God
that I can access
even at my very worst,
I've got a problem.
Because that's when I need His power.
That's when I need Him the most.
And so that's a deadly, deadly prejudice.
And so many of us have that
and many, many more.
So the first thing we have to do
is lay aside prejudice.
These prejudgments that I have about God.
These opinions.
And the second thing it says
and express even a willingness to believe.
It doesn't say we have to believe.
It asks for an expression
of a willingness.
And it says if we do those two things
it says we'll commence to get results
even though it's impossible
for any of us
to fully define or comprehend that power
which is God.
I sort of thought that I had to understand God
before I could approach Him.
And that's not the case at all.
Matter of fact,
my desire to understand and figure God out
was a very self-oriented thing.
The reason I want to understand God
is just the same reason
I want to understand the boss at a new job.
Because if you understand the way he thinks
you're going to get a little leverage there.
You're going to get a little more control.
You're going to feed self a little.
What about me?
It's going to do me, me, me, me, me.
Like maybe if I could understand God enough
I could tailor my prayers in such a way
to get the Bentley and the new house.
You know what I mean?
But you have to make him see
that this is what's necessary
and you just kind of have to understand him
so you can lay that down.
The book says don't even try.
A friend of mine says
that if God's small enough for me to understand Him
He's not big enough for me to help me.
And I believe that's true.
So if I can just express a willingness
and what the old timers in AA told me to do
was stuff that didn't make any sense.
Stuff that didn't make any sense to me.
I'm living in this halfway house
because I'm a homeless guy.
And they told me that I must get down
physically get down on my knees
every morning and every night
and turn my consciousness towards
whatever's running the universe
and to know that I needed help from that.
And I knew that.
I knew that I didn't have
by this time after seven and a half years of relapsing
I know that I don't have what it takes
to stay sober.
I know that.
I don't know a lot
but I know that.
And so I would turn
I'd go in the bathroom at the halfway house
because I don't believe in God
so I'm embarrassed to do this.
So I lock the door
I push the throw rug up against the crack
underneath the door
like as if I'm afraid somebody's going to peek under there
to see me pray or something.
Like I'm nuts, right?
I'm whacked.
And I get down on my knees
and I say okay whatever's there
I'm scared and I need some help
and I need your help to stay sober.
And at the end of the day
I would just simply get down on my knees
and I'd thank whatever that was.
And some funny things started happening to me
from the moment of this expression of willingness
and I didn't understand
that the physical demonstrations
are so powerful.
And you know
in Alcoholics Anonymous
we often talk about change of attitude.
And I didn't know what that meant for a long time.
Pilots talk about attitude.
It's the angle of approach.
And if you've got a bad attitude in an airplane
you're going to land in the mall, right?
You're going to land
you're going to hit the side of a mountain.
So you must adjust your attitude
your angle of approach.
And what the problem with me and God
is not God
it's my angle of approach.
And from the moment I started to take actions
against my natural inclinations
what I started to do was
I was changing my angle of approach.
So I was starting to access this grace
this power.
There's
amazing stuff started happening to me
from the moment I did that.
I was living in this halfway house.
I got one roommate
that's shooting heroin
and another one that's smoking pot.
And I'm on thin ice here.
Out of nowhere a guy came to me
and offered me a job
with room and board
living in a treatment center for teenagers
being the house manager.
I'm telling you
this job was divinely crafted for me.
It did not give me a lot of money
because a lot of money
I would have ended up in a saloon
telling everybody how smart I was.
It was just enough money
to start chipping away at some amends
having money to put in the basket
and maybe get a pack of cigarettes.
But it gave me
it put me in a position
to think of others.
I could get to two meetings a day
when I lived there.
It was perfect for me.
Perfect.
And it got me out of a very dangerous
and I didn't look for that job.
It just came to me.
I had other things happen to me like that.
Like I used to
I would go through these
really awful mood swings
in early sobriety.
Unexplicable stuff
because I don't understand myself
to know why
why go from one minute
feeling like I'm on top of the world
to the next minute
into this abyss.
And I had dozens and dozens
of experiences like that
where I'd go to some meeting
and there'd be a stranger there
talking about what's going on with me
and he's got my answer.
I remember one time coming
I was so frazzled at work.
I went to a noon meeting
and I'm nuts.
And I'm going to go back
after the noon meeting
and quit my job
because they've been disrespecting me
and taking advantage of me
and it's been really bad.
And I go to a meeting
and there's a stranger there
talking about something
that went on with him and the job
and all of a sudden it was like
oh my god
I don't have to quit my job.
I've got to make amends to my boss
for being an idiot.
That would never have occurred to me naturally.
Never.
And I started to experience
the hand of something working in my life.
I mean who's the choreographer
behind all that?
And I started to come to believe
in something
I suspect the only way
a guy like me could really
by what started to happen to me.
Over in London
to this day there's parts of London
that the streets are lit by gas
street lights rather than electric.
And years ago
before they had the electric starters
before they were all gridded and automatic
there was a guy whose job it was
at dusk was to go up and down
the streets of London
and he had a key to turn the gas on
and a long pole with a flame on the end
to light the deal.
And he was called a lamplighter
and you could climb up to the top
of the highest building in London
and look out over the city
and no matter how hard you looked
you couldn't see where the lamplighter was.
But you could always see
where he'd been by the lights.
And I could sit in a mirror
meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous
at three years sober, two and a half
I don't know.
I couldn't see where God was really.
But boy could I see where he'd been.
I mean I could see where he'd been.
And even more closely
and more distinctly than seeing
where he'd been in my life
man could I
I was doing a lot of 12 step work.
I was going into the hospitals and institutions
I could see the hand of God
and some of these new people that came in
six, eight months after me.
I saw the deadness of the eyes.
I saw the hopelessness.
I met the guys that would never see their kids again
because of the restraining orders.
I met the guys that were so far in debt
that they're not going to live long enough
to get themselves out.
I met the homeless guys
and years later they're buying their first home
and the guy's got his kids and
I mean tremendous transformations.
And I came to believe
I guess the only way that
I could I had to see it.
It had to be up close and personal.
Some people have an ability
that someone they respect will tell them
you need to believe in this
and they just go oh okay.
Or it says it in a book
and they go oh okay.
But I'm not that guy.
I'm a skeptic.
I'm an over
I'm a deep thinker.
There's a lot of deep thinkers in alcoholics.
If you're a deep thinker
you should not own a gun.
I mean deep thinkers
that have a hard time in alcoholics.
I mean I'm a deep thinker.
And God came to me
the only way that he could
and he started working in my life.
There's a friend of mine
Jim Amme
he's sober 40
probably 45 years now.
Lives in Pacific Palisades.
He's a dear, dear man.
He told me a story once
that motivated me to go to Florence
to try to find the statue
he was talking about.
I found it
but I couldn't see it
because there was almost a week waiting list
to get in this one museum.
But he told this story
that just lit me up.
And he said he was walking around
this very famous museum in Florence
and looking at this exhibit of sculptures
from the sculptor Donatelli.
And Donatelli does a lot of spiritual sculptures.
And he said he walked into this room
and there was a life-size statue
of the Mary Magdalene.
And he said when he looked at it
it took his breath away.
And he had to sit down
and the more he looked at it
he started weeping.
Because it's different.
This statue, this depiction of Mary Magdalene
is different than anything he's ever seen.
Usually you see Mary Magdalene
with the flowing robes
and the long hair
and she's very pretty.
But he said this was not like that.
This was a woman who was etched
with pain and hopelessness.
A woman who looked like
she'd been turning nickel and dime tricks
on the back alleys of Jerusalem for years.
And there was a deadness
and a hopelessness about her
and yet through that
shone a spark
as she stood there with her hand out
as if saying
this could be for me?
For me?
And oh man, I knew it.
Jim's telling that story
and I'm weeping.
Because I know exactly
what that feels like
as you start to approach God
and realize He's working in your life.
Sometimes early sobriety
which is I'd be driving down the street
I'd just start crying.
Because something has happened to me.
Something that I know what I am
that I don't feel like I deserve.
I ain't giving it up.
But I know I never felt worthy of it.
And there's a line in our book that says
God does not make hard terms
with those who seek Him.
And from the moment of approach
of changing my angle of approach
and attitude
this thing started coming into my life.
But I had a lot of work to do
in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And you know
on page 55
there's two paragraphs
that have become
two of my more favorite
paragraphs of the book
because it's really a vision
of exactly what happens
every single one of us
that works these steps
and devotes ourselves
to this primary purpose
of helping others do the same.
It's a vision of exactly where
exactly how
and exactly when
we will find and access
this power which is God.
And that's really the purpose
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
It says in our book
our main purpose is to
help you find a power
greater than yourself
which will solve your problem.
I think the great
single most great promise
of all of AA
is stated and read in every meeting.
Most people don't even hear it.
It's in step 12.
Having had a spiritual awakening
as the
the meaning single most only
as the result of these steps.
I think that's the deal.
We're here.
Something must wake up inside of me
or else I don't have the power
to live in this world.
Sobriety is too depressing.
It feels like I'm doing time.
I can't do this.
I can't change my life.
I can't will myself
into being a guy
that's having a good time sober.
I don't know how to.
I can't.
I've tried therapy.
I've tried everything.
I can't.
Something must wake up within me
or I'm toast.
Page 55 it says
actually we were fooling ourselves
for deep down
deep down in every man woman and child
is the fundamental idea of God
in me.
I used to hear guys like Chamberlain
and some of the old timers in a
talk about the God within.
I used to hear people saying
that they would commune with God.
They would listen to the still small voice
of God within them
through meditation.
Early sobriety.
I've worked the steps yet.
So I try to
go in to connect with God.
I don't find God.
I find a pack of crazy people.
I find legion.
I find just nut stuff going on.
I can't even be alone
in an apartment without the TV on
because when it gets quiet out here
it gets crazy in here.
If there's a God inside of me
boy it's news to me.
I think if that's God
those voices sound more like Satan to me.
I don't know.
Crazy.
But it explains why
I can't just go in and connect.
It says because it may be obscured.
This power may be obscured
which is blocked by three things.
By calamity.
I like calamity.
I like the edge.
You know what I mean?
There's excitement on the edge.
I go to an amusement park.
I'm right at the roller coaster.
You won't get me on the merry-go-round.
I want calamity.
I want excitement.
I've always misinterpreted excitement for happiness.
It's crazy.
And I think serenity is like
is the feeling you get when you just about died.
I think that's serenity, right?
If you're identifying with me
you need AA badly.
I'm telling you.
Badly.
If you don't know what calamity is,
imagine you want to hear the voice of calamity.
Imagine that a surgeon
could surgically implant a microphone
into your brain on a bad day
hooked up to speakers
and we get to hear what you think for one day.
We would hear calamity.
The second thing it says
it's blocking me is pomp.
It's that I'm so defended
and opinionated and judgmental.
I'm so full of myself
that I'm like a glass of water.
That there's no room for anything else.
It's just me and my judgments
and my perception
and my view of life
and me, me, me, me, me.
You know, God could be inside of me
with a megaphone
in between the pomp and the calamity.
There's nothing he ain't getting through.
There's too much of me
between me and God.
Just like the loneliness that I felt
every time I got sober
because there's too much of me
between me and you
and too much of me
between me and God.
And then the third thing it says
is worship of other things.
That's a hard thing for me to see
because I don't know
what they're talking about, really.
And I was a year and a half,
two years sober
and I had an experience
that would change my whole perception
of what this was about for me.
I was ending my first sober relationship
and in my experience,
I don't think there's a more
self-involved person on the planet
than an alcoholic ending a relationship.
I mean, oh, man.
You can go up to a person like that
and say, you know,
I just came from the doctor
and I have terminal cancer
and two weeks to live
and he'll go,
you know what else she said, man?
Oh, it's funny,
but that's the way we are.
I mean, you know.
Oh, man.
And that's what I'm doing
and I'm at this AA meeting one night
and I'm nuts.
I can't hear anything in the meeting.
It's like music in a doctor's office
because I'm in my head thinking
if when I see her,
I'll say this
and then she'll say that
and then I'll say this
and then she'll say that
and then I'll hit her with this
and she'll be properly ashamed of herself
and beg me back.
You know, so I'm crazy, right?
Plus, she's a member of AA
and she's not in this meeting,
which means that some hideous person
has these forces implanted a spring
in the back of my neck
connected to the meeting room door.
Every time the door opens,
I go,
Oh, not her.
Okay.
All right.
So God could be trying to talk to me
through the people in AA
and I get it.
I mean, I'm just blocked, right?
The meeting's over
and I end up going to coffee with some people
and it ends up me and this guy from Glendale
who was visiting,
who was sober about 28 years
and I started to tell him
that I had a captured audience
since he rode there in my car.
So I'm telling him about this relationship
for 20 or 30 minutes
until his eyes have glazed over
and he sits there very kindly
and he's listening to me and nodding
and just like AA's do.
And when I'm done, man,
he said some things that just rocked me.
First of all, he says to me,
he says,
You ever thought about the first commandment?
And I said,
No, I didn't.
AA.
He said,
Yeah.
He says,
I know.
He says,
Man, you and I are a lot alike.
He says,
Guys like us can't get past the thou shalt not.
He said,
The first commandment is thou,
I am the Lord thy God.
Thou shall not have false gods before me.
He said,
He said,
I think the Ten Commandments were originally written
as statements of spiritual cause and effect.
That somehow as they got translated
through the different languages,
the Greek and the Aramaic
and the Greek and Latin,
et cetera, et cetera,
somehow they got
an authoritarian spin put on them.
He said,
I don't think they were that way originally.
He said,
It is my experience
that God loves you no matter what you do.
He loves you and loves you.
That you can put anything you want
between you and God
and He still loves you.
The problem is,
you've just put something
between you and God.
He said,
When you worship something,
it doesn't mean to bow down to.
It means to obsessively turn
your consciousness towards.
He said,
You want to know
what you worship in your life?
Make a pie graph
of everything you've been thinking of
and the thing that dominates the pie
is obviously the thing
you've been obsessively turning
your consciousness towards.
When he said that,
I could picture this pie graph
with a little sliver for work
and a little sliver for A
and the rest of it was her.
And I knew instantly
why I felt such desolation
and why I was stuck
in my head
and I was disconnected from you
and disconnected from God.
Because I'm the guy who did that.
And I did it because
of a lack of power.
And I look,
I think that a relationship
will give me the power
to validate myself
and give me some emotional security,
a sense of connectedness,
I'll be a part of this.
And I'm seeking
and I'm at the helm of my ship
and I keep putting
these things in between me and God.
And I wish I could tell you
from that moment on
I haven't done that,
but I'm too, man.
I keep doing it.
Matter of fact,
if there's anybody here
that never does that,
would you help me please?
Because I keep doing it.
And sometimes I put
just being right about something.
You know what I mean?
That thing you just,
you don't want to let go
because not until they see,
you know what I mean?
Or money.
I put money in that spot
a lot of times.
And why is,
why would a guy like me
be worried about money?
Because money can give you
an illusion of power
and control and validation
and security.
But it's an illusion.
You know why it's an illusion?
Because I know I finally,
God spoke to me
and gave me the amount
of money necessary
that you need.
You know what it is?
Just enough so you don't
have to trust Him anymore.
You know what that dollar amount is?
Five dollars more
than you will ever have.
Because no matter how much you have,
it'll not be enough.
It's always more
and more and more.
Because money is not power.
It's an illusion of power.
Real power.
The book says there is one,
only one,
who has all power.
That one is God.
May you find Him now
or at least before you die.
At least before you drink again.
And so I'm looking for,
that's why I worship these.
That's why I make these things
so important to me.
Because I don't have any power
and I think I'm going to get power
from this stuff.
The book goes on to say
a couple of things.
It says,
we finally saw that faith
in some kind of God
was a part of our makeup
just as much as the feeling
we have for a friend.
Sometimes we had to search fearlessly
but He was there.
The only other place in AA
that I know of that uses
those two words together
is in the fourth step.
Fearless in searching moral inventory.
And oddly enough,
it is not until the fifth step promises
on page 75 that it says,
it doesn't say it after step three.
It's not until you've cleaned away
some of the stuff,
some of the pomp,
some of the, you know,
from all your judgments,
on your resentment list,
some of the calamity
that you'll see very clearly
on your fear list that you create
based on self-reliance
and some of the things you worship
that will appear both on all three lists
and also sex,
how often we make that a big deal
in our lives,
our relationships.
It is not until after step five
that some of us seem
to really start to connect.
It says at that point,
we'll feel the nearness
of our Creator.
Why?
God's always been there,
but now what's happened is
I've moved out just enough of me
that I can start to feel
the presence of God
because I'm jettisoning the things
that are blocking me
through this process
of four through seven.
And sometimes it's not actualized
until step nine,
until I actually face the people
and make amends.
And I'm starting to connect.
And what happens,
the funny thing in the steps
is the steps are not designed
to make amends to God,
so I'm closer to God.
The steps are designed
to remove the stuff
between me and you.
And what happens is
when that happens,
God shows up.
There is no view.
See, I'm one of those kind of guys
that wanted,
I thought maybe me and God
will be good
and I can still think
you're all idiots.
Right?
And it never works that way.
You want to measure
your distance from God,
measure your distance
from the people around you.
Right?
Because they're God's kids.
And when I separate me from you,
I'm separating me
from the God within you.
And I'm really separating myself
from God
when I separate myself from you.
So we had to search fearlessly
when he was there,
but he was as much a fact
as we were if we found
the great reality
deep down within us.
What a tremendous term for God.
Capital letters,
the great reality.
In chapter five,
they read it every meeting
and they talk about
the place you'll find God.
I didn't realize it was a place.
It says there is one
who has all power.
That one is God.
May you find him
in a place most of us
would never visit.
Now.
Right?
And that's the great reality.
God is present.
He is the presence.
And I miss it.
I'm disconnected from it
because I'm up here
thinking about it,
trying to figure it.
What is it?
What does that mean?
Analyze it
because I want control.
The great reality
deep down within us
in the book says,
finally, it says
in the last analysis
after I've looked
everywhere else
in the last analysis
that is only there
that he may be found.
It was so with us.
That is definitely my experience.
You know,
I came to Alcoholics Anonymous
in the last analysis
after I tried religion
and treatment
and medications
and therapists
and some of the great...
I really identify
with the guy last night.
I was in therapy
with Albert Ellis
because my dad
was so politically connected.
He used to send me up
to New York
to the Institute
for Rational and Motive Therapy.
I was in therapy
with some contemporary
of Fritz Perls.
I tried everything
on the radar
to fix me.
I'm telling you,
everything.
The end results,
I'm standing on a bridge
trying to take my own life
because I am stuck in a trap
I can't spring.
I can't jumpstart the party.
Alcohol is no longer
a spiritual experience
and I can't live without it
because there's a desolation
about my...
and a depression
about my abstinence
and I'm stuck.
And so after everything else
I try AA.
And then in the fellowship
of Alcoholics Anonymous,
I did every...
my first four years
of sobriety
was crazy.
I didn't stay sober
but I suffered periodically
from untreated alcoholism.
And I'm going to 15
and 20 meetings a week.
I'm a GSR.
I'm a DCM.
I'm intergroup.
I'm doing hospital
and institutions.
I'm going on 12-step calls.
I'm trying to outrun
my alcoholism
but as Chamberlain
said one time,
he said,
the alcoholic always gets
to a point
where you can no longer
put anything between you
and you.
And then there's
the shyness.
You can't outrun it anymore
and there you are.
And that ain't no good
because it's never been good,
really.
And there it is.
And a little over
four years of sobriety
I started following
the process in this book
and I started to finally
connect with something
as I cleared away
the things that kept me
in the driver's seat.
As I started to dismantle
my will,
in this fourth step,
which is really my judgments
and all the other crap.
I started to connect
with this power greater
than myself.
And my life has never
been the same since.
I'm no longer the guy
that has to outrun
his alcoholism.
And yet I still go
to a lot of meetings.
I probably go to seven a week,
I suppose,
sometimes more,
sometimes maybe six,
sometimes eight,
I don't know.
I have several
commitments in AA
and I do that because
I like the vitalization
of helping others
and doing service.
I've connected those dots
that that's the good dope here.
I was, right before
I went back through the steps,
I'll tell you this story
and then I'll end.
I was working for a man
who was trying to redeem me
as an employer,
as an employee.
And you've got to understand
by the time I worked
through the steps again,
I'd gone through nine jobs
in a little over four years.
That's a whole,
that'll show you
where I'm at.
And it's never my fault.
I can't help it.
I just keep ending up
working for idiots,
you know, I just.
Yeah, you can see
through that, right?
You know the truth, right?
So this guy's trying
to redeem me
and he gives me a set
of motivational tapes,
not AA.
It's a set of tapes
by a guy named
Earl Nightingale
called Lead the Field.
And it's supposed to kind of,
he's trying to help me
become a better,
less self-centered employee.
And Earl tells a story in there.
And when I heard this story,
man, I got it.
And the story supposedly,
Earl says, is true.
And I've done a little research
and I think it is true
to some degree.
I've heard different versions
of it.
But the details
are not important
is what the experience
of hearing it.
Earl told this story
about a guy in South Africa
who, you know,
had inherited a ranch.
And it was a nice ranch.
And the kind of ranch
that would have put his family
in good stead
for generations.
They could have made
a nice living for themselves.
But the problem was
is that this guy
inherited this ranch
at a time
when the diamond boom
was beginning
in South Africa
when there were people
who were becoming
Bill Gates,
mega Rockefeller rich
overnight.
And the more he got
rich,
the more rich
he became.
And the more rich
he became,
the more rich
he became.
And the more he heard
the stories
of their striking it rich,
the more dissatisfied
he became
with what he had.
And after a while,
he was so obsessed
with this,
he sold his ranch
and he took the money
and invested it
into equipment
and he went out
into the bush
obsessed
with finding diamonds.
And he never did.
And one account
says that he died
out there
broke,
bitter,
and alone.
Another account
has said
he threw himself
into the ocean
and committed suicide.
But we know
for one thing,
he didn't come
to a good end.
And it came to pass
that this ranch
he had sold
to these developers,
one day they're moving
around some rocks
and stuff
and they found
these unusual
looking big rocks
and they didn't know
what they were
and they took them
to a guy
and they found out
they were uncut diamonds
and they're raw.
And they discovered
that this ranch
was the largest
diamond deposit
ever recorded
in South Africa.
These guys
became like
two of the richest
men in the world
like overnight.
And now
they have to
hire all these people
and develop
these mines
and they got
to cut the diamonds
and market them
and ship them
for distribution
all over the world.
And they're talking
one day
and the one guy says
the other guy says
well we need to name
our company now.
And the other guy says
yeah he says
hey let's name it
after that poor
SOB we bought
this place from.
He says
what was his name?
He says
it was De Beers
wasn't it?
And I'm listening
to this story
and I'm thinking
I'm that idiot.
I'm looking
I come into
alcoholics
I look
everywhere else
for power
and validation
and security
and jobs
went through
nine of them
and relationships
went through
a few of those
and being a GSR
and a DCM
and an area officer
and doing H&I work
and trying to get
a lot of sponsors.
I'm looking
at validation
and power
everywhere else
and in the last
analysis
after I'm at the point
where I can't
outrun my
self-obsessed
depressions
anymore
and the loneliness
I started
to take
this journey
to uncover
as Chuck
would say
discover
and discard
the things
that have been
blocking me
from God
and ultimately
from you
because it's
a package.
I think
that what
Einstein
said is true
that the great illusion
of mankind
is that there's
more than one
of us here
that I
if I want to get
closer to God
I must clear away
the stuff
between me
and you
that really
is the aspects
of me playing
God
with you
the judgments
the separation
so that I can
claim my place
and this is
something
I have struggled
with
because
you guys
but I
I can completely
dismantle the
judgment machine
that is self
and surrender
it ultimately
and within
no time at all
it grows back
like a bad tumor
and I'll be
the guy who's
in charge again
and you know
how you know
when you're
in charge
you just start
seeing the people
that need
straightened out
around you
and I look
out over you
today
and you all
look like
you're doing
very closely
I'll start noticing
a couple you need
straightened out
but I want to
thank you for
allowing me
to be here
and thank you
for my life
in Alcoholics Anonymous
thanks