Bill W. and the Thirty Minutes It Took to Write Chapter Five – Chuck C.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I don't think we lost anybody. I figured we'd lose half of them, you know. The pretty part of the family has already gotten bent up here. My name is Chuck Steed and I'm an alcoholic. I am glad to be here and I'm glad you're here. I'm in my 37th year without a a drink or a pill of any kind due to the fact that there is a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, and there are people like you who share their experience, strength, and hope with people like me. It's been no chore for me to be around here for thirty-six and a half years. This is the only easy life I have ever known. The only good life that's ever been mine. And I hope I have another 36 years. And I think I will. You don't think so, huh? He looks like he's mad at me. He's not mad at you. I think he delivers Miller's light beer, and he doesn't want to spoil his sales. I've had a little trouble breathing the last few years. I don't think it had anything at all to do with the fact that I smoked four packs of camels for many years every day. They told me about twenty years ago that I could either smoke or breathe. And I chose breathing, but this thing didn't catch up with me until about four or five years ago. And their prognosis is dumb. They tell me that there's no reversing lung damage. That was not acceptable. So I took a good look at myself, and I said to me, any power that could keep me from wanting a drink for thirty-six years, a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot drunk like me, I haven't even had one conscious desire for a drink since I got here. and I said to me any power that could do that this thing's peanuts so I'm going to get well and I've been getting well ever since I don't know as I'm going to continue because in July I'm supposed to just kidding I'm supposed to talk to the doctors at Hogue Hospital at lunch and then I get through with that and then I'm talking to the patients the doctors only get thirty minutes but the patients are supposed to get an hour and a half now I don't know why I ever accept that kind of commitment. What the hell am I going to tell a bunch of doctors? Huh? They probably all need this program. I... My own doctor, who is quite an expert in chest problems told me after he had been treating me for a couple of years that he would treat me and not charge me. And I'd treat him and not judge him. I said, I didn't do that. You have a license that gives you a right to charge. I ain't got no license. So you treat me and charge me and I'll treat you and not charge you. Because when I talk, I have to call them as I see them. Even in this leper colony of ours. and I can't take an honorarium. Sometimes I get an assignment that has pretty good stipend for honorarium, but I can take it because I figure that if they paid me, I would have to say what I think they want me to say. And I can't talk that way. So, I'm not charging you for this deal tonight. I wanted to when I saw this crowd. and most of you look like you had money I've been conditioned to believe that all Texans have a large bankroll because they're sitting on an oil well that's what they're doing but I will be happy just to get my car fare I don't want to leave owing myself money in an hour's time I can't tell you much about my drinking career other than this that I had to die to get here. In the first 43 years of my life, I never made a mistake. I always had some place to point the finger. It was never my fault. It was your fault. It was conditions. It was circumstances. It was the rotten society in which I was born. It was my wife's fault, and as good an excuse for drinking as she was, she couldn't hold candle to her mother. Her mother lived with us for the last five years that I drank, 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 her fault all the way through she lived with us five years after I sobered up and I could spend this evening beautifully telling you what this program did for her if you ever saw that old bag straighten up and fly right it was her money I can say I never attended one AA meeting see here's just to embarrass me to death because she wouldn't believe that you people had been any help to me. She wouldn't be that God had been any help. She would come up and put her arms around me and she'd say, Oh, son, I always knew that you had it in you. But I did too but I wasn't thinking of the same thing she was. And I want to tell you something. I wrote this thing right through the gates of insanity and death. I'll tell you a little about my last go-round. It started on the Friday before Christmas, 1945. and I just got a note from a chap that called himself my brunette son he's a little darker than I am so he's brunetta all right and he sent me a thing that gave me the date on which the Friday before Christmas fell in 1945 and it was the 21st of December so I had 10 days in December and 18 days in January that I lost. I don't remember anything about it at all. Nothing. I don' t remember the first drink, the middle drink or the last drink. I don''t remember anything. Now that lady that you just heard talk says that during all that time I destroyed seven quarts of whiskey every three days and I can''t even argue with her. Because I wasn't there. She was. And I just have to keep my mouth shut. And that's one reason. The next reason is I don't think seven quarts is too much for three days. If you only work at it, maybe 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 after the middle of January 1946 with the clearest head I had ever had in my life because all of my excuses and all my I-wants burned out in that 28 days. I did not surrender consciously. I had nothing to do with it. I can't even say to you tonight, well, I drank the whiskey, didn't I? And that's what burned them out that I don't remember drinking the whiskey. So I can' t even say that. I think if I could remember anything at all about that deal, I could figure out a way to take credit. for the last 36 years. But I can't remember. I can even say, well, I drank the whiskey tonight because I don't know. But when I came to, my excuses were gone and my I wants were gone and I saw me for the first time in my life with nothing between me and me. and for the first time in my life I admitted defeat I had not one time in 43 years admitted defeat I could not admit defeat I had an older brother three and a half years older than I and three and half years stronger and we had one fight that lasted twenty years on the installment plan. And he beat the bejesus out of me for twenty years straight. But he couldn't make me believe it. I left home at twenty, believing I could whip him. And he had whipped me for twenty days. Twenty years straight! I became a periodic eleven years before coming to this program because I was not going to lose to a bottle. No way. So I became periodic. And for eleven years I was as dry as I am tonight between every two drunks. But I always got drunk again. So I could not admit defeat. And fortunately for me, and I believe it to be the most fortunate single experience in my life, sometime between the Friday before Christmas and the middle of January, the ego And the excuses all burned up, burned out. And I could look at me and see that I'd lost the battle of life. I did not know why, because I knew nothing of Alcoholics Anonymous. Nothing at all. I didn't know anything about the disease of alcoholism. I knew an awful lot about the inside of jails I knew a lot about the DTs and the convulsions and very dirty beds but I didn't know anything about alcoholism and so fortunately for me the second great good fortune was that after I'd been looking at this thing a little while the morning I came to I remembered that Mrs. C had found Jack Alexander's article in the Saturday Evening Post March 1st, Issue 1941 she had read it thought it might help me if I read it so she put it on the left arm of the chair I sit in today open at the right place hoping that when I came in if I came in I'd read it and evidently I did but I never remembered a thing about it until that morning and I remembered that I'd read it remembered only two things about it drunks up drunks and didn't 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 Alcoholics Anonymous and immediately the curtain dropped and I was sick and to death drunk and insane and had a lot of dying to do but from the moment of commitment until right now I have never had a drink or sedating or tranquilizing pill of any kind. Such is the great significance of this thing called surrender. Surrender. This is a battle we win by giving up the fight. In my opinion, one of the greatest lines in our book is we cease to fight anything or anybody. Because that's what happened to me. And I haven't had a drink or a pill since. And furthermore, and this I get a lot of repercussions over, my first group was Beverly Hills Group because that's where we lived. and when I'd get up before my group and tell them that I never had a conscious desire for a drink since my first appearance with you guys half of it hit the floor and they would say something that you shouldn't say in church they'd say Chuck you're a god damn liar that's what they'd say in chorus because they were having trouble with most of them hanging on to not drinking we call it white knuckle sobriety I've never had any since I came to you my eleven years trying to keep from drinking and get off the stuff to get well enough to get back in the ring for the next round I had white knuckled sobrietry then Or, not sobriety, but dryness. I think we use the term sobriery too loosely amongst us. My definition of sobrietry is the ability to live comfortably, peacefully, and joyously with myself. Because, in my opinion, alcoholism is not caused by drinking alcohol. Alcoholism is a living problem, and you and I have to have a living answer lest we drink again. For instance, insofar as I am able to perceive, there is only one reason that I'm not drunk right now. Just one, not two, just one. the reason is I've got the thing I was looking for in the bottle. I've got it. And what's the thing? It's the ability to live comfortably, peacefully, and joyously with me. And having that ability, I don't have the slightest difficulty living with you. Even the meatheads sitting here. Some of you I've known for quite a while. I don't have any trouble living with you. I've had the privilege in the last thirty-six years of talking in many, many, many penitentiaries in different parts of the world, and I don t have any trouble there. Don't have a bit of trouble. The problem is not there. Our problem is inside. And I believe that every society that we have allowed to use our program is a living problem just the same I don't think Fatty's Anonymous is an eating problem some of these days when I'm going to bounce a steel chair off my forehead because they've been trying now for years to get me to say Overeaters Anonymous that don't mean nothing to me Fatty'S Anonymous has a real ring A gambler is anonymous. I'm a gambler, always was, loved to gamble, but I'm not a compulsive gambler. I sort of grew up in the South, and the blacks taught me how to gamble. And they taught me good. And so I've won a great deal more money than I ever lost gambling. But I don't go out and throw money away. One of the things they taught is if you win some money, you're not playing on the house. If you lose it, you ain't got it. And if you win it, they ain't got it. It's yours. So you're gambling with your own money. So don't think you're gambling on the house. Put it in your pocket and keep it. They taught me never to gamble with scared money. One of my wife's bad problems is she can't gamble without having scared money she pays the nickel slot machines and condemns herself it's a jackpot because she's got their money that's not what they taught me if you win it's yours and they taught me not to sit around and try to wait for your luck If you sit down in the game and your luck's bad, get up and leave. Come back tomorrow. You know, those things are fundamental. But that's not the way the compulsive gambler does it. I'm going to tell you a little story that illustrates this. A few years ago, I got a call on a Friday night from a man in Whittier we live in Laguna Beach and this chap was in Whitier and he says Chuck I'm sitting here with a six gun in my hand and I'm going to blow my brains out but Jim told me not to shoot myself until I talked to you now he says what do you got to say well I says you called me on a bad night. I said, I'm talking tonight, Saturday night and Sunday night. But I'm open Monday night. If you want to talk to me, talk to him on Monday night. And he hung up the phone. And I thought that was it. Well, Monday night about 7.30 of the doorbell rang. And I go to the door and it's my boy from Whitley, Whitley. And he comes in and he sits down and he was a hockey and a compulsive gambler and he lost a lot of money that he didn't have and he'd lost it to professional gamblers and that's not a good way to establish and maintain longevity and so we sat down there at 7.30 and we started to preamble and at about 2 o'clock we were at step 8 and step 8 says we made a list of all persons we'd harm and became willing to make amends for them all. And I was getting strung out on that. And I were telling this old boy, now look, you're going to have to go to these people and you're gonna have to tell them that you admit the debt, that it's legitimate, you lost the money and you'll pay it back as soon as you can but you ain't got no money now yeah Chuckie says I can't do that they'll kill me I said so what you won't have suicide on your mind and he started to laugh and he's never going to laugh he has never quit laughing I walked out on the porch and listened to him all the way down the hill laughing every time I meet him he's laughing and he ain't very dead and he's paid off all his bills and nobody killed him you see this this is a beautiful thing it's a beautiful thing That's the reason I told you. Because until we get rigorously self-honest, we are going to have trouble with this program. We have got to learn how to be honest with us before we can think too much about being honest with other people. self-honesty is the golden key to this life that we find here. It's a fabulous thing. So I threw that in to make a point, and I won't belabor it. Mrs. C told you a few times how her life has changed since she has gotten to the place where she can laugh at herself. I had my crying before that, you know. Oh, I cry easily now, but it's not for me, you You know, I cry a lot. And when I feel like crying, I can't. I stand up here at these podiums and cry like a damn baby. And it's all right with me because I don't mind, you know. So, I decided to come to this program and I didn't know how to find it. I didn't know how to find it. I knew that you wouldn't be in the phone book because you were anonymous, weren't you? So knowing you weren't there, I never looked. Which is the story of my life. I knew so damn much that wasn't true I couldn't learn anything that was. So I had to call people and ask them if they knew anybody that knew anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous. And from a doctor that had treated me on a few occasions, keeping him from dying, he gave me the name of a man that was a member of our society. Motion picture man. And I talked with him and he told me a little about the program and he says, have you had a drink today? And I said, no. But he said, don't take one. He says, I have to work tonight so I can't take you to meet him but I might not have to work tomorrow night so call me tomorrow. I called him tomorrow and we talked a little while and he said he had a drink today and I said no. But he says don't take one I'm still working call me tomorrow. So I called him the third day and we hadn't gotten very far into the conversation when I knew he was still working. So I said to him, I know you're still working, he says, yeah. I said, you don't have to take me to a meeting. Where's the meeting I can go to? And he told me. And I decided to go. And I felt real good about it until about ten minutes before I was supposed to leave. And then I did the unforgivable. I started to think. Now, I came all the way down here to tell you two things. First one is quit thinking! This is our problem. Liquor was our problem. Thinking is our problem! If there was ever a bunch of screwball thinkers in the world, it's the alcoholics. We can justify anything in the world, including murder. So quit thinking. You can live yourself in the right thinking, you can't think yourself in the right living. I'm totally convinced that you can find God looking for him, because what you're looking for you're looking with. And how are you going to find God out yonder when he ain't out there? Yours isn't. Yours is right there. So you've got to turn your eyeballs around. It's an inside job. So, quit thinking. Get lost in life and find yourself in God. And the second thing Yes. I've forgotten. I've gotten it. Forgotten. I'll bring this up a little later. So, I started to think. And my alcoholic mind said to me, Look, son, you've lived in Beverly Hills a long time. And it just might not be good for you to be seen with a bunch of drunks. Now, you'll never know how funny that is. Because the only guy in Beverly Hill that spent more time in the Beverly Hills jail and I did was the jailer. I killed two chiefs of police in Beverly Hills in about, oh, maybe 15 years' time. You know? I mean, worried them to death. So, I was a little bit afraid that it might not be good for my reputation. be seen with you guys but I talked myself out of it because it was time to do something and I said to myself alright disguise yourself so you won't be immediately recognized and get to that meeting and I did and I went to the meeting and there was a great big hall as big as this one only way deep too and right in the middle of the back wall there was an outside door and it was open and I came up there and looked in and there might have been thirty-five people there mind you this was over thirty-six years ago and they were all in the center of the room everyone of them talking and nobody listening and it's been that way ever since now I couldn't hear a word they said but I could I could hear the the mumbling and it was happy it was a happy talk I didn't hear their words but it was heavy it was very happy talk and I said to myself they've given me the wrong the wrong dope this is the wrong night these are the veterans and their wives and they're here for a party because there's a veteran in the Foreign Wars Hall where they were having a meeting and I'm going to have to leave and come back the night the drunks are here and I turned to leave and I was as near dead as I'll ever be I guess because at long last I'd come and it was the wrong night and here the next minute is the very essence of our program. It's the reason it works when maybe nothing else does. I don't know. Somebody in the middle of that room had been watching me and when I turned to leave he came running over to the door and he called after me and he says, Mr., were you looking for somebody? And I said, no sir. well he said what were you looking for then and thinking he was a veteran I said well if it would interest you sir I was looking for sobriety and everything about that man changed just like that he just lit up lit up just like he'd turned a light on inside him and here's what he said to me why take off your hat and coat you're in the right place well he didn't know it but he'd just stolen my disguise like that he'd undressed me as well and so they took me in and rocked me asleep I remember that That meeting, the first one I ever went to, better than I remember last night's meeting. Everything about that thing I remember. The very first thing they told me, this is if you're an alcoholic, it's the first drink that's killing you. Now, I've been drinking for a lot of years and it had never occurred to me it was the first drink. I thought it was the last gallon. I was trying to knock it off before the trouble started, for years. And the very first thing you monkeys said to me, it's the first drink that's killing you. If you don't take the first drank, you don' t take the second one. I played with that a little while and bought it and I still got it the second thing you told me and this I wouldn't take all the oil in Texas for there's a lot of oil down here I know drunks down here that's got 43 oil wells My host up the way a year or so ago had an income of $10,000 a day and he had eight wells that were supposed to come in that weekend So I wouldn't take the whole deal for what you told me the next time you opened your mouth you says today is the day we don't drink today is the day we don t drink have you ever told me that I had to stay sober 36 years I d drop dead if you had said 36 days I d dropped dead but you didn t you said today is the day we don d drink Now, said you, regardless of how long you live in Alcoholics Anonymous, never expand that time more than 24 hours. And you run ahead to tell me that the past is nothing but guilt and the future is nothing. But fear. And if you live it, then now you duck them both. Hear me? Right now is our time. This is my day, I have no past, I want no future. And I've lived this way for over 36 years now. And it's a cinch. It's a cinch. If I had to depend on what I read in the papers and want to hear over that insane TV stuff for my peace of mind and serenity purpose. I wouldn't have a... I wouldn'T even finish this talk. I'd say, call me an ambulance. I'm going to the hospital. it's a beautiful thing and somebody said something about that a long time ago you know in another book that we read a little bit once in a while now is the only time we'll ever know right now is eternity you don't wake up tomorrow morning you wake up and it's now and that's the reason it took me so long to get here because I'd come to I never woke up I'd came to and I'd have to have a tumbler of liquor but it wouldn't take it I'd look at yesterday and I would see where I made my mistakes and I would be able to argue myself into the position that today, I'm only going to take what I have to live. Just what I have to live. And tomorrow I'll wake up and I won't have to take that tumbler of liquor. And when I got it all laid out right, I'd take the tumbler or liquor. And tomorrow I would come to and I still had to have a tumbler of liquor, you know. So when we live one day at a time, we don't have to do that. Second greatest thing I ever learned in my life. This is my day, I have no past, I want no future. The first one is that if we are going to live without drinking, we have to have some sort of personally acceptable, conscious partnership with the living God that made us in the entire business of living. The whole thing, if we're going to live without drinking. Because drinking is a living problem, and the only reason I'm not drunk right now, I've got the thing I was looking for in the bottle. And it's better than any liquor that I ever had. There's nothing in a bottle, pot, acid, that can do anything to me but tear me down because I've got the answer that I was always looking for. And I'll tell you a little about that. As I told you, I didn't come here looking for permanent sobriety for myself. I came here to find out a way to not drink right now, so I could use the time rubbing out the record. I didn't want my wife and my kids to remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing babbling idiot drunk. And I came to you to find how not to drink right now, so I could use that time to rub out. And I stayed because it was comfortable. I knew you monkeys were alcoholics because you were marked up like me. You had headlights here and you had bags under bags, and your wiring was exposed. and I knew you were drunk but I also knew you weren't drunk because I saw your eyes and I heard your voices and it was comfortable and I was back there every night I was bad because it was uncomfortable now I didn't I knew he had something I'd like to have but I didn' t expect it because I didn''t have the right to it I didn't figure that God owed me anything you know that I wasn't entitled to any of his goodies so I wasn' t asking him for anything but he was back here because it was comfortable now this is the series that happened to me in six months I discovered that I hadn't had a drink or pill for six months and I hadn' t wanted one Now, that ain't bad for a tongue-chewing babbling idiot drunk, is it? So I got so busy trying to give it away that another six months went by. And I discovered I had a family and they were living like kittens. And that wasn't a bad discovery. A year went by, and I discovered that I was still down in the office trying to clean up my desk. And business was good, it was just good, not a bad discovery. And another year went back, and i discovered that my own state of being was better than anything I'd ever known. It was just the good to breathe in and out. I rediscovered that lately, too. Those are pretty good discoveries. Six years went by, and I discovered I had a God of my very own. Wherever I am, He is. Now this is the great discovery. This is what I was trying to bring about for 30 straight years, from 13 to 43, and missed on. And what I had given up on six years before, wasn't trying to bring it about at all, and six years went by, and I discovered I had got him a very old, wherever I am he is. And I was so elated over this that I immediately started to try and figure out how I was going to show my gratitude. And the first thing I decided, I was gonna build him a plaque. We were in the woodworking business and I had some of the finest mechanics in the world. He could make anything out of wood and stainless steel and formica and stuff like that. So I'm gonna build Him a plaque and I got it designed in my mind and I finally, before I started him on the project, I said to myself, who are you going to give it to? And I could see me handing him this plaque and he didn't take it. And I dropped it on my foot and broke my foot. So I had to laugh about that. So then I was back at the starting gate. I says, who you going give it too? and my second decision I was going to become a Trappist monk and I knew a lot about Trappists monks, I'd read a lot about them, I loved them and I said I'll just be a TraPPist monk and it hit me man you're not even a Catholic how are you going to be a Trappismonk so I had to give that up so I'm back to starting good again and this time I got the answer and I there's a guy called Saint Peter the Catholics think he was the first Pope I don't think so I won't explain that but anyway I call him old Pete because before he became a saint I could identify with him a little bit you know when he got caught with red handed he lied out of it I said to myself he's a little alcoholic So, here I ran into this little dealie. The carpenter man called old Pete in before he left and he says, Peter do you love me? And Pete says, Yes Lord. He says, Ten my sheep. Now if you're Catholic, he said ten my lambs, but I'm not Catholic. So he said, "'Ten my sheep,' for as I'm concerned. I happen to be looking at an ex-nun, so I'm having a little fun out of her as I go along. Hi. Anyway, Pete says, "'Pete, do you love me?' He says, "'Yea, Lord. Ten my sheep.' And he turned around and said to him again, Peter did love me yea Lord tend my sheep and he turned right around asking again Peter did you love me yea Lord tend my sheet I said he must have meant tend my ship he said it three times you know and I said that's all I'm going to do and that's all I've done that's all I have done for 36 years I've never tried to get anything for me in 36 years I've never tried to go any place I don't run my own life or my wife's or my kids and everything's happened since I quit trying to run my life and hers and the kids we've become a family since I've quit trying to go anywhere I've been all over the world and since I quit trying to get something I got rich that's what happened to me and I never tried to bring any of it about I just tried to tend the sheep that's all I've done And if I'd go ahead, I would tell you that I had probably one of the greatest experiences in the business world that anybody ever had. In my eleventh year, I bought the business that I was thrown out of, and when I sold it, I was wealthy. And my people made me wealthy. They wanted me to be wealthy. Now, you business people in this room, including my friend Ed back there, and he's a whale of a businessman, will know that this couldn't happen. now I'll tell you a little story first I'm about to quit anyway because I'm getting hungry nobody give me another cookie or give me a cup of coffee or anything what are you going to make out of it all we have a group at home called the West Cabena Group. It's a big meeting, and it's held in a church. And it's about 20 years old. And I've talked at every anniversary they've had. Clancy talks the Saturday before Christmas every year. It's the Saturday night meeting. Clancy, incidentally claims that I'm his sponsor I'm pretty sure that he asked me to be his sponsor so he could sponsor me because he's been running my life ever since I said well, I won't really be your sponsor but I'll give you anything I've got but I won' t think of you as my baby so he takes that as giving him the license to run my life and he ain't bad but anyhow I was out there last year waiting for them to call a meeting and a man that I'd done hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business with I looked up and he was walking down this thinner aisle in that place and he was not an alcoholic I'd known him and done business with him for years and years and I thought what in the world is Bob doing here he's not an alcoholic so I went out and hugged him a little and told him how much I loved him and I said Bob, what are you doing here well he says I was over to see so and so a friend of his and a friend mine who's a member of this society this afternoon and we had a good visit and I said to him what are you going to do tonight? He says, I'm going to name him. He says do you know who you're going to listen to? He says yeah I'm gonna listen to old Chuck C because he always talks at our anniversary. Bob says can I go with you? And here I am. And so I introduced him to the four or five guys that were talking with him there. Bob stood there looking at the floor and he says, Gentlemen, I want to tell you something about this guy. He says, He's the only man I ever did business in my life that I never asked to write down anything. And then he just stopped. And I figured that I ought to say something, you know. So I said, That's true, Bob. But it's also true that I never asked you to write down anything, isn't it?" And he says, Yes. Now again, you businessmen know better than that. A little deal with me was $25,000 because we were in the fixture business, market fixtures only. built them, designed them, built them and sold them. And a little deal with me was $25,000, a big one was a quarter of a million. And the whole time I owned that business, I never had a written word. Not a written one. And nobody ever beat me out of a nickel. I'd put in a deal and bill them, and they'd pay me. And it was more fun than dill-ass pickles. There was just nothing but love and mutual trust. And a lot of people think it can't be done, but they made me wealthy. And they were tickled to death because they were all wealthy, and they wanted me to be wealthy. And they made me wealthy. And it's a beautiful thing, and I tell you that because of this. I am totally convinced that God doesn't think more of a salmon than he does of you. You know that a salmon born at the headwaters of the Klamath River will go down that river when he's about that long and he's liable to have gone clear to Japan and back and right back up that Klamath River where he was born and he spawns and dies now I get lost on the freeway with a sign every 90 feet I have to have help in the airport. I suppose if there was just one line coming in, I'd have to have help because I get lost. And here's a salmon that goes all the way to Japan and back." And I said to myself, I wonder whose travel agent is? So I swam with him in my imagination, and I knew who his travel agent was. God's idea of assignment includes everything necessary for its complete fulfillment, even going to Japan and back. We have another little phenomenon down there where I live. We have the Swallows that come back to Capistrano. St. Joseph's Day, they show up almost on the second at the first mission that was ever built in California, right there at San Juan Capistrano. And they winter in Venezuela. Now who do you think is their tablaiser?" And I had to fly with them. And it was obvious that God's idea of a swallow includes everything necessary for its complete fulfillment, including going to Venezuela and back without any road map. Now, this is a sermon that just carries me clear to the sky. Do you think that God's idea of a salmon or a swallow is more complete than his idea of his kids, you and I? I don't think so. I don'T THINK SO. when you and I get simple enough to live as we live in Alcoholics Anonymous sharing our experience, strength and hope with anybody that needs us in love just because we want to we discover that underneath is the everlasting arms and it's terrific it's absolutely terrific and I learned it from my blue jays you know my blue jays and my my hummingbirds sit in the same tree you know and I've been watching them I feed them all the time they break me up in business peanuts and sugar and stuff and I have never yet heard one of those Blue Jays say to his partner look at that so-and-so he's flying backwards I can't fly backwards why can't I fly backwards you know he don't even pay attention to him he don'T even know he's FLYING BACKWARDS you know why he DON'T GIVE A DAT he's busy being himself if I was a blue jay I'd want to be a hummingbird my bogan bee I've had it 25 years and it looks right up at the rose garden and you know that bougainvillea has not decided to be a rose yet it's perfectly happy to be a bougainvella and it knows how and it goes on well I'd want to be a rose wouldn't you now everything up to us is perfectly satisfied to be what it is and it does and it knows how but we come along and they tell us we've got to improve on God's handiwork we gotta be this have that and be known as before we can live you know and we get all involved in trying to self-improve and a lot of the people in our program thinks this is a self-improvement program it is not it's a self-discovery problem and with this I'm going to quit you sent me back to New York the second delegate to the General Service Conference in Southern California Cliffy Walker was first and I was second and And I got to meet all the old-timers, I got to meet the whole bunch back there. Ebby and Bill and Bob and their wives and Snyder and the whole bunch, you know? And it was a fine experience, very fine experience. I wouldn't trade for anything at the end of the second conference you go back for two years and I was there in 53 and 54 at the end of this conference in 54 Bill sought me out and he says Chuck, you've been back here two years straight and you've never taken five seconds of my time and I think I know why and it's time for us to become acquainted and I'm going to come out and see you well Bill lived in Bedford Hills New York and I lived in Beverly Hills California clear across the cotton and he was the head man and here I am a neophyte and he's going to go and he is going to come and see me and for a while I couldn't speak and what I could I said Bill if you're serious, we've got room for you and we'd love to have you now that was in April 1954 in June 54 he was in our house in Beverly Hills and from then until he died in 1971 Mr. C and I spent much time with him and Lois in their house and in ours and we got to know them quite well. And so quite often I say that our program, our formula for sobriety is the finest formula that was ever conceived in the mind of man through the grace of God for obtaining and maintaining sobrietry. But it has two other facets that are equally miraculous. It's the finest program for the good life and for self-discovery, not self-improvement, self-indiscovery. There was never conceived in the mind of man through the grace of God and this is the reason I say it. Bill was telling me about writing a book and they had written four chapters and it was time to write chapter five with our formula in it And Bill said he had to write. Now the reason he had write, kids, was that the book in its original conception was to spread the word faster to the drunks than they could do it on a personal basis. But the more they thought about it, the more that they thought that it was a money-making scheme too. And they were all starving to death. They were all meeting around Bill's kitchen stove, and the only one of the bunch that was working was Bill's wife, Lois. And she was working in Macy's basement. And they sort of wanted to get her out of that basement. So they were going to make a lot money off the book, and it's time for him to write chapter 5. And Bill said he sat down and he had absolutely nothing to write. He was totally void, but he had to write, and he wouldn't have a look, and he wouldn' t have anything to sell, and lost it after remaining the basement. So he started to write. There was nothing to write, and in thirty minutes he came up with the Twelve Steps. And the Twelve Steps have never been changed in essence. There has been a word here and a word there. But the meaning of the Twelve steps has never changed in forty-seven years. And so that's the reason I say it is the finest program that was ever conceived in the mind of man through the grace of God, because these steps came out of where they were. You know the carpenter man said, I am in the Father and he in me and I in you. The carpenter said, fear not little flock, it's the Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom. The carpenter man said, In him we live and move and have our being. And that means to me that you and I are living in the very essence of God right now. we're open, we get it from where it is. And when we're self-thinking, the doors are closed and we don't get nothing. So, we got the twelve steps out of where they are. The infinite intelligence in which we live. Because you see, God lives in us and in all other creatures that live on this planet. I'm particularly impressed with the Hebrew word for God. It's Yahweh. And it means that which is. That which is and it means all of that which is. And so we're related one to another and to the everything else that grows, everything that lives. The birds and the bees and the beautiful flowers. I was looking at your pink dogwood in this town. It's beautiful. I happened to be a sort of kid and got a hunk of it in me. They got mixed up over there in the Kalinas and forgot that there were Indians and others. So we got all mixed up at the Cherokees. And I've always had this feeling of unity, but I never brought it into conscious awareness until I was through with the business world. But since I've been out of the business world, I've taken all my so-called intellectual wisdom and turned it into conscious awareness. And it's fantastic. And it includes the fact that God in me as me is me, and God in you as you is you. And we can't change it. We can't changed it. The carpenter man said it like this, who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? Which means we can not change the reality of our own being if we can only change our experience in reality. I sit in the same chair I sat in for ten years in hell. And now I have thirty-six years in heaven, in the same chair. Nothing happened to the chair, nothing happened to my wife, nothing happened to kids, something happened to me. And I moved out of hell into heaven. And that's a sermon as long as from here to Mars and back. And it says, son, heaven was always in that chair. You were in hell. God bless you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.