The Chapter to the Agnostic That Acts as the Ultimate Sales Page – Deb H.

all right good morning everyone my name is Deb I'm a real alcoholic hey I have been sober since March 15 1987 I know it's a long time it's really a long time I trust me I was not planning on being here this long I was I wasn't I i was one of those people where i came into alcoholics anonymous and i was sure that everybody had made a mistake that all the adults in my life were overreacting and that clearly i was not a real alcoholic and i didn't have to stay sober for the rest of my life right because when i got here i heard you guys like you're like oh you know it's just one day at a time and i Was like that's not what you really mean you really I can never drink again and for those of you who are like you know 70 years old you don't have that much time left so not drinking for the rest of your just kidding but when i was i was 15 years old when i walked into alcoholics anonymous right and so people who were 40 were old um so but i but i was like no if you're 70 like the rest your life isn't that long it doesn't sound like a bad idea right but you know the rest my life for me like that could be 80 more years of not drinking right and do you have a sufficient substitute i don't know about that um anyway so my task this morning is to talk about we agnostics um it's and i have to and i will admit to you that this is a different format i've been a little intimidated by it i've read we agnostic like you know three times a day every day for the last week you know waiting for some form of additional inspiration because clearly what what I've been doing for 37 years isn't enough. Anyway, so instead of competing against the other speakers, I'm just going to join in with them and we're going to do the best we can to get through this. One of the reasons why April asked me to do this in our chit-chat, she said, because when you speak of God and you speak about your relationship with God, it's impactful. and I have had a deep and effective spiritual experience I continue to have a deep and effective spiritual experience that has all of these little baby awakenings throughout it and I have absolutely been stopped by a God that I did not know existed and did not believe in my entire life and it wasn't until I landed in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous that you guys taught me to lift my head and look around and realize that he had been there the entire time and I was astounded by that see I was born and raised in this little tiny town outside of Akron Ohio and it's a little hillbilly town like I say that because it's a little hill billy down the majority of residents in that little town they came out of the hills of West Virginia when the coal mine started closing down and they were all members of random unions and all of that stuff and and they there's a culture that comes with that and there's also this lots of little belief systems right we talk a lot of in Alcoholics Anonymous about we have to overcome old ideas right and so I got all these old ideas that I brought into Alcoholics Anonymous and many of those old ideas were really rooted in self-reliance right if you want it done right you do it yourself right pull yourself up by your bootstraps right if somebody knocks you down you know first time shame on them right but If I come back and you still haven't gotten up, shame on you. I mean, just all of these old ideas are really, really rooted in reliance on self. And if I'm not living the life I want to live, it's my fault now. It is deeply influenced by the man who has been keeping us down generationally, right? So let's not forget to blame the man. But at the same time, I am responsible. I am accountable for making things happen. I'm responsible for fixing things. I'm accountable for all of it. And so when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous and said, yeah, you're responsible, but you have left this entire body of power completely untapped. I was like, I don't understand. I don' t understand what you're talking about. Right? And they said, well, self-reliance has failed you over and over and ever. And I'm like, well that's true. That's absolutely true. Anyway, so when, so, when I'm sponsoring someone by the time we hit WeAgnostics. now we hit we agnostics pretty quickly right because I don't believe in taking a really long time to do the first trip through the steps I come from I you know I come some training where we go through the steps really fast because we got to knock the edge off right just enough to allow me to come all the way in and sit all the way down and then we're gonna redo the steps at three years when your skin doesn't fit anymore right and you've been making bad decisions based on the same faulty thinking. We're going to go back through and we're going to redo the steps, right? And at 11 years when you can't hear me anymore, I'm going to turn you over to someone else that I know and they're going work a set of steps with you. And we're going to encourage, right, to have a new experience with the steps over and over and ever because there are layers to these things just like there are layer to my relationship with God, right. The concept of God that I had when I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous was really none or so I thought. I wasn't raised in church. I wasn't taught how to pray. I didn't know the words to the Lord's Prayer when I got here. I just, I was a little bit of a blank slate. I knew that there were powers in this world that were greater than I was because I grew up in active alcoholism and my dad and his anger, very powerful, very powerful ran everything absolutely ran everything so i knew that there were things that were more powerful than me but the idea that there was something that was more powerful than me that had my best interest at heart that i could actually tap into that if i were willing that power would actually take over and do for me what i couldn't do for myself and the first thing that it could do for me if properly employed is it could stand between me and a drink Because that's where it all starts if I drink all bets are off Now today I can tell you my life is not about avoiding a drink I have been placed in a position of neutrality by that incredible power But when I was new I needed something to stand in the gap Something to stand between me and that first drink, and I didn't have anything like that in my life And so the old the old folks that were getting me sober they they dumped me into the realm of the spirit very quickly so I landed in this in this little country experience of Alcoholics Anonymous but right outside of Akron so heavily influenced by the first 100 and all of that kind of stuff I didn't know any of that at the time but I was dumped into this little country experience with AlcoholicsAnonymous where it seemed like everyone in AA there they were ancient and they had been sober since Christ was child and the president of Alcoholics Anonymous at the time his name was Mac Shadburn and Mac ran AlcoholicsAnonymous he was the guy that had the chair right back at the entry and exit door and all of his guys were the greeting gauntlet that you had to walk through if you had the audacity to go to a meeting on time which wasn't an issue for me for a while and his nemesis was a woman named Jane and Jane was as old as Mac and she'd been sober as long as Mac and they would carry Jane into every meeting in these wooden high back chairs because they would she would have her assigned parking place at every meeting and they were all the time and they went out of the car put her in this chair and four newcomers would carry her down the stairs into the church basement and they would place her like as close to the podium as possible and then people would line up to talk to her because she was that old timer who had that amazing quality of taking a genuine interest in the lives of others. I mean, she was just kind and she listened a little unless you started talking foolishness then she'd shut you down pretty quick but she followed your life and she was interested in it she wanted to know how the job interview went right if you were if you had gotten the call to go back to your daughter's house for sunday dinner and you hadn't been invited back there for 16 years she would make you a side dish and a little crock pot thing so that you didn't show up empty-handed right she was that kind of old-timer and mac is in the back ruling you know with a whip and the two of them were just they were the opposite ends of the old-timer spectrum. And thank God we had them both at the same time, in the same room, with the kind of dedication to Alcoholics Anonymous that they had. And the other thing is that Mack was raised in organized religion. Mack came into Alcoholics Anonymous, as he would tell it back then, with a very clearly defined idea of who and what God was. But even though he had a clearly defined ideia of who or what God is, was he had no active relationship with that God none and so the work that he had to do in Alcoholics Anonymous is that he had he had to take a look at that clearly defined idea and determine if that was something that he wanted to embrace if that something that you wanted to engage in and Mac decided to go ahead and go all-in largely because he was married to to a woman he would refer lovingly to as Mother Superior, and she had done without him for some years while he was out there running the streets. The least he could do was go to church with her now, and so he did that. But he introduced me to this idea that it was really okay to revisit the religion or the ideas that you were raised with and see if they fit. And if they don't fit, then try something new but give them an opportunity to fit because we are quick to see where religious people are right. And Jane's experience with God, however, was far less defined. It took me a long time in Alcoholics Anonymous to realize that my first sponsor who ended up being Jane, that my very first sponsor was the closest thing to an atheist I had ever met. And I went up to, I'd been sober for, you know, like six weeks. So I knew a lot. And I sat with Jane and I was like, okay, we got to talk about this God thing. Everybody's talking about God. I don't know what God is. I don'T know who God is, what is God? And she said, God is good orderly direction. You've been needing some of that and I'll be providing it. And she did. and for some reason it was one of the first miracles in my in my journey in alcoholics anonymous is that i listened to her most of the time which is just fascinating i hadn't listened to anybody for a long time right i was just i was obstinate and defiant and oh if it looked like it was going to do something decent in my life i ignored it completely and um anyway so you know i come in and there's this old woman who's you know barking orders at me but being loving to everyone else and i was like oh my god but but she never could actually verbalize her concept of god she didn't have spiritual language but she clearly had a connection to something she had a connexion to the idea that alcoholics anonymous was the process that would deliver us into this into the spirit into the realm of the spirit the way we needed to get there and she really didn't have an opinion about anyone else's spiritual journey she really didn't she didn't care as long as you had physical sobriety and you started acting right that's really what she cared about and in I and she was my sponsor for a year and a half and and and she would only my sponsor for only a year and a because she and so when I when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous they were looking around and they said look who is gonna sponsor right because I was I was very disruptive very disruptive and so they sent me out drinking because they asked me those two questions that are at the beginning of we agnostics right they wanted to know whether or not I actually believed I had alcoholism and so Mac asked me those two question he caught me when I was sneaking out of another meeting early after being insanely disruptive the entire time I I was in the room and he stopped me when I was leaving the room. And he said, Are you alcoholic? Are you are you really alcoholic? And I just looked at him and went and he said Can you control your drinking when you begin to drink? Can you stop abruptly? Can you do that? And I went because I had never tried. i was like no like i'm going to take the you're not going to take the cap off the bottle i'm gonna drink it all the way and then if i can walk i'm to go find some more i mean that's right i mean that's just kind of how that goes i'm usually face down in a mud puddle but you know some days were better than others but it asked me those he asked me two questions when i was sneaking out of that meeting and and it's on page 44 it says if when you honestly want to you find you cannot quit entirely or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take you're probably alcoholic and there were many mornings because i I was face down in a mud puddle many nights when I would come to in the morning and I would say, man, I just don't want to do that anymore. I don't wanna drink like that again today. I just Don't want To Do That, right? I wanna have a little something to drink, but I don' t wanna drink that much. I wanna Have A Little Something To Drink, But I Don' T Want To Cross The Tracks. I Wanna Have A Lil' Something To Drink, But I Don't Wanna Be Face Down In A Mud Puddle. I Wanna HAVE A Lil'Something TO DRINK, BUT I DON'T WANNA GO THERE WITH THEM AND HAVE THAT STUFF HAPPEN. I DON' T WANT THE LIFE THAT I'M LIVING BECAUSE OF MY CONSTANT DRUNKENNESS. And then my head would engage and it would say you don't have to it'll be different this time You don't know how to just keep the cap Because that's gonna make all the difference in the world right? Just keep the cat. You'll be fine But the idea of having just a little something and stopping Like I'm a kid. I'm drinking in cornfields right what am I going to do with the leftovers I mean I got a logistics problem right so I'm just going to drink it all and so this idea of drinking just enough well what was enough what was enough I'm walking around and I'm on high alert because everything in my life everything in My Life Because of the decisions I'm making and the places I'm going and the things that I'm choosing to do, everything in my life is a threat. And I am walking around on high alert. And so what's enough? How many drinks does it take to get my shoulders off my ears? How many drinks does it takes for me to loose my little fists? How many drink does it taking for me exhale all the way? I don't know the answer to that because I go from none to oblivion and I don' stop in between. and so can I control my drinking how am I supposed to know I'm a kid drinking in cornfields anyway so he so Mac took five bucks out of his back pocket he gave it to me and he said here's five bucks go try go try to control your drinking and if it doesn't work you get back here and if does i never want to see you again and i was like sweet sweet right somebody with some authority finally understands what i really need and off i went and i and i went out and i drank one more time and i'm going to have three shots in two beers because that was very moderate i mean i was drinking a fifth of vodka a day so three shots and two beers that's moderate my scale might have been a little off anyway and the next day i climb out of my final blackout and i walked back into the rooms of alcoholics anonymous and instead of getting there late and being a disrupt just an absolute disruption i got there on time i sat in the middle i got my coffee before the meeting started and i didn't get refills because i used to get refilled in the Middle of the pitch walking in front of the speaker dragging my chair because you know they were metal and folding and they make a lot of noise when you drag them which just made me happy but i got there on time i sat in the middle i had one cup of coffee i didn't get a refill i bummed all of my cigarettes before the meeting started i stayed seated the entire time and an hour is a long time when you're brand new it's a long it's another reason why it's okay for newcomers to sit in the back as long as there's a few old-timers who are peppered in there Anyway, and I entered into Alcoholics Anonymous having a new understanding of the fact that I actually have alcoholism. Now my understanding about who and what alcoholism is and how it affects me and all that kind of stuff, that has to develop over time. And certainly in walking through the first portions of the big book, I am so incredibly grateful that the old people who are getting me sober, they allowed us to linger in the doctor's opinion, so that I could understand that my alcoholism was not defined by my consequences of drunkenness. That my alcohol is defined by thinking and the fact that my head talks me into taking a drink against clearly my own best interest. And that I have a body that is 100% allergic to alcohol and when I swallow it the phenomena craving is triggered in me and the more I drink the thirstier I get and that's that that is alcoholism the more i drink the thirstier i get and it does not matter what mood I'm in what day of the week it is how much money I have whether my bills are paid unpaid who likes me who doesn't like me whether I'm fat whether I am skinny and not nothing when I swallow alcohol the more drink the thirsty or I get that's alcoholism that is the thing that we all have in common and I needed to understand that especially walking in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous at 15 years old because it was really important it's really important for all of us to know whether or not we have alcoholism because we have to concede that fact to our innermost selves I have to believe that that is true just like I believe that it is true that my eyes are hazel and color I am also alcoholic I have hazel eyes i am five foot nine and i am terribly allergic to alcohol therefore i can never safely take another drink as long as i know that everything else is available to me and by the time we hit we agnostics bill had spent a long time in writing describing to us what alcoholism is what alcohol isn't telling us stories of other people who had alcoholism so that maybe we could begin to have the beauty of identification. So that maybe, we could come all the way in and sit all the way down and give this thing a shot. And then we hit we agnostics and all of a sudden it's not so concrete. We hit we Agnostics, and all of a sudden we're not just talking about my drinking and the trouble that I'm in and the pile of problems that are astonishingly difficult to address, right? We're not talking about that stuff anymore. We're talking about this thing that is insanely abstract. And so when this chapter is written, thank God, they weave a lot of examples and a lot of statements that harken back to the concrete, right? That remind me that I am considering the God idea because I had been convinced in the first part of the book that self-reliance had failed me and that where alcoholism is concerned i need a new employer i need a new director and i need a brand new relationship with the father a brand new relationship with a father because if i held out in having having a relationship with my spiritual father because I judged who and what the spiritual father would be based on my earthly father, I was in trouble. Because my dad was the drunk and he was mean. And if I continued to define the word father by my earthly experience, I wasn't going to be able to get there. Because even though I wasn t raised in religion, I w as raised in a place where people went to church. Even if they didn t act like they belonged in church, they still went on Sundays. It was very weird right but they went and they identified you know is one of the questions in elementary school right which church do you go to which religion are you and I just remember the first time I remember being asked that I was in third grade and I looked at them and I said I don't go anywhere I don t have one of those am I supposed to have one of those and they're like yes you're supposed to have one and I was like well how do I get one and no one could answer my question but immediately I was outside of the realm of the spirit because everybody else had some kind of entry hall pass that I didn't have and I didn't know that I was supposed to belong to something and then we would pray in school and I know any of the words to any of the prayers and I was an outcast again and so when I got to Alcoholics synonymous, and I saw God, God, God, I was like, oh, here we go again. Anyway, so thank God for We Agnostics, and thank God that there were old-timers in my area who were getting me sober who had every kind of experience when it came to the approach to the realm of the Spirit, and so they could share those things with me. Anyway, I've got some notes, because I've read this thing three times a day for the last couple of weeks. I've gotten notes. so established up to we agnostics right we know what's wrong with us we know that we have a mental obsession and a phenomena craving that has been made very very clear masterfully in the doctor's opinion and the first three chapters we know that we've had years of broken promises and relationships that need mended we have revisited that we know that reliance on self over and over in light of failing over and over is not working which is what makes us strangely insane where alcohol is concerned we have been told and it's been demonstrated in our pages that our thinking takes us back to the application of self and fixing problems and figuring things out and managing our lives, even though we were just dismal failures in doing it by ourselves. But we've revisited that, and so now we are convinced that maybe our thinking might be a little bit faulty. Possibly. Maybe. And that the manifestation of self in our thinking delivers us back into the delusion that this time it'll be different. That I can get comfortable without you. That I could live a life that makes sense without doing all of this AA nonsense. That I don't really need you. Thanks a lot for the few months of sobriety, but I got this. Thanks a LOT for the coffee. Wasn't very good, but that's okay. We need something other than self to recover. That has been made very, very clear to us all the way through those first three chapters. We need some other than-self to recover, but now what? We've also been told that that something that we need better be pretty powerful because I am standing convinced that my alcoholism is pretty powerful. But I am standing now convinced, most of the way, that I cannot fix my own alcoholism. And so if I'm to get well, I have to get plugged into a source of power that is bigger. That is bigger than me, that is better than you. I have get plugged in to that source of that power and I am open to that by the time I get to We Agnostics. I'm still just a little worried about what that's going to look like. And so the question is, how do I not only discover who and what the power is, but how in the world do I get connected to it? How in the word do I leave self on the sideline and choose to put God in instead? How do I see self as a bench warmer and God as the starter? It's completely new thinking for me. Completely new thinking from me. bill and his ultimate sales pitch which i think is what we agnostics is right i think i mean bill is a salesman and i i really do the more the more i read this chapter the more I believe that this is the ultimate sales page right bill is like look we know that a relationship with god that that some kind of experience in the realm of the spirit is absolutely essential for long-term sobriety and we have to get people into it and and especially in the 20s and 30s right which was informing our experience that went into this book especially then our nation we were church going people right even if we weren't acting right after church we were a church-going people we really were and and we and we had this kind of free-floating christianity that was in all of the nooks and crannies across our nation all of it and so bill essentially said look you know i think that most of us are agnostic right most of Most of us believe that there is something, but we are not connected to it. Most of us believe there is something, but we can't touch it. We can't have a relationship with it. We're not engaged with it Most of us believe that there's something, but we have no active relationship. And so we agnostics is really it's this sales call that is set out to take on all of our objections to God and listen to some we got you. If you dismissed God because the experience of your childhood wasn't great, we got. You if you dismiss God because you think that religion and religious people have been unreliable, we've got you! If you dismiss God because you think the God of your religion and the way you used to believe in trust obviously wasn't good enough, we got you. If you dismiss God because the idea of having faith just seems like too much work and you're not one who has faith in things, we've got you! If you dismissed the idea of God because the idea that you would worship anything leaves a bad taste in your mouth, we We got you. And if you dismiss the idea of God because you just can't do it the way others do it, we got you." It's all addressed in WE Agnostics. And so when I'm using this chapter in sponsorship, it's really important that I know the sponsee that I'm working with, that I now where she comes from, that what kind of training that she had I know the experiences that she brings to the work because if she's not overly scientific why am I gonna take her into this into the anti-science of it all right if she is not raised in religion why would I introduce her to religious bias but if she was raised in I need to know what worked and what didn't work what was your experience what are the old ideas that you brought into this if the only concept of a power greater than you that you have is your alcoholic drunken abusive angry father okay okay you're also gonna work a fourth step and get over that but we got you right so I need to know who I'm working with so that I know how to take them in into the literature and that's key right and sometimes I won't even write read all of we agnostics with someone I'll just take them to the spot that really addresses the thing that's wrong with them because sometimes it can be pretty heady stuff and especially when I'm working with really young people talking about you know prosaic girders I'm not gonna survive that just that isn't just not going to survive that well I also love that in we agnostic bill uses one of of those old sales techniques over and over and over, and it is the feel-felt-found sales technique. It is where you just look at someone and you say, I understand how you feel. I felt the same way. But what I have found after employing this approach is this. And Bill does that over and over and over in the chapter We Agnostics. I'm going to read a little bit. To one who feels he is atheist or agnostic such an experience seems impossible but to continue as he is means disaster especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face it just makes me smile right now that I am no longer doomed to and alcoholic death I look at that and I'm like it's kind of a no-brainer right but when I was you know when I was you weighing my options it seemed like you know a viable thing to consider here's the Phil fault found but it isn't so difficult about half our original fellowship works of exactly that type at first so we understand how you feel at first some of us tried to avoid the issue hoping against hope they were not true alcoholics but after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life or else we understand how you feel we have felt the same way but what we have found is perhaps it is going to be that way with you give it a shot but cheer up something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted in other words we don't care we don' care whatever label you choose that's just a starting point if a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism many of us would have recovered a long time ago we found that a mere code of morals and a better philosophy of life were not sufficient to overcome alcohol we gave that a shot even our founders were participating in the oxford group approach before they sobered up and they had a mere code of morals and a better philosophy and it wasn't working but we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us no matter how much we tried we could wish to be moral we could wish to philosophically comforted in fact we could will these things with all our might but the needed power wasn't there our human resources as marshaled the will were not sufficient they failed utterly so self is not enough and this was particularly this was dr bob's experience this was absolutely dr bob s experience annie was very annie was a devout christian annie and he was 100 in alignment with the oxford group process she really held out a lot of hope there dr bob would go to oxford group meetings before he sobered up just to try to keep what little piece he could he could muster in the house but dr. Bob understood that it didn't matter it didn't work that there was something missing he absolutely knew that lack of power that was our dilemma we had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves obviously but where and how are we to find that power and then it says well that's exactly what this book is about well that exactly what his book is about you need to be connected to a power greater than yourself who's that power how do you get connected to it how do get into relationship with it and they go don't worry about that we got you we got you we gotta hold book about it I have a whole book about and then at the bottom of the page or it says well that's exactly what this book is about its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than your self which will solve your problem and in the first edition it says which will enable you which will solve your problems plural and by the time we got to the second edition it was singular that means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral and it means of course that we are going to talk about God which should come with some theme music dun-dun-dum right here difficulty arises which to which I say no shit many time we talked to a new man and watch his hope rise as we discuss his alcoholic problems and explain our fellowship but his face falls when we speak of spiritual matters especially when we mention God for we have reopened a subject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored and And remember, too, that when this book was written back in the 1930s, that prohibition had been in full swing. We had lived through some of that. We had been asked to sign temperance pledges. We had asked to treat alcohol as if the substance itself was evil. I mean, living in this society as it existed back then, we had been put through the paces by people who came out of a very structured experience of who and what God was. And so, by the time we are beat up enough and we are having an initial experience with Alcoholics Anonymous, we've also had many experiences with all of that. And so some of the way this is written is really to address some of those things that we've had to live through. I mean Bill talks about it in his story, right? The proffered temperance pledge that his grandfather wouldn't sign because he didn't want to believe that way, right. And so Bill was introduced to the idea that the realm of the spirit is broad roomy and all-inclusive. His grandfather took him out into the woods and said, this is where God is for me. The very first woman in Alcoholics Anonymous, her name was Ethel Macy. We don't talk about her a lot because we talk about Marty Mann instead. She was a New Yorker. She lived longer. She wrote stuff. And maybe she founded the National Council on Alcoholism, so she was a little bit of a rock star. But the very first woman in Alcoholics Anonymous, write her name down, from the Akron area, her name was Ethel Macy. And Ethel was one of those, when she showed up at Dr. Bob's house for the very first time, they told her to go sit in the kitchen with Annie. And she said, why would I sit in there with her? And they said, well, because that's where the women sit. And she turned and she looked at that room of men and she said I have alcoholism too is she treating alcoholism in the kitchen well she didn't use those words because we didn't have those words yet but that's essentially what she said and Dr. Bob was like oh I don't know what to do with girls what am I going to do mit girls right we don't how to do women in Alcoholics Anonymous oh my god anyway and Ethel said I'm not sitting in the kitching I'm sitting in here with all of you and I'm no going to church I'm going to my garden. I don't find God in church, I find God in the dirt. And so Ethel gave us permission to stay out of church and to go to wherever it is we experience God most. And so she spent, she was an outdoors woman and she was formidable. And a really cool story just a little quick aside. So gosh, probably seven or eight years ago some of my girlfriends We all came to Akron and we were staying in my house and we're going and doing all the history tours and all that kind of stuff. And one of my girlfriends is from lower Mississippi and she was, she's a powerhouse, right? She's been sober over 20 years and her first like six or seven years like she was like super sober, right and doing all of the general service stuff and all of that and she whatever, right area service and then she had kids, and her whole life changed and things changed, now she's not super sober but she's still sober. Anyway, and she's with us this weekend and we're touring around and we are walking through the archives in their inner group office in Akron, Ohio and if you have not been, get in the car. So we're walking through all of these incredible archives in Akran, in the inner group of office And we have this wall with as many pictures of the first 100 as we could find and little stories about who they are. And we're walking down, and we're looking at this wall. And she stops, and she looks at Ethel Macy. And she said, where were they from? And I said, well, they lived in this area, but their family was from Indiana. And she says, OK, who was her husband? And so we did a little, and so we figured that out. And I say, why are you asking? she said now she is at this time she's sober but she's not going to very many meetings she's very much on the fringe and i'm worried about her because i've watched it over and over and over when you stand up and you leave the middle and you move to the fringe you will often end up drinking so she's on the fridge and she said my maiden name is macy and my people came out of Indiana. And so she starts doing some digging and she realizes that Ethel Macy is her great-great-aunt and that she is actually related to the very first female member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I was like, well, why don't you come back to the middle and sit all the way down so that you can carry on her legacy, please? Right? We never know how this stuff is going to come about. Anyway, love me some ethyl. So we're constantly reminded that self is not enough. Bill is constantly using the feel-felt-found method to have us consider some spiritual concepts that he is providing to us. On page 46 it says, yes, we of agnostic temperament have had these thoughts too. So I'm going to back up, sorry. at the bottom of 45 it says we know how he feels we have shared his honest doubt and prejudice some of us have been violently anti-religious to others the word God brought up a particular idea of God with which someone had tried to impress them during childhood right so now we're taking on those two particular challenges perhaps we rejected this particular conception because it seemed inadequate with that rejection we imagined we had abandoned the God idea entirely we were we were bothered with the thought that faith and dependence upon a power beyond ourselves was somewhat weak, even cowardly. We looked upon this world of warring individuals. So this is an entire paragraph where it summarizes all of the objections that we have about God. And it says, we of agnostic temperament have had these thoughts and experience. Let us make haste to reassure you we found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commence to get results. Even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is God. So very early on in this chapter, it says, yes, self is not enough. You have to have a relationship with God. We know that you have objections about having a relationship with God and we don't care. And we don'T care what you call God because it's impossible for any of us to fully comprehend who and what God is also. Even those of us who have been sober for two years at the time the book was written, right? And so we give the newcomer the wiggle room to be wrong. We give the newcomer the wiggle room to not be sure. We gave the newcomor the wiggle room to certain but to need to fix the relationship that they have with this God that they believe in you know I often think about my relationship with God so I have I've moved a lot in my life I have lived in nine different states I've moved 13 times I'm not running from the law I've moved around largely because of work projects and things like that but I've literally lived coast to coast north to south I have a full experience you know Alcoholics Anonymous is alive and well in many places there are a couple of places I would encourage you to not go but I don't talk to them out loud when I'm being recorded I'm just kidding but you have some opinions anyway so as I've moved around the country I buy and sell houses because I need a place to live or I move into apartments or whatever but I move a lot and so there's you know there's this constant process of you know looking for a house and assessing a house in trying to figure out if it's got good bones and see if and the house always needs updated or renovated or whatever, but if it has good bones then maybe it's worth it and is the neighborhood right and all of that and the other day I was just sitting and I was thinking I was like you know what, it really is kind of like building a relationship with God so it says we need to enter the realm of the spirit on our own terms we need take a look around, see that things are a bit outdated but also see that it's got good bones and worth doing a few updates especially the kitchen where we create life-giving and life-saving food so we make an offer by saying a prayer modeling the behavior of those other aas who've been successful when the offer is accepted we do some inspections documenting what needs to be fixed updated completely renovated Sorry, I lost my place. Then I get to move in and I get to work making the space mine to share with who I wish and I like the feeling of the soft textures I've chosen, of the colors I've choosen. I've incorporated all. I build a space in my new house where I feel comfortable, where it's warm, where it is inviting. I open my doors. I have a housewarming party. My friends come in and visit me there. They bring me small gifts that I can incorporate into my home. And it adds a little something. And my house grows in its warmth and grows in it's appeal. And I reach a point where I don't lock my front door anymore because I want people to come and visit often. I want you to come and sit in my space and have an experience in my space. But when you walk in the door you're going to bring with you who you are. When you walk into my door you're gonna bring your old ideas and you're gonna bring your desires and you'll bring your need to have a relationship with God. But my house is fully renovated and it's updated and there's food in the kitchen and there's a comfortable couch and there is a spot to sit and look out at the lake and you can come in and be at home in my house and when you come into my house when you hang out with me and you realize that there are no lectures to be endured there are not specific prayers that you have to say you don't even have to wipe your feet on the mat if you won't do it you can just come in and you can share what I have and if what I births a desire in you to have a little something more then I'll take your house hunting and we'll go to a neighborhood that you think you like and we'll look at all of the available properties and I'll help you look at the bones to see if the bones are good and whether or not I think the renovation is going to be worth it, and you can tell me what you like and what you don't like. And then I'll help you figure out how to make an offer, and I'll help you learn how to build a relationship. And you'll get your house, and you'll renovate your house and you'll paint the walls and you're put your textures in and you build that really good kitchen so that when people come over you can feed them. And then you'll have an open house, and we'll all come over. And we'll bring little things, little thoughts, little ideas, little practices, little prayers. And we will bring them to your open house and we will offer them to you. And you'll take what you want and you'll leave the rest. And your home will now have a little bit of us in it. And those people who couldn't take my bright colors and all of my bold textures will find comfort in your home because you used earth tones. But my house and your house is now part of the same community. And then someone's going to come to your open house, and they're going to form a desire to have a home of their own. But they don't want to live where we're living. They don't wanna live on the lake or in the suburbs. They want to go deep into the city. I don't know anything about the city, but I know somebody who knows something about the city and so I'm going to introduce you to them and I'm gonna walk alongside you to make sure that you find the right place in the city And I'm still going to help you through the process of buying the place and assessing the bones and figuring out if it's worth it And when you buy your place in the city, you're going to put your own colors in it and you're going to renovate it and make it everything that you want it to be. And then you're gonna open your door and you'll have an open house. And we're gonna come visit. And we are gonna bring you little things. We're gonna bring little prayers and little hopes and little dreams. We're going bring you pieces of stuff. We're ask you what your colors are so that what we bring to you might be appropriate. And we're going to help you to develop your space where you feel safe and protected. And when you do, you'll unlock your front door and people will come and sit with you and people experience your space and you will introduce them to a feeling of peace and serenity. And now our community has got a place in the city and a place on the suburb and my place on the lake and all of our doors are open so that no matter who comes knocking, no matter who's looking for us. If you're a city kid we got a place for you to go. If you are a suburban kid we've got a space for you go. If you love the water come on over. And the community just grows. And for me, that's very similar to what we do when we're building this experience in the realm of the Spirit. When I use the word God, I have a specific concept of God in my mind. To me there is a physical manifestation of God that happens in my minds eye. There's a feeling that I have when I say the word, God. There's an experience that I have had of God over all of these years. There's a particular concept that I have, but when I say the word God, my friend Dean from New Jersey who's sitting in the back, I promised I would mention him during my talk. He has a different idea of God. He sees God differently than I do. experience of God has been different than my experience of God. And there are people who will come and sit with me, and they will find that comfort and they will find that growth in my experience. But there are people that need to go sit with Dean because they will find their comfort and their growth in his experience. And the beautiful thing is that in Alcoholics Anonymous, we have all of the experiences to offer. So I'll tell you just a couple of quick stories and then I'll finish so where I got sober was outside of Akron Ohio so it was in the country and and there was a meeting that I used to go to on Thursday nights it was Fredericksburg Ohio which is in the heart of Amish country and the very first the very first Amish man to ever be sober his name was Moe's Yoder sounds like an Amishman Moe Yoder got sober he died in 1984 I didn't get sober till 87 so I didn't know Moe's but I knew the second longest right I knew I knew the guy that he had sponsored the longest and his name was Danny Shetler and Danny Shettler is still around Danny Shuttler super old Danny Shutter was super old when I got sober but but Danny Shattler was still around and Fredericksburg was his home group and so that's the group where most of the Amish went and on the on the last Thursday of the month was pie night now that may not sound like a big deal until you think about homemade Amish pie right and so we would all establish a relationship on Fredericksburg because we never wanted to miss Pie Night and so every Thursday night they would drive me and it was 40 minutes for me to get out to the Fredericksberg meeting and we go to that and I loved old-timers I just absolutely loved old timers I didn't trust anybody else but if you old and had white hair you were my people and so i would i would sit really close to danny all the time because i felt like like if he was like the grand poobah or the president of the amish aa then i wanted to be near him and so I would spend all this time with them and there was this man who used to come out of out of the big city of akron his name was jeremiah and jeremiah would come and he would sit with us he would seat with danny and he had a rock for a higher power a rock in his pocket and i was sitting there one night and jeremiah shows up and he has a seat and he puts his rock on the table and danny says why are you bringing gravel into my meeting and he said that's my higher power and danni looked at him and he said that ridiculous and he said no he said this rock can go 24 hours without taking a drink i've had a tough time doing that and so this is my higher power it's got more power than i do and dannie was like well that's just stupid He didn't care much about, you know, the whole, you know, no lectures to be endured, no judgments to be had. Anyway, and so he and Jeremiah started having this conversation about who and what God was. And this conversation went on for weeks. Every Thursday, it was like Thursday night at the fights. I just loved it because Jeremiah is now defending his rock, right? I mean, if Danny hadn't come out swinging, he may not have felt the need to defend it, right, but he came out. so he's defending his rock and danny is talking to him about there will come a day when god needs to be bigger than that there will become a day where god needs to get in all of the nooks and crannies there will be there will a day there will not be enough and i listened to the two of them talk about who and what god was and what they demonstrated to me in that ongoing conflict and discussion was that the highway, the realm of the spirit really is broad, roomy, and all-inclusive. Never forbidding, never exclusive. Because Jeremiah had a rock for a higher power and he had physical sobriety. Danny had been restored to a central place in his Amish community with the culture and with the religion that goes with that. And so highly structured, lots of do's and don'ts to absolutely no structure, rock in the pocket. And both of those guys were able to have physical sobriety. But what Danny was explaining to him is that the relationship with God, indeed, we enter into the relationship with God so that God will stand between us and a drink. But when God stands between us and a drunk and we have physical sobriete, that's where everything else starts. That's not the race. That's the starting block. It's the starting block and so why does our concept of God have to continue to grow and change why do we have to to have this expanding relationship and experience with God it's because life is coming and being human sometimes as hard and being a human is also oftentimes joyful and when we're having an experience with life from from the seat in the realm of the spirit we have a shot at not only living through it, but thriving through it and helping others through it. And rejoicing in it and possibly never being scared of it. Because if I don't have a relationship with God, I don''t have any way to live without fear if I don't have a relationship with God how can you possibly expect me to sit in the vulnerable stillness when I need to be delivered from where I am to where God wants me to go if I don't a relationship was God I will not follow you I can't I must have a relationship with God and my relationship with god just as my concept of God needs to be able to grow and to expand and so Danny and Jeremiah are having this fight for a lot like six or eight weeks means these guys are going at it and so I would go to the meeting earlier and earlier because I wanted I didn't want to miss anything and i asked danny one night i said why are you continuing to argue with jeremiah i said he's not going to give up that rock and he said god doesn't change his mind first he changes his heart first and i believe that we that god will change his heart he will lay down that rock and his concept of god will be different and i said i don't think that's true he is really set in his ways and he said i think it is true he said you just wait and so i went to that meeting over and over and over again i waited and one night jeremiah walks into the meeting he looks at danny and he goes and the two of them walked into the kitchen and thank god it's one of those church kitchens where the top half of the wall opens right so they're standing in the kitchen and i went up and i and went the two Two of them are in the back of the kitchen and they're having a really hushed conversation. And then they just kind of looked at each other and they leaned in and they did one of those man hugs where they slap each other on the back really hard, and they came out of the kitchen and Jeremiah sat down, or Danny sat down and Jeremiah walked by, put his rock down by Danny's coffee cup and Danny just looked at me and went the realm of the spirit really is broad roomy and all-inclusive I came here with no concept of God knowing there was that there were things more powerful than me but no concept of god and through the process of Alcoholics Anonymous through taking the 12 steps of Alcoholic synonymous and through sitting in donut listening to all of you tell your ridiculous stories I came to believe in a power greater than myself and that that power would stand in the gap and that that Power could ensure physical sobriety so that I could live a life that I didn't know was available to me and that's what I have today thanks guys Thank you.