More Spiritual Change Between Years 38 and 41 Than All the Previous Years Combined – Sandy B.
About This Speaker Tape
Sandy B. speaks at the Far Corners Spiritual Retreat in what appears to be one of his later talks, opening with a vivid account of passing out at a meeting in Midland while an ex-trustee was speaking. Charlie and his wife Kate were there, and Kate talked the emergency room staff out of admitting him so he could get back to speak for the 800 people waiting. This led to getting a pacemaker and what he calls an adventuresome year. He reflects on his Marine Corps service and his lifelong fascination with Higher Power, connecting the spiritual experience of drinking to Carl Jung's observation that alcoholics satisfy their longing for Higher Power through alcohol.
The heart of the talk is a series of unforgettable stories from his sobriety. He tells the legendary Wormwood story from his Marine Corps days in Japan, where an executive officer built a wooden airplane from two-by-fours, bluffed cargo pilots into shipping it to Taiwan, and eventually donated it to the Chinese Air Force Academy in a formal ceremony. He describes the military's shifting relationship with alcoholism, from the pioneering treatment program at Long Beach Naval Station to the post-Tailhook crackdown that drove AA members underground and contributed to rising suicide rates.
Sandy shares deeply personal spiritual experiences, including the Al-Anon woman at his first meeting who told him everything would be alright, and a voice on the road at Quantico that said if he stayed in AA everything would be fine. He describes the College Park step study groups that forced him to learn the steps by requiring speakers to cover all twelve over four consecutive weeks. He tells the story of Lenny, a street person whose higher power was squirrels, who prayed for snow so little kids could have a day off from school, and who put his head through a plate glass window rather than risk hurting his sponsor again.
The talk closes with Sandy urging listeners to become spiritual seekers, describing how his own seeking intensified around thirty years of sobriety and deepened further between years thirty-eight and forty-one. He credits Chuck Chamberlain as one of AA's great teachers and describes a pilgrimage to Laguna to revisit Chuck's old haunts. His message is that spirituality in AA is validated entirely through results, and that the decision to become a seeker opens doors you never expected.
Discussion
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