The Rectal Suppository in the Ear – Larry K.

There's a town in England that had a wisdom that we in the United States could have profited from. Fifty-five years ago, at least, they foresaw the environmental problems that we're still trying to attack. They saw the pollution that would threaten their environment. And they had a town meeting to ward it off. Instantly, they saw that the single greatest threat to their environment was going to come from the combustion engine and they banned it. Nothing with a combustion engine has been allowed in that town from that day to this day. No automobile, no van, no truck, no cycle, no bus, nothing. Their problem wasn't whether they were going to allow it but what they would use as a substitute and all day they went back and forth over all the possible substitutes until near the end of the day by a close margin they selected the donkey and for 55 years it's been the main stay of their life since it's the only way for people to get themselves around or any burden they've got to get around every single person in town needs their own so should you ever travel there and visit and you look carefully enough you'll discover that the oldest man in town has his own ass, the oldest lady in town has her own ass. Take a good look at a young-looking gal and you'll find out she's got her own ass. Because it's so important to life, people are pushing their ass and pushing their ass and I don't know if you've ever discovered this from your own experience, but if you drive your ass too hard, it breaks down on you. Now, you've maybe never had to think what life would be like without your own ass but you would very quickly find your problems backing up on you and so you borrow somebody else's ass well nobody else's ever moves fast enough for you so you try to help it along well people don't like to have their asses kicked by other people certainly not in public and this leads to a lot of fighting in the town people are the same everywhere and a good-looking gal will park her ass where it doesn't belong and purely in the line of duty the local cop has to come and pinch it once a year everybody parades their ass in public and they pick the best looking ass in town now if you've never studied asses they're not all the saying there's a lot of variety to them asses may differ politicians don't and on the day of the contest you'll find the local mayor kissing ass for votes of course every somebody every sunday people haul their ass off to church and on a particular sunday that leads to the story i'm sharing with you right in the middle of the catholic mass an earthquake struck the town everybody in church had to run out of church to save their life their ass makes sense to me except for the local priest he had parked his ass tying it to a tree on the side of the church and he noticed as the quake was occurring that every window there was broken by the quake being smart he simply thought he would jump through a window and land on his ass what he didn't know is that's exactly where the main crevice of the earthquake was and he fell in it by error proving that even a priest can't tell his ass from a hole in the ground i'm larry kowalski and i'm an alcoholic i got here because of other reasons i happen to be a catholic priest who couldn't tell his ass from the hologram I and I am a priest I don't use the title in AA because we had in the military town where I sobered up a Colonel John until he got drunk and came back as John and I realized that anything that separates anybody from the fellowship threatens them I will stay on the same spiritual plane I've started for a few minutes yet at least we have had some trouble last night with the sound system and we might again this may help you a very elderly lady all of a sudden didn't feel right she went to see her doctor she's a doctor I don't feel good can you help me and he looked and he couldn't believe it and he got his tweezers and he probed and he said man did you know you had a rectal suppository in your ear she said oh thank goodness he said I just told you you have a rectalsuppository in your ears she says now I know where my hearing aid is so just in case you don't hear me too well shake your head a few times and one of our hosts will be able to tell you what your problem is in the post delivery room of a very large hospital two ladies were one very very rich and haughty and the other very poor the rich lady looked over at the poor one and said this is my second child. After having our first my husband was so happy he ran right out and bought me a 10 carat diamond. The poor lady looked over and she says that's nice. The rich one said and that wasn't enough. He then ran out and got me a full length ermine coat. The poor Lady said that's nice the rich lady said and through a sonogram we determined this child was going to be a boy so he's promised as soon as I get home from the hospital we go out and he drives and buys me a brand new powder blue Mercedes the poor lady says that's not the rich lady says well hasn't your husband done anything for you and the poor lady says as a matter of fact he has when we discovered I was pregnant he stopped eating his lunches and he saved all of his money and he sent me to finishing school so that I might be a more fitting mother for our child did they teach you anything at finishing school yeah they taught me instead of saying screw you to say that's nice when I finished with my sharing just in case you haven't liked my talk at all that's Nice and finally this young couple fell in love they were in love for years through junior high, high school, and they waited until they both became adults. And as soon as they turned legally adult, all the arrangements were made and they were driving on their way to church to be married and they were killed instantly in a car crash. Because they lived as good as they did, they instantly went and they appeared before St. Peter and they said, St. Pete welcomed them to heaven. They said, you know, we're happy to be here. We don't want to make you feel bad. But we have spent our whole lives on being married. Can you arrange for us to be marred up here in heaven? and saint peter says you know we never had a request like that before now you're in heaven and we have all eternity here so be patient i'll try to work it out on the 50th anniversary of their death they knocked on his door and they said hey pete remember us he said i haven't forgotten you told you it would take a long time i'm still working on it on the 100th anniversary they knocked at the door again and they said we're still here and he said good news i've got it all worked out be here wednesday and we'll get you married they showed up happily on wednesday there was a priest there they went through a whole service and that's something weird worked out happened they didn't like being married to each other and two weeks later they came back to see saint peter and they said uh this is going to sound strange especially through all the work you did to get us married but could you please arrange to have us divorced up here and he said listen it took me 100 years to get a priest up here to marry you how long do you think it's going to take to get a lawyer and a judge I told that joke about a month ago at one of our Sunday services the mass and the reader was a lawyer in this about the tenth few was one of the county judges the lawyer didn't like it at all the judge turned red laughing I am when I was about two weeks sober I woke up into a whole new universe I had a peace within me that I had never ever had in my life I knew that on the deepest level of my being I was okay I had been seeing a tremendous psychiatrist before this and just getting worse. And I knew that no human power could have achieved for me what I experienced that day. And so I knew there was a power within me that several years later I began because of that power being so personal to call God. When I was about two years sober, I had some very deep sharing to do. It's the deepest I've ever done. and I wondered how deep I could go in my sharing. How much I should tell them. And before I began the sharing I heard God speak the first of the two times that I'm clearly aware that my God has spoken to me. And the message I heard in my heart, not with my ears is Larry, I've made you the way you are. I'm proud of you. And I want you to be proud of yourself also and if anybody out there doesn't like it that's their problem. when I was five years sober I was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day and had been smoking this much for about 20 years smoking like drinking as most of you know is not basically viewed a sin in the Catholic theology so there was no clash there in my sobriety at all I had a hundred miles to drive i drove to celebrate five years being sober it was 11 o'clock at night and for the first time in my life i had good lighters and i was looking forward to smoking i pulled a cigarette out and i heard god speak for the second time the message i heard is you don't have to smoke now i've never had a cigarette since i went through no nicotine withdrawal i was already working the program of overeaters anonymous so i didn't substitute a pretzel or a heart attack it was the easiest thing that's ever happened in my life to prove to you i have an alcoholic mind about a month into this it occurred to me just as a flashing thought if it's this easy to quit why don't i go back i can quit whenever i want but i knew that if i picked a cigarette up for that reason i would die smoking and i've not had a cigarette from that day to this now i share these things with you not asking you to agree with them but for you to understand why in the depth of my heart I experience the reality of a God a power greater than me I want to begin with this because looking back now I can say all this once I know that there is a God then I'm no accident in this universe a God who is perfect has willed, planned, yearned, created me into existence. And I believe from my own experience that this God intends me to be fully precious in every single level of my being. This God made me to a flower that would blossom completely and every single part, every petal is necessary for the flower to achieve its full beauty. And as I look at the levels where I'm to be precious and know that I'm precious. They begin first on the physical, they include the emotional, the intellectual, the sexual, the social, and the spiritual. For a variety of reasons, it was nearly impossible for me to become precious on any of those levels as I was born and raised. If you have the opportunity and you're around me, I would love to show you a picture that explains my physical difficulties at the age of seven i have a picture of me with my ears straight out and they're about this big people heard me share this for years and years and they didn't believe it but two out of three people who see the picture and don't know my full story will say the same thing they'll look at the picture look at me and say when did you have plastic surgery i never did i grew into my ears and i don't Know when i did because you see i was called big ears and Dumbo as a child and I was made to feel ugly for what I am physically and ten years sober in this program if I closed my eyes it was impossible for me to picture my face because my mind could not claim a face that my body felt was ugly and I blocked out what I was I needed surgery in a hospital for a dermal cyst because for months in shaving sober I didn't see that cyst because I blocked out what was in the mirror when I shaved. I was ugly and when you are ugly to your core how can you want to become what you are? How can you make yourself un-ugly and become precious? I didn''t know any way at all. I grew up feeling, because of my mother's emotional problems, that I was not to have my own feelings. It was not okay to feel anger. It was NOT okay to fear. It was NOT okay to FEEL very happy. There's a lot of debate, and I've sensed it in the speakers and in talking to other people on talking about issues, and there's a LOT of debate in our society right now on adult child of alcoholic issues. I'm going to tell you where I stand on this. I have never cried in my life. I am coming right up to the border of it. I stood at my dad's grave and felt a tinge of guilt because I felt absolutely nothing. It is very important for me to know today that I can't cry because of a message my mother put in my mind, and that message is, you cry and I'll give you something to cry about. When I see other speakers sober a year or a day stand and cry, I envy them. I have 53 years of sorrow welled up within me waiting to cry out. And I'm coming up to the border. I can't cry. I cannot even allow myself to feel sorrow for myself. I don't have that right. I understand that I'm not to blame for that and this is the important message I got see if I see you cry and I can't cry if I hear you talk about never having been able to cry and the program freeing you to do it and I'm 18 years sober I haven't had a drink I guess I didn't give my sobriety date since May the 21st 1972 and I credit this solely to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous if I am 18 years over and I can't cry. I'm willing, I'm made to take additional guilt for that. I need to understand my reason for crying is not from me. What I do about that is my responsibility. Simply saying, my mother gave me a tape and blaming her for what I do in the future, that's not it. What I've come to understand has enriched me so much to see myself, to know myself and to understand I'm not to blame for so many of the things in my past but I am responsible for what I do about these in my presence. So, I was not allowed to feel anger. I was no allowed to fear. I wasn't allowed to have any emotions. My emotions were not okay. And if your emotions are not okay and you have to live on a flat level so much so that you feel nothing when your dad is killed in the mines. How? How could I feel precious with these feelings and claim them that God gave me? Many, many people in our program were put down absolutely as children they were called stupid and dumb and so they feel ugly intellectually the only area of my life that was respected growing up was the ability of the mind to think all of my grandparents were born in europe my dad was a coal miner he felt because he quit school my mother went into the factory quitting school at the age of four of in the fourth grade and they thought if we got a college education we could become anything and they wanted that for us and so they prized the ability of the mind to learn in school now i wasn't able to do that until junior high up until then i was a c student and i don't get any respect but in junior high i became a b student an ab student in high school and i have 12 years of almost straight A college. I respect the ability of my mind to think. However, absolutely nothing I ever did was right for my mother or my father. They critiqued everything. And so I can think academic thoughts, but for years I was absolutely paralyzed thinking practical thoughts. I believe I deserve a trophy for changing a light bulb or a socket in a wall because these are major errors areas of accomplishing today for me I've had cars with over a hundred thousand miles and I never knew where to put the oil in or the gate or maneuver put the gas in but never knew I didn't even know what a dipstick was because I was raised to feel I was totally helpless in that area but some of us in our programs are totally crippled in the entire intellectual area it's the only area where I could blossom at all sexually two great things occur in a general way because I don't think it would help you to share the specifics I was abused sexually and minorly molested in a way that had major consequences in my life by my mother and then added on top of that I remember coming home one day when I was in probably in junior high my mother interrupting a card game taking me upstairs throwing the sheets off the bed and I had had a wet dream and she pointed at the stain and she said that's dirty, ugly and sinful and that's me. So on top of the hang-ups of the molestation everything I am sexually I felt was dirty, ugly and simple and my mother still has that hang-up today. She sees two flies on each other on a screen and she goes crazy getting a fly swatter to squash it. Socially somehow i have never fit in anyone's world at all i didn't fit in my own family i was abandoned by my father who got out of the house he was really just never present my mother put us out ofthe house into the backyard in that backyard was my older brother who was cruel to me because i took away his love and my younger sister and my choices back there were to be with them with pain or alone with isolation and i chose to be alone hiding under of porch living a fantasy world. There's nobody my age in my neighborhood at all. I lived outside a Polish ghetto, and I went to a Catholic school for nine years in that ghetto where everybody else traveled around all the time. I had no friends. I wasn't important in anyone's life. As a matter of fact, it isn't until probably my junior year in high school that I was important in anyone's lives. And then I had that strange trait that so many of us do. The people who liked me, I had no time for. The people who I wanted to make friends were the ones who didn't like me. But socially, I was absolutely isolated and I just didn't feel there was any worth in me at all. So how would you want me? And I didn't see the world one at me. And it was like I live on an island by myself. I'm absolutely alone. Nobody has any time for me. I don't belong. So how can I develop? And finally, spiritually, I grow up feeling absolutely not okay. i did have a god that i did hear would put me in hell for an awful lot of things he's not the god of the bible and he's not really the god of my church but he forgot that he's the god that in my hang-ups i heard was going to damn me for everything i wasn't okay in my feelings and i'd be damned forever when i died the ideas i'm going to share with you i want to start off with that now see god made me to be precious and he made me to be precious in every single one of these areas And because of the difficulties I started life with, I couldn't become precious in any of them but one part of the intellectual. And I tried everything to develop as a person until I found alcohol. And alcohol allowed me to become precious in every single one of those areas but one. And that's very important. The prison group is sponsoring a meeting with two of, I think, the greatest AA speakers, if not the two greatest AA Speakers by my taste in the world. Don and Tom. And Tom's the one who started dropping the ideas I'm sharing with you. He talked about the hang-ups he had in a talk in developing himself, and how alcohol became the catalyst that allowed him to become everything he was supposed to be. You see, when I took a drink instantly, I was okay physically. Now, I wasn't attractive. My hang- ups are so great, but I never felt that I was so attracted any gal would be interested in how I look. But it's as if a light went on within me, and you would see that light. And it was whatever my personality was would be so charming you would overlook my looks so i could be physically and every single emotion i had at one time or another were made precious when i had alcohol in the system i could feel my happy feelings i could beat a life of a party and i was the life of the party for much of my drinking and then at the end of my drink when only negative feelings came out I could act on my anger I could express my anger and I know today that's still better than just swallowing it and keeping it in here because when I can't feel anger then the anger runs me when I could feel them and express it and all through my drinking I could my anger at the end I was expressing it that's still better they're just swarming at this swallowness and swallow you I don't know the best of my ability that anger that alcohol ever allowed me to cry the sorrow I don't know ever came out it may have happened in blackouts because I don't no I may have heard enough in those circumstances that I would feel that but alcohol made my feelings precious and alcohol certainly increased my ability to feel well intellectually as a matter of fact alcohol took care of so many of my problems that I believe I didn't crack up but I was able to go to Penn State and graduate from Penn State with the second highest grades in my college the College of Liberal Arts I was able to be offered five or six fellowships to start graduate school I was able to start Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin then to go back into the seminary and go through five or seven more years of academic study because alcohol kept siphoning off all these pains that were going to explode it would have cracked me alcohol allowed me to use my mind allowed me to become the person that God wanted me to be it was the drug that handled my particular problems for me because it worked for me in a way that it doesn't for an Al-Anon. Al Clancy does that so beautifully I've never heard anybody else come up with a better description Juanita if Juanita and I had been out drinking when my alcoholism was active and when alcohol was really working for me and we were both facing the same crisis because it was listening to an Al-Anon that made me aware of this than applying Clancy's talk supposing on a given day Juanita and I both smashed our brand new cars and we both went out we were just nervous she would take a drink well let me start with mine I would take a drink and it went down and it was just go and life would begin and I was okay Juanita would take her drinking it would go down and if would go poop something happens, but it's radically different. If you listen to them, something happens. See, I listened to an Al-Anon handle the traffic accident and she took two drinks to calm her nerves to walk through it. When I smashed my first new car, I sent out for a bottle. I knew that in that alcohol, everything was okay. It was okay! Alcohol was the answer to my problems. I didn't need the alcohol to handle the problems. When i had the drinks in my system there were no problems and it's a radically different existence. So alcohol worked for me and it worked for my life. It worked for the other areas of my life and it did work for me in ways that life became wonderful. It did not do much in the area of sex. I just got to tell you that. The hang-ups were just too severe in there but it worked 100% in the era of my not being okay socially. In the other eras it drugged me, here it worked. The only group, The only relationship that I know I belonged to before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous was the first group that I drank with in a bar in Pennsylvania, in Hazleton, where I grew up at the age of 17. I was not an outsider trying to become part of that group. I belonged for that group and alcohol did it. When I took a drink, two wonderful things happened. You all paid attention to me and you welcomed me and I was part of you. It's like you had all had your backs to me. You didn't dislike me, but nobody noticed me. It's like I would come around in life and try to tap everybody on the shoulder and they were too busy talking. Nobody wanted to turn around and make me important until I took a drink and then you did and I was important. And alcohol really gave me life and it really, I don't know if it made me feel okay, if it makes me precious spiritually, but it sure kept me from knowing I wasn't okay. I felt great. The only moments of pain I have before the program are moments when alcohol was in my system i did street drugs i did counter drugs i did all the drugs my drug of choice is very clearly alcohol i would use the others to keep me from really seeing that i had a problem with alcohol if i got too drunk as i did many weekends as a priest i would on monday and tuesday just be bombed out on tranquilizers to prove i could to me i didn't know at that time to show i could go without any alcohol at all but the last three four five years in my my drinking at least i could never walk through any day just being larry and then this is tom's statement alcohol stopped working and it's as if when god created me he made me larry a flower to blossom and because i found alcohol i blossomed in all these ways and then alcohol stopped working when it stopped working it's as if I froze and then I started closing back up alcohol got out of control I didn't mind it being out of control that wasn't bad I could take other drugs and they could as long as the drug is doing something good for me I'll take bad side effects I sponsored people who have walked through terminal illnesses and they've gone through chemotherapy and for some of them there have been unpleasant side effects but the quality of the living that they were getting in the long run from the chemo allowed them to accept the bad side effect. I didn't mind blackouts, I didn''t mind drinking more than I wanted to, I didn' t mind losing control when I drank, I did not mind that at all as long as I still felt precious on these levels. But then for me the great pain occurred and alcohol stopped working and I started closing up. And I'll start with the results. At the end of my drinking now early in my drinking before I discovered alcohol inside I don't feel any worth at all in my drinking I feel part of life with you everybody wants me I'm exciting I'm dynamic I'm wonderful any party I'll ever attend wants me to be part of it and I drank in public that was where all my drinking was all of a sudden I wasn't drinking in public all of a certain I was drinking at home and then I was drinking at Home Alone and then i was drinking it home alone upstairs and then was drinking a home alone upstairs in my own room but the door closed and the shades down and it's like precious had blossomed and being precious socially had just come right back and it was like i was back in the womb we have an alcoholic gal in my own hometown who made the journey further than i did the end of her drinking she was drinking in the closet with the door close and the light out in a fetal position and i understand it just a matter of time if I drank a little longer that's where it would have been back in the womb I felt on every single level I didn't feel precious physically anymore I felt ugly physically I hated everything I was and my emotions weren't good anymore I felt uglier drunk than I did sober I didn' t feel precious spiritually I didn''t feel okay I felt more guilt ridden drunk than I had than I could sober I would find people I didn ''t like and dump on them in blackouts secrets that I had difficulty saying in my fifth step. But I couldn't handle the pain and the ugliness in here anymore. It's like drunk it wasn't working. And so at the end of my drinking, I was back in my room. I couldn' t talk to anybody. Drunk, I felt ugly. Drunk I felt crazy. I was seeing a psychiatrist. Drunk i felt lonely, abandoned. Drunk ive felt not okay. and I did all the other things I'm not going to go through the drunk a lot because that's not what I want to share with you because I did things drunk you didn't because we walked different streets and if I talked about celebrating mass drunk you could sit here and say well unless you celebrated mass drunk they're not an alcoholic you got to become a Catholic priest to do that you may have abandoned a child I didn't abandon a child that I'm aware of drunk I stowed every cent it was in the poor fund of the first church I was in as a priest for three years in a row i didn't do it from for alcohol i had a wine supply that i ordered so there was always a supply there i didn t do it for pills i had a secret supply i did it to finance some of the sexual things i needed to do to handle the pain as the alcohol stopped working and i closed up completely if you could walk with this now i hope none of you felt as bad as i did on every level of being But if you used alcohol as a drug, you at least need it in some way to be made more precious, to be mad more than you were. And if you're like me as an alcoholic, alcohol stopped working. With prison sentences, with court assignments, with interventions and with treatment, some young people come in before alcohol really stops working. But it's part of the progression of the disease. I assure you, if you drink long enough, you'll reach this stage where when you drink, You feel less precious than you do when you're sober, when you still feel ugly, dirty, crazy, lonely, and damned. And the trouble is you can't stop drinking if you're like me. Now this is something that a lot of Al-Anons need to know, and I have the full Al-Anon trait. I have The Disease of Al Anonism. It exploded in my sobriety. This is something Al- Anon needs to know. For them, the great miracle is just to keep an alcoholic from drinking. And as long as we're not drinking, that's great. But you see, that would not have been okay for me. It's what I wondered when I came here. But I heard somebody share this. If you had put me in a straitjacket 18 years ago and kept me in an straitjacket for 18 years and just simply given me nothing that was mood-altering, I would be crazy today. I'd be a screaming, raving lunatic because no one can live with that pain that I was living with. I hear people say at a meeting that if the program didn't work for them, they'd go back to drinking. And I feel sorry for those people too because you see, I came here not because the program quit working but because alcohol quit working and I couldn't be a flower anymore. I was locked into myself in a hell that nobody could, I picture, ever want to be in and there was no relief. And I've never heard a person who's come to our program ever say that when they go back out, it kicks in, they get a second win and it works again. I have come to meetings and cursed that I had to be at the meeting. This was seven years sober at a Thanksgiving. And I told people, the only thing in life I could picture worse today is to be drunk on top of how ugly I feel right now because I knew it would just add to the pain. I need the solution. I came here because alcohol stopped working and there was no answer and I needed to drink. Now, I believe for me, the purpose of our fellowship is to enable me to develop in every single one of these levels and the program has enabled me to start developing in most of them what happened first and I think it's what happens for many of us the very first thing I felt was the fellowship I was told to come late and leave early and that's the only way I could have come I could not have arrived at a meeting three minutes before it began sat down and talked to anybody Even sat there while you talked to me. I had to get up and split. I arrived at five minutes after eight, and when people stood up for the Lord's Prayer, I as a priest split immediately because I couldn't talk with you. But somehow coming late and leaving early, the first great miracle of program occurred and I felt you wanted me. Second time in my life I thought I belonged in a group. I didn't feel I belonged to my family. I have parents who tried to love. I'm not blaming my mother for what she did. She did the best she could do with what she received. They tried to give love, I couldn't feel it. My antenna wasn't tuned into that channel somehow or other and I never felt anybody wanted me but somehow or another without my talking, without my coming early, I mean without my coming late you shared enough of yourself that I felt you understood and and I belonged. And I started becoming precious socially, the first half of it. And I went on a cloud nine. It was exciting to be wondered. My feelings were okay. It was great. But the cloud nine ended, and I drove from Lawton to Dallas, and I talked to Ray and Billy, who introduced me—I was four months sober—to something that in my group we never heard about it it was the program of alcoholics anonymous and the big book and the steps i grew up among bad aa and i'll tell you that they were good enough and that they had fellowship but nobody ever read the big book the attitude was you work a step i heard this shared and please i believe this will kill people you work astep and then you sit on that step till you feel real bad and that's a sign maybe you should start working the next step and speaker after speaker preached the cafeteria oh go through and if you like a step do it if you don't take the next the next and so we had a lot of pain-filled sobriety but I discovered the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and it is truly necessary for me to blossom on the other level and it begins with my remembering today that the single most important thing in my life is my alcoholism I had to face the possibility of having cancer about three years ago for the first time in my life I have a rare blood it's B negative and it's an ego trip for me to go give blood they know me they almost salivate when I walk in I give every two months scrupulously and two out of three times in a row I got turned down for having iron poor blood in between I started taking iron supplement pills my doctors in the program I told him this my doctor has less tact than Genghis Khan this was his response hmm middle-aged man I don't trust their test but if they're right iron poor blood that means you have internal bleeding that means who have cancer of the colon and he walked away two minutes later he came up and he said uh since you're on those damn pills get off before a week and then we'll run the test and he walk away again I had my funeral plan that night beautiful just beautiful funeral for the next week I had to remember that remembering I was alcoholic was more important than remembering or facing I mine had cancer and I did it by watching two people die of cancer one put the program sober first and he became one of the five most beautiful people in my life he was a turd when he got cancer and he was a real loser people would drive to another clubhouse when they'd see his car at one for a meeting but from the day he got cancer he never lost an attention his attention for the newcomer and I remember this if you were at your first meeting and he was there I saw him do this in a wheelchair three months before he died he had had a colestomy, he was shriveled up and we had a new chair. He picked the big book up and I guess when you're literally dying you have no time for frills so he didn't have 11 chapters. I checked after about three years of sharing this if I remembered it correctly and I do. He would say the first 103 pages of this book that's up through step 12 from the wives on it was luxury. The first seven chapters 103 pages have the answer to every deep problem you're ever going to have. And he would speak with love and he blossomed. I sponsored a woman who, with her third return to cancer, fired all the people she sponsored and took care of herself. And I watched her shrivel and become a shrew as a person. So I knew that my blossoming did not depend first upon my handling and facing cancer. It depended upon my attitude toward my alcoholism. And I've had to keep that sin. I've walked through some very heavy problems in a weird way the last few months of my life i was absolutely innocently accused publicly in the parish that i'm in of some major sexual slip and there wasn't an ounce of evidence it wasn't announced a possibility to it i can prove to you i haven't done something i've done i'm a good liar when you're 100 innocent it's nearly impossible to prove you're innocent and i had to walk through that in pain and not make it the most important thing because whatever happens in the parish isn't going to be responsible for my serenity, whatever happens in my heart. I was popular in my drinking and I didn't feel okay inside. I don't feel okay inside from what you say about me. I feel okay outside from what God says about me and from what I say about myself. Twelve years sober, I realized I don�t know what a relationship is. Up until that time, resentment was a way of breathing for me and I blamed view for every broken relationship i had 12 years sober i updated my inventory and i didn't blame a person on earth for any of the problems and my relationships were all shambles and it had to tell me i know how to take captives my idea of a relationship would be i meet john at the airport we share well i enjoy him i'm here for the weekend i fly back to sterling oklahoma then where i lived all alone in an entire city block i go into my rectory i close the door pull the blades the the shades and live with the memory and i call that a relationship see i've never learned to give and take of relating nobody ever did it with me 12 years sober 40 some years old it's easy to think i'll never learn how to relate the second then i'll not blossom if i tell god by giving up that something his power will never remove my god is a gentle person and will not force the power on me. The second step is a challenge for me to believe today that I don't have an obstacle bigger than God's power, and my God's love is going to win out, and every obstacle of my life will be removed, and at some time in my existence, I will be totally precious. Maybe before death, maybe after. That's not important. What's important for me is to know in the plan of God, literally, this too shall pass, and it's the second step that tells me that. Pass in the sense that i'll be precious how do i become precious not by doing what i want i told you i've got a brilliant mind i really do a god-blessed mind in academic problems but a friend of mine once was going to pick a tape of mine and make it the tape of the month in their club and i happen to belong to that tape ofthe month club and he didn't send it to me i wished he did because i was goingto send it back with the phrase listening to that son of a bitch is what got me to aa in the first place and see i have to remember that incidentally i believe my god is not offended by words i use he's offended by love and hate a new a new guide i give you if what i say unnecessarily hurts someone then my god doesn't want me to use those terms i went to a public high school in penn state i have a high school vocabulary when i'm talking to guys who are in aa i don't talk like this if i slipped up and said you know some little child starts crying in a sunday sermon and And I said, ma'am, would you get that little bastard out of the church? The hurt of that slip would be so intense to the mother that my God would never want me to use language to hurt. So if I use an okay, and I hope I don't anymore, but that one was necessary. Language that offends you. I am sorry. And if you were offended by the opening jokes, I'm sorry because they're not for me. My God has taught me how to laugh. And he wants me to laugh while I still know how to cry, but I didn't know howto laugh or cry. Not from the inside. Anyway, I don' t know howtomakemyselfprecious. I'm so intellectual, I don't know how to do it. Listening to me did get me here. I need to go to a guy who's never been to college, was until three years ago never a Christian, who did hard time in the penitentiary and put my life in his hands. And for the last 14 years, 15 years, when I do what he tells me, I get what the program promises. I am in coat and tie. I've been privileged since I've had drugs as a backup to be one of the speakers at a regional N.A. conference. And at this particular conference in Cheyenne, formal dress was having your own tattoo and tank top. I came up behind the podium in coat and tie because my sponsor, when I was 10 years sober, threw me against the wall because I dared talk in an AA group without having a coat and thigh on. And he says, when you stand up here, you honor the program. So I don't care how you want me to dress and I've been to other groups that have been the same. I do what my sponsor tells me. Doing what you want us to do or what you feel you want to do was responsible for much of the pain that made it necessary for me to use. Doing what my sponsor tells me to do helps me walk a road that enables me to feel precious enough that I don't find it necessary to use, and I do feel good dressing up today. I'm wearing a ring. It was a present 10 years sober with a 10-carat diamond. Fortunately, my sponsor was present the first time I got the ring and wore it. I apologized for it, and he said, Don't you ever apologize for making yourself look good in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I enjoy periodically today dressing up because I want to make this physical person that God has made as perfect and as precious as I can be. And I love it. I enjoy it, but it's from my sponsor. If I'm going to develop, I've got to know who I am. And see, I don't know who i am instinctively. I will put down my assets and I will minimize my defects or exaggerate my defects and that's where the fourth step of this program comes in. I need to know the depth of my problems. i need to know that in the back of my mind i have another message my mother gave that's the single guiding message of my life and that message says anything you do must be done perfect and even then you're you won't be good enough and so i don't try things because i got to know how to do it perfect i threw a football somewhere around the age of seven i never threw another football until I was 40 some years old. I've never thrown a basketball at a hoop, I've thrown a softball or a hardball that I'm aware of because for a sad through a sad set of circumstances in my entire life nobody ever taught me how to do any of those. My dad didn't know how his parents came from Europe and he wasn't there. My brother hated me there was nobody my age and whatever his group did I couldn't do and if I can't do it perfect I'm not going to try it and I need to know that it's okay to try but But you see, I didn't know that message was running my life. Two years ago, until I started with my sponsor's blessing, seeing a therapist to bring up some of the hidden messages I have, I didn' t know that that was in me. And I didn''t know how governing it could be. I now know I can do some things athletic. I'm a very accomplished snow skier. God willing, a week from now, I will start nine days of snow skiing in Aspen, Colorado. And I did'nt start snow skiing until I was 43 years old, seven or eight years sober. And I didn't think I could do it but if I could teach it, but I took lessons and that's much That's par for the court for me learn how to do it first then go practice practice and practice and I'll ski with anybody There isn't a slope that I've been on. It's too steep for me. If you know snow skiing I love the expert slopes. I don't like the moguls So if they groom them and they're crispy most experts skiers don't want anything to do with them That's where I go for my excitement. My little kid is coming alive see my mother was so conservative we weren't supposed to risk anything because we could get hurt and I've been I discovered I was driving around rural Oklahoma roads a hundred miles an hour I was bicycling as fast as I couldn't I was skiing as fast I could and I realized that the excitement that my little child never could have is coming out now and I'm like a seven eight nine year old kid enjoying it long as the law isn't there and a tree isn't in my way. I think it's okay. You know, it's getting the excitement that all of us should have had, I feel. Anyway, so if I want to be me, I've got to know who I am right now. I've Got to know my problems. I got to Know My Tapes. I Got To Know My Hang-Ups. I Gotta Know That I've Never Known How To Relate. And then I can go on and become me. I'm going to need a sheet of paper, a blank sheet, if you could get it. Just any, doesn't have to have anything on. I'll need it for the next step to show you something. I can't become precious if I limit my growth to what you want me to be, and this is where the fifth step gives real freedom. Many of us never understand the miracle that happens in the fifth steps. Almost every one of us are grateful to the person who heard our step because they've learned something in our life, and we don't understand the miracle occurs the other way. The greatest gift in the world, and I've heard between 500 and 1,000 fifth steps, the greatest gift in the whole world is the gift a person making a true fifth step makes to the person who hears it. For the very first time in their life probably they share everything they are with another person. You gift me with all of yourself. You allow yourself as you are to be given to me and for once you're not going to let any of your own messages or society's messages or any church's messages keep you from saying, this is what I've been. This is who I am. And you see, as long as I tailor myself to what I expect you to be, I can never become fully precious. I get the real ability to be the person God wants me to be. Larry, I made you the way you are. I'm proud of you. I want you to do the right thing. I want to make you to be proud of yourself. And if anyone out there doesn't like it, that's their problem. If you don't like what I'm sharing and you go out and get drunk, that's your problem. If I don't Like who God made me to be right at this moment and I go out and get drunk. That's my problem. And so I still have problems with dishonesty. I help from the church. I still used to say I overcharge things to the church I shouldn't. Ten years sober, that's what I said and my sponsor made me look at it and he said, you mean you're still stealing from the church? My sponsor has a very poor grasp of English. I never thought those two sentences were the same. I much prefer my way of phrasing it. I still do it. I wish I didn't. Now if you're upset that I don't have total honesty yet, 18 years sober, that's your problem. I'm trying to let God remove it if He can. But my telling you that this is where I'm at in 18 years over, that I'm just 5'10 as far as honesty goes, that's my size. I'm not 6'2". If I can't see that, that would become my problem. So I can blossom and become the precious person God wants me to be right now if I tailor my growth to what I feel You want. Almost every one of us sees the sixth step this way. God's going to remove my dishonesty. God's gonna remove my fear. God's Gonna Remove My Lust God's Going To Remove My Impatience That's Certainly how I saw the six step till about two years ago Going to tell you something my understanding of biology and psychology makes this impossible I believe my God has put a desire in life never to accept being more, always to want to become more. And that radicalized my understanding of the sixth step. You see, for years I tried to handle lust, remove lust. I triedto handle dishonesty, remove dishonesty. That creates a vacuum. Today I know I want God to make me the fullest person I could be. and if I have a real sense inside me of my dignity as a person, I can never look lustfully at you and allow you to become a thing. It's only when I understand how dignified I am that I can understand what a horrible travesty, what a sacrilege it is to demean a person of their dignity and make them a thing to satisfy a sexual urge of mine. Only when I understanding how God has blessed me with love that makes me fully honest? Will it be absolutely unnecessary for me to ever be dishonest? Only when God truly allows me to experience how patient God is with me and I become patient with myself can I be patient with you. You see, I've discovered we do judge others the way we judge ourselves and I had a perfectionist standard on me passed in from my mom. So I judged all of you critically for years in sobriety. None of you ever came up to my expectation. But when with the program and with meditation, I could let Larry be Larry. I can let you be you. And when I know how patient God is with me and I can become patient with me, then you have the right to be you and the sixth step is no longer my becoming less. It's my desire to become more and the seventh step is my being active doing this. There's a guy in one of my last home group who, oh, his grasp of grammar is worse than anybody's I know. He can't really say two-sentence grammatical but he's got a lot of wisdom and he told this story i was chairing a meeting and we had three minutes left when i called on him and i apologized and he said that's all i'm going to need he said i had one good molar left in my mouth and i love a good steak and that tooth wasn't feeling right so i went to see a defect i'm not going to translate i wentto see a dentist not a d well that shows you that's a freudian slip in my mind i'm gonna translate into uh freudia i mean to program terms now not Freudian terms and he said that dentist looked at me and he says your tooth has a defective character it's got a bad abscess I can't pull it take these pills and come back in three days and the two oh he said no no no I'm sorry the tooth was defective and that these dentists looked at and he says you know that your tooth as a defect of character it got to be pulled let me pull it and he says I wasn't entirely ready to have their dentist remove that that tooth I loved what it was doing for me enabling me to eat steak so much I said no thank you and I went home then he got an abscess in the tooth and he said I could feel my heartbeat in my tooth and I was at that dentist office entirely ready to have him remove that defect the dentist opens the mouth sees the abscess closes the mouth and says it's not ready to come out take these pills and come back in three days three days later the tooth was still hurting he went to see the dentist the dentist opens the mouth says take these pill still abscessed come back in three within that three-day period the absence Well, the pain was gone. Now here's where his reality differs from my program. At that point I wouldn't have gone back to the dentist. But he did go back to the dentist who says, the absence is gone we'll pull the tooth. And the dentist pulled the tooth and I just sat there spellbound. That explains why when I go to God and humbly ask him to entirely remove a defect it stays. God knows there are spiritual, physical, emotional intellectual, sexual and social absences in my system and if that tooth were pulled right now i'd need something worse it would unleash something worse and so god says take this meeting and come back in three days and when i'm filled with enough love and i'm tuned into love god says you don't have to smoke now and it's like that defect was never in my life when love pushes a defect out it's gone and until that time i know today not rationalizing i need that if i'm going to grow i have to know you're in my world And see, I hurt that bad. I could use you, but I never knew you have feelings. And when I did my eight-step list, I walked away happy because Bob White, who is dead, 29 years sober, told me there's two parts to the eight-stepper. When you do a list of people you've hurt, you don't ever have to want to make amends to them all. And I didn't. I didn' t want to made amends for most of them. Some of them I was happy I did it and a few I wished they were there so I could do it again. But I wrote what I did and to whom and why and what I walked away with was like for at this time it was 40 some years I treated you like a thing and if I thought you should be here that's where you should be and I've hurt people badly trying to do good for them because they weren't ready to have that good done and the 8 step makes me sensitive to you as a person and your feelings and where you're at now and that doesn't happen instinctively for me I gotta capture the program up until this point at any time like right now I'm relaxing because I'm working 1 through 7 and I'm trying to be aware of your needs. And I'm tailoring this talk to what I've experienced since John picked me up at the airport. I'm tying to share what I have to share with you and your spirit and everything else. I give it differently in different places. Very, very differently. Because I try to get a sense of the people. I'm me. But how I share it I try not to. I try that I share in order to help you and it helps me become more precious when I'm aware of you. The ninth step is my removing obstacles for this. In the tenth step I had a taper do me an album of AA speakers who died drunk and it's the most powerful album I have one is a priest who was 18 years sober and when I sobered up and he died of active alcoholism one was a doctor one was a lawyer and I listened to their talks and I'll take those three the priest had a better relationship with God than I do the doctor knew much more about alcoholism than I did and the lawyer had a smarter mind than I do. And they all give excellent talks and I remembered somewhere later after this talk their program that day didn't help them. Yesterday's program won't make me precious today. Yesterday's answer won't keep me sober today. And that shocks me into the first step and the longer I'm sober the more I have to be shocked into realizing I should be surprised right now that I'm so sober let alone serene. It's easy to say well of course I'm sober, when I'm 18 years sober, rather than my God, I'm sober. And listening to those people's tapes helps shock me back into the shock and the gratitude of sobriety. And that's what the 10 step does for me. It helps me really remember that today I have to work today's program. Now one through nine don't make me feel precious spiritually. They flush out the garbage. But when you take the garbage out of a home, that doesn't make it beautiful. That home never felt beautiful. It's the 11th step that rendered me spiritually okay. And my 11th steps is very simple. I have a God of love. And the God of my love just loves me as I am. My meditations are very different. They're not basically thinking. God is both truth and love, so I'm not in any way knocking anybody else's thinking a lot in their meditation. My medinations are simple things that I'll repeat. I'm on the same two lines from one of the Gospels for about three months now. and it's a powerful thing the Lord is going up to Jerusalem and He walks ahead and His followers walk behind and I suddenly experienced my God never asks me to go anywhere my God comes and He is loving me and He asks me just to follow that love but at the same time I discovered my God always asks people to follow sobriety is never just staying anywhere love in my life is always taking me somewhere new and if I stay in one place love is going to walk ahead and I'll lose it. This is what I'm experiencing in my gut. My meditations are me and I picture Jesus looking at each other across the table and he just looks at me and I feel what he looks and I see a love in my heart and that's how I know I'm precious. And then I felt that he has faith in me that's part of being precious I experienced my God loving me and it was much harder to really believe my God has 100% faith that Larry will be Larry I dropped my first flower so I'll pick a new one. The God who made this flower knows this flower can only become a flower. It can't fail to be a flower! I can't... This is the only flower I know. I know... This is a tulip, right? A tulip can't become a rose! Larry can't be a rose, he can't even become John or Rick! Larry can only be Larry! And that's all God wants me to be. I'm placed in his place in the garden to round out the whole bouquet which will be lopsided for the rest of the conference now because I keep... uh i'm gonna use the word d flower that's a bad word i keep removing buds from it okay god got his total faith i'll be larry and god has total trust in me that was another meditation jesus looked at me with absolute confidence that's the meaning of the religious word hope it's not i wish that because it's based on god the power is in the seed and in the love and i will i will will be lari then one day i watched my god reach across in this meditation and touch me. He liked me. And that upset me. That literally sent chills. I could have take God loving me, having faith in me and trust in me. But somehow there was still enough of the not okay to be upset to know that my God likes me. My God wants Larry as a friend. Jesus wants to be at that table with me. That's becoming precious. That's become real valuable. So one more thing I need to talk about being precious. I'm going to summarize some of the discoveries I've made in a moment and then conclude. but when I first came, you told me I was precious socially because you wanted me. But that's not my real social preciousness. That comes out of the twelfth step. The twelfths step says my real value in society comes from not your accepting me, but my accepting you and giving you myself. You see, God made me who I am because you need me. Don, who will be at that prison meeting, is the one who helped me see this. Now, I used to feel a pressure standing up to talk because I felt I had to give something to every one of you. And I don't feel that anymore. I believe today that I've been asked to be here in Arkansas because one person there needs the gift of Larry. And nobody else on earth can satisfy that need right now. That's why I'm here. And if I try to gift myself to that person as fully as I can, that's all I have to do. And what a tremendous value. If you died today and you came before you as God, would you pass you or fail you? And what grade would you give? If I came before me as God I would pass me. The grade varies sometimes from a C to a B to a D minus sometimes an A minus because I know one person died sober with tremendous serenity as a result of coming to see me drunk and strung out. My life isn't wasted. I went to a gal I knew who was a sober alcoholic in cancer remission and I looked at her sternly and I said what the hell are you doing to justify the air you're breathing God is gifting you with two miracles you're sober alcoholically and you're free of cancer right now and you've got and you know you're sitting on it you've gotta get off your duff and write some notes to people and share the wonder of what's happening to you and that's my real value socially that's not what I get from you in the acceptance is how I can bless you because that really does free me from your standards You may not want to hear some of the things I'm sharing. I've heard that today. As a matter of fact, if you're ready to cut the tape off, I'm going to, in my own way, take a stand a little different from your wife. I do not receive everything I need from the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I want to share that. I have glaucoma. In so many ways, it's good to compare glauroma to alcoholism. Most people who have glaucoma by the time they discover it are going to go blind. I discovered it through a very fortunate accident stepping and totally shattering lenses and frames a year after a doctor's examination because it's never been in my family. I'm the first alcoholic in my family. There's lots coming after me. Both of these, I was the first in the family. I handle my glaucoma by putting drops in my eyes twice a day. I don't know what the hell they do. I don' t know why they work. They have no taste. They have not feeling. sometimes i get a salty burn i don't know why the program of alcoholics anonymous works as clancy says so well why going to the plumber down the block in my case it was an accountant who likes to keep books and telling him all the garbage i did that i never had the guts to share with a psychiatrist or when i shared with the psychiatrist i felt worse why telling it to a plumber do i walk away feeling good i don t understand i don d understand why the drops keep me from going blind but if i put them in my eyes in the morning and at night my vision doesn't shrink glaucoma also is like alcoholism in that yesterday's drops don't handle today's pressure and if i say i've been putting these drops in my eyes for 10 years now and i have or seven or eight and that ought to be long enough i can just stop putting them in now and save the money i'm going to be blind relatively soon now the program of Alcoholics Anonymous does not have everything I need to handle glaucoma doesn't have anything I need to handle glucomas it has everything I needs to handle the disease of alcoholism but I have other diseases I hope the program has everything you need to handle every one of your other problems if it does though if you don't have glaucoa you would never critique me for going to a doctor because I haven't I've watched people I'm going to go out of the disease I have and talk about another experience of all the other addictions I have never seen anyone I sponsor or know who has the disease of compulsive gambling in a real wild way who's been able to handle it by using our program I have a very good friend 10 years sober keeping his sobriety who's done tremendous work in the program and is very active who gambled away six figures of income that he didn't have in one month in Vegas I watch so many people with so much anger so long sober I don't want that and so I have gone first with my sponsor's permission after I've worked the steps while I continue working the steps committing myself to a total program I've gone to see a therapist and I've learned so much about myself I learned that when my dad was gone, my mother as a workaholic put us outside the house because she wanted to get the house ready for us. But because she was a workAHOLIC, she never got ready for it. And then my therapist dropped the line. The only models you have, Larry, for parenting yourself is the models you learned in your family. There's a strange thing about me. I've got some mental quirks. I don't like nice weather. I don' t like that blue sky. I don''t like warm weather. I like bad weather, cold weather and I love to be sick I don't enjoy being healthy through my therapist I suddenly discovered and I don' t know if I ever would have discovered any of this just through the program it's speeding up the insights that I can then use the program on that when it rained when it was very cold or when I was sick I was inside the house and there was a chance of getting love that's insight one insight two is when the weather is nice the weather is warm and I'm healthy I don't pay time to me I parent myself exactly as my mother does I have a whole list of things that when I get them all done then I'm going to relax and give Larry some time and I never get him done for some weird reason when I'm sick I love to pay time to my little child when the weather's bad I love it I love paying time to my child when it's snowing or cold I love playing I love spending time with my little kid and when I ignore that child within me he does things like set me up to steal money from the church charge that i shouldn't things that could bring troubles into my life that caused me not to like me he's trying to be noticed now that's great i have an insight that i wouldn't have received on my own i want to grow you see i want to be precious in every single area of my life let me tell you what the program of alcoholics anonymous has done i saw driving from memphis to here the cutoff for jonesboro and what a warmth twelve years sober I was at a conference in Jonesboro and some dude got up at the end of the meeting not showfully and sang the Lord's Prayer and I pictured my face I never thought it would ever happen that was so wonderful I didn't try to do it again for over a year and a half I could have died at that spot and been content you see your love had helped me first know I was precious spiritually then it went to intellectually and then it went to emotionally in some ways and it overflowed you allowed me to be myself enough to feel I could be Larry so that I could picture my face. A year and a half later, I tried it and was shocked to see I could do it. That's not the end of this one. Two years ago, I was in Irving, Texas at a conference and Tom, the other speaker, who happens to be my single favorite AA speaker, was speaking. And I was sitting here and there was a break in the table and a full-length mirror. Now, I loved Tom, but I was flirting with myself and having troubles listening to him. I not only accepted what I looked like, I liked what I look like. And Angie, another speaker on the program, had a phrase that applies to this. There's no way to end up where I was that day in Irving from where I started. It has to be God's power. I am precious physically. And I want to be fully precious physically and I want to do the things that make me precious physically That's one reason I worked the OA program. I hate myself heavy. I went from a 31 waist to a 36 waist in four months eating one meal a day but snacking all night. 13 years now I feel you know I'm back down to a comfortable weight I'm 32 if you want to think I'm healthy I've packed everything this time but a belt my pants have no belts thank goodness I like things tight or I would be sitting here like this right now um I feel precious physically I went to see my therapist this past week and I through the whole session I had to keep from crying not for sorrow but love anytime i see love love i can give her love i received i want to break up crying two weeks ago in the middle of the sermon i was talking about our dad my dad came up and i had to stop i had a stop for about 30 seconds i couldn't say a word because i was ready to just break up and give him 54 years of tears it's so funny for about 10 years now i've been praying for the gift of tears and every time they start i say not god not now god later But it's going to happen. It'll happen for joy, at love, and then I'm going to have years and years of crying because I have 54 years of sorrow swallowed in here that I know God wants out and I will be precious in all of my feelings. And I believe it's okay to be angry because as I read the Gospels, Jesus was angry, so that's not a sin. It's not okay to mull on the anger or to express the anger. I want to feel my fear. I wantto feel my ups and I wanto feel my downs. I've been able to be a life of a party, So I'm a precious emotionally. I am trying to do little things intellectually. And incidentally, I'm going to say something that I know if nothing else I said irked you, this one will. I am very proud to be able to tell you everything I've handed on to you today has not been given by someone else. I'm very proud to tell You I digest the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and think about it. I don't want to insult Your program, but you see, my God made me more than a memory. My God made Me a mind. My God made me more than a parrot. My God gave me the power to make my God made me a thinking person and I believe my God wants me to think and share with you the results of my thinking as long as I point out anything added on the program or any deviations from the program clearly I owe that to you. But I'm proud that I like to think I like digest and I like share and I hope I continue to keep thinking. I'm willing to risk little areas of acting going out and applying the thinking in the world. I do change light bulbs still I change the tire finally in my car never put oil in a car but i'm willing to risk new areas because i want to grow and i want you to know that every part of my mind is precious intellectually i still have severe hang-ups in the area of sex my therapist and i are working on that again bouncing everything off my sponsor see he's my main person several people i have have gone into therapy and this is how they do it they commit to me their program before they go in so we instantly spot a deviation from that how many meetings what steps and everything how much time meditating secondly in any conflict they know and the therapist knows from day one i'm the boss because i was caught in a bind between my sponsor and my therapist and she had a rough time with it and i told her the day one that my my sponsor takes control he's responsible for keeping the alcoholism out she's responsible für helping me feel more precious if i take a drink instantly I ain't precious in any area of my life and there's nothing she can do about it. I know that. So he is my main guide in life. I surrender to him and bounce what she says off him and that keeps it from being a conflict. But we're making some progress in the area of sex right now. And then finally, not finally, I am certainly precious socially. I just went into a men's group to learn how to relate. Because you see, there's something I don't get in AA even. I've never had a real brother relationship. I've never had a real friend relationship growing up. In AA, you give me yourself. You don't give me advice except for my sponsor. I had this insight. I had the pleasure of being in Germany and I caught the difference between religion and spirituality for me. Someone once made a statement, there's too much, there's religion and there's spirituality and there're too much religion in AA. And that night I thought about this. In religion, you gave me rules that bind me. spirituality you give me yourself to free me I'm depressed you tell me what to do that binds me with new suggestions you tell me you know depression and how you handled it I had a nine-month depression and I know I've got to act today how I want to feel and I can't allow the depression to run my actions so in religion let me repeat that because it's so free for me and I no this is my whole attitude I as a priest there's a pastor now i give people spirituality i don't give them rules in religion by my understanding you give me rules in which i end up less free in spirituality you give yourself and i end up being freer i am precious socially but people have never had people tell me off people give me advice and i know i need that for real relations so i'm going into a men's group so that i can bring up a problem and somebody can start asking questions and i can't say go to hell pick up my marbles and leave because when i came here i had the emotional growth of a three-year-old i'm in my early adulthood now that's my emotional growth but i don't know how to give and take of relationships go years ago i used to say in the program i got a parish and i went into midlife depression i was given sterling i'm not from sterling anymore 10 years sober i was given the parishes of sterling elgin in apache together there were less than 400 catholics in about two to three thousand square miles and i was like 18 to 12 years a priest and i said after that they don't give you the cathedral well this may i got asked to see the bishop and i got better than the cathedral and a lot of my friends want me to go on tape contradicting what i said before the program has given me one of the best parishes in our diocese i have abused physical plant that I live in a room, a home alone with 19 rooms. A luxurious thing, five bedrooms. The priest who built it is a snuff. I'd like to punch him for the lavish waste. Between the hall and my toilet, living alone, I can close five massive doors in a row so that when I sit on my toilet alone in the house, I feel very secure because there's five doors you'll have to open. I can lock them all, I think, to get to me sitting alone. But I'm blessed with a luxurious parish, 700 parishioners. there was a lot of pain when i went to the parish but uh uh there was five percent of the people hated me they wanted a god of rules and i was giving them a godoflove the parish exploded we have standing room only at the main service and christmas was wonderful everything has gone so good our bulletins went from 500 to 650 we're paying off our debt the whole thing will be debt free it's a brand new physical plant in a year and i Was depressed this monday and i realized why I was depressed because right now I don't have a problem on life and my codependent part doesn't know how to live with that and I feel parts of me ready to fly off and cause a problem and that's why I need my sponsor in my therapist I certainly am precious spiritually and there's no end to the growth of that the last five minutes of preparing for you was reading a book by a Jewish mystic I want to try everything he's helped me more than anyone else Abram Heschel, die Jewish. What a profound experience of my God this man had. And he helped me walk through some real pain. I've hated myself in an inventory since I've been here. I didn't see a single good thing in my life. And his statement was something like, our God allows us to make human errors. Man makes the errors. God does the repairing. And I could just feel that what I am, God is still pleased with because I'm still sober. So this is where I've started with hating everything I was and I know so many areas of my life in which I'm precious that I could not have experienced before. I'll conclude with this story. Heard a biker with tears share it from Jonathan Livingston Siegel. He comes back and he's trying to tell people how high they can fly and Maynard comes limping across the sand with a broken wing and Jonathan says, what do you want? And Maynardo says, I want to fly and Jonathan says, You can fly as high as you want to. And Maynard says, You don't understand. I have a broken wing. And Jonathan says, You can Fly as High as You Want to. And Maynerd starts flying. Isn't that what happens in our program? Juanita came to hers and she couldn't fly at all. You can FLY as High As You Want To. You don' t understand. I have A Drinking Drunk Husband. I have Nine Children at Home or Seven at that time if I remember. Margaret, What do you want? You don't understand I'm an alcoholic. You don' t understand I can't fly as high as I want to because I'm ugly physically. I'm not allowed to have emotions. I'm only allowed to think in one area of my life. I'm abused and dirty sexually. I'm isolated socially, and I'm no longer able to live. I'm okay, and you told me you can fly as low as you want to. I know there's still no limit. I've soared further than I could ever dream and for that I thank you.