He Thought He Was Top Dog in Marin County – Dick B.

This last segment is going to be on Bill Wilson and Sam Shoemaker. By now we've pretty much established the link to the Oxford Group, the link of the Bible. Bill had great respect for Sam Shoemaker and I'm going to take some of the time just to give you the flavor of this man, not so much the direct impact on AA. We know he had it. he had a businessman's team with a lot of people that Bill was in close touch with. This wasn't known until we started to investigate, but Shoemaker's journals show how many of these people Vic Kitchen, Roland Hazard, Charlie Clapp, Shep Cornell and many others that are not as familiar that Bill is in touch with on a daily basis Hanford, Twitchell, John Ryder These were all New York people, they were all in Shoemaker Circle. And then there were the clergy, Irving and Julia Harris, Garrett Sturley, John Potter Kyler, a whole bunch of clergy. Shoemaker had a great circle of clergymen around him that not all Episcopalians, some were Presbyterians, other denominations. And these people gathered there, not just in connection with Calvary Episcope Church, but with the life-changing mission of the oxford group and bill got swept up in that he belonged to a team for a while as i said he was marching down there to madison square garden climbing up on the rostrum and witnessing whether he read all of the shoemaker books i don't know but they went to lots and lots of meetings shoemaker led some of the meetings some of his circle of friends led the meetings a lot of the meetings were about witnessing. There are many, many descriptions in my books and elsewhere of what those meetings were About. They were about life-changing and what God had done for these people. I'm going to try and give you a flavor of a few Shoemaker major ideas. And then one of the things I did in my Shoemaker book, which I did not do elsewhere, is I just went chronologically and picked up on what this man had written about various subjects, almost all of them AA related. And it's not amiss to point out to you that Shoemaker, you know, where are the clergy today? I can't say for sure because I was very busy in San Diego, but I'm not aware of the presence of the clergy at an AA convention in the way that they used to be at the 20th anniversary convention. The whole gang was there, Shoemaker, Father Dowling, these people, and they spoke. And nobody was ashamed to have them. Shoemaker spoke in St. Louis at that convention. He spoke at the San Diego convention In St. Lewis, Father dowling spoke. At San Diego, another Roman Catholic priest spoke. It was a different flavor. and to give you some idea a shoemaker was named one of the 10 greatest preachers in america by newsweek in 1955. who were the others norman vincent peel billy graham and other people as well known as that and shoemaker worked on college campuses as i said he wrote over 20 over 30 books he was constantly writing um art for his own church uh monthly the cavalry evangel he preached sermons regularly and he spoke on the radio and i was down at princeton university and you never know what you're going to find there's usually always a goodie And I found an extract from his very first radio program, October 4th, 1945. And it was so neat because his daughters had described to me what he did. She said, well, you'd go in and there'd be Mom and Dad sitting in bed and they'd be reading the Bible and praying and so forth. And so here was a little description. It's called Morning Talk by the Reverend Samuel M. Shoemaker, gems for thought just five minutes on american broadcasting company and uh some of it is his little talk but then he says may i tell you what we do in our house when my wife and i get up the first thing we reach for is our bibles not a cigarette nor a drink nor the morning papal but our bables we read a chapter or two then we get quiet and spend some time in prayer Our older daughter usually comes in for this time of devotion with us. In quietness, we pray for the people, the causes, the immediate responsibilities of the day and ask God to direct us and to use us to do his work and his will. We ask him for direction. We work out our plans together. We get clear if anything has gotten between us. We include our daughter in our plans and talk about any decisions she may have to make. the family prayer time ought to be a kind of crucible in which human tensions are washed out and human problems solved by the advice and help of one another as we all wait upon god bring the family and business problems before him ask him about them and trust him to tell you begin the day that way and i'll think you'll have a good morning and a good afternoon and a great evening and a good life and he signed off and you know you almost think you're reading the pages of the big book on uh on the 11th step what we do in the morning and it's almost as if bill either directly followed those suggestions in writing the book but what a neat way to describe how he started the day and this isn't baloney his daughter before i'd ever found this was telling me this is what they did in the home that's just kind of a little flavor about how Sam talked and what he said in his public addresses. We'll get in a little bit later to what he's said to AA's at their conventions. What did Bill say about Sam Shoemaker? One thing about Bill Wilson is he was unstinting in his willingness to give credit where credit was due. These are some of the things he wrote. Every river has a wellspring at its source. AA is like that, too. In the beginning, there was a spring which poured out of a clergyman, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker. Way back in 1934, he began to teach us the principles and attitudes that afterward came to full flower in AA's 12 Steps for Recovery. In 1963, he wrote Sam, The 12 steps of AA simply represented an attempt to state in more detail, breadth, and depth what we've been taught, primarily by you. Without this, there could have been nothing. Nothing at all. Though I wish the co-founder tag had never been hitched to any of us, I have no hesitancy in adding your name to that list." In 1964, after Shoemaker's death, Bill wrote in memory of Sam, Our ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others, came straight from Sam. Therefore he gave to us the concrete knowledge of what we could do about our illness. He passed to us spiritual keys by which so many of us have since been liberated." Where did the early A.A.s find the material for the remaining ten steps? Where did we learn about moral inventory, amends for harm done, turning wills and lives over to God, meditation and prayer, and all the rest of it? The spiritual substance of our remaining ten steps came straight from Dr. Bob's and my own earlier association with the Oxford groups as they were then led in America by that Episcopal rector, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker." When Sam came before the AA conference, he wrote this afterwards. Sam's appearance before us was further evidence that many a channel had been used by Providence to create Alcoholics Anonymous, and none had been more vitally needed than the one opened through Sam Schumacher and his Oxford Group associates of a generation before. The basic principles which the Oxford groupers had taught were ancient and universal ones, common property of mankind. But the important thing is this. The early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America and from nowhere else. He will always be found in our annals as the one whose inspired example and teaching did most to show us how to create the spiritual climate in which we alcoholics may survive and then proceed to grow. AA owes a debt of timeless gratitude for all that God sent us through Sam and his friends in the days of AA's infancy. And then... In 1963, Bill wrote, You must remember, Sam, that you were the personification here in New York of all the best that went on in Calvary and in the Oxford group of A.A.'s early days, your impact on me and upon some of our other people was simply immense. So whether the transmission of grace occurred by night or day is quite beside the point. It is also entirely true that the substance of A.'s 12 steps was derived from the Oxford Group's emphasis on the essentials and your unforgettable presentation of this material time after time. After the alcoholics parted company with the Oxford Group here in New York, we developed a word-of-mouth program of six steps, which was simply a paraphrase of what we'd heard and felt at your meetings. The 12 steps of AA simply represented an attempt to state in more detail, breadth, and depth who had been taught primarily by you. Without this, there could have been nothing, nothing at all. Certainly there were other indispensable contributions without which we would probably have gotten no place, but none of these were so large or so critical as your own. Though I wish the co-founder tag had never been hitched to any of us, I have no hesitancy in adding your name to the list. And then his daughter told me, if I can find it, and if I cannot, I'll paraphrase it, Sam came up to Nicky, a shoemaker's younger daughter, at his funeral, or at least at the event afterwards in their home in Burnside. And he said Well, I can't find it but I'm going to paraphrase it. Don't ever let anybody tell you that I was the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous without your dab there would have been nothing nothing at all, and that touched her deeply. And the question is, was this just stuff that Bill was passing on because he was generous in his descriptions? Well, let's look at the other side. What did Shoemaker have to say? What did he have to Say? Why is it the wrong book? Bill Wilson found his spiritual change in this house when the Oxford group was at work here many years ago. I have had the closest touch with Bill from that day to this. As I say, this is one of the myths that somehow Bill pulled out of the Oxford Group and he never had anything to do and then later he came back and he and Sam were personal friends. Well, there are some loops. I hope I can get financing enough to go to the Episcopal Archives in Texas, and I know I'm going to find the same kind of letters, the same kinds of correspondence from 1935 to 1943 as somebody else found there in 43. And I know that when I see the rest of the Shoemaker journals, which I think are in existence from January 36 to 39, the same material is going to be there. and so sam is saying he's giving me a forecast of what i can find i've had the closest touch with bill from that day to this then he says in another communication it happens that i've watched the unfolding of this movement with more than usual interest for its real founder and guiding spirit bill w found his initial spiritual answer at calvary church in new york when I was rector there in 1935. And then he said, I never forgot that I was one of those who read the first mimeographed copy of the first book, Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm afraid with considerable skepticism for I was then under the shadow of the old group feeling that unless a thing were done directly under the auspices of the group it was as good as not done at all. And then I don't have it with me but Shoemaker apologized to Bill and it's in a footnote and pass it on and you can find it out in the other room and I may have my notes someplace. And he basically said, Bill, I was informed that you were off on your own spur. Well, Sam was an awfully busy man and I think when the, you know, everybody tells you about the chair through the plank glass window in Calvary Church and maybe that disturbed some people but Bill didn't throw it and the point was that, you know, there were two or three people there that were saying this guy is having separate meetings with drunks and, you know, he's not in the Oxford group team and he shouldn't be participating in world changing. And this was the input that Sam was getting. But Sam was going to meetings. He was seeing what Bill was doing down in Maryland where Jim H. was there with Sam and Bill. Sam was there and he could see Bill coming into meetings and saying, where are the drunks? And so he had a sense of what Bill was up to, and he was basically saying, you know, back in the earlier days, I was getting the wrong input. And so Bill left. They didn't kick him out. He simply left because he had other things to do that the Oxford groupers in that area were not interested in. I read you Irving Harris's memorandum when he talked about in subsequent years before the big book was written, they had many conversations about spiritual principles they took sherry day's seven principles of the oxford group and they talked about them it's in this little pamphlet the principles of the group irving harris refers to them so you know all these things are evidence not of what sam taught bill that's what we've been doing here it's been difficult i i really hand it to you for sticking with us because it's heavy stuff as i said joe and charlie get to cover 103 pages in three or four days, and we're covering thousands of pages in about the same amount of time. And it gets heavy. But the heaviness is because there isn't any history on it. So you have to pick it out and say, where did it come from? And it's not very credible if you don't dig out the sources. So I've mentioned that Bill was involved with Roland and Shep and Ebi, and these people were all giving him input before he ever met Bob and Ann. Bob and Ann were reading Shoemaker's books. We'll see that tonight. Ann spoke of Shoemaker, and read Shoemaker books and lauded them highly. Dr. Bob owned eight of them and read them. So I used to think, well, Bill's not telling the truth when he says Dr. Bob and I got our ideas from Shoemaker. Well, it wasn't because nobody knew what was in Ann Smith's journal, but she was talking about eight Shoemaker books and she quotes from them and Bob read those books. So there was input from Shoemaker directly to Bob and Ann as well as to Bill in New York. Then, as I said, there's this interesting story that Garrett Sturley twice told to Jim Newton, and he said Bill, Shoemaker said Bill specifically asked him to write the 12 steps. So if he asked him to write The Twelve Steps and Shoemaker had the manuscript and looked it over and had the closest touch with Bill, there was a lot of input going on. We've covered pretty much what Bill's departure was about. Essentially, from my dough, it was simply that Bill was not allowed in New York to have the direct impact in Calvary meetings and in CalVary Church that he wanted since his focus was on drunks and helping them, and the Oxford Group focus was getting the president of the League of Nations and FDR and people like that involved in world changing. and the Oxford groupers tried very hard to interest Bill in that kind of thing and he caught the fever briefly but his basic interest was oh by the way that apology of Shoemaker's on page 178 of Pass It On it's just a little vignette that explains that Sam was saying yeah and I was getting input that you were off on your own spur here are some major Shoemaker ideas you need to find God god manage me shoemaker was big on what was called the experiment of faith certainly underlying aa's steps was the oxford group idea that you know we were talking at lunchtime you act your way into thinking instead of think your way into acting but the main idea rested on john 717 if you do god's will you'll have an understanding of god a shoemaker certainly was the one that came up with the turning point i don't find that in general oxford group literature i refined it over and over and again in shoemaker's quotations of william james the crisis of self-surrender is the turning part in any religious life i don t have much doubt that Shoemaker was the author of God as you understand him. This was written twice by him in 1927 and 1928, Surrender as Much of Yourself as You Understand to As Much of God As You Understand. He used expressions like casting my will and my life on God. He was big on self-examination, confession, and repentance. he wrote an immense amount of material on conversion and its importance his book If I Be Lifted Up was extremely popular with Henrietta Seiberling and Dr. Bob's wife and Dr., Bob owned a copy of it in that book he was writing about God's forgiveness assuring instantaneous companionship and the world beyond, the necessity for conversion, the sudden kind that occurred when the thief on the cross turned to Christ a penitent, and the kind called for in Romans 10.9, a confession that Jesus is Lord and a belief that God raised him from the dead, Jesus' concern for human needs, those of his mother and his beloved disciple, Jesus' acquiescence in God's will. And then he goes on and he talks about Now, man's need is not for instructions and moral principles but for more inspiration, not for more knowledge of what to do but from some power in putting all that into effect. And this is almost prophetic of AA ideas. The fact is that I sin, I deliberately sin with my eyes open. There are moral lapses in me for which I can never hope to atone. Yet sin makes a gap between myself and the idea which I am powerless to bridge. Only God, therefore, can deal with sin. He must contrive to do for us what we've lost the power to do ourselves. The deepest meaning of the cross is that God made reconciliation for us. Something done for us, a gift to us. Grace comes first, then character. Salvation first, dann service. It is God's utmost to shake us out of our independence. Not only can we count upon the love of God at all times, but he has sealed and demonstrated that love in the atonement of the cross. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another. The forgiven must forgive. We cannot keep the reconciliation which is given to us unless we become infinite extensions of that reconciliation into the world. We pray every day that God will forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us. And he said the heart of Christianity is relationship with God, not ethics they follow the deepest thing in the christian religion is not anything we can do for god it is what god has already done for us he's offered us redemption regeneration and new a new nature through the cross of cross of christ god and mercy strip us this day of the last vestiges of self-reliance and help us to begin anew trusting to nothing but his grace man was was a fantastic writer, and it was this kind of writing that attracted people's attention and admiration. As I said, he often wrote about the expectant waiting for God's direction. This was in his 1927 book, Children of the Second Birth. We believe entirely that conversion is the experience which initiates the new life, but we're not fools enough to think that the beginning is the end. All subsequent life is a development of the relationship with God which conversion opened. For us, its daily focal point is in what we call the quiet time. As in all other private devotions, we pray and read the Bible, but the distinguishing element of a quiet time is listening for the guidance of God. Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth is the expectant mood of the quiet time. The validity of what we believe to be God's guidance must show itself in the long run by more acute moral perception, more genuine human relationships, and increasing assurance of what one ought to do with every hour of the day. He often quoted that verse, often quoted the verse, Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth, but he also quoted, and that was from the Old Testament, he also often quoted Paul on the road to Damascus what shall I do Lord from being a man who knew just exactly what he should do and was doing it for dear life which was killing Christians Saul became a man who asked another what to do there Paul surrendered there Paul passed over from being self-sufficient individual who was working out his own problems with a general feeling that God was helping him to being a dependent individual who worked out his problems with the specific feeling that Jesus Christ was his Master and Lord. A great deal else went beside this, his inward division and unhappiness. And perhaps the greatest thing he lost at that time was the pride which loves best to control one's life. We all know the great appeal of self-reliance. Well, I don't know about you folks, but I thought I was top dog in Marin County, California. Mr. Cortomadera. And Mr. Corta Madera went down with a thud, you know? Self-reliance was no more any good to me. The world is filled with people who will not ask God for any help because they're convinced they can do that for themselves, whatever is necessary. Saul left that behind in the dust of the road. He got up a dependent person. That's precisely what surrender means. The center of control is no longer self but Christ. It begins with asking just that question, which is in acts lord what shall i do and you know that was saul's request okay i've been struck blind and uh there's a job for me what shall I do and shoemaker wrote about that a lot um on awakening he's back to paul again where saul asks for help god gives help help to recognize and choose the best the minute saul is really convinced that both his love and his hater in the wrong place the minute saw was honest god can flood his spirit with light and speak truth into his soul You hear that concept of opening the door to the sunlight of the spirit. But later I began to study religious experience in William James' great book, The Varieties of Religious Experience. Guess where the idea came to Ebi to bring Bill, William James is the varieties of religious experience. We're hearing that from Shoemaker and reading it in his books. I found out that conversion was not a remote and isolated incident in the life of St. Paul, but a widespread and common experience. I learned that these experiences varied immensely in their details, but were often surprisingly alike in their essentials. I found that in its main outline, St. Paul's conversion conformed to many others, namely in the need which preceded it, the divided life sharpening into a sense of sin and the need for forgiveness, and in the willing surrender of the self to God and his mercy and his plan as represented in the words What shall I do, Lord? And in the action of God upon that open soul the change God makes the forgiveness he gives the peace that follows and in all the subsequent life of inward unity and deep joy of outward righteousness and service of steady witnessing of that power which is saved and kept and a perpetual contact with Christ. i want to assure man of two things first that with god it is never too late and that his grace is out after him and has been seeking him all these wasted years and second that he can himself have some part in setting in effect the processes of grace he can do his part he can surrender wholeheartedly to the christ whom he longs to have in control of his life he must be willing to give up the sins which beset and to accept in full God's plan for his life. The bright light and the audible voice and the journey to Damascus are unimportant, but the consciously needy heart and the surrender of the will and the infilling of the living Christ are universal and belong to us all and are of utmost importance. This is Christ's way to faith and peace and the abundant life. And he said later, Paul stopped struggling morally and handed himself over to God. He let God give him victory over the power of his sin. I just wanted to read this to you to give you some sense that this was a great writer, a man of great faith, and someone who wrote in such a way that appealed to people. This is the kind of stuff that Bill Wilson was listening to. This is pages 170 to 196. I don't think we have that kind of time. Surrender is the handle by which an ordinary person may lay hold of the experience of conversion. In the first step, the step of the will, in order to make the surrender the decision of the whole life and not merely the emotion of a moment, it needs to be filled with practical content. We must help people to see just what they are surrendering to God, their fears, their sins, most of all their wills, putting God's will at once and for all ahead of every other thing. And think of the language of the sixth step when it talks, can he take them, all of them, that kind of thing. A full-orbed quiet time means Bible study, prayer, ample time to wait upon God in quiet writing down what is given to us and perhaps the sharing of what has come to us with those who are closest to us. There are no people who cannot get guidance except those who will not and have not fulfilled the conditions. The real gospel, this is called the gospel according to you, the real gospel is not ours but Christ's. The real recommendation of the gospel lies not in our persuasive power but in the Holy Spirit's power to come through us when we are open and the real opener of men's hearts and minds to the influence of the gospel is the wonderful grace of God. Let us declare the gospel to the world clothed as it was at first in the flesh and blood of life and there will come to us the glorious experience that came to John the Baptist and the two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus. Real religion begins by facing the facts, All the facts, pleasant and unpleasant. The facts about human nature, its rottenness and its potentiality. The facts About pain and suffering. The facts also about the way they sometimes bless us when we take them aright. The facts of faith and the difference it makes in life. The great fact of God. Any religion which pretends to reality and does not begin with the data and experience is pretending only. Begin with the facts. Dwindling fortune, diminishing health, age creeping up, increasing temptation somewhere, a difficult decision is to be made, the difficulty of life. Face it and don't run from it. But face the other facts too, God and faith, and the way believing in God and obeying Him turns life into clear sailing for those who believe and obey. Then he quotes James, Be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. And he translates that to act on the word instead of merely listening to it and deluding yourselves. I know some people who believe themselves to be cut off from direct communication with God by some lack of mystical capacity. I do not believe a word of it. If they're cut off, it's by their own disobedience to the truth they knew somewhere in the past. If they will face that, admit it, act on it, Ask God's forgiveness for it. Be positive about what God gives them as they pray now. Their doubt will disappear. Reasoning is no cure for doubt. Action is. Act on the word and only so will you know that it is the word, God's word to you. He said of God, He knows where your heart is right and where your head is right and where they both be wrong. Do you ask him? Do you pray long enough to come away sure about what he wants you to do? How different it is when the Holy Spirit is at work and we depend upon him. Sometimes he tells us silence, sometimes personal confession of wrong, sometimes keeping off religion altogether, sometimes ministry to another of need for time. Sometimes he says to take a knife and cut deep. But deep within him there's a smoothness, a clearness, a freedom from human suasion that can only be achieved when God himself is present. This is when lives are changed, when our words are filled with power, when we are channels and we know it and the other person knows it and we give God the glory. You and I are impotent to help ourselves in our greatest need. Pride ought to die right there and when it dies man really turns to God. We want to make the best of two worlds. We want God, but we want other things too. The sense of conflict, the sense of sin is really a well-placed danger signal telling us we're headed for trouble, perhaps nervous breakdown because we're still two or more cells. And God made us to be one self, the self of his vision and his will for our life. Let him, the estranged man, face all that is prodigal in him, all that istranged from God and offensive to God. Let him come back to an honest penitence to God like the son in the story and all that misery will be left behind joy will come automatically as a byproduct and then he quotes romans the real enemy is faith is not reason but an experience it's not an overgrown mentality it's an underdone experience you must begin with searching your own heart for the things that drive faith away you'll be surprised the way your rational difficulties begin to clear up if you get your moral difficulties straightened out first. Listen to the spiritually experienced who have themselves tried the experiment and you'll find that it turns out for you the same way. The true meaning of faith is self-surrender to God, surrender to whatever you know about him or believe must be the truth about him, surrender to him if necessary in total ignorance of him. Far more important that you touch him than that you understand him at first. Put yourself in his hands. Whatever he is, as William James said, he's more ideal than we are. Make the leaf. Give yourself to him. Temptation is a real crisis always for it marks a direction according to the way we meet it. If we live in the will of God consistently then the Spirit will go with us into the wilderness and help us to fight our battle with the powers of darkness. If we go in alone with no knowledge of God the outcome is uncertain. We have God to call on as Christ had. We have from Christ the vision of God's will in the world and what it might mean if all men looked up to him for their light and dwelt with one another as his sons. And then I'm going to, are we going to quarter two? Is that it? Okay. Whatever theory you hold about the fall of man, that story and doctrine are utterly true to what we most deeply feel about ourselves when we're honest. Contact with God is our normal condition, as normal as water is for fish. Sin and estrangement mean we've lost something, rejected something we ought to have accepted. We feel both responsible and guilty for our separation from God because we're both responsible and guilty. So far as justice is concerned, it would have been no more than those coming to us if God had closed the door and been through with us forever. But he came to us and identified himself with us by sending his Son in the likeness of our flesh to live under precisely our condition and to transform it from within. From within the same identified life he challenged us, giving Christ a message to human sin, a message of conviction but also of hope, a message of warning and rebuke which was also a message of faith and salvation. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That is God's eternal attitude toward humankind in its waywardness, sinfulness, and estrangement. We know that Christ Jesus came into the world to save such as you and me, to save us from sins we hate, to save unscathed souls, to save them from sins they love, to save from sins that they don't know, to save the great one all-inclusive sin of godless, self-filled, self-directed, self-ridden lives. There's a lot more. I want to turn briefly to some concerns that Shoemaker had. As I said, he spoke to AA conventions and he didn't pull any punches about what he had to say. He spoke at St. Louis and he spoke at San Diego, at Long Beach. and there were three major concerns that I think were very important to us and we'll come back to those at the end of the seminar Shoemaker was talking about absurd names for God and he was talking about half-baked prayers and he Was talking about self-made religion and uh he quoted us roman catholic spanish philosopher who said those who deny god deny him because of their despair at not finding him then he talked about prayer and he said this he's talking to aas their own convention real prayer is not telling god what we want it's putting ourselves at his disposal so that he can tell us tell us what he wants it's vital for us to listen as well as talk when we pray. Everybody that is away from God and tries to do his own will in defiance of God is half crazy. Till our own clamorous, demanding voices quiet down, we can't hear the voice of God. And then at Long Beach, one that I don't think has been written up in the great mind, but there's a great guy down in Florida, Bruce W., who took the time to transcribe Shoemaker's talk, and most of it was about God. Annie Studebaker said, puts pride right out of the driver's seat nobody but god is big enough to tell a human ego to move over and then he talks about unbelief how is that the necessity for god is going to be suggested in a program that was to release not only catholics and protestants and jews but skeptics and agnostics and atheists and total non-believers in any kind of god some people have had unhappy experiences with churches and many think they have but then he talked to the various kinds of people the first was those who are already christians with loyalties the god that is is a great deal more than we can ever understand of him and we learn more of him by experience than we ever do by argument or funeral discussions with with the belief as to whether our own church is better than some other church. Now if we're satisfied with the beliefs that our church tells us to hold, then we'll go along with them and grow as that church encourages us to do. Then as to those with little or no faith, he said, our initiation doesn't begin by being asked to swallow a lot of doctrine we're not prepared to swallow. A.A. says to begin with as much faith as you've got. There is something. What we have to deal with is the God that really is and not our human concepts of him. It is much better for anyone to pray to the God that is, he with no name and we with no words, than to pray to your own creation of God with words prettier than a poem but fictitious. And then he talked about the experiment of faith and the absurd names for God. Sometimes for beginners suggestion is better than explication. Some of us of the often absurd modern names for God, like the man upstairs, are crude attempts to use an easily grasped picture to suggest God rather than to use theological language to dogmatize about him. Beginners need all kinds of practical self-starters and courage to experiment, for nobody ever found faith sitting in a chair reading a book and wishing he had it. We often begin by acting as if faith were true in order to find out whether it's true. I've always thought that the first steps toward it ought to be severely experimental and put within reach of the greatest skeptic, providing he has got an open and honest mind. Now this is Shoemaker speaking after AA ideas had been developed. But then he said, having just followed the Monsignor on the podium, there will come a time when you can't leave it at just an experiment. You've got to grow, as the Monseigneur has been telling you. you got to go on and think out what has happened and use your mind about it you will probably be a good deal stronger if you link up as he suggested with some outfit that exists to help people definitely with their religious faith well we need to grow in the spiritual dimension and we certainly do not want to make a church out of aa that would cause trouble but as a precursor to the church what saint paul called the law to the gospel a tutor a schoolmaster to get us ready for church, I think AA stands second to none. And then finally this one. Before anything else is suggested about a change and a cure, the first impression that people of God ought to give is the impression of what Maysfield called the everlasting mercy. When we know ourselves to be beyond the reach of any merely human help, the first face of God we need to see is the face of love now there's just one answer for any sin and any need on the face of this earth and that lies in the forgiveness of God for the past and the grace of God for the future man can I identify with that that's where I was you know I had to have a sense that it was gone it was wiped out There's a strange little song we sometimes sing in our Bible fellowship. My sins are blotted out, I know. And they sure better be. No four-step list, no ninth step amends could take care of Dick's problems. I needed them blotted Out. I needed to do the best I could. I needed To learn from him. I needed Do apply the principles in living a different kind of life. But boy, I needed Them blotted OUT. and they're buried in the depths of the deepest sea as far as the east is from the west after they have been removed. And that's where they belong. And I don't want to sit in meetings and talk about what a scumbag I was. Some people know it and others don't know it and I don' t need to remember it except to identify with somebody. I need the forgiveness of God for the past and the grace of God for the future. What a fabulous challenge. You know those little signs, I don''t see one here but there's probably one around this place someplace, but for the grace of God. You know, where would I be but forthegraceofgod? I didn't earn this seat in AA. I stepped into it in despair and because of the graceofgod I was delivered. Not because I earned it, but because he loved. And Shoemaker says I take that to be the spiritual angle of AA because it is a spiritual angle of all mankind. So we might, with our good tapers' permission, quit slightly early, but I just want to read you a couple of things about the spiritual angle. The other side. During a meeting one day, I remarked that I was just tickled to death with this AA program, all but the spiritual side of it. After the meeting, another member came up to me and said, I like the remark you made about how you liked the program, all butthe spiritual part of it." We got a little time. Why don't we talk about the other side ofit? That ended the conversation. And then for those of us that may have had a little tough sledding in the last... The best is yet to be, as Jim Newton likes to say. But it was important and it's been neat to see how many people have really stuck with attention to what we've been doing because the big book says don't let any prejudice you have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. That's really what we're here to do. I'm a Protestant and I don't want to hear something about common property of mankind or I'm a this or I am a that. It's why turn off when the word religious is used. The big book uses it. We could look it up in the concordance, but this odious word religious is used over and over again in the big book. Do we really understand what it means? Do we understand what spiritual means? Do we know how many times it's used? And so it's so easy to get turned off instead of to be attentive to what the facts are and then draw your conclusions. And then little stuff, this is just kind of fun. There was an article written by one of AA's friends, Paul DeCreef. I can remember when I was a younger guy that DeCeef used to write in the Reader's Digest, I think, little articles on medicine. And so he wrote about AA medicine. And he said, the medicine the AAs use is unique. Though it should be all-powerful, it's never been tried with any consistent success against any other major sickness. It is free as the air with this provision that the patients it cures have to nearly die before they can bring themselves to take it. The AA's medicine is God and God alone. This is their discovery. And then Bill Wilson said this, mine was exactly the kind of deep-seated block we so often see today in new people who say they are atheistic or agnostic their will to disbelieve is so powerful that it prepare apparently they prefer a date with the undertaker to an open-minded and experimental quest for god and you know this is what much of shoemaker's writings were about the experiment of faith step into the water get into the puddle find out what it's like be obedient to God's will and find out what he can do for you and then you'll say said Shoemaker don't marvel what you've done for God marvel what he's done for you because you will have found that deliverance comes when you turn to God and obey his will and this was Sam Shoemaker over and over and over again and if I see anything and his effect on Bill. Yes, it was his concept of prayer and that is show me the way. This had a profound effect on Bill's attitude about prayer and you can see it in the book. Show me the Way, not let me tell you the way but the other one was the experiment of faith. Get into the water. Start swimming. Then you'll find out how to do it. You'll find that help is there but if you never get into the puddle and you just stand on the sidelines with unreasoning prejudice against this or that. You'll never know. And Shoemaker was constantly preaching to AAs the fact that life, spiritual misery is estrangement from and independence of God. And that's why he focused on the ideas that the half-baked prayers don't need to be half-banked prayers. They can be intelligent prayers. And that the absurd names for God are not appropriate. He said it's better not to call him anything and at least pray to him. And I think of that when I hear the light bulb and the bulldozer and the prayer and the good orderly direction, and believe me, I bought into all that stuff because I didn't know any better. And Shoemaker kept it simple and said you don't have to use absurd names. Just turn to him and ask him for help. Surrender as much of yourself as you understand to as much God as you understanding. And the last thing was that man's biggest problem is self-made religion. When he turns away and says, I don't like religion, I don' t like the church, I don''t like the Bible, I dont like, I do not like, and he is lying in a puddle on the street. One of my sponsors said he was an alcoholic heaven. Wine soars on one side and sunburns on the other on the park bench. And it is good to say what you don't Like, but when you're at that point and you start creating your own religion you haven't got much and that's what Shoemaker was talking about in two of his books the first one was called Realizing Religion and about the fourth book was called Religion That Works and what was he talking about? Establishing a relationship with God so we've had a long afternoon and I appreciate your attention and if I know anything about Ozzy and the food it'll be great and then there's going to be some great music he says a little bit later on so we'll see you tonight and talk about Ann Smith