Jimmy A. at the December to Remember Spiritual Banquet Conference – 2023

Hello, the recording you're about to listen to was recorded in Doylestown at the 2023 Doylestowntown Spiritual Banquet Conference hosted by the Conscious Contact Speaker Group of Doylesttown which meets at St. Paul's Lutheran Church every Saturday night 8pm Food and Fellowship 830 Speaker. Please look for us on YouTube at the Conscious Contact Speaker Group of Doylestown and our Facebook page, the Consious Contact Speaker group of Doylstown. Anyway, look forward to seeing you. Hope you enjoy these recordings. They were very powerful and lives were changed there. Please take advantage of them and share them with whoever you think could benefit from their talks. Thank you very much. Get ready. What's that? People listening on YouTube say there's something like being here in person. Oh, for you listening on Youtube, there's nothing like being here in-person. And I'm not going to adjust the microphone because... do what yeah tall jokes what is green and hangs from trees giraffe snot he didn't like that one okay so we're gonna close it off with Jimmy A and Jimmy is one of my spiritual brothers my big brother, my sidekick and a wonderful human being who eats, lives, drinks, and breathes Step 12. So here's Jimmy A. All right. All right, everybody, I'm Jimmy, an alcoholic. You might remember me. I was up here about 12 hours ago. I had hair on my head and no beard. brought the microphone up all right there we go oh what a great day this has been right this is like you guys are the real alcoholics because you're at the end it's like the after hours through right the lights are blinking last drink last drink get out no one more one more just give me one more. And my people, my people. Where am I going to go here? Wonderful speakers. No more steps. I can't step on anyone now like everyone stepped on me. And that's funny because you know I thought the steps were linear when I first came here. You do one check it off and you're good to go. Two, three, check, check check and you've done and what we heard today and what I know for a personal from my own personal experience is that how these steps are just so intertwined into each other and as we stay here a long time uh you know um you just really see how this unfolds. So again my name is Jimmy, I'm an alcoholic, sober since March 28th 1987 uh i've had so many different experiences with step 12 and uh and you know i started the day off by that little reading of bill in towns hospital sitting with silkworth and you know he's cried out am i insane and look where we've come throughout the day you know six hours later seven hours later we've had a spiritual experience we've stepped into the sunlight of the spirit that happened after nine now have full acknowledgement that God is doing for us what we can never do for ourselves it's the key to the door to the sunlight to the light of the Spirit we look at 10 we look 11 we look 12 and those are the three steps that I truly believe are the things that keep us out into the sun light of spirit but due to the fact we're human all trying to live on a spiritual walk we're going to fail at this daily we're gonna make our mistakes we're human my sponsor says it all the time we're humans on a spirit on a mental walk sometimes we lose focus of the spiritual walk but we get an opportunity with a spot check inventory like Sarah what Peter talked about with prayer and meditation and now more importantly of carrying this message to the alcoholic who still suffers so the key word I believe in 12 is we try there's enough said the power to get anyone sober none of us had the power get anyone drunk right there was a time in Alcoholics Anonymous early on I had a secret you might have this secret if you're sitting here today what I've come to find out it's really it's really a delusion he just said it earlier my alcoholism doesn't come in a bottle. It comes to my mind, and my mind is filled with a lot of delusions about a lot of things. And one of the biggest delusions I believe is that God's not going to help a guy like me. The delusion of spiritual disqualification. Now I've been through the steps numerous times over the years. I've read more inventory to all my sponsors. I'm made all my amends. I stand here today absolutely with not one amends outstanding amends that I'm aware of that's out there that i need to make i do nighttime inventory on a daily basis for i don't know how many years i pray i meditate i do service work i work i do a lot of the stuff we do in alcoholics anonymous i put on events like this all the time i do lot of things and i don' t say that for an attaboy or a pat on the back i say that for one reason and only one reason there's still a little part of me sometimes sometimes deep down inside me that 10 year old little boy is still there who's still driven by a 1960 religious belief system that I'm going to go to hell for everything I've ever done now that sounds utterly ridiculous when I say it but sometimes I believe that lie, I believe that delusion and sometimes what I can't understand is that i don't have purpose we have three purposes in alcoholist anonymous primary purpose singleness of purpose and real purpose we all know that real purpose is to fit ourselves to be a maximum service to god into each other right to help god's kids and what i couldn't see is that I've been of purpose since day one since day 1. and this is the importance of sponsorship because i think we have a responsibility as a sponsor when we're holding that man's hands before we give them to god's hands we have to show them that you are being of purpose because we're blind when we come in here this disease of perception it's like i'm a horse in a horse race i got those blinders on i can't see anything i can only see straight ahead and see i need men in my life that can really guide me and show me and tell me about things that i am doing right alcoholics anonymous because as we heard all day long we're our own worst critics right i don't need to beat you up yeah i beat myself up enough right so some of the things that i did you know i come from an age in alcoholics anonymous i think it's a lost stage and i know like peter knows i know there's a couple of the older guys in here 12-step calls used to be a common practice in my neighborhood there was a time in alcohol it's anonymous and i note a lot of the treatment centers took away that kind of stuff but there was a time in alcoholics anonymous where um couple months over maybe even a year sober where my sponsor would call me up and just say be downstairs in 10 minutes it could be 11 o'clock at night it'll be one o' clock in the morning and you never really questioned it okay it wasn't like oh richie i got to go to work tomorrow no he said 10 minutes downstairs 10 minutes you're downstairs that's just the way it was and what would happen is he'd be outside in his car he'd be with another old-timer and then he would grab a young kid like me and another young kid and they tell us that we're going on a 12-step call to go try to carry the message to a guy that's still loaded and we would show up at this guy's house and we all had firm instructions or i had from instructions my instructions for that particular 12-stop call might be go make sure there's no weapons laying around the house make sure there's not guns or knives or anything like that the other kid go check on the kids go check out the wife make sure everyone's safe and then what would happen from that point would we walk into the living room and the drunk would be sitting on the couch sitting on a floor sitting in there somewhere and then we'd watch those two old guys those two all-timers and then the magic would happen and the magic what happened is all they did was tell their stories to the alcoholic and at the end of that talk they would both say them do you want help and back then in the 80s you know we didn't have as many treatment centers there was very few detoxes most of the detoxes in northern new jersey were our local hospitals there wasn't all these fancy places that are around today and we never brought that guy to a a detox and we never bought that guy really to a treatment center very rare occasion unless he was in serious help we would take him to a hospital where did we bring him we bring them to you we bring him to a meeting of alcoholics anonymous and we put him in one of those bad metal chairs we give him a half a cup of coffee we watch him shake for that hour and on some occasions which was really shocking to me at the beginning was they would carry a pint of whiskey in the car so he wouldn't go into withdrawals or dt's or you know into a violent you know uh seizure or any of that nature and at the end we would ask him are you ready to go to meeting tomorrow and again i don't understand this as being having some kind of purpose you know i got that job in the airport that i talked about this morning i had it for a few months it ain't hardly any money but i bought my first car i bought a 1963 powder blue volkswagen bug can you imagine me driving that car my sponsor says you have a car now go pick up guys purpose your purpose get a commitment in the group make coffee do our purpose set up the chairs you have purpose break down the chairs you got purpose clean up the kitchen you've got purpose I mean I needed to keep on being reminded that we have a purpose here and we have a reason why we do the things we do in here. Day 7 I'm sober 7 days in my new home group with a new sponsor, with all these new friends I don't know what the hell is going on, I'm still, I'll use an old AA term I don'T even know if you can Google this word, MOCUS I'M MOCOS, I AM STILL SHOT OUT AND I'M AT A AA BUSINESS MEETING YIPPIEE! Oh, I'm so excited to be there. And Richie runs up to me all doing jumping jacks and happy. He was my sponsor. This is the guy that 12-stepped me in the airport that day. He goes, I want you to take the job as the ashtray cleaner. And in my mind, I am like, you are out of your mind. I am not doing that. And I had a perfectly good reason. Though I didn't say it to him, I had an absolutely good reason because right up to this day, I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. So why do I have to clean ashtrays? I didn't understand that he was trying to give me a responsibility. He was tryingto give mea job in Alcoholics Anonymous. But what I could tell you is this. From that day on Day 7 to this moment, standing right here right now, I've been tethered to AlcoholicsAnonymous through a position, through a job, through a commitment, whether it's been in my home group, whether it has been inmy district, whether it's been in my area i've been involved in the third legacy of service for a long time trying to carry the message to the best of my ability to the person who still suffers i'm 18 months sober i'm starting to have my doubts about alcoholics and on it's not so much that's about aa but you know how we get you know i'm that type of guy that when i came into ai everything came back really fast my health came back physically i came back i don't know about emotional and spiritually but you know i got back with that wife that i walked down and had those two little aaa babies i mean i got a house i got an union job i started to have money in my pocket everything looked good so maybe not that i overreacted but do i really need to invest in this thing called recovery and aaa it seems from my angle that i'm doing pretty good that maybe i don't need to go to ai and these are just my dark thoughts in my mind without talking to my sponsor about it talk to you guys about it and i walked into my parents home one night for one day and i found my father dead he was dead on the floor 19 months sober but i'm programmed you see because i'm going a lot of meetings i have a sponsor i'm listening to what they're trying to say to me and i'm doing a lot of 12-step calls so you know i call my sponsor up and i tell him what happened my dad's dead on the floor he's 63 years old almost three years younger than i am now he says let's pray and call 9-1-1 so we pray over the phone i call 911 and we start to pray first stop shows up cops taking down the information he goes uh hey uh i don't see you walking the streets anymore i said yeah i don' t do that anymore like i said earlier i was on the streets for 18 19 months living homeless on the shoots of northern new jersey taking a little bit more information after that after a couple seconds he looks at me a minute so he looks up and he goes i don´t see you in the bars anymore drinking anymore I said, yeah, I don't do that anymore. And he goes, well, how do you do that? And I start to talk about you guys. I start to talk About Alcoholics Anonymous and how I'm staying sober going through these meetings and he starts to ask me a few questions and before you know it, he starts to be a little bit more inquisitive and I am so locked in on 12-step calls and questions that I see this guy, this cop is asking me for help and I wind up 12 step in this cop over my dead father's body now why i tell you that is this reason last january i'm in my home group down on the jersey shore i haven't seen this cop since that day well i might have seen him a few times in meetings afterwards because he came to alcoholics anonymous but i'm in my own group and i'm you know we're hollering around talking about probably the giants beat the eagles again and i get a tap on my shoulder when i turn around it's the cop who's not retired he came to find me to let me know that he just celebrated 34 years of sobriety. Now, I don't tell you that for a pat on the back. I don'Ttellyouthatforanyreason. Like I said, I can't get anyone drunk. I can'Tgetanybody sober. But I want to tell you that God will use you without your permission, even in the darkest of times because we have purpose and experience you should not miss working with others. And thank God that Bill didn't buy into that delusion. Because Bill could have just said, you know what? I had that white light experience that I read. I got mine. I'm going home to Brooklyn. And me and Lois are just going to start a life. But thank God Bill didnít think like that. And Marion said it earlier. You know, on page 14 or 15, we get some of the greatest promises that are in this book. You know? I always thought it was just the 12 promises after the ninth step. But really, there's 225 promises all as a direct result of action. And thank God Bill didn't think that when he said after that white light experience, while I lay in the hospital the thought came that there were thousands of hopeless alcoholics who might be glad to have what had been so freely given me. Perhaps I could work with some of them. They in turn might work with others. That's why Silkworth writes about the altruistic movement, the selfless concern for others. bill witnessed it i mean silkworth witnessed it through bill of trying to carry the message to the best of his ability even though like it says in the doctor's opinion uh you know we're not too sure about it but we consented we let him tell the story maybe this will help to cut the hopeless alcoholic later on he goes on page 15 my wife and i abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problem it was fortunate think of that word fortunate it was fortunate for my old business uh associates remained skeptical for a year and a half during which i had found little work he didn't look at that like self pity or i'm not working i don't have money he thought it was a great thing to happen for him that he was fortunate to be placed in a position of being of use of having purpose of helping others our Our first HNI committee ever in Alcoholics Anonymous. We've got a friend, Harold, who's an old sponsor. It was a guy by the name of Tom Iverster. Some of you guys might have heard of Tom Eye. Tom Eye was an all-time AA member that just died last year with 68 years of sobriety. If you can get a hold of his tapes, I would listen to his tapes. Tom Eye killed two people when he was 24 years old, I believe. 23, 24 years older in a car accident. vehicular homicide he did four years in a prison system down in north carolina when he got out he got involved in h and i carrying the message to the alcoholics uh and to prison systems he started to bring meetings into their prison systems tom eventually became the warden of the prison that he was in the lord of the united states says you can't do that anymore but tom would always say this when he told his talk if you're a member of alcoholics anonymous make sure you take a commitment to a place that you never wind up again. Carry the message into our prison systems, carry the message into treatment centers, carry a message into the detoxes, carry the messages to your doctor through a PI commitment. This is what AA is and what AA isn't. Carry the message to your clergy. We have ample opportunities to carry the message. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. But what's a spiritual experience? Sounds like I said early on, stepping out into the light, stepping into the sunlight, the sunlight of the spirit. I think Peter mentioned being a free man, being able to go anywhere in this earth a free man not being bond in bondage with alcoholism right but i love bill's writings and i think in the 12 and 12 he gives the best explanation of a spiritual experience he talks about when a man or woman has a spiritual awakening experience psychic change personality change you guys fill in the blanks the most important meaning of that is now he has now become able to do feel and believe what which he cannot do before on his unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted a gift. And what I said earlier, what did it feel like the day before day one? Think about that. And now you're giving me a gift of sobriety? Now I've got this precious gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and being. He has been set on a path which tells him he's really going somewhere. That life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or mastered in a very real sense he has been transformed from the inside to the outside because he has laid hold of a source of strength, God which in one way or another he has until now denied himself. He finds himself in possession of a degree of honesty, tolerance, usefulness, peace of mind and love which he had thought himself quite incapable. What he has received is a free gift and yet usually at least in some small part he has made himself ready to receive it. So what are you doing with your gift is what my sponsor would say. What are you dealing with the precious thing called sobriety? are you trying to hold it for yourself because if you do, we've got the great paradox in alcoholics and honors in order to keep it I've got to give it away so what are you doing to give het away right and that's really been my journey for the last 31 years my first 5 years I was just kind of like a home group flunky basically doing nothing, cleaning up here making coffee there but what are your doing with your gift today and you know I think a lot of this comes down to sponsorship you know I kind of look at myself as like a lunch pail blue collared guy I'm like a union sponsor I'm not a I keep it really simple with the guys I work with get a job in the group get a commitment in the room get tethered to Alcoholics Anonymous let's work the steps right Peter talked earlier about empathy God's empathy when he said that earlier on I think he went into 6 and 7 but when he says God's empathy is what we need in Alcoholics Anonymous that's the first thing I've heard or looked at the 12 traditions because it all starts with a group how are we going to meet Alcoholics we're going to meeting them at groups we're gonna meet them in meetings and how do we sponsor people well we meet them in our meetings right so I started to understand that the group is probably the most important thing that we have more important than our own physical sobriety believe it or not Bill writes that in tradition one but the unity of a a is more important than anything without a a where are we going where are you going I have no way to go with that alcoholics anonymous I won't survive very long that's my track record so step 12 isn't about convincing anyone that they need this program what we're really doing is demonstrating through our own sobriety what AA has done for us we carry the message to the best of our ability and again we go to all different places to do that so we do that through sponsorship we do that through watching the door waiting for that newcomer to come in you know one of the biggest things that I think are most important things as a sponsor in carrying a message and helping someone is really teaching them about what Alcoholics Anonymous is and what Alcoholic Anonymous isn't. This is not a dating center, this is not job, a place where you're gonna find a job though you might. You know AA etiquette was really important in my early years. I'm glad for the old-timers that sat me down and really talked. Peter talked a little bit about this. The kindness of strangers, the men who took time out to explain what this is really about to me you know I used to make fun of the guys that I got sober with you know they were really old they were like 45 years old I was 29 years old you know and and and and and I make a joke of that because we didn't have big book meetings like we do today not my neighborhood anyway right but these men and I used the joke I to say is these guys don't know the difference between a phone book and a big book but if you needed help these men would be on your porch they would be at your house they would go to any length to help you make sure that you're okay right and they would sit me down and he would teach me about aa etiquette imagine that imagine coming to a meeting a half hour early wow and leave a half-hour later wow right how about thanking the speaker after he speaks even if you don't like this the talk that he gave my home group is ginormous and everything that the speakers always say when they come to my group it's not so much the group or all they talk about is they can't believe how many people line up to say thank you now we don't know how to do that without a sponsor showing us what teaching us that stuff all right so just those kind of things a etiquette how to be a member of a group getting a job in a group practice in these traditions and I just wrote down a few things that the old-timers used to tell me you know having that conversation you know we think that working with others when we read that's about sponsorship I don't look at it like that at all I think working with those is how to meet the drunk where he's at how do you have a conversation with someone who doesn't know what a is all about or maybe does know what they is about and it's totally lost do you how to do that do you know how to deal with 12-step cold do you not have to sit down and qualify the drunk meet the drunk where he's at every sponsor i had it was so important that they did something that i could never do for myself they got into the hole with me they didn't stand above me and tell me how to get out they climbed in a hole and they showed me how they get out of all through their own experience through their own actions i've had five sponsors in 36 and a half years Richie Schnoor was my first one, the guy that 12-stepped me. Five years I had him and these men were all different. They're all different and the same if that makes even sense. They all loved Alcoholics Anonymous, they still do love Alcoholics Anonymous because they're not all dead, thank God. But it's early yet so... Still got to get back to the airport tomorrow. But I had this guy, Richie. Five years, he was my sponsor. And he's the one that 12-stepped me in again. I remember I had the most important question in the world. I had to ask him one day. How do you not go to a baseball game and get loaded? How do You not have fun? How do YOU not go to barbecues? How Do You not go to the lake or the beach or a concert? how do you do that stuff and he didn't tell me how to do that he showed me how to do it he would have parties at his house he would have barbecues at his home picnics we'd go on we he showed me that alcoholics anonymous and the fellowship that we crave is not about you know being dumb boring and glum like it says about in division with you for you right that there's a life here to have and in doing so we get to carry the message and to practice these principles in all our affairs bill grace i talked about him earlier year five he became my sponsor bill grayson was as big as me came from saint paul minnesota had a blue book he came into my town he was a man that was armed with the facts he had a message of depth and weight and the old-timers were afraid of him we had business meetings where the old times would tell us young guys stay away from that guy he's going to kill you they were threatened by his sobriety now that sounds absolutely ludicrous saying it but that's just the way it was in my neighborhood back then because they felt threatened or maybe they felt fear or maybe they just realized they weren't doing anything but just not drinking and going meetings and buying into that lie that abstinence is a solution to a spiritual malady but bill grace he picked up a drink at 16 years the first guy that took me through the book he had full-blown aids and back in the 80s for those who were around there was no cure for aids back then and he started to get all the lesions all over him and he probably withered down to about 120 pounds at 6 foot 4 looked like a pencil he was skinny as a rail and I loved this guy but he gave up hope and he wound up drinking and I think he was shooting dope at the end and he died but that doesn't dismiss everything he did for me of carrying a message to the alcoholic who still suffers and then i had this old time rdv for like nine years my dad was a butcher you know and i told you earlier on all the trouble i had with my father me and my old man we were like this my whole life until i got sober and when i was sober and you know he came to my 90 day celebration he met you and he was so happy though he couldn't express that happiness and how he felt about alcoholics anonymous and what you were doing for his son i know deep down inside he was proud of was going on in my life that my life was getting transformed even though you know i mean i was only a few months over but he saw a difference and when he died my old man like i told you just now you know i moved down to the jersey shore and uh i'm looking for a sponsor and i hear this old timer he's he sounds pretty good he was about 60 years old back then he was 30 years something sober He just died, you know, I don't even know, six months ago, a year ago, with 57 years of sobriety. And I remember, like, I felt this incredible fear about asking him to help me. But then one day I walked to him and I said, what do you do for a living? He goes, I'm a butcher. Damn, God, stop showing off. And he became my sponsor for about nine years until I really went sideways at 10 years of sobriety. Because you see, I'm not that guy that got on a spiritual rocket ship when I got here and went up, up, and away. My recovery is about growing, hitting a wall, growing, hitting a Wall. And I think that's the story for most of us. That we all have that second surrender, that third surrender, that fourth surrender. And i think we hit a lot of walls. But we stay close to alcoholics and addicts. We stay close to our sponsors. We say close to God. And we get through things that we get through. And then I met Petey Boy. I blow up my life for 10 years. I almost drink at 13 years. I walk into a bar at 13 years sober. I'm living a double life in Alcoholics Anonymous, though I don't want you guys to know about it because I'm an AA guru and I'm, you know, I walk into the bar and I walk into this bar because I'm in this double life. Lying to my sponsor, lying to everyone, walked out of a marriage, all that stuff. Walked into a Bar one night in Red Bank, New Jersey. I said, bartender, give me a drink. He put the drink on the bar. I understand what Dr. Bob talks about in his nightmare when he says we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. I didn't want to take that drink, but God damn it, I needed that drink. And when the devil and the angel popped out on my shoulder, they said, drink it, don't drink it. Drink it, don't think it. And all of a sudden a hand went around that glass and pulled that glass back and when I looked up, the bartender just happened to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. What are you doing in here? Well, apparently throwing my life away. And two weeks later, and this is just to show you the emergence of ego, I walk into a workshop that he's doing. I never knew this guy. I'd never met this guy, never heard this guy. And I'm in there and I'm judging him because he sounds too good to be true. Two weeks earlier, I'm ready to drink, and now I'm here judging him. And the way he likes to put it, but I think it's really the way I see it, was I walked up nicely and asked him to sponsor me. I think he says I put him in a headlock and said, you're going to sponsor you now? Something like that. We never get clear with that story. But that starts my journey for the next 15 or 16, 17 years with him. Right? and we're like brothers now there was a point where I needed a new voice in my head it wasn't about him, it was just me I just wanted to grow a little bit and he was a little surprised I was afraid to talk to him to be honest with you but I'll show you how God works so I called three guys in the country and say I'm thinking about a new sponsor, I had a guy in mind but I didn't tell anyone all three of them gave me the same answer All three of them don't even live 1,000 miles from each other. They had no idea. And Bob B became my sponsor. Bob Bazant's from St. Paul, Minnesota, who's over 55 years right now. Bob B is a different kind of guy. He's just different than anyone else. And Bob's not about mechanics or any of that. Bob's about let's just sit down and have a conversation. Let's just talk, all right? And here comes full circle how God connects the dots. Peter's looking for a sponsor and he calls me up and says, I'm thinking about asking Bob. So now my old sponsor is now my sober brother and something like that, you know, we're like the wayward family or something. but they've all done one thing for me they insist on carrying a message to the alcoholic who still suffers you've had a spiritual experience as a result of these 12 steps you've stepped into the sunlight of the spirit now you need to give this away in abundance and that's really been my story I've been involved in a lot of things through the years but a couple of things if I put it all together some of the things they really talked about was just having that conversation working with others when I start sponsoring guys the mutual expectations we have for each other I'm not here to be your sober coach, I'm no here to be your father, I am not here to be any of that stuff I'm just another guy who has been through the 12 steps and is trying to carry the message to you so you can have this still awakened life and help others it's really simple I'm like the total AA for dummies type of guy you know I think it's really important that we share our experience, our strength and our hope I'm not a counselor, never been in the field I know nothing about that stuff but I used to learn with this this guy Artie was and he used to talk about the three E's that one I need to explain one I needs to encourage and one I needed to engage and explain is really just about our basic concepts what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous why don't we expect a newcomer when he walks in to know what we're doing we don't So we have a different language in here. It's called the language of the heart So we need to really start sitting down and talking about our basic time. Why is that basket going around? We always make a joke there He told that joke a little earlier about you know That his uncle well, maybe it was a private joke and you guys weren't in on it so I'm not gonna tell you but it was basically But basically, you know, we're all kind of like Shady sometimes you only get here. Where's that money basket going? You know, who's that guy? you know that's holding that but just the basic concepts of alcoholics anonymous you know the encouragement you know i was always encouraged to read our literature you know this is really our sponsor right this is rarely our sponsor all our literature everything we need to know is in our literature what we get from our sponsors and what we give from each other is our experience strength and hope when you apply these principles to all your affairs and what that looks like what does it look like to make amends like we heard tonight from freddie what does it look like to write inventory? What does it look like, you know, pray and meditate? What does that look like? To get on your knees with another person and take that third step prayer. And then engage. I was always told to engage in all three sides of the triangle. We can get very top heavy in fellowship. We could become AA ninjas like I said. We could become militant in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's a dangerous place where I think we all go through little phases at some point or another. I know I did. I know after I went through the steps the first time, the first thing I did was I went to Harlem, New York and I saw Joe and Charlie for the first time. And I came back from Harlem and I'll tell you, I was like hitting people all over the head with this book. You better do this stuff. I wasn't doing it but you better do it. That kind of thing. We have to learn about that stuff. We have toned that stuff down. That's not effective. Here's the question. Am I useful and effective in carrying a message? never take advantage of a sponsor whether it's financially sexually or try to control them I got one job is to get you independent of me and dependent upon God that's it and we do that through sharing our experience with them and I hope you do that through carrying this message you think I'm going to talk about a spiritual experience, but this is the accumulation of what we do. Step 12 of carrying this message. 2006 I'm sitting in my house or a little prior to that and we're talking to my wife Mary Beth who was up here earlier. We'd like to start a big book meeting down by my house. We belong to separate home groups and we said we want to start a bigbook meeting where we can carry the message to people in our neighborhood you know to make it there was no big book meeting per se in our neighborhood so i got 12 guys from all different groups invited them to my house we put a steering committee together i like bill wilson hammering out on the anvil of experience when he wrote his traditions we used the experience of all these other men and women that were at our house to create a format so we could start this meeting in our neighborhood i'll never forget when we wrote this format out and we had the church that we wanted to go to i'll not forget this night till the day i die we went to prayer and we prayed that 30 people would show up at our home group on day one that first night we had over 175 people at our group we had tables well we had round tables but we were like we're gonna ditch the tables we need more chairs you know and 18 years later will be celebrating 18 years as a home group this January on the Jersey Shore Neptune New Jersey a design for living room and any day on any Sunday given Sunday we could have 200 to 300 people in that room a pocket of enthusiasm are you excited about your sobriety I know when I get to my girl home group I see excitement in the air I i feel the pocket of enthusiasm we walk in and i know some girls from another group that broke off from us and they're the same way there's two girls reading over here in the book there's two guys over there there's a guy around the coffee pot talking about again the giants beat the eagles there's excitement there's spirit you can walk in because i know you guys have walked into meetings where it feels like the night of the living dead where there's no no juice going on no juice going on and at a 2007 we decided to become a group I'm 19 years sober at the time and in order to be a group we need a GSR to be keep our group attached or connected to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole so we're not the type of group where if you go to the bathroom you come out the GSR that we don't do that. But they asked me to be the GSR. I don't want to do service work. I don' know nothing about service work, I know nothing about that side of the triangle, no clue. But I reluctantly put my hand up. All right, I'll do it. It was all fear. I'm afraid of what you think of me if I don't do a good job see how that thing is still in me I think it's still in the those feelings of insecurity those feelings I don't fit in his feelings I can't do the job I mean the list is from here to the back wall I have why I can't do what I could do but I raised my hand I said I'll do it that next month I went to a regional regional service assembly in Hunt Valley Maryland a thousand people it's called Narasa and I walk in there and I'm overwhelmed with people and I feel like a square peg in a round hole 19 years over coming up on my 20th year of sobriety and I am like riddled with fear hundreds of forms of fear in this big hotel and then I met two guys two old-timers two guys one became my service sponsor his name is John Q and And if you can't pray for him, because he's in the hospital. Our elders are getting old. He's not going to last too much longer. And John Q was just a, I thought he was an old dude from the neighborhood. But he was a past trustee and he was a past United States trustee at large, which means that he was the connector. He was the liaison between our structure, AA and AA, AA, United States and Canada, and all the structures in the world. One guy does that. And there's one person in Canada that does that. And the other guy was our owner, and he was our Northeast trustee, and they took me under their wing. And I'll tell you why I'm telling this long, drawn-out story. John hands me the service manual. I don't know if anyone ever read the service module in here. It's a real doozy. But all he wants me to do is read one thing in there. In the old manual, it's on S20. I don't know what page it's on in the new manual and as a title there's an excerpt in there from a non-alcoholic class a we call them non alcoholic trustee his name was Bernard Smith he was Bill Wilson's personal lawyer he's the guy that created our general service structure along with Bill and what he writes in there or the excerpt is why do we have a general service conference why do we do the things we do in alcoholics anonymous and in that little excerpt he writes this we don't do what we do an AA to ensure our sobriety we're all here right now I know when people show up in Florida Peters group he knows what they're doing that newcomer I know you girls over there know what to do when that girl shows up and sit her down and help her out and get her on a path, right? But what he writes is right now. In Doylestown, Pennsylvania, there's a man right now, I'm guaranteeing you right now he's cracking open a bottle of Jack Daniels and he's ready to wash his day away and he has no clue no clue whatsoever because there's bunch of guys in here that have an answer to his problem. I'm guaranteed you right now. In Doylestown, Pennsylvania, there's a single mom who can't wait to put those three kids down and crack that bottle of wine open and just wash her day away, not knowing there's a bunch of beautiful women in this room right now that haven't answered the how problem. Right now, right now, in your local hospital and 120 miles away where I live and every hospital in between there's a baby being born destined for alcoholism so we all have a responsibility and learned i have a responsibilities what that responsibility is is to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers and yeah we could talk about sponsorship we could talk about sitting at the table we could talked about bringing someone through the steps and we all know that's vitally important that's why we talked about that all day long but there's other ways of carrying a message to alcoholics who are still suffering who don't know we exist in the rooms of aaa and we do that going through treatment centers we do that on our prison systems we do not go into detoxes we go to our doctors we go to our clergy we carry the message to the best of our ability we try we tried to practice these principles in all our affairs and bring the word out to them elimination of our drinking is just the beginning a more important demonstration of our principles lies in our respective homes occupations and affairs how you dealing with that as my sponsors would say to me How you doing with that Jim? So I started to learn that I need to do a little bit more as an individual member in Alcoholics Anonymous. I can't take on the world, I do my part. We all have a part and so I got involved and I started to work down my service structure. We have an inverted triangle. The groups are on top. Groups are in charge of Alcoholics Anonymous I started working my way down. I became a DCM, I became an alternate chair I became the chairperson, became an alternate delegate, and then I just rotated out last December as the delegate to the General Service Conference for Area 44. Big whoop-dee-doo. And I'm proud of that. But that's not my purpose. My purpose is to carry the message for the alcoholic who still suffers. So when you're involved in service at that level, you're making decisions for Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole when it comes to our pamphlets. some people walk in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous have no clue what this is about they get to the pamphlet and they don't want to talk to any of you guys because they're afraid but they go to that literature table and all of a sudden they see a pamphet that might apply to them and they pick up that pamphret and they say, you know what maybe there is hope for a guy like me or a woman like me so we need to stock our literature tables why? because that's a way of carrying a message to the alcoholic who still suffers my two years I'm going to wrap it up with this in a little bit my two years of service as a delegate, my first conference was virtual eight days, ten hours on a computer vertigo the whole time you know how dizzy I was on my first talk? I mean I had that for a week but my second was in Brooklyn at the Marriott down in Brooklyn Heights and I'm the closest living delegate at that time to the General Service Conference even closer than the guy that's a delegate from New York, Sini and I make a decision to just drive in, I mean what else would I do I'd just drive into Brooklyn and go to this conference as I drove into Brooklyn, I grew up in Jersey City, got sober in Jersey city which is on the Jersey side of the Hudson River so I had to go through Jersey City so I said to myself, you know what let me just take a ride through my old neighborhood and I drove through my old neighborhood and all these emotions started to flare up in me this feeling of gratitude, this feeling of purpose I'm going to do a job for Alcoholics Anonymous trying to carry the message because of this spiritual awakening I get to carry this message to the best of my ability to represent my area to represent my groups to represent the people that are lives on the brink sometimes and as I drove through those streets where I would walk aimlessly at night for 18 months with no direction I passed that house I grew up in where it was such violence sometimes where my old man would just be off the chain and I just couldn't wait to get away from them. I passed that first bar I drank in Wally's. Back then the drinking age was 18 but if your chin could hit the bar you were getting served so I was getting served like 15 years old because I've always been I was born six foot four. My mother got through it don't worry. The joy of living is the theme of the 12 step. How will you live in your life than alcoholics and others? Are we just not drinking and going to meetings? Are we just hanging our hat on sponsorship, which is important, and not everyone needs to get in service either. I'm not saying that. But what part are you doing to carry the message to the person who is still sick and suffering? And what lengths are you going to do that? I had 90 days sober. In Jersey we don't do the chips, the coins. We do a 90-day pinning and a yearly pinning. I'll never forget this day. My only 90-days celebration I ever had. You see, when you had 90 days, they used to have a triangle in New Jersey. I don't know if we had that. Some groups still do. It's a gold triangle with a G on top, a dot in the middle, and AA on the bottom. And what would happen on your 90 days? You'd get on a jacket and tie. They were pretty adamant about showing up dressed at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, the CEO always says, don't show up like you just committed a felony. Be dressed. Show respect for the life that you've been given because of Alcoholic Anonymous. And see, the sponsor would stand up there and he'd say, hey Jim, see this little insignificant dot in the middle of that triangle? That's you. But I want to make you a promise. Same promise I'm making to anyone in this room tonight. Whether you have 30 minutes, 30 years, 30 days, it doesn't make a difference. Because we know from experience that you could be dying in here with 30 years of sobriety, but your ego and your pride has now stepped into place and you're not talking to anyone about any of that stuff. And the pandemic has made that even worse because we've isolated, we've gotten behind the screen. Not knocking virtual meetings, but it's real easy just to hide behind a screen and not be eyeball to eyeball with each other. But here's the promise that they made me and the promise that I make you. If you could put one hand in G, which is God, and one hand on AA, which Alcoholics Anonymous, and get involved with our three legacies of unity, service, and recovery, you'll never have a hand to pick up a drink. And in doing so, we get to carry the principles, we can practice these principles, we have a spiritual experience, and we get the life that is, as I've heard from a million podiums, beyond our wildest dreams. That's all I have, thank you. Thank you again Jimmy, incredible talk, incredible talk from all our speakers today. It's been an amazing day and thank you for your service coming here and if you get a chance, thank them. I don't know what we're going to do. We'll say a prayer. Let's say to the Our Father real quick and then if you care to join us. Our Father. God of God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Yeah, the night meeting goes on tonight at 8 p.m., I guess we'll, 8 p!m. Food and Fellowship 8.30 speaker. If you guys want to go out and grab some dinner and get a break unless you guys want to sit here and do open mic and rotate speakers until then you're welcome to do that. All conference talks We'll be on YouTube.