Sponsorship and Getting Out of Self – Big Book Study – Part 7 of 8 – Scott L and Matt C

This is, thank you for coming back. Thank you for touching my life. What a privilege it is. I've been moved to tears so many times this weekend and I'm so grateful for that and this is my favorite of all the things that we do in this last hour. And this is some, it's a little bit disjointed, thank-you. It's, I'm just going to talk about some things that meant a lot to me remember my home group one day said she'd just been to a dog race and they the little mechanical rabbit took off and they shot the gun the cages popping the dogs were chasing and the mechanical rabbit malfunctioned in the first turn and stopped and the lead dog hit that rabbit running wide open and was tail over tea kettle into the ditch with a mechanical rabbit and i thought where in the world is she going with this and she said you I'm exactly like that dog. I'm shot out of a gun chasing some mechanical rabbit that ain't going to be what I want if I can catch it. I said, holy mackerel. Then she said, she said that dog is smarter than I am. Do you know that dog will never chase another mechanical rabbit in his life? They retire that dog, he will never do it again. Not me baby, I'm after the next one. I thought, holy mackerel. I had a wonderful conversation with Margaret at dinner last night. We were talking about corrections, and I'm always moved to tears. And I'm going to tell you a story that happened to me a few years ago. I was sitting in a little restaurant in Nashville having lunch, just minding my own business, and a fellow walked up to my table and he said, you don't remember me, do you? I looked up at him and I said, man, I don't know you. If I should, I apologize. I don' t know you and he said you came into a prison I was in a few years ago and you spoke and I heard you and I believed you and I've done what you said and I'm never going to be incarcerated again in my whole life and I'd like to thank you for my freedom I'm overpaid for the rest of my life I want you to have that experience oh if you've never tried it don't take a commitment just get with one of these people that's doing this thing and go with them once. If it calls to you, it'll call to you so loudly that first time you'll never be able to ignore it again. And I've had that experience more than once. A lot of us have. I want you to have that. I want to tell a sponsorship story, and I almost have permission to tell this one. The very first time that Bob and I did this was three years ago this month, and it was in Los Angeles. I flew into Las Vegas on the Thursday, And Friday, he and I drove about six hours across the desert to get to this clubhouse in Los Angeles to do this the first time. About halfway across, his cell phone rings. This is Bob's side of the conversation. Yeah, hi. Oh, no. Oh, I'm sorry to hear it. No, oh, yeah, I agree with you. She means it this time. Yeah, it's over. Yeah, I know you're devastated. I'm really sorry to Hear It. It's Friday afternoon. I'll be home Sunday night around dark. I want you to have two new men to sponsor by the time I get back. you know where they are go get them that is sponsorship that is sponsorship when i got a problem i got to get out of me i sponsored a guy named well a fella in nashville and uh he had about 17 years when he died but he was terminal for the last six months he sponsored a lot of great guys around the city and a number of them came to me and they said what do we do i mean he's at home dying of cancer ain't any doubt about it what do he do and i said take him your hangnails take him your hangnails he needs to sponsor you he he needs for you to get in there with the small things so he can get out of himself give him the gift of allowing him to sponsor you bob says it better than i do i'm just going to take it from him he says it will put an island it puts an island in my day where i'm not all over me this sea of me all of a sudden is an island of you in it and i need that dry land in my life so when my sponsor's in trouble and having a rough go he needs my hangnails that was an important lesson for me and i love seeing him do it i walked into the old woodbine club one time or i was standing there a few minutes before a meeting having a discussion with another member and not being as spiritually accelerated as i am you might have thought it was an argument about a very, very serious issue, which at the moment I can't remember exactly what it was. And about that time Joe B. walked in, and Joe had been sober since about a month before the earth began to cool and was also very intelligent, which is clearly going to put him on my side of this burning issue, which I still can't recall exactly what was. And as Joe poured his coffee, I posed this question to him. And I said, Joe, what do you think? And Joe said, I am not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. Do not wish to engage in any controversy. Neither enforce nor oppose any causes. My primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety. And by the time he got through that little dissertation, my opponent and I were laughing pretty hard. And it took me a while, and I had my own definitions. I had what I call a revelation. The sponsors will recognize this. A revelation is when I figure out for myself something you all have been trying to tell me for three months or longer. Right? It's a revelation, and then I went to Joe and I said, You meant that. He said, Oh, yeah. Joe B. was living the AA preamble, and you could not draw him into controversy. It wouldn't happen. He had a primary, and he thought that meant first purpose was to stay sober and help others achieve sobriety. And if he got involved in a controversy, it might block one of those. You could not draw him into it. I don't know if I've talked about this time they're kind of running together on me. I've been on the road about 20 days now. But I thought I had to go when I got here from taker to receiver or taker-to-giver. Have I talked about that? I don'T think so. I got here believing that. I got here as a taker. I've been a takter all my life. I thought I was going to have to transition from taker to giver. Incorrect. Can't go from taker-to-giver because you can't take anything worth having. You got nothing to give. What I had to do is I had to transition form taker to receiver. The difference is that a receiver acknowledges that someone else gave, they say thank you and they ask for some more and that contains humility. And having received for a while, I am then able to transition to giver. Can't go from taker to givers, you haven't got anything. And then I believed that it was necessary that the thing that would keep the channel between me and God open the best was my willingness to give, and I think that's important. But the real peace is my willingness receive because that contains humility. When you're hurting and I get the chance to love on you, I get this wonderful closeness to God by giving. When I'm hurting, if I don't let you know, I block your chance to get close to God by giving. It's a very selfish act. We lose a lot of old-time people 15 years or higher from the internal voices saying, you know, I can't take this and let my group know about it because they don't need to see a guy with 15 years shattered all over the floor. I couldn't disagree more. That is exactly what they need to say. That's exactly what they need. The two most important things I take to my home group are my mistakes and my pain. Makes it okay for anybody who respects my program to be real. Let's go be real! My My sponsor said, one of these days your fanny is going to fall off on the floor and shatter. And when it does, scrape the pieces into a grocery bag and take it to a meeting. And look around the meeting and you'll see some other grocery bags. And that's exactly right. Because I've got to be real. As I said before, I don't think the act is goingto get sober. I complained to my sponsor in about six months. I said, there's only four or five of us in this group that do all of the work. Where's the willingness? He said, people in AA are 100% willing. I said no, he says, no, you listen to me. He said 2% are willing to work and the other 98 are willing to let them. And then he said it is your responsibility to be part of the 2%, to be certain that the men that you sponsor are part of the two percent and to make the other 98 welcome when they get back from their next slip. Those are my instructions. And then I said to him, I'm hearing people say spiritual side of the program this and spiritual side of the programme that. If there's a spiritual side to the programme, there's got to be at least one other side. What's the name of it? He said, there are two sides. He said there's the spiritual side and the drunk side. Pick one. Wow. And that was true for me. I want to tell you a story on my wife. I have permission. And this is just an unembarrassed opportunity to make you laugh. that's all this is about. I was sitting watching television, we got a big TV and I'm watching the U.S. Open golf tournament a couple of years ago. I have the sound turned off, we're chatting, my wife is spending time with her husband, right? And we're chatting and there's a Japanese fella, a shot or two off the lead, we've seen a lot of his shots here on the last day and he hits one particularly bad shot and the camera comes in close on his face and you can see he's just in anguish over hitting this terrible shot. And Ms. Linda says, oh, I hope he doesn't commit karaoke. I hope so too, honey. I've been there when people have committed karaoke. Oh my God. And she is comfortable in her own skin that I tell you that I told it when she's sitting here. She thinks it's funny today. There's a thing that happens to people who go through these 12 steps and become comfortable in their own skins that it's just okay that it's just okay I had an experience a number of years ago some of y'all have seen this thing up here I'm going to tell you about it now I I'm a commissioned salesman and I had one of those magical sales days where I walked into my first call at 8 o'clock in the morning didn't even set my briefcase down and the receptionist says he's ready for you I walked into the buyer's office and he said I haven't got time to talk to you today here's your order and that happened to me all until noon my day was over I got nowhere to go nothing to do. I got fishing gear in the car. I pull into a park. I'm wading the creek fishing. There's a family having a picnic. They got a seven-year-old boy. It looks like he and I are going to fish together today. Apparently, I'm going to cast and he's going to do everything else and got to know and we had a great time. Got to meet his family. He had three siblings. There's not a fisher person in sight and he had a case of it at seven. I understood that. That's my story and i was at a time in my life where i had time to go and do things and what i did was i spent time fishing with this kid i got to know his family i'd go by and pick him up and we did a couple of short trips and there's a river west of nashville about an hour called the buffalo river it's a national scenic river and i say i like to think there's some places in heaven almost as beautiful as the Buffalo River. I hope so. This kid and I launched a canoe on that river, and when I was sure he could do it all day, because we followed about 10 hours, five miles of river, we caught over 100 fish that day. Yeah, kid caught a four-pound smallmouth bass. Yeah. He got my fish is what happened. Tell you the truth. about a mile from the takeout the sky's black and then i hear the thunder and we're going to get it kind of pulled over to the sides under some trees and i'm about to give god a little piece of my did you happen to notice saint scott down there taking the boy fishing by the way he caught my about to do this prayer you see and uh this beautiful little guy looked over his shoulder of me and he said, is it okay to fish here? What a fabulous lesson. It's one of the great lessons in my life because see, I forget things. I forget what I believe. My buddy Chainsaw Mike says there's a trap door between my head and my heart. And when it slams shut, I usually get trapped on the other side. The trick for me is to keep that door open. And I forget what I believed. And what I belief is that I prayed the third step prayer in a minute it, and then made the rest of my life none of my business. And I believe when the skies in my life blacken and I hear the thunder and now I'm fixing to get it, I think that's the prayer I'm supposed to take to my Father. Is it okay to fish here? Because that's my assignment. See, I understand it. There's a principle of anonymity. You may have noticed Bob and I giving our last names in IA meetings in keeping with our tradition of anonymities. If that didn't make any sense to you, I'd like to recommend the book Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers, page 270, and the pamphlet Understanding Anonymity. We are not a secret society. I believe there are people – we know some federal judges that need to be anonymous within the fellowship. But we're not a Secret Society. Dr. Bobs said, and I think Bill said also, it's in violation of our tradition of anonymity not to give your last name at an AA meeting because the newcomers need to able to find us. I mean, so a member of your home group goes into the hospital and you walk up to the reception desk, excuse me, ma'am, what room is Janet from another planet in? Well, or chainsaw Mike, excuse me. Is Wall Street Dan in here? I mean they just – they don't have that. So we need to be able to find each other. I really believe there are some exceptions, but I don't think there are many. And so that's why we do that. But the other piece of this anonymity is about doing something good for somebody else and not getting caught. I talked about that the other day, passing the parking place and turning over the penny and doing something nice for somebody. And when I do that, something nice or somebody, this is going to sound very poetic. I apologize for that. It's like there's a piece of sunshine about the size of a ping pong ball will lodge itself in my chest. And I can think about what I've done any time, and it will glow and send light through my whole body. but when I tell it gets out and what happens is when I do good for something good for somebody else and don't get caught God gets the credit and I get one of those pieces of sunshine and I know people that are full of those and you know how you can spot them it's because it glows out of their eyes you look for them, you'll see them this is a gift from my friend Howard this is kind of a harsh story but please stay with it True story. There was a guy who was a skydiver and his great passion was free fall. He loved to go high as the plane would go and then free fall and tumble and do whatever they could, I never did that, but whatever they could do. That was his passion and he did it every time he got a chance. And there was a particular day that he was taking some novices up and as they approached the drop zone, he's checking their equipment, giving final briefing and so on. And he had violated procedure himself, and they hit some turbulence, and he got thrown out of the plane and did not have his chute on yet. And I see somebody recognize this story. And He was faced with a choice, and His choice was to be terrified, to place blame, to have all kinds of negative emotion and resentment, or to do the thing that He loved the most for the rest of his life. And they watched him as he fell, and he tumbled, and he did those things that you can do in free fall. I would propose to you that all of us fell out of the plane the day we were born, and we're in freefall right now. And we don't have as good an idea when the end is coming maybe as he did, but we face the exact same set of choices that he did. It's to be negative, to be terrified, to have all that nasty stuff and resentment, or to do the things that we love the most for the rest of our lives. We faced the exact same choices that he did. It was necessary for me to do these 12 steps to get this poison dug out of my soul to begin to find out who I really am, to find out what those things are. I have had an absolutely spectacular weekend here. I got an answer to a question I had not asked here, and it was an answer that I needed very badly and i and i get a lot of them from him and it was one more time it came through him and he doesn't know this because i believe one of the great truths is you can't give without receiving and you can receive without giving it's just not possible on sponsorship for just a second the buddhists say the only way to get into heaven is to bring someone with you you think about that it's a beautiful thing that's in part what sponsorship is about It's a chance to bring somebody with you. At the first session, I told you that in those moments of silence, I invite God to the meeting because I treat God like a gentleman and I ask you to do the same. And you may have noticed I always take my shoes off up here. And it's because we've invited God here, my feet could be on holy ground. And I've tried to hold that in my heart here. I don't know that I've ever had a better time doing what we do. And this is my favorite of all the things I'm allowed to do in this fellowship. And it's been a phenomenal thing for me. But I'm here in stocking feet in honor of the God of my understanding that I could be standing on holy ground. I want to thank you for inviting your God to join us. And I also invited you if you were new and had a problem with the God concept to borrow mine. If you did that and you got touched, borrow them again. Try it again. Don, whose picture I carry in my text, was my teacher. He had terminal cancer and I had the privilege of spending his last Thanksgiving with him, my wife and I, and he and his wife, and we spent the day together. And the ladies didn't see this happen. This is the guy, if you've never heard Don, who's amazing. The Russian government, I think in 1984, 85, called AA World Services and said, some official said, we can't invite you, but we think we may need what you have. And if you'll send a delegation as tourists, we'll grease the skids and make sure they get where they're going. We sent four people. Don was one of the four. He was trustee at large at that time. And get one of his talks about taking AA to Russia. It's fascinating. But that's who this guy is. But I used to take him the unanswerable questions, and he always had the answers. And they were always gentle, and once he said it, you could see the principles that surrounded it. I never took him the question he couldn't answer, did you? It just couldn't be done. He was an amazing guy. And sitting there at his last Thanksgiving, everybody in the room knowing that's what it is, I was finally able to ask him a question that's been terrifying me for a very long time. And I asked him, finally, I've been trying to for a long time, but I finally said, Don, what are guys like Scott going to do when guys like Don are all gone? And this gentle, humble man cupped his hands like this and he leaned forward and he looked in his hands and he said, I have been bringing you hands full of water. Go to the river. And that was the answer. He said he had tapped a source of wisdom and strength beyond his own ability. And he just brought me some little pieces of that. And that he believed it was possible for me to go there by myself and find what he had found. It's my prayer that I have, and Bob has brought you some hands full of water this weekend. I really, really hope you'll go to the river. I had – they say if you fly a high-performance airplane, one of two things happens to you. One day you walk out there for your last flight in a high performance plane and you don't know that's what it is. Or you walk up one day knowing it's your last one. And I was one of the ones that knew. And I took the runway on this thing and released brakes and lit the burners. And about a mile later at about 170 miles an hour pulled it off the runway and pulled the gear at 1,000 feet. I raised the flaps and began to apply forward pressure on the stick and held it level and full afterburner until I accelerated at 1,000 feet to 600 knots. I pulled it up, and I was level at 40,000 foot 3 1⁄2 minutes after brake release. They gave me a working area called a barrel. It's a 30-mile circle around a point on the ground with an altitude block. If you're going to play at 600 or 700 miles an hour, they have to give you some room. That's one of the rules, and it's a good one. And they gave me more altitude than I was supposed to have. And I was young and immortal and just kind of wondered how high it would go. And so I rolled it in at about 15 degrees of bank. I slid the throttles back out afterburner. The fuel gauges moved kind of fast in afterburners. But I was in what we call military power, which is everything short of that. Pulled my nose up a little bit and rolled it into about 15 agrees of bank, and I started climbing in this circle starting at 40,000 feet. They told us regularly that we're not supposed to be above 45 in this airplane. They said there were two reasons for that, only two. One is it could get killed very quickly. The other is that you would die soon and you would owe them an airplane. Those were the two reasons that they suggested that we not be above 4,500 feet. But this was back in the days before the radar gave him your altitude. They were having to take my word for it. And I'm sure they were making other mistakes at the time too. and um so so i'm climbing and uh at 52 300 she was done um it's just not going up anymore i'm flying at nine tenths of the speed of sound um i can do this with a control stick and nothing happens this thing's so sensitive you don't ever move it you just think what you wanted to do and there's just no air up there i and i rolled out and i looked i had done an instrument climb I had not looked outside. At 52,003, I leveled it off and rolled out and looked up. I was heading just about due north. It's 930, 10 o'clock in the morning on a clear day. I'm 80 miles west of Jacksonville, out over the swamp. The sun's coming up over my right shoulder. It's about here. It''s real bright. The sky above me, I got a bubble canopy. The sky above is black, really black. I looked out to the west and saw the curvature of the earth i didn't see it a little bit i saw the curvature of the earth really saw it this thing that we're writing is this magnificent blue ball and it's just floating there in space and i like to think it's held there by love it felt like something warm was poured over me that ran down me slowly like wax might run down on the candle and the poem High Flight the author says I reached out my hand and touched the face of God and I did that that morning and I sat there and looked at eternity for just a couple of minutes it was an amazing experience and I eased the throttles back and gently brought it down and landed and I couldn't tell them I mean, if they believe me, I'm going to be in a lot of trouble. I might have been the town drunk. I wasn't the village idiot. I don't tell them. And I didn't tell him the whole time I was in the Air Force, and I'd sort of forgotten about it. And Burke Harlan was one of my mentors. Get one of his CDs. These guys have got it. They don't have them with them, but they've got it, and Burke was oneofmyteachers. And I spoke at his 12-year birthday when I had five years, and I told that story like I just told it to you, except I said about halfway through, I don't know why I'm telling this. And, of course, I got to the end and you know why. It was my first spiritual experience. I just didn't recognize it. I was 23 years old. For over 30 years, I wanted to see the curvature of the earth again. You can't do that and not want to do it. I'll tell you what, in 1967, there weren't many people that had seen that. Not many. Alcoholism took away any chance my dreams had of coming true. Alcoholics Anonymous gave it all back. In 2004, my little company had a really good year. And Miss Linda and I went out to the National Airport and chartered a Learjet. A Lear 31, but for your information, will go to 51. And Alcoholics Anonymous gave it all back. I serve a big God. I have learned to dream big. I hope you're dreaming big. And I want to close my portion with what I believe is the single most important thing that was said this weekend. Here are the steps we took, which is suggested as a program of recovery.