Fr K. – The Cunning Baffling Power of Church Wine – 2005

About This Speaker Tape

Humorous Walk thru The 12 Steps - 2005

Father Larry Kowalski, a Polish Catholic priest from Oklahoma, dismantles the 12 Steps through a lens of gritty humor and raw self-exposure. He maps out a life defined by a deep-seated feeling of ugliness and a 'nomad' existence within his own family, using alcohol as a bridge to a world that otherwise rejected him. Larry is candid about the wreckage: stealing from the church poor fund, sexual struggles, and a history of 'camouflage' living. He frames the steps not as a pleasant journey, but as 'hemorrhoid surgery'—a painful but necessary process to stop the bleeding. He emphasizes the shift from taking others' inventories to finally looking inward, moving from a 52-page resentment list to a place of peace. He argues that sobriety is not the absence of alcohol, but the resolution of the alcoholism, achieved through a rigorous, often reluctant, adherence to sponsorship and meditation.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening joke about the town of donkeys and the priest falling into a hole.
• 12:15 Laughter: Larry discusses the 'cunning, baffling, powerful' nature of his own drinking habits.
• 18:30 Step 1: Larry discusses the inability to manage his own life and the feeling of not having a right to exist.
• 25:45 Discussion of the 'bridge' alcohol provided to overcome feelings of ugliness and isolation.
• 32:10 Step 4: Larry describes his 52-page resentment list and the process of updating inventories every two years.
• 40:20 Step 5: Larry shares the freedom of being 'open' and the risk of sharing his story with others.
• 50:15 Step 6 & 7: The 'hemorrhoid surgery' metaphor for the pain of working the steps.
• 58:40 Step 9: Amends to the dead and the necessity of giving the deceased permission to be dead.
• 65:10 Step 11: The importance of meditation as 'moving inside' the house of recovery.
• 72:00 Closing: The metaphor of the Magi and the danger of confusing knowledge of the program with actually working it.