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

I did find out that he likes jokes and that he drinks his iced tea like I used to drink my whiskey,
and that's a gallon of iced tea for breakfast in the morning.
Help me welcome Larry Kaye from Stilson, Oklahoma.
Thank you.
They saw how brave it would be, and they saw that probably the greatest pollution would come from air pollution.
They held a town meeting over it, and instantly, the beginning of the meeting,
banned the combustion engine from the town.
From that day to this, nothing with a combustion engine has been allowed in the town.
No cars, no vans, no trucks, no motorcycles.
Not only by the people who live there, but even by tourists.
If you want to drive through it, you've got to...
Detour all the way around it if you're going to stay in a car.
The biggest part of the day was trying to come up with an ultimate means of transportation.
How they themselves would get around and how they would lug all their burdens around.
And they weighed the pros and cons of everything they could think of,
and finally, at the end of the day, they voted on what they have settled and accepted from that day to this.
And they voted on the donkey.
It's become, therefore, a staple part of their life.
And if you visit the town, therefore,
and if you look carefully, you'll see that all of the older men have their own asses.
All of the older women have their own asses.
Because life would be very uncomfortable for them without an ass.
Look carefully enough and you'll find every young gal has got her own ass,
and every young guy's got his own ass.
Now, because of how crucial it is to them,
people just keep driving their ass and driving their ass until it breaks down on them.
Now, think for a moment what your life would be like without your ass.
And you can see how important it is they borrow somebody else's ass.
Now, in your whole life, has anybody else's ass ever moved fast enough for you?
So you try to help it along, and this leads to a lot of fights,
because people don't like to have their ass kicked in public by a stranger.
Because they are so important to life, you find a lot of people peddling asses.
You find a lot of people peddling asses in town.
Young gals are the same, and a young gal will park her ass where it doesn't belong,
and the local cop has to come along and pinch it.
Younger people don't understand that reference.
Once a year, everybody parades their ass in public,
and they try to pick the best looking ass in town.
Now, I don't know if you've ever studied asses very carefully,
but they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes and everything else.
When they pick the ass of the town, you find out that politicians are the same everywhere,
because you'll find the local mayor kissing ass for votes.
On the Sunday morning that leads to the story I'm opening with,
everybody takes their ass and they go to church.
In the middle of the Catholic mass, an earthquake struck the town,
and everybody ran out of the church to save their ass,
except for the priest.
He had parked his ass,
tying it to a tree,
on the side of the church.
Those windows were broken by the earthquake,
and he hoped just to jump through the window and land on his ass.
But he fell into the main crevice of the earthquake,
proving that even a priest cannot tell his ass from a hole in the ground.
I'm Larry Kowalski, and I'm an alcoholic.
I happen also to be a Catholic priest,
who got here because I could not and cannot often tell my ass from a hole in the ground.
I haven't found it necessary.
I haven't found it at times desirable.
I have not taken a drink or a mood-changing chemical of any kind today,
or anything else.
Or any today since May the 21st, 1972.
And for that, I'm very, very grateful.
What it was like, what happened, and what it's like now.
And I'm going to start in a reverse order.
About a month ago, I woke up in the middle of the evening
and remembered the dream I was just having.
And that's extraordinary, because I don't remember dreams.
And the dream that I was having was that I was in the process of moving from one home to another.
And couldn't find my wallet in the moving.
And I would think, I think the wallet's in my coat.
And I'd go to the closet, and I'd open the coat.
I'd open the closet to look for the wallet.
And the closet was filled with things of mine that I had forgotten completely to pack.
And there was no room, because my car was already completely filled.
And then I'd say, look, I think the wallet's in a shoe under the bed.
And I'd look under the bed.
And then I'd say, look, I think the wallet's in a shoe under the bed.
And under the bed, it was just jammed with things of mine that I'd forgotten to pack.
And there was no room.
And this went on and on.
And instantly, I understood, for me, the relevance of that dream.
And it really shook my whole life for 36 hours, minimally.
And it's been affecting my life from that time to this.
And what I had been experiencing in this dream was an understanding
that I had so overloaded my life
with material things, with amassing, with gluttoning my life with everything,
that I'd lost my sense of identity.
I was losing a real experience of who I am.
And I got that experience, I get that experience,
through the steps of the program, especially through meditation.
And when I make the things of the world so important,
I block out my ability to listen to God telling me who I am.
And I was losing it.
Now this was almost instantly confirmed by a series of things
that I thought about the next day.
About a month before this, a very young priest was talking to me,
and he quoted back to me something that he was living by
that I had told him about nine or ten years before.
And it's that I told people, don't ever give me anything
if later on I can't give it to someone else who needs it.
And that was real true at that time in my life, in my early sobriety.
And I felt so free.
But about eight years ago, I started amassing and collecting and keeping.
And I was becoming like a priest friend of mine that I looked at and I said,
you know, I hope, well, if you hold on to your sins the way you hold on to everything else,
you're going to have a hell of a lot of trouble at the last judgment.
Because I wasn't parting with anything, and he wasn't parting with anything,
and I was losing in my gut who I am.
I travel about 3,500 miles a month.
And in the course of my traveling,
I do a lot of car-driving meditating.
And for about two months,
95% of the time I'd spend meditating was distractions.
And thinking after the dream,
the distractions were all worried about things I owned
that were breaking down, or needed to be fixed, or weren't functioning right.
And they were really blocking out what I needed to find me.
I knew instantly that I had to start taking action,
because this is an action program.
And what I had to do was start dumping things
that I didn't need.
And the very first thing I did was totally weed out my wardrobe.
We had had someone in the small town that I live in in Oklahoma
suffer a major loss of everything through fire.
And I just, he'd be about roughly my size,
and I gave him like about one-fourth of what I've got.
And it wasn't the bottom half of it.
It was one-fourth of what I like that I own,
so that I could start becoming free.
And I started divesting myself of other things.
And I knew that just simply giving things away isn't the answer,
when I have a problem, the problem remains,
and it's a problem in me.
And this was a problem showing itself.
And this just showed itself about a week ago,
I went to a grocery store in Oklahoma City that takes used credit cards.
And I charged two hundred,
this is a credit card that I was using,
gets charged to the parish where I'm pastored,
two hundred and seventy dollars worth of stuff.
And a lot of it again are little things that I don't really need,
but that I won't get to real quickly to get.
And so I was running,
and filling my life,
I will have this tendency to want to fill my life with things.
And that isn't where my peace is going to be found.
It wasn't where my peace was found then,
and it isn't where my peace will be found today.
This is what you do when you're Polish.
This is why I'm a priest and not a brain surgeon.
I could just see going to the old operating table
and stumbling,
next.
I have to attack the root of the problem.
I want to talk about identity,
and tell you that I was born with no identity.
And I want to tell you some of the things I used and did
to try to find myself identity and how they didn't work.
I want to tell you how I got a sense of identity from alcohol
and a backup of drugs.
My drug of choice is clearly alcohol.
How alcohol helped me find myself,
and then how alcohol stripped me of my identity.
And then I want to spend hopefully time telling you
how the steps of the program are necessary in my sobriety
as life continues to want to strip my identity from me
to help me discover who and what I am.
Before I do this, I certainly want to just take a moment
and thank the committee
for the real honor of being asked to come here and share with you.
About 14 years ago they had a kangaroo meeting in the parish where I was
as an assistant to throw me out.
To be invited anywhere is a real honor.
And to find the warmth that I find in Alcoholics Anonymous
is just a real tribute.
And there's always a tendency to want to find my answer myself
when people think of me.
But I was popular at times in my drinking.
And I have to remember that I don't find my identity
from what you think of me,
but from what I feel and experience of myself.
Not what you think of me, but what I feel of me
is the basis of my own self-living.
I shared with you that I'm a priest
and it doesn't have Father on the program
and I sure don't look like most of the priests dressed that you saw.
I found this telephone booth and said,
Shazam, and this is what happened.
I have a very good reason for not using the title
Father in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I used to tell people first
that I do it because we had a Colonel John
in the military town where I sobered up
until he got drunk and he came back as John.
And whatever separates me from you is likely to kill me.
I remember being at a meeting.
My home group, we segregated.
The guy sat on this side, the gal,
and I was about a year and a half sober.
There were about nine, it was a closed meeting,
about nine women, about 15 or so men,
and the speaker said, Son of a bitch.
And he stopped and looked at me and he said,
Excuse me, Father.
Stuff like that, taking one person out of a group
and making them special.
If that person is me, he's going to kill me.
My disease doesn't exist on the level of what I do.
It exists on the level of who I am.
And I've got to see that.
Now I've shared before, therefore, that
I don't wear the collar and use the name for this reason.
But in really wanting to share with you,
I've got to get a little bit gut more honest
and tell you that I don't use my collar and my title
because I'm in a desperate search to find myself.
I felt like nothing for 35 years.
And I don't want you accepting me because of a collar
and a front and a title.
I need to be accepted
and related to, to somehow feel in my gut
that if you like me and if you accept me,
you're liking me and you're accepting me
and you're not coming across to greet me
because of some profession.
You're coming across to greet me.
And so it's crucial for my own self-existence
that when I go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous,
I'm Larry and I'm Larry Kowalski.
And I don't care how sincere you are as a Christian.
I hope that you'll respect my own needs.
And if you meet me in a meeting in the program,
through the program,
you'll deal with me as Larry.
And if you deal with me in the church,
then I expect for the sake of the respect
that people should pay any church
that you use the titles that are given
to the ministers of that church.
As a clergyman, sometimes I can help people
by making a few comments also on
the disease of alcoholism in religion.
If right now I was hit by an attack of appendicitis,
and you started taking me to the closest Catholic church,
I hope I'd have the strength to punch you out,
call for an ambulance and go to the hospital.
Now I have experienced a God that,
I hope you can believe this,
I believe honestly my God can,
and probably through the course of history,
has directly healed people of appendicitis.
But I believe from my experience of God
that medical knowledge is God's gift to the world.
He so wants his children to be healed
of appendicitis that he gave us his normal way,
and he allowed us to discover the laws of medicine
and the techniques of medicine
that enable appendicitis to be handled.
And God, I think, tells me that the normal way
for me to have appendicitis handled
is in a hospital.
And if I go to church, I'm telling him
I want him to heal me my way, not his way.
And my God doesn't take orders very well.
I have a different disease.
I have the disease of alcoholism.
And the normal way to handle the disease of alcoholism
isn't by going to church.
And if anyone can tell you that, it was me,
because I was in church daily
when my alcoholism exploded.
Three percent of the people who go to church
find their answer.
The normal way that God wants to handle my disease
is in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now I know some people that God has led to church.
I'm spiritual director to one.
He's been sober 12 years,
and he has to continue in church
sharing with other people and helping other people,
giving away what he receives
if he's to sustain his sobriety.
God led him to church.
God led me to Alcoholics Anonymous.
And it would be very presumptuous for me to switch.
And I want to carry this image of the disease
one step further.
When I meet brand new Catholics
in Alcoholics Anonymous,
when I meet brand new sober people
who are Catholic in Alcoholics Anonymous,
I discourage them from going right back to church.
I do it to people in several other religions also,
for a very good reason.
If I were operated on on Friday night for appendicitis,
I don't belong in church on Sunday morning,
I would tell anybody who did that
that they were medically and morally wrong.
Their stitches are too weak
and they're endangering their health.
And a God of health doesn't want his children
to endanger their health,
but just to come for a service.
And when I came to this program,
I came so burdened with guilt
that I feel a lot of you are like me.
And we start getting emergency surgery
and a lot of people go running into church
and their emotional stitches are too weak
for what they get hit with.
Most of you think the Catholic Church says
you can only have one marriage.
Rare is the Catholic who comes to Alcoholics Anonymous
anymore in their first marriage.
And they take the third step
and they feel they've got to surrender
to the will of God,
which for some people almost means
they've got to hunt up that first wife,
throw out her husband,
and remake that first marriage
or they're going to get drunk.
Or they're not being sincere in their third step.
And they don't have the maturity to handle that.
And in some other churches,
thank God this wasn't for Catholics
or I really would have been in trouble,
you're not allowed to smoke, dance, gamble, drink.
And you've got to do at least one of those
to make our program.
And if you're like me,
you usually go for the group package.
You know, it comes so much easier
when you pull them all together.
Incidentally, I am not Saint Joseph
with a drinking problem.
There are some clergymen in the program
who had trouble with alcohol.
I sure as hell didn't have trouble with alcohol.
I had trouble with life
and alcohol wasn't an answer for that
until a little bit later.
So people's emotional stitches are too weak.
My philosophy is you go to Alcoholics Anonymous,
which guarantees a spiritual awakening
until you find God that strongly
that you can't thank him enough.
And at that point,
if you don't go to church,
our program, as I understand it,
says you're going to get drunk
because you have to sustain and grow spiritually.
And when I can't continue my spiritual growth
enough in the program,
I better find the church that God wants me in.
And I don't think God needs me to defend him.
And I trust enough that if you're sober today,
God's given you a miracle
and I can sit back
and God doesn't give miracles to his enemies.
And if God likes where you're at,
I don't even question it.
I just hope you and I together
will stay open to his guidance.
Now coming on to identity.
I grew up, well, about a year ago,
Ramona and Al-Anon from Oklahoma and I
were together on a program in Memphis
and she used a statement,
the loneliness of onlyness.
And it just hit me deep in my stomach.
And that night I organized all the sharing
I wanted to do on how I have just lived
in an island by myself.
And how alcohol helped form a bridge to the world.
Drugs affected me in a different way.
They enabled me at times to think it was okay
being on this island by myself.
And I've got the disease of Al-Anonism
and my Al-Anonism made me want to bring someone
sicker than I was onto that island with me
so they would be dependent on me
and I wouldn't be alone in my loneliness.
Ramona and I were together last weekend in Hot Springs.
And she spoke again and she used that phrase,
and again I was speaking after her
and when she used the phrase I did some gut thinking,
maybe because I've been so heavy into identity.
And my problem went deeper.
And you know I think there's a loneliness deeper
than the loneliness of onlyness.
And it's the loneliness of nothingness.
The emptiness of nothingness.
And that's how I grow up.
Now this isn't going to affect all of you.
And I want to comment on that because
maybe in some ways I've been blessed being a clergyman.
I've heard a lot of fifth steps.
Over 500, well over 500.
And it tells me something.
That the only thing all of us who are alcoholic
have definitely in common is we all misused alcohol.
That's all. Not even commercial alcohol.
Not all beer. Not all of us wine.
Not all of us mindless Canadian whiskey.
My drink of choice.
We don't all drink the same thing.
And when an alcoholic stands behind the podium
and goes from his or her experience
to everybody's experience.
And I say that all alcoholics are liars
or all alcoholics are thieves.
And you're sitting out there and you weren't a liar or a thief.
Alcohol is cunning, baffling and powerful.
And my talk is likely to get you to think
because I didn't have this symptom I don't have this disease.
Therefore I can go out and drink.
Talk to any doctor.
I don't know of any disease where the symptoms
are universal for everybody.
We all don't come the same.
Many of us have feelings of not
of having no good inside ourselves.
Some alcoholics are bloated up the other way.
Most Al-Anons have experienced the feelings
I'm going to share but not all Al-Anons.
And let me just take this a step further and tell you
that just as all people with the same disease
don't experience the same symptoms
the medications, the treatments for given disease
don't produce the same immediate reactions.
Some people are wiped out by chemotherapy.
Other people don't seem to have any bad effects at all.
I've seen people who have been deeply depressed
near the end of their fifth step
because they've heard of people take their fifth step
who are climbing the ceiling
and they're not climbing the ceiling.
Let me just share this real quickly because it might help you.
About one out of fifty people get an emotional high
during the fifth step.
One out of fifty get depressed
as I do every time I do my own fifth step
updating it from the last one.
I walk away feeling worse than I came.
Forty-eight out of fifty people from my experience
walk away as if they just had an emotional enema.
They're empty inside. They don't know how they feel.
All of us, if we've done the same thing
we'll get the promises on page seventy-five.
We'll be able to look the world in the eye eventually
and be able to be alone in peace and ease.
That's the eventual result of the treatment
but the immediate treatment
has different reactions.
Going into mine,
I have never felt the right to exist.
I'm a total nothing.
I don't belong by my feelings where I'm at at any moment.
If you feel it, you don't need it explained.
If you've never felt it, it'll be hard for me to put it in terms
but I'll try to give you a few examples of this.
You spill coffee on me, I'm going to apologize.
You push me, I'm going to say I'm sorry
because I don't belong where I'm at.
I've got to justify living.
I feel guilt for being.
Yes, I felt guilt for the things I did
but I felt far more guilt just for existing.
When you don't have a right inside you,
you're just a total nothing.
You don't deserve to exist.
You feel guilt for whatever you're doing,
whatever air you're breathing.
And since it's constant guilt,
it's got to be constant anxiety.
How can I walk through life
when I don't have a right to be in life?
And I lived with this.
I grew up with this.
And these are very deep feelings.
Just to give you a few examples.
Those of us with feelings like this
can easily become workaholics.
We've got to justify our existence.
We need people dependent on us
because it justifies our existence.
If I'm working, I'm needed.
If I'm needed, I'm needed.
And I can breathe.
And it's very difficult for us to learn to play.
I was nine years sober before I forced myself
to learn to play.
And I mean just waste time
and celebrate myself.
And I've become very successful at it.
I've become an addicted snow skier.
I had four ski vacations last year.
And when I go away,
I don't think of Oklahoma.
I don't think of the church.
I don't think of most of the people I'm sponsoring
unless one of them's walking through a severe crisis.
I can just relax.
Now that's impossible
for someone with my feelings
without this program.
When you don't have a right to be,
you can't do things for yourself.
I felt guilty doing anything good for me.
I wonder,
how many of you have ever bought
a Christmas present for yourself
or a birthday present for yourself?
And if I buy Christmas and birthday presents
for everyone else and not for myself,
my body talk is telling me
what my feelings say.
I'm not worth anything.
And I try in the last few years
to spend as much time
thinking of a present,
not something I need,
thinking of a present
I want to give myself
because I want to be my own friend.
Ten years sober,
someone I sponsor gave me
a ring that has a ten-point diamond in it.
And shortly after I got the ring,
I was talking from the podium
and I apologized for wearing it.
And fortunately,
my sponsor was there
and he jumped my butt so strong
after the meeting,
telling me,
I don't ever want you to apologize
for making yourself look good.
If you have no right to be,
you have no right to look good.
I take great pride
in dressing myself up for you.
And I do all I can
to make sure that the outfit I wear
any time I stand behind the podium
of Alcoholics Anonymous
or stand up in Alcoholics Anonymous
if I have been invited in advance to talk
shows you how much I think of myself.
I'm dressing up the package of who I am
and how much I think of you.
And it's very important to me.
I not only felt nothing from inside.
Through a very strange combination
of circumstances,
I was a total nothing
in the world in which I grew up.
I had parents who tried to give love,
but I never felt the love.
They had a bedroom,
I had a younger sister
that had a bedroom of her own,
and I shared a bedroom
with a brother,
an older brother,
who,
as a child at least,
was very cruel
and totally predominate.
I slept there
there and changed clothes there and that was all. I was no one in my own family. I was a nomad
inside my own house. I'd move from room to room. If the kitchen was being used, I'd study in front
of the television. If the television was on, I'd go in and sit in the kitchen. I never had a place
of my own. And it took me about seven, eight years sober to understand why the things I've
got today are so important to me. You walk into my house, I'm uninvited, walk over and turn the
television on, you've made my resentment list. Because I had nothing. I had no place, no roots
that were mine. And what I've got today is important to me because I was rootless. Now if
I tell you to make yourself at home, you can do whatever you want and it doesn't touch my feelings.
My brother was able to make an ally of my sister. And inside the family, my choices were to be with
them in pain. And it was pain. I'll mention that in a moment.
or to be alone. And I grew up preferring to be lonely than to be with people in pain.
And I've had that same thing acted out in my priesthood. For some strange reason,
I've been completely ignored by the priests of Oklahoma. Nine years a priest, not one priest
ever called me socially. And I've had little acts of rejection. And I've tried to be friends to them
before I became kind of eccentric. And now I understand why they do what they do.
But it was this same old pattern, being lonely or going out to be with them and feeling rejection
and pain. It's like I don't exist. Love me or hate me, but don't ignore me. That's my attitude.
I'll take negative strokes because it says I'm alive. But I've spent so much of my life just
not being there that it's deadly to me.
There was nobody my age. Well, first, my brother called me Big Ears. My ears clearly stuck out as
a child. He called me Dumbo. And I feel so ugly that 30, 45 years old, I had never once been able
to picture my own face. And it does no good if you tell me that I'm attractive. I had some people do
that. That just turned my stomach. But I was at a conference in Jonesboro, Arkansas, 10 years sober,
and we all held hands.
And someone sang the Lord's Prayer in a very prayerful way. And when it was being sung,
the only thing that happened was I pictured my face. And that was it. That was electrified.
And it was like my face was nothing. I blocked it out. I could not see my face. I'd look in
the mirror and not know what I saw. I had a lump, an inside cyst growing. I didn't notice it for
months until it needed surgery in a hospital. Because I blocked out what was in my face. I
thought it was there. It was nothing. And to be able now to show you how delicate these feelings
are, I pictured my face in Jonesboro. This was like a year and a half ago. I didn't try to do it
again until a month ago. It's like I had taken one step on that limb, but I wasn't sure I could take
another one. And I did it a second time, and it was exciting. And then I didn't do it for three
weeks. And I did it a third time. And before I was sharing in Hot Springs, the night before, shall I
try it? I'm afraid. It's just no problem. I can do it. What this means is your love has enabled me
to accept who I am. Slowly, layer by layer, I can accept more and more of me, and I can become who
I am. But my brother really hurt me. And then I'd have to. There was nobody my age in the
neighborhood, so I had to run around with him. When you're four, you can't play ball the way
seven-year-olds do. So they didn't want me. They just ignored me.
And I began to feel I was a washout here. I went to school in a Polish ghetto, a Catholic school
in a Polish ghetto, where everybody knew everybody, because they lived together in that environment.
And I came from outside the ghetto. And I was the second youngest person in the class without
ever skipping a grade. I graduated from high school at 16, college at 20. I never knew what
people were talking about. I had to pretend I was part of life. Their voices were changing,
and I had to pretend I knew what they were talking about. And it's like I'm nothing. I'm not part of
the world you're in. I wasn't part of any of their friendships or any of their relationships,
because I was so young, because I had no confidence in being able to do anything athletically,
because I was a failure with my brother. I wasn't wanted. I wasn't hated. I just wasn't
unwanted in grammar school. They'd choose the teams, and I'd be ignored. So I'd go pal with
the gals. I looked like a sissy. And I really feel it was more that the guys just didn't notice me,
because I couldn't be a sissy. I was a sissy. I was a sissy. I was a sissy. I was a sissy.
I couldn't do what they were doing. And it hurt so bad. And then I got out of that school system
in the ninth grade. In the ninth grade, I got a little bit of attention. We had a little yearbook,
and I was editor of that yearbook. And people noticed me. I got into a little bit of controversy.
But I was never elected on for any office. The single most painful thing I think I've
ever seen on television was the Charlie Brown Valentine special.
If I ever watch that again, it will be signs of great growth here. He goes out,
with a satchel to the mailbox on Valentine's Day, expecting it to be full, and there's nothing
there. Now, I live that every year. Not disliked, just not there. And I know the pain. And that's
deadly. I really think that's worse than loneliness, just being totally nothing.
When I went to the, I'd have to walk a mile and a half for friends in grammar school,
nearly two miles for friends in high school.
And they grew up in the neighborhood, and I came from outside, and they never called me.
It was a one-way friendship, and it's just like I'm nothing attaching myself to them.
And they don't know I'm there. They don't dislike me. They accept me, but they don't really.
And that was the story of my life. And I tried everything to become something.
I tried using material goods. I'm a compulsive buyer. And it's like I tried to find myself in
what I had. And this was part of my problem when I was a kid. I was a kid. I was a kid. I was a kid.
I was a kid. I was a kid. I was a kid. I was a kid. I was a kid. I was a kid. I was a kid. I was a kid.
I was losing my identity. I was having deep troubles with food. I'm a compulsive overeater.
I've got eight or nine years abstinence in the OA program. But I was putting weight on at meals.
And I wanted God to handle this. And I'd had sexual problems 13 years into my sobriety
that still periodically would erupt. And I wanted God to handle this. And I saw that I was stuffing
myself with life, just shoving in every material thing that came by, anything I could buy. And if
I'm stuffing myself, if I'm pigging out on everything, I can't ask God to help me diet in
one or two areas. I can't ask God to help me diet in one or two areas. I can't ask God to help me diet
in one or two areas. But with this, I understand now why I had to do this. I was trying to find
who I was by what I had. I tried to find what I had, who I was, by my power to influence people.
I stowed every cent in the poor fund of the first church I was in for three years running.
They don't make you Saint of the Year for that. You know, just when I tell you I'm not Saint Joe,
you better believe it. And I didn't do it for alcohol or drugs, because I had a
church that I was in for three years running. And I didn't do it for alcohol or drugs, because I had
a church that I was in for three years running. And I didn't do it for alcohol or drugs, because I had
a church wine supply and an independent supply of drugs that was free. I did it for things in the
area of sex and other things, because I needed to be able to influence people to feel in this power
that who I was. And it didn't work. I tried to find myself in activity, but it was just nothing
that I was carrying along all the time. I was super compulsive in the anti-war movement in the
military town. I went into a self-destruct pattern to try to get the negative attention. I got some
negative attention.
I know today I became a priest, because I grew up in this Polish ghetto where priests were so
respected. And I felt, you know, if you're frustrated and if I become a priest, I'll be a...
I thought I'd be respected. I became a frustrated priest. And that's when my alcoholism actually
exploded. I tried to find myself through sex, and it just led to more guilt, because I've got so
many hang-ups and so many patterns that I don't think other people have. And certainly when I grew
up, I thought nobody else on earth did the things sexually that I did. And I thought, you know,
I hated myself, and every release would lead to a ton of guilt, and it would set up the next need
for it. But there was still just that emptiness. Once the brief sexual excitement was over, there
was that nothingness in here, that deadness in here. And that's me living. I tried to find myself
through the help of my friends, if I had the right circle of friends. But as I told you, I was always
the outsider, and I never felt I belonged. And they became a threat, because you see,
I could fool you. I could make a good first impression. But when you got close, then you
would see the nothingness in here. So as the friendships deepened, they became deadly. I tried
to find myself through popularity. But if every one of you applauded, the only voice I had to
listen to was booing. And if one of you frowned or walked out of one of my sermons, I was ruined,
because that's what I'd tune in on. And it just all collapsed instantly, and I was back to that
total nothingness.
I tried to find myself through fantasy. Even in my drinking, I spent hours, more hours in the fantasy
world than I did in the real world. Because you see, in that fantasy world, I wasn't nothing.
My fantasy world included the real people from my real world. I wasn't, you know, people didn't
like me in the real world. They didn't like me in my dream world, but I was perfect. I was the
perfect athlete, the perfect scholar, the perfect businessman, the perfect priest, the perfect
everything.
The picture was perfect. And so I would always win. And two years sober, the phone rang while I
was into one of these heavy daydreams. I did it long in my sobriety. And it took every ounce of
willpower I had to leave the dream world where I was somebody and go back into the real world
where I was nobody. And I saw why people become Napoleon and what they mean by that. It is far
less painful in the dream world.
The psychotic world than it is in the real world. And I know that in my gut. And I know that that's
waiting for me if I lose my sense of identity. Because I can't live being nothing. And I also
saw that I can't afford hours of fantasy. Because they tell me what I'm not. And I have to build on
what I am. I got a little bit of respect in the academic world. I have 11 years of college,
been in 11 different colleges. All my first four years of college, I've been in college for 11 years.
They're all at Penn State. I'm very proud to be a graduate of Penn State. My academic performance
was excellent. And this is where I thought I found myself. Because I had respect there. But I
couldn't live just in the library. And outside the library, people didn't give a damn. And slowly that
started seeping out. You know, the grades weren't able to distract me from the nothingness. There
are a lot of other things I did, but we don't have time for that. Let me tell you about what worked.
Alcohol worked.
And sometimes people forget that. I was talking with Mary this afternoon, and she said it so well.
Alcohol was the answer to my alcoholism. I wasn't nothing when I drank. Now, my ugliness was so deep
that I didn't feel attractive. But I felt electric. I never felt attractive, but I felt
electric. I felt there was a spark in me that would make you want to have me at your party. I didn't
feel crazy. Incidentally, at the age of 14, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. And from
then until I came here, I was looking for the answer. And I'm here because I couldn't kill
myself. If I could have done that, I'd have done it at 14 or every day from then on. At the age of
16, I decided that I would end my life permanently committed in a mental hospital. I hadn't started
drinking yet. Or drugging. And I believe that was a valid decision. And I think that's a valid decision.
That had I not found alcohol and drugs, I would have gone crazy earlier. And had I not found
Alcoholics Anonymous, and if I don't work this program, I'm going to go crazy. I will end my
life permanently psychotic, unless I do have the ability at some point to kill myself. Because
people can't live with that pain. Just the pain of just being a total zilch. And that's what I
lived with. But I took a drink and it changed. And I took drugs and they changed. And they were
different solutions to the same problem.
Alcohol was my bridge to you. Drugs made me feel okay inside myself. Now again, if they won't work
that way for everybody. Not all alcoholics have that distinction. But I'm also a member of
Narcotics Anonymous. I belong to every anonymous organization except Gamblers Anonymous. And I'll
give you odds I can get in that maybe someday. And it's because I belong there. I'm not there
by accident in any of these.
And
normally a lot of us who did drugs, like I would do drugs in a group, but I just didn't want to talk
to anybody. When I started doing my drugs, I was in my own little world and it was okay inside me.
When I did my drinking, I wanted to be in your world and be exciting and electric and dynamic.
Last week in Hot Springs, I went into a restaurant at about 20 o'clock in the morning and there were
a group of people there from Shreveport for the convention. They all had their badges. And I acted
the way I always wanted to act. I acted like the life of a drug addict. I acted like the life of a drug addict.
I acted like the heart of a party. Table hopping, having the focus of attention on me and it was like I stepped outside myself and I couldn't believe that I could ever be this free.
I was everything I always wanted to be. I'm very intimidated here. Very. When I arrived here, I knew not a single person. I have been very lonely since I got here.
I've been going up to people at tables and restaurants and it's just very, very difficult for me. I've come with a little bit of down feelings. I was super up when I arrived in Hot Springs.
Once I saw the identity problem, I began really putting things in perspective
and had the deepest experiences of God I've had in 13 years so bright.
They're a little bit shakier since I've been in Hot Springs.
So like, you know, I'm standing in front of you partially at peace and partially insecure
because it's just so very difficult for me to put myself forward.
But I saw what the program can do.
I became the kind of person I always wanted to be and it was tremendous.
I did this.
Did it totally without any drink or drugs and I was completely alive and living.
Alcohol helped me do this.
I didn't feel ugly.
I didn't feel crazy.
I didn't feel isolated.
I could be with you.
But I'm an alcoholic and I started losing control of the alcohol.
And I started getting the shakes and I started blacking out.
Now, I want you to hear this because sometimes we don't think about this.
I think if that's all that happened,
I would still be out there drinking.
You know, a lot of medications have bad side effects for people,
but the people accept the side effects because what the drug is doing is important enough.
I'd have taken the shakes if I still felt like somebody.
I'd have taken the blackouts.
Blackouts never upset me.
It was just any moment I didn't remember was a moment of guilt I didn't have to carry.
And every moment, undrugged until I came here, was a moment of guilt.
That I, in my memory, so I loved my blackouts.
And I deeply resented the people who were kind enough to tell me the stupid things I did blacked out.
I mean that I resented them very much.
They gave me pain I didn't need and a life that had far more pain than any, than any person should ever have to carry.
What caused me concern was about the time I started losing control of alcohol.
Just staying with this example of the medication.
Some people will take chemotherapy and they'll lose their hair, they'll put on weight.
But what they're getting out of the therapy is important enough that they'll take the side effects.
What I originally got out of the alcohol or the drugs was important enough that I'd have taken the bad side effects if they continued to work.
But about the time I lost control, they began, alcohol and drugs, to lose control over me.
And I felt like nothing when I was drinking.
Occasionally I'd get drunk, but I was filled with guilt and self-hatred.
I'd dump my garbage on other people.
I was blowing up.
I was ruining parties.
I was getting destructive.
I wasn't feeling good anymore.
I was feeling electric, sparky.
I would drink and I'd be dead.
And I couldn't live with that deadness.
And that brought me to the real crisis.
I couldn't live when I came here with alcohol.
And I couldn't live without it.
And if you don't understand this, you might do some damage.
If you take alcohol out of the life of an alcoholic, you haven't done any long-range good.
I spoke in the Cleveland.
And I opened with a different phrase than I've ever opened before.
I said, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink or mood-changing chemical for about 13 years.
And for that alone, I'm not grateful.
And for that, I'm not grateful.
Supposing we had taken you into the hospital the day your sobriety began
and tied you in a straight jacket to a bed
and just kept alcohol and drugs out of your system from that day to this.
Do you think by the day you'd be grateful for it?
I'd be crazy.
I'd be screaming.
Because I can't live with this inner pain.
And that was my agony when I got here.
Let me talk to you about identity.
I had a meeting recently.
Somebody said that he had been told in treatment,
when you come to Alcoholics Anonymous, at the start you don't form relationships,
but they didn't tell him why.
And I gave him two sets of answers, and I want to share them with you.
When I came here, like most of you, I felt like a pig.
When you feel like a pig, you look for a sow for company.
Then eventually,
I became a man.
And when you become a man, you start looking for a woman.
And then eventually, at times, I had felt like a prince.
When you feel like a prince, you want princesses in your world.
And then when I really am with this program, I feel like a child of God.
And when I'm a child of God, I will settle only for children of God.
To put it more crudely,
it isn't butterflies.
It isn't swans that are attracted to manure.
It's horseflies.
It isn't swans that are attracted to dead meat.
It's buzzards.
And if you're like me and you come in here,
you're not going to have the butterflies and the swans circling around you.
You have the horseflies and the buzzards.
That's very important.
I had no identity when the alcohol went.
And the steps of this program are designed to give me my identity.
Now, I'm going to comment on the steps, not all of them in detail.
And this isn't, I'm not going to comment on maybe their main aspect.
But I'm going to comment on the steps as they help give me my identity.
And I'm not going to comment on them the first time I work them.
Because you see, I constantly must re-struggle to regain my identity.
I have to do it again and again and again.
And the very strangest,
the strangest thing is I have to remember my total nothingness,
that I'm absolutely powerless to find out that I'm someone
and to have alcohol taken out of my life.
I have to remember that I'm powerless over alcohol,
that I can't manage my life, that I'm a total zero.
I've got to put that first if I'm going to understand who I am.
And you know, I don't always do that.
At one point, I was teaching in a Catholic high school.
In my schedule, I was chaplain to the nuns, full-time teacher,
chaplain to the nuns.
And I was working full-time in my sponsorship, listening to Fifth Step.
So I had like a 120-hour week.
And I was getting up at 5 in the morning, going to bed in midnight,
and I had no time really to meditate, and all my steps went.
And I really lost who and what I was.
See, because if I'm not remembering first my sobriety,
if I'm not remembering my disease, I can make anything important.
And if I make my work, if I make a problem, if I make a project important,
that doesn't give me my sobriety.
I'm not going to plug into the steps of the program and I begin to lose
the whole sense of where it's at.
For in order for me to find out who I am, I've got to begin at every moment
remembering again who and what I am, that I'm Larry Kowalski and that I'm an alcoholic.
And AA can help me forget that.
The longer I'm around, the easier it is for me to figure with 13 years,
I've seen how bad alcohol is, so I won't drink.
I'm going to rest on what I've heard, and I've seen how deadly that is.
I've got to remember today that I'm as powerless as I was 14 years ago when I'm drinking.
And that my whole life begins today with my remembering that and putting that first.
The second step came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
has changed since hot spring.
Sanity is from the Latin word whole, entire.
I'm challenged to believe that there's a power that can make me whole as a person.
Now, if you go back to the beginning of the Bible, you'll see that there's a power that can make you whole.
If you go back to what I want to share with you, it just astounded me to see that's the opposite of being nothing.
I'm going to be everything rather than nothing.
And so many people in this program I hear say, believe in the second step, they're never going to be perfect.
Thank God, at least, I belong to a church where that doesn't have to be.
I honestly believe that there is a power that can make me and will make me someday whole as a person.
And that's so crucial.
I see people when they say this, look at a defect, and they've got a defect like I've had in my sex problems,
my grief, around for 13 years of sobriety, and before that, 35 years of living.
That's 48, so you don't have to do the math.
Alcohol is a good preservative sometimes.
I don't always look my age, and I sure as hell don't act it.
I came in with an emotional age of three.
I've reached the emotional age between 15 and 17.
I think I'm right at 17 now, and that's tremendous for me.
But anyway.
I see people say that they've got a problem, and it's always going to stay.
And I really believe that if I don't think God's going to remove the problem,
he's not going to force it out of my life.
And I want to tell you what I've just seen.
If I look at the problem and say, that's going to stay.
If I look at any part of me, if I fracture me again,
and look at my lust, look at my laziness, look at my greed,
I become nothing again.
Because I'm just looking at my problems.
When I'm looking at my problems, that nothingness comes back.
And my only hope is to really believe I'm going to be whole.
I'm going to be Larry, a whole person.
And I want to share more with you how the program leads to that.
And I've got to believe that when the problems come by.
I've got to believe that very deeply now.
I have a strange pattern where after anything good in my life, I flip out sexually.
A year ago, I was in Myrtle Beach, and I was on a crest, deepest peace I'd ever had.
Two weeks later, I was in Memphis, Tennessee, and sitting on the top of a mess.
My whole life had kind of blown up inside.
And I had to share that.
And I've just had the neatest time I've ever had in hot springs last week.
And I know my pattern.
I know God can break my pattern.
And if I look at my patterns, I'm going to fall apart.
I'm going to despair and figure it's going to happen again.
If I look at His love, I just leave the door open to whatever's going to happen.
That power's there.
This won't always stay.
This, too, will pass.
Whatever I have, and I someday will be able to be whole and tire as a person.
And I get there by making a decision to turn my life.
and my will over to the care of God as I understand Him, which for me was not God.
I didn't believe in God when I came here.
I was an unbelieving priest, an atheist, or at best, an agnostic.
And that helped me out a lot.
I surrendered to a sponsor.
I got a sponsor before the program.
Through the sponsors, I got a group.
Through the group, I got AA.
Through AA, I got the steps.
And then I found a God one day.
I woke up being at peace inside myself.
And there was something where there had been nothing.
And I didn't say that was the God of any church.
Thank God I didn't have to listen to some jackass' preach.
You know, because, of course, there's this God right in these boxes.
I just kept these worlds apart.
What was said in church didn't help me, and this was real.
And it took two years to bring them together.
And boy, there's nothing that I find in the program that I can't find in the Bible.
And I spent one year alone, a thousand dollars, on books interpreting the Bible
because it's just so rich for me.
Just I can find it.
It's God of love.
It's God of mercy.
And it's God of forgiveness.
It's God who loves Larry.
But I surrendered to my sponsor.
And I haven't found it necessary to take a drink from the day I got here
because I've done every single thing my sponsor's told me.
Now, my sponsor, I got one now.
I had him for the last ten years.
My sponsor isn't always nice, like Mary.
He looked at me once and he said,
You dress like a Philadelphia fag.
Change.
I'm very thin-skinned.
I don't like being told things like that.
But I changed how.
I dressed.
You know, he's done other things.
He can be real cruel at times in a loving way.
And I thank him for that.
And I do what he tells me, not fast, but I do it.
And then, through this, his love and comfort will come into my life.
Now, the first three steps really don't help me find myself.
They offer a hope.
I start off seeing I'm nothing.
They offer a hope and they give me the direction.
But I don't start finding myself.
And I really start finding myself in the strangest of all.
I start finding myself in the strangest of all possible ways.
By getting out of paper and really looking at everything I've been trying to run from
and my alcoholism and denying my Al-Anonism.
Just at the present moment, I'll give you an example of this.
I can't accept me as a person unless I know who I am.
And I can't be unreal.
I can't play ostrich, bury my head in the sand and deny the reality in which I live.
I've been very hurt.
I'm in Sterling, Oklahoma.
Chalk another one up for the Polack Nation.
I'll tell you.
Is this one enough?
It is?
Okay.
I was sent to Sterling, Oklahoma.
Now in two phrases, I'll let you know what Sterling, Oklahoma is like.
If you ever are in Sterling, ask yourself why.
And the second one is a traffic jam in Sterling, Oklahoma is when both cars meet.
And that's true.
It's a town of 650 cars.
50 that's going nowhere.
My main parish has 100 Catholics.
My secondary parish, 8 miles away, has 150 Catholics.
And my third parish, 23 miles away, has 40 Catholics.
I have a parish of about 1,000 square miles with less than 500 Catholics.
After that, they don't give you the cathedral.
Okay?
I'm not going to make it in a Catholic church.
And I really didn't understand it.
Right at the moment, I'm taking an inventory.
And when I see that I don't deserve a good parish,
that I am not a good pastor,
in areas I function well as a priest,
but I couldn't, I can't administer.
I can't confront people.
I've been in parishes with secretaries.
I can't tell them what they're doing wrong.
I can't give them a note telling them what they're doing wrong.
I put the note on their desk when they're not there and run like hell.
I can't supervise the staff.
I don't have it in me.
Since I've come to the program and by my own tendencies being so lonely and nothing,
I can't socialize.
I'm not going to go with the women and have a party.
I can't have a tea.
You know, my parishioners know and they accept this,
that at funeral dinners, I show so the family isn't embarrassed and run.
Wedding receptions, I show, sign the book, and I run.
You know, you can't administer big parishes like this.
And I'm really seeing that I'm not a good pastor.
And it hurts.
But that's reality.
I'm seeing my size as pastor.
I'm 5'10 physically.
I'm 5'10 as pastor, not 6'4.
Seeing my size across the board.
And the fourth step is when I look at what I am.
Because I can't come.
I can't come to a sense of identity based on an irreality.
I had my identity very badly shaken.
Taught in that high school, I got fired.
I always want to say this because I want you to know.
Mary and I were commenting on Nuns.
I want you all to know I have completely forgiven those bitches.
It took me one and a half years to forgive them.
It took me another year to get at peace with them.
And right now I'm beginning to see they should have done it.
And that's really hurting.
Fifth step.
Admit it to God, to another human being, and to myself.
The exact nature of my wrongs.
I can't become me if I have to hide me.
You know, some of you people don't want a priest to have the feelings that I have.
Because you're good Catholics in AA.
If it's going to upset you and you get drunk, I'm sorry about it.
But I'm going to be me.
And if you don't like what I am, you blame God.
Because He created and sustains me.
And I'm not going to hide what I am anymore.
I really feel that God is proud of who and what I am.
And I'm supposed to be proud of who and what I am.
And I'm just sharing the GX, PX, whatever it is, version of my story.
You're not hearing the R or X version, let me tell you.
Because it would hurt you.
I won't share.
But I've been able to share in fifth steps or in sponsoring everything I've ever done
that anybody needs on any level to handle their own needs.
I can be me.
And it's okay to be 5'10".
When I came into the program, I was 35 years old.
At 37, I discovered I was 17.
I dressed, acted, talked, and ran with a crowd of 17-year-olds.
I psychologically had blocked out aging.
And in one year, I had to age 20 years.
In the high school, all of a sudden, I was a popular teacher.
And the kids started coming by.
And I noticed this tendency coming back.
I was dressing, talking, and acting like a 17-year-old.
I couldn't tell that to my home group the week after I saw it.
And it killed me.
I was playing a role.
I wouldn't assume the identity that is mine.
I wouldn't claim what I was publicly.
And if I can't claim myself publicly, I can't be myself privately.
Fortunately, I dumped it in a meeting in another group and came back to my home group in total.
I've got to be open with one person so that I can be open with everybody.
So I can just be myself.
And that's crucial.
The sixth step, entirely ready to have God remove these defects.
God remove.
Now, I'm not Larry.
My God is love.
My God is you.
And you accept me.
How are my defects removed?
They are removed by being accepted.
Now, this is rather strange.
Only in the last three years have I seen, I tend to make myself schizophrenic.
And stand in your presence and God's presence that way.
I want you to like my charity.
I'll weed out.
Everything I've got periodically for the poor.
And I give them what I like.
I'm not poor doing this.
I don't want you to like it.
I don't even want to tell you that I still charge things to the church that I shouldn't.
I want you to like the fact that I can spend 30 hours a week with people I sponsor.
I don't want to tell you that people I've sponsored have called when I've been in sex fantasies
and I've just pretended to listen to them.
I don't want you to know that.
I want you to see my zeal.
I don't want you to see my greed.
And you know, I don't feel with you that way.
I accept you as a person.
I may know a lot of dumb things you do, but I accept you.
And you accept me.
You don't accept traits and patterns and actions.
And you're my face of God.
And that taught me something that it's very difficult for me to work through to.
My God doesn't deal with traits, accepting some and rejecting others.
Doesn't deal with past actions, accepting some and rejecting others.
If you accept me and you're the face of God,
my God accepts me.
And the sixth step is just becoming Larry.
It's coming together.
It's being whole, not being split apart.
And I'm getting the deepest spiritual experiences from the day I saw that to this day
when I just try to do that.
I'm not going to be traits.
I'm not going to be schistos in my own mind.
I'm going to be Larry.
Just me.
Someone I sponsor told me she loves to hear me say that, that the word sings.
And she told me this about two weeks ago.
And it shocked me.
Because, see, I hated so much everything I was that I'd almost curse out my name.
And if I had the ability to pronounce my name with love,
some great things were happening in this program.
I'm coming together as a person.
The seventh step humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
I short-circuited God.
God gave me a chain of command.
I didn't find God and I never have.
I found sponsor, group, program, God.
It's very easy for me to go direct to God.
But nothing worked.
In 13 years, everything I've humbly asked God to remove, I still have.
In 13 years, everything I've humbly gone to my sponsor with and asked for help
has been removed as long as I continue to do what my sponsor tells me.
When I follow God's chain of command, things happen.
I had troubles with the bishop.
I didn't even want to tell my sponsor about it
until it ate my guts that much that I was keeping something from him.
I dumped it on him and I said,
I don't want this removed right now.
He said, it doesn't make any difference.
And he just told me what he thought I should do.
Last month, my relationship with my bishop,
which echoes my relationship with my pastor,
was healed for the first time in my life.
I can be open and I can be free and I can be me.
I find my identity in 16-7.
Until I know who I am, it's impossible for me to know you.
You're things in my world.
You cannot become a person until I start becoming a person.
And so the eighth step is perfectly placed for me.
It's the step where I make a list of all persons I had harmed.
Go through and look at what I've done.
Try to look at you as a person.
I've harmed people trying to do good to them.
And I've done this very recently.
I'll embarrass people I sponsor publicly at meetings, pointing out things.
And I don't have a right to do that.
I don't want to be publicly criticized by my sponsor.
And so it's so difficult for me, with all my pain, to listen to you.
It never happens automatically.
I've got to make an effort to hear where you're at,
to really force myself at any time to listen and to sit down and care.
Only when I make you a person can I really make amends to you.
Before that, I'm just brown-nosing and going through actions.
Now, they'll help.
But when you become a person, I am one person.
I'm one person relating with another person.
And I can reach over and really try to offer you a healing love.
The theory I think that I do this the most is in my sponsorship.
I'll do dumb things, say dumb things, act dumb ways,
with people who really consider me in some way important and special in their lives.
And then I've got to go back and just remember, make them human, make them whole,
and go back and call them up and really tell them how wrong I was.
And it's strange.
I find out they respect me more for this
than for almost anything else I do in the sponsorship.
But I can see them and I can relate with them as a person because of the nine steps.
The ten steps, I've got to keep aware of all my problems.
I attempt to write a written daily inventory.
On the average, I do it six days a week.
I will not do it seven days because then I get fanatic and I'll stop doing it.
And I don't allow the people I sponsor to write seven days.
We all have a day off.
Mine is Friday and it's my favorite day of the week.
But in my inventory,
I've got to counter my natural tendencies.
And my natural tendency is to think of myself as nothing,
just to write all the bad that happens.
And I had to write a lot of pain yesterday.
When I've got it together, I write the good.
I force myself to see the good.
I'm not nothing.
Through God's presence in my life,
I'm becoming something and I've got to see that.
I'm rushing through these middle steps
because I want to give you two examples of meditation.
I told you this is where I get my identity from.
Now,
prayer is talking to God.
Meditating is listening.
God doesn't need to hear what I have to say.
Not in my view,
so I don't pray much.
Prayer is just my stopping myself from running
so I can listen to God talk.
My God is not truth.
My God is love.
Truth is known in the mind.
Love is known in the heart.
The mind can be a distraction to the heart.
I stay on a passage from anything,
the 24-hour book,
the Bible,
a minimum of a week,
a very small passage
until it starts going from the mind to the heart
and I start feeling it.
I'm going to give you two meditations.
The one,
maybe it'll just be this one
that has been working so well for me.
I picture myself as a little child,
two or three years old,
and there's a thunderstorm outside
and I'm scared.
And I go running over to my dad,
this is my Heavenly Father,
and just jump on his lap and he holds me.
Staying in that experience is the meditation.
See, I come running to you
and you put your arms around me
when I'm hurting
and you give me love.
And there's no thought,
there's no action.
I just want to stay feeling your love.
That's the answer to everything.
That's my dignity.
I began with that
and I was meditating on something else
from my Bible passage
and it told me
my God is more than passage.
He's active.
Alcoholics Anonymous is really active.
We reach out.
I want the hand of AA to be there.
When the thunders,
clouds are coming over the horizon,
my God comes looking for me.
Like the Father,
when he picks me up
and he's holding me in his hands
because he doesn't want me
to start getting scared
when the clouds start coming.
And that was the second part of it.
And I feel you wanting to hold and correct me.
The last part of this
is just two or three days
old and I think it's the richest.
I don't have any children.
Those of you who have children,
if your child had a deformed limb,
a leg that he couldn't walk on
for some problem,
had it operated on
and it was still so weak
and he's two years old,
what part of him
would you massage the most
and love the most tender?
You'd go to the part that wasn't working,
the defect,
and you'd love it.
I was taught that God hated my defects,
my sex drives
and my sex patterns,
my greed,
my materialism,
my jealousy,
my envy.
Today I see my God looking with love
and massaging with love
all these defective spiritual
and emotional organs
because they're what has most of his care
and what's most of his concern.
That's meditation for me.
In this I find myself.
In this I can really experience myself.
I had a meditation,
the one that produced this,
where my God went out
into a desert area
and he battled for my good.
And it was good for me to feel
that he's looking at my negative areas
and he's battling,
he's not hating them,
he's fighting to free me.
When everything else fails,
my all-out meditation
is to fill a small room
with all of my favorite people in AA
and to put me on a chair in the middle
and to just feel what's in their hearts.
And that's it.
And I feel warmth
and I feel light.
And I know that every one of them
hurt the way I did
and they were as incapable of love
as I was when I came here.
And I really feel
they want me to be sober,
they want me to be more peaceful.
There is something positive
in their hearts for me.
And that's love.
And that's God.
Paul, hopefully,
will talk again here
what he,
Paul's our speaker this evening.
He mentioned something
I never heard anyone else talk about.
Midlife crisis.
When I went to Ascensus Sterling,
I began a midlife crisis.
A year's depression.
Forty-some years old,
going through some biological changes
and wondering where I'm going.
I'm going nowhere.
The eleventh and twelfth steps handle me.
When I experience you loving me
and God loving me,
I'm not a nothing.
I'm not a failure.
And the twelfth step gives me my purpose.
I don't know who all I have to talk to.
I know that if I'm alive and breathing,
there's some alcoholic somewhere in this world
who needs me to share my experience,
strength, and hope.
And how can my life be without a purpose
when the life of someone else depends upon it?
I make four meetings a week,
committed meetings.
I can add extras,
but I never miss the one.
If I get back Sunday on time
from Oklahoma City
to get down to the airport,
to get down to my meeting in Lawson,
I'm going to be at that meeting.
I don't miss committed meetings
because I've gone to two meetings
when no one else has shown up.
And I don't want ever that to happen
to a meeting to which I'm committed.
I sponsor twenty-three people.
They all call me once a week.
Twenty-two of them do.
And they make a regular report
of where they're at.
I normally listen to one fifth step a week.
I have a purpose for living.
And it's to give what I've received.
And that's the other part of the midlife crisis.
I find my dignity.
I'm not nothing.
And I find my purpose
carrying the message.
I stand behind pulpits on Sunday
and I see so many people hurting
that I can't touch.
And I know that in Alcoholics Anonymous
I can take my failures
and use them as a tool
to enable other people to know healing.
And I can't see anything more meaningful
in all of life.
I don't know any priests
that have higher ministries,
any ministers,
than we in the program do
as we just work one with another
than anybody in the program does
one with another.
I'd like to pull this all together
with two phrases
and a Bible passage.
The first phrase Bill Wilson used
and you don't hear it a lot
in AA anymore,
the good is the enemy of the best.
And it's going to explain
why material things at the start
had blocked my sense of identity.
The second phrase
I heard at a toast
for someone I sponsored
who was getting married.
The best man made the toast
that I make to you.
May the good,
may the best
never be good enough for you.
Let me come back to those in a second.
The story in the Bible
and you want to talk about something ironic
to check the passage
because I didn't know exactly
where it was and the man.
I opened up a Bible upstairs
and it just happened
out of its 900 and some pages
to fall open to page 298
2 Kings chapter 5
where you have the story of Elisha
and a pagan,
a non-religious person.
The non-religious person is a good man
but he has a social disease,
a disease that's affecting
his relationships with others.
He's a leper.
And there's somebody there
who knows there's an answer
and she tells him there's an answer
and he following her
goes with all this great wealth
to the religious leaders.
And the leader of Israel
looking at this pagan
feels this man's important.
He's a general.
He's a general.
That this is just a cause
to provoke a war.
And he throws a fit.
But there's a prophet named Elisha
and the prophet sends out word
saying hey tell the dude
to come to see me.
And the guy comes.
And the prophet sends his servant out
and says tell him to go wash six times
in the Jordan River.
And this big important pagan
throws a fit.
He says don't I have rivers back
where I come from?
Did I have to come all this way
to go wash in the river?
And somebody says hey listen.
If he asked you to do something important
you'd have done it.
You know I'll bet you
if we were asked to undergo
some kind of painful surgery
costing $23,000
to permanently arrest our alcoholism
we'd do it.
But to go to those damn old meetings
four days a week
four weeks a month
fifty-two
I mean twelve months a year
and you know wash
wash in those same steps
I'm supposed to
somebody says I'm supposed
to go tell a plumber
everything I did.
I was paying a shrink.
Good shrink.
Good money.
Even worse.
Don't I have better shrinks
back where I came from?
I've got degrees in theology.
Why should I have to learn
about God in AA
and wash myself
in that damn old river?
And the number seven
is a biblical number
for you keep doing it
until it's complete.
Until you're completely clean.
And we just come back
again and again and again.
And if you're like me
and I've been doing it
I have been being washed clean
and finding my own
sense of identity.
And I've been doing it
and I've been doing it
and I've been doing it
and I've been doing it
and I've been doing it
and I've been doing it
and I've been doing it
and finding my own
sense of identity.
And this is what was wrong
when I made the world important.
The world is filled with things
that God has made good.
But the good is the enemy
of the best.
And I was losing the best.
My experience of God
which I need
to find in myself.
Today,
as much as possible,
I know who I am.
I'm not a pig.
I'm not just a man.
I'm not just a prince.
I'm a child of God.
And I know
I wish that would be
the same for you.
May the best
never
be good enough for you.
Thank you.