The Emotional Enema of the Fifth Step – Larry K.

There is a town in England that had a wisdom and foresight that many places in America wish we had had, and 50 years ago foresaw the ecology crisis that we're trying to wrestle with today. And they had a town meeting to take steps to handle it in advance. And immediately at the start of the meeting recognized that the combustion engine was their single greatest threat. It would pollute their air. And without any difficulty, they banned it then and forevermore, at least down to this day. Nothing with one is allowed in the town, whether you live there or just are traveling through there no car no motorcycle no van no truck their big problem then was to find some way to get around and the rest of the day they weighed the pros and the cons of every other means of transportation for themselves and for their burdens and finally at the end of theday they settled on the mode of transportation that From that day down to this, they've held in the town. They've settled on the donkey, which becomes important as a means of transportation. And should you ever visit there, therefore, you'll notice that everybody must have their own. If you look carefully enough, all the older men have their old asses. All the older ladies have their asses and they do. The young guys probably have theirs also. Because of how important it is, people are pushing their ass and pushing their ass, and if you push your ass too hard, it breaks down on you. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought what your life would be like without your ass. It's exceptionally uncomfortable. Things seem to pile up on you, and so you borrow somebody else's ass to get out of the problem. Has anyone else's ass ever moved fast enough for you? So what you try to do, you try and move fast enough You try to help it along in public This leads to a lot of fights because people don't like their ass kicked by somebody else Young gals are the same in England and in the United States And a young gal will park her ass where it doesn't belong And the local cop has to come along and pinch it Once a year Of course, since they're so important all the time, people are peddling ass in town. I mean, you can just imagine how much... Anyway, once a year, everybody parades their ass in public. We're on television. I've got to behave a little bit. Once a year... Everybody parades Their Ass in Public, and they try to pick the best-looking ass in town. Now, I don't know if you've ever really studied asses a lot, but they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. and when they've picked the best looking ass politicians are the same and you'll find the local mayor kissing ass for votes Sunday morning everybody hauls their ass off to go to church including the local Catholic priest and in the middle of the Sunday that leads to the story that I've started with right in the Middle of the Mass an earthquake struck the town and everybody ran out of the church to save their ass except for the priest because he had tied his ass to a tree right on the side of the church and those windows were broken in the church and he hoped just to jump through a window and land on his ass what he didn't know was that was exactly where the main crevice of the earthquake was and he fell into the crevace by mistake proving that even a priest cannot tell his ass from a hole in the ground I don't know how strict the censorship is on the television. I wondered if that came across, you know, all the older men have beeps and all the older ladies have beeps. That actually introduces the theme I want to share upon with you. My inability to tell my ass from a hole in the ground because I'm Larry Kowalski and I'm an alcoholic. I also happen to be a functioning Catholic priest who throughout much of his life, in essence, couldn't tell his ass from the honogram. I haven't found it necessary or desirable to take a drink or a mood-changing chemical today or any today since May 21, 1972. Now, in one of the kind of remarks that Jim hinted at, hear this very carefully. For that I am not grateful. That'll keep you awake for a few minutes until I get to the point where I'd like to share on that. That occurred to me right after Mother's Day in Ohio this year, and I shared on that theme a little bit. I had a dream about a month and a half ago. And I rarely remember my dreams. I'll remember less than one a year. I woke up right at the end of it. In the dream, I was moving from one home to another. And in the moving, I couldn't find my wallet. And I would think the wallet's in a coat in a closet. And I opened the closet, and the closet was filled with things of mine that I had forgot to pack, and my car was already filled, and there was no room. And then I would think the wallet's under the bed, and I'd go look under the bed. And under the bit, it was just jammed with things of mine again that I had forgotten to pack, and there was no room because the car was filled. And when I awoke, I instantly understood the dream, and it really disturbed me. It really turned my stomach for about 36 hours. what I understood by this stream and I'm not into dreams was that I had so overloaded my life with material things that I didn't really need that I have lost my sense of identity because that's all the wallet signified there was never a concern for money it was for the cards that are symbolic of who I am and what I am and I instantly in thinking of this the next day started seeing confirmations of this. I've been talking to a young priest several weeks before who reminded me of something I said about nine years ago. I told him never to give me anything that I wouldn't be free later to give to someone else, and I meant that in my early sobriety. But about six or seven years ago, I stopped giving away and I started hoarding, and I stated amassing far more than I needed. As an example, that the night of this dream, I'm heavy into stereo equipment. I love music. I had the equivalent of two Sony Walkman, three small portable players and one large one and seven quality cassette decks. I had three really entire stereo systems. Now, I had just so overloaded myself that I was so paying attention to material things that I wasn't listening to God. And as I hope to show you, I have really experienced my own identity only through the experience of a loving God through this program. And this I saw the next day also. I drive about 3,500 miles a month going to AA and servicing three mission parishes. And in my car, I've spent a lot of time meditating. And the meditations in the past sometimes have been very fruitful. But for about two months, certainly before the dream, 95 percent of my time driving meditating was spent distracted thinking about things I had that wasn't where that weren't working and about how I had to get them fixed. Overloading my circuits, wondering and worrying about the present. And I just was really losing a sense of who and what I was. and i had to take action on this and i began the action by immediately starting to share things we had a fire in the town the small oklahoma town where i live and i just went through my wardrobe and i weeded it out and not the things i don't want because that wouldn't help me at all but i warded it weeded out with things i really want and things i like and i gave away about a quarter of what i had and i started giving away my stereo equipment in order to be free And by the day, with everything I gave away, I felt freer, less burdened, and more capable of finding and rediscovering myself. for the past month I have had a deeper inner experience of God a deeper inner sense of freedom than I have ever known in the 13 years that I've been sober and this is very important because another sign of the problem I was having was I was having recurring problems in my area of my sex life. And I'm a compulsive overeater. I've been in the OA program for about nine years. And I hadn't been breaking my abstinence, but at meals I was eating more than I should and I was putting on weight. And this was really disastrous for me. And I was asking God to handle my sex problems and I saw even before the dream that I was stuffing myself on life. I was pigging out. I would get what I want before I wanted it in every single area of my life, and I knew that I couldn't pig out in all of life and ask God to help me diet in one or two areas. And my life has been healthy, and my life is consisted of an exceptionally healthy total diet of saying no to so many things I don't need so that I can say yes to the things you need. And in this, discover myself, discover God, and discover you. And that's what I wanna share about. I want to share about my own identity, what the one I grew up with, my lack of identity, the efforts I made that didn't work, how alcohol and drugs gave me a sense of identity and then stripped it away, and then how the steps really helped me discover who I am. Before I do this, just let me first say that I want to thank the committee. Who the hell's the committee? I want to thank you all. There's no place that I would rather be invited to talk than Omaha, Nebraska. There's not a place I have ever been that I have been received more warmly. You have an enthusiasm that I brag about in other places that I've gone. The way I say it, you stand up in Omaha, you say your name, they go crazy, you want to quit right then because you can only go downhill after that. I was able to be here last night, and I don't want in any way to make any of you feel uncomfortable if you weren't. We had a fabulous speaker, and that started making me feel uncomfortable because I felt he really got us off to such an excellent start. I've got to kind of live up to the standard. I've been here before. I've had a second pressure in my own brain. And I've got to live up to my own reputation. And I'm going to have to live with it. I've gotta live up to my old need to be perfect. And fortunately, I try to write a daily 10-step and I wrote out all that crap last night. And I saw that in the past I've had a lot of popularity. People liked me and I tried to be what people wanted. This was in my drinking and in my sobriety. And the only voice I really ever listened to is the voice inside me. And I got to be me. And I go to be able to accept and live with who and what I am. So what I really want to do is try to share who and what I am with you and that's what I'm going to try to do in this period of time that I'm with you. But also by way sort of an introduction as I thank you all for your invitation to be here I want to make a few comments on being priest. I don't have father on my name tag they put it on the program it often doesn't go on and I don' t dress like a priest at AA ever unless some emergency has forced me to do some priestly work and then quickly go to a meeting. And one reason that I've shared before about this has been, the reason I do this is we had a Colonel John where I sobered up until he got drunk and came back as John. And whatever separates me from you is likely to threaten my sobriety. But in thinking about identity the past month, I've hit a deeper level for this. You know, I have felt, as I'm going to share with you, like absolutely nothing all of my life. And I'm finding myself in here. And I honestly don't want any of you accepting me for a role that I play in the world. I feel a part of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I want to feel that I'm a part of Alcoholic Anonymous because of who I am, because I'm Larry, not because of some title of honor. And so if you ever deal with me in the program, please, so that I can know my peace and so that i can relate with you, please honor me here in calling me Larry. If you deal with me in the church, I would expect that as an honor to the institution that I represent, You give me some church title with which you're comfortable. As a priest, I feel able to help people with two problem areas, and these two I quickly want to touch on, and I do it almost all the time I talk. If right now I had an attack of appendicitis and you were taking me to the closest Catholic church, I hope I'd have the strength to punch you out, call for an ambulance and pray that the damn doctors would perform the surgery the way they should see i believe in a god who can heal and in two instances of my life weirdly without my wanting it god used me as an instrument for immediate physical healing in the lives of two people so i know god can touch people directly but the god i've discovered through the heart of AA, I believe doesn't want a few people healed in extraordinary ways from physical disease. I think he gave us medical science so that all of his children who are possibly can, can be cured and healed. And God's normal way of healing appendicitis is medicine. And if I go to church, I'm telling God that I want it done my way, not his. And my God doesn't take orders. Now, I believe God has given us a normal way to heal the disease of alcoholism and it isn't in churches. He can and he does heal a few people in churches, I've been spiritual director to an alcoholic who in essence really has never come to AA's made one meeting late in his sobriety, 12 years sober with good serenity. He stays active and he must share in his own church group and church work what God gives him. And he reminds me that we're not the only answer to the disease, but every statistic I pick up tells me we are the normal answer to the diseased. And if I were to go to church, and I did, and say, heal me this way, I'm telling God to do it my way, and again he doesn't take orders. I get sober in AA. I read the Bible drunk. I read the big book and learned how to stay sober, and now I can find God in the Bible. If I were operated on on Friday, so that's the first thing, why I don't think there's any treason to the Catholic Church or any church, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, by coming to Alcoholics Anonymous for sobriety. If I was operated on Friday I don' t think I belong in church on Sunday. My stitches are too weak. And I think when we come to Alcoholic Anonymous us, many of us have emotional stitches that are too weak. So that for a period of time, I feel we ought to stay away from our organized churches depending upon the church and what we're going to run into. As a Catholic priest, I'd feel very free to say this about the Catholic Church because most people think that a Catholic is only allowed one marriage. And they decide that they really want to make an effort to stay sober and they turn their life and their will over to the care of God. And they may have to go hunting up that wife and throw out her third husband so they can live this third step they're taking, and that can't be. And then a lot of other religions say you shouldn't smoke, dance, gamble, and drink. And you don't come to AA without doing at least one of those. And if you're like me, you probably went for the package deal. And so what happens is people go back to church when the emotional stitches are weak and they get hit with a ton of guilt. My philosophy is that it's healthiest to come to this program until you find God so powerfully that you can't thank him enough here. And then you aren't going to stay sober, according to our big book, if you stunt your spiritual growth. and I trust God enough to believe he will guide you when he wants you in a church and you best follow that guidance when he gives it and until that time I have no trouble with anybody who had been in any church who still don't feel comfortable going back to it because they don't want to go back to the God that they knew then I hope maybe to share something on that in a while we have an Al-Anon in Oklahoma called Ramona that I hope a lot of you have heard. Ramona and I were on a program last year in Memphis, and she used a phrase that I'd never heard her use before. I'm sure she did, but I wasn't ready for it. And it was the loneliness of onlyness. And it hit me that hard that I shared the next day and everything I shared was based on that. my experience of this and how I used alcohol and drugs and Al-Anonism, because I believe I have the characteristics of an Al-Anon also, to escape my loneliness at different times of my drinking and my sobriety. Ramona and I were together in Hot Springs two weekends ago and she used the same phrase and I was listening to her and as I listened, something was different. She talked about the love that her father showed her, the horse rides, the cooling the feet in the stream. And I never felt that. I had good parents, but I never felt love. And as she was talking, I experienced something deeper of myself. And there's a deeper loneliness than onlyness, and it's the loneliness of nothingness or the emptiness of nothingness. And that's what I live with. Now when I say this, let me, as a little aside, say that not all of you experienced that. As a clergyman in AA, I've been blessed to hear a lot of fifth steps, Al-Anon's, AA's, NA's. And I know that there is no single universal trait that every alcoholic has except we drank alcohol, not even all of us commercial alcohol. Some stay drunk on vanilla or Listerine or something like that. You'll hear speakers in the sincerity of their heart go from their own experience to say all alcoholics do this. The two that I hear the most often are the all-alcoholics lie and all-alkoholics steal. That's not true. I'm not saying this because of me because I lied and I stole. I stole every cent that was in the porphyrn of the first church I was in. I am not St. Joseph with a drinking problem. I just am not. So I'm nicht sagen das um mich selbst zu verweisen. Ich sage es, weil ich lese von Menschen who shared deep things they did in other areas, but who never lied or who never stole. And alcoholism and alcohol are cunning, baffling, and powerful. And if I say something that I experienced and say all alcoholics experienced this and you didn't, you're likely to think you're not an alcoholic. You know, people with any disease have different symptoms. Not everybody with appendicitis have exactly the same symptoms. Some people have stomach nausea. Others don't. Some people of a pain in the side. Others don't. Not everybody with cancer has the same symptoms, and that's so true of alcoholism. You may not have had my symptoms. The symptoms I'm going to talk about are the symptoms that I have, that a lot of alcoholics have, and a lot Al-Anon's have. And I want to just take a moment and say something about our Al-A-Nons. You know, very often we overlooked them. Every valid thing that I know about dealing with the people that I sponsor, I have really learned from our Al-Anon program. a a a teaches me what to do with my alcoholism listening to alanons teaches me what to with your alcoholism i would never never have learned anything about tough love if alanons had not shared as a matter of fact when i think of signs of God's power, one of the supreme examples of what God's power can do in this earth is the serenity that some Al-Anon's achieve living with a drinking alcoholic, loving him and raising a family. And I think we've got to respect that and stop ignoring them and short circuiting them often because so many of the alcoholics that I sponsor are raising future alcoholics and drug addicts, and they're desperately and deadly going to need the principles of Al-Anonism if they're going to stop being enablers and start showing the tough love that may save lives. So I have nothing but the deepest respect for Al-ANON. Let me say one other thing on disease and different symptoms that may help some of you. Just as the symptoms differ by disease, so do treatments. Not everybody who get the same treatment have exactly the same immediate effects. Some people from chemotherapy are wiped out. Other people don't feel anything. Hopefully, the long-range benefits are the same for both. Now, that's important to hear in AA. Some people come in and they get immediate cloud nine. Bill Wilson was almost like that at the start. Dr. Bob trudged along. Some people in a fifth step are climbing the ceiling and they talk about this and everybody is looking for that experience in their fifth step. And I've had people go into deep depressions because they weren't climbing the ceiling. And I try to warn them about this from my experience, one out of 50 people on the average have a real emotional joke. One out of50 people have the opposite. And that's me. When I update my inventory, I walk out feeling worse than I came in. I've just gone through all my crap. why should I feel good? 48 out of 50 people walk out not sure how they feel. My phrase for it is it's like they've got an emotional enema, a spiritual enema. They're cleansed inside but they don't know what's there. All of us eventually will experience the same promises that are on page 75 of the big book. We can look the world in the eye, we can be alone at perfect peace and ease and we begin to really feel often the nearness of our creator. Those are the guaranteed results But the immediate results can differ very, very much. So my symptoms are not going to be the symptoms of every alcoholic. But I grow up feeling absolutely like nothing for reasons inside me. And I can't explain why it happened. I never felt the right to live. I'm a total nothing inside. I marvel at people who can just go through life feeling good about themselves. I don't have any right by my feelings, and this includes in my sobriety, to occupy any space at any time. Therefore, I have no rights to defend myself. I've never comfortably been able to return anything. I buy something defective, I'll beg a friend to take it back and exchange it. I bought my first phonograph, I didn't know how to work it and it wasn't working. I couldn't even call up to find out how to take care of it because in here I have new rights. And if I have now rights and can't defend myself, my anger has to turn inward and this leads to depression and guilt. How can I have any right to live? I've got to feel guilty for everything I do. We people, and the example that's the clearest and I always use it is, you spill coffee on me, I'm going to apologize. It just happens. You step on my feet, I'm gonna say I'm sorry, I don't belong here. And I'm not gonna, you know, something goes wrong, what did I do? It's just my instinctive feelings. And if I have no right to life and I don't, then how can I succeed? I have total guilt for what I've been and what I am. And I've got to have total anxiety facing the future. How can I be anything? I don'T have a right to be. I'm a nothing. And so I lived with constant anxiety. When I came in here, I bought aspirin by the 500 or 1,000 tablet bottle and they didn't last long. And that was on top of Alka-Seltzers, sleeping pills, tranquilizers, street drugs, and alcohol. And I never got rid of my tension headaches. My stomach was constantly uptight. I didn't know stomachs could relax. And four times a week, I'd have psychosomatic diarrhea after the evening meal. I could never set an appointment. It was all pure tension. A year and a half into the program, I took Exlax, and it was a tremendous sign the program worked. you know i almost always remember to put that in because people always laugh i didn't think it was funny i thought it was great you know really it was just it was a real good sign for me things were happening i was growing in the program things different way i was relaxing inside i didn't have that tension all the time i didn'T know that i could live that way so i lived with anxiety and i lived WITH TENSION just to give you some examples of this if you have feelings like this, and a lot of you will. I had no right to waste time. I just can't do nothing. Nine years sober, I started learning to play. I tried several canoe trips. Ten years sober, I started skiing, snow skiing. I never thought I could do anything athletic. I'm a totally addicted snow skier. I went on five ski vacations last year. I can't ski black slopes, but I've got in excellent ski style on blue slopes. And when I go skiing, I forget the world. And so many people with the feelings I have who have to work all the time, I watch that I'm sponsoring get burned out periodically because they can never just stop to do nothing. A lot of them will go on vacations, but they're really serving their family. And I tell them one session at least every two weeks, a morning, afternoon or an evening, they do only for themselves, Not with any member of their family They do it because they deserve just to waste time Something totally non-productive I could never do anything for me Now, every Christmas And once or twice in the course of the year I go out looking for a Christmas present for Larry If I spend time trying to buy presents for you and not for me My body talk is telling me you're important and I'm not And that is my body talk I don't buy something I need I go out and I buy something I don' t need And I really put time And thought into it Because it tells me I'm worth something And I've got to act my way Into those feelings Because my feelings are I'm not worth anything Ten years sober I was gifted with a ring That had a ten-point diamond I always wear it When I speak at AA And I was about five miles Away from home Driving to the airport And it occurred to me I didn't bring it I wish I had because I love it but the first time I wore that and was talking my sponsor happened to be there and I apologized away the ring and he jumped me so fast after I was through talking you couldn't believe it and he told me he never wanted to hear me apologize for making myself look good and I want you to know that I don't apologize at all for doing that I have a wardrobe that I do not believe and it is just for AA because I take great joy in dressing up the package that God has made me as his gift in my life to you. That damn camera really killed me. Biggest thing since I got here, first, you know, the second time I'm on television in AA, it happened once before, but that time I didn't know it and didn't think about it. I spent hours trying to think whether this wardrobe or the blue wardrobe would look better on television. I should put on Jack's jacket just so the people in the rooms can tell me if I made the right choice or not. But that's growth for me. I want to look good, and my feelings are that I have no right to look good. You can't dress up. You have no right to waste something on nothing. And it was real sad that the feelings that I had inside were supported by my outside world. I had loving parents, but I grew up with no room in my own family. I've got an older brother and a younger sister my parents had a bedroom, my sister had a bedroom, I shared it with my brother it was his. I slept and changed clothes there and that's all I was a nomad in my own family and I didn't realize this until 10 years sober what I have today is precious to me you walk into my room my home and without being asked walk on over and turn on the television you've made my resentment list and that is because I had nothing I was no mad if nobody was in the kitchen and they were all watching television, I studied in the kitchen. If they were busy in the kitchen, I found a different room and I was shiftless. It's like I was nothing in my own family. My brother was real cruel. My ears stuck out very noticeably as a child. He called me Big Ears, Dumble. And I grew up feeling physically ugly, feeling like my ears went from wall to wall. And I learned something. I don't live in reality. I begin living with the world of my feelings. I could look in a mirror, but see, when I looked in a mirror, I blotted out what was there. I didn't see my face. I started having a cyst grow and I missed it for months because I would shave every day and blot out what I saw there. I could not picture my own face. Eleven years sober, I was at a conference in Jonesboro, Arkansas and after one of the talks, we all held hands and someone sang very prayerfully, Our Father and I pictured what I looked like. That was fabulous. Your love and long exposure to it had gradually enabled me to accept my looks. Now, I've shared that before. What I haven't told you is this whole thing was so delicate that I didn't try to do it again until two months ago, a year and a half later. Because I didn' t know that it would work. It worked once, and that was fabulous. I could picture what I looked like. And then I waited three weeks before I tried it again. And now I can do it at will. I'm not afraid to bring my looks into my memory. I don't reject what I am, but it's love that has enabled me to accept myself physically. I didn't have that because of my brother. My brother had a lot of cruel traits and he could always get my sister as his ally. And growing up in our family, my choices were to be with them and treat it as nothing with cruelty or to be alone. And loneliness was less painful than company. And strangely, that same scene has been played out for much of my life. The world treats me as nothing. Nine years as a priest. Not one single priest ever called me from the Diocese of Oklahoma socially to say, you know, just in any way. And so I was playing back the same pattern with my peers. My choices were to be alone and not take the pain of their rejection, treating me like nothing or being with them and being hurt. And I stayed away from them. And I'm only now ready to go and rejoin their company. I've grown enough to 13 years sober because I was just nothing. There was nobody my age in the neighborhood, so I had a tag along with my brother. And when you're four, you can't play ball the way seven-year-olds do. And so I wasn't wanted, and I grew up thinking I was an athletic washout and unwanted. I started school a month after I turned five, started first grade, graduated from high school at 16 and college at 20. And there was another sad irony. I went to school in a Polish ghetto, a little closed community, and I lived outside the ghetto. They all had their friendships and I was an outsider. They knew each other. And I was so young, I was just no good. And again, I wasn't wanted. I wasn'T the last pick. I wasn' t picked. And so I'd go play with the gals. And I don't know that I've shared that very often. I consider it sissy. But I was dying for recognition, and I was treated as a nothing with the guys. And when I got out of that school system and went to high school, I transferred school systems and came in from the outside. Nobody my age in the neighborhood. I'd have to travel a mile and a half in junior and senior high schools, different directions for friends. And they were together all the time in their neighborhood, and I came in form outside. And I just don't feel accepted. I wasn't really. They tolerated me, but inside I'm a nothing. And that just continued. those of you who don't know those feelings be grateful you don't those of you who know what I'm talking about I'm just walking through your pain and telling you that I know so much what it's like I had nine months of total depression at the end of my drinking like a turtle in my shell could I just stayed there I didn't want to go out into a world where I was nothing that didn't wind me and I look for an out from this and I've tried everything I've tried material goods. I tried to become something by what I had, and it didn't work because things would age and they would stop distracting me from myself. I triedto become somethingby the power to do things. That's why I stole the money. Not for alcohol. I had the church wine closet. Not for pills. I had a secret supply. But it was to dothings in the area of sex and other areas of my life, to impress people, to buy friendship. But the money was never enough, and I felt emptiness inside here. i tried to become somebody by what i did i became a priest because i grew up in a polish ghetto where priests were respected but if you're frustrated and you become a priest you become a frustrated priest and that's when my alcoholism exploded i had everything there in the play man from la mancha not the movie there's a song to each his dulcinea everybody should have his dream but the song contains the word a man with moon it's prudent to recall a man with moonlight in his hands has nothing there at all and I had moonlight I had a dream and when I became a priest it was just nothing and I was still nothing and there was nothing else to dream nothing else to distract and there was only alcohol at that point I tried to become somebody by being super active but my activity showed this streak of self-destruct that so many of us who are alcoholic have and this was its first real manifestation I was very active in an anti-war movement in a military town had the CID the FBI and God knows everybody else tapping phones taking pictures and out to destroy me but I loved that because love me or hate me but don't ignore me because I'm nothing and the three times in my life that I've been controversial were some of the neatest moments I've had before the program. People noticed me, and that's better than just not being called. The saddest thing that happened in school would be Valentine's Day. Charlie Brown has a special in which Schultz has a specialty where Charlie Brown goes out with a valise to the mailbox to pick up his Valentine's and there's nothing there. I can't watch that thing. I doubt if I'll ever watch it again. It's so painful because I lived that. I got the fewest Valentines year after year after year in grammar school and it killed me. I didn't, I wasn't not getting Valentines because they disliked me. I just wasn't seen the great nothing. And that's an emptiness and that's deadly. I tried with sex, but I carry so many hangups that sex didn't make me feel good. It just made me feel more guilty and hate myself all the more. I tried with people. I tried with the best psychiatrist I've ever heard of and I just got worse and he had to fail for me to learn that no human power could have relieved my alcoholism and my nothingness is the main symptom of my alcohol and I can't live with that. I tried with friends hoping that if I brought you into my world I'd become somebody but when you started getting close I started getting desperate because you would see that nothingness. I could fool you. I could camouflage it from a distance, but as you got close to me, you were going to touch that nothingess that I couldn't stand and the garbage that I wouldn't live with. And friends would backfire then at a certain point. Two things worked. I could go on to others, but two things worked I want to tell you about. The first was my fantasy world. Drinking and sober in my early sobriety, I spent more hours in fantasy than in reality. at times in my life fantasy was far more important than alcohol as an escape from my nothingness because in my fantasies I was everything I was everyone I was the perfect athlete the perfect scholar the perfect businessman the crap heads of my world real world were in my fantasy world but I always won and they always noticed me and a year and a half to two years sober I was in one of these fantasies and the phone rang And it took every ounce of willpower I had to leave a world where I was something and come back to a world Where I was nothing and I saw how simple it would be to make the decision. It isn't worth the pain And to stay in the dream and become a napoleon Because there's less pain I also saw why I can't afford daydreams and I had a stop daydreaming at that point Because while they were a temporary release my mind knew I wasn't this perfect person and the fantasy was a condemnation of what I really was because it was what I really wasn't and I've got to be mean the other thing that worked for me for years was the academic world I did well in school starting with the 6th grade B student in junior high A B student in senior high A student through 12 years of college I got recognition I got acceptance I got awards And when I spoke as recently as a week ago, I didn't know why I left that world. It shows you how you can black things out. I left the world for a good reason. I got thrown out of it. I got thrown out of the seminary. They begged me to leave so they wouldn't have to throw me out. Well, it's hard to get a lot of recognition when they're telling you to get your butt out. And the crisis time of my life began at that point. And I manipulated and fooled and conned people until I could get back in and get ordained, but the academic world was never my out anymore. Alcohol worked. The other things didn't. Alcohol, drugs, and Al-Anon in their own way each work, but especially my alcohol. And I hope those of you who are alcoholic will hear this. Alcohol is the answer at times to alcoholism. When I drank, I didn't feel ugly. I didn'T feel crazy. At the age of 14, I was sick and tired of being sick and tiredof this nothingness, and I knew that. And I just wanted to die. Atthe age of 16, andI didn't start drugging or drinking yet, at the age of 16 I knewthat I was going to end my life permanently committed in a mental hospital, and that was a valid decision at that time and would have come true if If it weren't for this program and alcohol that carried me through life until I found this program that drugged me to the emptiness of nothingness until I could become someone through your acceptance in God's love. I felt didn't feel ugly. Now, my ugliness was so deep. I didn't feels good looking the way a lot of people do. I just felt electric. There was a glow in here that made you want me. And I didn' t feel guilty. I felt exciting, and I didn't feel crazy. I felt brilliant. And alcohol was a bridge to the world for me. Here's different. Different drugs can treat the same disease in different ways. What I'm saying is a generalization that a lot of people will say is probably true as a generalisation. It is not universal. Alcohol, for a lot us, tends to make us social in the early days. I wasn't a hermit when I drank. Drugs tended to make me feel it was okay to be by myself. I would do the drugs with people, but I'd just pull into myself and just stay there and just crash. Al-anonism made me want to find somebody who would be dependent on me and therefore had to be sicker than me. And I would bring someone sicker then me that I would have to keep sick so they would need me, attached to me to help me escape from the nothingness of my own existence. Three different approaches I've used to the same problem. But my drug of choice was clearly alcohol. And it worked. Now, I would still be drinking, but things started happening. I started blacking out. I lost control all the time. I didn't drink every day because I found pills. Days I didn'T drink, I WOULD do pills. I, till a year ago, said I never took a morning drink. But I WOULD say that I took pills. It's interesting how we can block out reality. I drank at least a water glass filled with wine every time I did the morning mass. And I never considered... I sure do now. I've got the grape juice permission for those of you who are wondering. And I use it. I don't believe in ever gambling with my sobriety. Alcohol was my drug of choice, but it was getting out of control. I would have taken that. I don' t know if you think about it, but a lot of medications have bad side effects. People with chemotherapy put on weight or they lose their hair, They take the chemotherapy, they accept the painful effect because what they're getting in the good is more important. I would have lived with the shakes, I'd have lived with the blackouts, but alcohol stopped working. About the time I lost control over it, it started losing control over me in the sense that when I drank, I still felt like nothing. And I was breaking from people, I wasn't being social. I was drinking alone and I was dumping my garbage in blackouts because I couldn't stand what I was. So on top of being nothing I had and feeling guilt just as a way of living, I had additional guilts. And in a blackout, I revealed something that was told to me in deepest counseling. I nearly broke a marriage into two professional relationships and four friendships. And there was nothing about me that I could respect anymore because the only area that I hung on to was I thought I was a good priest. And I wasn't anymore. I was more destructive than I was beneficial and I had nothing and I couldn't die. I wanted to die. I just didn't have the ability to kill myself. I prayed that somebody would kill me to escape from this pain. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I hope you'll hear this. I want to go back to my opening. If all you had done 13 years and a few months ago was take the alcohol and the drugs out of my life, you wouldn't have done me any favor. And let me show this to you by if you have more than a year in the program, maybe this will be meaningful to you. Supposing the day of your sobriety you had been committed to a hospital and we had tied you down in a straight jacket to a bed and kept you there from that day to this, never giving you any program, any drugs or any alcohol. Could you live with the hell? I couldn't. i use the term sobriety just for not drinking most people mean it for a serenity but just not drinking was what i wondered when i came here but i know today i'd have gone crazy or had to kill myself if that's all i got i needed an answer to the alcoholism and i want to make a few comments on this i heard somebody ask why he was told in a treatment center not to form relationships in the program when he was new. Water tends to seek its own level. If you feel like a pig, you're going to look for a sow for company. if you feel like a man you're going to look for a woman if you feel like a prince you're going to look for a princess and if you feel like a child of God nothing less than a child of God will satisfy and I have felt like all four and I go back to feel like each of them at different stages of my sobriety To give you two images you might remember It isn't butterflies that are attracted to manure It's horseflies It isn'T swans that are attracted to dead meat It's buzzards And when you come into the program it isn'T the butterflies and the swans that are going to be circling you there's another corollary of this that i'm just walking through now as you get healthier you may have to walk away from your friends and leave them behind because you will either pull them up if they don't grow or they will pull you down. And I'm wrestling with that in my own gut. The two friendships that I formed closely with people outside the program in my sobriety happened to be formed with people who weren't in any way drinking when I met him. The one is now in the program and the other is heading toward the program. I've grown healthier than that. And I need people of health to walk with today. And that is very crucial and very important. And it isn't a matter of pride. It's a matter OF GROWTH. I have got to be me. And I can't afford to be pulled down. I must be lifted up. So I came here feeling absolutely nothing, and the program helps me find myself. Now this wasn't a tendency that I had when I sobered up and I lost. These are tendencies that I carry inside me so I constantly have to go to the steps and work them again and again and again because as the program helps me find dignity I'll slip and I'll go right back to feeling nothing and I've got to pull the individual steps to discover who and what I am and it's interesting to find out that I'm someone I've gotta remember that I don't know that I really nothing and it through my recognizing I'm powerless over alcohol and alcoholism over my life and over alcohol that I start finding out who I am. And in my sobriety because of AA I forget that. Alcoholics Anonymous at times can be dangerous to sobriete. And people die because they forget that by coming here I hear so much of what alcohol is I sometimes feel I'll never take a drink I'm safe now. And I've got to remember that tonight I am as powerless over alcohol as I was 14 years ago when I was drinking there is nothing more in me, I am at times powerless against the first string. And when I forget this, I make things in my world important. And if I don't, I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm going to have to And when i make things In my world Important i end up forgetting completely who i am At one point i was teaching in a catholic high school from which i was fired and i want you to know it was run by Nuns that's why i could be fired and I've grown enough that i have completely forgiven the bitches for firing many of those yelling were taught by nuns also I was too anyway I was going from 5 in the morning till midnight and I had no time to work this program and I was losing it all in here I was forgetting completely who and what I was and when I forgot that all of my nothingness just started creeping back into me and I have to begin to remember I'm an alcoholic teaching in the high school the kids asked me a question once because I've used so many examples from AA somebody asked without being smart do you have to be an alcoholic to find God because I talked about so many of my friends who did and I got an answer instantly that had to come from God but it applies to what I'm sharing no but when you're standing on your feet it takes a lot of humility to find your knees when you are flat on your back getting on your knees is part of the way up when I forget who I am I start standing on my feet and it's hard to find my God and have the humility and I today have to remember I am absolutely powerless and that's the doorway to life the second step came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity means for me sanity not sobriety and sanity is wholeness and only if two weeks ago it occurred to me that's the opposite of nothingness to be whole to be entire as a person somewhere God's power someday can make me whole as a personal person I believe unlike a lot of members of AA the second step is a challenge for me to believe that I'm going to be a saint and if you want to see a sign of God's Power you feel the presence in this room. You stop listening to me and you feel the power that brings the massive amount of drunks who are just in this room let alone the other rooms sober on a Friday night and this power can do so far much more in my life than keep me sober. There's no obstacle that I've got after sobriety that can stand in the way of this power and if I start thinking that God can't handle some of my traits like my tendency to be efficient because I'm nothing I've got to be perfect and give me a project and I'm going to walk right over people and this happens to people I sponsor it happens every year my sobriety and if I start thinking that this is going to stay I start living with depression it's important for me to believe that this in my sexual problems one day will not be part of my life right now right here I'm wrestling with one I've gotten I've lost this self-destruct so that every time something great happens in my life I flip out Most of my sexual problems have occurred immediately after a time when I've enjoyed a conference. I was last year in Myrtle Beach, had a tremendous sexual piece two weeks later in Memphis, was totally screwed up and had to tell them. I've been in Hot Springs two weeks ago, and this is just, this just happened. It's very extraordinary for me. And I was in Tampa last weekend, and I'm still okay. and it's like my program is telling me I'm going to go crazy and part of my mind is planning it sexually it's already plotting how I can do it right here, right now and another part is saying it's got to happen because you can't handle this give up and give in I've got to believe I don't know if it will or not that won't upset me I've gotta believe that at some time in my life that's gonna go I need the hope because if I give in and say this is going to stay it's gonna be impossible to find what I found from my God if I believe it's going to grow I can right now start walk through a little bit to a presence with my God. The third step made a decision to turn my life and my will over the care of God. I have never found God direct. I found a sponsor first, then a group, then AA, then the steps. And then I woke up with a God experience. And that's my chain of command. Still, I turned my life in my will, over to the care of my sponsor. And you know, it's fascinating. I watch people. I sponsor running right off a cliff saying, ain't the view grand? And I got to hold him by the collar. Look, you dumb SOB where you're heading. And they don't see it. They go, wow. That's one. Here are two. I've had the same sponsor for 10 years. I see him heading right off a cliff saying ain't of you grand. And I see somebody, his sponsor pulling him bythe collar and he goes, wow, and I wonder why I'm different when all of a sudden I feel a tug on the collar. Just what I'm saying ain't the view grand. I can't run my own life. I haven't had it and found it necessary to take a drink since I came here because I've done everything I've been told by my sponsors. I have one sponsor for the last 10 years I've had I shifted sponsors in early my sobriety. I've got the same sponsor for 10 years he's not delicate he walked up to me two years sober and says three years because that's when he started sponsoring me he says you dress like a Philadelphia fag or a Pittsburgh pimp change you don't tell that to a very delicate soul you really don't I changed I was pushing people away trying to seem different and wanting acceptance as part of I don't want to seem different, I want to be part of you I wantto conform to your acceptance and your love never selling out a basic principle the fourth step helps me really start looking at who I am I can't find my identity as long as I'm running from it and that's my alcoholism I've got to escape what I am or denying it that's Myelanonism I can only find myself to the degree that I come to know myself and that is not easy I got fired and I'm only now looking at the reasons I have forgiven the nuns it took a year and a half and only now this happened about four years ago in my scene they were right in doing it because I was getting sicker and sicker for reasons I'll share in a moment with the fifth step I was very hurt when I was sent to Sterling, Oklahoma I went into a midlife crisis I'm 48 years old Sterling Oklahoma is a town of 650 people let me describe it to you through two phrases that will help you capture the spirit of the town if you're ever in Sterling Oklahoma ask yourself why A traffic jam in Sterling is when both cars meet. The people are wonderful. I think the town is hell. The big thing is after you get Sterling, they don't give you the cathedral. I'm going nowhere in the priesthood. And only now, right at this month, am I bringing my inventory up to date and seeing I got exactly what I deserve. In some ways, I function well as a priest, but I can't be a pastor. My sense of nothingness is still too strong. I can't confront I can' t confront a secretary I don' t have one now but when I had one in my priesthood and they did something wrong I couldn' t even give them a note telling them they were wrong I would write the note out wait till they were gone and put it on the desk and run like hell I couldn't administer a large parish staff I can´t go to the coffees and the teas that´s not my bag I´m not going to hold up my little pinky and you know drink tea after especially I´ve been with you and you talk about life and death things I don't want the Mickey Mouse parts of life even I want to be where life is and so I shouldn't be a pastor of a large church because I'm not the material and that hurts but that's reality I'm 5'10", that's all 5' 10 as a person 5' ten as a priest 5' tan with my lust my greed my materialism and I've got to see my size and accept it because I can't have peace if I'm trying to be 6 foot to please you or 5' 8 to please You in any area of my life I must see who I am. But feeling like nothing, I can't really be me if I'm going to please you, change me to be you. And I did that desperately. I needed your approval, especially if you were young. When I came into the program, I was 35. I was at least borderline psychotic. I was 17 in my mind. I dressed it, I acted, I talked it, and I ran with 17-year-olds. I didn't see it until two years sober and I had to age 20 years When I started teaching at the high school I was an effective teacher and the students started liking me And they started coming by the second year And all of a sudden I started gravitating to them And I needed their approval And I'm going to share with you how strongly I needed Their approval I needed Their approval so strongly I allowed a kid who graduated to come in Drink vodka at my home And he didn't look like he was drunk to me And get in his car after he had a fight with his wife From my home and go tearing down a road on the extreme left lane of a two-way road caused a head-on crash and got killed and I went to the hospital to identify the body and he was my closest friend in that class and I wanted to kill him because I loved him so much I had people for I guess it was six years later after I saw my sickness come down to visit me that I taught and I took them out to a restaurant and I was desperate for their approval I got a club card so they could buy a drink because they were underage and had 100 miles to drive back. And then went to an AA meeting and felt like hell, mentioned them, called my sponsor up, and I said, I feel guilty like hell and told him why. And he says, you deserve to feel guilty. Like hell, which was what I needed to hear at that time. I need approval very badly. I want to share one other thing because these may help you. Some of you have been enablers of your children or friends. And I wantto tell you, you can deal with the pain and you can make amends to the dead because I've been able to. I sponsored a drug addict who got a year and a half of great God experience and then went to church, left me, didn't listen to my warnings, stopped the program, twisted off, and then came back and he wrote me and called me. He hinted at hinting that he wanted me to be his sponsor, but I wanted him to ask me directly, and he killed himself before he did. Now, I've been able to make peace with him and give him the permission to be dead, but it wasn't easy. I don't need approval from you I need God's approval first and I don' t have to tailor myself to be who you are and if you don' T like what I' ve shared a lot of people when I share get a little bit upset especially Catholics because they want their priest to be plastic figures if you' re upset with what I said blame God He' s created and overseen my life and if You' re going to get drunk over it I' m sorry but I' M accepting what I am and I can embrace myself and I can hug myself in the present and in the past. And that's the important thing for me. I will not, hopefully, tailor myself in major ways for your approval, even if you are 17. The sixth step is where peace really starts beginning for me, becomes entirely ready to have God remove my defects. Now, my God is a God of love, and love loves. And how does God remove defects? By loving. And entirely ready means I'm going to stop splitting my personality. I have come to you and I've gone to God and I have stood in my own mind and said, You can accept my generosity. When I go through my wardrobe and give half or a third of what I want to the poor, but you can't accept my greed, the fact that I still charge things to the church or shouldn't. You can except the time I spend sponsoring, but you cannot accept the fact that sometimes if I am in a good sex place and somebody I sponsor calls, I have just pretended to listen to them. I wasn't going to leave the action or the fantasy. I don't want you to accept that. you know I found something out you don't accept traits you accept me and through you I've learned my God doesn't relate with traits he relates with me I fracture myself and that's sick my God doesn't relay traits in my past he accepts me and the sixth step is Larry trying to be Larry someone I sponsor said when I say my name she loves to hear because it sounds like I'm singing it she told me that two weeks ago and it astounded me first I don't like my name. And secondly, I didn't like me, but if there's a little to it, it's come from love and from self-acceptance and from what through you, I have experienced God giving me. And I am trying to be myself. I'm just trying to be Larry. And that's all not a series of traits, not a series of labels, just Larry. It's enough. And it's good enough. The seven step humbly asked him, God gave me a chain of command. Hear this, please. Everything I've gone directly to God with and asked him humbly to remove, I still have. I mean that now. Everything I'm going to do I've done directly to my sponsor with and asked Him humbly for help with and have done what my sponsor told me has been removed by the day when I'm doing it. You see, it's an easier, softer way for me to tell God that I flipped out sexually or that I'm mad at the archbishop. this was a good one. I was living with my sponsor, was really irked at the archbishop and wouldn't even tell my sponsor because I wasn't ready to have that removed and finally had to cough it up to him. And he just told me how bad that was. And about a month ago, I was at a big meeting in Oklahoma City and I wanted some things to happen and they didn't happen. And what I didn't want happened, happened. God totally healed my relationship with the archbishops outside this program. And I'm sharing that because sometimes we confine God's actions to the steps. My God acts through the steps and that's guaranteed, but every so often he steps outside and he'll do something. And even though I wasn't ready to have this thing handled yet, because I'm inventorying it right now, and it shouldn't go before the inventory, I feel so free and so much healthier and happier because the archbishop was my father and I had some pains. My father is dead. I had Some lingering pains over never feeling his acceptance and notice. And the archbishop had ignored me for years. I would try to get negative strokes, and he wouldn't call me. I was Peck's little bad boy in the priesthood, and he ignored me. And, you know, love me or hate me, but don't ignore me. I understand the man, I love the man and I'm one with the man. And that's why I'm ready now to try to go and rejoin priests. Six and seven helped me start finding my own identity. Until I know me, I can't know you. And that's what the eighth step is. It's making a list and coming to know who you are. And here again, let me just show how sometimes we're so unaware of each other in AA. Here's the one place I come with all my defenses down. And people will walk up and say, you're putting weight on. Your hair looks messed. And they don't know how that hurts. You know, if you feel like something, you don't know how people who feel like nothing can be stung by personal criticisms. Especially when I come with my defenses down and can't get them up fast enough. We talk about old Joe or fat Joe. I never do that. At least I'm unaware of doing it in the program. I try to be aware that you're a person and you have feelings. and when my brother called me big ears and dumbo I didn't hurt less the more often I hurt it I hurt more I smiled or put a straight face on because I couldn't show him how he was killing me but I died inside and that can happen in our program and making another comment on the Al-Anons are ignoring the Al Anons male and female and are being so short with them and talking so negative about them is making them feel that somehow they're lesser than us because they don't have our disease and that's sick. They're people. They're God's children. I can't identify with them for help with my sickness, but that doesn't make them any lesser. And as I become aware of myself, I can become aware of them as people. It doesn't happen. I've got to make an effort anytime I talk with any of you to allow you to be a person because I was so dead inside, everything was concentrated on me And I can only heal relationships then in a healthy way when i'm healing a relationship with another person Outside of that. I'm brown nosing I'm getting rid of guilts When I do it in the program and i'm really relating with you when I go to the people I sponsor Because i've joked about them in public and it suddenly occurred to me Everybody knows i'm their sponsor and my joke is a put down and I don't have a right to put anybody down this way And i've got to go and tell them I was completely wrong I'm dealing with a person on the level of person and they don't think less of me for it. They think more of me for it two weekends ago. I heard Paul Keebler 43 years sober from St. Louis revolutionized the 10 step for me. He says the inventory isn't to keep me aware of how I'm maintaining. It's a lead into the 11 step in which I'm supposed to improve my conscious contact and what I'm supposed to look at is am I improving today my conscious contact with God as I understood I've never seen that I have to balance I do a written inventory six days a week so I don't get fanatic Fridays I don' t inventory it's my favorite day of the week I don''t have to do the damn inventory tonight this is Friday I don'T have to do it I have to balance my natural tendencies I have to force myself to see the good and because I do it every day doesn't stop it from being good and because it's regular I think of what I as a drinking drunk wouldn't be doing today I wouldn't be washed my bed wouldn't be made my hair wouldn't be combed I wouldn't be eating healthy. I've got to force myself to see this good because if I just end up inventorying my negative, I'm going to be back to feeling I'm nothing and I have to see God in my life to know who I am. These don't really handle my nothingness. They wipe away the problems. My nothingness goes through 11 and 12 and not through prayer. Prayer isn't important for me. Prayer is simply my screaming at God when I'm angry, my telling God what I'm feeling quickly He doesn't have to hear what I have to say. He knows, I think. And he can ask better than I can for what I need and he loves me better than i do. I sure hope so. He sure has shown it. Prayer is simply for me to get ready to meditate. Prayer is talking. Meditation is listening. My God is not truth. He is love. I try to sometimes let she be love also. And love is in the heart, not in the mind. I'll give you three meditations quickly. My quickest one would be stand up here in your mind and feel what's in the heart of all of us for you. And just stay in that feeling. That's the answer to drinking. That's a peace, a warmth, and a light that is everything I look for in life. A second meditation is the one I'm on now. I take a Bible passage and stay on it a very short one for a whole week at least to get from the head to the heart. The one I am on now the Lord is walking by the shore and he walks up to Peter who was fishing and he says come after me and it occurred to me that Peter had been fishing for every day and he was doing the most ordinary thing in his life and all of a sudden it became sacred and in so many ways my God and you take the ordinary actions of my life and you make them sacred to help me discover your love and what he says is not go anywhere it says come after me and he's a God of love you've never asked me to go anywhere alone you've asked me to stay with you to stay with your love and that's the direction for my life. The meditation maybe that I can most leave you with that's been most helpful, I suggested to some gals I was sponsoring who were walking through heavy problems. And then after it worked for them, I suggested it to others and then after it worked for about six people, I started doing it myself. Picture yourself as a two-year-old child with a bad thunderstorm outside running to your father or your mother who is truly your heavenly mother or father, truly God, and just jumping on the lap and the arms come around and hold and just stay in the embrace. And I ran from the storms of life to you and I have felt your arms around me. I can feel that when I go into the meditation. And that's all. I just stay In that feeling. But this got better because it occurred to me that those of you who have children, if you know they're afraid of a storm and you see a storm coming, you're not going to wait till they come running. You're going to go looking for them. And my God isn't just passively waiting to love me. His arms are reaching around me, and they're active. And that was neat. But about a week ago, I thought of something that has totally changed my concept of God. Those of you with children, if you had a child with a deformed limb, a muscle that was too weak, and you were kissing him goodnight and holding him, what would you rub the most tenderly and cry over for his sake and care about the most? it would be his defect and I thought God hated my defects and I understand my God is massaging them and crying over them for my sake and caring the most about what I hate the most in myself and it's revolutionizing my understanding of God and I find it through you I've only understood God by understanding your heart and in this being loved I found the answer to midlife crisis I'm not a failure I'm a child of God and as a child of God I deserve only the best and the 12th step was the second answer and this just takes a second how can I be useless a failure when I'm still alive as a sober alcoholic somewhere there's somebody maybe here somewhere in the world hurting somebody feeling like nothing who's got to hear they can walk through it and discover who they are and as long as I'm sober I know I've got a mission in this program and I don't want to go to church because Sunday after Sunday I see Christians dying who are sincere and I know there's an answer for their pain and they're standing and they can't find their knees and I can't show them how to find the answer. And I come back frustrated, but dealing with life and death and John Barleycorn in sponsorship, I can share my pain and people can find that same God, not because of me, but through me. And my life has a meaning. And that's the second answer to midlife crisis. So, you know, just very briefly. I make four committed meetings a week. I hear one fifth step a week, and I'm sponsoring about 23 people. That's my regularity as I attempt to live it in this program. I began telling you how I lost my identity. I lost it because of the good things of the world. Bill Wilson said something we don't hear often as I kind of wind up. He said, the good is the enemy of the best. For a pig, good is good. For a man, the goods of this world are worthwhile. For a prince, the gods of this life are worthwhile, the goods in this world might be a reward. But for a child of God, the goods on this world are no longer good enough. The best alone will do. Someone I sponsor was toasted at his wedding recently with a toast that I believe applies to me and to you. May the best never be good enough for you. And I often like to involve a biblical meditation in, if you don't read the Bible and you're not in parts of the Bible, don't worry, just take it as a story. There's a story of a stable. At least they think it's a stable, there were animals there. The dirtiest place in town and a child was born in that stable And I believe with the birth of that innocence, nothing changed to the eyes of man. It was still the dirtiest place in town. But if you looked with the eyes of God, it was the holiest place of the universe because all of God's love was there. I certainly was a stable. All sorts of filth I brought in to clutter my life. And when I look at myself, so often I see but the filth. but a child of love has been born in my heart through you and I'm challenged not to look with the eyes of man but to look with the eye of God to look what the eyes of Alcoholics Anonymous and what I say of me I say if you may the best never be good enough for you God's children thank you Thank you.