The Practice of Surrender – Chuck C.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I don't think we lost anybody. I figured we'd lose half of them, you know. The pretty part of the family has already gotten bent up here. My name is Chuck Steed and I'm an alcoholic. I am glad to be here and I'm glad you're here. I'm in my 37th year without a a drink or a pill of any kind due to the fact that there is a program called Alcoholics Anonymous, and there are people like you who share their experience, strength, and hope with people like me. It's been no chore for me to be around here for 36 1⁄2 years. This is the only easy life I have ever known. The only good life that's ever been mine. And I hope I have another 36 years. And I think I will. You don't think so, huh? He looks like he's mad at me. He's not mad at you. I think he delivers millers like beer, and he doesn't want to spoil his sales. I feel like a clown you're in the right place I've had a little trouble breathing the last few years I don't think it had anything at all to do with the fact that I smoked four packs of camels for many years every day they told me about twenty years ago that I could either smoke or breathe and I chose breathing but this thing didn't catch up with me until about four or five years ago and their prognosis is dumb they tell me that there's no reversing lung damage so that was not acceptable so I took a good look at myself and I said to me any power that could keep me from wanting a drink for 36 years a tongue-chewing babbling idiot drunk like me I haven't even had one conscious desire for a drink since I got here and I said to me any power that could do that this thing's peanuts so I'm going to get well And I've been getting well ever since. I don't know if I'm going to continue, because in July I'm supposed to talk to the doctors doctors at Hoag Hospital at lunch. And then I get through with that, and then I'm talking to the patients. The doctors only get thirty minutes, but the patients are supposed to get an hour and a half. Now, I don't know why I ever accept that kind of commitment. What the hell am I going to tell a bunch of doctors, huh? They probably all need this program. them. My own doctor, who is quite an expert in chest problems, told me after he had been been treating me for a couple of years, that he would treat me and not charge me. I'd treat him and not judge him. I said, I can't do that. You have a license that gives you a are right to charge. I ain't got no license. So you treat me and charge me, and I'll treat you and not charge you. Because when I talk, I have to call them as I see them, even in this leper colony of ours. And I can't take an honorarium. Sometimes I get an assignment that has a pretty good stipend for honorarium, but I can't take it, because I figure that if they paid me, I would have to say what I think they want me to say, and I can talk talk that way. So, I'm not charging you for this deal tonight. I wanted to when I saw all their scrubs. And most of you look like you had money. I've been conditioned to believe that all Texans have a large bankroll because they're sitting on an oil well. That's what what to do. But I will be happy just to get my car fare. I don't want to leave owing myself self-money. In an hour's time, I can't tell you much about my drinking career other than this, that I had to die to get here. In the first 43 years of my life, I never made a mistake. I always had some place to point the finger. It was never my fault. It was your fault. There were conditions, there were circumstances circumstances. It was the rotten society in which I was born, it was my wife's fault, and as good an excuse for drinking as she was, she couldn't hold a candle to her mother. her mother lived with us for the last five years that I drank and she had a grandstand seat watching me crucify her only daughter. And she didn't like me very good. And I didn't like her that good. Because if she hadn't been living with us, I wouldn't have had to crucify our daughter. It was her fault all the way through. She lived with us five years after I sobered up. And I could spend this evening beautifully beautifully, telling you what this program did for her. Have you ever saw an old bag straighten up and fly right? It was her mother. And she never attended one AA meeting. She used to just embarrass me to death because she wouldn't believe that you people had been any help to me. She wouldn't be that God had been in the house. She would come up and put her arms around me, and she'd say, Oh, son, I always knew that you had it in you. Well, I did too, but I wasn't thinking of the same thing she was. And I want to tell you something. I rode this thing right through the gates of insanity and death. I'll tell you a little about my last go-round. It started on the Friday before Christmas, 1945. And I just got a note from a chap that called himself my brunette son. He's a little darker than I am, so he's brunette all right. And he sent me a thing that gave me the date on which the Friday before Christmas fell in 1945, and it was the 21st of December. So I had 10 days in December and 18 days in January that I lost. I don't remember anything about it at all, nothing. I don't know if I remember the first drink, the middle drink, or the last drink. Don't remember anything. Now, that lady that you just heard talk says that during all that time I destroyed seven quarts of whiskey every three days and I can't even argue with her because I wasn't there. She was and I just have to keep my a mouthful. And that's one reason. The next reason is, I don't think seven quarts is too much for three days. If you only work at it, maybe fifteen days. But if you go twenty-eight days, it's either too much or just enough. And in my case, it was just enough because I came to after the middle of January 1946 with the clearest head I had ever had in my life, because all of my excuses and all my I-wants burned out in that twenty-eight days. I did not surrender consciously. I had nothing to do with it. I can't even say to you tonight, Well, I drank the whiskey, didn't I? And that's what burned them out, but I don't remember drinking the whiskey. so I can't even say that I think if I could remember anything at all about that deal I could figure out a way to take credit for the last 36 years but I can' t remember I can''t even say well I drank the whiskey didn' t I because I don' t know but when I came to my excuses were gone and my I wants were gone and I saw me for the first time in my life with nothing between me and me and for the first time in my life I admitted defeat I had not one time in 43 years admitted defeat defeat. I could not admit defeat. I had an older brother, three and a half years older than I, and three and half years stronger. And we had one fight that lasted twenty years on the installment plan. And he beat the bejesus out of me for twenty years straight. But he couldn't make me believe it. I left home at 20, believing I could whip him. And he had whipped me for 20 years straight. I became a periodic eleven years before coming to this program because I was not going to lose to a bottle, no way. So I became periodic. And for eleven years I was as dry as I am tonight between every two drunks, but I always got drunk again. So I could not admit defeat. And fortunately for me, and I believe it to be the most fortunate single experience in in my life, sometime between the Friday before Christmas and the middle of January, the ego and the excuses all burned out. And I could look at me and see that I had lost the battle of life. I did not know why, because I knew nothing of Alcoholics Anonymous, nothing at all. I didn't know anything about the disease of alcoholism. I knew an awful lot about the inside of jails. I knew a lot about the DCs and the convulsions, and very dirty beds, but I didn't know anything about alcoholism. And so fortunately for me, the second great good fortune was that after I'd been looking and this thing a little while the morning I came to. I remembered that Mrs. C had found Jack Alexander's article in the Saturday Evening Post, March 1st, Issue 1941. She had read it, thought it might help me if I read it. So she put it on the left arm of the chair I sit in today, open at the right place, hoping that when I came in if I came in, I'd read it. And evidently I did. But I never remembered a thing about it until that morning. And I remembered as I'd red it, remembered only two things about it, drunks help drunks and didn't drink and they called it Alcoholics Anonymous. And I said to myself, if I ever lived to get out of this bed I will find Alcoholics Anonymous." And immediately the curtain dropped, and I was sick to death, drunk and insane. And I had a lot of dying to do. But from the moment of commitment until right now, I have never had a drink or sedating or or tranquilizing pill of any kind. Such is the great significance of this thing called surrender. Surrender. This is a battle we win by giving up the fight. In my opinion, one of the greatest lines in our book is we cease to fight anything or anybody. Because that's what happened to me. And I haven't had a drink or a pill since. And furthermore, and this I get a lot of repercussions over, my first group was Beverly Hills Group because that's where we lived. and when I'd get up before my group and tell them that I never had a conscious desire for a drink since my first appearance with you guys half of it hit the floor and they would say something that you shouldn't say in church they'd say Chuck you're a god damn liar that's what they'd say in chorus because they were were having trouble, most of them, hanging on to not drinking. We call it white-knuckle sobriety. I've never had any since I came to you. My eleven years trying to keep from drinking and get off the stuff to get well enough to get back in the ring for the next round. I had white-knuckle sobriety then, or not sobriete, but dryness. I think we use the term sobrieta too loosely amongst us. My definition of sobrieto is the ability to live comfortably, peacefully and joyously with myself, because in my opinion, alcoholism is not caused by drinking alcohol. Alcoholism is a living problem, and you and I have to have a living answer lest we drink again. for instance insofar as I am able to perceive there is only one reason that I'm not drunk right now just one, not two just one and the reason is I've got the thing I was looking for in the bottle I've done it and what's the thing? it's the ability to live comfortably, peacefully and joyously with me and having that ability I don't have the slightest difficulty living with you even the meatheads sitting here some of you I've known for quite a while on me I don' t have any trouble living with I've had the privilege in in the last thirty-six years of talking in many, many penitentiaries in different parts of the world. And I don't have any trouble there. I don t have a bit of trouble. The The problem is not there. Our problem is inside. And I believe that every society that we have allowed to use our program is a living problem, just the same. I don't think Farage and Anonymous is an eating problem. Some of these days when I'm going to bounce a steel chair off my forehead because they've been trying now for years to get me to say overeaters anonymous. That don't mean nothing to me. Patties Anonymous has a real ring. gamblers anonymous I'm a gambler always was loved to gamble but I'm not a compulsive gambler I sort of grew up in the south and the blacks thought taught me how to gamble, and they taught me good. And so I've won a great deal more money than ever lost gambling. But I don't go out and throw money away. One of the things they taught me is if you win some money, it's not, you're not playing on the house. If you lose it, you ain't got it. And if you lose it, they ain't get it. So you're gambling with with your own money so don't don't think gambling on the house put it in your pocket and keep it they taught me never to gamble with scared money one of my wife's bad problems if she can't gamble with without having scared money she pays a nickel slot machines and condemns herself self. It's a jackpot and he hates it because he's got their money. That's not what they taught me. If you win, it's yours. And they taught me not to sit around and try to wait for your luck. If we sit down in the game and your luck's bad, get up and leave. Come come back tomorrow. You know, those things are fundamental. But that's not the way the compulsive gambler does it. I'm going to tell you a little story that illustrates this. A few years ago, I got a call on a Friday night from a man in Whittier. We live in Laguna Beach. And this chap was in Whitier. And he says, Chuck, I'm sitting here with a six-gun in my hand and I'm going to blow my brains out. But Jim told me not to shoot myself until I talked to you. Now he says what have you got to say? Well, I says you called me on a bad night. I said, I'm talking tonight Saturday night and Sunday night but I'm open Monday night if you want to talk to me talk to him on Monday night and he hung up the phone and I thought that was it well Monday night about 7.30 the doorbell rang and I go out the door and it's my boy I said what is it? what is this? and he comes in and he sits down and he was an alky and a compulsive gambler and he lost a lot of money that he didn't have and he'd lost it to professional gamblers and that's not a good way to establish and maintain longevity and so we sat down there at 7.30 and we started to preamble and at about 2 o'clock we were at step 8 and step 8 says we made a list of all persons we'd harmed and became willing to make amends for them all and I was getting strung out on that and I was telling this old boy now look you're going to have to go to these people and you're gonna have to tell them that you admit the debt that it's legitimate you lost the money and you'll pay it back as soon as you can but you ain't got no money now yeah he says I can't do that they'll kill me I said so what you won't have suicide on your mind and he started to laugh and he's never good at laughing he has never good laughing I walked out on the porch and listened to him all the way down the hill laughing every time I meet him is laughing. And he ain't very dead. And he's paid off all his bills, and nobody killed him. You see, this is just a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing That's the reason I told you. Because Because until we get rigorously self-honest, we are going to have trouble with this program. We have got to learn how to be honest with us before we can think too much about being honest with other people. Rigorous self-honesty is the golden key to this life that we find here. here. It's a fabulous thing. So I threw that in to make a point, and I won't belabor it. Mrs. C told you a few times how her life has changed since she has gotten to the place where she can laugh at herself. I had my crying before that. Oh, I cry easy now. But it's not for me. You know. I cry a lot. And when I feel like crying, I cry. I stand up here at these podiums and cry like a damn baby. And it's all right with me because I don't mind, you know. So, I decided to come to this program and I didn't know how to find it. I didn' t know how to find it. I knew that you wouldn't be in the phone book because you were anonymous, weren't you? So knowing you weren't there, I never looked. Which is the story of my life. I knew that that much that wasn't true, I couldn't learn anything that was. So I had to call people and ask them if they knew anybody that knew anybody in Alcoholics Anonymous. And from a doctor that had treated me on a few occasions, keeping him from diet he gave me the name of a man that was a member of our society motion picture man and I talked with him and he told me a little about and he said have you had a drink today and I said no but he said don't take one he says I have to work tonight so I can't take you to meet but I might not have to go I have work tomorrow night so call me tomorrow I called him tomorrow and we talked a little while and he said you had a drink today and I said no well he said don't take one I'm still working call me tomorrow so I called him the third day and we hadn't gotten very far into the conversation but I knew he was still working so I said to him I know you're still working he says yeah I said, you don't have to take me to a meeting. Where's the meeting I can go to? And he told me. And I decided to go. And I felt real good about it until about ten minutes before I was supposed to leave. And then I did the unforgivable. I started to think. Now, I came all the way down here to tell you two things. First one is quit thinking. This is our problem. Liquor never was our problem, thinking was our problem. If there was ever a bunch of screwball thinkers in the world, it's the alcoholics. We can justify anything in the word, including murder. So, quit thinking you can live yourself in the right you can live yourself in the right thinking but you can't think yourself in the right living I'm totally convinced that you can't find God looking for him because what you're looking for you're looking with and how are you going to find God out there when he ain't out there yours isn't yours is right there so you've got to turn your eyeballs around it's an inside job so quit thinking get lost in life and find yourself in God and the second thing is I've forgotten I'll bring this up a little later. So, I started to think. And my alcoholic mind said to me, Look, son, you've lived in Beverly Hills a long time. And it just might not be good for you to be seen with a bunch of drunks. Now, you'll never know how funny that is. Because the only guy in Beverly Hill that spent more time in the Beverly Hills jail than I did was the jailer. I killed two chiefs of police in Beverly Hills in about, oh, maybe 15 years' time. You know? I mean, worried them to death. So, I was a little bit afraid that it might not be good for my reputation to be seen with you guys. But I talked myself out of it because it was time to do something. and I said to myself all right disguise yourself so you won't be immediately recognized and get to that meeting and I did and I went to the meeting there was a great big hall as big as this one only way deep too and right in the middle of the back wall there was an outside door and it was open and I came up there and looked in and there might have been 35 people there mind you this was over 36 years ago and they were all in the middle of the room everyone of them talking and nobody listening and it's been that way ever since now I couldn't hear a word they said. But I could hear the mumbling, and it was happy. It was happy talk. I didn't hear their words, but it was a happy talk! And I said to myself, They've given me the wrong dope. This is the wrong night. These are the veterans and their wives, and they There was a veteran in the Foreign Wars Hall where they were having a meeting. And I'm going to have to leave and come back tonight to drunk for here. And I turned to leave, and I was as near dead as I'll ever be, I guess, because at long last I'd come, and it was the wrong night. And here, the next minute, is the very essence of our program. This is the reason it works, when maybe nothing else does. I don't know. Somebody in the middle of that room had been watching me. And when I turned to leave, he came running over to the door. And he called after me. And he says, Mr., were you looking for somebody? And I said, no, sir. Well, he said, what were you working for then? then. And thinking he was a veteran, I said, well, if it would interest you, sir, I was looking for sobriety. And everything about that man changed just like that. He just lit up. Lit up just like he'd turned a light on inside him. And here's what he said to me. Why take off your hat and coat? You're in the right place. Well, he didn't know know it, but he had just stolen my disguise right there. He had undressed me as well. And so they took me in and locked me asleep. sleep. I remember that meeting, the first one I ever went to, better than I remember last night's meeting. Everything about that thing I remember. The very first thing they he told me. He said, if you're an alcoholic, it's the first drink that's killing you. Now, I'd been drinking for a lot of years and it had never occurred to me it was the first drink. I thought it was The Last Gallon. I was trying to knock it off before the trouble started, for years. And the very first thing you monkeys said to me, it is the first drink that's killing you. If you don't take the first drink, you don' t take the second one. I played with that a little while and bought it, and I still got it. The second thing he told me, and this I wouldn't take all the oil in Texas for. There's a lot of oil down here. I know drunks down here that have got forty-three oil wells. My host up the way years ago had an income of ten thousand dollars a day, and he had had eight wells that were supposed to come in that weekend. So I wouldn't take the whole deal for what you told me the next time you opened your mouth. You said, today is the day we don't drink. Today is the Day We Don't Drink. Have you ever told me that I had to stay sober 36 years? I'd have dropped dead. If you had said 36 days, I'd have dropped death. But she didn't. She said, today's the day we don't drink. Now, said you, regardless of how long you live in Alcoholics Anonymous, never expand that time more than 24 hours. And you went ahead to tell me that that the past is nothing but guilt, and the future is nothing but fear. And if you live in the now, you duck them both. Hear me? Right now is our time. This is my day. I have no past. I want no future. And I've lived this way for over 36 years now. And it's a cinch. It's a cinch If I had to depend on what I read in the papers and what I hear over that insane TV stuff for my peace of mind and serenity purpose I wouldn't have any I wouldn'T even finish this talk I'd say, call me an ambulance. I'm going to the hospital. It's a beautiful thing. And somebody said something about that a long time ago. You know, in another book that we read a little bit once in a while. Now is the only time we'll ever know. Right now is eternity. You don't wake up tomorrow morning. You wake up and it's now. And that's the reason it took me so long to get here. Because I'd come to, I never woke up. I'd came to and I'd have to have a tumbler of liquor. But it wouldn't take it. I'd look at yesterday and I'll see where I made my mistakes. and I would be able to argue myself into the position that today, I'm only going to take what I have to live. Just what I have to live. And tomorrow I'll wake up and I won't have to take that tumbler of liquor. And when I got it all laid out right, I'd take the tumbler or liquor. And tomorrow I would come due and I still had to have a tumbler of liquor, you know. So when we live one day at a time, we don't have to do that. Second greatest thing I ever learned in my life. This is my day, I have no past, I want no future. The first one is that if we are going to live without drinking, we have to have some sort sort of personally acceptable, conscious partnership with the living God that made us in the entire business of living. The whole thing, if we're going to live without drinking. Because drinking is a living problem and the only reason I'm not drunk right now, I've got the thing I was looking for in the bottle. and it's better than any liquor that I ever had there's nothing in a bottle pot acid that you do anything to me but tear me down because I've got the answer that I was always looking for and I'll tell you a little about that as I told you I didn't come here looking for permanent sobriety for myself I came here to find out a way to not drink right now so I could use the time rubbing out the record I didn't want my wife and my kids to remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot drunk and I came to you to find out how not to drink right now so I can use that time to rub out and I stayed because it was comfortable I knew you monkeys were alcoholics because you were marked up like me you had headlights here and you had bags under bags and your wiring was exposed and I knew you were drunk but I also knew you weren't drunk because I saw your eyes and I heard your voices and it was comfortable and I was back there every night I was bad because it was uncomfortable now I didn't I knew you had something I'd like to have but I didn' t expect it because I didn''t have the right to it I didn ''t figure that God owed me anything you know that I wasn' t entitled to any of his goodies So I wasn't asking him for anything, but he was back here because it was comfortable. Now this is the series that happened to me. In six months, I discovered that I hadn't had a drink or pill for six months and hadn't wanted one. Now that ain't bad, for as long as you wouldn't babble an idiot drunk, is it? so I got so busy trying to give it away that another six months went by and I discovered I had a family and they were living like kittens and that wasn't a bad discovery and a year went by and I discovered that I was still down in the office I was trying to clean up my desk. And business was good. It was just good. Not a bad discovery. And another year went by, and I discovered that my own state of being was better than anything I'd ever known. It was such a good to breathe in and out. I rediscovered that lately too. Those are pretty good discoveries. Six years went by and I discovered I had a God of my very own, wherever I am He is. Now this is the great discovery. This is what I was trying to bring about for thirty straight years from 1343 and missed on. and what I had given up on six years before wasn't trying to bring it about at all and six years went by and I discovered I had a God of my very own wherever I am he is and I was so elated over this that I immediately started to try and figure out how I was going to show my gratitude and the first thing I decided decided, I was going to build him a plaque. We were in the woodworking business and I had some of the finest mechanics in the world. He could make anything out of wood and stainless steel and formica and stuff like that. So I'm going to built him a plate. I got it designed in my mind and finally before I started him on the project, I said to myself, Who are in this plaque and he didn't take it. And I dropped it on my foot and broke my foot. So I had to laugh about that. So then I was back at the starting gate. I said, who are you going to give it to? And my second decision, I was going to become a Trappist monk. Now Now I knew a lot about the Trappist Monks. I'd read a lot of them, I loved them. And I said, I'll just be a Trappists Monk. And then it hit me, man you're not even a Catholic. How are you gonna be a trappist monk? So I had to give that up. So I'm back to starting good again. And this time I got the answer. You know, there's a guy called St. Peter. The Catholics think he was the first pope. I don't think so. I won't explain that. But anyway, I call him old Pete because before he became a saint, I could identify with him a little bit. You know, when he got caught with red-handed, he lied out of it. I said to myself, he's a little alcoholic. There you are. So, here I ran into this little dealie. The carpenter man called old Pete in. before he left, and he says, Peter, do you love me? And Pete says, yes, Lord. He says, tend my sheep. Now if you're Catholic, he said, tend my lambs, but I'm not Catholic. So he said tend my sheep, as far as I'm concerned. I happen to be looking at an ex-nun, so I'm having a little fun out of her as they go along. Hi. Anyway, Peter says, Peter do you love me? He says, yea Lord. Tend my sheep. And he turns right around and says to him again, Peter, do you love me, yea lord, tend my sheep? And he turned right around and asked him again. Peter, did you love, yea, lord, tend my Sheep? I said, he must have meant tend my sheep. He said it three times, you know. And I said that's that's all I'm going to do. And that's what I've done for thirty-six years. I've never tried to get anything for me in thirty- six years, I've not tried to go anyplace, I don't run my own life, or my wife's, or my kids. And everything's happened. Since I quit trying to run my life and hers and the kids, we've become a family. Since I quit trying to go anyplace, I've been all over the world. And since I quit trying to get something, I got rich. That's what happened to me, and I never tried to bring any of it about. I just tried to tend the sheep. That's all I've done. And if I'd go ahead, I would tell you that I had probably one of the greatest experiences in the business world that anybody ever had. that. In my eleventh year I bought the business that I was thrown out of, and when I sold it I was wealthy. And my people made me wealthy. They wanted me to be wealthy. Now you business business people in this room, including my friend Ed back there, and he's a whale of a businessman, will know that this couldn't happen. Now I'll tell you a little story first. I'm about to quit anyway because I'm getting hungry. Nobody give me another cookie or give me a cup of coffee or anything else? We have a group at home called the West Cabini Group. It's a big meeting and it's held in a church, and it is about twenty years old. And I've talked with every anniversary they've had. Clancy talks the Saturday before Christmas every year it's a Saturday night meeting Clancy incidentally claims that I'm his sponsor I'm pretty sure that he asked me to be his sponsor so he could sponsor me because he's been running my life ever since I said well I don't really be your sponsor but I'll give you anything I've got but I won't think of you as my baby so he takes that as giving him the license to run my life and he ain't bad but anyhow I was out there last year waiting for them to call a meeting And a man that I had done hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of business with, I looked up and he was walking down the center aisle in that place. And he was an alcoholic. I'd known him and done business with him for years and years. And I thought, what in the world is Bob doing here? He's not an alcoholic! Holly. So I went out and hugged him a little and told him how much I loved him. And he says, Bob, what are you doing here? Well, he says, I was over to see so-and-so, a friend of his and a friend of mine who's a member of this society, this afternoon, and we had a good visit. And I said to him, what're you going to do tonight? He says, Amy. He He says, you know who you're going to listen to? I said, yeah. I'm going to let an old Chuck see. Because he always talks at our anniversary. Bob says, can I go with you? And here I am. And so I introduced him to the four or five guys that were talking with him there. Bob stood there looking at the floor. And he says, gentlemen, I want to tell you something about this guy. he says he's the only man I ever did business in my life that I never asked to write down anything and then he just stopped and I figured that I ought to say something you know so I said that's true Bob but it's also true that I've never asked you to write down anything isn't it and he says yes now again Again, you businessmen know better than that. A little deal with me was $25,000 because we were in the fixture business, market fixtures only. We built them, designed them, installed them. And a little deal of me was 25,000, and a big one was a quarter of a million. and the whole time I owned that business I never had a written word not a written word and nobody ever beat me out of a nickel I'd put in a deal and bill them and they'd pay me and it was more fun than dill-ass pickles there was just nothing but love and mutual trust. And a lot of people think it can't be done, but they made me wealthy. And they were tickled to death because they're all wealthy, and they want me to be wealthy, then they made me well. That is a a beautiful thing, and I tell you that because of this. I am totally convinced that God doesn't think more of a salmon than he does of you. And you know that a salmon born at the headwater to the Klamath River. He'll go down that river when he's about that long and he's liable to have gone clear to Japan and back and right back up that Klamoth River where he was born and he spawns and dies. Now I get lost on the freeway with a sign every 90 feet I have to have help in the airport I suppose if there was just one one line coming in I'd have to ask for help because I get lost and here's a salmon goes all the way to Japan and back and I said to myself how you I wonder whose travel agent is So I swam with him in my imagination, and I knew who his travel agent was. God's idea of assignment includes everything necessary for its complete fulfillment, even going to of Japan and back. We have another little phenomenon down there where I live. We have the Swallows that come back to Capistrana. Every St. Joseph's Day they show up almost on the second, at the first mission that was ever built in in California, right there at San Juan Capistrano. And they winter in Venezuela! Now who do you think is their Cavaliers? And I had to fly with them. and it was obvious that God's idea of a swallow includes everything necessary for its complete fulfillment including going to Benjo Island back without any road map now this is a sermon that just carries me clear to the sky Do you think that God's idea of a salmon or a swallow is more complete than his idea of his kids, you and I? I don't think so. I don' t think so When you and i get simple enough to live as we live in Alcoholics Anonymous sharing our experience, strength and hope with anybody that needs us in love just because we want to we discover that underneath are the everlasting arms and it's terrific it's absolutely terrific and I learned it from my blue jays you know my blue Jays and my hummingbirds sit in the same tree, you know. And I've been watching them. I feed them all the time. They break me up in business. Peanuts and sugar and stuff. And I have never yet heard one of those blue jays say to his partner, and look at that so-and-so he's flying backwards I can't fly backwards why can't I fly backwards you know he don't even pay attention to him he don'T even know he'S FLYING BACKWARDS you know why he DON'T GIVE A DAT he'S BUSY BEING HIMSELF If I was a blue jay, I'd want to be a hummingbird. My bougainvillea, I've had it for 25 years. And it looks right up at the rose garden. And you know that bougainveila has not decided to be a rose yet. It's perfectly happy to be be a bougainvillea, and it knows how. Well, it knows how. Oh, I'd want to be a rose, wouldn't you? No. Everything up to us is perfectly satisfied to be what it is, and it knows how. But we come along, and they tell us we've got to improve on God's handiwork. We've got to be this, have that, and be known as before we can live. And we get all involved in trying to self-improve. And a lot of the people in our program thinks this is a self-improvement program. It is not. It's a self discovery program. And with was this and I'm going to quit. You sent me back to New York, the second delegate to the General Service Conference in Southern California. Cliffie Walker was first, and I was second. and I got to meet all the old-timers. I got to meet the whole bunch back there, Ebby and Bill and Bob and their wives, Snyder and the whole batch. And it was a It was a fine experience, very fine experience. Something I wouldn't trade for anything. At the end of the second conference—you go back for two years, you know—and I was there in 1953 and 1954. At the conference in 1954 Bill sought me out and he says, Chuck, you've been back here two years straight and you've never taken five seconds of my time and I think I know why and it's time for us to become acquainted and I'm going to come out and see you well Bill lived in Bedford Hills, New York and I lived in Beverly Hills, California clear across the cotton and he was the head man and here I am a neophyte and he's going to come and see me and for a while I couldn't speak and when I could I said Bill if you're serious we've got room for you and we'd love to have you now that was in April 1954 in June 54 he was in our house and from then until he died in 1971 Mr. C and I spent much time with him and Lois us in their house and in ours. And we got to know them quite well. And so quite often I say that our program, our formula for sobriety is the finest formula that was ever conceived in the mind of man through the grace of God for obtaining and maintaining sobriete. But it has two other facets that are equally miraculous. It's the finest program for the good life and for self-discovery, not self-improvement, but self- discovery that was ever conceived in the mind of man through the grace of God. And this is the reason I say it. Bill was telling me about writing a book, you know, know. And they had written four chapters, and it was time to write chapter five with our formula in it. And Bill said he had to write. Now the reason he had to write, kids, was that the book in its original conception was to spread the word faster to to the drugs, then they could do it on a personal basis. But the more they thought about it, the more that they thought that it was a money-making scheme too. And they were all starving to death. They were all meeting around Bill's kitchen stove and the only one in the bunch who was working was Bill's wife, Lois. and she was working in Macy's basement and they sort of wanted to get her out of that basement so they were going to make a lot of money off the book and it's time for him to write chapter 5 and Bill said he sat down and he had absolutely nothing to write he was totally void But he had to write, and they went out of the book, and he went out in his cell, and lost it after remaining in the basement. So he started to write with nothing to write. And in thirty minutes he came up with the Twelve Steps. And the Twelve steps have never been changed in essence. There has been a word here and a word there. But the meaning of the 12 steps has never changed in 47 years. And so that's the reason I say that it is the finest program that was ever conceived in the mind of man through the grace of God, because these steps came out where they were. verse. You know, the carpenter man said, I am in the Father, and he in me, and I in you. The carpenter man said to him, Fear not, little flock, it is the Father's good pleasure to give us the the kingdom. The carpenter man said, in him we live and move and have our being. And that means to me that you and I are living in the very essence of God right now. When we're open, we get it from where it is. And when we're self-thinking, the doors are closed and we don't get nothing. So, we got the twelve steps out of where they are. The infinite intelligence in which we live. Because you see, God lives in us and in all other creatures that live on this planet. I'm particularly impressed with the Hebrew word for God. It's Yahweh. And it means that which is. That which is and it means all of that which is. And so we're related one to another and to the everything else that grows, everything that lives. The birds and the bees and the beautiful flowers. I was looking at your pink dogwood in this town. It's beautiful. I happened to be a short kid and got a hunk of it in me. They got mixed up over there in the Kalinas and forgot that there were Indians and others. So we got all mixed up with the Cherokees. And I've always had this feeling of unity, but I never brought it into conscious awareness until I was through with the business world. But since I've been out of the business world, I've taken all my so-called intellectual wisdom and turned it into conscious awareness. And it's fantastic. And it includes the fact that God in me as me is me, and God in you as you is you. do. And we can't change it. We can't change it, the carpenter man said it like this. Who by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? Which means we canít change the reality of our own being if we can only change our experience in reality. I sit in the same chair I sat in for ten years in hell and now I have thirty-six years in heaven. In the same chair. Nothing happened to the chair, nothing happened to the wife, nothing happen to the kids, something happened to me. And I moved out of hell into heaven. And that's a sermon as long as from here to Mars and back. And it says, Son, heaven was always in that chair. You were in hell. God bless you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.