Ellie’s Chisel Built a Spiritual Arch, Brick by Brick – Harold M.

Look at the monitor and Sally says it's 685 is on time. So they all walked over and sat down and I was standing there by myself. Finally, I went over there and I said, the plane 685 landed already. And they said, are you Harold? I said, yeah, there's nobody else in here. It's nice to be in Iowa and get an education at the same time. I got to tell you that. I learned all about cows and steers. Now, she said, I promised I wasn't going to tell her because she explained the difference to me. I won't do it. I don't think I could because I don't know. Talking about other. I do know that milk don't only come in containers. I found that out. It's wonderful to be here. Actually, I was here a year ago. I was out in Council Bluff and got out of there just before the flood. I hope you all got a better newscast this year than it did last year. And coming through the airport, we were talking about, you ever see that commercial? With OJ going through the airport and people getting out of there? That was me. Because the connecting flight that I had to get over here landed about two minutes before the connecting flight was supposed to leave. And if anybody's ever been in the Minneapolis airport, it's shaped like an eight. And I was on this end and my flight hours on the other end. I had about nine minutes to get a mile and I made it. It's great to be here though. And I want to thank Theresa for asking me out here. Really, I love this part of the country. I get out here quite a bit and I have a lot of friends. I saw my good friend Dennis as I came in just now and some other people that I met when I was up in Council Bluff last year. And it always gives me, I'm always, I always feel very privileged when I'm in a group of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's God's chosen people. And I believe that. I've always felt that way. And I don't mean that in an elitist kind of way. I think God always chose the least. And I think God chose the least of them to show the others the way. And if you, you know, when you look at who Jesus' disciples were, they were thieves and robbers and murderers. And if you look at who's in Alcoholics Anonymous, you can see that he chose the right people to carry his message. And I think he blessed us because he gave us that gift that nobody else has. And I feel very, very special when I'm in a group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think that's what's so special about Alcoholics Anonymous, recovering in our fellowship. You know, it, it, it, alcoholics were not always, always treated with any kind of respect. As a matter of fact, for many, many years, for a long time, alcoholics were, were people that they pointed to. And there were people that, that they used to say, if you don't stop, you'll wind up like him or her. And for a long time, nobody really knew what alcoholics meant. Nobody really knew what alcoholics was. But alcoholics goes back a long way. Solomon talks about alcoholics in the Bible. As a matter of fact, they told me that the reason the pilgrims got off at Plymouth Rock is because they ran out of booze. And, and, and, you know, when you run out of booze, you get off wherever you're at. But, but the, the, the, the problem of alcoholics goes back a long way. It goes back, as a matter of fact, as far back as the early 1700s, around the time the Declaration of Independence was being formulated. There was a doctor named Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who did a treatise on alcoholism. And he said in his treatise that alcoholism was a disease and the only, the only cure for it was total abstinence. And, and for many, many years, no one had ever saw that treatise. No one ever read it. It, it, it was lost somewhere. And, and so nobody knew that there was a solution. Nobody knew that there was a way out. And, and back in the early part of the, the middle of the 18th century, just before the Civil War, there was another group of people, as a matter of fact, in, in a tavern in Baltimore. A group of drunks were drinking. They were drinking. They were sitting around one night and they heard about this movement up in Washington. And one of them decided he'd go up to Washington and find out what it was all about. And it turned out to be a, a movement called the Washingtonians. And the Washingtonians was part of the old temperance movement. And, and, and before long, the Washingtonians grew to be a huge movement. They had stadiums and chapters and groups. All over the United States. Abraham Lincoln spoke at one of their rallies. And then all of a sudden, the Civil War broke out. And they began to choose up sides. And before you knew it, they'd be got involved, they'd be, they'd got involved with politics and they forgot what their primary mission was. They forgot what their purpose was. And why they were even there. And before you knew it, the whole Washingtonian movement collapsed. And the one thing that they never did, the one thing that, that, that made them different is that they never wrote it down. They never had any treaties. They never had any recipe book to, to show how it worked. And so whoever heard of the Washingtonians, except maybe people who are in Alcoholics Anonymous. And, and not long after that, there was another group of people. They, they were the religious science movement. Mary Eddy Baker and Ernest Holmes and Emmet Fox. William James, who's mentioned in our book. They began to, to have a notion that if you could put science and religion together somehow in a symbiotic relationship. You could, you could help the alcoholic. You could treat the alcoholic. And it began to work. They set up these clinics. And, and, and the Emanuel movement was born. And sure enough, alcoholics began to get hurt. And they started to get hurt. And they started to get hurt. And pretty soon, the religious people got into an argument with the scientific people. Each thought that their method was right. And they began to argue and fight. And before you know it, their movement collapsed. And again, they didn't write it down. They didn't have any tradition. They didn't have any, any movement, any, any message of how it worked. And so the, their movement became part of that great myth that went along with alcoholism is just bad. And if, if you have free will or, or if you're, if you're a good person, you can start drinking. You can start drinking. And not long after that, there was a, a minister. He was up in the New, New England area. His name was Frank Buckman. And he was a very charismatic person. And he had a mission that helped invalid children and homeless children. And there was a church and some other local people that supported him. And he got into a row and argument with them. And he, and, and in and a half, he, he, he left and he went to England. He went up to Oxford. And being the kind of charismatic person that he was, he started his movement in England, helping people. And he, he developed a, a simple set of principles that people followed. It was called the absolutes. The four absolutes. Absolute honesty. Absolute unselfishness. Absolute purity. And absolute love. And they called themselves third Christian cent, or third century Christians. And they went all over England. And they began to teach these simple principles. And people began to get help and relief. And someone thought, maybe we can take these simple principles and, and take them down to South Africa. They were having a lot of racial problems. They were South African. They said, maybe these principles can help alleviate some of these tensions. And so they did. The problem was that they were a mixed race group. They had Asians and Indians and other groups of people. And in, under the apartheid laws in South Africa, they couldn't all travel together. So they made a deal with the South African government that if they would be allowed to travel together, they would all ride in one railroad car. And so they agreed to that. And they put a sign on the railroad car. And they called it the Oxford Group. And the Oxford Group went all over South Africa. They didn't change anything. The apartheid laws were pretty much the same. But the Oxford name stuck. And when they came back, they left South Africa. Many of them came back to the United States. And small Oxford groups began to spring up all over. There was one out in Akron. There was one in Cleveland. There was one in New York. And then a very strange thing began to happen. Drunks started showing up at these Oxford Group meetings. And they started to get sober. Now, that was never the intent of the Oxford Group members. As a matter of fact, they would have much preferred if the Oxford, I mean, if the drunks didn't show up in their meetings. You know, drunks can get noisy and disrupt stuff. But they kept coming. And they kept getting sober. And one of the drunks that showed up was a guy named Roland who had been all over Europe, had been treated by Carl Jung. And Carl Jung had told him that he had never seen an alcoholic like him ever get sober, except if he had had some kind of psychic experience, some kind of psychic phenomena, something that would change his life. He said that that's the only time he ever heard of a drunk of his type. Getting any relief. Well, Roland came back to New York. And he hooked up with a group down in lower Manhattan who was run by a guy named Sam Shoemaker. And it was an Oxford Group. And lo and behold, Roland got sober. And after he was sober for a while, he remembered a guy that he knew in Vermont. The guy's name was Ebi Thatcher. And Ebi was the real winner. The last time he was sober was in the early 90s. And Roland had heard from Ebi. Ebi had driven his car into a kitchen, a farmhouse kitchen, stepped out of his car and asked the wife of the farmer for a cup of coffee. And they were going to put Ebi away for life. Well, Roland went up there and he talked to the judge. And he told the judge that he thought he could help him. And he brought Ebi down to New York and brought him to the Oxford Group. And sure enough, Ebi got sober. And then Ebi remembered a guy that he knew. Also from Vermont. And he remembered that his friend Bill Wilson was an awful drunk. He was living in New York. And maybe he could help this guy. So Ebi called Bill up one day. And he says, can I come over and see you? And Bill was kind of glad to hear from him. He hadn't heard from Ebi for a while. And he invited Ebi over. And as he hung up the phone, he remembered that Ebi drank a lot. And Bill had just promoted a bottle of gin. And he really wasn't all that happy about sharing that. He was really happy about sharing his bottle of gin. But when Ebi got over and they were sitting at the kitchen table, Bill offered them a drink. And Ebi said, I'm not drinking today. And Bill was polite. And he said, well, are you on a water wagon? And Ebi said, no. I met up with a group of people. And I learned some simple principles. And I don't have to drink anymore. And Bill said, well, what are they? And Ebi told him, he said, you get honest with yourself. You talk it out with another person. You help other people wherever you can. You make restitution. And you pray to whatever god you know. And Bill thanked him. And Ebi left. It wasn't too long after that that Bill wound up out in Towns Hospital, probably for the last time. And as he was walking into the hospital, he told old Doc Silkworth, he said, this time I got something, Doc. This time I really got something. He was waving a bottle of gin at the time. But he said, this time I got something. And it was that night, while he was in town, that Ebi came and visited him again. And he asked him, he said, what was that neat little formula you told me about, that I don't have to drink anymore? And Ebi told him, he said, you get honest with yourself. You talk it out with another person. You help other people wherever you can. You make restitution for people you might have harmed. And you pray to whatever god you know. And he left. Well, that night Bill went into his room. And Bill was kind of an agnostic. And he wasn't a really true believer. But he was at that point that he talks about himself, that we get to, where we're at the bottom of the helplessness. We're at the pit of helplessness and hopelessness and despair has us in its grip. And there's nothing else that we can do. And we're at the bottom of the pit of hopelessness. And there's nothing else that we can do. And there's nothing else for us to do except surrender. And Bill was in his room. And while he didn't really believe in what he was doing, he cried out and he said, if there is a god, will you show yourself? And he describes it as a blinding flash. And being on a mountain top with the wind rushing through his body. And he thought to himself, this must be the god of our fathers. And shortly after that, Dr. Silkworth came into the room. And Bill asked him, am I crazy? Have I really gone off? And old Doc Silkworth, who was really a wise man, said, no. You haven't gone crazy. Something's happened to you. You've changed. And whatever it is, you better hold on to it because it's so much better than what you had. And it wasn't too long after Bill, got out of Towns Hospital, and he had stopped drinking, that Bill got back into his old business. You know, they called Bill a stockbroker. Bill was a stock speculator. Bill used to sell fast talking to slow thinking people is what he did. And Bill had a deal going on out in Akron where he figured he was going to go out there and take over by proxy this company. And he was going to take over. And he was going to be on a roll again. And so he went out to Akron to promote this deal. And many of you know this story. The deal collapsed. And he found himself in a hotel. And he didn't know what to do. He was sort of on one end there was a bar, and on the other end there was a church directory. And he walked down and he called somebody from one of the church directories. And he told them, he said, I'm a rum-dum from New York and I need to talk to another alcoholic. And you know, when you call somebody cold in the 30s and say you're a drunk and you need to talk to some other drunk, they might think you're a little strange. You know, one drunk at a time is bad enough. When you want to talk to a lot of them, you could be looked at very, very strangely. But for some reason, Reverend Tunks, who got the call at the time, didn't do that. He put him onto a list of people and he called a whole list of people. And the last person he called was a woman named Henrietta Seibeling who happened to be part of an Oxford group. And when he talked to Henrietta and told him that he was a rum-dum from New York and he needed to talk to another alcoholic, Henrietta said, our prayers have been answered. And he didn't understand that until a long time afterwards. It turns out that Dr. Bob, for many years, had been going to Oxford group meetings. And he had never admitted that he was an alcoholic. They all knew, the whole group knew he was an alcoholic because he was always drunk. But he would never admit that he was an alcoholic. And a week before Bill came to Akron, he was at an Oxford group meeting and he finally admitted that he was an alcoholic. And the group was so relieved, they asked, yes, would you like us to pray for you? And he said, yes. Will you pray for him? And a week later, Bill Wilson shows up in Akron saying he's a rum-dum from New York and he needs to talk to another alcoholic. And Bill and Bob got together. And Bill talks about that it's a strange kind of tapestry we weave. Where if you look at a tapestry, and on the picture side of the tapestry, it's a beautiful, beautiful full illustration of whatever picture it is. But if you pull a string in one part of the tapestry, something will move on the other part. And if you move one part of the tapestry, it'll change the picture. And it's the way our fellowship came together. There are so many strange things. The history of Alcoholics Anonymous, the way it came about is extraordinary. It's fascinating. I can go on for hours. But I think it's suffice to say that in the beginning, just the coincidences of those people coming together the way they did was extraordinary. And it had to be the hand of God. It turns out that Roland, the first person who went to the Oxford Group meeting, came from Vermont. Bill W. came from Vermont. Ebby Thatcher came from Vermont. And Dr. Bob came from East Virginia. And Dr. Johnston came from St. Johnsbury in Vermont. And somehow all those different people from all those various places came together and brought us here tonight. To where we are tonight. And to say that the hand of God had not been part of that would really lead someone to wonder. Because it is by the grace of God that we are here. It's by the grace of God that I'm here. Because for all intents and purposes, I should not be standing here. I come from the east side of Manhattan, what's known as Spanish Harlem. And Spanish Harlem is a neighborhood where you grow up very quickly or you stand a good chance of not growing up at all. And in my neighborhood, in my neighborhood, by today's standards, they would probably call me an entrepreneur. In those days, I was a hustler. I used to find stuff before it officially got lost. If it was small enough, you just stole it. If it was too big to carry, you just sort of laid down next to it and cleaned it. And I remember there was a kid in my neighborhood, they used to send social workers in to study us. I didn't know I lived in a ghetto until I got out of it. One of them asked me one day how far it was to the subway. I told him I don't know. I told him I don't know. Nobody ever made it. You grow up in an environment like that, you learn how to live one day at a time very early on. See, I knew about the one day at a time deal long before I got in here. Because in my neighborhood, you trusted what was in your pocket. Those are the things that you could rely on. You know, words like honesty and integrity and commitment were alien words to me. You know, you did what you had to do. Growing up in New York and Harlem in those days, if you didn't know how to fight, you could be in deep trouble. And one of the things that I learned early on was that if you hit somebody first, they had a tendency to leave you alone. And that's what I used to do. I learned how to box. And I started fighting, and people had a tendency to leave me alone. But the problem is with boxing and fighting in the ring, you develop this great stone faith. You know, you can't let people know that. You can't let people know that you're hurt or that you're angry. The fastest way to get your head knocked off is to let somebody know that you're angry. So you develop this great facade, this stone facade. And what happens is that I carried that over. I could stuff my feelings down, and nobody would ever know how I felt because I'd always looked the same. And that carried me on for a long time. Because as an alcoholic, I never really wanted people to know how I felt. I never wanted people to ever get too close to me. And so I had this wall out here. And every time somebody would try to get close to me, I'd put another brick in the wall, and it got a little higher. And any time somebody would try to get close to me or learn something about me, I'd put another brick in it, and the wall got higher and higher and higher. And pretty soon I was behind the wall, and I couldn't get out. And I didn't realize that there was a way out until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't realize that I didn't have to try to go through the brick, I could go around it. I didn't learn what I know in Alcoholics Anonymous because I have three university degrees. I learned it by running into that brick wall 14 times before I realized that you can go around. I love the story my old sponsor used to tell about the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic and how you could tell the difference. He'd say, there'd be two doors at the end of the hallway, and over one door there's a sign that says, Peace and Happiness. Peace and Happiness. And inside the other door there's a guy with a baseball bat. Now, the non-alcoholic will come down the hallway, and he goes through the door, the guy with the baseball bat, and the guy hit him right in his head. He'd turn around, come back out of the hallway. Same two doorways, non-alcoholic goes up the hallway, he looks at the two doors, sees Peace and Happiness, and he goes through the door with Peace and Happiness, and has Peace and Happiness for the rest of his life. Now, the alcoholic will come down the hallway, and they're the same two doors, and he goes right through the door, and there's the guy with the bat, hits him right in the head. He turns around, comes back down the hallway, turns around, goes right back up the hallway, same two doors, goes right back through the doorway, the guy with the bat is right there, hits him right in the head. Turns around, comes back down the hallway, turns around, goes halfway up the hallway, but this time he stops, and he thinks to himself, maybe he won't be in there this time. Yeah. Maybe I can get away with it. Goes through the door, the guy with the baseball bat is gone. Now the alcoholic goes looking for him. That was me. Running into that brick wall 14 times before I realized there was a way around it. Back in the early 50s when the Korean War was going on, I knew I was going to get drafted, and I didn't want to go in the Army, so I figured I'd join the Navy, and I figured I'd join the National Guard. Real slick, right? Join the National Guard. The minute I joined, they got federalized, and I wound up on active duty. And they sent me down to an alcoholic's paradise. They sent me down to El Paso, Texas, Fort Bliss, Texas, right on the border, right across from Juarez, Mexico. And I don't know if anybody's ever been down that part of the country, but you can walk across the bridge. And sometimes during the dry, dry season, the riverbed is dry, and you can walk across right underneath the bridge. But I didn't know that there was a 40-foot dropout there, and I tried to drive a Jeep across there one time. I think it's still out there. But I was walking across the bridge going into Juarez one night, and we're walking down, a buddy and I, and we're breaking rum bottles on the lamppost. And the Mexican police take a very dim view of that. And I wind up in a Mexican jail. Now, when I was a little kid, we used to go to movies, and you'd see the pirate pictures with Errol Flynn, and they'd be dancing around, doing sword fights and whatnot. And then you'd see the Spanish dungeons with the chains and the bars on the doors. I thought it was all make-believe until I got into a Mexican jail. And what happened was, I was boxing at the time. I was fighting in the army, and my CO was a fight fan, and he came and he got me out. And I think that that's the story of the alcoholic. We seem to get into some of the damnedest situations, and somehow we manage to get out. I remember once they asked me to leave jail. They actually asked me to leave. Little town, upstate New York, you can't drink in the street, and I'm sitting on the curb, sucking out of this wine bottle. Police came by, said, get in, and I got in. Took me to their jail, a brand new jail. They put me in a cell, laid down, lit a cigarette, and the mattress caught on fire. They took me out of that cell, put me next door into another cell, lit a cigarette, laid down in the mattress, fell asleep, and the mattress caught on fire again. And the guy came and said, you have to leave. We don't have any more, you gotta go. And they took me out to the edge of town, let me out, and I thought I got over again. I just got over again, because we never, because we never really see ourselves the way we really are. Other people see us, clearly. Other people can look at us and see us clearly. Alcoholism is the kind of disease that says there's nothing wrong with you. We never see what's wrong with us. And so, the kinds of bizarre things kept happening to me. I used to hang out in one of the upholstered sewers in New York called the Old Commodore Club on 42nd Street. A lot of newspaper people hang out in there. And I remember sitting in the Commodore, and I'd be sitting on the bar stool, and I'd be looking in the mirror, and I would see what I considered to be this suave, debonair guy looking back at me, and my fly would be open. We don't see ourselves the way we are. Other people can look at us and see us very clearly. And so, those are the kinds of things. I got out of Texas, and they sent me to another alcoholics, they sent me to another alcoholics paradise. You know, they lost money on me in the service. They sent me to military schools almost the entire time I was in the Army. And I'm probably one of the few people in the United States that can arm a barometric fuse for a hydrogen warhead. They taught me how to do that. I often wonder what would have happened if I fell asleep at one of those consoles. None of us would have been in here. But they sent me up to Huntsville, up to Redstone Arsenal. Had the same kinds of things happen, the bizarre things. They used to have what was called Poor Richard's Wednesday. And you could go out on the post, and they'd give you a shot of booze was a quarter, and I think a steak dinner was about a dollar. And I got pretty well fired up, and I was living off post at the time, and I had a car, and I was driving back, and something in my alcoholic mind said to go back out on the post. So I'm from New York, and I know how to do all these cool, slick things, and I checked around, looked all by myself, and I had a car behind me, and I made what I considered a fantastic U-turn on a lane where you're not supposed to make U-turns. And as near as I can figure out, they had to be in the trunk of my car. Because the minute I made that turn, there they were, two six-foot-six Alabama state troopers. I spent most of my life in law enforcement. It is not a good idea to argue with state troopers in the best of circumstances, but for me to argue with them in Alabama is insane. I mean, absolutely insane. The thing is, I got away with it. I got away. If you enjoyed this talk tonight, you should have heard me talking to them state troopers. They said, get this one out of here. And they let me go. They let me go. It wasn't too long after that that I came back to the South Bronx again, and I did another really alcoholic thing. I got married. And the only reason I got married was because my brother got married. And you know how things are. The old gang is breaking up and everybody's going their separate ways. So I got married. And as God would have it, I married a beautiful person. And she probably became my greatest enabler. And we proceeded to begin to raise a family. And by this time, I had left the department of the Army, and I had taken an examination. I wound up on New York City Police Department. And that was an experience all by itself. Working on the police department. I worked down in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Everybody had been down there. There was bars on every corner. I was drunk two-thirds of the time, and I was locking drunks up. I'd take them to court, and they'd have to hold me up in front of the... That was a disaster. But it was very... God moves in mysterious ways, because I had applied to take another test, and I wound up working in the court. I worked as a warrant officer in the criminal court. And then it was really easy. I worked a straight nine to five. I worked with a judge. And I didn't have the kind of pressure that you have walking a beat out on the street. The problem is working in the New York City court system is if you're not an alcoholic, you will become one. Because that's what happened. I worked in the criminal court with every judge I worked with was an alcoholic that should have been a hit. As a matter of fact, one is. But... A typical day in the court that I used to work in is like I would call the calendar, and we would have the first call, and then the judge and I would go back in his chambers, and we'd knock back a few. I had one judge that had his own Scotch in Portland with his name on it. We used to go back and drink a few, and we'd come back for the second call, and after the second call, we'd go to lunch. And we'd come back from lunch to be at four o'clock in the afternoon, and we'd go to lunch, and we'd go to lunch, and send all the prisoners back to Rikers Island. They used to wonder why nobody ever got sentenced in our court. Needless to say, at this time, things at home were not getting better. You can't live the kind of life as an active alcoholic when by this time I had two small children, and things were beginning to deteriorate very, very quickly. And things that should be done that weren't being done were not being done. Bills weren't being paid. My wife would need things and would complain. I would come home from work, and she would have prepared a very nice dinner. And knowing that I was drunk or getting drunk, I would just walk past them all and walk in the back and close the door and start to drink. And it wasn't that I didn't love my family. I did love them. I loved them very, very much. I didn't want to do things, but I had no sense of responsibility. I always wanted to be this kind of pillar of society. I always wanted to be this person that people looked up to. And I had no sense of responsibility, and I couldn't do the things that responsible people would do. I couldn't promise my children, I'll take you to a ball game on Saturday or to the circus on Saturday, because I knew by Saturday I'd probably be drunk. And so I never promised them anything. And so the bricks got hard. And the walls got higher and higher. And nobody could get to me, but I couldn't get out. And the higher the bricks got, the more closed in I got. They say alcoholics are loners, and I don't believe that. I believe alcoholics are very private people. We are very private people. We teach ourselves. We seek our own counsel. It gets us in trouble most of the time, but we do that. We look to ourselves and we answer our own questions. And we go inward. And that's what was happening to me. I started to close in. And in the meantime, all the pressures began to build up. I was having trouble on the job. I was getting these, you know, you get the letters come in the mailbox with the big red letters on the outside that says, pay up or die. And the phone would ring, and you'd be afraid to pick up the phone. And you'd walk down the street looking over your shoulder, and the fears began to build up. And the pressure at home. And I decided one day, and if you can do this, you can take this disease to the moon. I decided one day it was their fault. It was all their fault. If the job would leave me alone, my wife would quit bothering me, if all these people would stop running after me for money for bills, I would be okay. And somehow I thought that if I could get away from all this, somehow, somehow, somebody would wave a magic wand and it would all go away. And so I thought, so I walked out. I walked out of my house with a beautiful wife, two lovely children, and I wound up in one room. And you see the picture around our rooms in various places with an alcoholic sitting on the bed and two AA's talking to him. That was me. In one room. With a dangling light bulb and broken window shade to get away from peace of mind. And I used to go out during the day. By this time, I had lost my job. I was unemployable. And I would wander around the streets and I would panhandle a few bucks from people that I used to know. And I'd get enough for a bottle and I'd go back to the room and I'd just drink until I got unconscious. Finally, I couldn't even afford the room and I wound up out in the street. And living in the street is really very simple. You only have to worry about where you're going to get your drinks at one day at a time. And that's where I was. I was out in the street, totally unemployable. I remember walking up and down the streets in the freezing winter trying door knobs or car doors, trying to get in out of the cold. And I had a family I could go to. But because of the pride and the ego of the alcoholic, I wouldn't go back there. I'd stay out in the street. I remember once I was in a basement, a dark, dingy basement with a dirt floor. And I'll never forget it because it had an automatic burner and every time the burner would fire, I'd hear Handel's Messiah. I hate the thing today. Every time I went out, I'd hear the whole Handel Hallelujah chorus. And I saw the Bonham and Bailey Circus go through that basement, those lions and tigers, the whole nine yards. But it was one of those times that we all know, you're not quite drunk and you're not quite sober. And you have that moment of clarity. And I came to in that basement and I looked around and I was dirty and filthy, laying on a dirt floor. I hadn't bathed. And I thought, what are you doing here? What are you doing in this basement? I come from a good family. I'm relatively intelligent. I have a good education. What are you doing in this basement? And I had no answer. And I did what I always did. Whenever I got into a jackpot, every time I got into trouble, I would pray to God. But my prayers was making a deal. You know, you do this for me and I'll do that for you. And nothing happened. At least I thought nothing happened. Because I know today that God was with me in that basement. That God was there every single step of the way. That God had been by my side leading me the path that I was on directly to these doors. Of course, I had no knowledge of that at the time. But I realize today that without the hand of God directly intervening, I would not be standing here tonight. But in that basement, I had no knowledge of that. I thought nothing had happened. I realize today that in the book of Ecclesiastic, in the 23rd chapter, it says that for everything there is a season and a purpose under the heavens. There is a time to live and a time to die. And I believe that there is a line somewhere. There is a point that we all get to beyond which God will not allow us to go. There is a level of pain somewhere that God will not allow us to go below. And we all reach that point sometime. And when we reach that point, some of us die. And some of us find our way to Alcoholics Anonymous. But however we get to that point, whatever brings us there, once we reach it, we don't have to drink anymore. And I realize that I was at that point. Looking back in hindsight, I was at that point where God was saying, I was at that point where God was about to step in directly and intervene in my life. Because it wasn't too long after that, I had somehow managed to hang on to my chauffeur's license. And I used to, from time to time, I'd get jobs running dumps out in Staten Island where I lived at the time. And I was on my way back to the yard with the truck one night, and I blacked out. I had been having these chills and coughs, and I thought it was a cold. And I blacked out at the wheel, and I went off the curb and almost ran out into the river. Nothing really happened. The cops came and they got it back up on the road. And they suggested I go get an x-ray. And they took me down, and I had some x-rays made. And I forgot all about it until the next morning, some colleagues and I were sitting around, and we had just invested in a bottle of wine. And I got this phone call, very strange phone call. A lady said that I had to come to the hospital immediately. Well, I explained to this lady I had just invested my money in this bottle of wine, and I was not about to go anyway. But she said that if you don't come down here, we're going to send the cops out and get you. Well, I didn't know what it was all about, but I really didn't want to see any cops, and I didn't want to get hassled. So I decided to go. And not to make a long story longer, I had tuberculosis. And I had tuberculosis so seriously, when I got to the hospital, they wouldn't allow me to go back to get clothes, nothing. They said I was a carrier, and I had to go into isolation immediately. And I realized that was the hand of God working. And it may seem strange today to know that was the best thing that happened to me. Getting a serious disease is not a simple thing, but I know today it was the best thing that happened to me. Because they put me out into an isolation ward, out in the tip end of Staten Island, in a tuberculosis hospital. And I was there for over a year. And in that time, what happened is I had the opportunity, probably for the first time in my entire life, to finally stop long enough to check the record. I was in the hospital where I couldn't get out of bed. All I had time to do was think. And I look back over my life, and I realize every single time I got into any difficulty, any time I went to jail or lost a job or got into a fight, or any time something bad happened to me, I was either drinking or I was drunk. And I think laying in that hospital, a cement block up here lifted and a message went through, there's something wrong with you. And it has to do with alcohol. And I don't know how it was for you, but for me, I think it was the first instance of grace entering into my life. Because it was the day that I was about to be discharged that I was sitting on the side of the bed, and I had gotten familiar with the supervising nurse on my ward, not knowing that she was one of you sneaky alcoholics that had been watching my shenanigans the whole time I was in there. And I was sitting on the side of the bed, and I knew I was getting out of bed, and I knew I was getting out of there the next day, and she came over and she sat down next to me. She knew I was very quiet, very subdued, which was totally unlike me. And she said, what's the matter? And I told her, I told her I was afraid. I was afraid to go back out. While I was in the hospital, I was in a protected environment. I had everything done for me. I knew that the moment I stepped outside the doors of that hospital, I'd be right back on that merry-go-round, like Alice in Wonderland, running twice as fast, to stay exactly where I was. And I was afraid. I was afraid to go out. And I told her I was afraid to go out. And she asked me the question that we're all asked in one form or another. She asked me if I really wanted help. And I said, truthfully and honestly, for probably the first time in my life, yes, I need help. And she arranged for me to get to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I didn't know what I was getting into. And I walked into the door of Alcoholics Anonymous, down at the old Snug Harbor Group in Staten Island, and I met the man who was to become my sponsor. God bless him. He died in 1985. I used to call him my walking stick. God bless him. Ellie was the kind of sponsor that was just right for me. And he showed me the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And he said, everything you will ever need is in this book. Well, my scheme in mind went right to work. When I left out of that hospital, everything I owned, I walked out in a shopping bag, and that had a hole in it. And I figured that if everything I needed was in this book, maybe I could figure out how to get a loan out of this book. So I read it. I read the book from cover to cover, and I came back, and I said, Ellie, I can't get a loan out of this book. And he said, yes, you can. Everything you'll ever need is in that book. And he said, I can't get a loan out of this book. And I said, I can't get a loan out of this book. And he said, yes, you can. Everything you'll ever need is in that book. And he was right. He was absolutely right. Because we started on that walk. We started on the miraculous walk that we all know about here. And I don't know how it was for you, but for me, there were so many things that I didn't know and didn't understand. And Ellie being the kind of person that he was, well, he was the kind of support. He would tell me very, very often, he would caution me. He would say, I'm going to use this weapon between my ears, is what he used to say. He used to say, three words that you never want to hear an alcoholic say is I've been thinking. Whatever comes after that is going to be a butte. So all the things I didn't understand, he said, you don't have to understand. It isn't necessary for you to understand. All you really need to do is understand that there is a power greater than yourself that can do for you what you can't do for yourself. And he began to explain to me what this journey, what we talked about, we were going to go, the journey we were going to take and what it was going to do and where it was going to go. He explained to me that spiritually, we're going to build ourselves an arch. We're going to build an arch. He said, and when that arch is completed, we're going to be able to step through that arch into a sunlight, a sunlight of the spirit. And he told me, he said that the foundation of that arch is our first step. He said it just makes sense. Our first step tells us what's wrong with us. It tells us the problem. We're powerless. We're powerless over alcohol. The result of that, our lives are unmanageable. It doesn't take a rocket science to figure that out. I see people writing stuff down about alcohol. I see people writing stuff down about the first step. All he wanted us to understand is that we have a problem and that we are powerless over alcohol. And as a result of that, our lives are unmanageable. He said that the cornerstone of that arch is the solution. And the solution is finding a power. What we have to do is come to believe that there is a power greater than ourselves. And if you can believe that, you can do anything. If you believe that there is a power greater than yourself that can restore you to sanity, you can do anything. Well, first thing that came to my mind is that he thought I was crazy. And I didn't mind that so much, but he said, no, that isn't what we're talking about. He said when we restore to sanity, if you look what sanity means in a dictionary, it means a normal way of thinking. He said think of a pie. He said if you took a pie and you divided it into ten parts, and you gave away one part, you'd still have nine parts. If you gave away another part, you'd still have eight parts. It doesn't mean the pie is all gone, it's just not all there. And what he's saying isn't that you're all gone, you're just not all there. And what we're going to do is put these pieces back. Well, that made pretty good sense. He said the first thing you have to do is believe that it would happen. No, coming to believe is a process. It doesn't happen to everybody all at once, and it happens to people different ways. And I'll never forget the way it happened for me. And it happened back in the early 70s. If you remember, there was a whole series of pictures called Star Wars. And in one of the pictures called The Empire Strikes Back, there was one scene that stuck in my mind, and I don't even know why. God must have just planted it there. Where Luke Skywalker crashes his spaceship into a swamp. And Luke gets out of the spaceship and he walks around it trying to figure out what to do. And there's a little alien sitting up on a ledge named Yoda. And Yoda says, why don't you pick it up? And Luke says, I can't. And Yoda says, you can do anything that you want to do. And Luke says, okay, I'll try. And Yoda says, no, don't try. Do it or don't do it. And so Luke goes over and he reaches down and he tries to pick up this spaceship. And he can't budge it. And he walks over and he says, I can't do it. Yoda climbs down off his legs. He's about the size of a small dog, little spindly arms. And he reaches down under the spaceship and he lifts it up out of the water with one hand. And he sets it on dry ground. And Luke says to him, I don't believe it. Yoda looked him right in his eye and said, that's why you failed. You come to believe and when you do, you can do anything. I believe that there is a power greater than myself. I don't have to describe it. I don't have to draw a picture around it. I don't even have to see it. I'm the alcoholic. And an alcoholic's true test is to see something happen over and over and over and over. And every time I have turned my will and my life over to the care God as I understand him, things have happened the way they were supposed to. And what I realize today what was happening when I came to believe, I got faith. And the faith allowed me to step through that door into the unknown to find out who I was. And from that faith, I was able to do the steps that I needed to do to look at myself. Bill Wilson says that the dilemma of the alcoholic is that we have no power. And he tells us that the power, the real power, the great reality is deep down within every single one of us. And there are three things that we have to do for that power to come out. We have to rid ourselves of all bias. We have to think honestly. And we have to look inside ourselves diligently. And the power will emerge. And the power that emerges is awesome. Truly awesome. I'm always amazed when I see women come to Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, we have this kind of double standard in our society where a man can get drunk and fall down and roll around in the gutter and get up the next day and take a shower, put on a clean shirt and go out. And nobody thinks anything about it. But if a woman does that, if a woman does anything that taints her reputation for whatever in our society, she's tainted. It's almost as if men reject the kinds of things that are important to women. Men have always rejected women's issues all through history. And we almost program women to believe that there's something wrong with them, that they're lesser than other people. It's like there's a demon on the ground. It's like there's a demon on their shoulder that says you're no good and you're not worthy. Somebody once asked me, can you kill the demon? And the answer is no. You can't kill the demon. But you can educate him. You can educate the demon right off your shoulder. And what happens when women come to Alcoholics Anonymous, they learn how to educate the demon right off your shoulder. And during that process, we say to them, let us love you until you can love yourself. And before long, you see women emerge like beautiful flowers. And the light goes on and the smile comes from here and they aren't smiling with their teeth anymore. And you begin to see them for the beautiful creatures of God that they really are. And that's the power and the force that comes from us. As we realize that what we have is a mystical cord of God. A mystical cord of grace that binds us one to another. God's given us a gift that allows us to talk one to another. So I can talk to another alcoholic and he can hear what I'm saying. My old sponsor says, we're not interested in what you are. We want to find out what you are not. And we're going to get rid of all of that. And who you are will show up. And so we began to take that walk. I don't know about you, but I don't know anybody that looked up on the wall and saw eight or ten things and all those stuff that they really wanted to do. Because I didn't see any. Well, my sponsor said, you do it. You take the action and you get the result. So I took the action. I began to take the action. I began to follow what he said. I wrote the inventory. And then I went and I talked it out with another person. I talked it out with an alcoholic priest who began to tell me the exact nature of my life. And I said, I'm wrong. And I put another block into that arch. And then I knew then after I had talked it out with another human being and to God at the same time, I knew there was no mistake who I was, what I was. What do I do now? I had to find a bridge. I had to find a bridge to go from what I was to what I wanted to become. And they gave me the six steps. The six steps that says that we are entirely ready to have God remove those defects of character. Well, that was news to me because I was all set to have God remove those defects of character. But I didn't want them to be removed too quickly. The statute of limitations hadn't run out on some of my stuff. And I didn't want to get too honest too soon. But he said, that isn't what we're talking about. He said, you can't do anything. You set up the condition. He said, a farmer can't grow anything. He sets up the condition. He plants the seeds. He waters the soil. But God will make the plants grow. The farmer sets up the condition where God can do the work. A doctor can't heal anybody. He can diagnose the illness. He can prescribe a treatment. He can prescribe medication. He can set up the conditions. But God will do the healing. We can't change anything. But when we become willing to have God do it for us, we set up the condition. And all we have to do is ask. Humbly ask. And God will do it for us. Not only that, they wrote it down. They wrote it down in the prayer. And our book says very clearly. That God removed these defected characters from me so I can go out from here and do your will. And as those defected characters become less and less, the bricks become lower and lower. And I began to see over them. And the arch got wider and higher. And then I knew there were certain things that I had to do. I had to go back and I had to restore some of the things that I had torn down. I had to make restitutions and repair the relationship. And so I did what they suggest. I made a list of all those persons. And I thought that that was the deal. You make a list and you go out. And my sponsors say, you say to the people that you regret what happened. This is something I can do to make it right. And I thought that was it. I didn't realize that the real payoff, the real payoff to making that list and making amends was that. I got free. The chains came off. I wasn't afraid anymore. I could walk down the street and look somebody squarely in the eye again. The freedom began to come to me then. More and more and more abundance. And I realized what they say in the book was true. That if we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We will know our new freedom. And a new happiness. I know we will forget one time I was in a meeting with something like this. And after I finished talking, the speaker said, well, we will have some questions now. Guy in the back got up and he says, you know that part in the book where it says that you will be amazed before you are halfway through? I said, yeah. He said, well, how do you know when you are halfway through? I said, are you amazed? He said, no. I said, you ain't halfway through. Now, I'm not. We will know our new freedom and a new happiness. Things that used to baffle us, we will intuitively know how to handle. No matter how far down the scale we have gone. We will no longer wish to shut the door on the path. God will do for us what we could not do for ourselves. And as we move forward and we're beginning to see the light now. It's beginning to come on. And we understand what they're talking about now. There is a freedom here. And a happiness. We've built up a set of checks and balances if we've done this properly. That from this point on, whenever we do anything wrong, we don't feel right. If we've done this properly, there's something wrong. We don't feel right. We start to get uncomfortable. We get that knot in here. So what we have to do is promptly make amends. We have to promptly admit our wrongs. We have to go to the Lord. We have to go out and seek out what's happening. I realize today that when there is something wrong, it isn't out there. It's right here. I need to look at myself. Continue to take that inventory of myself. And when I found what's wrong, I have to promptly admit it to someone else. Not because I care about especially how they feel. But I don't feel right. They've given me these checks and balances. Now I've got a scale. I've got to keep balance. And they've given me a step. They've given me a tool that allows me to look at myself so I can keep that balance the way it is. And if I want to continue to grow, if I want to continue to be that person who will continue to grow and still have the kind of feeling and sensitivity that God wanted us to have, I have to continue to seek His will through prayer and meditation. Continue to seek His will. And strive for knowledge of His will only. And I recognize today that seeking God's will simply means doing the things that I know God intends for me to do. He tells us in our book, what we have is a daily reprieve that is contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. And as long as I keep that conscious contact with God as I understand Him, that condition will grow and grow and grow. And I will continue to be strong and full of the kinds of things that God intended for me to have. A guy once told me, nobody can give you power. Power is something you have to take. And the power, the power that are in these rooms, the power that are in our fellowship is here for us to take. All we have to do is reach down inside of ourselves. And take it out. Justice is a byproduct of self-respect. When we begin to have the power, we begin to have our own self-respect. We understand our own self-worth. And when we know that we have worth and that we have strength and we have love and we have the things that will make us whole people, we can demand the justice that we deserve. We can demand the justice that we deserve. We can go out and take the justice that we deserve. So then justice becomes a byproduct of our self-respect. And our self-respect becomes a measure of our growth and our spiritual worth. And so spirituality and God as we understand them become one and the same. There is one mind with a billion faces. One love common to all men. And as we begin to seek that love, we begin to see that love. And as we begin to seek that love and that mind and that one understanding, we become whole people. And when we reach that point, we have gotten to the sunlight of the Spirit. And the 12th step tells us, having had an awakening as a result of these steps. And that's precisely what has happened to us. We have now gained the God consciousness. A sense of our own worth. A belief in who we are and what we are. And as we begin to understand that fully, we can go on now. And we can pass that on to another person. We can carry that message to an alcoholic who needs to hear that. And as long as we practice these things in all our affairs, that will continue to grow and grow and grow. And that's our process. It's not an abstract idea of one thing and another thing and another thing. It's a process. It's one huge picture. And once the picture is there, we can look at it. And as we say in our fellowship, we can step through into the sunlight of the Spirit and become part of the picture. And as we do that and our lives become full and whole, we see the truth and the wisdom of what they told us early on. In the beginning, they didn't know any of this. They didn't know any of this. What they knew was that they were 100 people who had recovered from a seemingly hopeless condition of the mind and the body. And what they wanted to do was to write that down so other people would know precisely how they did it. And they gave us this book. It's incredible. You know, when this book was first written, nobody knew what to call it. Nobody, you know. Bill Wilson, slick as he was, what he wanted to do was to call it Alcoholics Anonymous. But there was a whole group of people out in Akron that wanted to call it The Way Out. And there was another group of people in Cleveland that thought it ought to be called 100 Men. So he called up a friend of his that happened to come from Maryland, a guy named Fitz Humayo. And he said, Fitz, go up to the Library of Congress and see how many books there are up there called The Way Out, how many books called 100 Men. It turns out that there were 12 books called 100 Men, another 12 books called The Way Out, and there wasn't any book called Alcoholics Anonymous. So we got our name by default. We got our name, Alcoholics Anonymous, by this book. What we are, our fellowship of this book. And what we are, our fellowship of this book. And what we need to do is to take the message in that book and we pass it through the fabric of our lives. And then we pass it on out to somebody else out there. Some guy or gal that walked through that door for the first time. Somebody out there who may not understand one word I've said here tonight, but understand the feeling, the love, the process that happens when you come into a room of the church, the process that happens when you come into a room of Alcoholics Anonymous, where it's almost as though there's a cloud that precipitates out and sprinkles over all of us. And somehow it seeps in almost by osmosis. They know that feeling that no matter what they say or how it comes out, somebody in here will know what they're talking about. That happens when you come into a room of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it's what's kept me here for 25 years. One day at a time. One day at a time we carry our message to alcoholics who need to hear it. If there is a message in our fellowship, it is that we have the gift that God gave us. He allowed us inside of a golden circle. We stand inside that circle as children of God. As long as we're inside that circle, we're protected. That circle is our books, and our meetings, and our groups, and our fellowship, and our sponsors, and all the things that make us whole, or the circle that we stand inside. And I'll never forget the story my sponsor told me once. Michelangelo had just completed his statue of David. And one of his students saw the statue, and he went up to Michelangelo and he was awestruck. How could you sculpt such a perfect image? How could you do such a perfect sculpture? And Michelangelo said, I just chipped away everything that didn't belong there. And David came out. And I think that that's what happens here. We take all the tools that we have, our meetings, and our groups, and our books, and our topics, and we chip away, and we chip away, and we chip away, and we're what happened. We're what happened. The real challenge is to pass it on. I was very, very fortunate. I served on the General Service Board of Trustees for many, many years, and I got to meet many of the old timers. Dr. Jack Norris, Milton Maxwell, Chairman of our board. I knew Lois Wilson. She lived near me when I lived in Westchester County. I talked to her on many occasions. Many people, and they all say the same thing. The way that we have to keep it is to give it away. The message is to be shared with everybody. No matter who you are or where you come from, you can hear our message if you're an alcoholic. And that's the real challenge that we have here today. I've gotten so many gifts. Since I've been in Alcoholics Anonymous, it would take me the rest of the week to try and name them all. I remember the time, the incredible strength that I got from the members of my group and the members of Alcoholics Anonymous when my mother had to have her leg amputated. And I had to give the doctors permission to cut her leg off. But that wasn't as difficult as having to go and tell her that I gave the gift. I had to tell her that I gave them permission to cut her leg off. Tell her that that's what they were going to do. And be with her when they took her in the operating room and held her hand and told her that I loved her. That I was with her all the time. And when she finally passed on, the strength that I got from the people around me, the strength that just flowed out from the compassion and the sensitivity from the people around me, was something that no one could ever have if they weren't a member of this fellowship. When I finally became cognizant enough of what was going on, I looked around me and I found that my wife had died. She had contracted cancer during the time that I was out in the street and passed on. My children, I didn't know where they were. They were in a nursing home, in a foster home. And so, my old sponsor used to tell me on a regular basis, be careful what you pray for, because you might get it. Whenever God wants to punish you, He will answer your prayers. I went looking for my children and I got them. I got two teenage kids that I spent the next ten years raising. And that's another whole story. And they are fine human beings today. Both of them are in Alcoholics Anonymous. Laughter. Which isn't very surprising. I have a wonderful job I love today. I build houses that people can afford to buy. And I get a great deal of strength and satisfaction from that. But I think probably the greatest gift I have is this ability to share what I've learned. The power is in our experience. The power is in our experience, our collective experience. And our individual experience. If we were to take everybody in this room, put them in a rocket ship. There's a star out in the universe that's called Alpha Centaurus. It's 300 light years away. It would take 600 years for a rocket ship to get there. If we put everybody in this room in a rocket ship and shot them out toward that star. If we didn't tell them who they were when they started out, and they didn't tell every generation, generation after generation after generation, who they were and where they had come from, by the time they got out to the star, they'd be just a bunch of people floating out in space. Not knowing who they were or where they had come from. So the challenge is ours to carry the message and pass it on. To pass it on to the guy or the gal who walked through that door for the first time tonight. That's our message and that's our challenge. There's a pamphlet, one of our pamphlets that I love. It was pointed out to me very early on by a good member of mine who lives down, a member friend of mine who lives in Florida. It's called A Member's View of AA. And toward the end of the pamphlet, the author takes kind of a biblical turn. And he tells the story about the time when he was a child. He tells the story about the time that John was in one of Herod's jails for about the hundredth time. And while he was in jail, he hears about his cousin Jesus, who's out doing all kinds of miraculous things. And John sends for two of his followers and he says, go and find Jesus. And ask him if he is the Messiah. Ask him if he is the Messiah. Ask him if he is the Messiah. He says, he is the one we've been waiting for. So the men go out and they find the Lord and they walk with him for a while. And finally, one of them says to him, are you the Messiah? Are you the one we've been waiting for? And Jesus didn't answer them directly. What he said was to go back to John and tell John only what you have seen and only what you have heard. Tell John that the blind can see. And the deaf can hear. And the lame can walk. And the sick are made well. And the poor in spirit have been given the good news. Well, I'm here tonight to report, if you will accept the report from me, that I've come to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I can report to you truthfully that the blind do see. And the deaf can hear. And the lame do walk. And the sick are made well. And the poor in spirit have been given the good news of Alcoholics Anonymous over and over and over again because it's here in this room. Thank you very much.