Powerlessness Is the Base of the Pyramid and Without It Nothing Works – Father M.

I want to thank you for getting me out of the home tonight. I see we're all here because we're not all there. care. A doctor once told me, he said, you're an alcoholic. I said, well, I'd like a second opinion. He said, You're ugly too. You know, some of the greatest stories I've ever heard to come from patience. And one of them was about a fellow who used to interview applicants for his company. He was an interviewer. The man had no ears. So the first applicant one Monday morning walked in and the first question right off the bat, he said, do you notice anything peculiar about me? And the fellow was rather embarrassed, you know. He said, well, yes, yes, sir, you have no ears. And he didn't give him much time. He asked him a few questions and dismissed them. So on his way out, he figured he'd better warn the fellow next in line. He said, for heaven's sake, when you go in there, don't mention the fact that fellow has no ears, he said, all right. So he went in. Sure enough, the first question, the man said, do you notice anything peculiar about me? He said yes, Sir, you're wearing contact lenses. and we said how in the world do you know that he said if you had ears you'd be wearing glasses this other fellow is telling me a wonderful story about a patient two weeks in treatment he was penniless he had no job he was unemployed and so on anyway he determined that when he got out he would be a bible salesman very difficult work well anyway he got the job and the first day it was a Monday morning he set out with 50 bibles 9am come back at 1.30 he said I'd like 50 more I'm sold out and his boss didn't believe him he said here's the money and the man said well our best salesman can't sell 50 bibles in less than a week week and a half and that's pushing it he said how'd you do it well he said my last two weeks in treatment i worked on what i consider to be the perfect technique for bible selling he said i ring the doorbell when the lady of the house answers i always say lady lady lady would would would would you would would what would you will would you like to bob would would you Would you like to buy a Bible or would you rather have me read it to you? I fly in a lot of airplanes, and we come in there on one of those small ones. And as soon as it touched, the pilot just jammed on the brakes, reversed the engines, and that thing just shuddered to a stop right at the edge of the runway. and he was chalk white and the sweat spilling out of him. He said, good Lord, I've never seen a runway so short. And the co-pilot said, you ought to see how wide it is. I'll get around to it in a minute but I have to tell you a beautiful Christmas story because it's Christmas so close there was a little boy about 10 years old that just so wanted a bicycle for Christmas and right around this time of the year he went up to his room and he took a pad out and he wrote dear God if you see to it that I get that bicycle he said I'll be good for a whole year and he just crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket next letter he said I'll been good for six months got it down to a week and he stared at it he knew he couldn't be good for a week he couldn' be good for a day and he looked up on his dresser and there was a small statue of the Blessed Mother. So he wrapped it in a towel, put it in a shoebox, stuck it in the corner of his closet and covered it with about three blankets and he went back and he wrote, Dear God, if you ever want to see your mother again... I had to begin this way because I have spoken publicly all my life and always somebody before a public lecture will say, Father, do you get nervous before you speak? And the answer is no. It's what I do. I enjoy it. It's like any of you during your work. but at an AA meeting you see for the next hour or so I'm going to be playing with your lives and that's a very it's very scary it's a great thing it's pretty frightening so I'd rather you be in a good mood than have to stand up here and face 2,000 beady little eyes well what's he got to say I am an alcoholic that's the center of my life it's the main fact of my life and on it everything depends everything and everything revolves around that central core of my being my name like all of our Our name's unimportant because it's nothing but a verbal identification tag that legally could be changed. The alcoholism cannot be changed, I'll carry it to the grave of course as will we all. The big book contains such unbelievable wisdom when we speak to a group our story should should disclose in a general way, a general way, what we used to be like, what happened, and what we're like now. When it comes to the specific nature of our faults, we reveal that to God's self and one other and other human being. So I'll just share with you some general things about my drinking and what it did to me in order always to remind myself where I came from and to help others to identify with me. In the course of the evening, I will share some of the convictions of my soul. If you disagree with any of them, keep your disagreement to yourself. They have to be mine. My drinking was very unspectacular. I drank for ten years. Ages 24 to 34. I never once, I was a teacher, never once showed up naked in a classroom. Never roller skated down the center aisle of any cathedral. Never punched a bishop. But my drinking, as unspectacular as it was, nearly destroyed me. my drinking was gradual in its downward slide I fell in love with the martini on Thanksgiving Day 1948 four of us when you teach seminarians you live the life of a seminarian and you get off when they're off our first holiday was Thanksgiving Day and I was sent from Baltimore to the the San Francisco area to teach out there. So four of us on the faculty went down to Santa Cruz to a very quiet, quiet little old hotel and I think we were the only four in the lounge and when the waiter asked what we wanted one ordered this and one that and my closest priest friend Father Larry Taylor said I'll have a double martini so I said I said, well, I'll have one too. Believe it or not, I didn't know what a martini was. But I learned very quickly and they became a favorite. The drinking was gradual and rather unspectacular because I could never understand why anyone would choose to drink too much, most especially in public. I don't mean blind drunk. I mean just drink too mucho. tell it by the way they behave and the way they speak. I could never understand why anybody would want to do that. You know, looking back on it, I could see a mental preoccupation with alcohol. It fascinated me. That thing that we call euphoria, that wonderful sense of well-being. You just feel good. Well, the intake got to be a little bit more and more. And once Once on a visitation to our house, our superior mentioned the fact that when I was home back east during a summer vacation it was noticed that I was drinking a bit. And he said, is that so? And I said yes father. I think it was the only time outside of talking to doctors from whom I wanted help, was the only time I really told the truth about my drinking. I was out there for seven years and toward the end of those seven I remember once I thought I was headed for a nervous breakdown I'm sure I was I was just shaking to pieces and they put me in St. Mary's Hospital up in the city for three weeks the doctor never once mentioned the word he simply presumed that I would not drink again you've got to get something to occupy your time he suggested golf a few years later I once played nine holes that cured me but I remember one afternoon he came in he was a wonderful man he was the doctor who should be a doctor very gentle very kindly very compassionate and he asked me this question he said father suppose somebody came to you with a question let's say in moral theology you just didn't have the answer to it what would you do? I said I'd try to find it he said suppose you couldn't I said well I think I'd send them to somebody that I thought did have the answers and then he said to me well I find myself in that predicament and very bluntly he said would you be willing to see a psychiatrist And I said, of course, whatever you suggest. I had complete trust in the man. Well, I went back to St. Joseph's. Father Taylor picked me up and we were 40 miles south of there. We were near Palo Alto. And we went to one of the fine San Francisco restaurants and I had the three double martinis before dinner and didn't think that I shouldn't. ten days later I was worse off and they put me on an airplane flew me east one of the indications that trouble was brewing you know some jackass once said that we alcoholics are a cut above average intellectually well I mean there are so many of us there's bound to be a brain rattling around in here somewhere well Well, you know what used to baffle us intellectually superior beings when we were drinking? Now hold on to your dentures. This is a kicker. How to get rid of empty bottles. I mean, a kid would look at you and say, throw them out. Oh. Save them. there's something in the alcoholic brain that says what will the garbage man think well geez he's got problems of his own well I used to save my empties in two suitcases and filled they held oh I don't know perhaps 30 or 40 empty fifth bottles now Now, at the seminary where I taught in the Santa Clara Valley, we were way out and we had our own dump there, garbage place. Anyway, it was behind an old barn that had been converted into a gym. Now, I'll show you how smart I was. I waited until the kids were in class. And I decided to take these two suitcases and get rid of the empties. Well, the house dress then was the long black cassock that reached to the ground. You've seen it. And I'd set out from the building in this long gown-like cassoack carrying two suitcases heading into the hills. you know all they had to do was look out the classroom window well I got to the funeral pyre and I buried these dead soldiers one at a time consoled by the fact that every one of those dead soldiers had a priest with him when he died that's the only vaguely humorous thing I can think about when I think about my drinking I got back east in April now you want to know what an alcoholic is somebody who's drinking makes trouble because what makes trouble is trouble now nobody can prove that, it's self evident it's that simple simple. But so often we fail to see the obvious. I remember one day back at Ashley, it was after lunch and there were two fellows standing with me and we're right in the flyway of the Canada geese when they migrate. So they're coming in now. And I've always been intrigued by these beautiful V formations of Canada gees flying. And i said to them you know if If I live to be 8,000, it will always impress me. And one of them said, Did you ever notice, Father, it's never a perfect V? It's always longer on one side. I said, Why is that? He said, There are more geese on that side. That's so obvious. That's such a good question. So obvious. But you see, I wasn't thinking of the answer to the question. and I was wondering, why are there more geese on that side? I was expecting something out of the archives of the Smithsonian, you know. He said, well, there are more geESE over there. Ask a child that question. And they come up with the answer every time. So often we fail to see the obvious about ourselves. Well, I saw it, but I didn't see it. I knew I was troubled by my drinking. I just couldn't figure it out. What's an alcoholic? Never in my life have I been transferred 3,000 miles in April of a school year leaving three other priests to finish my courses as a result of eating green beans. It was alcohol. The man who saved my life has this definition. If you can connect drinking with any of your problems, before, during, or after you've got a drinking problem. Well, by that time I think I knew it. For the next two years, the last two years of my drinking, I tried to quit and discovered that I couldn't. and it creates fear complete frustration and a wondering what in God's name is wrong with you why can't you drink like normal drinkers I knew nothing about addiction compulsion or anything else my favorite sister My sister invited me to stay away from her home until I regained my self-respect. My superior came and told me that I was to be taken out of a parish where I was helping out on Sundays. The pastor asked to have me removed because the parishioners were beginning to be aware of my drinking. drinking. I was supposed to give her first Holy Communion to a little six-year-old niece. I was hungover that day and I had to call my sister up and say, I'm just too sick, I can't. We alcoholics have the flu quite frequently. But it wasn't the flu at all, I was... hungover badly. My superior would sit with me. He too was a kindly, gentle man and he loved his priests. And he used to say to me, what do you want? Name it. It's yours. It will help you stop drinking. And I would just stare at him. He said, son, drinking and training men for the priesthood simply don't go together. And one day he asked me the question that scared me half to death. He said what are we going to do with you? well he called me in the last year of my drinking school let out on the 20th and I walked into his office on the other side of Baltimore have you been drinking no father I knew I was lying he knew I was lying and ladies and gentlemen I knew that he knew it and I couldn't say yes in my opinion it's the most self degrading thing any alcoholic can do is to lie to somebody that you know knows the truth normal drinkers have no reason to do that we lie out of a sense of pure self preservation I desperately wanted to believe that one day all of this agony would be over with but I still couldn't envision living without it I knew that God did not hate me but I felt that he just in utter disgust had just quit I was alone somebody once said the alcoholic is alone in a crowd and whoever said that didn't even come close I'm the only one on this earth like this and it's not until we come into AA that we find that everybody felt that way that borderline despair there's no hope when I die I'll be in orbit somewhere alone all alone and that's what came into treatment because the last time he called me, he didn't ask me to come Come see him. He drove over to the college to see me. And I thought, this is it. You know, what are we going to do with you? I had no idea. And when he walked in, he said, Son, we're going to send you away this summer. This is not punitive. We just want you to be well. Ninety-eight percent of my problem went right off my shoulder. Somebody was doing something. So on Sunday, June 15th, 1958, the day after my last drink, I walked into Guest House. A sanatorium founded by a layman just for us alcoholic priests. And when I walked up to the front door, I was at a point in my life where I had to jump up to touch bottom. I was absolutely empty. And you know the feeling. I was empty. So the only thing they could do was fill me up. And I learned what proper treatment is all about from this man. His name was Austin Ripley. Rip was the greatest man I ever knew. And I'd like to share a conviction of mine. If you don't have a hero in your life, find one. I pity people without heroes. The tradition says we place principles above personalities but never instead of them because that's where principles exist in human souls. I've always said I can't define charisma but I know when I'm near it. Within five minutes of meeting that man I wanted to be just like him. I wanted everything he had. And for those two reasons I would have died to please him. I would have died to please him and isn't that what this thing we call AA is all about the examples of people that we look upon as heroes so that we can follow them if he had told me your first month here I want you to sleep on the floor I'd have done it and I would not have asked him why I knew that he knew and I wanted what was inside of that man. Rip was the greatest man I ever knew, literally. He had the soul of a saint, the tongue of a poet. He could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. Rip gave me probably the finest piece piece of advice I ever had in my life. You know, there are four enemies to recovery. Youth, health, wealth, and brains. I've seen... In our treatment center, I've seeing PhDs get drunk on the way home. And I've watched illiterate stable hands get sober and stay sober. He said, Father, I know all about your education. I know everything about you. I know about your educational background, around your degrees? He said, leave them right outside the door. Ladies and gentlemen, you don't need brains to get sober. You need desire. I think that we need a burning desire to not drink more than the desire to drink. And it isn't the cells of our body that tells us that. It's some oasis of sanity up here that tells me if you keep drinking you're going to lose everything and die. Because I've come to the conclusion that if the alcoholic doesn't stop the drinking, it'll stop him one way or another. You know what treatment was there? Old Doc Green used to give us lectures on the nature of what was wrong with us. That's where I got the chalk talk, taking notes from old Doc Green. He had a wonderful statement about AA. He said, you don't get AA, it gets you. But you have to be there for it to get you. and so I always tell patients you don't have to like AA just be there if you wish to continue to breathe we had a we had a visitor one time every Monday morning we have a graduation at Ashley and one time the friend of a friend who was graduating was a young boy 23 years old and May I live with the Abraham family Tommy and May I've lived with them for 23 years now and May is the most unique human I've ever encountered in my life I live under the same roof with these people and May asked that young she got talking with him before she asked him to come up and say a few words which he did He said, four times every week of my life I go to a local hospital in the city where I live No, three times and I sit for four hours each time while a machine changes all the blood in my body. Now maybe for the first week it could read or pray or whatever but how do you do that 12 hours a week every week in your life? He said, I'm 23. I don't like that, but I like living, so I do it. And one of the marks of maturity, I feel, is doing the things we should do, like it or not. I went to my first AA meeting the next night. I walked into the room and I felt a kind of a sense of sweet dependence on these people. Well, I was home. because they were just like me. And they had a wonderful custom that I wish were nationwide. Whenever a new person was in the room, they always discussed step one. And these folks, there were about 20, 25 of them, and I could identify with a little teeny bit of every single one of them. And then the rest, the bulk, the nature of treatment, Austin Ripley explained to AA, He knew Bill and Dr. Bob intimately. He came into AA in 1940. It was only five years old. The big book was only a year old. And he was so intrigued with this movement that got Alcoholics Sober that nobody else could touch, he took a year of his life off and spent it with them. I believe he had as much influence on them as they did on him. And I think that to understand any individual institution, organization, whatever, you have to understand where it came from and why, its nature and its purpose and rip one over those 12 steps constantly. I did not know it at the time but I had the best. I figured when I came back I'd be playing catch-up ball with AA in Baltimore and I found I was about 20 years ahead of them because so few people had the advantage of treatment then because there was practically no treatment and I had RIP and inside of myself I like to boast that my sobriety came second hand right from Bill and Dr. Bob through RIP he gave me a passionate love of the sober life and he gave us what he learned from Bill and Dr. Bob a wonderful knowledge of the 12 steps I believe that the depth and the seriousness with which we try to live this way of life depends directly on the depth and the seriousness with which we accept step one I am an alcoholic I am it's been a lot of years since my last drink and that first step is much more deeply embedded in me now than it ever was it's amusing sometimes to hear a patient say well I did one and two I'm on three now no you never leave one you never leaves any of them step one is a constantly growing awareness of my condition I can't drink alcohol safely and I'm conscious of that all the time our lives have become unmanageable so often you hear people say especially bright people I still write books I review books I teach school I run a company good God alcohol and thoughts of alcohol just took over 90% of our waking thought it determined the people we like to be around and hang around and those we stayed away from the restaurants we went into and those we stayed away from it dragged us around by the nose alcohol comes in liquid form you know what a liquid is it's a substance that takes the shape of its container put it in a round bottle it's round, square bottle by the way I think that it must have been an alcoholic who invented the square Jim Beam bottle because you see if you're in a chair too drunk to get up and you drop the bottle, it won't roll away. And yet this shapeless stuff controlled my life as it did yours. I always say in step one, give in, Bunky, or you'll cave in. One or the other. What is this thing, denial, that destroys so many people? Well, it comes in different forms. If any of you had approached me during my first year of drinking and said, I think you have a drinking problem, I'd have said, no, I don't. And if you give me a lie detector test, I'd come out clean. It was an honest appraisal at the time. but when I began to lie by living the lie there is nothing on earth more embarrassing than someone who was drinking trying to disguise the fact that he is when an alcoholic draws himself up to his full dignity and you know exactly what I mean it's simply embarrassing and we live that way lying is trampling on one's conscience lying is a prostitution of the soul it is the most inhuman unnatural act that we can perform and we live that way and we also did some things we wish we hadn't and failed to do the things we wished we had AA is the only therapy on earth so far as I know that recognizes morality we are asked to take a searching and fearful moral inventory of our lives the goodness or badness of our behavior and AA says you better clean that up and resolve it Dr. Bob you know drank on a medical convention very shortly after he met Bill and he tore back and that's the way steps 4 and 5 came into being he said I cannot live sober with a past that hasn't been resolved through forgiveness forgiveness. We alcoholics are like, well, otherwise perfectly intelligent human beings who climb into a boxing ring every day with a champion and get beat up, and we keep doing it. Black and blue, we're crawling on hands and knees toward the ring, and we're wondering I wonder how I can not get beat up today and AA leans over our shoulder and says don't get in the ring geez we climb boom down again what's an alcoholic? somebody who repeats the same behavior over and over again expecting different results well of course they are different they're worse they're worse and we fail to see that the obvious why is one side longer than the other the obvious you want to know what an alcoholic is ask a kid i once asked a 12 year old about his mother i said jonathan what's wrong in your house five words he hit the bullseye right in the the middle. My mother drinks too much. He didn't go into her past, her psyche. He didn' t examine psychological background. The problem is the drinking. And boy I knew that thank God. Then there's this type of denial. The second patient who walked into Ashley 11 years ago this coming January slashed his throat with a razor on Easter Sunday three years later. The day of hope, the day of resurrection. He was an alcoholic and he knew it, no doubt. He just didn't want to be one. And there are some here by pure law of averages. You know you're alcoholics and you're angry about it. I just want to drink able to drink like other people. Something tells me I can't and everything in me tells me that I won't do. I'd better resolve that. It'll kill me if I don't. We alcoholics have lots of pep but no judgment. I ever heard I've been using it for years. It illustrates it perfectly. An Alitalia airplane airplane was flying from New York to Rome. And you're familiar with this. The airplane's in the air about 20 minutes, and then the voice comes, the whoosh of the PA system comes on, and the voice, hello! Said, this is your pilot. I've got two announcements to make. One is a good news. One is bad news. Well, I give you the bad news first. We're lost. he said I got no idea where we could be hold on for the good news we're making a damn a good of time that is a photograph of the alcoholic inaction we haven't the funniest notion where we're going but we're getting there quick and AA with it's wonderful saying says easy does it I said, hey, come back here. Hold on. Preparation before execution is the way normal, sensible, mature adult people function. Alcoholics Anonymous spells out in 12 simple sentences a classic blueprint for rational behavior. Preparación, then execution. Step one, we admit we're sick. Then we take on the steps to get well. We enter a room and look at people who have gotten well. We then come to the conclusion we can too. We make a decision to place ourselves under God's care by embracing AA. We spend the rest of our lives carrying out that decision every morning when we wake up. Then they come in pairs. We take an inventory, then we make known what's bad. We become willing to have faults removed, then мы ask. we become willing to make amends then we do it we continue to take inventory and continue to resolve the guilt we determine to deepen our relationship with the God who has given us sobriety we carry it out through prayer now the first 11 steps are a preparation for doing what human nature is created to do to love others as we love ourselves by sharing our good fortune one. The simplicity is mind-boggling, and you don't need brains to grasp it. You know, Bill's brilliance was in the marvelous wording of those steps, and I met him once, and I heard him say that he himself wrote them in about a half hour. He took all the stuff they had written, and he condensed it into these 12 lines for for publication in the big book. The paradox of recovery, Bill Wilson started with the 12th step in order to discover the first 11. We have to be prepared to have something to share through the first eleven before we do the twelfth. Execution following proper preparation. The animals of Africa were having a football game and the Rhinos teams playing a Zebra's team and the Rhino kicked off the zebra got out to the 10 went down three plays later nothing had to punt now zebras are good kickers and he banged that thing in the opposite end zone the old Rhino grabbed of course their vision is not very good he just looked he saw where the opposite goalposts were tucked the ball in ran straight ahead knocked knocked everybody down, and scored. By halftime, the score was 56 to nothing. Came out for the second half, and the zebra had a kickoff. Well, again, the rhino grabbed it, and he got out to the three, and he went down as if he had been shot. And when he got up, he staggered around. They had to take him out and put a baboon in. In the meantime, everyone on the zebra's team said, who hit the rhINO? Well, it wasn't the lion. It wasn't a chimp. It wasn' t the cheetah. It wasn'' t the alligator. Finally, this tiny little squeaky voice from the ground. I ain't dead. I hit the rhino. And they looked around. Nobody saw anything until finally somebody discovered a little helmet about the size of a half dollar. And they lifted the helmet and under it was a one-inch centipede. You hit the rhinos? He said, yeah, no sweat. They said, where in the hell were you during the first half? He said putting my shoes on. W.C. Fields once drank a glass of water and he said it will never sell what role does God play in our sobriety He gives us the strength to not drink and the twelve steps through which we exercise that strength. There's a role that God plays, there's a roll that we play. I've heard it said in a... Well, my life's getting a little unmanageable, I think I better get out of driver's seat. You get out driver's sheet, you have a wreck. God is not about to come down here and take over your life and live it for you. You know what God gives drivers? Maps. You know what we do with maps? Shove them in a glove compartment and step on the accelerator. There are a lot of stupid remarks in AA, I think. one of which is the most important person in the room is a new person not at all I am that has nothing to do with pride it has nothing to do with conceit it has to do with a realization of my own first responsibility before God when I die is he going to ask me if I've helped any drunks you bet he is not going to ask me that first he's going to ask me if I died sober so my friends friends, if it's a question of your getting drunk or my getting drunk, I hope it's you. You see, you may have a return to sobriety. I may not. I don't know. When they say first things come first, they mean it. And the first thing in my life is my sobriete. And Rip told us, he said, Fathers, it's got to come before everything, even your priesthood. Why? If your sobrieting does not come first First, there will be nothing to come second. Nothing. That's why meetings like this are so serious and that's why it's so frightening to speak rather than listen. I found the fifth step the single most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. I've been to confession all my life, but I took my fifth step to Austin Ripley and as soon as I asked him Rip would you hear my fifth step I wanted to shove the words right back down my throat I thought when he hears I will have lost a friend you see every one of us is three I am who you think I am it's pretty accurate what you see is what you get I am who I think I Am it may or may not be a little bit more accurate but then there's the real me and AA demands that we look into the mirror of self and look at all of it and the only thing I have to admit to the person to whom I take my fifth step is the exact nature of my wrongs and I went through them and actually our friendship deepened getting rid of faults why do I have to become willing why is there a separate step that we're entirely ready to have God remove our shortcomings. My God, I've spent a lifetime acquiring them. They're my friends. I am congenitally lazy. Don't ask me to get energetic. And of course, we're all impatient. Now, has this ever happened to you? Cardinal Newman's classic definition of a gentleman is one who does not consciously cause pain. And even though I can be explosive inside, you know this crazy nonsense, let it all hang out. Well, little brats, let it All Hang Out. Oh, I know what's wrong with you. You stuff your feelings. Mature people stuff them until the right time. I once heard a man say, I have found in AA a place where I can properly ventilate my anger. I just obey the fact that whatever is in me I have to come out with and scold everybody around me. Well, I won't get into that. That's a whole lot of stuff. I just feel that there is a right time and a right place and a write person with whom you can share your anger or your feelings and let them properly fall into place. Well, anyway, impatience. Every now and then I'll say something and somebody hears and it kind of stings them and I go, oh, jeez, Lord, please make me more patient. That's like age 27. And you get up to age 36. Look, Lord. I mean, really, please make me a little more patient, 47. I mean it. I'm serious. I'd like to be a little bit more patient. Fifty-four. Lord, it's half over. Please. Sixty-five. I'm seriously serious. And when you get into your seventies, it's, oh, jeez, please. Please. And he's up there saying, I'm trying, I'm trying. How does he remove our shortcomings by giving us the strength and then thousands of opportunities to exercise it? You ever been to a meeting when somebody tears and he's had a bad day? Oh boy, do I need a meet tonight. Holy smoke car totaled. Lost my job. Argument with the wife. She's threatening to leave. Cut myself shaven. Scalded myself myself in the shower holy smoke do i need a meeting tonight and there's usually some wise old quiet aa who lives it who says well son sounds to me like god gave you about a dozen opportunities to grow and you blew them all spiritual infants thank god for the ice cream and cones of life. Mature people thank him for the aches and pains of life because it's the only way we grow. I think pain is the fertilizer for human growth. But see, there's only one thing wrong with pain. It hurts. And I think that it takes a lot of preparation during your own quiet time to ask for the strength to see that maybe some unpleasant things that are happening to me or the opportunities the good Lord's given me to be a little bit more patient and trusting. So difficult. I mean, it's hard to be good when it's easy. I have to prepare to make amends. Why? They're shameful and embarrassing. I don't like to do unpleasant things I mean I don' t and we have to build up the courage through the grace of God to do it and then there's a terribly difficult one you know we alcoholics cause a lot of pain but we've suffered a lot at the hands of others their tongues, their condemnations and everything else suppose I owe an amend to somebody might owes me one who goes first austin ripley from his own life shared this thing with us and i was deeply impressed by it he used to write for the chicago tribune and he wrote a weekly feature for look magazine and ripped by his own account was a very arrogant drunk he's a very humble saintly man sober but he said he owed apologies to everybody in the look organization and he He made appointments to see every one of them. And he flew from Chicago, where he worked, to New York to the Look Building. And he began with the CEO up in the penthouse office. And, of course, with that marvelous, wonderful mind and tongue of his, he explained alcoholism and what it had done to him and why it had made him do the things he did and so on and so forth. And they were all patting him on the head and forgiving him and giving him milk and cookies and so On. Anyway, he got a few floors down to the office of one of the vice presidents. The man made him wait 20 minutes past the appointment time. When he entered the room, he was not invited to sit. The man said, Ripley, what do you want? And Rip went through his apology and was very sincere. And when he finished, the man took a pipe out of his mouth, set it down, and he spoke these words. He said, ripley, you were a son of a bitch then and you're still one. Get the hell out of my office. he was crushed and he was angry left the office pressed the elevator button and he went to his office I'm going to get down get a cab go to the airport and fly home but while he was waiting he was sober enough for these thoughts to hit his mind haven't you forgotten the forgiveness you've been given haven't your forgotten the apologies you still owe and then he came to this conclusion that man did not have to accept my apology I had to give it and when the elevator came he hit the next floor and went on with it I truly believe that AA is not just meetings at which we snow each other with our brilliance AA is what we live in between them and that's the hard part because usually not too many people are watching and no one can read our minds and our motives being what we are all of us holding membership cars of the human race we're going to fail again and again and so the brilliance of the tenth step it's like a spiritual shower hour. We bathe our bodies regularly. The tenth step helps to clean up the soul. I used to devote a great deal of time to the eleventh step, trying to put a philosophical basis on it proving that it is the most human thing we can do is to pray. I don't do that anymore. If anyone in this room needs an explanation as to why we should deepen our love of the being to whom we attribute our sobriety, there isn't a person on earth who can explain it. You either see that one or you don't. But do you ever notice after we're about two to three weeks sober, we all become spiritual experts? Oh yeah, the 11-step prayer. Well, I'll tell you what prayer is all about. All the while we're discussing it, nobody's praying, but that's neither here nor there. We begin to compare prayers well I think meditation just and it's usually put this way me and me first me and God talking ladies and gentlemen I think we talk him to death do you ever wonder what a Sunday morning is like in heaven I see the dear Lord looking for a closet here they come again again. Meditation has been defined as either prayerful thought or thoughtful prayer. Prayer is any contact with God. Don't compare prayer. I look on prayer as I do clothing. You don't wear a bikini up at the North Pole, nor do you wear a parka on the equator. We have different prayers for different times and different conditions. Did you ever meditate after major surgery? Did you every pray with a toothache? I remember once in Newsweek magazine shortly after Second Vatican Council, a young priest in Missouri got up in a pulpit and took his rosary and broke it apart. He said, it's time we gave up this childish repetitious type type of prayer. Well, I have news for that young man. During the last two years of my drinking, that was the only chain that bound me to heaven. Don't ever, ever, ever put down the prayers you said when you were drinking. Oh yeah, when I was drinking, I used to bargain with God, please help me and all this. Don't undersell those prayers. They were the best prayers you ever said. You're here, aren't you? He answered them. took his time doing it but that's his business that is his business I believe that the cry of a soul in pain is pure music to the ear of God because there's nothing phony about it AA's crowning glory is step 12 you know why up until it's time I think that AA was the only therapy on earth, part of which was sharing good fortune. Bill Wilson was a man who dreamed the impossible dream and he fought the unbeatable foe. He bore with unbearable sorrow, but he ran where the brave dared not go. In his heart, he knew that if he'd only be true to his glorious quest, that his heart would lie peaceful and calm when laid to its rest. The world, the whole world has been better for this. One man, one man, scorned, covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage and he finally reached the unreachable star. This priceless jewel that people like you and me have been searching for for centuries. Sobriety. but you see in the quest he had his human nature restored to him because he was set free from the compulsion to drink what is a human being a child of God built in his likeness and so he acted like God theologians and philosophers have asked for centuries if God is explanatory of his own happiness why did he create and the answer is God knows and he won't tell and the only thing we do with mysteries is give a descriptive definition like we do with addiction they looked and they said what they were looking at goodness tends to diffuse itself and go out and he created other beings who could enjoy that goodness and that's what Bill did because he went out looking for drunks is the reason this room is filled. I've heard this too often in AA. Yeah, the guy two doors down from me has a hell of a drinking problem, but he knows I'm in AA and he knows where to come. Out of this side of our mouths we say he has a disease of body, mind, emotion, and soul. He's in pain. He hates himself. He can't stand people. Can't stand being without them. He's afraid of light. He's scared of the dark. When he's drunk, he prays to be sober. When he is sober, he wants to be drunk. How many of you woke up on a lovely summer morning and knocked on the screen door next door and said, Hi there, can you help me with my drinking? We don't do that. We'd rather die first. And most alcoholics do. He went looking for drunks. My big book does not say we tried to carry the message to alcoholics who called AA and begged us to. Please, we can't ever forget how it all started. My friend's Dr. Bob didn't call Bill. Bill called him and he didn't even know him. I am not advocating walking into bars, knocking people down and dragging them to meetings for God's sake. We have to have some sort of common sense about it. It takes prudence, common sense, and experience. The twelfth step of AA is intervention. We tried to carry the message to alcoholics. What's the fifth tradition that was just read? The group. The group has as its one primary purpose to carry their message to our colleagues who still suffer. If Father McDonald had not come to me and said we are sending you away God knows what would ever have happened to me the twelfth step is also gratitude and action if it's anything we talk to death it's gratitude gratitude is not a feeling it's an action and it's the hinge on which the sober life swings I've heard it said if you do this you'll get drunk do that you'll be drunk you'll do that do the other thing you'll got drunk I know people who do it all and don't drink wouldn't give you a dime for their sobriety but without gratitude I don't see how anyone can stay sober you know what Austin Ripley's definition of gratitude is the golden tray on which I offer others what God has given me and that is the twelfth step you see if you're grateful you won't have to tell me at all I'll see it I'll say it it. They say, don't tell me, show me. Put the money where the big fat mouth is. As you know, 12-step lists are voluntary. People give their name and phone number to the central office. A friend of mine in AA, a young fellow, put himself on answering service one weekend end, you know, when the AA employees are off. He had been to a meeting Saturday night and the man who spoke had the entire room in tears with how grateful he was. Oh, just, I mean, they were, he had them blubbering. An hour after the meeting, this young fellow got a call from a man in his neighborhood. And he called two or three people, finally called called him. He said, there's a 12-step call. Some guy needs help about three blocks from you. Can you take it? And this was the response. I'm tired. I'd love to know where I'd have been if Father McDonald, a non-alcoholic, had been tired. I don't know whether I'm... And gratitude scares me. It's the only thing I'm afraid of, not being grateful enough for what has come my way. Just through a knowledge of what I've done, we have a lot of Russians and Poles at Ashley for training. I was privileged to be in Russia about a month ago, gave some talks. And to notice the effect that American treatment has in foreign countries is mind-boggling. I think that of all the people in this room, I have much more to be grateful for than any of you because God in his goodness has given me all of you. the human heart is almost infinitely expandable once you get sober it'll hold all the love it can take and if real wealth is measured in the coin of human love i'm one of the richest men on this earth and folks like you have made me a wealthy man how in the name of god can i be grateful enough for that It frightens me. Every morning, if you can command God, I try. My prayer is so simple. Make me grateful. Make me love You. It's the only thing I'm frightened of when it comes to facing death. I envy these people. First of all, I envy those who say, I work these steps to the best of my ability. I don't know whether I've ever worked one of them to the best of my ability. And how they can do 12 things at once to the rest of their ability. God, I could kneel in front of you. You know, it isn't so much the things I've done that scare me. It's the things that I've left undone. And I envy people. I'm not afraid of death. Well, I am! God. render an account of the way I've handled my life it's frightening but I am much more afraid of the things I have left undone than I should have done the response to people who call or write I owe 8 year old letters I'm not very proud of that oh no every day is not Christmas in AA AA is a difficult way of life because it demands goodness. Hey, by the way, what do you want for your children? Don't you want to be good and be happy? You may be a pig, but you want your kids to be good. We are the lucky ones. We have found out that there is only one single solitary way to become happy. That's by being good. Didn't we prove it by doing the opposite? What causes all the misery in the a human soul, living in a way that I know I ought not to be living. All AA does is open the door to us. I tell our patients, you know the frightening thing about your leaving here? The ball is in your court. It's in your court. My sobriety depends on the way I respond to the graces that God gives me through AA and so does yours. I want to thank you for being here. I thank you more for doing me the great honor, and it is one, of listening to me. There's so much more that one could share, I guess. But I really, at least in a nutshell, told you all I know. you know I've been praying for you since the day I entered treatment 35 plus years ago every day of my life I pray for our colleagues and I think if the leg work that we do is backed up by prayer it will be much more effective I'd like to ask you to return a favor if you would or I'll haunt you after I'm gone There are many, many ways of saying goodbye. And I hate, God, I hate goodbyes. I just came today. I've got to leave here at 6.30 in the morning. And I don't like that because I'm at an age now where, well, going to bed at night begins with a removal of parts. So, that's it, guys. Sometimes there's more of me on a dresser than in the bed. I really am in an age now where it isn't so much when I'll see you again, but if I'll say goodbye to you. I'll never see you. Well, Latin people, they hate goodbyes too. And they always commend you to God. Adios, adieu, adio. Always they look forward to meeting again. Au revoir, Peter Zane. In Italy they have a saying unto the seeing again Arriveder in Rome. There's no place on earth with a greater pride of origin than Rome and it goes back centuries before Christ. So when a Roman leaves another one he says I will see you again here Arrividerci and when Romans meet in other parts of the world or Italians in general and they part they always say Arrivederla I'll see you again there well let this holiday in Jasper be our Rome this is where I met you I commend you to God as I do every day Adio until I hope we meet again here Arrivederci