The Relationship and the Arrangement with Higher Power – Clint H.

my name is Clint Hodges I'm an alcoholic thank you Mark we have had a good time this weekend and I'm so glad that Linda came with me we have fun a lot of fun we live in Los Angeles We have a 13-year-old calico, and I like the cat. I just want to say this. I have not in the years we've been together seen anything like a flicker of recognition in that cat's face I'm not even going to bring it up we have fun and we work together and boy I remember not that long ago when I first started my law practice the idea that my wife would be in there know where all the bones are buried would have scared me to death but we have a lot of fun there too I had my last drink on the 14th of August 1966 I was 29 I lived in Glendale California. I'm 67 now. And so this 38 years with you has been remarkable. And the last dozen of those years have been the very sweetest of all. And I'm glad to be here today. I I'm glad to be here at this important conference that you have every year. And I was glad to hear the other speakers. I was happy to hear Carl and a lady from New York who gave such a touching account of that 9-11 event. I was gladly to hear Clancy last night. I rarely heard him in better form. and I've known him a long time. He's, let me, he's not here. I'm going to tell you. I've got a few things to say. Oh, and by the way, I wanted to say apparently Joe is 111 years old today. That's remarkable. Joe, are you here? Well, could you just kind of raise a hand maybe? Oh, oh, it says Joe is ill. Oh, hell, well, no wonder he's here now. Yeah, it's as if he's ill. I was just... Years and years ago. years ago in Los Angeles Clancy came up he had been at the midnight mission for maybe a year he said you guys to three or four of us you guys want to come down to the mission next Sunday night because there'll be a guy down there putting on an NFL film for the guys that are living in the mission and so we thought that That'd be a good idea. And the story developed that this guy that was going to be going down there had been ordered by the courts as part of a sentence to put on a film every month for a year at the midnight mission. He was a wide receiver for the Los Angeles Rams. He was an international figure and a very good football player and he had gotten arrested for possession of marijuana in the Los Angeles airport and for some other stuff. And he was sentenced in part to come down to the mission, and we were excited, and we weren't sober very long, and it was a big deal to go down there and meet this guy and see the film and talk to him. And we went down there, and Clancy had, as I said, been at the mission for maybe a year by that time, and he was very good with those guys. And the guy came in and we'd been sitting in Clancy's office and he got all his, he came in a little bit late but he got there and he put on that NFL film for about 60 guys that were sober and clean and asking good questions after the film was over. But this guy was apparently in a hurry because he wanted to get out of there and he was a little short with them. we're all collected after this in clancy's office and this nfl wide receiver for the rams was wrapping up his gear and then he came put it in his truck and he came into clancy'S office with a sheet of paper and said uh would you sign this please and he said sure and he signed it and he said okay good thanks i'll see you next month and clancy said don't come back i don't want you back he said I gotta come back the judge ordered me to come back here he said the judge didn't order me to have you back here and I don't want you back there and he said why and we're all sitting there watching like it's a tennis match he said well you showed up late 60 guys out here waiting for you they're not not really very important in your world, but there are 60 human beings that are sober and clean and waiting for you. And you didn't have the capacity to surrender to the clock and get here on time. And he said, after you put on that film, you almost answered their questions. They ask you good questions. And it just didn't seem to have the time to address them as he said I'll tell you something these guys have given away their dignity perhaps but we're never going to take it from them and I don't want you to come back well that guy was having a fit he said please you got to give me another they were just all like sitting there like flies on the wall finally Clancy relented he said come back one more time well you can be be sure that we were all back there then. We didn't want to know what was going to happen. That guy got there early, and he put on the film, and after the film he would have thought that group of maybe 75 guys at that time were members of the Rams board of directors. He's very courteous and very warm and outgoing And elicited more questions And he learned something About human dignity It's out of that experience And I did too Clancy can be kind of a figure year that people like or dislike and I understand that and I've had my days when I liked him in days when I didn't like him but he has made a difference in the lives of a lot of us and those kind of events it just seemed to come to him without any question with great certainty are important events and so he's not here this morning but I wanted to snitch he'd hate to have you find out he's a nice man but and so I had come to Alcoholics Anonymous several years earlier I was living over in Glendale at the time I'd had a tour of duty as a Marine Corps officer I mishandled it badly because of drinking I had before Before that, I'd gotten deferments so I could stay in dental school and I had gotten thrown out of dental school because of drinking. And my life was a mess. I got out of the Marine Corps with an honorable discharge, I moved to Glendale and I lived in an apartment for a while and then in the car and then a little shed. I called it a double garage. It was a shed. Linda and I were over there a few years ago and she said, over at Glendales, she said I said, I want to see that shed you lived in, that garage you lived in. We drove down in there. She said, is that it? And I said yeah. She said, that's not a garage. That's a shed. I looked again and by God no car had ever gotten in that place. I I lived in there. I later came to to know a guy by the name of Earl Rogers. His mother was a notable writer. Adela Rogers St. John's had made some essays after her entry into Alcoholics Anonymous, and I read those essays, they weren't published. She said, And after this long, sterile diet of snake pits and manure piles on which no roses ever grew, I longed for hope. And you gave me hope. And it touched me because there was that in the picture. I long for hope, So that terrible, smelly, empty little 8x10 room I lived in with the steel cot and the wet mattress on it and the awful smell and the sticky linoleum floor is something I don't have much trouble recalling. What I have trouble recallING is the terror of it, is the hopelessness of it. It is the night that that rat was laying over there in the corner that turned, in the first light of dawn, I looked again. I sneaked a look at that rat from under the bed and it had turned into a pair of socks laying over their own floor. And that's a singular event. If you've ever been held hostage by a pair a pair of socks all night long. Welcome home. I had a radio that would just play, a little clock radio. I never knew what time it was, but it would just pay, and it wouldn't stop, and you'd have to pull a plug out of the wall. And it would still play. And you'd take it out and put it in the dirt outside the door and it plays. I was sober some months before I got another angle on that clock because I listened to a woman say in AA that she had been arrested for taking a hammer to a parking meter and I asked her why and she said because it was after the meeting I said why did you do she said it was broadcasting every rotten thing I ever did Oh, well. That's alcoholism. The jails are part of it. The terror is part of it. I hadn't seen my kids in some time and I did not want them to see me. I've been married twice and I have three sons and I don't want them to See me like this. And I many times said, guilty your honor, guilty with an explanation. whatever Judge Ken White in the Glendale Municipal Court seemed to be going for. And I'm walking away one morning from that little shed, going nowhere. Couldn't stand to be there. It was going to be a hot day and there's a honk from a passing car and it pulled over and stopped. It was my bail bondsman, a guy that I had done some business with. and I walked over there he said I'm going to take you someplace today and he brought me to you and I was in that Glendale-Allenville club whatever that means going to meetings every day for three weeks and then I ran across a stash of amphetamines in cash and that requires a drink as you may know I was gone for two weeks and came back to Los Angeles on the 14th of August, 13th of August and got back to that little nasty smelly terrible room and I walked over to the club at Glendale that morning, the 14th and I didn't have any hope, I just couldn't stand to be in the room, I didn' t want to be on the streets I had no job to go to. I was selling encyclopedias during the war. I told everybody, but I didn't have a job to go to when you asked me what I did for a living. I always started that sentence with well right now in the way alcoholics talk about their work when they don't have work. When they don' t have the work they want and are trained for it makes them feel productive. Well right now. so I walked over to the club and I walked up that long flight of stairs that day and it was going to be a hot day and there was somebody in the middle of the morning when I got there doing his job in Alcoholics Anonymous because the door was open and the lights were on and the coffee was made and Bill Kennedy stood there and I pushed that door open he was there he had the sweetest smile he had the most wonderful wonderful, welcoming air about him. He had no judgment attached to him. I felt awful about myself that day because I had so many times. And he's smiling. How are you doing? I said, not good. He said, what happened? I said well I got drunk again. Let everybody down. like AA and Glendale's going to collapse, I guess. I don't know what the hell I thought. He said, could have said a lot of things, you know. Well, you didn't go to enough. Well, do you have a sponsor? Well, he didn't say that. He asked me a very simple question. He said are you alcoholic? It's a good question. It's good question and I don' t know the answer. I mean, I know what he's looking for. And I've been drinking badly a long time. But I don't know. But I knew he wanted to know and so I didn't want to annoy him because whether I could stay in on the son that day and not get arrested that day seemed to me to be up to him. And I didn' t want to offend him and I finally said, yeah, you know what? I've been an alcoholic about a month now. He didn't even blink. He said, so, you're an alcoholic and you got drunk? I mean, he blew right past that I'm a mild case thing, you see. About a month, right? Just caught it. I don't know what happened some toilet seat deal not my fault he said so you're an alcoholic and you got drunk smiling I said yeah he said you know we do that that's the deal that's the deal he said in fact he said if you're an alcoholic of my type you're going to do that he said you will drink no matter what now that's a pretty serious indictment even though he's smiling and it was true and I knew it was true and I couldn't have said that and the cat's out of the bag and he said you will drink no mater what and I drink no matter what But I tell you, I'll be home right after work. I don't go home. I stop for one. I'll bring the check home. The check does not arrive because I have to stop and cash it. And to be sure, I put the family money in one pocket and I put 20 in the other pocket in case I want a drink. but I'm not drinking I'm just cashing a check in that bar but you have to have a drink the guy was nice enough to cash the check but since I'm not drinking, I pay for it out of the family money I don't get into my money if you understand that logic welcome home and after a while the family monies gone and then I have to get into my own money And that's when it occurs to me that, God, now I've got 20 bucks to drink on. That family, you know, you really get a sense that the family is a load at that moment. I drink no matter what. And this guy said it out loud. And I had been trying to quit. And there's no quitting. That's what it says. That's what it says. We're not going to quit. There are people that come to Alcoholics Anonymous and they get the heat off and they go on about their business. Those are hard drinkers, the ones that are described in the book who if a sufficiently strong reason arises such as a marriage or an illness or a death or something, they can quit or moderate. I've had guys say, yeah when I was in graduate school four years ago I didn't drink for a year and a half and I know I'm talking to somebody that is a hard drinker if I if I were talking to an alcoholic he said yeah and I got thrown out of graduate school because I had drunk all the time there's kind of a device I'm just reflecting on that singleness of purpose we have a lot of people in alcoholics None of us, of course, that did an awful lot of stuff besides booze. But if we're the kind of people that drink no matter what, it doesn't matter much what else we've been doing, we belong here. And we're seeing more and more of that in NAA, of course, and we've learned, I think, not to get judgmental of people just because they've had some drugs if they're alcoholic and we you know the set test is pretty simple in any case i'm alcoholic because i drink no matter what and i cannot quit i cannot quit there is no sufficiently strong reason that comes up for me that makes a difference for me I drink, I drink no matter what and he threaded the needle that day and the cat's out of the bag and I surrendered to that simple idea that I drink no matter but I did not surrender to God or to AA really but I knew that morning something I had not really accepted I drink no matter but I cannot quit and you know the weird part about it is although we sometimes talk as if we had quit drinking because we're no longer drinking very few of us can lay claim to that there comes a day remember when you first got into that book and started reading that awkward language in Alcoholics Anonymous and you see things like our troubles arise out of ourselves we think, go wow that's weird I hated that sentence and I realized as I went through that it really means, the subtext means no one else has to change for me to get free that's what that means, it's the biggest promise of hope in the book no one elses has to change, and I always wanted people to change I wanted my mom to be I wanted Mike I wanted dead people to change they're not like in the basic security of your life and your sense of well-being on whether a dead person will change is not really gonna spell out a happy life we're We're fretful, we're almost irritable and discontent when sober. The other thing that was weird in that book when I first read it was that sentence that Bill uses. He says, God comes to most men gradually, but his impact on me was sudden and profound. Oh, how nice for you, Bill. oh we're all so glad you had that white light thing going on because i got raised in the church of the air in billings montana and i'll tell you they spoke like that they spoke of white lights they spoke of miraculous conversions they spoke of passing somebody in the airport and below he was brought to the lord on his knees in front of all my other passengers i never believed a word of it. Where is that guy now? I ask all the rude questions. Because it didn't seem to me that God paid any attention to me, and because I was quite convinced that when I died it was going to be even worse, he had something very special in store for me. Burning forever things like that and because I knew I was a bad boy I had thoughts that were just not very realistic but they were always there I got baptized in the Yellowstone River when I was 12 years old early one March water about 28 degrees. I didn't find God, I'll tell you that. I didn'T find anything for about three days. That scares a little plenty, I'LL TELL YOU THAT. So Wilson comes into God comes to most men gradually, but I don'T think so, Bill. And then one day, and I've been here for a while. One day you reread that book. You read it with your heart and not your head. And it changes it. It changes it because on the 14th of August, I was a drunk and on the 15th of august, I didn't drink and I haven't had a drink since. And that's happened to every one of us, hasn't it? We call them birthdays. Birthdays. Birthdays Go from drunk to sober I don't know it's happened but it happened and it happened in the blink of an eye as it must happen we are the people who cannot quit and we're not drinking anymore more. And if you're new here, as the days and the weeks go by, you'll be asked, when was your birthday? And when was your last drink? And you'll count back and you'll, oh my God, it's been five weeks. It's been eight months. It has been whatever. Nine months I realized I hadn't been drinking. And I've been in your midst and I've been in meetings and I'd been setting up chairs and I had been surrendering to the clock and I had been here talking about maybe someday getting a sponsor but I didn't drink from that day 38 years ago when Bill Kennedy with a smile on his face said you're gonna drink no matter what he was right in and of myself I I drink no matter what, and I didn't drink after that day. And that's a miracle. And I somehow have a tendency to take credit for the miracles in my life, and I miss the miracles. And that was a flat miracle that occurred to me. And I'm very aware of it today. I'm sehr aware of es. today and it's not a we celebrate that every year and we have the problems of living as we go on and it distills down in a spectacular way to three little prayers doesn't it it's complex for us very important for us There's one prayer, and if you're new, you might say it. Help me. Help me He'll do that. There's another one. Give me Serenity prayer is one of those. Grant me serenity. He'll grant you that. And when all of that is done, there's another one. use me use me what else are we gonna do he's given me everything I need he's helped me in all areas of my life he's done it for me really more than help paper used me I'll show up for that it's one of the reasons that um mark is such fun to be around he's in the thick of it you know there's something about step 11 that says what did i contribute to this stream of life today in order to contribute anything you have to be in the stream of light have to begin i can no longer stand at the edge of the stream and think about it i have to Get in the dam spring and make my little contribution, whatever it is. I have to surrender to this day, to this hour, to walk from my office 60 feet down the hall to Linda's office and say, you know, I used a tone with you this morning. I know it hurt your feelings. I'm sorry about that. And she smiles and forgives me. And it's a big deal in our home. Forgiveness has become a big deal, and over nothing. The biggest forgiveness is over... We were out with couples, another couple, and I told a story one night as we were standing around the parking lot after dinner, and it was about some excursion and my version of the story put me right at the center of it in nice lights. Linda didn't interrupt me but she just added in a few details after that that were part of the story but ones that I wouldn't have put in there and she didn't do it out of any rank or at all she just thought they were interesting details we got home I didn't say anything but I'm angry it's a little deal I'm going to rise above it I'm too spiritual to get all anchored in that sort of thing we went to bed Linda had the bad manners to go sound asleep nothing like are you okay Linda she's gone the 13 year old is over there purring and I'm staring at the ceiling and I finally got it after an hour I went into the study and I found that peace on forgiveness and I let that go I let it go I mean why am I going to hang on to that let it it go. And with God's grace, I just let it go, went back, went to sleep, didn't say anything about it, never did say anything about it until about a year later I was telling some undermarried guy that. Linda overheard it and she said, I didn't know anything about that. I said, well, there wasn't any point in bringing it up because it was a non-event except in my little gourd where all non-events claim rent. So the years have gone by in sweet, sweet ways but I didn't take a drink after that and Wilson is right God comes to most men gradually He doesn't come to me gradually or to you He comes to us in the blink of an eye Do we know it? No But he comes When we need him When we die the great death Everything but God He is there He honors the slightest turn In his direction When we stop trying to do it ourselves That's amazing And that takes a little bit of living here I was talking to Don this morning about a day and it wasn't that long ago when I couldn't have said that couldn't believe it I was in AA a significant number of years running my life managing, running as hard as I could being worried about my image in AA and elsewhere God, it's so interesting to lug around an image. When I was in the Marine Corps, they had us put branches on the trucks so they'd look like trees. My trucks always looked like trucks with branches on them. I got this image here. But God comes to most men gradually. His impact on me was sudden and it was profound because he went right to that little piece of me that always needs a drink and he removed that obsession and without the obsession the craving isn't triggered and then you eventually I wasn't quick to leave to take in these steps not because I'm lazy not because I don't love AA not because I'm not grateful to be sober but because I tell you I tell ya it just and it's so subtle but I know these steps work for you up. But what if I take them and they don't work for me? What am I going to do? Where will I go? Better not to take them than to take them and find out they don t work. And I went for quite a while doing that. Got to nine years sober, my world changed because the state of California gave me a license to practice law which is amazing took me a long time just to fill out the application with all those rude questions on it like have you ever been arrested for anything other than a minor traffic violation and they leave three little lines and you write C-attached page. Bundle it up with blindness and they let me take the test. I'd been four years at night law school and I passed the test and I've been doing that and I was looking for power, of course. I'm always looking for Power. I'm addicted to Power. I love Power. Lack of power would not be a dilemma for me if I didn't dig the hour. That I'm an alcoholic and I'm powerless, that's a difficult concept, isn't it? I don't have any power. He has all power, none left over for me. Hard to get. there is an analogy I like I'm in the middle of the ocean land is not visible in any direction I've got a raft I'm alone, I've gotta paddle furiously paddling gives me the illusion of power to make that little raft go around in circles so I spend a long time circling the drain as we say but I'm not going anywhere I don't have any power to make that ramp move in any direction much less the direction I may want and one day, one remarkable day from some place in my mind I never use it occurs to me to take off my shirt and attach it to that oar and stick the oar up in the air and catch the power I get moving it's not my power but if we leave it lead a life that is consistent with that power if I can line up my will in the morning with God's will I'm going to spend the day doing and being off target most of the day. And it's only if I get way out here in the far country that I've got a problem. And at the end of the Day, I can look at all of that. So was I contributing anything to this dream of life today? Those questions don't really... Mostly, was I thinking always of other people or concentrating on myself? The answer to that is almost always. I was concentrating on myself. Rarely thought of anybody else. It's just a human life. I don't beat myself up about it, but it's just interesting. But at the end of the day... And I do it before I leave the office when we retire at night. If I wait until I get in bed, fatigue takes over and I don'T get done. So I do IT before I LEAVE. Because I'm usually going to a meeting or to be with Linda. and I want that to be particularly sweet and all of this started in earnest 15 years ago 14 years ago because I lost everything I had I worked so hard to get the right house and the right car and the write lady in my life I never because I was angry at my mother when I was a little boy because I stood at her grave when they buried her when I was 14 and said, I don't love you. You never loved me. I don' t love you and because I was a long time getting back to that grave I wandered in the far country without relationship I had arrangements and there are, it's a big difference an arrangement is just a contract, you do this I'll do this and always with its penalty clause is, aha, you didn't do this. Aha, you're changing. Yeah, I do that. Well, that's not acceptable to me. Of course a relationship is about change. It's about growth. It's not about who do I go to the dance with. It's not that kind of shallow security that we're after in a relationship. And you can't have an arrangement with God. And I'm a spiritual seeker i want a relationship and i didn't even know what it looked like until i went through these steps until the time came when i had failed badly in sobriety and lost everything i had to transfer my practice to some other place and build it up again and i was frightened and i moved out of a lovely home to a little apartment and i was afraid that i would end up walking the streets broke failure and out of all of that somehow or other my heart broke open it had broken before as our hearts do my heart broke open and I wound up finally getting to a point and people took care of me. Guys took me through these steps, guys that had been there themselves. It's an amazing, amazing transformative trip. And I got to step nine because I had the power from eight, because I had done seven and six had given me the power for seven. It's an important sequence. It works the same way our minds work. They said, yeah, you've got to turn your will and your life over to the care of God because steps four through nine are contrary to your will and against your life. And you won't do them unless you are tapped into real power. You've hoisted the oar with a sail on it. That gives you a sense of direction. And I wanted a sense of direction, power, peace, happiness and a sense of direction are promised us. And that happens. And then you begin to take other guys through the steps and that's an amazing process. I knelt at the grave where my mom and grandmother were right in that cemetery in the low rent part of the billing cemetery one weekend and wept all my tears. finally back there finally could see because I had been changed by these steps that they always loved me that I could always trust them we can't get how far off we are in our thinking because I evaluate my thinking by using my brain which is like having a hound dog's guard at the stakes I have a couple of friends that live in Norwalk they're great guys and they're both members of AA they have alcoholic minds one of them is looking out into his backyard one day and he sees that his dog has the neighbor's rabbit in its mouth. And he doesn't want any trouble over the rabbit, and so he runs out there and he grabs the rabbit. The rabbit's dead, but he brings it inside and he washes it off and he blow dries the rabbit and he waits until dark and he sneaks it into that cage next door. And three weeks goes by and he sees his neighbor out in front, the other AA, and he says, How are you doing? The guy said, I'm doing great. He said, couldn't leave it alone. He said how's your rabbit? He says funny thing that rabbit died about six weeks ago and I buried it but now I see it's back in that cage. Good thinking. So we need a new mind you know That's that psychic change, the entire psychic change that Silk Road talks about. It's really a new mind. And we get that going through the steps. And we got a relationship with God going through those steps. And we come out finally at step nine to being at peace in the world around us and knowing that our mothers or our fathers or whoever it was loved us. Not some dismissal, well they did the best they could. No. No. They love me. That's my mother. I am of her. They never came, she didn't love me and in my childish anger I extinguished that and it changed forever the way I think about my mother it changed for ever the way i think about women it changed for ever and fundamentally whether i could have a relationship in my life And it was only then that Linda came into my life. And we were friends, and the friendship caught fire. And we came back here to Kansas at my suggestion to talk to her dad who was in a retirement home at a little room about 100 miles south of here. and we're in that room there's just a bed and a chair and some personal effects and her dad is 93 years old and he's a sweet man he wasn't there moment by moment but he was there linda was sitting on the bed with him i'm in the chair i said mr stout we flew in here from Los Angeles today I've fallen in love with your daughter I want to marry her and I want your blessing and he looked at me Linda's sitting next to him she's got a tear in her eye he looked up to me for a long minute and finally said how's the weather out there in Los Angeles I said close enough damn right I'm going and we lived the sweetest life I've ever known I remember when I was a kid four years old my mom before all the troubles seemed to start would come and tuck me in pray with me we'd whisper our secrets we'd tell our little stupid jokes I'd try to get her to laugh sometimes I could it was a sweet time and then it was gone Linda and I wake up in the morning and we tell our secrets say our prayers set our purpose and that sweet time is back even though we've had standard scuffles I got a diagnosis earlier this year that I didn't want to get and I had the surgery and we've all got that a lot of people with diagnoses in this room but it scares you a little bit they removed my prostate four months ago I guess and you don't know quite what's going to happen what's this relationship going to turn to how much time do I have, what will I do and it comes back, use me, use me, my recovery really took a turn the day that some guy came over that I'm taking through the steps and he and I kneeled down at our couch and said the third step prayer together I had a friend a good, good friend in Arizona I've known him for all this time and he called me and he said I have a story for you but I said yeah And I was in pain and I was afraid and I wasn't taking medication and all of that. But I was glad to hear from Howard and he said there's a guy that was a skydiver. He loved skydiving. He loved it. Loved it. He spent every nickel and every hour he could spare getting into an airplane and going up and popping out of there. Loved him. One day he's up in the airplane, and he's getting his gear together. The door is open. He's about to put on his parachute. The plane lurches out of control in an updraft, and the pilot kind of overcorrected it. It tilted, and this guy without his parachute on went right out the door. And Howard said, you know, he had that choice at that moment that all of us do. I said, yeah, what's that? that. He said he had the rest of his life to really love doing what he was doing or live in abject fear. And I got it. I got it. Do what I love to do. And I love to be with you. I love to be with my wife. I love my work. I love God. and it's a sweet life we'd gone swimming a month ago now I said pull over pull over and stop we were on our way home from swimming I need to say something to you and I said you know I don't think that sex thing is coming back and I want you to know that I'm okay with that I'm at peace with that and I wanted to know know that I've fallen in love with you all over again. And I want to know how you feel. And she said, I've falling in love with you more and more. All over again." My wife told me that. And so we just do this day knowing that all our needs are going to be met. That the joy is always there. That we are so fortunate. that we know fundamentally, finally, and at long last that God loves us. And the proof is so easy because if he didn't love us could we have spent this weekend loving each other and laughing and crying and being together? No. We'd be alone and afraid and someplace else but we're here. And his love is abundant. Thank you. Thank you.