Step 6 Happens When the People Who Should Reject You Accept You Instead – Larry K.

About This Speaker Tape

Larry K., a Catholic priest from Sterling, Oklahoma, opens with a long comedic parable about a town that banned combustion engines and switched to donkeys, before pivoting hard into his core story: he is an alcoholic who got sober May 21, 1972, and the program — not the church — is what saves him. He explains why he refuses to use 'Father' at AA meetings, why he discourages newly sober Catholics from running back to church on weak emotional stitches, and why he believes Higher Power led him specifically to Alcoholics Anonymous rather than to the sanctuary.

The heart of the talk is identity. Larry describes growing up with what he calls 'the loneliness of nothingness' — an emptiness deeper than loneliness, a felt lack of any right to exist. He was the youngest in class, ignored by his brother, rootless inside his own house, ugly in his own mind to the point that for 45 years he could not picture his own face. Alcohol became the bridge to other people; drugs made the inside of his head bearable. When alcohol stopped working, he was left with the original nothingness and nowhere to put it.

He walks the Twelve Steps as an identity-recovery program. Step 4 forces him to see his real size as a pastor of a 500-Catholic parish in a town where 'a traffic jam is when both cars meet.' Step 5 lets him stop hiding. Step 6 happens through being accepted by other alcoholics, who become the face of a Higher Power who doesn't sort him into acceptable and unacceptable traits. He short-circuits Higher Power by going through sponsor-group-program first. Meditation — picturing himself as a small child climbing into his Father's lap during a thunderstorm, or feeling Higher Power massage his defective parts the way a parent loves a child's weak leg — is how he now experiences being someone instead of nothing.

He closes with the Naaman story from 2 Kings: the important man who almost refused to wash seven times in a muddy river because the cure was too ordinary. Larry's takeaway, borrowed from Bill W. and a wedding toast: the good is the enemy of the best, and may the best never be good enough for you. Today he sponsors twenty-three people, makes four committed meetings a week, and knows he is a child of Higher Power.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opening donkey parable — the town that banned combustion engines and voted in the ass
• 5:00 Introduces himself as Larry Kowalski, alcoholic and Catholic priest, sober since May 21, 1972
• 7:00 The wallet dream — closets jammed with forgotten possessions, the warning that material things were stripping his identity
• 12:00 Why he refuses 'Father' at AA meetings — whatever separates him from the room is likely to kill him
• 16:00 Appendicitis analogy — Higher Power's normal way to handle alcoholism is AA, not church; weak emotional stitches and the new-Catholic third-step trap
• 22:00 The loneliness of nothingness — deeper than loneliness, the felt absence of any right to exist
• 30:00 Big Ears, Dumbo, and 45 years of being unable to picture his own face until a Jonesboro conference
• 42:00 Alcohol as the bridge to other people, drugs as the answer inside his own head, and the Hot Springs restaurant where he finally felt electric without either
• 55:00 Walking the Steps as identity recovery — Step 4 in Sterling, Step 6 through being accepted by other alcoholics
• 1:10:00 Meditations — the child on the Father's lap, Higher Power massaging defective spiritual organs, and the Naaman story closing with 'may the best never be good enough for you'