The Difference Between Being Entirely Ready and Entirely Eager – Larry K.

There is a town in England that had foresight that most of the rest of the world lacked, and fifty years ago foresaw air pollution as one of the great crises facing life and in an all-day meeting did something to resolve this problem for themselves namely first banning the automobile as the main polluter of the air and then selecting some other way to get around now it didn't take them long to ban anything using an engine but finding what they would use as a substitute that was very difficult for them they looked at all the pros and cons of every possible means and they finally settled on the donkey and from that day to this that is the only way to move and to transport anything in that town if you're a visitor and you go up there you're not going to be able to drive through the town you got to totally get around it because therefore the donkey is so crucial for transportation everybody must have one. So should you ever visit there and study carefully, if you look real close, you will see that every old man has his own ass, and every old lady has her own ass. And the young guys have asses, and the young gals have asses. And because they are so crucial and so central, people have to drive their ass pretty hard. And if your ass is driven too hard, it's going to break down on because you still have to live. And you imagine how difficult life is without an ass. You borrow somebody else's. Now, no one else's ass ever moves fast enough for you. So you do what you can to get it moving a little bit faster, prodding it in public. But nobody likes to have their ass kicked by somebody else in public, and this leads to a lot of fights. people are basically the same and young gals will park their asses where they don't belong and the local cops have to come along and pinch them once a year everybody parades their ass in public and they have a contest to pick the best looking ass and i don't know if you've studied them carefully but there are a wide variety, shapes, and sizes to asses. And in the course of this contest, politicians being the same everywhere, you'll find the local mayor kissing ass for votes. Being as important as they are peddling ass is one of the biggest jobs in the town. Come Sunday morning, even religious people must have an ass. Everybody takes their ass and they go off to church. now there's this particular event that led to the story i'm sharing with you and it happened in the middle of the catholic mass an earthquake struck the town and everybody ran out of the church to save their ass except except for the priest he had parked his ass next to a tree on the side of the church and those windows had all been broken and he just jumped through a window hoping to land on his ass and fell instead into the main crevice caused by the earthquake, proving that even a priest cannot tell his ass from a hole in the ground. I am Larry Kowalski and I'm an alcoholic. I happen also to be a functioning Catholic priest, basically who is here because I can't. Because of the miracle of this program, I have not found it necessary to take a drink or a mood-changing chemical of any type today or any today since May the 21st, 1972, and I'm very deeply grateful to all of you for that. I want to first make a few comments. I'd like to thank the committee for the invitation. It's scary and it's an honor. About 11 years ago, 12 years ago about this time there was a kangaroo meeting in the parish in which I was functioning as a priest to throw me out to be invited somewhere else by that group of people that I most respect and honor on earth to share with them has got to be one of the greatest privileges that can be offered me. I take this for granted very often, but about once a year the thought strikes me what right do I have to expect any AA group to accept me? What are my credentials for coming to you? Failure, sin, and crime. and on that basis you hold your arms out and you welcome me and I am very very pleased to be here very very much so I want to tell you that I am as I shared a Catholic priest pastor of three parishes in the archdiocese of Oklahoma City three little mission country parishes I do not introduce myself in AA circles as Father Larry for several very important reasons, some for me, some for other people. And I would hope that if we have a chance to share after the meeting as the conference goes on that you won't try to call me Father for my sake because there's something in me that wants to feel different, to feel apart, to feel that I'm on a cliff again, the loner of the world, from the world. and it's very important that i can identify with you i saw this lesson early in my sobriety when the group where i sobered up had a colonel john until he got drunk and he came back as john and i don't want to be a father larry who's got to come back as larry i'd rather just stay as larry that's how i came and that's what i want to do and i wear the room i wear the roman collar when i'm functioning as a priest i do not wear it unless some emergency makes it necessary for me to come that way to a meeting of the program because i'm dealing with my disease and it's a disease that attacks me on my the level of my being a person and i had hemorrhoid surgery which proves incidentally i'm not a perfect ass i had hamroid surgery and i didn't wear a collar when i went in for the surgery and i'm attacking another disease when i come to you and there's no sense wearing a collar again because for me that would set me apart. It may not for others, but I'm not them, I'm me. And so I would hope that you can respect this and I hope that we can meet together on a level of sharing. I'd like to begin with a gospel story. I've heard several used. I've never heard this one used. It never really struck me until about the last five, six months And I can't understand why it hasn't been used, because it's so much the basic story of every Al-Anon and every alcoholic. And I believe that I share most of the traits that are characteristic of the disease of Al-Analism. I like that word because it is a single word for a whole character set of traits, as well as the disease of alcoholism it's in the gospel of john and it starts the fifth chapter there's a man who was paralyzed for let me excuse me first say that when i sobered up i immediately when i experienced god felt that it had to be god as the catholic church understood him and i grew and i hope that i respect that phrase in our steps because it occurs more than once respecting the right of each individual to his own experience of a power greater than himself as much as anyone else in this program i've come to understand that a god who needs me to defend is a very weak God. And so my God doesn't need me to stand up for my experience and try to impress it on any other person. But that's small compared to my second reason for respecting that phrase. I believe alcoholism is a fatal disease. And I believe a sober alcoholic is a contradiction in terms. And that we are sober just because God is intervening in our lives. And I believe the action of God speaks greater than anything else. And if God is intervening in my life and your life to keep us sober, I believe he's got to like us. And if you're going to do that, if God isn't content with where you're at enough to keep you sober today with whatever concept you have or don't have of him, then I think it is damn imprudent of me to try to correct it, to do more than even God at this moment seems to want done. So when I quote the Bible, I'm not doing it in a way I hope that will hurt anybody. If you believe in it in a special way, hear it in a special way. If you don't, hear it just as any other book that may have a message and a story that you can apply to your own lives. The beginning of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John, there is a man as I started sharing paralyzed 38 years next to a pool and Jesus walks up to him and I'm going to give you almost word for word the entire relevant part of the story and he looks at him and he says, do you want to be healed? And the man responds I have no one to put me in the pool. Before I get there someone else enters the water. And Jesus said pick up your mat and walk. Now translate that into reality for us and I hope you heard the shock a power able to heal walked up to someone who was paralyzed in the face of life and said you want to be healed and the answer was not yes it was an excuse for staying sick I have nobody to put me in the water you don't understand the problems of being a priest when your bishop doesn't appreciate you You don't understand the pressures I'm under. I'm back in school. You don'T understand the character traits I hate about myself. And then there was a statement of self-pity. Before I get to the pool, somebody else gets in ahead of me. Do you want to be healed? But you DON'T understand how much my husband's drinking. You DON'T UNDERSTAND my wife would only get off my back You don't understand I got lousy AA in my group. You don' t understand the crisis I'm going through. And then the self-pity. Then the fabulous part. Pick up your mat and walk. I believe that's my challenge because I come here today and I believe that my God is entering my life through you as he entered my life 11 years ago through the representatives of Alcoholics Anonymous in Lawton, Oklahoma and looking at me and saying do you want to be healed and it's important for me to know that healing is not a one-shot experience for me and that this question is being asked right now and I gave you some of my excuses in that list I used and through the course of this conference again and again I'm going to be challenged to throw away all those excuses or not even to pay attention to those excuses and to listen to the challenge to be healed now let me translate again for us the response pick up your mat and walk could be translated into stand up and take the steps necessary to walk into more health. And of course, the steps here would be for me the steps of the program. And I want to do that with you this evening. What I enjoyed most in my years in the program was a talk where our steps were taken and shown to be relevant not just the first time they were experienced but relevant in a continuing way, relevant for me today to take a step that will enable me to walk freer and healthier than I have ever walked before. So what I want to show to you are some of the principles I need and some ofthe particular actions involved with the steps that can offer me an experience of greater health today. And it starts off for me today with a challenge, a challenge to really admit that I am absolutely powerless over alcohol and that my life's unmanageable that isn't an easy thing to do it isn't an easy thing to do because for 11 years I've been active in Alcoholics Anonymous and part of my mind has heard a powerful amount I've driven I've given distances without batting an eyelash to hear speakers who I felt had a message for me some of them on the program with me, and that's one of the real honors and one of things that makes me feel so uptight that people I respect so much I'm privileged to be part of a program with. But I've heard so much and my mind is sick and I start confusing what I know with the treatment for my disease. And I want to give you some warnings that I have to remind myself of. Last weekend, I had the privilege of being in Des Moines, Iowa talking at the White House conference and it was an AA group club that isn't that huge but that absolutely astounded me because I met somebody with 39 years and with 37 years and with 36 years and incidentally it's interesting to see that people stay human when they're in our program a long time I was talking to the guy with 37 and said I just met somebody else in this club with 37 he said no you didn't he's one year behind me and i felt it was so good somebody with 35 years and several people with over 30 years and i asked the guy who drove me back to the airport how many people he knew in that one aa place with over 30 years sobriety and he said i think it's 10 our program works now against that i want you to know that i've been traveling a little bit in my own state being moved around as a priest for a variety of reasons, some of them connected with my own psychological emotional problems still. How many priests do you know got fired? I got fired nine years sober from teaching in a Catholic high school. Ran into my sponsor filled with self-pity and found out that when he was 10 years sober, he got fired for the first job he ever held worked for other people in his life. And this is the whole way of how we can identify with one another. I also like to say, I wish I'd done this. I wish I'd gone down and filed unemployment. And they'd have said, what do you do? And I said, I priest and just watched their face. I bring it up in my talks as I say because those damn nuns fired me one day and I'm going to get revenge talking about them I hope for the rest of my sobriety. But I've moved around a lot and I see groups where we've got a lot of people from one to five years sober, and some people over 15 and 25 years. But there's nearly nobody between five and 15 years in most of the groups I go into. The particular group that I'm in right now, I'm a lot in Oklahoma. It's a town of about 100,000 people. I've ended up back where I sobered up. And we have maybe 100 to 500 people flow into AA every year. And I'll bet you we do not have five people sober for any year over five. And there's some reasons for this, and I want to share them. Because I feel people are saying things that are likely to kill me. And I don't want to hear them, yet part of me wants to hear that. I hear people say, take what you want and leave the rest. I hear People say this is a cafeteria-style program. Just go through the line and take the steps as you need them. And what strikes me as so strange is at the same time as we did tonight, they're going to read the beginning of chapter 5. And what they're wanting to do is make me an alcoholic schizophrenic. Because at the very end of the chapter 5, at the exact same time they're telling me, with all of the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Take what you want and leave the rest. now i don't think the human mind can follow both of those directions at the same time if it's a healthy human mind and my human mind is not healthy i am definitely i have been at the end of my drinking at least borderline psychotic and those statements kill and i hear people talk about suggested steps and my sponsor pointed out something that i missed in the big book as different from the 12 and 12. There's no comment about suggested steps. There is a suggested program of 12 steps. And it's suggested to me to try this program, but in that book it is not suggested that I vary and alter and select the steps. I can select the program. And I need to remember that because I forget it. And the first step for me has to throw a certain fear of alcohol into me it's important for me to remember that i'm as powerless over alcohol today as i was 12 years ago when i was drinking and i forget that eight years sober when i was at the high school i was getting up at five in the morning going to bed at midnight and did not have time to pray literally in the course of a day and i my whole pattern in ah changed for about a three month period i started going to meetings at exactly eight leaving at exactly nine. I had no time to talk to people who called. I had no real sympathy, didn't want to hear from the people I sponsored. They interrupted me. People would come to share fifth steps and I couldn't identify at all. And it took me over two months to see that there was a problem, that something was changing and to find out what it was. And what it changed was I was going to bed saying, of course, I'm sober rather than my God, I am sober. I was assuming that I could be sober i was taking my sobriety for granted and that means i'm not working the first step of this program i'm saying i can do it despite all the evidence i've seen of everybody else who's heard all this knowledge beside even thinking that if i knew that i might come down from with with cancer that knowledge is no defense against it i'm now saying somehow my knowledge is a defense against the disease of alcoholism and it isn't i've just started school again a full-time professional school in another profession while keeping my parishes and again i'm going from five to midnight and going up to des moines was a very good thing for me because as i sat through a lot of talks friday saturday it all of a sudden broke in on me that i was back in that same pattern going to meetings right on time having no real identification with any people which means i was allowing the pressures of life to push out the reality of alcoholism for me and the most important single thing for me to remember today is I am powerless over alcohol. Because if I forget that, every other thing I'm building is going to come crashing down. If I remember that, at least that bit of pain isn't going to be added to my life. And I do have to remember that. And I also have to know that I can't manage my life, that trying my best, there's still something wrong and I still need to be drugged. I still need an escape. And I've got to apply that again and again and it's important for me to apply that for me today. I begin therefore with a fear of alcohol but I've got then to come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity and for me the principle of the second step is hope as a religious term which doesn't mean I wish that but I have absolute confidence that because it's not based on me. It's based on the power itself. And I've got my own understanding of the second step. First, I think it's one of the most ignored steps of the program, especially by people like me who sponsor. Somebody comes with a problem, we tell them to turn it over to God. And it occurred to me once that the person talking to me wasn't any dumber than I was, and she would be turning it overto God if she could. But the reason she wasn't doing this was because right now she couldn't trust that God would handle it. And what she needed at this moment wasn't to have her third step build up, it was to have Her second step worked on. And so I sat real gently with her and I did for her what I've got to do for myself. And I just looked at God acting in my life today. And if I'm sober, I really believe God has got to personally break into time and touch me to keep me sober. And so there's a power actively working for me And I don't believe that this power that's working to take a mountain out of my life is going to let me fall on my butt over a molehill. And I try to count every day of sobriety and start building a record. And if it's a week, that's a weak you have to look at to deepen your own experience of the second step. And I use other people. I use people coming in and growing to see God's power in their life. I use People who have walked through crises and shared it at AA to remind me this power is in their lives And with all this together, then somehow I can dare to grow again. When I was five years sober, I shared with a drug addict. And she had had one of the heaviest pains that I ran into for a long time that she shared with me. And I believe in matching. I think this is what works so well in our program. We share ourselves. And so I went into my life and I pulled out a sexual pattern that I had had that was absolutely destructive, destructive that I really couldn't mention before my fifth step to anybody. And I shared it with her. Well, she stayed straight just for about two months and then twisted off. And for whatever reason, she shared the story. And this was in Enid, Oklahoma, a town about the size of Salina. And the story was passed to three very prominent couples in the parish where I was a priest. I got the whole list of names and then came to me. And when this hit, for about 20 seconds, I had absolute panic because it could ruin me, I felt. And then I had blinding hatred and then I went right to the second step and just challenged myself really to believe that because I shared this in love, God was going to guarantee that I would be taken care of. Now, I don't have a rosy picture of what that means. I don' t think that would mean that nothing could happen in the parish that I would ever lose the position, that they would keep me. I don't think it would mean that the bishop wouldn't turn his back on me. I simply believe that God guarantees that whatever the world does, He will give me the serenity I need to stay sober and to walk through that to greater peace. I really believe that. Also, I'd like to very quickly say that the second step to me means sanity means perfection. it. I really believe that someday I'm going to be a saint. As a Catholic, I have a little bit easier to do this, and I know most people don't think that. I don't know if it's going to happen before my death or after my death, but this is a very important part of my second step. And people always chuckle when I say it, but I'm dead serious in saying this. I had, incidentally, a resentment list 52 pages long when I did my first inventory because i have a bad memory it shrank to 12 pages with my first update and it's down to eight pages 11 years sober so i'm not giving you an ideal view when i say that i believe someday i'm going to be perfect i just believe that god's power is greater than my defects and his love has started breaking in my life and it isn't going to end until that's complete now it might not be till after I die. That's not important. What is important for me is the real experience that someday whatever is bugging me isn't going to be here, and that takes the pressure of time off me. I don't have to worry as much about when it's going to go. It's goingto go, and that's the only important thing. There will be some point in time when I'm going to able to accept all of God's love as totally deserved for all that I am and to me that is health that is wholeness that's perfection the third step for me if I go from fear to trust I start experiencing gratitude relief within me and I want to tell you first what the third step is not and I'm sharing something that I heard when I was three years sober from one of the speakers in the program it does not deal at all with my feelings and my thoughts I don't like a lot of people in AA. I still act this way because I'm so insecure my feelings are very strong. I can't control those feelings. I heard myself best described by the person in the program who called herself an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. And so at times I think I'm superior to everybody else in the world. My feelings say I'm never right, my thoughts are never wrong. I can't control where those two are running real often, but I can control my actions. And that's the area that I think the third step deals with. And it's important also for me to say it doesn't deal with becoming a saint at this level of the program. I lied before my third step and I lied after. I stole from the church. I stole every cent that was in the poor fund for the first three years of my life. So when I say I think I'm going to be a saint someday, you can see God's going to get a spiritual hernia working that one through. I stole from the church after I was sober in the program. I hanky-pankied before the third step and not hankie-pinkied after the third step, and the third steps to me doesn't deal with those areas. The third step deals with my taking my life and my will and surrendering it completely to my sponsor who represents this program, who represents my God for me. And I'm one of those very fortunate people and I think we owe it to tell you this, who have never found it necessary to drink from the moment we first came to the program and that has nothing to do with me. But for 11 years I have done every single thing I have been told by my sponsor. I haven't liked it. I haven'T agreed with it. I haven' t done it fast. I have DONE some of those things to prove how dumb he was. And I have BEEN angry when they' ve worked. But I have Done them. That's the kind of sponsor I want. Now, I am very, very thin-skinned and sensitive, and my sponsor walked up to me within the first year of his sponsoring to me, the present one that I have I picked up in my third year, and he looked at me and he says, you dress like a Pittsburgh pimp. Change it. No, you don't say that to somebody in my, you know, delicate, thin-skin condition. You just don't do that. But I changed it. And that's important. He still does this. He's got a phrase he uses. He says, Larry, I'd like to offer something for your serious consideration. It means there's a shoe going up the butt. It's just a question of how far. And he's got to write to do this. I think he's gotta duty to do it. I wouldn't want my doctor to watch me die and not recommend anything because I haven't seen the problem to come to him with it. I want my sponsor to tell me what I need. And he does, sometimes in a very rude way. But I've done everything he said, and I don't make meetings because I need them or don't meet them or want them and don't want them. I make my meetings because my sponsor has told me to make meetings and the number's set. I make four meetings because that's the number that was set for me. I don'T have to worry about it. I DON'T have the privilege to pick what nights because that wouldn't be healthy for me I'm not talking about anybody else, but in my circumstances, I just go. Zing, zing, zinc, zinc. My nights are all set out. I go Saturday morning, Sunday night, Monday night, and Wednesday night. Those are the four best meetings that are available for me, and I go to those because my program has to be the best available for me, and that brings a real relief in my life. I'm not worried about drinking today. Whether I drink or not isn't in my hands. It's my sponsor's problem. It's AA's problem, and ultimately it's God's problem and that'll work. I've had people come to me and I said, you know, if you're worried about drinking someone that i sponsored i said don't you worry anymore that is from now on my problem you just go out and live and it worked instantly for the person and of course i didn't fear because i just put it in god's hand person i was talking with hadn't come to a part yet where they could trust in god they didn't know that trusting in me when i can't do anything is just trusting in god as i understand as i understanding through the program fourth said the fourth step to me is sort of the one of the great points of walking down the road to continue sobriety steps one two and three don't touch my disease they touch the symptom alcohol and alcohol for me includes all mood change and chemicals uh just to identify myself very briefly and i often forget to do that and feel very bad because it's important for me that i do it i'm the kind of alcoholic who drank alcoholically from my very first drink. I believe I was, I had alcoholism before I ever had alcohol. I don't ever remember quitting because I wanted to. I can't picture that. I drank not liking the taste. I drank for the experience, the effect, what it did within me, the explosion. I started having blackouts all the time. I did not drink every day and I never took a morning drink.I did not do those things because of what I just shared with you. And that's why it is crucial for me to tell you that I did drugs because I did with drugs what a lot of you did with alcohol. My drug of choice is alcohol, but I hid the reality of the depth of my problem by not drinking every day. If I was too drunk a whole weekend, I just got zonked on tranquilizers and sleeping pills on Monday and Tuesday. And I talked to a doctor's daughter who talked to her father, she incidentally is now in the program, who suggested exactly the pills I pop at night and in the morning to give me what others got from the morning drink. So it's important for me to tell you that we can use pills to hide symptoms of the advance of our disease. I cannot tell you how many years it was in my life that I went without a day straight because, see, I didn't consider those pills a problem. I also did pot and some street drugs, other street drugs. But I didn' t do much of those but I didn''t consider the tranquilizers difficult because those are the kind of things that doctors handed out. It never occurred to me that I never had a prescription from a doctor. I always got mine from independent sources, but doctors would have handed them out anyway. The first three steps remove the symptom, but my real problem is my alcoholism, and my sponsor defined it for me once as the need to escape, the need to run. About five years later, I tried to think of what is Alanonism and looking at the Alanons that I knew and looking at that area of my own life, I've come up with the need to deny. If this is my problem, the need for me to escape, if this is the other part of a problem that I experience, the need of denying, the first three steps don't touch those and that's why the big book just about guarantees that if all I do are those three steps, use those three principles, I'm going to drink again because the disease is running in my life. What I need is to attack the root of the problem, and this is why I believe the fourth step starts handling the answer, because the opposite of my need to run from everything that I was, and I ran with every possible thing. I ran mit compulsive buying. I ran with compulsive being with activity. I ran with a change of profession. I I ran with a change of geography. I ran without isolation. I ran to psychiatry. I ran within a heavy fantasy life. I fantasied away about at least a quarter of every waking day. All of these were escapes from just being Larry. And the first great answers that I thought I found were alcohol and drugs. They weren't an answer, though. They were just a drug. The opposite of running is confronting. Confronting on paper everything that I am. And I didn't like what I saw. I really didn't like this at all. But if I liked it, I don't think I would have had to have run from it. The opposite of denying is affirming. So I believe it goes to the heart of the disease of Al-Anonism also. And to that degree, I really think the fourth step starts handling my problem. What it is, it is self-honesty. I look at myself and say, This is me. I'm 5'10 1⁄2". If to please you, I thought I had to be literally 5'11", not standing on tiptoe, but making myself taller and stretched out as far as I could. Imagine the tension I'd put my body under. If another part of me thought I had to be 5'9 to please the other side, and I tried to pull in, imagine the pressure I would put myself under. Between that pressure and that tension, I can't know peace. And that's how I went through life. Showing you trying to deny the person I was to be what you wanted me to be inside me. I hate children. Now, a Catholic priest is not supposed to hate kids. So I try to make myself like kids. I try and make myself look like a child. I try so much to be more loving than I am and less horny than I'm. Tension and pressure both. And what I've got to see is if you scaled me out on a scale of love, I'm 5'10 today and I'll only have peace if I say that's the size I am. If you look at my sex drives and my sex problems as they're being handled by God right now, they're going to be 5'10". And I will only have piece if I stay there at 5' 10". The same thing for my zeal, the same thing from my greed, the same things from my jealousy. I look at all that and I affirm what I am but there's constantly deeper levels of seeing this, of self-awareness. My first inventory, I basically just saw what my past life had been, and that's all I could do. Two years sober, I got an insight that I had troubles with women. Two years after that, looking at just the next two years, I understood that there was a certain type of woman that I was afraid of because they patterned my mother. Two years later, I began to see that this really was a blind hatred of all authority. And the great difficulty I had with absolute self-will run wild. wild. Now all of that is just showing me what I've always been, but it takes a little bit of love and a little Bit of growth for me to look deeper in myself and see what I am and face that darkness that I've been running from a little BIT clearer. And so I constantly am challenged to a deeper self-awareness. I don't want to think that with 11 years sober, I can do some of the things, be cold to some of the people I sponsor because of my need to study the way that I've been recently. I don't want to think that things like that can happen to Larry and that's making me that unreal person again and I've got to start off in saying this is where I'm at and happiness will only come from there. The fifth step to me is openness. I not only denied what I was, I hid what I wasn't. I pulled inside myself and I started that physical retreat as well i started drinking in the world incidentally i was in a town of a hundred thousand as i told you and i drank in public because others would buy me the drinks i would go and out and counsel with them in a place called the purple bunny club now i now i wasn't going to give scandal to the church so what i did was i put on a like an olive green suit and wore sunglasses and just thought nobody had ever seen me i stopped doing that i started drinking at home the church home i started drinking in my room i started closing that room and the last nine months of my life i couldn't really come out of out in the world to see anybody because you see i felt like i was a loser i feltlike i was going to be damned i was sure for it from at least the age of fourteen till i came into this program that i was gonna end my life in a mental hospital permanently committed that was just a certainty it would just be when they discovered me and that's all i had to hide what i was the opposite of that for freedom is taking everything that i am and just sharing and when i did that with one person saying here here's larry he's 5 10 and there's a lot of things he's done that he wished he hadn't done there was a freedom because that person accepted me But immediately after doing that, I started hiding new parts of me. One of the hardest things I ever had to do was go to my sponsor about three months ago and talk over a sexual problem that was active in my life. And I really didn't think that after 11 years I should be like this. And of course he was much more mature than that. But what he told me is, you know, you constantly come to me with this problem after it's crises. this time once God has handled it why don't you come for some good preventive therapy come and let's talk over about it not recurring and I've been doing that and I'm just walking through an amazing peace inside but I didn't want to share that with him and when I didn' t want to show it I carried the pain of hiding something and only when I shared it with him could I know forgiveness self-forgiveness and freedom I'm in the openness just to stand and be myself. I enjoy very much the sixth step. I'm going to make some quick little statements. Entirely ready is not entirely eager. And I think a lot of us confuse that. Just because I've got a defect and I'm not happy about maybe having to lose it doesn't mean I'm nicht ready zu losen. If I've had a defect, I think it's in my life because I need it right now to keep out pain or bring some pleasure in. and I can't picture living without it or I would be living without it I just have to be ready not to have Larry but to have God it isn't for me to map out in my case what I need to get rid of but to have God and I'm going to tell you what God means for me when I talk on the seventh step if I don't forget in just a moment to have God remove that's different from suspend but what I really want to talk about is the term defect years one to three sober i thought defects were all the things that made me lousy years four to nine i thought effects were the things That Made Me A Nice Guy This Was My Al-Anon Personality That Made me Just Lie Down And I'll Become A Doormat For The World And I Started Having The Inner Courage And Strength To Stand Up And Saying I Am Larry And I Have Some Rights I Started Being Able To Show Tough Love When People Came To Me For Sponsorship Or Fifth Step And They Really Needed To Hear Something I Didn't Want To hear it, to attack the women whose personality I most ran from and to see this not as a liability but as an asset, not as defect. But the last year or so, this has changed completely. And I want to just first lay something on you. Notice that in a lot of our groups, we give you the right and you give me the right to God as I choose to understand him in the third step, and then people take it away in steps 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. People tell me what my wrongs are, and people tell me what my defects are. Clubs will list defects, and I'm supposed to assume that because it's on their wall, that is a defect. I'm just going to tell you two things. I do not consider cheating on my income tax a defect of character. I have my own moral justification for that. It connects with greed as rationalized by pacifism and the amount of the budget that goes on spending. But that's where I'm at. I also do not see profanity as a defect. i know two instances where it's an asset i knew a society drug user who was employed she after she straightened up and had powerful sobriety going was employed by a government program for street using drug people the woman could not curse when she got her job and that's the vocabulary of the streets she had to learn to curse to carry the message not to curse would be to talk a foreign tongue to her and so she had to learn to curse to address her i went to a public high school in penn state before i went into the seminary and i've got a gutter vocabulary as part of my background i have to learn that i can't really afford to use it and i tended to use hetoo much in talks because i've gotta talk to you the way that you'll most comfortably here if i talked to you in french if i were bilingual i wouldn't be helping you i've got to talk to you the way you being here are ready to hear this woman learned to curse in order to love i knew a guy who was driving alone he'd get furious once he'd drive 70 miles a day one way twice on small oklahoma roads and people would do dumb things and he'd just get furious and he'd curse him inside. And he came to me, and this wasn't as an alcoholic, but this was as a priest, and he thought this was a fault. And I said, it's no liability. You get mad and you're not going to be a safe driver. If you're in that car by yourself and you just let out some curses, that might tap your anger and it might make you a healthier driver. When guys talk this way to each other, it is just a vocabulary. So I don't feel that we can tell each other necessarily precisely what our defects are, but that isn't what I want to share with you. What I really want to show you is my last real insight came from the seven-step prayer where it says, We are entirely ready. My Creator, I'm now willing that You should have all of me good and bad. I pray that You now remove from me every defect or character that stands in the way of my usefulness to You and others. Not the things Larry doesn't like about Larry but the things that keep me from doing God's work. And what has hit me is I really don't know what a defect is. As I've shared with you I'm not St. Joe with the drinking problem the way some priests are I've done every single thing that I was able to do that I said I would never do and wished I could do a lot more but I was just bound by my fears and I fought a hell of a lot more than that yet given all that when someone comes to me that I sponsor and they're locked in a problem I'm going to be like some priests I know who have never had any sexual problems and you say well get out of it I understand what it's like to be locked in something that you want out of and can't get out of. And so I can listen and share. And if all the things I don't like about me were removed today, there is absolutely no way I'd be of any use to you because I'd been so damn filled with egocentric pride you couldn't stand me. Now are my defects hurting God? Not if I use them correctly to understand that I'm only 5'10", and therefore you can be 5' 10", and 5' 4", and 4' 10, and 4. And I shouldn't judge you. I should just understand. They keep me humble for sharing. And so I really don't know what my defects are. But the sixth step basically to me is trying to become whole as a person. To let God love all of Larry. See, I used to be schizo. And I would try to let God love my AA activity, my sponsoring, my fifth stepping. But he wasn't supposed to touch my lust and my greed and my materialism. He wasn't suppose to touch myself destruct. I'm not a list of traits and God doesn't like labels, I don't think. My God likes me. And now I try just to go into his presence as a person and just to be one whole person. And right now, for the last year, I get the deepest spiritual experiences off working the sixth step, just trying to be whole as a person in the presence of God's love. And it's constantly difficult. The seventh step, humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. To me, that means being active in submitting myself. That's a bad term for some Al-Anons, but it has the element of humility and activity, the word submitting to this power in my life. For a long time, I would go to God and humbly asked. and humbly ask incidentally isn't proudly demand it's humbly asking so if i ask god to have like my smoke and when i smoke three packs a day remove today and i'm mad tomorrow i'm not humbly asking them my reaction shows that but you know i didn't meet god on a straight line i met a sponsor i did not surrender as a priest to aa because i didn' t to god i didn''t believe in god when i came here i surrendered to my program and my sponsor i didn'T want there to be a god because doing the things I did, I was going to be in hell. I didn't want that Christian notion that others had given me. It's not really the Christian notion as I understand it. So God to me was God through program, through sponsor and I was short-circuiting this and it doesn't work when I short-cirk it and I found out if I want my defects removed I've got to go back to the channels God gave me and I've gotta go to my sponsor and if I go to him with a sex problem rather than saying God remove this and i really am ready and humbly asking him to tell me what to do and he feels i'm ready to have this removed right now things are going to start happening and they have when i've gone direct to god nothing is gone when i'm gone to my sponsor every problem i've gotten to him with has been removed from my life if i've done the things he's told me the eighth step has probably been the most important single step in opening my eyes in the whole program because somebody showed me but two separate parts. It does not say became willing to make amends to all people we had harmed and therefore made a list. So I don't have to be ready to make Amends to a single damn person. It says, made a List of all persons we had harm and I stopped there and I made my List and I did not intend desire at all to make a Men's to most of the names on that List. I was happy I did some of the things and about one fourth of the names. And I mean this, I wish they were there so I could do it again. I wrote who they were and what they did. I mean, who they weren't, what I did and probably why I did it. And when I got done with that list, it was like 20 ton hit me in the head. I suddenly realized one of the reasons I was so unsuccessful in relationships. And that's because I walk through life absolutely unaware that you have feelings. I nearly destroyed somebody trying to help them, because I asked them to take a jump that somebody six foot could make, but she was smaller at that time. And she couldn't make it, and she thought she couldn'T work her program. And it took me three hours of talking to get her back where she was before I opened my big mouth. I did it again within the month when somebody relatively new came in, and I landed on him too hard, and I wished this story had a nice ending. right after I opened my mouth I knew I owed amends but I just kept my mouth shut and she walked out of the meeting and it was too late because I couldn't go find her at that point I've got to remember where you are I've gotta listen for you and there are times I can really do this with the step the eighth step is other awareness for me and that's so crucial and it doesn't come easy because see I'm so filled with fear I've got to make an effort to get out of myself to know where you're at. And I can't really sponsor well without that. It's so absolutely important. Let me make a comment on this and broaden this a little bit. So often in meetings, good sharing people will say, At least I never. Anytime I ever say that, I forgot the eighth step. I can tell you, At least i never. but whatever i'm going to tell you the likelihood is one of you out there did it and by that choice of words i'm saying that's wrong and you were bad for doing it and i can't do that anymore i don't want to cut myself off from any any group i felt cut off from life and you offered me a wholeness i've heard people who are gay put down at meetings one of the groups i go to now there's a guy who almost every meeting said at least At least, you know, I never did what the fags do. What opened my eyes was a phrase one of our speakers once used that said the only difference between her and a prostitute was she didn't need the money. And boy, that hit me. I didn't eat the money and I had a different set of drives. And so I don't care what you've done. I've never listened to anyone's fifth step and heard a single person say something when they've spelled out their life that I could say, I wouldn't have done it if I walked your route. I know what I've done and when I put myself in their shoes, I'd have done that and worse. So I don't have any at least I've nevers. And when I come to this, when I came to AA, I'm open. I was at a meeting very recently when people were making comments labeling speakers as Fat Joe or Old Tom. That isn't healthy. you know I have big ears they stuck out my brother very sadistically spent five years just crucifying me with them when I was 28 years old I could not mention my ears to anybody even in the privacy of a confessional I couldn't say it it was destructive and just because he did it every day didn't take the pain away didn't make the pain any less will i come here open and when people comment negatively unnecessarily outside of my sponsor i'm open and so i'm most vulnerable to a cut and i can be hurt and it is so important that i be aware of where you're at and try just to say what will help and if I have some at least see that they're really not yet and just shut my mouth so they never have to become part of my story. The ninth step to me is healing the relationship. All the people that I've amended that I'm that I'd hurt I've broken the relationship in my own mind and I've got to go back and I'm going to go and I know I've gotta heal that relationship inside my mind before I do it in the world And what I do for that is I just start thinking of the person and praying. And as I start praying, I usually start hating them more. And I've learned I can't control the feelings and that's a healthy hatred coming out. I think of them and I just repeat the same prayer. I'll use rosary beads and say the step, the prayer in the big book for the fourth step. God, this is a sick person. How can I be of help to him? God, keep me from being angry. Thy will be done. And I just keep saying it and saying it and saying It. Picturing the person and whatever happens, I don't have to control. So this anger comes. And I'm talking now about at least a two-week process if I want to have this done. After the anger, there's just an emptiness. Then after the emptiness, I start feeling positive feelings. And two years after being fired, I really would like to be at peace with those damn nuns again. And that's healthiness that only God can produce. I could not heal that relationship. Now I'm ready to go see them. Until that happens, I'm not ready. I got a story on this one. Eight years sober, I had a fight with one of these nuns for nine years and went to my sponsor. No, I got that story wrong. I had an AA group and my sponsor told me to go make amends to her. And oh, that was horrible. Two months later, I had to fight with this nun who was the superior of the convent where I was teaching in high school. And I got all ready to go to my sponsors and I figured, hell no, he's going to send me to make amens and I'm not going to do that. So I went to confession to a priest friend of mine and he gave me as a penance going to make amends to the nun and you know honestly going there I was just so mad at God I could just hear him laughing yeah, yeah, little Polack thought you'd get over you know it's hard for a Polack to be smarter than God I'll tell you it's really, really difficult the tenth step is being responsible regular is being responsible making an inventory I believe my inventory has to be in writing. That's what I need. And whatever my basic personality is, tendency, I've got to compensate the other one. If I have trouble seeing my faults, I've gotta force myself to see my good. I'm sorry, if I have troubles seeing my false, I gotta concentrate on the negative. Like, I have a lot of trouble saying there's any good in my life. So in my daily inventory, I force myself to write the positive. And that's crucial. The eleventh step is allowing myself to be loved. It is being loved. Prayer is talking to God. Meditating is listening. Remember I told you how God came into my life through my sponsor in my group? The easiest way for me to see what these two are is to take a group meeting. I come before you and prayer is what I say. God doesn't have to hear what I'm going to say. I've got to say it for my sake. I've gotta tell God where I'm really at. I gotta curse him when I'm mad. I have to tell him this is lousy. I've got to tell him I'm afraid. I don't like his will. He knows that. I just get the feelings out. I come to a group, if I tell you that everything is good when I'm hurting, I can't feel your love. Because if you love me, I think you're loving that false front. If I come and say, here's where I'm at today, I'm feeling flat, I am a little bit nervous, I'm pressured, and you accept me anyway. I can accept that as real because it's me as far as I am. So my prayer is telling the group where I'm at and meditating is listening to what the group does by action, not its words, not people saying, I like you. But I just tell people again and again and again by words and action exactly what's happening. They just sit there and they shake their head, figuring that's where he's at and they still accept me. And I feel that acceptance. See, my God is a God of love, primarily not truth. And truth is in my mind, Love is in my heart. And I want to get my meditation from my mind to my heart, the easiest way for me to do that is to think that I'm here and feel all of your love and just feel that love flowing because I feel every one of you are as self-centered as I am and I really feel you want me to be at peace and sober and that's got to be God in you and I just start with that and just figure, wow, he's infinitely this. the twelfth step I believe is more crucial now than I've ever thought it was in the program it took me eleven years sober to understand that for me the principle is loving as I am loved now to go out and filled with love to love others to see that AA's answer to the problem of alcoholism is one alcoholic working with another this is our answer and then unless we carry the message we're losing our unique answer to alcoholism and very likely to drink again because of the shortage of time. I'm just going to go into a conclusion without telling you how important I feel that is, but I've got to work with others. I'll just tell you that. And what I owe you is what it was like, what happened and what it's now. And I'll tell you what it is now because that's the message. I am in a professional school and so I am under a lot of pressure. I try to be too much and I have just got to pull in. I dropped a course and that was very difficult because I went through 12 years of college with almost straight A's and to drop a course was failure. And somebody just said, failure is simply setting your standards for yourself too high. And I realized I thought I had to be 6'2 and I cut myself back to 5'10. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get through this semester of the professional school I'm in because it is that rigorous, but I'm just taking it a day at a time and I just understood I don'T have to go for a degree. I can go for knowledge and the knowledge which will always help me work with others. I began with a story from the Gospels. I want to close with another story from the Gospel of John also. Jesus has a friend named Lazarus, and he goes to the place where Lazarus is. And he goes into the tomb accompanied by two of Lazarus' sisters, Martha and Mary. And he calls Lazarus back to life. He says, Lazarus come out. And Lazarus comes out and he had been bound with little strips so that he couldn't really see and he could barely walk. And then comes the part that I feel is so important for me and for you to hear. Here's what it says. Jesus said to them, untie him and let him go free. That is an excellent story for me to keep in perspective my role, and God's role. And your role. You don't give me life. Only my God can call me out of that cave where I was literally dead inside myself and call me to life. Eleven years ago and today. But when I sobered up, I couldn't talk to anybody. I went to meetings at eight o'clock and left at nine. I was told to go after they started and leave before they closed. That was the only way I could have walked into my first meeting. It hurt that bad in here I couldn't look at you and stay socially before or after. But my God brought me to you with your constant daily love to unbind me and teach me to walk free. And at first I crawled and then I started limping and now I can take some walking steps but again and again and igen I've got to come back to you because I'm sure not walking as free as I know God wants me to. What you do for me, we do for each other. Again, our double challenge. Do you want to be healed? And that's to each of us as individuals. And then our challenge as a conference. Our God who is giving sobriety in life, telling us that we have a row this weekend. Untie her from her Al-Anon chains. untie him from his Al-Anon chains, untie her from her alcoholic chains, untie Him from His alcoholic chains and let them go free. Thank you very much.