Marilyn S. Explains How the Big Bang Fits Into a Higher Power

I am Marilyn Slater and I'm an alcoholic absolutely delighted to be here thank you for the introduction thank you for being my host Michelle but more than that thank Thank you for being a friend. And Bob, this is such a privilege to be at this weekend. Thank you and the committee, whoever was responsible for this amazing wonderful weekend. So far I just can't remember having an experience at an AA weekend like this before. It's truly fantastic and great privilege to be a part of it. I was asked to talk about coming to believe and what the third step has meant in my sobriety. And I will try to do that, try to tell you what that means to me. Coming to believe was not a one-time thing by any means. It continues to happen. I come to believe at several points. And after I cometo believe, I know that this is it. I've been looking for it all my life. Everything has fallen into place, and it's simple but beautiful, and it will be this way forever. And then something shatters that whole thing, and I realize that I've Been Strangely Asleep. And then there's a dark tunnel. And then coming into a new experience of the program, other people, my higher power, and so forth. Then that continues. That continues to this day. and yet a long time ago I heard the wonderful Chuck Seed talk about his experience in Alcoholics Anonymous he talked about that kind of thing of climbing a mountain and he says that the climb is very hard but then you get to a meadow and you get rest for a while and as you do this over and over again you find that each time you stop in the meadow you're higher up and the view gets a lot better and I didn't know what that meant at all. I couldn't imagine what that meant in early sobriety but I did like mountain climbing. I was a member of the Sierra Club so that was kind of a little bit of identification but that's taken on meaning with these years. Just to give you some indication of who I am, I hail from the Pacific Group in West Los Angeles. Yeah, cheer. And this amazing program has kept me sober for about 39 years and nine months, a long time. And I take no credit for it, but that's just a fact. As for the third step, that was such a mysterious thing for me because I came into the program as a confirmed atheist. And this talk about God that I had disproved many, many times in my own mind, giving my will and my life over, or at least asking this being, this force to take my will and my wife into its care had no meaning for me. So early sobriety was very mysterious for me, but long before sobriete, I was a seeker as many of us are. I've heard people talking about joining Est and all kinds of churches and synagogues, and that's interesting to me. It never occurred to me to look for God in places that talked about God. But I sought God in science. I mean, science represented God to me because it talked about big things and very tiny things too, but it was the big ones that really impressed me like the universe and infinity and speed of light. I mean those were magic words for me and I came to worship that kind of thing and that was in a sense a higher power. I felt that it could answer things it could ask questions like why are we here and where did it all begin but it answered things in mysterious ways like Big Bang. Now in those days I thought I had an answer if I heard that. But that's two words, and you don't, I mean, you know nothing except Big Bang. And yet there was something satisfying about that to me. I studied science. I even tried this notion of God back in Ohio. Lots of people talked about God in Ohio, and I thought, okay, this is some kind of mythical being that is supposed to be very powerful and I'd give it a try. God, if you're there, give me a sign, I'd say. And sometimes I'd get a sign. Shooting star, leaf falling out of a tree, falling over a rock. Okay, that may be a sign now if it really came from you here's my agenda and then I'd give three or four things that I needed done really fast and since God seemed to ignore all of that I took that as proof that nothing is listening and certainly nothing powerful so I had heard about other mythical beings and I just relegated this idea of God into the category of Dracula, Easter Bunny, Santa Claus we know who they are and they have mystical powers but they don't really exist So that was my relationship with God through all of those years. I studied science, and science was a wonderful higher power at first, but it just could not satisfy that deep need that I felt for whatever I was looking for. I didn't know what it was, but I just knew I wasn't finding it. And I went away. I married a scientist. I looked like a scientist, And now looking back on that time, what I realized that I was in love with was the idea of science. I loved the idea of being a scientist. I loved it. I loved to love the look of scientists. I just didn't like the work of scientists, so as a consequence, I wasn't really a very good scientist, but then I was rescued by something that became my next higher power, a much more powerful higher power and you can probably guess what that is since this is a weekend of Alcoholics Anonymous and alcohol kind of came into my life in a gradual way. It came in because of the 60s really and if you missed that too bad some of you are young but oh my gosh what a time for us it was anything goes was the attitude and I was in this lab but we just break out the lab alcohol there were seals on the bottle that had little pictures of, like, federal government and symbols and things. And we'd just break those seals. Now, I'm sure it's highly illegal, but this was the 60s. I mean, that's what kind of wonderful time it was. And we drank. And that's when I began to feel like a real scientist. I was getting close to that thing that I was looking for. Now, what was it? I don't know. But, you know, I felt like, boy, I am getting there now. A part of it was just kind of an entry into the human race. I had always felt like a stranger in a strange land, like I came from another planet and didn't know how to talk with other people. These social situations were forever baffling. Questions like, how's it going? It. How is it, it going. going some kind of verb, it going and I'd try to interact and it was so hopeless and so here I was searching in the lab looking for answers, trying to be a scientist failing as a scientist finally the director noticed that I didn't like to work. Actually, I liked to work, I just couldn't work very effectively because I drank so much. Never occurred to me that I lost my job because of my drinking. It was a cruel quirk of fate. And so I went home and gave birth to a whole lot of children. That was not in the plan, not in the plan at all. But by this time I had lost the ability to plan and carry out plans. I had even stopped looking at this point. These were the years of despair. People in Alcoholics Anonymous, not so much now but when I got sober they talked about alcoholism being a disease with three stages. First it's fun. Drinking is fun. Then it's fun with problems, and then it's just problems. And so I had fun there for a while in the 60s, early 60s and then fun with a lot of problems trying to work in the lab and fool people that I was working big problems, uh, and pretty soon just problems being at home with this house that was filling ever more with children and husband working long hours at the lab, leaving me alone with these children. And I certainly was a dangerous mom, dangerous to these little children. I wondered how it went so terribly wrong. As I said, I'd stopped seeking by this time. I was just in real despair, wondering why did life turn out so badly? How did it all happen? I didn't know. And one night I had gone out for more to drink and was driving around. Now, in those days, that was the late 60s, so there were no seatbelts in cars. And we were just all kind of hanging loose in the car. And I was trying to go in a straight line, which you can do, even though you had a lot to drink, if the front right tire touches the curb at all times. And I must have fallen asleep at the wheel or came out of a blackout because what I noticed was that my husband had come home from his lab. He was a scientist, and he was opening the door of the car saying, What is wrong with you? And here I was, little children in the car looking lost and cold, And I don't know how long we'd been there, but I was very, very drunk. And pretty soon there was a great big one in the house, and that was my mother-in-law. He was a man of action, a scientist, and he could figure out that the kids were in danger and there's a crazy woman in the House. Now, that was back around 1970. And that was before Betty Ford made it safe for women alcoholics. that was a time when the alcoholic woman was the mad woman in the attic they'd just kind of farm us away stay out in the garage, they'd say to me but on the other hand my mother-in-law was feisty and she'd say things like unless you get control of your life and stop drinking so much We're going to lock you up, and you'll never see the children again. Just these little gentle tutelages. And it was like a cold hand grasping my heart. I was afraid of her, really afraid. I didn't like her very much and felt that she had come to take my place, which she had, of course, because I certainly couldn't take it. but it was largely because of her and my own mother who came and wept a lot at the state of affairs and I heaped abuse on these grandmothers that only tried to help go home, don't you see you're ruining our lives and my mother in particular would just say well, it seems like you need help here and I'll stay a little while longer maybe you better cut back on the drinking but that was the only thing that allowed me to get through the day life had become so painful so unbearable at that point but as I said these little gentle reminders got me to call Alcoholics Anonymous and people would come to visit me and take me to meetings and I'd always get taken up into a meeting that was just way too scary and I played around between 1969 and 1972 and then something amazing happened in 1972 I went to a meeting and it was not because I went on my own but somebody paid a 12 step call on me actually came to my house so I'm a great believer in 12 step work certainly made all the difference for me and it also made a difference for her her name is Lorena and she's sober to this day up in Ojai over 40 years sober and continued to do that kind of work working with others, there's just something magic and healing and transformative in that wonderful basic thing. As Carl said, one alcoholic talking to another. And I wasn't afraid of her when she came. She talked about her own drinking and said she'd take me to a meeting. She said that we'd go to a real nice meeting and I said, oh, but I have certain requirements. And I explained that I needed a dark, quiet meeting because I was a scientist. And I said, but don't take me to the Pacific group because people have taken me there and that's way, way too noisy and, I mean, too many lights. And I sent friendly people, but what I meant was carnivorous. and so she agreed we'd go to a dark quiet meeting and I said I want to meet somebody named Marion somebody I'd seen from afar and she didn't know Marion but off we went to the meeting and there was a first half which I don't remember and a coffee break and then we all sat down and the leader got up to the podium and said tonight our main speaker is Marion W you. And I looked up and there was the one I was looking for. I had met her in these visits to Alcoholics Anonymous, but I was always waiting for her to come over and choose me out of a crowd and say, you're special and I want to be your sponsor. I really want to get to know you. And she didn't do that. So I never said hello or tried to get acquainted. And yet she was there that night. And she told a story that I could hear about fear, about unhealthy dependencies. And what happened saved my life, I'm sure. After the meeting, I went up and attached to her, just saying, be my sponsor. Would you be my sponsor? She agreed to do that if I would come to her home group, which was the Pacific Group. And I said, no, no, that's too active for me. Too friendly. and she said well there are dark quiet meetings like here, 26th and Broadway this is nice, you can stay at these meetings but I can't be your sponsor but I had already attached with the kind of unhealthy dependency that a sick parasite can muster don't ever go away don't ever go away. And I said, even that. And that was another thing. In fact, in this journey in seeking sobriety and seeking transformation, these things that are often the scariest, the most unthinkable have turned out to be the most essential, the most central. I needed a huge active group where everybody was accountable for everybody else. And that was what I got. I was introduced to this big group. And at first, it was not too bad. I had Marion, my buffer against the scary world. She taught me how to answer mysterious questions like, how are you? I'd never known that. And she gave me the script. She said, say, fine, how are you and that one worked and I came to trust it was not long before I heard this word God and began to read these steps that are suggested we better take them but they're suggested and so many of them do talk about the spiritual part of the program giving our will and our lives over to the care of God coming to believe in some kind of power greater than ourselves all of this mysterious semi-religious language that was so offensive after all of these years of atheism and figuring out that I knew there was no God worshipping the God, no God, all capital letters but Marian was so gentle what she said was just give lip service to it you can recite those prayers it doesn't matter what you think they mean and it doesn' t matter if you don' t think that anything is listening but do what we suggest here and our home group can be your higher power well Marian became my higher power my sponsor was my higher powder and much of sobriety in seeking in coming to believe has been finding something and then having that taken away, as I said before. And this first higher power, Marion, was a wonderful higher power. She spoke English. She talked to me. I could reach her on the phone. I could understand her will for me on a daily basis. That was good. It was a very good higher power and before I was one year sober, she told me she was going to move away. my higher power is moving out of my life and I said no, no you can't do that I'll never find another Marian and she said oh yes you can do that I have to go and I say take me with you no, you're here you have a lifetime of amends to your husband and to your children you have to learn how to be a wife and mother you have not with me you have to stay here and I said okay then be my sponsor please let me keep you as my higher power and she said no you're far too intense you have to get a sponsor in your home group and my heart was breaking and she drove away and my memory was that I held onto the car and was pulled along the freeway until I just dropped off all bloody around the chest. I was right about one thing, though, and I never found another Marian. And in the great scheme of things, now after approaching 40 years of sobriety, I can just see how that worked. Again, that was one of the most horrible bits of news I was ever presented with. But somehow my higher power that I hadn't met at that point, my higher powers beyond earthly higher powers, was using that opportunity, not causing it, I don't believe, but using that to break some of those dependencies that I could easily form with human beings. I could just attach like a tick on a dog, as I said. And that was fine, but I'd also drain out your life as I was doing it, and that wasn't so nice. So that was the first in a series of breaking these dependencies. And, again, this dependency then was transferred to a bunch of old-timers, a bunch OF people that I respected in the fellowship, and to my home group, eventually to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. But there, in those early days, Marion moved away, And I was kind of lost for a while, searching for that perfect sponsor. But again, that dependency was being transferred. But also trying to tune in to what was this mysterious language about God. And around that time, there were people speaking in Alcoholics Anonymous. One in particular, we were talking at dinnertime about the great Chuck C. and it was my privilege to know him he came to our home group and he talked a lot in Southern California and at first when I heard him he said things like he's the pappy and we're his kids and then he'd laugh and I just thought this is beyond corny this is so dreadful that I was embarrassed for him and then he grew on me and I don't know why but he had that presence that very few people have a kind of radiance from within he walked into a room and the whole room got a little bit brighter and he had a smile that was so accepting so welcoming it just said come, I love you and I'd been afraid of people all of my life I couldn't imagine what love was, except, as I said, attached like fungus on a tree. But his love was love and let go. You're okay just as you are. If you want my help, here it is for you. Completely open, wonderful, and radiant. And then I began to listen to what he said, and he knew some big thing, a really big thing. And pretty soon I wanted to know that big thing too. I came to understand that he had some kind of relationship with something supernatural, some very big, complex, very loving, very powerful thing. And on the chance that it was there, one time I was alone, and I just said into outer space, if you're there, I'd like to get to know you. And if you'RE really there, I'm willing to go on any path you pick for me. And it made my heart beat fast because I knew I'd just signed my whole life away. Now, my life was pretty worthless at that point. But it was the only one I had. So it seemed like a big step. But some years later, I realized how strange that was, that I thought that was kind of an original idea. You see, that was just my brain catching up with what was happening in Alcoholics Anonymous. As I said, I was thrown into the Pacific Group. That's a container. And as I was poured into it, I began to take the shape of the container. It was a mold, and a lot of people call it the structure. But I needed that kind of thing. I was walked into those steps that were causing me to recover, allowing me to stay sober, causing a transformation. So by the time that my brain had caught up and I was able to say, if you're there, I'd like to get to know you. And if you really are there, I'll go on any path you pick for me. I'd been trudging the path for quite a while. I was taking the steps. I was working with others, working with newcomers, I was sponsoring people by that time. The transformation had already occurred. I had already given my will and my life over the care of my higher power, which at that time was Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was a fine higher power. After many, many years have passed, I still have the same belief. It doesn't say this in AA literature, but it's my belief, and that is that seeking to do God's will for me is the very same thing as seeking to be a good member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because in doing that, I am led along some kind of a path that allows me to stay sober, it allows meto recover, and it allowsme to go out into the world and every now and thenbe a productive citizen. And that happened without any planning of my own, just by turning myself over to the care of Alcoholics Anonymous. Back in those days, though, I muttered that prayer. I may have said it aloud, may have set it to myself, but I was fully present in it. Later, I came to understand very much how like the third step prayer it is. God, I was offering myself to God To do with me as God chooses I didn't say take away my difficulties But that's what I meant Do anything with me The part that I didn' t add was So that I could be a witness to your power I had doubts that anything was there But on the other hand That was the best I could do Giving my will and my life over to God and then walking in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. After that, and it's probably as a result of our wonderful inventory staff and making amends, but things that were unresolved for a whole lifetime. I was 32 by the time that I got to AlcoholicsAnonymous, and I did not experience much emotion except fear and loathing and dread. But early on, horrible things had happened. Like my father was in a terrible auto accident and lay in a coma for 12 years. I don't remember ever experiencing any emotion about that. I think it was just way too much for a 10-year-old kid to deal with. But all of these things that I just kind of put on a shelf, filed away for future reference, sort of crashed in on me after an inventory, fifth step. giving serious attention to six and seven, eight and nine, and so forth. A job was being done on me, and all kinds of emotion began to surface and get resolved. And during this time I found that really, really painful. It lasted for about a year of just a lot of psychic pain, confusion. and yet by that time I had a friend Diana, who is my friend to this day even though she lives far away and she was my friend before I sort of lapsed into this thing I lovingly call the abyss just this enormous upwelling of emotion she stood by me during this time was a good friend during that time and she didn't really quite know what was going on but felt it had something to do with Alcoholics Anonymous and recovery. There was a fellow in our group, Bill B., who became very important to me as kind of a spiritual guru. He didn't talk about God, but he talked about science. And he talked abut finding his higher power at Griffith Park Observatory by looking in a telescope and seeing the vastness of the universe. And I could hear that. and Diana and Bill and other people said this is necessary and if you get through this completely on the natch then you will come into some kind of understanding that you never had before and this was the first one of those big climbs in Alcoholics Anonymous where I just my whole world was coming apart I could not understand what was going on nothing made any sense the more I did in Alcoholic Anonymous the worse I felt, emotions that I couldn't control. In other words, coming to. And it was no fun. There was a moment, there was a time during that when I seemed not to be able to get off the floor. Was in a lot of just abject psychic pain. And I kept thinking if only I could call my friend Diana then she would talk to me and it was good to have a friend I'd not had friends in my life before but I had a friend now and I trusted her I loved her in the way that I could love and I just thought if I could hear her voice I would feel better and maybe she could play some music for me there was a recording she had that was in the days with vinyl records of all things But she had this recording of the Canon of Pachelbel. It became very popular after that. But it was just this very sweet, repetitive, wonderful ethereal thing. And I thought if I could hear that, I might be able to make it through the day. But I just really couldn't get off the rug. And then I saw the door pushing open. And it was my friend Diana walking in. The door was unlocked. and she said, Marilyn, I was thinking about you and I just wanted to come over and see you and I bought you a recording of that canon of Pachelbel that you like so much and I don't know what that's all about but it's not the only time a remarkable coincidence has happened to me on the program that's gotten me through a very strange and difficult time and it just seems that as long as I am halfway willing to find out what in the world I'm supposed to go through here, and I keep on trudging. In extremis, my higher power just kind of reaches out extra hard and meets me about 90% of the way. Things like that happened, and I got through this difficult time. And then one day it all began to part, And I did come into contact with a God of my very own, experiential knowledge of God that was convincing to me. I had a kind of knowledge that I hadn't had before, higher on the mountain, and then I had a nice meadow. It was such a wonderful meadow, and I felt that I had received such wonderful knowledge from God that I became very saintly, insufferably saintly in fact, and drove many friends away. Diana did hang in. But I realized that I had become a highly spiritual being and it would be this way forever and ever. And I had about a year in that meadow and it was truly wonderful. I had this moment where I thought, there is God. So I thought Alcoholics Anonymous is not enough for me. So, I went out and joined a church because churches talk about God. And it was a Presbyterian church. Well, I didn't know anything about Presbyteryans but they talked about God so that seemed good. And I was so enthusiastic that they made me a Bible teacher. Now, I quickly read the Bible so I could teach the Bible, but I confused Bible with big book, and I like big book better. And I began to teach my little Bible study group the big book. And it was the 20th century, so they did not burn me at the stake. but it became clear that my spiritual program is Alcoholics Anonymous and that is my message and I should not try to inflict that on another spiritual organization and so I just had to stay away from church for a long, long time and my spiritual home is Alcoholic Anonymous A funny thing happened after about a year that old anxiety began to come back. Now, why was that so? Well, it was because I was getting acquainted, better acquainted with my children, getting acquainted with the church, getting acquainted with my husband for the first time in my life, really trying to enter into real life. I was talked into joining the PTA of all things and that brought me into the real world big time and they didn't appreciate that I was a saint. They just wanted me to be the science chairman of the local elementary school. And I just found that people did not understand my high spiritual qualities. And eventually, I came to understand that, again, I'm not fitting in. I mean, other people seem to have this common language and I'm still odd and weird. And maybe it is all just something false. And I was embarrassed. again. The climb, the climb. We'd moved to San Francisco and I was called at that time by the director of that lab where I had been so bad, squandered a wonderful opportunity. I had made amends to him and he called and offered me a job of all things. Now why did that happen? Because I made amends? I have no idea. Maybe he was insane but it happened. So I went back to the scene of the crime and I began to work in that lab again. Even in sobriety, I was not a terribly good scientist. I had a great knack for breaking a lot of expensive equipment. And I felt bad about it because I wanted a good podium story. I mean, I went back to science and now I won the Nobel Prize and I could even wear it to meetings, I thought to show how powerful God is but it wasn't going that way and then I was relegated to helping to write grant proposals and I did that I made a very bad mistake in writing a grant proposal and left out a large part of the research section like 18 pages of it and it went off to NIH and they didn't fund the grant it was a couple million dollars to keep the lab going and largely because of my mistake our lab was not funded for the next five years so the lab came to an end now I had had nightmares like I might be fired but never did my I couldn't even conjure up a nightmare that bad that I could cause the collapse of a whole laboratory, but that seemed to be what was happening. The day we got the news, the director had gone to NIH when they were going to review our grant and the program officer had pulled it out of the cabinet and all the research section was missing and he thumbed through it and the director was horribly embarrassed and They came back and broke the news. Well, on that day, I knew I had to go home and kill myself. I mean, what do you do when you do something like that? There is only one answer. But I was programmed by that time, so I began to call telephone numbers, and I couldn't reach anybody. It was the middle of the day, but I finally reached a person named Ruth who was a person I respected very much in the fellowship. She was there, and I told her what I'd done and that I had to fall on my sword, as any good worker would do. And she said, Marilyn, it would be far nobler to stay alive and to try to undo some of the damage that you've done. That is far nobbler. And I said, but I can never go back to Alcoholics Anonymous. And she says, they'll love that story. It will make them feel better. And then you'll live through it, and then you really will have a good story to tell. How you can live through and face up to just about any bad thing that could happen. So I went to a meeting that night, and I thought, I'll never tell another soul. But I ended up telling somebody. And I was called on to participate, and she urged me to talk about it. And I told it from the podium. And rather than laughing up their sleeves, they were sympathetic and kind and good. And that was a funny thing. I offered to, I certainly apologized to the director, offered my help, should we try to resubmit? The lab was collapsing. It was actually a lab that was ending up anyway. That just made it end a lot faster. But I lived five years beyond that, ten years beyond that, and I began to see that we all went on to better things. This was a lab full of normal people except for me. And when adversity strikes, they just think, okay, how do I pick up the pieces and go on and make the best of a bad deal and find another opportunity where I can be of service? I mean, that's how normal people think. It was strange thinking to me. But again, that seems to be the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. I heard that over and over. Pick up the piece. Find out how you can move on. and do something better. And the director went off, became the director of a lab in France and was a happy person. And I went back to school. I studied information science, and I've worked in that field ever since. I might not have done that had it not been for that incident. Who knows? But I found something that I can do, and I don't cause a lot of damage in the process. So everybody's happy. and the children were growing up. I went to work, and that was fun. But I was working in a little think tank. I was running a little information department, and we had to do research for the people there. There was a strange person there that was kind of a middle management person, and she was just a little bit crazy. and so she went out and she sued everybody and she gave a deposition and said some things about me it led the attorneys to think that there might be problems they looked into her background and I don't know what it was but I was told that I should either not come to work for a while or if I did come to works I should wear a bulletproof vest the vice president who was our boss had to move to points unknown for about two years well I had another friend who I climbed mountains with and she was married to a police officer so she loaned me a bulletproof vest and I had never worn one before but in those days they were made out of lead so it's very heavy so I wore this into work because I could take direction after Alcoholics Anonymous and worked in this but again I kept thinking things seemed to be going so well for a while and again where is God now that something so terrible could go wrong with this nice company around that time Our kids were growing up, and our young daughter, our baby. There's only three of them, by the way. It just seemed like a whole house full while I was drinking. But Susie, the baby, had gone off to Israel after high school, and she lived on an opan, lived in a kibbutz for about a half a year and learned Hebrew and really got into it. That changed her life. She came home with some kind of direction in her life after that. So I went there before she came home, and I spent two weeks in Israel. And she, by that time, knew the state of Israel or the country of Israel and could speak a little Hebrew. And she was a wonderful tour guide. And by that Time, I had made enough amends to my kids so that I just felt I adored them, I loved them. And it was a sad and melancholy moment because Susie was the baby, and she was going to leave home now. They were all up and out of the nest and that toward those later years had so much meaning for me and now that was going to disappear and here we were in Israel together. I don't know what it is about Israel but it seems like when God wants to do something big, God often does it in Israel if you think about it And I don't know what happened to me, but I just remember standing on the Sea of Galilee and looking out over the sea and thinking of the history of that. And Susie was standing, and I took a picture of her, and she just had her arms out, and the wind was blowing her hair back. And it was one of those magic moments where I just, wow, if that's all there is. I mean, I have been so amply blessed. And so I took a picture, and I have that picture. But what else was happening was that I realized that back home I'd had that job, bulletproof vest, I'd gone to school, I was going to AA. By that time I had left the Pacific Group, I Was doing quieter AA. But that's enough for somebody like me who is seasoned. And yet it was all kind of gray in a horrible kind of way. Around that time, or maybe earlier, there was a person named Peggy Lee who used to sing a song, Is That All There Is? Is that all there is, my friend? And that was what I thought. Is that All There is? Until that moment at the Sea of Galilee when Susie was standing there, I just thought, I want to do something more. what is it? And since we were in Israel it made me think of God and so I thought, okay, I know what it is I am going to Calcutta and I'm going to turn myself over to Mother Teresa that was as clear to me as if God had spoken out loud I mean, it was engraved on tablets coming down from Mount Horeb I mean, it was just clear Calcutta, Mother Teresa. And I really wanted to work with the poorest of the poor, the dying and the hopeless. And I told Susie about it, and she said, interesting idea. She's very tactful. And so we came back, and I shared this with friends in AA. I shared it with Diana. I shared It with other people. and I had gone sponsorless for a lot of years because I could never find another Marian so I didn't have a sponsor to consult with but almost invariably every AA friend every acquaintance said interesting idea but consider this you're not a Catholic you're married and you have a family you shouldn't go to India and leave them you don't speak any of the languages of India you have no experience working with the dying maybe it's like that but just something a little different so I thought what could it be and then another idea came into my mind and I can't tell you how that came into me it was not nearly as profound as that moment at the Sea of Galilee but I thought Pacific group my birthplace and it was still there and I thought Clancy Mother Teresa yes yes and it is that kind of group where we welcome the sickest of the sick the poorest of the poor. I mean, you don't have to have anything to be welcomed into the Pacific group. And the less you have, the sicker you are, the more welcome you are. And so they always welcomed me, of course. And I returned when I was 18 years sober and Clancy became my sponsor and has been my sponsor ever since. And it's not that kind of attached like a tick on a dog relationship it is a genuine respect for a wonderful human being that does much more in Alcoholics Anonymous than anybody else I know an example that I emulate could never live up to but I love to have that kind of thing in front of me and that is what he has done is keep that group full of integrity he's kept it intact through these years so it was there when I returned. I had a kind of energy that I never had before and really have not had ever since, but at 18 years of sobriety, I began to go to seven meetings a week. I went to all the watches. I wentto all the activities. Went to group moves. I just did that more than I did when I was a newcomer, and I experienced a kind of joy that I did not know was possible, full immersion in Alcoholics Anonymous, coming deeper into a relationship with my higher power, which I fully experienced through Alcoholics Anonymous. Fully turned over, fully invested in the fellowship. There was nothing that I was asked to do that I wouldn't do. I was in a good spiritual condition. My friend Charlie one time said, maybe says it often, but I heard it one time, and he said, a measure of my spiritual condition is how willing I am to be inconvenienced by AlcoholicsAnonymous. And I thought, yeah, that is a very good measure. Very good measure and I was very willing during that time. That was a gift of life. I just see that as a part of the journey and that deepened my experience of life, of God, of other people. I was no longer afraid of people. I loved to walk into a room and see my friends and yet when I've been fully immersed in Alcoholics Anonymous a funny thing happens that's when I really get drawn back into life in a big way and that of course happened I got a more challenging job in a hospital and found a lot of fulfillment there and found the greatest joy in sponsoring women I love that, I love that aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous I love the women I sponsor we have grown up together and now some of us are growing old together I sponsor women who are more than 30 years sober now and I love them like my own children there was a moment when I found a sponsee that I loved particularly because I saw myself so much in her but she was almost like the good twin she she was happy and welcoming and loving had a smile there was a song Frank Sinatra used to sing Nancy with the laughing face and my mother loved that song and I liked that song her face just radiated laughter well anyway I had the privilege of sponsoring her And what I got to see was that she was such a good member of Alcoholics Anonymous that doors seemed to open for her. I could see that the more she invested in AlcoholicsAnonymous, the richer her life became. And it was fun because I had a front-row seat on her life, and I could say, don't you see how God is working in your life? Not only now could I see how God had worked in my life, had united my family had allowed me to become a productive citizen in the world with a job allowed me a fair degree of joy most of the time but now I could see it working profoundly in the lives of others and I said, Sally, this is so wonderful She was sober, and she went back to school. And the doors kind of opened for her, and she had always wanted to study art history. She had been a hard-working social worker, and she liked that, but she loved art. So she was given a fellowship so she could go study art mystery. And then she got money to come out to California to study at the Getty. That's a place in Los Angeles, the GetTY Museum. so she was in Los Angeles for long periods of time so I got to spend a lot of time with her and I began to see how things fell into place for her, she was very bright and again it was just this wonderful experience of God working in her life and coming into this understanding of exactly how God works and how God works in the lives of others and what a joy that was And moreover, she was a wonderful art director. I'd go to museums with her and she would point out pictures and tell me all about these wonderful pictures. Just a wonderful fringe benefit of sponsoring an art historian. And I was so proud of her. And then she finished a PhD and I went back for her graduation to Boston. And I Was So Proud of Her in Her Cap and Gown And several of us went. And she was much loved because she could love. And, again, I could just see this wonderful thing of walking hand in hand with God and complete trust and how you're not let down if you do that. And things went so well that she got a wonderful postdoc. And that led then to an offer for a tenure-track position in a university. and that's what every academic dreams of a tenure track position it's just magic to your ears I mean, it's like coming to this casino and hearing that magic noise where you win $400,000 it's просто wonderful and again, we could just celebrate and the goodness of God and see how God is working in your life and as she was signing the contract and filling out the forms to take this wonderful position and she had a pain in her left side, and I said, well, you should go to the doctor because it wasn't going away. And she had an illness, and she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Now, when she told me that, I was speechless. I no longer could talk to her because I kept saying, don't you see how God is working in your life? and I felt like a fraud. I felt like I had led her on some terrible path of expectations and here she had been thrust to earth with this horrible diagnosis and she had surgery and the outlook was not good and they said maybe maybe a year better get your affairs in order. Again one of those things that was a real crisis of faith for me because I had just seen the hand of God. I had come into that deep understanding, I had come to believe that if we really, really surrender, then there will never be an unhappy day. Now, I should have given up that idea in early sobriety, but I had been coaxed into it again just because it was such a magic relationship. Now, she didn't take the news as badly as I did, it seemed. She really was a highly realized being, had her own wonderful relationship with God. And it was, well, this is sad news, but I hope it's not too hard on my husband, George. She was thinking of him. She was speaking to him. She was talking of her friends in that moment of that kind of news. And I must say that I learned a lot. I learned about from those last months with Sally as she went into that new adventure I just couldn't reconcile it with a loving God, though A real crisis of faith And my baby Susie The one in Israel on the Sea of Galilee Came to my rescue I talked with her She was undergoing her own spiritual transformation at that time She had gone to work She had actually gotten a very hard job A hard job for her She's an academic like Sally And she was offered a position at Notre Dame And so she became a professor there. And she was really frightened. So she had a religious conversion out of fear more than anything else, but it seemed to be really genuine. So she was on one of those meadows where she was in a good relationship, and she listened to me, and I was explaining how could this be? My faith is shattered. And she said, well, you know, what I think it is, she told me. Do you remember when I was just a tiny girl and Dad used to read us Winnie the Pooh stories when you went out to meetings? She liked the story about WinniethePooh when he said, he was talking to Piglet and Piglet said to him, what is your favorite thing to do? and Winnie the Pooh said my favorite thing is eating honey and then he thought for a minute and he said no, no it's not that it's that moment before eating honey and then Susie said don't you see, don't you see I mean she was offered that job and she got to leave this life on the happiest of all possible notes, that moment before eating honey, the academic stream, the offer of a tenure-track position. Susie had that moment of joy, and then she took that job, and she was in committee meetings, fear of not getting tenure, having grants turned down, fright, fear, lots of academic battles. I'll tell you there is a thing that people talk about in academic life and it's it goes something like why our academic politics so vicious and the answer is because the stakes are so small and so Susie was in the midst of that and and she was eating the honey and she just pointed out how how Sally had been spared that and realized how wonderful her life had been, and it was going to move into some new territory on that very happy note. We've lost a lot of friends. I'm old, and so people younger than me that I love very much have already passed away in our home group. Vince Y., whom probably many of you got to meet, left us all too soon. And that was another example of he had just gotten a wonderful job and his life was coming together in some kind of wonderful way. And I began to realize that when we leave this life, if we're sober alcoholics and we're fully participating in Alcoholics Anonymous, we're always in the midst of something wonderful about to happen. I mean, that is how life becomes after we've been sober for a while. We're always in the midst of that thing that we're working so hard on that promises some kind of success, whether it's making a film or whether it'S opening a new business or whether It's working with others. We're alwayS in the midSt of something exciting. This journey has, as I said, had ups and downs, but each step on the meadow has been a little bit higher. And I've been reading this book about Steve Jobs. Now, he's not an alcoholic, so I can use his last name. But he left a little bit soon, and he was in the middle of something. And he had a life that is, you know, he had the emotions that many alcoholics seem to experience of just magnified everything. And at his memorial service, his sister wrote a eulogy for him. and I guess that in his final moments he was very weak, sleeping most of the time but before he left this life she said there was a moment and then he kind of brightened up and as he left he said wow, oh wow, Oh wow and I thought because of the God I have come to know I know that step is going to be, oh, wow. But in this lifetime, I am given a little bit, a little picture of heaven on earth in the now. I accompanied Becky, our firstborn, when she was pregnant, to the doctor for a checkup when she was about three months along. And I heard the heartbeat of our first grandchild. I heard that heartbeat amplified in the room That was a moment of heaven Mostly I see heaven in places like this In gatherings of Alcoholics Anonymous This is heavenly Thank you for this heavenly experience Thank you.