Step 6 and the Room for Improvement – Kent C.

It's been a while since we heard from Steve, let's pray again. Heavenly Father use me tonight as the instrument of thy will speak through me so whatever results that you desire here tonight will be accomplished in all things thy will not mine be done and God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things i can and the wisdom to know the difference what i love most about alcoholics anonymous is the simplicity of it i'm a really simple guy there's a line in the big book of alcoholics unanimous that bottom lines the simplicity of aa for me and that line simply says this remind the prospect that his recovery is not dependent upon people it is dependent upon his relationship with god the single most important fact in my life as I stand here tonight, and the only reason I'm standing here or anywhere else tonight is that I got a power that I choose to call God who does for me one day at a time what I could never do for myself. If I had the power to quit drinking on my own, I'd have never come to AA. Why should I? I didn't come here because I had nothing to do. I didn'T come here because I was lonely. I came here becauseI couldn't stop drinking. I gained access and grow in that relationship through living not memorizing analyzing or discussing but through living to the best of my ability one day at a time which is never perfect the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous is outlined by the founders in the big book of alcoholics autonomous and that is the reason that i pray before i introduce me from behind here because me couldn't get or keep me sober. That prayer reminds me of two things that I believe are vital and crucial to me staying here, first and foremost, the reason I'm in Bismarck tonight is to do God's will, not mine. And it also serves to remind me that he is in charge here tonight, and as always, thank God, I am not. Good evening, my name is Kent Coleman, and I'm an alcoholic. First off, I want to thank the committee once again for the honor and privilege of participating in Rule 62, for your kindness and your hospitality. I wantto thank the speakers who have participated this weekend. The speakers who are here this weekend are people that I get to see on a fairly regular basis. They're family to me. Don got a special place in my heart. And, I mean, that's all that I can say. Twin sons of different mothers. And I love Don dearly. Jeff is one of my sponsee brothers. We got the same sponsor and just a lot of wonderful things ahead for Jeff. I love Jeff dearly, Roger. I met Roger at Gopher State however long ago that was. And what a wonderful guy and a real power of example of what's available here live and in the flesh. Mari, you know, like we got family in here, right? And my family was three boys. I didn't have no sisters. I got some sisters in Alcoholics Anonymous, right. And my mom, she'd been gone for a while. My mother died. I was about 18 months sober, and Mari is my AA mom. And Mari has walked—see, in here, we walk through life together. You know, my kids was born. I got divorced. You know? Mari's been there. Mari's my AA Mom. So, you know, a weekend like this is very special to me. It's special for me to be in Bismarck. from the Wednesday night book study in Sandusky, Ohio. They asked me to tell you all hello and tell you that they love you, all right? So I'm going to deliver that message for you from them. It is wonderful to be here. I love AA if you can't tell that, right? You know, I'm like a little boy who came home from his first day of school and his daddy met him at the door and said, well, boy, did you learn anything? And the little boy looked at him and said apparently not they told me I had to come back tomorrow you know and I mean that's the way it's been for me at Alcoholics Anonymous I keep coming back tomorrow and I love it I loved AA the first time that I saw it I knew nothing about it I didn't understand nothing about what I fell in love with was the fellowship and the spirit of it I felt it at my first meeting there are things in here that defy description in terms of words my vocabulary is not extensive enough to describe what happens in spirit at the very first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that I attended. And trust me, I didn't know nothing about AA. I had never been to AA. I've been convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol seven times in the state of Ohio. I have over 41 alcohol-related arrests in Erie County alone where I live at. No judge ever said, we think you got a drinking problem. Take this paper and go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous what happened to me is the judge went like this and I went somewhere else right and so and I'm very grateful for that because you know I used to think to myself man you know alcoholism as it's described in our book I can I can say without a doubt in my mind that by the time I was 16 years old I definitely had it full-blown full-fledged obsession allergy the whole spiritual malady the whole nine yards and uh you know i used to thinking how come i didn't get here sooner. Anybody ever think that, right? You know, why didn't I get here? My life wasn't, I wouldn't have had to hurt as much, you know what I'm, hey, that's God's business. I got here when I was supposed to. You know my first sponsor said something to me. He said with the kind of personality that you got, had you come here and not been ready, you would have discounted this and you would never came back because that's what I did with everything else. So I got here when I were supposed to get here and you know we had a 53 years, you know stand up here tonight if you knew in here tonight right and you just saw this sobriety countdown you can see in here in in the flesh not reading it in a book in the flesh that Alcoholics Anonymous works it works this is not theory look around the room right now I was laughing talking to Don right because we saw people standing up with less than a week and all that Don was like I wouldn't even have been here I I was like, I wouldn't either, right? And I definitely wouldn't have stood up. That definitely would have been out, right. I went to my first AA conference. I was sober over a year and they tricked me. That's the way they got me to go to that, right They used to say, would you like to go to Founders Day because I live an hour from Akron and I was, like, for what? We have meetings here, right and you know why I didn't want to go to Founder's Day because I was scared and I didn' t know what it was, right And I'll talk about fear and how it has limited my life. One thing about fear, the book calls it a rapacious creditor. And I don't know why I'm going where I'm Going because I asked God to talk tonight. They call it a Rapacious Creditor. That means it's a nonstop taker. It's a Non-Stop Taker. And I want to say something. I'm not willing to give fear no more in my life It has taken enough from me. It has Taken Enough. So if you knew and you hear tonight You know, I'm just saying, because I remember what it was like to be new. You know? You off to a good start. You know because to come to something like this, sight unseen, don't know what it is, who are all these people, right? It's a very cool thing. And that's one of the great things about Rule 62 is I'm seeing so many people who are new in this thing. Now, I said earlier, well, let me give you the vital statistics. I'm a member of the Friday Night Venice group I have a home group in Sandusky, Ohio We've been around since 1938 We began as an Oxford group meeting My home group ain't the best group in the world It ain't my first sponsor Taught me that it's okay to stop competing now Alcoholics Anonymous is not a competition It's not a who got the worst story We was laughing earlier. I said, it's the only place in the world where people try to out-bottom each other, right? You know why? Because we think in here, the worse off you are, the more they like you, right. So we got people in here trying to out bottom each other. You think that's bad? Well, listen to this, right, it has alcoholics and all this, but my first sponsor told me, you understand this, this is not a competition. I'm a member of a group, right ? I'm not a member of the best group in the world or the worst group in the world. It's just an AA group. Our primary purpose is to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. I think we do a pretty good job of that. We've been doing it for a while and we have a lot of fun in the process. I have sponsorship in Alcoholics Anonymous today. Sponsored by Bob D in Las Vegas. I still have the guidance of Ken Bombalecki in Cleveland. I was raised in Alcoholic Anonymous by Bill Finley and Lorraine and Kenny Bombalecking in Cleveland, Bill died 55 years sober. Kenny is now 40 or 48 years sober I think And Bob, I believe, is coming up on 39. I've been blessed with some wonderful help in Alcoholics Anonymous. But sponsorship is just like everything else in here. You will get out of it what you put into it. Having a sponsor, if you're new in here, having a sponsor is a great thing. Being sponsorable is even better. It's nice. I like to do this sometimes because there's so many new people in here tonight. Would everybody who's in here tonight who would be willing to sponsor somebody new, please raise your hand. Thank you very much. If you knew and you ain't got a sponsor, I just hooked you up, right? No one ever need leave an AA meeting without the benefit of sponsorship. And I do that. Everybody always laughs. But I do it for a reason because if you knew like me and I came here, I don't know you. I don' t know if you got 10 years or 10 minutes, nor do I know whether or not you're willing to help a guy like me who doesn't even think he deserves any help. So if you're new here tonight and you don't have no help, the help that you need just identified itself. What you do with that information is up to you. It is upto you, right? And this is what I like to call the total package in Alcoholics Anonymous. Home group, service commitment. I have a service commitment, we talk about service a lot in here, the three legacies of AA. And I come from a three legacy sponsorship line and I come form a three-legacy group. And the funny thing, you know, we get these commitments, right? That's the first service I did in AA was a commitment at my home group. This Venice group, I was under a lot of pressure when I was new because I came to Alcoholics Anonymous absolutely convinced I was smarter than all y'all put together. And there was some talk about it today. I looked at this 12-step program and I eliminated five. Okay, I had a seven-step problem. and I told them old timers there were guys in my home group who knew intimately Dr. Bob not Bill Wilson who died in 1971 Dr. Bobby died in 1950 there was four guys in my homegroup who were in that home when Bob and Ann lived there and um and I told them that once I perfect this seven-step program I would expect them to join me in writing New York, you know, so we could get some changes made. This is me when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, right? So I was under a lot of pressure and being told to do a lot of things, and I got this sponsor, right, and he said, you're going to sign a book at one of these meetings. People used to ask me all the time, if you're new, people will ask you this, what's your home group? Anybody ever ask you that? What's your new, what'S your home groups, right. Here's the answer I used to give. all the groups are my home group right because i went to meetings every day right now i'm not attached to any of them i'm still holding you at arm's length right because you can't get close enough to me to know me right but all the troops are my own group and my first sponsor said enough of that so i joined this venice group because this is where all these old guys were at right and i thought well they're pretty stable it looks like right i didn't really like any of them but it was pretty stable so they had this book you signed this book and you put your sobriety date in there so I signed the book and there was a man God rest his soul Herb Brady and uh Herb Brady looked at me and he said I got some bad news for you sonny said we ain't interested in your autograph we want your service I said what do you mean you want my service he said uh these are the keys to the coffee locker we want you here next Friday this was an 8 30 Friday night meeting we want to hear at six o'clock to make the coffee set up the tables and chairs and put out the literature for the meeting I looked at Herb Brady like he had three heads I said how long am I going to have to do that and he grinned at me and said we'll get back to you uh three years later I asked him again right so I got this commitment now here's a small problem with this commitment that I got Kent don't drink coffee therefore Kent don'T know how to make coffee however Kent does not have the humility to tell you that I DON'T know how to make coffee right so we've now got a problem right for the next six days I did not sleep I am thinking about this coffee deal right I'm tossing I'm turning in my mind I'm envisioning people drinking the coffee choking and dying at the meeting right I've just I'm at work and I'm like coffee coffee coffee right. So finally Friday night comes six o'clock I'm after church I come in And I see them Lincolns in the back, right? And so I come into church and there they sat, all four of them. And I'm thinking to myself, they don't trust me. No, they didn't. I wasn't trustworthy, right. So they're sitting there and first I set up the tables and chairs. This was a big meeting, a couple hundred people. I got the literature rack out. I got all the pamphlets and the big books and things out. I'm dragging now because we're getting close to this coffee thing, right, we had 200 cuppers that we had at that meeting so I went and got them out right now I went to college now my mother always said you couldn't really tell that but I did all right and um and I got a piece of paper that proves I was there and I don't prove I learned anything but I'll get to that later inside the hundred cupper there's a little 100 and a line so now having gone to college I know how much water to put in it so I'm good with that right I put my water in right now comes the moment of truth I get the basket you know that you put the coffee in and right at that time old Herb looked at me and he said hey Kent he said come here for a minute I got the basket in my hands right I walk over to Herb he said I don't know about you Kent he said but tell me he said when I make a hundred cupper he said i like to put the Coffee right to that line right there in the basket he said how do you like to do it I said I'd do it just like that herb, right? Because Herb knew that Kent don't know how to make coffee and Herb knew that Kent couldn't tell him that. Do you follow me? Nobody said to me, are you stupid? You can't make no coffee. Nobody told me take the cotton out your mouth and put it in your ear or whatever that nonsense is. I wasn't raised in an AA like that. Now, they was firm with us if we got out of line. See, when I came to AA, they told us you go to the bathroom, you get your coffee, you get in your seat, and when the meeting starts, you should be able to hear a cotton ball hit the floor. No cell phones, no getting up, getting coffee during the meeting, wandering around. They said, listen, if you don't want to sit and be at this meeting, then leave. but you don't have the right to come in here and distract and disturb people who are serious about this and whose lives depend on this see that's the way we were taught when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and we listened to them they weren't mean they didn't yell at us but they were firm and they taught us things right so so I made the coffee right and I became the coffee guy at Venice my first sponsor was a man named Bill Finley and Bill told me um bear yourself shoulder deep in this thing called Alcoholics Anonymous so that you can't teeter and fall and I've been shoulder deep in AlcoholicsAnonymous since then I've had the privilege of being involved in service in a lot of different areas of being about and I don't come to the podium and talk about what I do in Alcoholics Анonymous and I'm gonna tell you what I tell my sponsees when they knew you get in where you fit in. God don't make no junk. Whatever it is that you bring to this deal, bring it to your group. Bring it to the fellowship. Bring It to Alcoholics Anonymous. If you are a warm and friendly person, you look like a greeter to me. Right? If you got a degree in finance or accounting, man, you looked like a treasurer to me, right? All right. If our bossy and an organizer, you look like a secretary right get in where you fit in bring what you got in here and share it the sooner I start learning to be on the give rather than to take this thing is going to start working for me and I'll talk about that a little bit later too but I came into Alcoholics Anonymous um in 1992 and I'm going to tell you a little bit about my life um I was born in Sandusky Ohio I was the second of three boys I was raised in a Christian home. I was taught the difference between right and wrong before I ever got out into the front yard. All of the spiritual principles that are espoused in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was told as a little boy. I have learned nothing new here, absolutely nothing. For those of you who are new, the principles here, spiritually principled living, we like to call it, didn't originate in Akron, Ohio in 1935. Those principles are ancient, and there's a whole lot of people who live like that out there every single day and this is the amazing thing about them they don't expect a pat on the back for it either they live that way because it's the way you're supposed to live and in my home we were taught these things um my mother worked for Chrysler Corporation my father worked for General Motors I'm retired from Ford and uh had a great life growing up um you know I always tell people yeah there's a lot of craziness in the house but we had really nice cars but anyway uh ten speeds, many bikes. We wore $100 tennis shoes by 1972. I had the kind of parents that went to any length to see to it that we had the things when we grew up that was denied them when they were new. My father was the commissioner of the local youth football league, the AmVest little league, baseball league. My grandmother cooked for everybody in town. My mother was the president of Ohio Baptist Women's Convention. All them famous people that you see on TV and religion from the south then people been in my house that is the atmosphere in which i was raised i was not sent to church i was taken to church the principles of this program were not taught in my house they were demonstrated if you watch what was going on in my home i lived in a house of people who put god first in their life and they served their fellow man and i and that's the way that i was released when i was a little boy they set me down and they said um honesty is the best policy a real man is always honest with himself and other people to thine own self be true in my house maybe in yours we got automatic whoopings when we got caught lying did that happen to anybody else's house in here that's step one the principle of step one is honesty i learned it at the end of a hickory stick my mother called me one day i'm like seven years old my mother said to me come here kenny i'm worried about you contrary to what you seem to believe the sun don't rise when you wake up and set when you go to bed she said look out the window and tell me what you see sky grass you know birds flowers trees cars people she said you think they just popped up out of nowhere she said there's a power greater than you that created all of this and all you need to do is be willing to believe that step two in our house they said if you will make a decision to put your life in the hands of the power that created it all is in my house they called that power god they had a word for they called it god they said you will always have what you need no matter what happens outside or around you. They was telling me the answer's inside, not outside, step three. In our house they told us, anytime you got a problem no matter how bad you think it is, come talk to us about it. A problem shared is a problem half solved. You're only as sick as your secrets. Anybody ever heard that before? That is steps four and five. My mother used to say the biggest room in a human being's life is the room for improvement. There are no perfect people. If you can make C's, you can be B's. If I can make A's, And if you'll ask the power that created all of this to help you in any positive endeavor you want to take, the power will always help you. That's what the power does. The power is good. Step six and seven. In our house they told us anytime you hurt, harm or wrong someone else, go make right the wrong you done. You owe an apology, make it. You own money, pay it. Your time, give it. Clean up your mess. That is what responsible people do. That are steps eight and nine. My mother used to say you can never go forward in this life if you don't know where you are today and what you need to work on to get wherever it is you want to go. Somebody said it earlier, it was Socrates who said the uninventory life is a waste, right? That's step 10. Our grandmother told us, we was little boys, she said, you wantto know the secret to having a good day? We was like, yeah. She said, okay, when you wake up in the morning, slide out of your bed onto your knees and say one word, please. As you go through the day and you don' t know what to do, ask the power that created all of this to help you. And at night, before you get back into bed, hit your knees again and say two words, thank you. Conscious contact with God, step 11. And in our house, they told us the greatest thing that we could do with our lives was not acquire money and material things. It was to be of service to other people. We were taught to follow the golden rule. Talk to folk the way you want to be talked to. Treat folk the Way You Want To Be Treated, right? Offer to share what you have with others before you have your own be of service to your fellow man that is step 12 when I got on the bus to go to kindergarten I was already armed with a set of spiritual principles right that I immediately almost immediately recognized when I came here as the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous right so I know what you're thinking if you knew out there well Ken if you had all that what are you doing speaking at an AA meeting tonight right I bet you know the answer to that too don't you I never did any of it I talked about it a great deal right you ever be down at the bar room and be some drunk in there quoting scripture that was me right I'd be down Brownlees Tavern on Friday night so down to Brownleese somebody had a meltdown every Friday night and it was usually for one of three reasons they was losing their job going to jail or getting divorced because that's what we did down to brownlees Tavern and somebody would explode into tears or get the moan in and Kent would walk over with a drink in his hand and say something like this Luke chapter 5 verses 11 to 17 tells us and I'm giving spiritual guidance down to Brownlee's Tavern right and I didn't just stop there I give marital advice down brown leaves now i had never had a wife but i didn't see how that made a difference right with my life savings laying on the bar i gave financial guidance down to brown leaves my father used to call me a walking encyclopedia of perfectly useless information right because none of it was born of my experience it all came from here i am a parrot I am a parrot I am addicted to approval I have An extremely Extremely deficient Sense of self Right And I'm addicted To your approval Right And so I'm willing To go to any lengths To get that Right So I become I'm like You know The book talks about The alcoholic Leads a double life You're looking at A man who lived Quadruple lives Right There was a different Kent for every group of people that I was around. There was Kent around the other athletes, because I was a ball player. There Was Kent in the schoolhouse. There was Kent at home. There was Kent on the street corner, right? There was Kent down at the ballpark. Whatever I need to do, whatever I need to be, right. I'm empty on the inside. This is the way that it was for me. And you know the parents that we had. Those things I talked about earlier, those principles. I bet you some of that stuff was taught in your house too, wasn't it? I don't know if you ever looked at it like that, right? But those things were taught. Sometime at home, I am amazed at the arrogance of our fellowship. Because I hear stuff like this in meetings. You ever heard this? Boy, them earth people out there sure could use what we have in here. Where do you think we got it? absolutely amazes me right i watched a guy across the street shovel the driveway of the elderly people next door he don't come over and knock on my door and go hey did you see me shoveling there's snow over that really just the only place in the world where we got to tell people go be a decent human being but if you tell anybody what you do it don't count it's the only place in the world where we gotta do that we are so self-consumed right that we wanna pat on the back for doing what we were supposed to be doing all along don't pat me on my back in Alcoholics Anonymous I'm serious don't Pat me on my back this is what I was raised to be I was a shy insecure and afraid little boy scared of girls right always feeling a half a step behind everybody else nobody ever pulled me to the side and said Kent you realize you're a half a step beyond the rest of all this stuff comes out of my head right it's crazy like I was raised in the same house my older brother was the complete opposite of me he was a big strong tough guy he was very comfortable around the females everybody looked up to him he was confident you know all of that we had the same mother the same father we went to the same places we was taught the same things why was I like I was I don't know and I don's sit around trying to figure it out it don't matter. All I'm telling you is that's the way that it was, and I was plagued by those feelings all of my early life, right? So I start looking for something, right, because I don't feel right. I don'T feel like you look, so I start Looking for something to change that, and I always looked outside of me, right. All this stuff that they talked about, all This church stuff, and the spiritual stuff, And the God stuff, right., I'm a kid. I ain't hearing none of that right I want to be just like any other kid I want to be accepted by my peers right I wanna have fun I wanna be popular right church don't get you no props on the corner you follow what I'm saying right so I ain't got no use for that and it wasn't cause I didn't believe it was no God right I I wanna tell you a little bit more about myself here um but growing up I started looking outside of myself so I became I started reading because it provided for me an avenue of escape from reality right I could read before I went to school which was a huge advantage when I got to school right they bought me a grade right I'm a straight-a student so it was a hug advantage um I watched a lot of tv I'm daydreamer right I always wanted to be somebody else someplace else doing something else the reality of my life was an untenable and uncomfortable place for me And I just couldn't get comfortable in my own skin, right? And I'm self-conscious and I think I've got to say the right thing and I've Got to do the right things because everybody's watching. And so I'm so, you know, my sponsor, I used to say I was very sensitive. My sponsor said we've got another word for that. Self-centered is what we call it, right, because here's what you find out later in life. All these people who was watching your every move, none of them were watching you. They were too busy thinking about themselves, right? But this is the head that I'm carrying around as a little boy. And my first real drink of choice, I guess you would say, was my older brother. My older brother, I'm already describing to you, my family is a football family. There's a lot of families do music. Some families do art. My family does football. We do it on Saturdays and Sundays, and we do it in front of a lot of people. My dad played at West Virginia State. My Uncle Bo played at Penn State University. I had two cousins who played in the National Football League for over 10 years. We do football. My brother, by the time he was 16 years old, was 6'2". He weighed 215 pounds. He could run a 4-4-40 on a center track, and he was a tailback. And they liked big running backs at Ohio State, and that's where he was going to go. Woody Hayes came to our home, who was a coach at Ohio state university. See, my brother was going to go to Michigan. I had a cousin who was an All-American at Michigan. And so he was goingto go to Michigan. And Woody Hayes, college football wasn't like it is today. They start recruiting kids now when they're like nine, right? And Woody Hayes never bothered. What Woody did was this. One day a red pickup truck pulled into my mother and father's driveway. A little short man with a red baseball hat knocked on our front door. My father opened the door and said, come on in, coach. He came in. They called my brother out of his bedroom. Woody Hayes looked at my brother and said, where are you going to school? And my brother looked at him and said Ohio State. Right? And that was the recruiting right? So I idolized my brother and so did a lot of other people. My town is a big sports town. And I followed him everywhere that he went. He took me with him everywhere that he Went and I had ease and comfort in his shadow. Nobody expected me to be or do or say anything. I was around older guys. I am Brian's brother. That is my identity, and I am very comfortable with that. Anybody know what I'm talking about? And September 1972, I'll make this long story short. My brother suffered a head injury in a football scrimmage. He lapsed into a coma that night. It was a Saturday night. He had nine hours of brain surgery on Monday, and he died Wednesday, September the 5th, 1972. to and I remember like it was yesterday I could tell you everything that happened from that day on that day from the minute I woke up to the minute i went to bed is that what makes me alcoholic absolutely not absolutely not um people live people die tragedies happen don't they um this was a big thing obviously in my family um almost killed my mom and daddy i ain't gonna tell you what it did to my grandparents changed the face of sports in my town from that date to this that's how devastating it was nothing like that had ever happened before and nothing like that happened since then either and um I'm 13 years old and um all of a sudden he is gone not to return um so my life changed right um I saw the power of God in that event um I have a very big family and um everybody came together and um they bought his body from Maslin Ohio where he got hurt at. That's where he died at, to Sandusky. And there was 1,500 people outside the funeral home. And my mother, and I mean, my family is teetering on the brink. Teetering on the bring. My grandmother has been sedated. It was a mess. And my mother stood up in that funeral home and she looked over them people. And this is what she said. She said, I don't know when and I don' t know how, but God Will create blessings from this And I watched The decompression I saw that And I knew that my mother didn't have that kind of power I've never doubted the existence Of the power of God In my darkest days in the street I never did But I didn't think it would work for me And I'll tell you why in a little bit So now I'm 13 years old I'm now hanging out with guys My own age because he's gone I've known these guys since I'm two years old We're standing on the street corner in Sandusky Topics of conversation amongst our crew In 72 was three things Very simple, drinking beer, smoking weed And climbing in and out of girls' bedroom windows In the middle of the night And I was batting 0-0-0 I had a mother that did not play None of that I went to school, church, ball practice And home But I don't let you know that do I You remember them dogs they used to put In the back window of the car With their head to go like this That was me Right. Oh, yeah, I've been over there. Ain't that fun? I'm 13 years old. I become a liar, a fake and a phony. I'm telling people I've Been Places I Ain't Been. I've done things that I haven't done and that I know people that I don't know. I am willing to compromise everything that I have been taught and believed to be true to gain your acceptance. I am empty on the inside. I am a man of no substance. And I'm thirteen years old and I'm a liar or fake and phony and I start living that life. right got her got her every time I walk up on somebody got to remember what I told him the last time I seen him very difficult way to live your life ain't it and I got all these different personalities right this and and here's I mean that's a that's hard way to leave because you got to keep some people separated right you can't let certain people get together in the same room right because I don't know who said it was Don said fear of exposure fear of explosion my worst fear right and so I live this fake and phony life and that's me at the age of 13 I'm a really confused young fellow my mother used to talk to me a lot after my brother died and she would tell me things like God's been so really good to you you're gonna have a really good life and I used to look at my mother and think I don't know where you get this stuff at but I could tell you in 30 seconds what I want out of life I want mine I want to get it my way and I'm gonna need you to leave me alone while I'm doing it and my mom would get that sad look on her face you know how they do And she said, we didn't raise you that way. You don't get it. And I pointed my finger in her face. I said, no, you're the one who don't gets it. If you don't think my way is going to work, get out of the way and watch me roll. One of the gifts God did give me is that I was a very good student. That's a gift from God. I didn't work for it. I didn' t earn it. It came to me naturally. I will give God the credit for it today. Back then, of course, I took the credit for it . That's the tone and tenor of my life. Anything good, I take credit for. Anything bad, I'm blaming you. And I'm 13 years old. I'm a straight-A student. And I'm sitting in study hall, I'm probably about 14 at this time. And my first sponsor told me when I was new, he looked at me one day and he said, you know, any time you are in a room alone, all your enemies are there. And what he was referring to is my thinking. I have a severe thinking problem. And I am sitting in the study hall one day, and I had a visit from the enemy, my thinking, and here's what my thinking told me, I am 14. Looking around the study halls, right? These people in here are breaking their neck trying to get B's and C's taking general math and science. I'm taking calculus, physics, fourth-year Latin, fourth year English. I'm in the 10th grade, and I'm getting straight A's. You know it just might be entirely possible that I know everything. Now, I had no evidence to support this thought as being true. I accepted it as a fact and I left the room and took action on it because that's what I do and I walked into my mother and father's living room that evening they was watching the 6 o'clock news with Walter Cronkite and I stood in the middle of that living room and I told them that I thought they ought to know because things around the house were destined to change at this point make a long story short here's what happened my father came up off that couch really quick Now I'm going to tell you something about my daddy. My daddy played football when they didn't have face masks. My dad was a hero in the Korean War. I don't mean Purple Heart, he was in the woods in Korea. My mother used to say Your dad's a really nice guy But don't push him too far But that day he come up off that couch And I decided not to wait To see what he wanted I broke for the screen door To the day he died I never asked him What he intended to do to me He must have been thinking Look what we got in the house I'm going to kill it But anyway I got out the front door I closed the front doorway He's right behind me And he looked through the screen doorway And he pointed his finger at me, and he said, Kenny, I'm going to tell you something. He said, boy, you're going to have a hard life. He said because don't nobody know everything. And I looked my father in his eye, and I laughed in his face. I laughed on his face a significant day in my life because on that day, I closed the door. Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness, it says in spiritual experience are the three essentials of recovery. I got news for you today, three essentials. Three essentials of a happy, healthy life. And on thatday, I close the door, a closed mind cannot learn, it cannot grow. And from that day forward, boom, everybody in my life became an idiot. My mother, my father, the preacher, the teacher, later on the police, the judges, the lawyer, the probation, the PO. If I don't know it, it ain't worth knowing became my philosophy of life. I used to look at my mother. I had this condescending look that I would get. My mother would be trying to tell me something and I would turn around and I would look at her with such disgust and disdain. How dare you speak to me? Now, I didn't say that, but I gave her that look. And I'm going to tell you something. That look almost got me killed on several occasions. My mother was ironing clothes one day, and I gave her that looks, and she pulled the iron plug out and, zoom, my iron coming through the, right? Boom! Right? This is the kind of kid that I am. I'm restless. I'm irritable. I'm discontented and according to my mother I mean as a rattlesnake I have yet to take a drink of alcohol I'm a mess and um I tell people I was the perfectly tilled soil for the disease of alcoholism all I had to do was pick it up and water the soil and see if I had the allergy in one day I did I got in a car with a guy I played basketball in high school he was two years older than me he had the life I lived in my head I don't live in the real world where the rest of you snazzy car pocket full of money ran around with the kind of girls I ran away from known in the bars and gambling spots already this is the guy whose life I want got in a car with Johnny he said hey Coleman you want to get something to drink I have been warned about drinking alcoholism don't run in my family it gallops and I have being told we do not do alcohol well take a look at the cemetery cirrhosis of the liver heart just my family is rife both sides of it with the disease of alcoholism if johnny had said to me that day let's go rob to carry out i absolutely guarantee you if he'd had two pistols i would have done it that's a little sense of self that i got and those are the links that i'm willing to go to to gain your approval i am empty on the inside see i made a decision at the age of 14 that as soon as i'm old enough to call my own shots i will never again darken the door of a church i don't want it i don'T need it right this is not the kind of life that i want i know everything i am destined for success Anybody in here like me I am destined for success And I got absolutely I treat everybody I treated my mom and them just like crap We bought 10 quarts of Slissmore Liquor Bull that day To the youngsters in here The quart preceded the 40 ounce Alright It was 32 ounces of beer And we bought 10 of them For one reason and one reason only It was on sale more bang for your buck We bought 10 quarts of Slissmore Liquor Bull Johnny said 5 for you, 5 for me I said bet 5 quarts beer, a lot of beer for a youngster Dropped the convertible top on that Pontiac Cranked up the Parliament Funkadelic And we rode through the streets of Sandusky And we drank that beer Right And I'm going to tell you My life changed Found out some things that day That was to set the tone and tenor For my life for almost the next 20 years Number one I can drink a lot I can drink a lot I drank them five quarts and no it went down smooth right and he was looking at me he was like man you can go I'm like yeah I can go so I found out I could drink a lot right but that wasn't the real thing we talk in here and there's been a lot of talk about it this weekend the effect produced by alcohol because we started drinking that day and it was a beautiful bright, sunshiny day. And I'm going to tell you something. Something happened inside me. Not up there. Something happened to me. All of a sudden everything that I had ever wanted to be or do or say now seemed possible. We went behind the Derek apartments where all the thugs hung out. And these are the people whose acceptance I would like to have. I ain't said five words in public in the last three years. We pulled up, people surrounded the car, the convertible top was down, the music was blasting. I looked at Johnny and I said, dude, turn that music down because there's a few things I want to tell a few people who are present here this afternoon that I have been wanting to tell them for quite some time. And I went around that circle of hoodlums, told each and every one of them not only what I thought of them but what they needed to do, in my opinion, to improve themselves. The reaction of the guys around that car. Dudes was leaning in the convertible and hugging me saying, see I told you. I told your Coleman all right. He's loosening up. He's doing a little drinking. He's one of us. God damn I connected the dot man. When I drink I change and you change. The way I see life changes. The way i see the past the present and the future changes. Alcohol equals success. I now have the acceptance of the people whose acceptance I want the most. Not mom and dad, them drive-by shooters behind the Derek apartments. Alcohol equals success, and you better believe I got it. And it was a conscious thought. We left from there, went off to the home of some of them girls he run around with I run away from. I've never been over there in my life. I walked into that home like I was paying the mortgage. I went in and sat down at the dining room table, and I made eye contact with a girl I still think is the finest girl to graduate from Sandusky High School And it's 148 year history I had never even breathed in her direction Much less said hello Right And I locked eyes with her And she looked up at me And I said come here And that's how I said it right And she got up and started walking toward me Now any sane human being at this point would think Gee Ken if you wasn't so shy and scary Look what you could have done Just by speaking Is that what I thought absolutely not if you knew roll with me for a minute here's what I thought if you had been drinking before now look what you could have done dude look what you've been missing that thought as clearly as I see you now alcohol equals success and you better believe I got it I immediately attributed it to drinking now this is an honest program and I'm going to be honest with you tonight when she got over there tell me I had no idea what to do with her I don't think that far ahead when I'm drinking But I watch a lot of TV Because I got a lot Of time on my hands right Then on TV they go like this So I did and she sat down In my lap And my life changed again Right And the up shoot to that whole deal Is on that day alcohol did for me What I could not or would not do for myself The best way that I can put it to you Because this is some internal, and it's hard to really put it into words. But here's what I'm going to tell you. The book calls it a sense of ease and comfort. For the first time in my life, I felt whole. And that is a very powerful thing. Now, what happened the rest of the day is the rest is my drinking history, and we can get out of it. Drank trouble. I went into a blackout I have no idea What went on the rest of the evening According to eyewitnesses at the house I came in the front door Threw up a trail through the house and passed out The next thing I remember is My mom knocking on that bedroom door Come on you clean up this mess You know you've been drinking Blah blah blah Staggered into the hallway In what later years would be my drinking uniform My underwear bouncing off of them hallway walls like father pete used to say i had a hangover i could take out and look at i mean i'm dying i go in the bathroom i lock the door put my hands on the bathroom sink i looked in the mirror and this is what i said man oh man i can't wait to do that again anybody following me grounded for life is what was being discussed in the living room and how that sentence was going to be carried out you take him to school i'll pick him up this is the kind of discussion that's going on in the living room. So I'm in the bathroom now, and I had a meeting with myself. Now we've heard talk of meetings with ourselves here this weekend, right? So I've been in the bedroom, had a meet-up with myself, and here's what I came up with. Okay, Kent, here's how it happened. You got drunk, you got sick, and you got grounded for life. Yes, all these things are true. Now, the reason, Kent, that you are grounded for life is not because you got drunk the reason that you are grounded for life is because you got sick so what you gotta do is learn how to drink come on without getting sick i knew i was in the right place right are you kidding me right now this is the i'm the guy who beats himself in the head with a hammer to get rid of a headache i'mthe guy who continually puts his hand on a hot stove. This is the first time I drink this is the way I'm thinking, right? And I'm gone, man. I'm gone. I found out real quick. See, I didn't understand alcoholism. People say, oh, it's a disease of denial. No, it ain't. It's a diseased ignorance. They ain't teach the doctor's opinion and the diseased concept of alcoholism at Sandusky High School Or Miami University And it most certainly wasn't discussed at Brownlees Tavern Right I didn't know what was wrong with me I drank more than other people Here's what I thought They sissies That's why I drank like a man See I didn' t understand That when I put alcohol into my body Something happens to me that don't happen to them Right That it creates in me a hunger An insatiable hunger They call it With me Dude I put the alcohol in me It is lights out. I ain't going to, and here's the crazy thing about it. I would tell myself, right, okay, you drank too much last night. You missed work. You know you need to go to work. See, I ainít got no power over, I didnít have no power at the end. I would say to my disease, Iím going to work, you know what it said? No, you ainít. No, yeah, Iím gonna pay these bills. Oh, no, you arenít. No,you arenít, I put a drink of alcohol in me And this happened when I was a teenager. It is lice out. Got a car at the age of 16, fake driver's license that said I was 22 years old. One snowy night. I was constantly getting grounded for breaking curfew. I had to be home at 1 o'clock on the weekends. I ain't never in there before 1.30 or 2. There's hollering and screaming. I'm grounded. The next week I get back out, I do it again. It's the way my life is going. One snowy night I put on a three-piece suit Like I got on a 3P suit this evening And I took my fake driver's license And I went to Toledo, Ohio Which is about 55 miles away And I was in the middle of the night And I came home And I ran into a place called The All Beautiful Shea Nightclub At least that's what they said on the radio That ain't what it was when I got there But anyway I went up in the Shea nightclub And at 1 o'clock When I was supposed to be home I was drinking a gin and juice And slow dragging With a woman older than my mother And I come home It's 4.30 in the morning And I went by myself This is how I was I rode with a crew Right But I went By myself I come home It's 4.30 in the morning Living room light Is on Usually it was Her bedroom Like not this time Whole house lit up I come in there 4. 30 in the mornin' My mother's sittin' On the couch I open the front door Tears runnin' Down her face This is what my mother Told me As your mother And father We owe you Food to eat Clothes on your back Roof over your head And an education And buddy We fulfilled Our part of the bargain She said But I got something you can't have And she said that's my peace of mind She said Kenny you're going to penitentiary or the cemetery And I got news for you buddy I ain't going with you I'm giving you to God I'm done Go do what you want I'm gone And this is what I said to my mom I broke you I broke You and you want to know something Mama you such a spiritual Giant I'm a little disappointed because it wasn't even that hard and that's how I talked to my mom I don't talk a lot about I'm not a guy that comes to the podium and talks about good times drinking I'm no going to stand up here and glorify the disease that wrecked and ruined and burned my life to the ground and damn near killed everybody who ever cared about me I am not going to stand up there and do that right? The old timers in Cleveland used to say drink trouble right and if you knew in here, prison is not a requirement for recovery right? Going to jail DUI not a requirements for recovery that is not my experience however if this was a beer and I stood here tonight and took a drink a cop would drop right out of that light and land in front of the floor Dude, dude, I've been in a lot of trouble. And I want to tell you something. As my alcoholism progressed and it kept taking and taking and taking, it kept burning down. Man, it's an amazing thing, right? I got three felonies and 11 misdemeanors one night. In downtown Toledo, there was guns involved. The police was involved. There was a lot. This was a bad thing. I got hollow point ammunition, cop killer bullets that penetrate a bulletproof. This was a really ugly thing. And I woke up the next morning and I was shackled at the ankles and manacled at the wrist and I sat in the jail cell. I was 23 years old and I said to myself, I will never drink again. Now I'm crazy but I ain't stupid, right? And I kind of knew that the way that I was living my life, I had graduated college, I was working at the Ford plant because if you do the things I do and you drink like I drink, Working at Procter & Gamble ain't happening And I knew that I wouldn't last it a month And them people offered me a job I went to one of the best schools in the country But my alcoholism is the center of my life And my life is constructed To accommodate my drinking And I'm sitting In the jail cell And I meant it as much as I mean it right now I'm done This is it, I finally bought the big one Everybody knows out there It's coming and it finally came I got bailed out of jail at 5 o'clock. My mother and them came and picked me up, and I got in my car, and here's the thought that came to me. Whoo! After a night like this, you young man deserve a beer. Does anybody follow me? Right. 12-pack, drove that hour home, throwing the bottles the telephone pulls out the windows, and I stagger into my mother and father's living room facing three felony and 11 misdemeanor charges in Lucas County in one night. And I didn't do that because I'd rather be drunk than sober. I did it because I'm powerless over alcohol. My life had become unmanageable. And unmanagability is not those going to jail, those are social consequences for antisocial behavior. The problems I got are internal. They ain't external. And that's been talked about here all weekend my grandfather bought me out of that um spent a lot of money and i got out of that and um i learned nothing i dropped dead at the age of 26 one day just dropped over dead not happens to us don right they call the rescue squad they put the paddles on me they got me in the cardiac unit everybody's up there the priest is up there to preachers up there there's crying there's praying my girlfriend's family my family all of this i'm laying in there i got tears running down the side of my face i got all these things on me i'm in the cardiac unit and this is what i said god if you let me live i never drink again and i meant it as much as i mean it now you to put a lie detector on me the needle wouldn't have moved 48 hours in the cardio cardiac unit my heartbeat stabilized they put me in a regular room here's the thought that came to me whoo that was close but I'm all right this calls for a celebration anybody following this a guy my best drinking buddy who died of this disease he died drunk he died drunk came into my room and I told him to go across the street and get me some booze and he looked at me and he says you're out of your mind and I said you going to need me before I need you. Go do what I told you. And I didn't do that because I'd rather be drunk than sober and I didn'T do that cause I'd better be dead than alive. If I had the power to choose not to drink and I could not drink, I'd have never come to AA. Why should I? One of the worst statements I hear in here. Oh, I got a choice today. Really? If you do then choose not to drinking and go on home. Only choice I got is either spiritual help or alcoholic death. Them's the two choices I got. Whether or not I'm going to drink, I can tell you right now, I don't have that choice. I got a choice to either accept spiritual help or else go on to the bitter end. Go on to The Bitter End. At the end of my drinking, no baths, no showers, my liver is distended about seven inches. I drank Old Granddad every time I take a drink of whiskey. And this is unbelievable. Alcohol in my life was always the victor. Anybody know what I'm talking about? I talked about earlier, you know, being in a car wreck and thank God I was drunk. I was limber, right? I mean, they had a big blizzard. The blizzard of 78 in Ohio. 70 mile an hour winds. I was in college. Snow drifts up to the second floor of the dormitory. I made the beer run. And when I got up to, to the Rusty Nail Tavern, which was the only thing I was, was open. And I knew it would be open because the guy lived upstairs. He came downstairs. He goes, what are you doing? I said, let's drink. So me and him got drinking. I got me a big bag, a case of beer. And I went back out in this blizzard. And they found me sitting on the steps of the dormitory. Two guys looked out the window and saw me. I'd have froze to death. They came out, got me, took me inside. You know what I said the next day? Thank God I'd been drinking. I had that antifreeze in me. I'd of froze to deaf. Nobody said if you weren't drunk, you wouldn't have been out there in the fridge. Do anybody see this? I spent the last three years I tried everything I could think of to quit I quit hanging around them guys I got the booze out of the house I changed shifts at work I moved and I couldn't shut it off I was drunk every day how dark it is before the dawn I gave up in my life there was no day, no night no right, no wrong, no good, no evil, no God, no devil. The three most prominent words in my vocabulary were I don't care. I'd take a drink of whiskey and I'd go in the bathroom and I would cough all this white stuff up. My liver and pancreas would no longer metabolize what I was drinking so what I'm coughing up is pure alcohol. I'm 32 years old. My body is now rejecting what my mind is obsessed with and I'm dying of alcoholism. Came out of the pump lounge it was a night like any other night and I had what they call a moment of clarity, a moment of sanity. I'm a great believer. I believe I was prayed in here. There's a guy in Cleveland, six-pack Charlie Kitchen. He said that's the moment when God paralyzes the liar in you long enough for you to see the truth because you have to understand something. Nothing that ever happened to me was my fault. It was always your fault. It's the police's fault. It's her fault. It's that old nosy woman next door who keep calling the police. Right? And it ain't never my fault. Never my fault I had seven DUIs and the last one I represented myself. And they advised me against it, but I had an airtight defense. It was entrapment. I left the bar. You follow me? Pull me over? You can't do that! You can just sit out. You know people drinking in a bar. You can not just pull them over for no reason. So I went to court with my little white shirt and tie on. they called me up they put me on a stand the Honorable Judge Stacy was sitting the bench that day he said I'm gonna make this quick he's a mr. Coleman Matthew two questions he said on the evening in question had you been drinking I said yes sir I had he said mr. Komen were you driving that's it yes sir I was he said get this idiot out of my courtroom and lock him up now later on they call that a confession I didn't know what you know this I can't you have to understand I can't this is how I live my life this is How I Live My Life I'm a guy that confounds I got I got bosses and coaches and counselors and all and family and all these people who love me who and all I'm telling you them is I ain't hurting nobody leave me alone it's my life I'm grown, and I ain't hurting nobody. And I have this moment of clarity, this moment of sanity, and what I saw was that if you don't stop drinking, you're going to die. You better get some help because you can't do it by yourself, and you better do it now because you're running out of time. Out of nowhere. Went home, called my best drinking buddy from college who's a doctor today, and what he said to me was, man, I've been waiting for this call for seven or eight years. Pack a bag, stay by the phone. I got you. He is not a member of this fellowship. Called me back, told me he was going to put me in treatment in Xenia, Ohio. Next day, my brother and his wife took me down there. I drank a case of beer on the way to treatment. I didn't know too much about treatment, but I had already figured out on my own they weren't serving no liquor down there, and I got to treatment, I was knee-walking drunk when I got down there And Richard took me to treatment, bought me a quarter of Miller's for the trip. We pulled in the parking lot of the hospital. He looked at me. He said, go ahead, dog, finish that. Don't ask me how I know it, man. He said that's the last drink you're ever going to take. That was the 17th of May, 1992. I've not had another drop of alcohol or anything stronger than aspirin since that day. It's because AA works. I spent 35 days in a 28-day program. Tell you how treatment went for me. Got out of treatment. I came home, I played a game. It's called don't drink, go to meetings and don't do nothing else. If I put my arm through a window and I cut an artery in my arm, I bleed all over the floor. I put a towel on my arm. I drive myself to the hospital. I run into the emergency room, bleeding all overthe floor. Doctor comes out, says, Mr. Coleman, come on back. We'll treat you now. I sit there in the emergencyroom, bleeding to death, look at the doctor and say, no, thank you. I'll just sit here. And I bleed to death in theemergencyroom. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the emergencyroom. I've been in these rooms long enough. I watch people who attend these meetings on a daily basis die of untreated alcoholism before my very eyes it don't say haven't had a spiritual awakening as a result of attendance don't stay having a result meetings are important literature is important service is important all of them have one function and that is to support the facilitate the 12-step process in your life And as long as I understand that That they're not a substitute for that Then AA starts to make some sense I went to 250 meetings in three months And ended up in the parking lot of Daly's Pub Dying of untreated alcoholism And I never wanted I'm vibrating And I'm thinking to myself What's the matter with me? I'm going to these meetings every day Right? And I said my first prayer in that car God, what am I doing wrong? Like a lightning bolt What are you doing right? If you go to that many meetings You hear it every day Get a sponsor, read the book Work the steps, help others I didn't do none of that I treated AA like a cigarette smoking Donut dunking coffee clutch And instead of going into Daily's Pub I put the car in drive And I went to an AA meeting And I walked to a man and I said Would you help me And this is what he told me I'm going to take you through the 12 steps As outlined in the book The same way my sponsor did for me He had got sober in 1958 And this was what he taught me He said, you bury yourself knee-deep in here so you can't teeter and fall, Kent. And like I said, I've been shoulder deep in here ever since. And my sponsor said, I'm going to show you what I do. I'm not going to just tell you. And he was a power of example in my life. A lot of things happened in my life. I started working the stops. I had a chance to make amends to my mom and dad. My mother died. I was almost two years sober. And he said, my sponsor said Go make your direct And I was living with them Because I didn't have a safe place And all he said Was go in there and be the son You were supposed to be Keep your mouth shut So when the time came I went there They got her off the morphine I sat down I had this big speech planned out I looked at my mom My mom looked at me She had tears running down her face I had tears run down mine And the only thing I could say Is mama, I'm sorry And my mom looked up at me and she beamed. My mother had the biggest brown eyes I've ever seen, and my mother smiled at me, and she said, I forgive you. She said, Kenny, I want you to promise me that you will stay with those people, and they were the answer to our prayer. They were able to do for you what we could not. I promised her that I would, and I have. My mother died holding my hands and looking in my eyes with my family up there calling their name, and more. My uncle stood in the back and said, don't call her no more because she ain't going to look away from him. That's how she wants to go. That'S how my mama left this earth, andI'm going to tell you something. I've been blessed a billion times since then but if that was all i ever got i want you to know right now that was enough thank god for the fellowship in the program of alcoholics anonymous um my dad died i was 18 years sober amends made we were best of friends he saw the birth of my daughters i got divorced 20 years sober um life been life life's been life but here i am and i want you to do something if you knew in here that sobriety is not immunity from the vicissitudes Well, come to your next door neighbor's house. It's coming to your house. People are going to get sick. People will get divorced. People going to get jobs. People gonna lose jobs. Life going to be life. But here's what I can tell you. I am a chronic alcoholic. I am an alcoholic of our type as described in that book. And since the day I got a sponsor and started putting these things imperfectly a day at a time into action in my life, I have not one single solitary time ever thought of taking a drink of alcohol not once and i stand here tonight and i stand not one single time have i thought of taking a drink it's because aa works um the ancient mariners used to follow the north star right and that's what we do in here we got these principles right and and we and their perfection and we aim at them and we never live long enough to reach them but you know something about the ancient Mariners they followed the north star and they always got where they were supposed to go And I follow the principles that were left us by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. I love AA more than I did when I first came, right? Burn the idea into the consciousness of every man that he can get well regardless of anyone. The only condition is that he trust in God and clean house. And intensive work, one alcoholic with another was vital to permanent recovery. Six simple words they taught me at home. Trust God, clean house, and help others. And that's the message, has been since June 10th of 35, and it is today. They gave me a tape of Warren Chisholm Sr., 12th man in AA in Cleveland when I was new, friend of my first sponsor. In that tape, Warren Chischolm said anyone who comes here who is willing to follow the principles and practices of this program is outlined in the big book need never drink again a day at a time. I went to Finley. I said he can't say that, never drink Again a Day at a Time. Bill said, yeah, he can, and I'm going to tell you why. He said because this is a spiritual program And God doesn't fail If this doesn't work for you This is what he told me It's because you have not fulfilled the conditions that have been laid down God ain't going to do for you what you can do for yourself But he will do foryou what you cant do foryourself If I said anything to help anybody tonight Thank God Do not thank me If I didn't say nothing to help you tonight Guess what We got some more meetings tomorrow Right God does not make too hard terms with those who seek him God could and would if he were sought Abandon yourself to God as you understand God Admit your faults to him and to your fellows Clear away the wreckage of your past Give freely of what you find And join us We shall be with you in the fellowship of the spirit And you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you until then. Good night, Bismarck.