The Difference Between Faith and Hope – Don M.

and thank all you guys you know of course this weekend I've had Bob so I can understand you folks sticking around but when I do one of these weekends for myself I'm kind of amazed when people show up on a Saturday and then when they come back after lunch I'm just overwhelmed that somebody would do that So thank you, and Bob, you did a great job on the tradition. So thank You, Betty. I'm going to talk a little while about practicing the principles, and hopefully I am going to tell kind of a little wow. I think the first thought that comes to my mind is the places I need to practice the principles the very most are the places where the principles clearly don't apply. it's like what i do for a living is i'm a criminal defense lawyer and i was criminal defense lawyer for 10 years before i had a bad automobile accident began hitting bottom and and i really was was pretty materially successful i was you know real highly paid criminal defense lawyers by the time i was in my mid-20s uh i knew how to succeed materially at practicing criminal defense law and didn't have a thing in the world to do with these principles. And I was absolutely convinced when I got my law license back and God gave me the choice between staying in Nashville and starving to death or going back to Louisville and trying to practice law, because I didn't want to go. I didn' t want to practice long. I knew that I would either have to compromise the principles, in which case I would pick up a drink and die a mad dog death or I would fail at criminal defense law because I knew very well how to do it. And I remember an angry conversation with God in early 1983 where I said words to the effect that I was more convinced in 83 that profanity was too a sign of spiritual growth than I am now. and my conversation with God was something to the effect of all right, you did it I'll do it your damn way and then after I fall on my face then maybe you'll show me what I need to do and like so many things I had it all backwards it turns out that God is a whole lot better criminal defense lawyer than I am just a whole not better And it turned out that these principles work just like a charm. These principles are not just some sort of high-mandated spiritual thing to make us feel good or even keep us sober. They are the most effective, practical way of living life that I didn't even imagine that there was anything this practical and effective out there. I was an extremely fiery orator the first 10 years that I practiced law, and I have not raised my voice in or out of a courtroom for over 20 years. and I found out that the quiet and loving truth is so much more powerful than all the flowery and powery oratory than all the out thinking, out performing and out maneuvering that I can possibly be do that there's just no comparison of course another place that the principles clearly don't apply is in sexuality and of course that wound up being and a place that I needed the most to apply to. It also wound up being, if you want to sweep somebody absolutely off their feet and assure success, because that's what I did with Sharon, the lady I've been married to for 15 years, I will tell you how to do it. Sincerely pray to yourself all the time, Lord, please let me seek to love, comfort, and understand this person rather than to be loved, comforted, and understood by him. Lord that will be done I'm no longer running the show and approach that person that way let go of whether they understand you let go off whether they love you let go up whether they comfort you and you will wind up as I said last night in other context love comforted and understood beyond your wildest dreams you know page 19 of the big book tells me that, you know, even though 12-step work is great, 12- step work and all things connected with Alcoholics Anonymous is great. That a much more important demonstration of the principles lies in our homes and our vocations. So, you now, we don't get a whole lot of points for being great AA members in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's necessary and it's really, really good and we have to do it. But this is not, this thing is not self-contained. This thing isn't designed to get us sober so we can turn inward on ourselves and stay in Alcoholics Anonymous, this thing is designed to return us to society. To return us to society and let us walk through society in general. And I don't believe the message that we need to carry is limited to alcoholics first place. We don't even know who alcoholics are. The people that I may have helped the most in my life, I'm probably unaware that I ever helped them or ever had any influence on them at all. You see, whether I like it or not, I am a billboard for my higher power. We all are. Every one of us is a billboards for our higher power." I don't need to be giving somebody the finger in traffic in Louisville, Kentucky or anywhere else. I don't know who's going to be looking at me and form an opinion of Alcoholics Anonymous and my God by the fact that I'm acting that way. Now, the next thing I'm going to say is a little high-minded, but I don' t mean it high-mandered. It' s just a real practical way for me to gauge my minute-to-minute behavior. If what I'm getting ready to do or say we're going to be on the front page of the Louisville, Kentucky paper tomorrow. If it would be a real mess if it were on that front page I better not do it or say it. It's just a real good little checklist. Obviously there are private things that you wouldn't want on the font page of the paper but I'm not talking about that. If it was on the first page it would just be like a fight in a brothel if it was only on the next morning I probably just better not It's a good little checklist for me as I go through. And, you know, I'm so glad that the wording of the twelfth step is carrying the message. You know, if that word had been delivering the message, it would have been an absolutely impossible order. And that's what I do. That's what i mean by the billboard deal. I'm carrying a message, whether it's a positive message or whether it is a negative message. And I need to be aware of that in practicing the principles in my affairs. When I foul up, I need admit I am wrong at once. That's not so much for the rest of the world. My original sponsor, Cherry, probably told you this too, Winston. He said, Don, if you want to be comfortable eventually, you can admit you're wrong eventually. But if you won't be comfortable promptly, you need to admit that you're right. You're wrong promptly. And that's what I need to do. I don't need to let those mistakes fester. I needto go right on with it. And I needtotell the truth and not shy away from things. I needdo do things. living by spiritual principles to me doesn't have nearly so much to do with contemplating my belly button and how our planes of spiritual existence as it does, and Bob kind of stole my thunder because I am a fanatic on return your telephone calls return your phone calls, that's a very spiritual thing to do, and I want to tell you something don't weed out the telephone calls that you already know don't need to be returned because i tend to do that every telephone call is in fact a telephone call you know i get a lot of telephone calls but my mind tell me that's not really a telephone called about 12 or 14 years ago about 12 or 14 years ago I had one of the most aggravating sponsees you will ever find I mean he could just worry you to death and he had an extremely common name so I get thought a phone message that Joe Blow which was not his name has called and I'm wearing it oh god I will call him back later I don't have time now I thought you go tell these people to return their telephone calls return the telephone call it was another guy by the same name that paid me a huge sum of money 45 minutes after I called him you know I just don't even know and I can't count the number of times when I've gotten a call oh lord he or she is wanting to know if I've done that and I haven't and I don't want to tell them the truth and I hate lying to them but I go ahead and call them back and I ain't tell you the number times they don't even ask me if I've done that. It's something totally unrelated and sometimes it's something real pleasant. And bottom line is this on the phone messages, I can turn my life into a living hell in 48 hours by ignoring my phone messages. I can put myself in a position where I can't sleep, where I'm scared absolutely to death, where the voices in my head are just drowning out everything by the simple expediency of not returning my telephone calls. I need to keep my integrity intact. And what I mean by that, not that I need to keep my integrity intact, if I've told you I'm going to do something, I need to do it. And if I don't do it when I told you I was going to do it, I need to call you and let you know that I'm not doing that or that I'll be late on it because, you See, that restores my integrity. But as long as I've got this deal out here where I said I was going to do something and I haven't done it the way I was gonna do it, there's no peace for me. It's kind of like, and some of these principles, believe me, I don't do anywhere within 1,000 miles of perfect level. I'm gonna leave here and I'm going to head back to Louisville. And I will spend another few hours working on trying to find some way to be comfortable driving 85 miles an hour into 65 miles an hours. I've been looking for 24 years of sobriety, and it just has got to be some way to be uncomfortable doing that. And, of course, the ending. You know, if I'm going to do those things that are not the right thing to do, if I am going to expose myself to problems, if I m going to put a rattlesnake under my bed, I m gonna sleep very uncomfortably. And that, you know, all the praying in the world won't change that. All the inventories in the World won't changed it. Nothing will change it. I need to understand that Cherry Carpenter put it so simply, so simply in fact that it couldn't possibly be the real truth. He said, Don, if there is only one way to become comfortable, do things that make you comfortable and stop doing things that make you uncomfortable. and that's just far too simple for me but I've never been able to find a single exception to that some of the principles forgiveness I've had a real journey with forgiveness since I've been sober when I was about 10-12 years old a family member that had been involved in the sexual molestation of my daughter was on what everybody believed to be a deathbed. And that person wanted me to come to that bed, and I didn't want to go. And I didn' t think I could go. A big part of me didn' d think I should go. It felt disloyal to my daughter. There was no question that I couldn' t feel any forgiveness for that person. But I started talking to you guys, andI started praying. And it got clear to me that when we wind up today, just like we do so many times, I'm going to hold your hands and I'm going to ask my God to forgive me by precisely the same standard by which I forgive my fellow man. And I want to tell you, I am way too far gone to put limits on my God's forgiveness of me. So I started talking to folks and said, I can't do that. Man, I can'T forgive this. And same old song I hear all the time. Oh, Don, what you mean is you can'T feel like you have forgiven. Said the feeling of forgiveness is really kind of a self-centered thing that's all for you. Forgiveness isn't a feeling. Forgiveness is action. And if you want to forgive, you go to that bedside and act like a person would act if they had forgiven. And, of course, everything in me screamed, Hypocrite! And I talked about that last night about how we don't want to be hypocrites for God's sake. But then I started thinking some more about the Lord's Prayer. You know, if I go and do that, if I act out forgiveness even though I don't feel forgiveness in my heart and God gives me exactly what I've forgotten, I'll be just fine it'd be nice and a nice warm fuzzy feeling if God felt like gee, I just feel like I've forgiven everything God's done and I really feel good about the little fellow but the fact is if God said man, being God is a bitch because I would really like to just squish him like a bug but after all I'm God and he really ticks me off but I'm gone and I've got to act like I'm forgiven and I'm going to let him slide and some good things happen to him. It doesn't make any difference in my life. I still get the good things. So the bottom line is that if I act out the forgiveness and my God gives me precisely what I have given, that's perfectly all right. I will tell you, I never, that person has since died, did not die at that time, although we thought it would happen, but died years later and I never got to where I wanted to run and have a cup of coffee with them. But on the other hand, I did come to peace with it by acting that out. And it was all right. It wound up being all right with my daughter that I did that. It was just all right, so... I need to understand that my forgiveness is action. So much is action, fear. The greatest enemy that I've got every day of my life is fear. You know, the book says that resentment is the number one offender. And it's funny how I misread this book. For years, I thought that meant that resentment had to be the number one offinder for everybody. It doesn't say that. It means overall resentment's the number one offending offender among alcoholics, that it seems to kill more alcoholics than anything else. I truly believe, for me, fear has always been the number one resentment. I think one reason for that is I am so self-centered. and I've always thought I caused everything. I won't even give you credit for causing bad things to happen to me. It all turns inward on me that I caused it. And the first two or three years I was sober, I would lay around, get down on my knees and pray, God, please remove my fear so I can do what I'm afraid to do. God, Please remove my fears so I an do what am afraid to d And it really wasn't working real well. And finally somebody said, Don, if you were hungry and locked yourself in a closet and prayed for a hot dog, do you think one will come squirting through the keel? It's that probably you need to get out and around where there's some food after you've prayed. And so what I found out is that the more effective prayer for me is, Lord, please give me the courage to act in spite of my fear. And then when I get up from my knees and I start walking toward that thing that I fear, then and only then usually does God remove the fear. But as long as I keep laying in the fetal position, God please remove my fear so I can do it. It never ever works. As far as going down to work, I've already mentioned Chuck Chamberlain and Bob's mentioned Chuck. And I'll tell you, I don't feel a bit bad about referring to this because what it is is basically a transcript of an AA talk that Chuck did over a weekend in the 70s in California. It's published and called New Pair of Glasses, pages 70 through 82 in that book. That part begins where Chuck says, now we're going to talk about business. It's all I need to know about business, it's all i need to No, it tells me things like whatever it is, regardless of how uninteresting and unpleasant to me it is. If I will make myself give my entire interest, attention, and love to it, it will become the most interesting thing on earth. I can overcome all that, but instead of shying away from those things, truly give my interest, intention, and Love to it. It will become The Most Interesting Thing on Earth. It tells me that if I try to outthink, outperform, and outmaneuver, I'll wind up in the snake pit. It says I don't have to be a con man or a Facebook artist. I can be sincere and well-intentioned and be trying to out think, out perform, and act maneuver and I'll end up in a snake pit On the other hand, it tells me that if Alga approached my work with it being my entire focus to try to help God's kids do what they need to have done for free and for fun because I want to. If I will let go of trying to take care of me, if I'll act as if I believe taking care of me is not my job, that's God's job. My job is helping other folks do what they need the help done. Things will go more beautifully than I can possibly imagine, and they do. And you know, some of these spiritual principles, and I made a statement earlier that I have no idea how A causes B here. But actually, when you think about it, that couldn't be any other way. There is not one single thing in this society that we are ever paid one cent for other than providing other people with something they either need or want. That's all we're ever paid anything for. So if my true focus is trying to help God's kids do what they need to have done for free and for fun because i want to it is almost inevitable that the money will all come in behind that and the book tells us specifically it says that that that material well-being always follows spiritual progress and then in case you didn't understand that bill edge it is never the other way around never and i believe that with all my heart i don't believe my god withholds anything for me a minute beyond the point when I can have it and not hurt myself or somebody else with it. I believe that with all my heart. I think big. I mentioned the big deals last night. I really think big, you know. My idea of success is always the bases are loaded in the bottom of the ninth, and excuse the baseball metaphor. I'll try to only use a couple of them here. The base is loaded, bottom of the ninth. My team's behind by three runs. I'm up to bat, and I hit the ball just on a frozen rope plumb out of the stadium. And that is the way I have always envisioned success. Now let me tell you what my success has always been. The successes that I've had in life have been getting dressed for the game when I was pretty sure it was going to rain and there wasn't even going to be a game, and I was hurt and didn't think I could play anyway. My uniform was dirty and had a tear in it, and I didn't want to be seen like that. I got there, and I did not get in the game, and I do not think I was going to get in the game. And finally, I get put in as a pinch hitter, and I break my bat, and I loop a little looper over the second baseman's head, a broken bat single. My successes come from the broken bat singles. I am old enough that I can see what is happening to my contemporaries in life that I was in school with and grew up with, none of the hot shots are rich. None of the ones with the big ideas and the big plans, the guys that are rich are the ones that kept on doing that same dull thing every day. Kept suiting up and showing up. Getting up and just going over and over and doing that. And that's the way success comes to me. I need to always keep in mind for me that anything is better done than perfect because I will paralyze myself with these insane thoughts of perfectionism. My procrastination and my alleged perfectionism are all intertwined with one another. And whatever it is, I need to go ahead and make an end of it. I needto go aheadand do the best I can and get it done. The people who succeed in law and, I suspect, in other things are the people that show up, suit up, same old thing, do the same thing every day. They also are very frequently not the brilliant people. They're frequently not even the ones that work just so much it makes you tired to look at them. The people who succeed are the ones who are willing over and over to act in the face of fear. that's the biggest common denominator I've ever found for successful people and I'm talking about spiritually successful materially successful successful across the board is the willingness to act in the face of fear when I know in my heart that the right thing to do is act but I'm afraid so that's been so, so important to me by the way I don't need to be figuring out who I need to help and I have to go over and over on that I had a situation come up about a month ago, and I want to tell you, I have not gotten so spiritually and exaltedly that I instinctively like everybody that comes around to Alcoholics Anonymous. I am blessed in that I like most people, not many people that I don't like, and I'm real grateful for that. But every once in a while, I'll have one of those chemical reactions, just makes little hairs stand up on my head, just don't Like this person. Well, I ran into one of those at a conference a few weeks ago, and I was going to avoid him. And I said, Major, you insane hypocrite. So I went and sought that guy out, and I tried my best to give my entire interest, attention, and love to that fellow. And do you know he wound up being a real interesting guy? And I think that truly he and I have formed a friendship and we'll share a lot on the path of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous. But if I had gone with that feeling that I didn't like that person, if I'd let that be my attitude, and we've talked about that last night, I need to separate my attitude from my thoughts and feelings. My attitude is my angle of approach, and that is 100% how I act towards something. And just like everything else, the way I feel about things is very apt to change according to the way I act toward it. I've already mentioned that I don't need to be controversial. My being controversial helps absolutely nothing. I don' t need to on any soap boxes. I'm made to speak the quiet and loving truth. One of the visions or images that has helped me the most over my whole sobriety is picturing myself going through the day being a little Western Union messenger boy from the 1920s with one of those funny little uniforms and pedaling around on a bicycle because, you see, if that Western Union passenger boy took responsibility for the contents of the messages that he's delivering and responsibility for the reaction to people who are getting the messages to those messages, his job would be so difficult nobody on earth could do it. You know, oh my God, these people's child is dead. You know what are they going to do? You know it'd just be awful. That boy's job is the quiet and loving delivery of the message. And my job is to quiet and love in delivery of truth. And quiet and loving is real important because for me it is very true that honesty without compassion is usually not honesty, it's hostility. You know, I need to deliver my truth quietly and lovingly. And folks, I never have one time changed the truth. Lord, I have tried so much, but I have never on any given day changed what the truth is on that day. And my job is like the little Western Union messenger boy, pedal around, quiet and loving delivery, not responsible for the contents of the message really because I don't create the truth. Not responsible for The Reaction to the Message but simply going. Now, I've spent a lot of time in sobriety trying to balance my life. You know, you get busy and the first thing you know after you get all these gifts from Alcoholics Anonymous, your life is oblivious. And for those of you who were not blessed with going up on a western Kentucky farm, a blivet is ten pounds of manure in a five-pound bag. Excuse me there. I needed some balance in my life, so I went on a quest to balance my life. And I mean I went On A Quest To Balance My Life. Inventories, outside counseling, dominating discussion meetings, prayer without end. Absolutely. And this went on for two or three years. I mean, people were... I knew it was, oh God, here comes Major and that balances life crap again. I was sitting in my home group about two to three years after I had begun my quest to balance my life. and there was a little fellow who has never been there since and to my knowledge was never there before and for some reason I remember that he had gotten out of the asylum two days before and I'm sitting in there discoursing on my efforts to balance my life and this little fellow said Don, if you could balance your life why couldn't you manage it? Of course I can't balance my wife i've got to let god balance my life but talking going back to that stitching that i was talking about that that works so well for me if i'll do that god is wonderful at balancing my life simplifying my life and lord i've tried to get great big great big chunks of simplicity in my life you know done all the writing had all the plans uh and by the way how you say i'm a poor planner. That's not true. I'm a magnificent planner. I suck at executing, but I can really do a bunch of good planning. So it turns out the only way I've simplified my life effectively is I go through every day of my life. I've got numerous little tiny decisions where if I decide one way, it'll be simpler, and if I decide the other way, I'll be more complicated. And it seems like about 80% of those things, it really doesn't make any other difference which way I decide. A real good example is that about 80%, the telephone calls I get involved in, professional and personal, I have a choice of whether to leave the ball in the other person's court to call me back or me take it in my court to do something and get back with them. And I have that choice with no negativity whatsoever. How much simpler it is to leave the ball in their court that's one more thing that i don't have spinning around in my brain somebody calls and asks me to go somewhere or do something when i really know i don t want to go everything in me wants to tell him well i'll have to check my schedule or talk to my wife and get back to you i know i'm not going lord i have just complicated the devil out of my life and then after i'm late on calling them back i've turned it into a nightmare it's taken over my entire life. What I'll have to do is say, thank you, no, but that's not my cup of tea. I'm not going to do that. And those, that practical way of walking through and making those little decisions of taking the simpler way rather than the more compact way is the only way I've ever been able to simplify my life. I talked last night about the big deals. I want to touch on that again because that's so important to me. The big deals will kill me in every area of my life. If I make a big deal about my influence in sponsoring people, I can't effectively sponsor many people. It'll break my back. And I've been so blessed in that regard because I have got guys that this weekend are out somewhere talking to big crowds of people and folks are practically throwing gardenias at them telling them how spiritual and great they are and i've got guys laying in graveyards and sitting in penitentiaries that that i've sponsored um as far as i know i told them all and showed them all the same thing and i'm so blessed because i have sadness for those that haven't made it and i have some joy for those guys that are doing well but i don't feel one tiny bit of responsibility for either one of them i'm not crippled by it because i truly know that whether or not anybody gets to stay sober is totally beyond my power absolutely beyond my power that my job is to just keep on sowing the seeds keep on sewing the seeds and trying to do the next right thing. And if I start trying to take responsibility for the results, either way, it'll break my back. In my life, and I don't think I mentioned this last night, but in my business, in practicing law, I've been blessed with knowing and working closely with some really successful lawyers. I mean, people that are overwhelmingly successful. Those folks I have never seen have a big deal, whether they represent the United States Senator on a criminal charge or whatever they're doing. It's, oh, I don't know, Don, let's look that up. Let's call this most lowly clerk over there and ask her. We don't own it. On the other hand, about a half dozen guys there in Louisville, and I love these guys, know them, love to talk to them, who take the bus to traffic court. Their butts are falling out of these threadbare suits that they've got, and they're trying to snag $10 or $20 in traffic court, and I know everyone I'm loving. And any morning, I can walk in there and say, Hey, come here, Alex. Come here, Sam. What's going on? And I guarantee you they'll be eaten up with big deals. They will have huge big deals so big deals just simply break my back and I need to keep it in my mind because it's so true whatever it is. Anytime I make a big deal out of anything that is not God and not these 12 steps, What I'm really making a big deal out of is me. And when I do that, I'm back into ego and I'm back into alcoholism. Very much a part of practicing the principles for me is sponsorship. Both being sponsored, that's the principle of humility, and some other principles too, and sponsoring folks. And I'll just talk about sponsorship a little bit. If you're new and you don't have a sponsor, get a sponsor. Quit looking for the perfect sponsor. There isn't one. You know, find somebody who's done the first nine steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and living on the last three and ask them to be a sponsor. And sponsorship is not a marriage. If that doesn't work out in the next few months, you don't have to go to the AA court and get a divorce. You know what? Get a sponsor, and you're not going to choose anybody who's ill-intentioned. Do what they say, andyou'll be okay. is whether or not you're somebody you can identify with. I've got friends, and Bob does too, who says the last thing we need when we get here is somebody we can identify it with. We want somebody that's looking at 10 years in the penitentiary, somebody whose love life is a total mess, somebody who's bankrupt. The last thing he may need is somebody that we can't identify with when we come to him. get here but but uh my first sponsor cherry and and then weston i think was more beloved of cherry than i was and that's just not a sibling rivalry when i asked chariot sponsored me cherry did not like me and i did not like cherry and i don't tell you the truth i don' t think we ever got all well about one another uh we never rode in the same car together we never shared a meal Cherry had never called me except to return my phone call. But Cherry Carpenter was always there for me as a guide through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he always told me the truth, and when I called him and needed him to make time for me, he always made the time. So your sponsor doesn't have to be your best friend. On the other hand, my two sponsors now are both very good friends of mine And both those things work. So please, please have a sponsor. Don't look for the perfect one. Stress, by the way. I haven't talked about stress in a while, so I'll talk about stress into my life today. My boy Billy that I mentioned earlier today, Billy H., that so many of you guys know. Billy and I practice law in the same building. Billy andI talk a lot. And about now, I guess 12, 15 years ago, Billy and we were having one of our morning telephone conversations. And if you had a recording of that conversation, you couldn't make a case in court because Billy and I are too slick for that. But the essence of that conversational was that stress was just the byproduct of being such high-profile, busy guys in both Alcoholics Anonymous and the legal profession. And it was just a price we had to pay actually for our magnificence. And then it hit me. Stress is impossible unless I've made a big deal out of something that is not God in these 12 steps and therefore a big deal out to me. So now when I feel stressed, it's not an inevitable byproduct of my greatness. It's a specific identifiable spiritual mistake. And I know way it is. And you know, going back to Chuck C and the new pair of glasses, another wonderful thing that Chuck says in there, he says there's an easy way to do this and there's a hard way. And the right way is the easy way and the hard way is the wrong way. And I believe that's true of everything in my life. If it's hard, I'm doing it wrong. I'm simply doing it wrong. I'm not a bleeding deacon that believes that life is necessarily difficult. I believe my life gets real difficult because i make it that way i don't believe there is any scarcity in my god's universe whatsoever i don'T BELIEVE THERE IS ANY SCARCITY OF MONEY SEX RECOGNITION RECOVERY CARS HOUSES I DON'T I DONT BELieve THERE'S ANY SCarcity OF ANYTHING IN MY GOD'S UNIVERSE I BELIVE I CREATE MY SCARcity THROUGH MY OWN SELF-CENTERNESS THRU MY OWNA FEAR AND WHEN i'm able to do that stitching with the next right stitch and let go of the patterns i think my god will take care of me another thing that uh that i really like to use in the applying the principles in my life is is what i've come to call the principle of the bad hands and bob being from las vegas might especially appreciate this but the same weekend that i referred to earlier today when I went to Cleveland and began the new journey on Step 6 and 7. There was an old boy up there, and he's dead now. His name was Jim. And Jim had been sober 20 years at that time. And there was a lot not to admire about Jim. Jim had run a large business in the ground, owed the government a couple million dollars on withholding tax, always sober. and he was living in Las Vegas underground and had it at that time for seven or eight years and was making a living playing poker. When my conversation with Jim, that piqued my interest, you know, money without work always interests me. And Jim told me something. Jim said, I'll tell you what, he said, Don, there are tens of thousands of people that want to make a living playing poker and said there's really just a handful of people that can do it and he said the difference in the ones that can't do it and the ones that can has absolutely nothing to do with the good hands he said any idiot can play the good hands, the entire difference between being able to succeed or not is what you do with the bad hands and I've found that that's true in every area of my life, when I've been dealt a deal today that I don't even want to look at, all I want to do is just fold it up and get away. What I do with that and the ones like it is going to make the difference in whether I succeed or not. It's not going to be what I do when it's all roses and it's going exactly the way I want it to. My difference, the difference of whether I'll succeed will be what to do with those bad hands. my decision process let me tell you about my decision process now it's not nearly as important as I thought it was in early sobriety I would sit around and agonize about these big decisions in my life and I'll tell you what it seemed like, it seemed like that God had this deal set up kind of like a game show and if i guess the right square i got trips to acapulco and new cars and everything but if i guessed the wrong starts a square i get dragons and it seemed like a peculiar way for 11 god set up universe um and i know now that that's not true that's just another way that's another manifestation of self and blowing my importance all out of proportion You see, if I've got a good faith decision. Now, the question of whether to go to an AA meeting or rob a liquor store is probably not a good-faith decision. But if I'm going to do it, I'm not going to rob a store. If I've done a good faithful decision and I've gone in a room by myself and I prayed and I have drawn a line down the middle of a piece of paper and written on one side why I should do one thing and on the other side why i should do the other and i still can't tell which way to go it doesn't matter which way i go because either path i take if i do god's will a step at a time if i follow that little spark of the divine in me and i'm gonna take that stitch at the right place it's gonna be just fine and either way i don't if i don' t do that it's going to turn into a total bucket of crap so what's the big deal about which way I turn Again, it's just another way of blowing my importance and my little old brain completely out of proportion. One thing I need to keep in mind is that I am too busy not to go to meetings. And let me tell you what I mean by that. There is some magic. I don't know what that magic is. I have no idea how it works. But going to meetings somehow magically expands time and energy. How it does it, I don' t know. But it does. So I truly am too busy not to go to meetings. I need to keep in mind that things like gratitude and faith and my attitude are not feelings, they're not thoughts, they are actions. You know, I thought faith was that nice warm feeling that God had me in the palm of his or her hand and everything was all right and going to stay all right. No, it's not faith. That's the reward for faith. faith is a really difficult scary thing when that little spark of the divine in me knows what that next well what that next stitch needs to be and my brain my alcoholism my fear is telling me that i'll not get something i want or i'll lose something i don't want to lose if i take that stitch there that's what faith is faith happens to me when my palms are sweating and my knees are shaking and my guts feel like jelly that nice warm feeling that i'm in the palm of god's hands comes as the reward for faith. The same thing is true with gratitude. The gratitude that keeps me sober, actually that really nice feeling of laying around and feeling so grateful for everything probably doesn't have a whole bunch of spiritual value. That's just comfortable. Gratitude, the gratitude that keep me sober is going to Alcock's Anonymous when I don't feel like going, when I do not want to go, but I know I ought to be grateful for Alcock Anonymous. hummus it's going and finding that guy that i didn't like that i started to blow off and really giving my interest attention and love to that guy that's the gratitude the gratitude that saves my actions not to save my butt is not a noun it's a verb it's what i do and i need to keep that in mind uh and by the way i continually confuse faith and hope. I have wasted so much time trying to have faith that my health, that my kids, that my money, that My sex life will be okay. And I ain't ever going to successfully have faith of that because that's not subject to faith. I'm not even dealing with faith until I try to get okay regardless of what happens to my health to to my kids, to my money, to my sex life. That's faith. The rest of it is hope and the rest of it is man will. I think I mentioned last night that whatever it is, what am I getting out of this is the wrong question because if I ask that question and then ponder it about 30 seconds the answer is always not enough. So it's just a wrong question. Wrong question about anything the right question for me is what can i bring to this and of course that triggers that great paradox that's when i'm going to really get something out of things when i've not trying to get out of it but i'm trying to give to it uh i need to realize that this is not a hostile universe that i've got to risk my living and what i need from it from an unwilling hostile universe by my iron will and my sterling intellect i need an understanding of what blocks me from all the gifts of my god is me and my fear and my self-centeredness i need to keep in mind that every morning when i wake up the universe is playing a tune and i got two choices i neither dance to that tune or i can sit in the corner and sulk and whine and carry on about to about the tune not suiting me but i don't have the choice of changing that tune the universe can play that tune that day and the choice i've got is whether i'm going to dance and be joyful in it or whether i've going to be miserable and suck about it and let me talk about my days of life i get my days alive and uh i don't want to get too much into numbers but this is important to me do you know if i take all the days before i was born and all the things that are going to happen after I leave this life. Compared to this little span of a few years that I'm alive and able to see you guys and ableto communicate with you and able toe enjoy this wonderful, wonderful, glorious gift of being alive today, if I do the math on that, the odds against me being alive and being able to be with you guys here today on this particular day are greater than the odds against me winning Powerball. Every day of life is mathematically a greater win than winning Power ball. And it's such a shame, such a shame. Well, it's a sin and I used to hate that word but Cherry straightened me out on that. The definition he gave me from sin is from the Greek. It's to miss the mark. It' s to miss the mark and I live with that. What a missing him the mark to take this beautiful gift of a day of life and throw it back in my God's face because I don't like the rapid paper. You know, Andy, today it's to whatever tune is being played and enjoy it and love it. Old boy down in Nashville named Gene told me something one time. In fact, we called him Crazy Gene Winston. He said there are no degrees of honesty. So on any given day you're either honest or you're not. And I thought Gene was crazy. And Gene may have been, but I think Gene was right about that. There's also no degrees of being forgiving. You know, if I say I'm going to be the most forgiving thing there ever was, unless you step over that line and then damn you, I'll not even attempt to forgive you. I'm not partially forgiving. I am totally unforgiving because I've reserved for myself the right to draw that line. So the same thing is true with tolerance. You know, love and tolerance is our code. And that doesn't mean that things like efficiency and responsibility are not great things and that they don't have spiritual components of them. They do. But the way I read my book, it says very clearly that love and tolerence of others is our coat. That's the AA code. For that reason, if I have a choice between tough love and I really have a good faith choice, I'm not telling you I don't ever exercise tough love. I do. But if I've got a good-faith choice that I really don't know what the right thing to do is, I wish to choose and believe I do choose every time to err on the side of kindness. I would a whole lot rather have on my tombstone darn was canned than to have darn doesn't take any crap and you know we talk about practice and these principles and we forget things like courtesy to me there's absolutely nothing more consistent with and important to the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous than simple courtesy, courtesy to those people closest to me Courtesy to strangers, courtesy to people in Alcoholics Anonymous, courtesy to people I sponsor. Courtescy. I think courtesy for me is a really, really spiritual deal. You know, I always want to set policy so that I always in this situation, I'll always do that. I can't go on spiritual cruise control because there have never been in two situations exactly alike in the history of the universe. And I've still got to listen to that little small voice inside me, that conscience, that spark of the divine, and try to take that next stitch in the right place. And I love you all, and thank you for putting up with me today, and thank YOU, Bob, for your wonderful sharing. Bye.