Cut to the Chase: Old Ideas Are the Killers and the Fifth Step Finds Them – Clint H.

Thank you. My name is Clint Hodges. I'm an alcoholic. Good to be here. Thank you so much. And thank you, Bob, for putting this together. I know you didn't do it single-handedly and I know he had a great committee, but I'm grateful that you put it together because these speakers are amazing, inspiring. I know some. I've just getting to know some others. And I'm glad that you are here. Somebody made the comment there probably weren't too many new people here. But there may be some people that haven't tapped into the power necessary to make amends the way it says to do it in this literature of ours. And by the way, we're all very, very partial to conference approved literature. We're all very, very partial to the big book and to the 12 and 12. But we don't want to be worshipping those texts. It's not like that. And where there is difference of opinion about their relative merit, whether a particular paragraph means one thing to one person and something else to another person is largely a matter of where you are when you read it. It means more to me than it did both of them, especially the big book means much more to be than it does to me. It means much to me more than it didn't 40 years ago when I got sober and read it for the first time. it's become meaningful to me in the last 17 years in a way that I never thought it would 17 years ago my life dropped out from under me I had demanded so much out of life I had commanded that my image carry me through every situation situation. I was all about my image. I'd gotten sober, been sober a while. I was I'd gone through law school at night with the encouragement of a sponsor. I had and I thought that in looking back on it, I knew that the law school experience and having a license to practice law would, would in fact get me some power, some power. Because I knew in some vague way that even after 23 years of sobriety, I didn't have any power. And I wouldn't have been able to use that language back then, but I really thought that it would make a difference. And it doesn't really help much. I mean, it's kind of fun work. work. It's the kind of thing that you, it's easily prescribed. You practice your character defects and call it advocacy and send out a bill. And it drains you a little bit more and a little more because you're trying to do things you cannot do. But I love that and I still do that work. And I'm glad to be doing it. Maybe because what I did before I went I went to law school with cell carpets, and that's not something you can really get your passion into. I didn't much care whether those carpets got sold or not. Hard to believe, isn't it? So I was glad to be doing that. And I had made some furtive stabs at amends. This idea of reparation, this idea of atonement, this idea of knowing we have wronged other human beings and made a try at evening it all up. But you need power to do that. You need power. You need access to power. Even to make the list that it suggests in step eight, you need power. Wilson says that we have the list already from our inventory. The guys that took me through the steps when I was 23 years sober didn't let it go at that. They said dig out your Christmas cards, your business list, the whole thing. Scan, of course you have a lot of amends to make from your inventory, from step four, from step five. But you need more than anything to absolutely find out everyone. And if you make this little prayer, take me to my next amends and give me the power to make it, you will read all of these lists with something different in mind because you want to be free. You want to being free. And I had not been free at all because I was so caught up in those days with how you saw me. I wanted to be admired. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be seen as somebody whole and complete as far as I can tell. I was deluded enough to think that you wouldn't spot the difference And so part of going to law school was to cement that image. And walking around with an image is not really a very interesting thing to do. You know, when I was in the Marine Corps, they had us camouflage tanks with branches so they looked like trees. My tanks always looked like tanks with brushes on them. And it's not exactly where I want it. When you have an image, you're just some donkey carrying around an image all the time. You see a girl you like, you go, hi. And she hears you. She doesn't hear that. She hears, hee-haw, heee-hah. Because she knows whatever she has is not real. You know, whatever she's got a hold of or talking to is not real, has no real depth. And I was sober and I was glad to be sober. And I Was in AA and I Was going to meetings and I Was doing all of that stuff. And at depth, I hoped that I could skate through. I had made a little stab at making amends. I'd gone to dental school along the way. And that is a whole tragedy all its own. I won't go into that, but I was thinking when Charlie was talking about fear, I was in dental school after college because one day my dad, who scared me to death, said, well, what do you, I was at high school, he said, what are you going to do with your life? I don't know where it came from, but I said, I'm going to be a dentist. What the hell? What is that? And he didn't hit me. So I thought, well, now we've got some kind of a decision about a career. And I went to college and I went into dental school for two years. And that was an awkward period in my life because by then I'm drinking And I'm taking Dexamil they had in those days, a combination of Dexedrine and Miltown. So you're supposed to just, you know, float through, I guess. Keeps you awake a lot of the time. But it makes you shake. You remember when the next morning you're off of that stuff and you shake? That would have been bad enough, but they just come out with a new high-speed air-driven handpiece and my mornings on Saturday in the clinic were a little colorful. They don't like to hear you say whoops. And during that time, I roomed with a guy And one night, I set his couch on fire. He had the furniture. I moved into his apartment. We were together to take care of this complex, do the gardening and stuff like that in Portland. And I woke up, and the couch was on fire, and I knew what had happened. I'd gotten drunk, and a cigarette had gone down in the cushions, and I'm struggling to get the couch out of the living room and out into the street and he woke up, not a happy guy found his way into the livingroom and the two of us carried this couch out into the streets and there it smoldered for three days and was finally dragged away and then I'm sober for maybe two years and you've been talking about amends and making things right and doing all of that. So I was working by this time. I had a job. I was bothered by that couch thing. So I sent him a letter. I'm sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm so sorry about burning your couch down. Here's a check to cover that expense. And he sent me a nice letter back with the check. He was thrilled that I was sober in AA, and he said, Donate the check to AA. And I'm thinking maybe someday I will. I'm not sure it could happen. And that's about what I knew about amends. So now flash forward without any further effort at that sort of thing for a long time. And I know why I stayed sober. I know God's grace, same way I got sober. I did not get sober. I did make a decision to quit. I had no more power to quit drinking than the man in the moon. I got sober in Glendale just on the 14th of August in 1966. One more time, went up the flight of stairs into the Alano Club of Glendales and a kindly guy named Bill invited me to come in and sit down. Asked me if I was alcoholic. I mumbled some response. or I told him I've been an alcoholic about a month now, is what I, trying to sell the idea that I was a mild case, that I wouldn't be any trouble, that I really needed to be in out of the weather that hot August day. He said, well, if you're an alcoholic of my type, you're going to drink no matter what. And he was smiling when he said that. And that cut through me, I can't tell you. Now, what my biggest secret was out in the air, and Bill knew it, and I knew it. And I couldn't imagine that anybody else knew it but I drink no matter what. And I didn't drink again from that day on. And I did not quit. it. Wilson said there at the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time. I didn't even know that, but I felt better. Telling the truth about that made me feel better. But I also knew that I had about three weeks before I hit Skid Row in Los Angeles. And this doesn't have a lot to do with Step 9, but it does have to do with my growing awareness of the miracles that we all experience here, because there's no way that I was the kind of drunk I was on the 13th of August and didn't drink on the 14th. Wilson says, God comes to most men gradually, but his impact on me was sudden and profound. Oh, my, yes. Yeah, sudden. In a day, in the blink of an eye, my relationship to alcohol changed. And it was profound. I mean, when a power goes to that part of me that needs a drink all the time and heals it up, that's profound, that's deep. And he didn't mull it over. I just had surrendered that I would always drink. And he said, okay. Or worse to that effect, I didn't know any of this for a long time. I couldn't quite get to the idea that I had gotten myself sober. And there are so many people in Alcoholics Anonymous that contributed and calmed me down and gave me security and love and affection and guidance that I didn't worry about it a hell of a lot. But then all of the things that I hade accumulated to augment my image over 23 years were taken from me. They just disappeared within about 90 days. The house was on the market and the car was gone and the lady was gone and my law partner was gone. The stream of income was gone and I don't think I've ever been more frightened ever, certainly not in sobriety. I didn't wonder what would become of me. I knew that, like my little brother, I'd be pushing a cart in the streets of Los Angeles with my crap in it. I was as afraid as I had ever been and I walked around bumping into walls. I was back in Kentucky at a conference and met some guys that knew something about these steps. One of them said, I'm moving to Santa Monica in the spring, I'll call you. because it was painfully apparent that I was lost, sober and not doing at all well. And he called me. He called me and said, you know, I don't know why it is that you've avoided the steps so long, but it's about time, isn't it? And I said, yeah, I'm living in a little apartment at the bottom of the hill. I'm driving a sturdy Chevrolet instead of that Mercedes. I'm trying to rebuild the law practice and I'm terrified. He said, we'll go on a journey together. He kind of got a little snippy with me. Somebody did. They said that I had the perfect cake mix kind of approach toward the big book. I said, I don't know what that means. He said, well, if you wanted a chocolate cake, you'd go out and buy a box of cake mix. You bring it home. And your style would be to read it carefully, every word on it, and then complain that you didn't have any cake. and so you gather some people around you and you'd read it with the group and you would read it in unison and you translate it to French and you do a lot of tricks with that box of cake mix but it's not going to produce any cake for you you have to actually read it and get it and do what it says to do nothing short of that is going to get the job done for you and we're going to go on a little journey together if you want to. Neither one of us is coming back. And I was frightened enough to be hounded into that awful commitment to read the first 164 pages, to agree that I was willing to do what they said to do and I didn't even know what that agreement meant or what they would tell me it meant. I just started in. And I started in by, and everything I did in the book up through those early steps augmented my sense of powerlessness, my sense of total inability to manage my life. I began to see that more clearly than ever. I didn't believe it up until that point. I didn' t believe I couldn' t manage my life. I mean, I had gone to law school. I was successful in trial work. I did everything I tried except get along with people and rid myself of that knot in my gut and have a decent relationship with another human being. I couldn't have that. Oh, I had arrangements, to be sure. And there's a terrible difference between an arrangement and a relationship. And I wanted a relationship, and there's nothing wrong with an arrangement, which is just a contract. You do this, I'll do that. And it always has a punitive clause in it. In case they don't live up to what you think they should do, you can scold them or take a beating if it's your part to be deficient. An arrangement can be great if everybody is on the same page because the idea is for security. You know who you're going to the prom with. But a relationship is a different matter, And I say it only because the book never talks about an arrangement with God or with our fellow humans, nor does it talk about a partnership. Not really. We're given some examples in the book that use the words father and child Child as one possible relationship. Employer, employee as another possible relationship, director and actor as another possible relationship agent and principal. There are four of them. Although it sounded just fine to me, but they didn't mention partnership. And Thomas Merton says, we know you want us to be real partners with you in this business of living, but that won't work much for me. I think it'd start out God and Hodges on the letterhead. But it would be no time before it was Hodges and God. And then we don't need any partnership meetings. Meetings. And then it's of counsel over there on one side, God of counsel, if I need him. And that had been, I'd tried it just about every conceivable way. I'd been brought up in the hellfire and brimstone of the Church of the Air in Billings, Montana. And I learned by the time I was 14 that God didn't care. I've learned by the time I was probably five that God didn't answer my prayers. I learned by that time that he doesn't shield me or anybody else from terribly painful events. My mom got sick with cancer when I was 12. She died when Iwas 14. And I stood at that graveyard in the low-rent part of the cemetery at Billings, Montana as they poured dirt on her coffin, furious with her. She loved my sister more than me. My sister was born when I was four and a half or something. And I didn't know that gone were the days when my mom would tuck me in, say a prayer with me. Those were the happiest moments of my day. We'd whisper our little secrets. We'd laugh. I could make her laugh in the middle of World War II with my father overseas and nobody knowing how that was going to come out, I could made my mom laugh, give her a moment of levity. And I took great solace from that. One day that was all over because she said, do you mind if I bring a little baby home from the hunt? No, bring her home, bring here home. and that was the end of it they had a little room set aside for this kid and my mom spent all her time in there or so it seemed to me and I devised even then I was an expert at managing things and so I devized a means by which I could solve that problem and get my mom back I decided that I would encourage my sister who was maybe seven weeks old to move out So I'd go in there and thump her on the head You know, give her a little You're through here, pal I'll help you pack, but it's time to go Love ya, get out My mom caught me with those shenanigans And threw me out of the nursery And before I hit the wall in the hallway way I knew. We know in an instant. I knew she didn't love me. I know she loved my sister more. I new she had betrayed me and I knew it to the depths of my soul. And some ideas Ideas were formed that day for me that I didn't even smell for years. But I had the bad effects of those ideas. When you can't trust your mother and, by reference, your grandmother, you don't have much of a chance of being able to trust any important women in your life. And you can'T form a relationship on that. I neither respected nor trusted women and I knew they'd go for it for about four years and then it would be all over. And that's how it turned out. I'm what we call much married and all those marriages are four years in length or thereabouts. One longer than that while I was going through law school. Not that she... I was just too busy to get a divorce, I guess. I don't know what it was. Always uneasy around women, especially the ones that were powerful women, women whose approval I wanted. Always, always feeling at the effect of that. And, of course, I was scared to death of my dad when he came home from the war. Or he was a bad drinker and he was quick with his fists. And I just hated to be around him. On Saturday morning, we'd seem to be having fun and then he would reach into the cupboard over the refrigerator and take that bottle down. And I knew, I quickly learned that we were not going to see much of him anymore. He didn't want to be with us anymore. And he would drink for a while and then leave the house, and we wouldn't see him and wouldn't seen him. And my mom got increasingly angry and increasingly frightened, and we didn't know what was going on. And so now I can't trust male authority figures. I can trust men that I should be able to rely on, And I can't trust women that should be endlessly supportive of my nonsense. And I've got some amazing material to work with. I got some old ideas, as Wilson calls them. And I did a lot of damage believing that that's just how life is. And I got to hurt you before you hurt me. and I've got to leave you before you take off, before you stop loving me. And if I could have said the truth about any of that, if I had known it, I don't think I would have said it, but if I'd have known the truth, the truth would have been, hey, you know what? You're a very nice person and I know you like me. You're pretty lady and I wish I could love you too. But you see, I didn't get the love I needed when I was a kid. I don't have any left for you. If I ever get all the love I need, you are going to be the first on the list for me to love. But I couldn't say that. But that's kind of how it floated out. And so I withheld and I withdrew and I did all of that. And over time, their dignity leaves them. And you add in the joys of alcoholism and we easily take their dignity away. We easily invade the power of men we should respect. We easily want to get them before they get us. And so it was with that, and I had a twin brother who I began to suspect that my mom loved him more than me and so I and we would fight you know when he's like seven years seven minutes older than I am and when we were teenagers we go out in the backyard and go at it and you know when you're popping each other with everything you have ten minutes of that That is a long time. And sometimes I tagged him, but too often, too often he nailed me and I'd go down. And I would be impotent and furious and angry and determined to nail him the next time. And there would be a next time with the same result all too often. And then he started competing with me scholastically. And he's a good student. And I couldn't even kick his ass in the classroom. And you kind of get a sense that there's something wrong here. I am deficient in serious ways. And then we're 16, and this is my companion. This is my guy. We finally learned how to not give in to the toughs in the neighborhood, but to stand side by side and stay together. And we were formidable. And then he fell in love with a girl. He left me for all intents and purposes. Where'd you go? What happened? Oh, I was with Barbara. And you swallow that. I guess he doesn't love me. Not interested in me. And Barbara was clearly giving him something that I was not going to give him. And so he was very taken with her. And given all of that, given all OF that, and that's not much. It's just a screwy way to start a life. When I was 16, I had that first drink in high school after a football game. I loved it. I loved that drink. It gave me a feeling I was in touch for a moment with something in me that I could not have explained in those days. Today, I think I was touched for a minute or two with the divinity in me. There was something about that booze that moved the clouds away and the hatred and the anger and the sense of, you know, I was sober. And somehow or other missed so much that I went traipsing down there and had that talk with him. But before that, I had to get in some kind of fit spiritual condition. I brought this little book up here because it has a little bit of the 12 and 12 in it. the first paragraph in the 12 and 12 on step 9 step 9 says may direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others and the first paragraph says good judgment a careful sense of timing courage and prudence these are the qualities we shall need when we take step 9 and I guess it's just as well that I waited till step 9 to make amends because I was not fit to do that first. I didn't have good judgment. I had no sense of timing. I tended to want to get things over with. I hadno courage, no courage, no moral courage and prudence. No, I'm not careful about anything. I just self will run right is me. But I'm sober all that time. and somebody said it up here today we have step one where we admit we cannot do anything about our alcoholism can't even quit really it should say, shouldn't it? step one, quit no, we don't hear that No. And I think it's because we can't. Not really. For whatever reason or another, we go back. And so when that and I began to look back, I began to look on those remarkable early days. I began to look at those people in Glendale that were so kind to me that set a place at the table for me, that welcomed me even though they knew I thought that I was going to be on Skid Row in three weeks. They welcomed me. And how Bill Kennedy was so kind when I was new. He died last year. He had the most beautiful smile of anybody I ever saw. He was a huge factor in my life, and I may have spent one hour altogether with Bill Kennedy, but it was that critical hour he made me no promises he didn't say if you do this and that and the third thing you'll be able to stay sober he didn's say that he just said if you're like me you're going to drink no matter what good people in AA will tell you don't drink no mater what and you will drink no matter what and that would have seemed like a death knell but to me it cleared the air got it But God, my worst fears have been said out loud and it gives you a sense of relief. And there is a surrender attached to that. He said, come in and sit down. If you get hungry, I'll fix you a sandwich. We have a little kitchen in the back. And now 23 years has gone by and I'd forgotten all about Bill Kennedy. I'd gotten all about any notion that I was as powerless as I was. I'd forgotten about anything except my life was not working for me and worse than that I was very terrified extremely terrified and we finally got to step 8 which is making a list of all these people we had harmed and I went to my inventory for that that's the last official act I did with that written fourth step but I took all those names under suggestion under orders and made a a list of everybody on there that it seemed to me I could have harmed in any way. And it was a pretty good-sized list. And then I went to the Christmas card list and I went this list and I want to that list and other names appeared and I asked to be shown the truth about who I had harmed because by this time I had the solid beginnings of a relationship with God. And that whole thing is another story. But I think we need significant power to effectuate six and seven, to really admit those are our old ideas, to really get it that we can't get rid of them no matter how hard we try. eye. If we could have gotten rid of them, we would have gotten rid of him. But when it began to be so clear that they were ruinous and we were sober and could have gone to a hundred people, what am I going to do about this? And I think just about all of them would have said, well, you're not going to do anything about it, but you can ask God to do something for you. Like take them away. These old ideas and Bob was talking We were talking about it. It says, now these are about to be cast out. That is a huge promise. And they're cast out at seven when we ask that they be cast out, knowing what they are. And it's fun to sit and listen to a fifth step. And the guy hates his wife. But we've started much earlier than that. Turns out he hates his mother. and he hates her because she wouldn't give him money for a Halloween mask. Now, what would a guy have to believe? What would the old idea be that would drive a guy to think that his mother had betrayed him by not burping up the dime for the Halloween mask? Well, he has to believe that she thinks he needs a Halloween mask and won't give Him one or doesn't understand the need or doesn't have the dime to spend. He has to believe that if that's what love amounts to, love ain't much. I mean, we get all kinds of goofy ideas in our head. I adored my son, but I didn't know what to do with him and I took him to the yard and kind of let him play with the other kids. I thought that was good shepherding. He did not. It made him feel inadequate. and you sit and listen to a fifth step and watch those ideas begin to pop up, float to the surface. What would a guy have to believe to believe that his mother or father loved his brother more than he was loved? You'd have to belief there's a limited amount of love. There's not enough to go around. That's what you have to belive. You must belive that. Is it true? Oh no. No, no, no. It's not true. But we believe that And our lives are bound to that idea, not to be given up. We don't even know it's our old idea. We just think that's the way that it is. What do you have to believe to hate your brother because he can outpoint you in a fistfight, outpoint you in grades? Oh, not every time, but far too often. Do I believe that he's smarter than I am? No, I cannot believe that. that I can believe only that God hates me. Or he would not have me play in this stupid game at the effect of fear of my brother who loves me. So, the ideas come floating up if we're looking for them. And we must look for them because they run our lives. And we get through that in seven and then eight. We have a little more courage from the first seven steps and we make the list. And then and only then can we throw that inventory away. We have no further use for it. I was told, throw it away, get it out of your life. The written inventory can go now. But don't be disrespectful. Whatever you do, be conscious enough to realize you're putting aside some description of somebody you never were. You can take it to the beach, make a little fire, take it up to the mountains, bury it, Put it in your fireplace if you have one of those. Put it In a trash bag and put it in the garbage. Whatever you do, be conscious about it. And don't try to retrieve it. Let it go. Let it Go. It's been very important to you. Time to let it go And so the list of people to whom we owe amends is reduced to, in my case, And as somebody said, there's a lot of ways to do this. And it doesn't much matter as long as it's easy to manage. So I wrote those names down on a three-by-five card. One person with maybe two or three ways I had harmed that person, I wrote their phone number down. I wrote the harm in the middle of the three-bye-five card in the upper right-hand corner. or I put a plus or a minus, depending on whether I was willing to make amends to them. They said, tell the truth. Tell the truth if you're not willing to make the amends, it will come. But don't make amens to anybody unless you're willing to do that. And by the way, look up willing. Willing in the dictionary is gladly ready. Can I just conjure up look, gladly ready? No. How am I going to get gladly ready if you're going to ask for that? Take me to a place where I'm gladly ready to make amends to this person for this harm. And then I had a stack of 3x5 cards. Some of them had a minus. Some of the others had a plus. Some of it had a positive. And I sat down with this guy that was taking me through and we looked at him. And there were a significant number of them where when it got right down to it, I had not harmed the person. I might have thought bad thoughts about them. I might've resented him, but unless I actually harmed them, he said, no, that's not for that. What about if I gossip? No, don't go to somebody and tell them you've been gossiping. That's under except when to do so would injure them or others. What will I do to make amends? You will start talking very highly about that person to the same people you bad-mouthed him. Oh, what an order. Is that it? Is that really it? Sure, you don't want to stir up more trouble by telling that guy you've been stabbing him in the back. Okay, okay. Because you can't harm him that way, not really. Make him feel bad, but he's not harmed. She's not armed. So I had a stack of three-by-five cards. and they contained each one of them, the name, the type of harm, whether I was willing. And I said, what am I going to do about these that I'm not willing to make amends to? And they said, you will become willing. Right now your fear has you by the neck and everything looks terribly undoable to you. You're going to ask for power to make the amends and because you're going to get some satisfying, rejuvenating, wonderful responses. And you will. Your unwillingness to make amends to other people on your list in the cards is going to drop away in large part. In large part, start with the easy ones. Don't tackle something you see as dangerous Don't do that And so I started I was In those days This was 16 years ago, 15 years ago I was dating a lady that had a small boy A son and I knew beyond any doubt that I owed his father an amends and I owed him an amens because I had totally dismissed him they'd been separated divorced for some time but he was drinking and drugging in terrible shape and I dismissed this man he loved that boy and I was coming to love that boy and I didn't have a competitive thing in me about that, but I was afraid his father would injure him. I was worried the kid would get heartbroken. And so I didn't encourage that relationship. And somehow that seeps out, you know. I'm disdainful of you, John. I never said that to him, but I did. And one day I was over it. I was doing a little, his mother had asked me to go over to school for a Halloween festival of some kind. And he was in a part, he had a sophisticated part in the Halloween magic, kind of like last night up here where you had a high level, sophisticated theatrical display. play. And he was up there and he turned around, he saw me anyway. And then I looked over here and his dad was in the room. And I thought, oh man. Oh man. What am I going to do about that? That morning I had said, take me to my next amends and give me the power to make it and I knew I didn't know after this thing was over I went over to him and I said how about you and I having a cup of coffee and he was clean and sober that day and he said okay we went to a coffee shop and that's the way to do it amends don't take very long doesn't take long to tell the truth it doesn't take long to say what we have to say. But we don't want to make it around a meal. We don't want to have people coming in and out and bringing food along. We don'T want to do anything. We don' t have any agenda beyond making the amends. This is not anything that we want. Something good may develop out of that, but not at that time. I was told keep it brief, tell the truth. Thank them for meeting with you. Tell him that you've been looking back over your life and you've made a lot of huge mistakes involving other people. He's on the list. I'm here to make amends to you. I'm hier to clean that up if we can, and I hope we can. And so thank you for meeting with me. And here's the amends. Here's the harm that I see that I have done. And you tell him the harm. And you ask them, do you need to tell me how any of that made you feel? And sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. Once in a while, one or both of us will be crying by this time. Somebody's, is this a participant? No, never mind. and you as it says in the 12 and 12 judgment, courage and it's very much a feel your way through the thing and if they say yes there's other harm and he did he had his own list that was pretty extensive and you just sit and listen to it and it is not easy to hear and finally you get down to the last question what can I do to make this right with you and I ask that question and at this time we were this lady and I were talking about setting up a household together I had come to love that little boy very, very much and I didn't know what he would say about that I thought he'd say stay away from my kid he said after thinking about it for a long minute he said take care of my boy and a crazy man named Don Pritz had told me six months earlier that whatever the answer is to what would you have me do to make this right that is very important assignment for you don't dismiss it out of hand there's no better way to know God's will than to honestly and fully and completely respond to whatever you're asked to do and I did it with a heavy heart oh God when my kids were young I was an undependable and dangerous parent. Dangerous. My dad's example was just all I had to go on. And I didn't want to take another chance. But I had my marching orders in effect. And I had come to a place in my life by this time where two words had been added. One was obedience, and the other was surrender. And I'd surrendered to doing anything that these amends required of me. And I was obedient to the precepts in the book and to what God would have me do as long as I knew it. And my life was getting so much easier. And I were sleeping all night long. And I Was having moments of joy in my life. something that I'd never had before and the only reason that I had that is because there is now a place inside me where I can go where God is he's inside me not like a BB in a glass of water but like the ocean is in a wave and there's no other way to really explain that or describe it but it's extraordinarily important to me because I'm a seeker I am a seeper A seeker is somebody that's been touched by God in such a way that nothing less, nothing less will ever do. And you're my masters. People like Clancy, like Tom, my sponsor. All of you here are my masters and a master is somebody whose very life bears living witness to the seeker that what the seeaker seeks is real. and I'm so grateful for that I'm so grateful that we're given each other because without each other the marvelous energy that's in these rooms would not be here and we need the energy call it anything you want, we need this the energy every living creature puts out its own level of energy and when we come in here our energy is low Low, low, low. We have just enough courage to admit we can't handle the booze. But that's all we need. And gradually our energy gets... And then we come into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. The energy is marvelous. And we need that energy. And the new people need that enery. And it's up to us to increase, to support that energy and when you get to your next meeting in your home group you get a feel for what that energy is, what the level is. Is the level one of joy? Is the number one of humor and laughter and love? Is the Level of Energy one of service? You can feel it. You can see it. And our souls need that energy. That's why this is such a special conference. The energy is high. And why is it high? Because extraordinary people have come from all over the world to sit here, to speak here, to lead here, to pray here. And what if they were just average people? Well, they are. That's all. And they bring that energy. They find it here. And so, and so. When we get to step nine, we draw heavily on that energy, heavily. And for five years then, I was a parent to a boy that was five when I started actively parenting him. And when he was nine or ten, he and his mother moved back to the Midwest. And I knew a couple of things. I knew that meeting that obligation had become a joy to me. I knew that he was a better kid for it his dad shortly after I made that commitment to his dad his dad died in San Gabriel Motel with a needle in his neck and the kid was heartbroken he loved his dad and his dad loved him and I was the predominant male figure in his life for a while and I loved him I loved that boy and he loved me too and he was shattered when his dad died and I never ever by any tone of voice suggested that that wasn't the right dad for him I respected how he felt I went up to Portland Carl met me at the airport up there my brother I'd harmed him I made amends to him for that harm I flew back to Roanoke where my dad had been buried many years. I had come to a point, as is the principle of Step 8, of forgiving him. I knew a little bit about forgiveness by this time. And I forgave him and I stopped being afraid of him. him. I was afraid of him. When he was confined to a bed with a stroke, I would walk into that bedroom of his. He begged me to stay. I couldn't stay. I was an adult sober quite a few years. And I spent 10 days in Naples, Florida and then stop in Georgia hoping every time that I could make amends to him I clutched I couldn't stay in that room he suddenly I became the little boy again I couldnít be around him because it was he was always so fast and things seemed to be going well and suddenly somebody was getting hit and hit hard and I didnít have have the kind of faith or trust that was required to stay in that room with him. And after two days, I had got to go, Dad. Got to go. And then he died. And then I went back to Roanoke and knelt at that grave. And there wasn't any momentous thing about it. And it was only later than that that I could forgive him and did forgive him. I rewrote my history by allowing God's grace to rewrite my childhood. It was, Sandy tells such a wonderful, rich, powerful description of that huge gap between what happened when we were kids and what we thought happened when we were children, between reality and the story. And mine was largely story. As we do, you know, maybe more than largely, maybe entirely story. But I had it painted a terribly gloomy picture, very frightening. And I couldn't let go of the story to make amends while he was alive. And so I went back after he was dead and knelt at that grave. I went to Denver. My sister, the one that had bumped me out of first place in my view, was living in Denver with her husband. My dad was born in Roanoke, Dothan, Alabama, deep south. Very, very racially prejudiced. prejudice. And the word got back to him that my sister in Denver had married a black guy. Yeah, I thought, oh God, how could you do that? Oh, I could have gone. I just was afraid to go to Billings. And they asked me the next year and I'm under new management. So I got to Billings. A friend of mine, a lady in Al-Anon had gone up on the same flight with me. She was speaking at the same conference. Corinne, my mom, a letter and I did that. He said, buried out there in that graveyard. I had the letter. She handed me a shopping bag. She said, you'll need this out there. And I looked in and there was a liter of water. There was a pair of shears. There were some clippers. There was everything I needed. Some rags. The snow was off the ground in Billings. I didn't realize it then, but almost 40 years earlier I had stood at that grave while they buried her and said, You don't love me? I don't know. I don' t love you either. I didn' t cry. I don't love you I don' t love you and I was disobedient to the point of cruelty with her and then I step 8 has a forgiveness component that's the principle of step 8 and atonement is the principle of steps 9 and I had to come to a place where I was willing to make amends to my mom and before I could do that I had no idea to forgive her those terrible slights real and imagined and there's no memo on this she'd been dead many years and I've had to my detriment and the detriment of people around me carried the resentment and the sense of injustice all day long, for many days. So I knelt down there and I kind of got the leaves off the little marker, leaves from the prior fall. I had started to cry a little bit when Corinne gave me that shopping bag because there was such an odd love in it. This Al-Anon member, a good friend of mine today, cared enough to lug all of this stuff clear on that flight and give it to me. And I'd had a guy that drove me out to the cemetery and we finally found a marker that It was my mom's, Virginia Marie Eaton. And then there's a date, a year she was born, a dash, the year she died. And just a dash represents a life. It doesn't seem... There ought to be more somehow. But it was a life of integrity. It was a wife of love. It was life of courage. It was the life of hardship. It was a life of a very painful death of cancer, and I had missed her horribly. When I was younger, she'd tell me to mow the lawn. I would mowthe lawn after getting a few beatings. She'd say, clip around the sidewalk. I would never clip aroundthe sidewalk. That's my little line in the sand. And those clippers that Corina gave me, I took them out, and I started to clip around the damn marker. The thing I would never do. And the tears started again. I expected that my worst dream was that she'd come roaring out of that grave like the Wicked Witch of the West and finish the job with a big sword. And my grandmother would come racing down and whack me a couple of times. and it was just a little marker in the low rent part of the cemetery and she had died 40 years earlier and I'm crying and clipping around that thing and beginning to get that whisper of an awareness that she loved me the day never came that she didn't love me the day ever came that I couldn't trust her the day every time that she was unfair to me. We all got about the same treatment, but I wasn't singled out for any deprivation. I wasn'T singled OUT for any particular anger. My mom was scared to death. They didn'T have anything in Billings, Montana during the Second World War called counseling. They had a church of the air on 27th Street called the Church of the Air. Can you get ready for that? The Church ofthe Air. they have another name for it now I think but it was Church of the Air and we won't be tied to any snot nose kid that got smart in the Church of air because you got a little whack I always sang all those songs that meant nothing to me I thought gladly the cross eyed bear was a bear with bad eyesight for years I thought that it never touched me but the tears started and I was able to stay out there that day and I had a strong sense for the first time in my life of crying all my tears of weeping the unshed tears because I saw that she always loved me I saw that I could have I am of her she has no choice she must love me if she doesn't have some pathology going on she's going to love her kids and she loved me and I could have trusted her and I couldn't trust her the decision she had to make because she was so frightened because money was so scarce because the allotment check was iffy seemed harsh to me but they were the things that she had to do because who knew how that war was going to last how long and how it was going to come out and I never saw that I never saw how beautiful she is but I saw it that day as I knelt there clipping around that goofy marker and crying those marvelous of those people in Billings we talked about it at that conference that weekend and they were kind enough to take me out the next day Sunday before it was time to get on the airplane and we found that again I walked down and stood in front of my grandma's grave suddenly I respected her where I never had before I thanked her for her unwavering hand I thanked her for consistency. And I walked out of that cemetery that Sunday and got on the airplane and a different person, a different version. I was no longer interested in running anybody to earth. I was not alone. I was now longer interested in protecting myself against women for the first time in my life. I could be friends with a woman for the First Time in My Life. women were something other than a sex object or an enemy. I had harbored all of that from the time I was 14 until I was 54. Forty long years. Forty Long Years. With a lot of failed relationships, well they weren't relationships, a lot goofy arrangements in that time. and I got back and Corinne called me and said she just heard from one of the Al-Anons up there they had made a decision to go out every year after the snow was off the ground and make sure my mom's grave looked good I mean that's a lot of love those Al-Ans showed me all kind of love drive by love no basis for loving me like that and it was a precious thing and I came out of Billings different, different, different and it wasn't it was the last amends and the last thing I wanted to do and the one that had a huge impact on my life that I felt almost immediately Linda and I were friends and became good friends after that I had no I wasn't looking to get married again God there'd been enough of that I wasn't looking to do anything but be friends we went to movies a lot she never let me take her she always had her own car meet you at the movie then one day that friendship caught fire and I said we got to go back to Kansas where your dad is he was in a retirement home 93 years old she said do you really want want to do that? And I said, yeah, I want his blessing. If we're going to get married, I want His blessing. We found that little retirement home and he's a great guy, a Catholic through and through. And he had just found out that he was in a Presbyterian retirement home. Gave him a few bad moments, I'll tell you. So I liked him for that. I sat in a little little chair in his room and he and Linda were sitting on the bed. Mr. Staub, my name is Clint Hodges. I came here from Los Angeles with your daughter on a special errand. I wanted to meet you. I'm in love with your daugher. I want to marry her and I'd like like to have your blessing. He gave me a long look and just got a tear cut. And he finally said, how's the weather out there in Los Angeles? I said, close enough, man. I'm going with it.