The Chapter to the Agnostic and the Transition From Maybe to I Know – Bill W.

Well, good morning everybody. My name is Bill and I am an alcoholic. And the first thing I want to say, and I'm saying it really and truly from my heart, not routine, I really want to thank you Don, and thank you to the committee and whatever mysterious background personalities bring it about that I find myself right here, right now. I never understand how these things happen. It's a total mystery to me. But anyway, here I am, and whoever is responsible for it, I want to say to you from my heart, thank you. I can't imagine being anywhere that makes me happier than being where I am right here, right now Conrad has just mentioned to you after he read the promises God has a sense of humor if you want to know whether he has or not just look around you I believe that when I'm with this particular company recovering alcoholics I'm in the presence of that mysterious presence. I have believed this about the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous ever since I first went to a meeting. I can't understand it, but it's Sunday morning and I feel like just lying down in front of you all, bowing down and adoring. I believe that the wonder of wonders is right here. A whole pile of zeros, zeros, powerless, powerless people. And yet, here is power. Power that's amazing, that's kind, that're friendly, and that has a sense of humor. Thank God for you, and I thank you for God. Well, I've talked to you long enough already to make you realize that I was not born in the United States of America. But I was born and raised where all the real alcoholics come from. And when I tell you my story, I'm telling you my history story from the vantage point now of a number of years experiencing recovery in this fellowship and program. And so I'm looking back from the perspective of being in the process of becoming recovered. The very first meeting of AA I ever went to, I remember seeing the steps up on the wall. Twelve steps. And the moment I saw those steps, I had behind me then 25 years of alcoholic drinking. And for some reason I'll never understand, when I saw these steps I realized that I was looking at something that was the absolute certain prescription for putting right everything that was wrong with me I remember saying to myself with my mouth open God, I need to do every single thing that it says there to do Yesterday Vince talked about the 12 steps being perfectly familiar to him this is just what he had been hearing all his life from the religious backgrounds had come from. And it was the same in my case. God, I need to do that. Everything there. And I remember zeroing in on the second step. Being restored to sanity. And my eyes must have bulged out of my head. I had 25 years of alcoholic drinking behind me. And they had sent me, my bosses had sent me to shrinks and psychologists and psychiatrists and holy people and gurus. I couldn't tell you what I was. It's all no use. And here I was looking at something that was telling everybody in that room that they needed to be restored to sanity. And I thought, my Lord, I wonder if that's what's been wrong with me all the time. Such a thought had never dawned on me in my whole life before, and I remember thinking to myself, Lord, if that's true, that I've been insane all the time, that would explain a lot. And for the first time in my life, I allowed for that possibility. And now, as I look back from the perspective of being with you for these years, I know that that what was wrong all the time. I know it now. I'm certain of it. And so it's an embarrassment for me now to share my story with you, because it's the story of a nut. Well, there may be some here that won't see it that way. If there are, you're in the right place. So, there are all kinds of nuts, you know, various kinds of knots. And the kind of knot that I know now that I was, right from the start was, I was a religious nut. Now that doesn't mean necessarily there's anything wrong with religion, it doesn't necessarily mean there's nothing right with it either. But that's the kind of nut that I see myself as having been. I was born in a little village in Ireland, the south of Ireland, not that place up in the north, where everybody was a Roman Catholic just because there was nothing else to be. When I think of my native country, I go back there, you know, I go back there every so often. I go back to polish up my brogue. The last time I was back there just three years ago, there was a story going around and I was thinking of it when Vince was telling us about his Texan friend last night. There was a story going round about a Texan who was on vacation in Ireland and he got in with this little Irish, with this Irish farmer. And he asked the farmer to show him his little farm. So the farmer did. And the Texan looked at it and he said, you know, he said back in, back on my farm, I don't call it a farm, it's a ranch, a ranch. Back on my ranch, give you an idea of the size of it. If I got up at sunrise and got into my car to go around my ranch. By the time the sun would have set, I wouldn't have gotten halfway around. So the Irish farmer looked at him and he said, it's not a fact. God, he said I had a car like that one too. You know, if you ever go on a vacation to Ireland, I'm warning you, watch it. You won't win. You want win. There's another story about an American. I don't know where this one was from, but he was on a vacation. He was looking up all his forebears and getting to know the place and so on. And he came to the end of his vacation and he was in this little village and he went to the village hall where there was a dance. And he had his eye on one particular girl. And eventually he cornered her and he had this dance with her. And he gave her a real sob story. It was his last night in Ireland. And He'd never, never, ever see Ireland again. He knew that. And he had only one regret, that he had never gotten round to kissing the Blarney Stone. Now that's something you do when you go to Ireland and you'll have luck for the rest of your life if you kiss the Blarny Stone. So he said, I never got... He said, well, I believe the next best thing to kiss in the Blarning Stone is to kiss someone who has kissed it. So he popped a million dollar question. Honey, he said, have you ever kissed the blind store? So she's dancing around it from there and looking up at him. And she said, no. But I sat on it, she said. Watch it. You won't win. not even I win when I'm around there last time I was there I got the use of a car I'm not used to driving in Ireland I left Ireland when I was very young I'll tell you that in a minute in Dublin, in this car I was trying to find a certain street and Dublin is all one-way streets since I was a boy it's all different now and any time I came close to the street I was starting to get to the arrows were all pointing away so I got frustrated and I pulled in to the curb and I put the window down and there was a native passing by and I said to him hey para how do I get to Thomas street so he looked up the street and he looked down the street and he said father he said if you get to thomas street you wouldn't really start from here at all Anyway, that's the kind of people I was born into. And as I was growing up, I was sent to school in this little village. I went, first of all, to the school where I was taught by the nuns. And then I went to the schools where I was taught what's called the religious brothers. And then, I went into the classical school where I taught by priests of the diocese. To our classics. So as you can imagine, I heard an awful lot about God. God! God! All my years growing up. God became more real to me than the people I could see with my two eyes. He haunted me. And this is the part about me that I always feel embarrassed when I have to share with you. I was conscious of God all my waking hours. It's only in my later years that I became aware that not everybody is like that. I wasn't I thought everybody was like that I was as aware of God aware of him haunted by him all my waking hours as if I could see him I was afraid of him I was terribly conscious of God and if from from my earliest years I never remember making my mind up to become a priest. I never remember making my mind up to do that. As far back as I can recall, that decision was there. When I made it, I don't know. I have no records. No one ever suggested it to me. I always wanted that. And if you had asked me when I was very young, now why? Why do you want to be a priest? I would have been very embarrassed if I would have told you for real. Because there was something going on inside me that I know now was unusual. I had heard, and don't forget now, if you're nuts, what you're told and what you hear isn't all of the same thing. You must allow for that. I had heard when I was growing up, that if you want to do the biggest, biggest thing that a human being can do, what is it? What's the biggest thing a human being can do? Well, I have heard that the biggest thing a human being can do is to love God. To love God perfectly. The good book says that. What's the first and the greatest of all the values? Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, thy whole soul, thy mind. Do that! It's one of the biggest things a human can do. Bigger than getting to the moon and back, bigger than getting the cure for cancer, bigger than making a billion. The biggest thing you can do, love God perfectly. Do that, you've done the uttermost maximum. And that impressed me. And I said to my little self, well, that's what I'm going to do. That's what i'm going to do, I don't see any reason for doing anything else. And if you'd ask me, well now, what does this business of loving God consist in? What do you have to do in order to do that? Well, that's where I would have been a bit embarrassed to tell you. Don't forget now what you hear and what you're told isn't always the same thing if you're nuts. And so if I were to tell what you have got to do to love God totally and perfectly, I would have told you, well, the first thing you have is to make yourself as miserable as you can possibly make yourself. You have to give up every single thing that's in any way enjoyable. Give it up. And I said to my little self, well if that's what you have to do let's get on with it, let's do that. And then I had heard that if you really want to go in for an honours course in this business of loving God perfectly Then you have to leave home and leave all your possessions and prospects and family and all that and go way out foreign to convert to heathen. I said, okay. And I thought to myself, where in all this world could you get more heathens than England? Now, don't forget I was nuts. And so at the ripe old age of 15, I packed my little bag, I told my mother and father what I was proposing to do, and my father brought me up to Dublin, the capital city, and put me on the little ship that went across to Liverpool in England, north of England. And from there I went to a place called the Yorkshire Moors, out in the wilds of Yorkshire in the north of London. And I went into a prep school run by monks. And in due course, when I graduated from that prep school, I entered the monastery and became a monk myself. and not only a monk, but was ordained as a priest as well. And I lived the life of a priest and a monk in a monastery for 30 years. Now, if you want to know what life is like in that kind of a setup, up, you'd regard it, I know, as very, very weird. And for all I know maybe you'd be right. I don't know anymore the difference between normal and abnormal. I don' t know. But in that life that we lived in the monastery we used to get up at two o'clock in the morning and when I say get up I don t mean out of a lovely comfortable bed. We slept on bare boards with a straw mattress and a straw pillow. We just rolled off of that at two o'clock in the morning and tootled along to the Abbey Church where we sang the praises of God for over an hour. Now, if you want to know from me what in the name of God God wanted his praises sung for at two O'clock in the Morning? I don't know. But it seemed a good idea to me at the time. We used to fast three days a week. We used to, what I say, we still do. Still lived a life of very intense prayerfulness and study, worked in the fields. And then as well as that, those particular kind of monks used to go out of the monastery at regular intervals to do a kind of work that you don't hear so much about, I think, nowadays. You know the kind of priests that look after parishes in the parish? They are called diocesan priests. Well those kind of priest would ask for some monks from the kind monastery that I lived in to come to their parish for a week, two weeks, three weeks, and preach to the people. And the idea was that these holy, holy men wrapped up with God in prayer and meditation and penance and all that, would come like Moses coming down from the mountain of being wrapped upwith God, coming down to the people in the plains to speak God's mind and God's heart to them. Which is the same idea. These kind of monks would come to the parishes and preach parish missions. They would also go to the convents of religious sisters, nuns, and religious brothers, and recharge their batteries and their commitment to the life they lived. What was the kind of life that was lived by those monks that I belonged to for 30 years. Well, in 1950, that was five years after I was ordained a priest, my superiors took it into their heads to send me to Rome to go to a Roman university to study all kinds of highfalutin stuff. And And I found myself living in this head monastery of the religious order that I belonged to. The head monastery in Rome, and in this Head Monastery there were not only the resident Italian monks but also all kinds of other young monks of the same order from all over the world who are going to Roman universities like I was to do. Now I had never been drunk in my life up to this point. And I found, when I was living in that monastery in Rome, that the two meals each day that we went to, at each of those two meals wine was served and served very, very liberally. There was no limit to it. You used to sit at these long, bare tables, and you always sat in the same place at your table with whoever was on this side of you was always this side of you, whoever was that side of... according to your seniority, like in the service. And all down the middle of these tables were these enormous flagons of wine that were positioned one between each of two monks. weren't supposed to drink the whole tune. That's the way they were set up. And the guy who sat this side of me here, he would only take that much in the bottom of a glass at each meal. The guy who sat the other side of me, who was supposed to share that enormous flagon with the fellow on the far side of him, this fellow here never took any at all. He was weird. And the fellow to the far side of him, he only took that much. So twice a day, I found myself within reach of two enormous flagons of wine. Now I had never been in a position like that my whole life before, and I have to tell you, I was always very, very, my stomach was always empty at mealtime, and it was always full by the end of the meal, but it was full of wine, I think I'd bottomed those two flagons at each meal. And I experienced, for the first time in my whole life, inebriation, intoxication, getting smashed! And I want you to know that it was the most fantastic experience of my entire life. Nobody had ever told me what happens when you get smashed. Lord, I couldn't believe it. It was out of this world. Everything became funny, funny, fun we had to eat in silence and there was a kind of a podium halfway up the dining room and there with a reader reading all kinds of serious spiritual little solemn stuff, you see, all during the meal. Well, I took strong objection to some of the things that he was saying. And to make a long story short, meals became an awful problem. Anyway, what I do clearly recall is that I had this fantastic, all I can call it is, breakthrough. It was like Alice in Wonderland. I just broke through to a whole new dimension of reality that I never knew existed. Being drunk was wonderful. And I was drunk twice a day. For openers. Because I have to tell you that in that monastery there were young priests like myself, young monks from all over the world, from English speaking parts of the world like America, Australia, Canada, God knows, Ireland, England. And we formed a kind of a little community within the community. We weren't supposed to, but we did. And we had money sent to us by our superiors back home to supply ourselves with books and all that was necessary for doing deep research for university. But we didn't need all the money for that. And so we formed this little fellowship within the big community, and they made my room the meeting place for these parties. And they laid in the stuff, and I laid in shelves, had shelves put up on the wall there, and I had rows and rows of bottles of booze. It became a bar, discreetly covered by a blanket. We co-opted one single Italian into our little circle. His family owned a winery outside of Rome. And so I lived to see the day when this huge barrel of wine was brought up the back stairs of the monastery, along the cloister and into my room and set up on a trestle with a faucet to it, which was wonderful. So there I was all set up for my honeymoon with booze. It was unbelievable. Unbelievable. I spent three years in that monastery. I was supposed to be studying all kinds of wonderful, wonderful stuff, but I don't remember very much about it. I really don't. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that I was not sober or without a hangover for three solid years. Those are my first years with those. When I eventually got the degrees they sent me out there, how the heck, I don' t know how that ever happened either. I wrote a dissertation, by the way, for the doctors. And I read that thing once in a while still. And where in the name of God it came from, I don't know. The professor said it was absolutely brilliant. I don' t understand a word of it. So anyway, I came home from all that experience and I came home meant to my monastery in the north of England and I was appointed to teach and that was the fulfillment of a dream that I had hugged for secretly for years. I wanted to be the most brilliant professor that the Roman Catholic Church ever produced. And I was going to put the Roman Catholics Church right about absolutely everything. And it needed putting right. So, by this time, I discovered that I couldn't function without you-know-what. And so, I became a chartered drinker in my monastery. Now you may be, oh, isn't that nice? Will I keep talking? Ah. Ah. You may wonder how a monk living in a monastery with all the restrictions involved in that can supply himself with booze limitlessly. A monk, as some of you may know, is a person who takes very serious vows, what are called vows. To take a vow of poverty, to undertake never to own any money, never to earn any property, never to owe anything, whatever at all. To live like a poor man, like the founder of Christianity did. He undertakes to live... He takes a vow of obedience in which he lets his whole life be run by another human being in whose arrangements he recognizes the will of God for him so that all his comings and goings are under the vigilance of the superior. He's vowed to obey. He can't go where he likes and do what he likes. And it takes a vow of chastity, in which he renounces all that has to do with marriage and romance and sex and all that side of life. By the way, the whole purpose of this is to do what the third chapter of our big book talks about. The third chapter talks about ego has to be smashed. The ego has to be smashed if we're ever to get close to God or God is ever to gets close to us. And that's the rationale behind all that stuff that goes on in condoms and monasteries when they take these vows. Anyway, here was I. I needed... I had switched to Scotch by this time and I needed it. And I was never without it. i was always able to get it because as i told you these kind of guys used to go out from the monastery to parishes and to other and to convents and other places to give these parish missions as they call them and retreats and all that kind of thing and when the pastor would see that this particular good holy monk, needed to be filled with the spirit to keep going. He thought to me that I was filled with a spirit. And when I'd be going back, he would supply me with plenty of booze during the job. And then I'd go back to my monastery, he'd give me something to put in my bag and he'd even give me, apart from the honorarium to give to the monastery, he gave me a backhander for myself. He wasn't supposed to. I wasn't supposed to accept it. But in an emergency, God understands. So I was never without. And I hope you'll notice that by this stage, this business of loving God perfectly had gone in the back burner. A thing called pitiable and incomprehensible demoralization had set in, and it had set in with a vengeance, with a revenge. I don't know what way I'm made, I really don't, but I can have terrific high ideals that when I let go of them, oh boy, oh boy, oh man there are no limits when I say to hell with it all I mean what I'm saying so I became I became a phony hypocrite, fraud I was drinking constantly but I never regarded myself as an alcoholic for heaven's sakes. Anyway, I hadn't been teaching very long when the superior sent for me. And I tooted along to his office, wondering which university in America I was going to be recommended to. And when I walked into his office the look on his face indicated that the barometer was very low. So he just said to me, I want to cut this short, he said. I want you to know, he says, that as of this moment your teaching assignment is terminated and it's terminated for good. I will see to it that you will never have another teaching assignment anywhere in the Roman Catholic Church on this planet. he said your conduct has been atrocious the worst day's work I ever did was to send you to Rome all it did for you was it made you an alcoholic that was the very, very first time in my life that that filthy, filthy word was addressed to me God bless us a man with a triple doctorate an alcoholic? You'd appreciate that's not possible, Vince. Not possible. That superior was out of his mind. He didn't recognize a valuable man when he saw one. Anyway, I staggered out of there. And now I come to a period of my life that I just want to skip over. Twenty-five years of alcoholic drinking. Twenty-five years of a king-size chip on my shoulder. Twenty five years of maudlin, maudln drunkenness. I was reduced in the ranks. I was required to do the kind of tasks that you needed no brains whatever for doing. I'd drag myself through life, going on those preaching jobs. I'd get up in the pulpit and I'd talk wonderful God stuff. Wonderful, most impressive, oh boy. And all the time I knew that every word that I was saying was an indictment of myself. I knew it. I was leading a life, my friend, unrestrained, maudlin, pathetic, pitiable self-indulgence. Depraved. I know what they're talking about when the 20 questions asks, did you seek out what is your company? I know who they mean. I did. I hope to God my poor mother never hears what kind of sleazy circumstances I got myself into. And what kind of depths I descended to. After, I don't know how many years of trying to live my life, saying to myself that somehow or other this will all clear itself up. When my ship comes in, somebody gave me one of those things you put on your desk. I was always thinking about the day when my ship would come in. And someone gave me a thing that says, with your kind of look when your ship comes in, you'll be at the airport. I decided that the religious order that I belonged to wasn't worthy of me. And so I did something that was rather exceptional in those days. I applied to the supreme authority in the church, to the Pope, to annul my vows as a monk and let me go free. But I had to remain a priest. And so I had to apply to become a priest, a member of a diocese somewhere in the world. And I pulled wires and pulled strings and all this. And I got the president of the seminary back in Ireland to recommend me to the Bishop of San Diego a very promising young man here who would be an adornment to the diocese and the Bishop of San Diego swallowed it all hook, line and sinker and he accepted me as a priest for his dioceses he has regretted it since And so, in 1968, 21 years ago, I once again packed my bag, and I ended up in San Diego, brought my problem with me without ever realizing I had any problem. My problem was very simple. If only people would realize the talents I had. If only people would realize where I belonged in God's scheme of things and put me there, everything would be perfectly all right. The first assignment I got in the Diocese of San Diego was with an Irish pastor. He was a bit older than myself, and the very first words he spoke to me when I arrived was, Do you like a drink? Will you drink with me? And it transpired to this fellow, he was a chronic alcoholic. How lucky can you be? Now if any of you have any idea of what it's like to have one Irish alcoholic around, watch out when you have two. I really mean it they don't call us the fighting Irish for nothing oh boy when we really got tanked up it was serious you needed to keep out of the line of fire would you believe the neighbors called in the police one night That's how bad it was. I was reassigned. And I was re-assigned many, many more times. I wish I could really make you appreciate what is going on inside of me during those years. It was there. It's very hard to put into words. You know, the people that I identify with most in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous are people who have had a big love in their lives. who have fallen in love have experienced great happiness and then came the booze and the drugs and the whole horrible, horrible mess up. And all they did the loss, the loss the loss of all that you treasured and the loss of any claim the feeling of having any claim anymore on what you treasure that old boyish dream that I had of wanting to love God wanting to wanting to be close to him wanting him to make use of me whatever way he wanted for his good purposes that old dream was still there I knew I had loused it up God, did I ever I want to tell you you can't meditate on your junk or when you have a hangover and so prayer, prayer was gone out of my life absolutely, totally and completely. There was no relationship with God at all. There was only a terrible terror. I was terrified that I might die and the ultimate disaster overtake me. Terrified constantly. I always intended to fix all this up somehow, sometime but not today in the meantime let's have another drink that was my sort of you know guys in my job and my core religionists you know Roman Catholics have very weird beliefs and one of our beliefs is and dynamite won't get it out of our heads one of our beliefs says that when the priest does what he does at the altar at mass what he's holding in his hands has him face to face eyeball to eyeball with his maker his God his savior, his judge and as I was doing my thing as a priest I might be coming from the pigsty the night before with the sweats and the shakes and have not a comfortable feeling to be face to face with someone you have promised to love someone that you have asked to love you in a special way and that you've totally reneged on it's not a comfortable feeling it's not a comfortable feeling to go into the confession thing and have people come in as Vince told you last night just to take a fifth step that's all it is to acknowledge their foibles their faults decent, humble, honest people and I was supposed to speak the word that would express God's merciful kindly loving heart to them And there I'd be, sitting there, and inside the parish house, I knew the whisky bottle was out, the precious drinking time was being wasted, and here they were, coming in here, hesitating and fumbling and forgetting, and I just blow up and say, well for God's sake, on with this damn thing. It was not a nice life. Why did I stay in it? Well, I always intended to put it right somehow. I made friends with a family that, oh boy, once again I chose my friends very cheerfully. The wife, the mother in this family herself belonged to a large family which owned a winery, Brookside Wineries. And this family befriended me and supplied me with all I needed, plenty of booze every time I would go home. And they invited me to go on a vacation with them in a place called Ensenada down in Mexico. And I went with them on this, which was a big family, typical Catholics, you know, loads of kids and all that sort of thing. And the children ranged from a 20-odd year old who was in college away, way down to a little nipper, a little pinny. Now, down in this big thing they had on the beach. What do you call them, those trailers? It was really two or three trailers broken into one, assembled into one. But Mom developed tennis elbow, and she had to be brought back up to San Diego to the doctor by the husband brought her up there, and that left Uncle Bill in charge. And this particular night, I had been drinking all day as usual, well-oiled, just feeling normal won't you understand and it was coming towards midnight and there was a radio had been blaring in the trailer all day and was still on I said now guys and gals let's switch off that radio let's all go to our beds and have some peace and quiet around here and so I upended the bottle put the last of the whiskey into my tumbler threw the bottle away in the trash can and here was my last tumbler I was going to go to bed with the one I was gonna pass out with the most important drink of the day and I was veering over towards where my bunk was and the eldest son, his name was Matt positioned himself in front of my bunk with his thumbs in his belt not looking very friendly and he said to me where do you think you're going buddy I said I'm going to bed where else he said no no you're not not with that and he pointed to the tumbler in my hand I said who said I'm not he said funny enough I did and I'm going to say a bit more that you need to hear you come around my family on a regular basis and just because you wear a collar back to front, you think you have some sort of God-given right to limitless booze from my family. Now he said, I want you to know something. You are not welcome around here because all you are is an ignorant, Irish, savage alcoholic. Did you hear that dirty word. That is the second time in 25 years has anyone ever addressed that ugly word to me. And he said, I want you to know this, that my father and mother are too decent to tell you to the face what I'm telling you. And I'm saying it to you on their behalf. And on telling it to you on behalf of all my brothers and sisters here, haven't I? And they all said yes. Including little Timmy, and then he ran away like hell. And he said, the sooner you make yourself scarce and get the hell out of our lives, the better we'd all be pleased. Did I tell you people, by the way, that I was a very brilliant man? Did I say that? Did I ever tell you that? No one had ever talked to me in my life like that before. No one. And I decided to try to walk past Matt with dignity as befitted a triple doctor and he made a grab at the glass in my hand and he knocked it out of my hand and that was the last whiskey in the house and when that happened something happened inside me that I never know how to describe something exploded in here like an atomic explosion I just went berserk I have never imagined that anybody could experience such anger, such total savage rage. It just swept through me and I wanted to grab hold of that young punk and get his neck and squeeze till his eyeballs bulged out and he'd go all blue and fall down. And I made for him and I would have killed him, I would had if the rest of them didn't. Oh, the screaming and the roaring was unbelievable. They dragged me off of that guy and I half wrecked that trailer that night. And I stormed out of there and I went up the beach and I knew there was a bar open up there and I bought my last bottle of booze. What I pray to God is my last bottle of booge. It was the 8th of September, 1975. And I lay out on the beach and I drank myself into insensibility. When I came to, the sun was up, I had a clear recall of all that had happened. I looked over at the trailer and I wouldn't go back there. I wouldnít meet them. And I stood looking out at the waves of the Pacific Ocean. And l remember the very first time Iíd ever seen waves. It was when I stood at the rail of that little ship going across to England when I set out to get close to God. And I remember saying to myself, you've come a long way, baby. You've come a long, long way. Boy, have you ever. And I had an awful experience there. My God, you tried to kill a man last night. You wanted to. You really, seriously wanted to, all because of booze. All because of boozes. And I had a recall, a blurred recall, of a whole long road stretching out behind me. And the situations I got myself in through booze, through drinking. All the conflicts with authority figures. All the mess I had introduced into my life. and the loss of God and I felt I remember saying to myself you know buddy you're not going to quit drinking you've been here before because you can't you're not going to be able to go on living with this thing because you're either going to kill someone or someone's going to kill you You can't go on living with us And you can't live without us Now what are you going to do? And the most awful despair I have ever known Just came down on top of me And for the first time In God knows how long I just said God God please take me back I want to I want to put this life behind me help me the kids had left the trailer and I went back they didn't see me and I had my car and I put my belongings into my car and I came back up to San Diego and I have to go on a preaching job up in Los Angeles in a place called Alhambra and I wanted to do something that I hadn't done I can't tell you for how long I wanted to go to confession I wanted to do some symbolic thing that consisted of reaching out and saying God God grab a hold of me please but I wasn't going to go to confession to any of my colleagues that I knew, or who knew me. So, I set off for Los Angeles, and I had the directory of the Catholic clergy of Los Angeles. And I just looked at addresses, that's all, names, no, I didn't know any of them, and I just look at addresses to find an address that I could get at easily off the freeway without getting lost. And I picked on one that I thought I knew and it worked out. I went to this address, found myself at a little rectory. It was obviously a one-man place. I rang the doorbell, and this narrowed old guy with big, thick lenses to his horn-rimmed glasses opened the door. He had a collar on, and I had my collar on. I said, Father, would you hear my confession, please? Oh, sure, he says, Father. I'm right in. And then he sat down in his little armchair In his little lounge And I knelt at his elbow I was stinking to high heaven The booze was coming out of every pore in my body And I had the shakes And I tried to tell him The bits and pieces that I could remember It wasn't a hundred part of what he should have been told But I tried And when I was through he looked at me in the most bored, bored way. And he said to me, why did you come to me with all this garbage? I thought that was an awfully strange thing to say. I said I came to get God's forgiveness for my sins. What else? Oh, he said, I know, but why did your pick on me? Oh, I said, because you don't know me. I hope. Oh, no, he says, you needn't worry. I don't and furthermore I don' t want to but he said I do know something about you that you don' T know as a matter of fact I know all that's worth knowing about you all there is to know I know what's wrong with you all that' s wrong with you is you' re an alcoholic and you don't like hearing it but that' S that' m all and that' t part of the course no alcoholic likes to hear he's an alcoholic. But that's all that's wrong with you. And he started in to tell me that I had a disease, that I wasn't responsible for having it, but I was born with something in me that the booze activated and I was allergic to this drug alcohol and it has coursed all through my brain a thousand times and it changed my brain and programmed me to think all kinds of shit. And you could think I'm thinking all kinds of wisdom. It has programmed you to feel all the ways you're feeling and to do all the damn things you're doing. It would be a miracle if you didn't. You said there isn't a decent sin in all this stuff from start to finish. To commit a sin, he said, that you are to know, you have to be a mature, responsible human being. So you needn't worry. And all the time I was hearing it, I was kneeling there and I was thinking to myself, my God, what have I walked into here? Are there two lunatics in this room or only one? And if one, which? You know, the big book tells me we stood at the turning... I knelt at the Turning Point. I didn't know whether to get up and close my fist and let him have it right in the teeth and said, look here, buddy. I've come in here in the state of mortal sin, dreadful, dreadful sin. If I was to die, I'd be buried in hell and I don't want your chloroform. Now you do the job you're paid to do. I didn't know whether to do that or stay there and listen and some sixth sense said to me now you listen buddy I had never heard this kind of stuff in my life before and I said to myself I wonder I wonder is he is he a nut or is he for real does he know something and then he said something that pinched it for me he said you think you told me you came along to me you looked at a list or something he said do you think you came here by some kind of a fluke I have news for you you didn't come here by any fluke you were brought here you were brought here as sure as you're here because I'm an alcoholic I've been a chronic alcoholic more years than you've been and also I belong to an outfit called Alcoholics Anonymous and he started telling me all about Alcoholics Anonymous and he said if you think that you came here by some kind of a fluke look he said I'm the only priest who's a recovering alcoholic in Alcoholics Anonymous for miles around here if you think you came here by a flukey or even stupider than you look. And he started to tell me about this fantastic fellowship, about the disease that I have, but that the whole AA thing will not work as long as you think that you are responsible for the condition that you are in. As long as we think that it was due to your lack of willpower, that it It was due to your lack of holiness and goodness. Whatever you're thinking, he said. As long as that's the way you're feeling. As long als you think that you're a mass of outrageous sinfulness, you will never, ever get well. You've got to settle for the fact that you are sick, sick, sick boy. Are you sick? Not a bad, bad daddy. And God love the heck out of you. as it is, but you don't know it. He ended up phoning my bishop. I gave him permission to do that. I ended up going for treatment and then I ended up where I am today. And I want to finish by telling you what Alcoholics Anonymous has introduced me to, and I don't expect you to believe it. But it's an honest program. When I came to this program, I got me a sponsor. And he was something like the sponsor that Vince was telling us about last night. Only this guy had red hair and he had no religion. But boy did he have AA. And I asked him to be my sponsor because he was a man who had taken human life repeatedly. He had done a search in a penitentiary. And when I knew him, he was in model of serenity. I said, I want you to take me from point A to point B where you're at. Because I said I have a temper that will destroy me. He said, aren't you the roaming traveler? I saidI am, but what difference does that make? Well, he said, if I'm to be your sponsor, he says, it'll be on my terms. I said fine, what are the terms? Well,he said, you phone me every day. You tell me what's going on inside you and what'sgoing on around you, outside you. and I'll tell you what to think about all that and you think it go to meetings, read the big book blah blah blah we'll get through the steps sometime eventually he said to me well have you read the Big Book I said yes I have up to the stories did you read The Chapter to the Agnostic I said Richard you know the job did you re... no I said I didn't well read the thing he said. And I did, and I want to tell you before I go back to where I came from, this is all I came to tell You, that there is no literature on the face of this earth known to me that comes within a billion, billion miles of presenting us with the wisdom that in that chapter it's the agnostic it is out of this world it's fantastic I have read nothing to compare with and my sponsor said to me now when you read that chapter buddy you read what's there a smart ass like you with all your stuff he said where you're coming from will say to yourself when you see this oh this is for agnostics you'll be saying to yourself oh now they're going to try to prove to me that there's a God that is not what that chapter is trying to do at all it is not trying to prove to you in me that there's a God it's trying to do something immeasurably more marvelous it's trying to get you and me to do something something utterly simple which will make it possible for God to prove to me that there is a God if he wants to period you don't prove anything to you what are you going to do your proven with he said read what's there and I did and this is what I found that this chapter draws my attention to a simple fact we live in a wonderful world wonderful awesome wonderful things going on I've been drunk so long and have the hangover so long that I have failed to notice the wonderfulness that's all around me. You sow a seed in the soil, and the flower grows. Nothing's above that wonderful. If it happened instantaneously, you'd jump sky high. The fact that it happens slowly and gradually doesn't make it any less wonderful. It's magic. Birds lay eggs, and the eggs become birds and fly away. Percival Sevens. Disneyland has nothing on this. A man and a woman do what a man and a woman would do. And nine months later, a new human being is walking around. The thing is mind-boggling. It makes you wonder. So wonder! That's all. Wonder! You look at other areas of life where terrible things are happening. Starvation, violence, cancer, eating into people, frying them. Could there be a good, good God? You wonder. You wonder! One minute you think you've said maybe there is. Another minute you're saying to yourself maybe there isn't. But all the time you're thinking maybe there is, you're really saying maybe there doesn't. All the time you're saying maybe there isn't, you're really saying maybe there is. So how do you get off the merry-go-round? The maybe. The maybe! How do you Get Off It? That's what it tells you. How you Get Of It. How you make the transition from maybe to I know there is! I know! Tells you how. We finally came to see that faith in some kind of God might not be as irrational as we had hitherto supposed. There's a very guarded statement, whoever knows one. But how to make the transition from maybe to I know there is? We had to search fearlessly. And Richard said to me, does that remind you of any step. Oh, yes, I said the fourth step, fourth. Brilliant, she said. Keep coming back. We had to search fearlessly, but he was there. Where? We found a great reality deep down within our own selves. In the last analysis, it is only there he can be found. You know, people used to tell me that AA is very deferential, very modest. Modest my eye. This is the most dogmatic statement and I can recognize a dogmatic statement a mile off. Here's a dogmatical statement worthy of the Vatican or the Kremlin. In the last analysis, it is only there, down there, that God can be found. And when found, he was as much a fact as we ourselves were. I'm pretty sure that I'm a fact, for I didn't dream myself up. Sometimes I've doubts about you. But I'm pretty sure that I'm a fact myself. And here's these jokers telling me that I can be as sure that God is a fact as I am that I am a fact. That's pretty sure. How do you get to be that sure? How do you help? Take your fourth step. Stop looking out at outer space, gyrations of the stars. Stop looking down into the atom. In the last analysis, there's where you find them. You find them where you found what you find when you take your fourth step. And what do you find? When you take your fourth step. The good and the bad. The bright and the dark. The garbage, the garbage, the garbage. And what's all that garbage? My garbage is the areas of my life in which I experience powerlessness. My powerlessness to be content with my lot in life, to enjoy it and not just endure it. My powerlessness too. My powerlessness over my ambition, my longing for status and recognition. My powerlessness over my resentments, my angers, my spites, my jealousies. My powerfulness is over my lust, my utter, utter powerlessness. Get in touch with us. Make it surface. Look at us. And now what do you do with us? You put it out there and you say, are you there? Are you there or God, I want you to be there. I want rid of all this muck that's killing me. I really want rid of it, but I can't rid myself of it. And I want you to be real. I don't want my life to be an affair in which I and I alone do whatever is to be done for me, to me. Oh God, no, no. I'm frightened that enough. I can get there. I want You to be there. I want to be a humble person now, because as I found out somehow that humble person, people are happy. I wanted to be self-sacrificing person, outgoing, accepting of others as they are, not wanting to change them. I WANT to be that kind of a person. Please make me that kind of a person. And just go on, live your life, go on day at a time, ask them if you're there what would you want me to do now? How would you like me to handle this and that? And as sure as you do, a fantastic thing is going to happen. It could be like this. The phone might ring some day and you'll pick it up and there will be a voice at the other end of the phone, someone whose guts you could never stand. And you'll find yourself saying, oh yeah, yeah, fine. Oh yeah, sure, I'd be delighted to if that's what you want. Yeah, that's fine by me. Yeah. Right. Put the phone down and you walk halfway across the room and you do a double take. What does that mean? That's something weird going on here. And there is. You find yourself being empowered to do what you know darn well you're powerless to do. You find yourselves doing it. You find ourselves being empowered to be the kind of person you're utterly powerless to be. You find themselves being empowered not even to want to be that kind of a person. You cannot stop yourself being and never could. and you find yourself enjoying being this totally different kind of person and that's the most amazing part of all when I was a little kid I used to come in from the backyard all muck and dirt torn and hurt been in a fight and my mother would look at me and say oh what have you been doing to yourself and she'd take me up in her arms and take my clothes off and wash me and comb my hair and put clean clothes on me and make me feel lovely and silky and fattening and nice feel good that's how I found out my mother loved me I didn't sit down with a bit of paper in the pencil and work it out she cleaned up my mess she made me feel good that's what I found out when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Somebody, somebody cleaned up my mess. When, as Vince said last night, he did the damn thing that says to do. Do the damn things. Stop asking questions. Do it. What do you say when you've had a longing all your life, from when you were a child? I set out when I was a little child to find God, to get close to Him, to have Him get close to me. They couldn't do it for me in a monastery, they couldn't do it from you know Roman University, they couldn't do it for me in the job I have and you have done it for me. I don't know what to say there just are no words. I just say this, to be doing the job I'm doing, knowing that there is a God, is quite a change. Quite a change! It's a beautiful job now and all I want to do is thank you for giving me God and thank God for giving me, all of you. I love you. Goodbye.