The Twelve Traditions Are the Principles for Living With Other People and Nobody Told Me That for Twelve Years – Dick A.

Without knowing it, this is really what I was looking for all my life.
I don't come from an abusive upbringing.
I don't come from a problem.
The only thing that I had to overcome in my early life was opportunity.
I literally had everything handed to me that I could possibly want.
We were not a family of wealth.
We were a family of honor and a family of discipline and a family of purpose,
and it was a spiritual family.
And this is how off base I had gotten by the time I got here.
I was embarrassed for my family because we were military.
And I know there are a lot of military retirees and military people down here.
We were military.
And because we lived, they moved.
My parents, who were self-sacrificing,
who were humble people, moved to a district where I could go to high school
because I was a gifted kid when I was young.
And so that particular school district had a lot of the wealthy people living in it.
And so I felt inferior because I came from this military family.
And let me tell you about who I come from and the people that I come from.
My name is Dick Anderson.
My dad is a retired colonel.
He was given the Army Medal of Honor, which is, I mean, the Army Cross,
which is next to the Medal of Honor during World War II, two silver stars,
several distinguished flying crosses, one of the most decorated pilots in World War II.
He later ended up being a test pilot with Chuck Yeager and some of the guys.
So they were the predecessors to these guys that are over here on Merritt Island
at the Kennedy Space Center.
And that was my dad.
My little sister is a retired Berg colonel with honors.
Her husband, a retired Berg colonel, their son graduated from West Point.
I'm named for my great-great-grandfather, who was General Dick Anderson
and was a three-star general at Gettysburg.
He's named for his great-great-grandfather, who was General Richard Clow Anderson,
who was a general under George Washington.
My family all my life, and nobody bragged about it.
They weren't at the VFW.
We didn't have a lot of drinking at our family reunions.
We had lemonade and iced tea, and there was a lot of prayer.
They believed in service.
They believed in prayer, and they were humble,
and they believed that we do what God puts us on earth to do.
And for whatever reason, I thought they had something special in them that I didn't have,
and I felt like I did not fit in.
And so I started this search of my own,
trying to find out where I could find some kind of spiritual connection.
And from the very beginning, all the activities I was involved in
had some kind of spiritual guidance.
I was a member of Boy Scouts.
I was a member of Little League.
I was a member of church.
I went to...
I went to...
I went to...
I went to a vacation Bible school.
There wasn't anything that I was involved in where...
If you remember the Boy Scout handbook, it says that
we please God best when we anonymously do something to help others.
I mean, that's what our program's about.
That's exactly what our program's about.
But I couldn't connect with any of that for whatever reason.
And I thought that these people, my parents, these heroes,
that my dad in the flight suit would go off,
had something in him that I didn't have in me.
So I searched, and I searched, and I searched.
When I was in college, I took some graduate work in intercultural studies.
And I was reading Edgar Cayce.
And, in fact, Edgar Cayce was a psychic
who would put books under his pillow and absorb them.
And I tried to put the books under my pillow and absorb them.
Later in life, I drank Wild Turkey 101.
But at that time, I was drinking a Rebel Yell,
which was Stitzelweller bourbon and had a Confederate.
I went to Kentucky.
And so I drank a little...
It could be that it works better if you're trying to absorb those books
when you're not drinking Rebel Yell.
But it wasn't working for me.
And I was trying to find a spiritual connection.
I went to a psychic, one of Cayce's protégés.
All my life, I was looking.
I had my first spiritual experience, well, when I was six years old.
I did not and could not relate to...
And one of the things we have that helps us with the spiritual journey
are the people that we follow in Alcoholics Anonymous
and the sponsors that we have.
But I didn't...
I didn't have anybody I could talk to.
And I couldn't share any of this with them.
And I didn't know who to follow
because I couldn't tell you what was inside me
because I was afraid if you found out that I didn't have what you had,
you wouldn't accept me.
And so I couldn't tell you anything.
And that's the way I lived for a long time.
And the one area where I could connect it was in a television show.
When I was a kid, we had a little black and white TV
and there were shows on there like the Andy Griffith Show
and Father Knows Best.
And in those shows, I started to get my spiritual bearings
my moral compass
because if Opie or Wally were ever off base a little bit
at the beginning of the show
towards the end of the show
Dad would take his pipe
just kind of move it to one side
and say something
and without judgment
Opie or Wally would get the message
and they would get back on the beam.
And I thought this was great.
So I felt comfortable in fantasy land
in this area where I was watching TV.
But I felt very ill at ease with you in person.
Anyplace.
I always felt like I was being a phony.
I was not connected.
I didn't have that connection
that Sandy was talking about earlier.
And my first experience when I was about six years old
I went to the drive-in
and I saw my first movie in color.
Not only was it color, it was Technicolor.
And it was on the screen about 120 feet wide
and it was called The Ten Commandments.
And I really believe that I had a true spiritual experience
when that took place
because the big book says
lack of power is our dilemma.
And that to me,
is the essence of this spiritual connection.
It gives us the power to deal with things,
to be part of,
to love people,
to be of service,
to get outside of myself,
to live and have a happy and useful life
as the big book says.
But I didn't know that.
At that time I see up on the screen
this Ten Commandments
and up there I saw the kind of power
that I'd been looking for all my life
because Charlton Heston had this staff
and all he had to do was move it to one side
and the Red Sea parted.
And I made two decisions when I saw that film.
One was that I wanted to be around that,
whatever it was, making films.
And God was listening.
Everybody who's been up here at this panel
has had a spiritual awakening.
So when you have heard them tell their stories,
they are telling it from the other side
and they realize what happened.
But I went to Gettysburg where my namesake fought
and they gave us a tour.
And we saw the battle.
After the fact.
And they showed how the battle was lost.
But I guarantee that the people
that were in the middle of the battle
didn't see it the same way.
And that's the way I've always been with life.
On the other side and after the fact
I can see what happened.
But I couldn't see it at the time.
And so I make this decision.
God heard me and that's what I've done
for the last 35 years is write and produce.
That's what I do for a living.
So he took that talent,
gave me the heart for it,
gave me the message through that film
and I'm here.
The second decision that I had,
made that night was,
I made a decision I wanted to be on God's side
because I saw what Charlton Heston
had done to Yul Brynner.
And so the next day
I went to Linden Baptist Church
where we were members.
I got dipped and dunked.
I gave my all.
In fact, I think that was the hymn
that was being played as I went down the aisle.
And I was maybe seven years old
and I surprised the family.
But I had had this spiritual experience
at the East Drive Inn
and I'm going down front.
And I absolutely gave everything I had to God that night.
And here's what happened.
It's just like a newcomer to coming to AA
who thinks that we get better just by coming to the meetings.
But the big book says we have to trust God and clean house.
And that's all we've been talking about this whole weekend.
I didn't have a sponsor.
Didn't have anybody I could talk to.
So I couldn't tell them what was going on.
Nobody told me I had to change.
And so I didn't take any steps to change.
And so within a few weeks or a few months,
I was the same scared little Baptist Boy Scout
I was when I walked down that aisle.
Nothing changed for me.
And because of that,
when I looked at these other people,
I saw these happy faces and joy
and this power in their life.
I thought God didn't want me.
So I made a decision at that age
to turn my back on God
and I would have to do it myself
because He didn't want me.
And so I felt like I didn't fit into my family at first.
Now I feel like I don't fit in with God.
And that's the way I live my life.
I was faking it.
Until I got to my next spiritual experience.
I was 14 years old.
And a buddy of mine,
I had never been around alcohol,
but we were playing a Babe Ruth League game the next day
and I was the center fielder
and wore seven for Mick.
And the right fielder and I were camping out.
He got us a six pack of beer
and a half pint of gin.
He drank the gin.
I drank the beer.
And I had,
they call them distilled spirits.
And I had what was similar to that spiritual experience
that I had when I saw the Ten Commandments.
I thought that was real,
but it drifted away.
But this time it was real.
And I felt like I was ten feet tall
and I didn't have the staff,
but I felt like the wind was blowing through my hair
just like it was for Charlton Heston.
And instead of parting the Red Sea,
this buddy and I decided we would hitchhike.
And when you're 14,
that's the only way you can get around.
And we went up to a place called the White Castle.
Which is a little place where they sell those hamburgers
with onions on them at 3 o'clock in the morning.
And I walked in there and I had no fear.
The fear was gone.
I felt connected.
Everything that Sandy was talking about
in a spiritual process,
I found that night,
because I felt connected to the people.
I was talking to the adults.
I was having fun.
And I did not feel afraid of anything.
I had lost my fear.
My buddy Dave was,
he wasn't having the same spiritual experience I was.
As it turns out,
he's not one of us.
And so he was getting a little woozy.
And so I had never had a cup of coffee either,
but I had seen in Perry Mason,
where if you have too much to drink,
you can have a little coffee
and it will sober you up
so you can talk to the police.
So I ordered some coffee for my buddy Dave
and it did not have the desired effect.
And Dave threw up down the counter.
And if you're looking for a Louisville City policeman at midnight,
the best place to find him is at the White Castle.
So two of them came down and asked me
what was wrong with my friend.
I said,
he just had a little bit too much to drink.
Thank you.
They said,
well, how old is he?
Fourteen.
How old are you?
Fourteen.
And so they invited us to go with them
to Louisville City Jail.
So I was in jail four hours after I took my first drink.
That was the end of my social drinking.
Between that time and the time that I got sober
when I was 27 years old,
I was locked up 22 times.
I didn't find any spiritual meaning in that.
But the reason I kept going,
but it does point out I was not quite as successful at drinking
as some people might.
And I kept going back because of the feeling
that I was connected with you,
and it removed the fear.
It made me feel like I fit in.
It made me feel that way that I thought
Moses must have felt.
He had purpose.
He had power in his life.
That's what I was looking for.
And finally,
like the rest of you,
it stopped working for me.
I had a,
when I was 27,
I guess,
the last two years,
I stopped my drinking.
I'd been fired from a very good job.
I'd made it through two tours in Vietnam.
I'd gotten to the point where I was,
I'd been a vice president with,
and the youngest creative director
for an ad agency in New York.
But alcohol moved real quickly with me.
In my last two years,
I spent basically drinking on a bathroom floor.
I was hallucinating.
Wasn't sure where I was.
Couldn't pay the rent.
But I was in a basement apartment
and bleeding from the stomach.
And I didn't eat much food the last two years.
And finally came to my bottom.
And when I came to my bottom,
I had no money.
I was being evicted from my apartment.
And I was angry.
And I was so angry,
I was angry at God.
I was totally disconnected from God.
I was estranged from my family because,
as you can tell,
the kind of family I came from
didn't tolerate my behavior very long.
And so,
I walked into being evicted from my apartment.
I walked in.
I had a weapon.
I put a bolt in the chamber
and I got ready to pull the trigger.
And I started screaming in the top of my lungs,
God, blanket, God, blanket, God, blanket.
Because I was angry at this God
that had caused me to live like this.
And something broke in me
and I started saying,
God, help me.
God, help me.
God, help me.
And I had a moment of peace.
And there was a scene from a movie called,
Days of Wine and Roses,
that I had seen maybe a hundred times drunk.
And it was almost as though it filled that room.
And Jack Lemmon comes to Jack Klugman and says,
I understand you need help.
I'm from Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now, there wasn't a movie in that room
and I didn't have anything.
There was no TV.
There was nothing.
But that scene was as real as it had ever been.
And that was a spiritual experience for me.
And I walked up to a phone booth on a street corner.
And I called the operator and I said,
I need help.
And that operator connected me
with a woman named Helen.
And Helen had just taken the job
as General Manager of Central Office in Atlanta.
And Helen said,
I understand you need help.
Just wait right there, honey,
and I got a guy that's going to come out.
And she sent a guy named Ed.
Now, without knowing,
I was involved in 12-step work already.
Days of Wine and Roses was written by one of our members
and it was coordinated with General Service Office
so that it would give an accurate description
of an AA experience.
And I had seen it.
And I had been 12-stepped over and over and over.
And when I came back from Vietnam,
my second tour,
I had to go to a mandatory drug abuse seminar.
And that mandatory drug abuse seminar,
I thought I was going to hear a lecture.
And my drinking buddy,
a Marine Gunny named Bob,
and I hope it's Bob D by now if he's still living.
But Bob and I decided,
we're going to have a mandatory drug abuse seminar.
We have a few shooters
and we put on our sunglasses,
sat in the back of the room
and we were waiting for a lecture
and a guy got up and he says,
my name is Charles and I'm an alcoholic,
but I don't drink anymore
because I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And he was doing 12-step work
and he was carrying the message to me and Bob.
And I hope that Bob is still around.
But I got the message because people like you,
were carrying the message doing 12-step work.
I got the message from Days of Wine and Roses.
Then I got the message because Helen answered the phone
and she was at a central office where we do 12-step work.
And she sent out a guy named Ed.
And Ed came to me
and I had a weapon in my lap,
loaded with one in the chamber and no safety.
And Ed sat with me for two hours and shared his story.
And if Ed hadn't done that, I wouldn't be here tonight.
And Ed put me in a car.
He did suggest we get rid of the firearm.
And that's not in the big book, but it is a good idea.
And Ed took me to a place to dry out.
And on the way there, this was 1977,
and a lot of things were happening that I wasn't really hip to.
It was the year Star Wars came out,
but it was also ATMs had just kind of evolved
on the thing.
And Ed said, we're going to stop here.
And Ed had a year and a half sobriety.
He lived in a small room with a hot plate,
but he had a brand new car.
You know how we are.
And it wasn't much of a car.
It was a Pinto.
But that Pinto, and it still had the sticker on it.
He had just bought it.
It was his first brand new sober car.
And Ed said, I'm going to stop here at this ATM machine.
And I said, well, huh?
And he said, it's a machine.
I put my card in.
I get money out.
And the first thought was, well, God,
if I'd known about that kind of machine,
I wouldn't need to be calling you.
But apparently, they hadn't issued me an ATM card
at that point in my life.
But he stops for a minute.
And he said, you going to be OK?
And I said, yes.
And he goes in.
By the time he got back, it was a hot day in June in Atlanta.
And I threw up down the inside of his car.
And the only thing that Ed said when he came back
is he put his arm around me and said, it's going to be OK.
Because he knew that if we don't help alcoholics,
we don't have cars.
And I hope at some point he got beyond the one room
and hot plate thing.
But we have our lives increase.
Our lives multiply.
And I think it's based on that.
And I think it's based on the fact
that we are useful to other people.
And Ed had learned that lesson with a year and a half sobriety.
And that taught me more than anything anybody ever said.
Because when I got to AA, I had brain damage.
And so it took me about a year and a half
to learn how to read again.
So I heard what you said.
And the first speaker, outside speaker I heard,
was Chuck Chamberlain.
And he spoke for an hour and 40 minutes
in a building that was kind of hot.
And everybody was using those funeral fans.
And I didn't remember anything he said
except for that laugh, his presence,
and also he said when he was a year and a half sober,
he would be walking down the street
and hang on to a lamp post because he still had trouble.
And that gave me hope.
That was 12-step work.
That gave me hope.
Everybody else might have understood.
Well, somebody might have understood what he was saying.
But I got the fact that he had something I wanted
and he made it even though he was in bad shape like me.
And he had this wonderful laugh.
And I heard him a lot more.
But that night, he saved my life.
And the first tape that I heard before I ever got out of detox
was because of my military background and everything else.
I thought that it would be harder for military people.
It was of a Marine Corps pilot named Sandy.
And he gave me hope.
That was 12-step work.
And I never thought that I'd be part of a program with Sandy.
I just thought I might be able to live.
That was 12-step work.
He was carrying the message to me in a little room
where there were about six of us listening to that tape.
And I happened to know that the other five didn't make it
because they were too young.
Because they were too unique.
They didn't make it.
I don't think any of them made it.
But I made it.
Because I heard Sandy's message to me.
And I laughed.
I remember the one thing I was...
The story, if you've ever heard Sandy's story,
there's a story of him standing there arrogantly telling the guy
that he didn't have anything to offer
while he was standing there in the mental hospital
in his little robe and sandals.
And the guy says,
Well, is that right?
They're going to lock you up
and I'm going home to my wife.
And I got it.
I got it.
I was temporarily locked up at that time.
But I was okay.
I was going to be okay.
And I got that from him.
I got it from Chuck.
And on and on and on.
And I moved back to Louisville,
which was my hometown.
And I had a man named Jack Sullivan
who was a railroad man.
And he was my sponsor.
And the first thing that he did...
I hadn't been there for a day or two.
And he said,
We're going to go call on somebody tonight.
And we went to a hospital
and we called on a policeman.
And he said,
I don't really want you to say anything.
I just want you to watch what we're doing.
Because I was confused about what to do.
And he said,
If you want to share something, fine.
And I didn't say anything.
But I watched.
And this guy was in a bed
and he was close to death.
And I watched him a couple weeks later
when he came to a meeting
and as he started to get sober and so forth.
And I saw that process.
The big book says
when we take that third step,
that God will provide whatever we need.
I didn't have any money to live anyplace.
So I worked at one of those clubs
where you pour coffee.
And a guy named Bernie
who had a little unit
let me sleep in one side of it.
And then I stayed with...
We didn't have a place to drive people out
at that point in Louisville.
And on the other side
was where we put all the new drunks.
Now, I'm just a few weeks sober.
And I'm staying up with the new drunks.
And I'm taking a washcloth
and wiping them off
and helping them throw up.
And I don't know how you help somebody throw up.
But I mean...
There is an art to it, though.
But you give them some more...
Here, try some more of this orange juice and carob syrup.
Oh, yeah.
But I stayed up with them.
And that's how I earned a place to...
They let me stay there
because these guys had real lives.
They were married and they were working
and all that stuff.
And I just didn't have any life.
But I didn't mind at all
staying up all night with these guys.
And that's how, for a long time,
for my first year or so,
that's how I lived.
And it was a wonderful life.
And I got a job.
But they gave me a job.
I couldn't carry the message
by talking to anybody
because I would start crying.
The crying I'm doing up here
is because I'm so grateful.
But back then it was...
You might say something funny,
I'd cry.
And it was inappropriate crying,
if there's such a thing.
And so I would do this.
And I was just confused and stuff.
So they didn't really want me
shitting on them.
And so I would do this.
And I was just confused and stuff.
So they didn't really want me
shitting on them.
And so I would do this.
And I was just confused and stuff.
So they didn't really want me
sharing a verbal message as such
with anybody.
But I could stay up with the guys
and help them get well.
And then I could go to the meetings
and I got a job.
And my job there,
my way of doing 12-step work
for the group,
I was the ashtray guy.
I couldn't count
or anything like that.
But I was the ashtray guy.
And so I took care of the ashtrays.
And that was very...
At Louisville at that time
if you came in to AA,
if you didn't smoke,
it was mandatory
that you learned how to smoke.
So I was the ashtray guy.
And so I took care of the ashtrays.
And that was very...
At Louisville at that time
if you came in to AA,
if you didn't smoke,
you learned how to smoke.
So my job was essential.
It was key.
It was important.
And I was a very good ashtray guy
until I found out about rotation.
And when my brain started clicking,
they came in and they said,
Raymond is now going to be
in the ashtray guy.
And I said,
I don't think so.
I do a good job on these.
And they pointed out
they were going to move me
to the person that set up the chairs.
And there were 10 ashtrays
and four people
and 40 chairs.
So I knew this was a promotion.
And so...
You know, we're sick.
We're not stupid.
But I had a life.
I was more proud
of being the ashtray guy
and doing that
and going with the guys
on the 12-step car.
And I was proud
of being the youngest
creative director
at this ad agency
because before it was unreal.
Now it was real.
I actually...
Honestly,
where I am today,
all I want to do
is just live
like my dad did.
My dad was very humble
even though he was,
you know,
flying planes
and taking out bridges
and doing the things
that you do.
He thought of that
as his mission.
That's what he was
put here on earth to do.
My great-grandfather
was the same thing.
He was one of Lee's
favorite generals
because he thought of it
as his mission.
Well,
I'm not a great military person
and I'm not a...
I did have two tours
in Vietnam
but I found my own
little niche.
I tell stories
about people
in my professional life.
I tell stories
about true-life stories
about people
that overcome things
and that's important.
That gives people hope.
That gives people faith.
And in here
in Alcoholics Anonymous,
I can share my story
in an ad agency
and I can share
my story
in an ad agency
and I can share
my story
in an ad agency
and I can share
my story
in an ad agency
that has some value.
It has some...
My experience
has some value.
I can be of service
but I can be of service
just by opening a door
for somebody
who needs to have
that door open.
I'm going to talk
a little bit later
about,
in fact I'm going to close,
sharing about things
that I've learned
from other people
because I think
that's how we do
our best 12-step work
is in the way
that we act
and the way
that we live.
But I get sober.
The guys that I got sober with
did an annual
house cleaning...
Scott was talking about that.
And most of them did it at a place called Gethsemane.
We weren't all Catholic, but it was just a nice, quiet place to go.
And we spent the whole weekend down there very quietly,
got a handful of us, and we'd go down and do.
And finally, when my brain started working,
I'd get through this house cleaning.
I'd get to these root causes.
I'd let go of a lot of stuff.
And then I'd get into the night stuff,
which is where my spiritual awakening really started taking place,
where I started being able to see, like Chuck said, with a new pair of glasses.
And my first big amend that I remember going back to
was that Linden Baptist Church where I had walked down the aisle
and God had rejected me, and I went down on a Sunday night
and I told them that I'd been calling them hip grits for a long time
and I wanted to make amends and I wanted to be a member there for a while
so I could be of some service, and I apologized to them
and I asked them if they would take me back.
And I found several things happened because I was there.
I was there out of fear of sponsor.
I did not see the benefit of doing it.
Yes, I honestly didn't.
It was not, did not.
You know, I mean, I would have said,
Jack, this doesn't seem like it's one of your best ideas.
And so, but a friend of mine, Keith, said that he always talked about the fact
that it's good for us to go back before we get any other kind of spiritual connection
to the church of our childhood.
And it's like having a marriage that's sitting here before you go to date somebody else.
I had to deal with this.
And two things happened.
I found, I had a spiritual experience.
I found unconditional love in that place.
I had already found it in AA, but nowhere else.
And I found unconditional love in that place.
The second thing that happened, and this is the big part of practicing these principles in all our affairs.
Whenever I am doing something, like Ed, who called on me and 12-stepped me and took me someplace,
and he benefited from that, whenever I have been doing something useful or working one of the,
I am surprised by what God does for me.
It is way beyond anything that I would normally measure in return.
That night, when I was sharing with this congregation about how sorry I was,
and I think that's about how eloquent I was, how sorry I was,
there was a beautiful blonde there.
I had been kind of looking for a relationship, a meaningful relationship.
I'm not one who had several marriages.
I was engaged six times, but I was so bad that it never got to the altar.
And sitting in that congregation that night was this beautiful blonde
who was in two categories of people that I was not looking for.
She was a nice girl and a seminary student.
And I was kind of looking for a nude dancer who needs some spiritual guidance.
But that nice girl and seminary student is sitting down here
because we've been married now for 24 years.
She didn't know she had any alcoholism in her family when we started dating.
It turned out everybody she was related to was a moonshiner and alcoholic.
And she didn't know it because she grew up in it.
She's just not one of us.
And she's a past Al-Anon delegate and very active,
and she chaired the Al-Anon meeting Friday night here.
And we have a good marriage.
Because of something that I'm going to share in just a couple of minutes,
because I had to learn how to practice these principles in all my affairs,
including my marriage.
I didn't know how to do that.
I had a second amend that I made, and that was to, or many amends,
but one of the amends I made was to McCain Erickson,
this agency that I'd worked for in New York.
And I went to the comptroller.
Her name was Hartmas.
We called her Heartless because she was so tough on everybody.
I was scared to death, thought I was going to go to prison.
And I went to her and said,
I think I owe about $30,000 that I padded on my expense account
because I was told by my sponsor that if you pad and don't pay it back,
it's called stealing.
And white collar doesn't make any difference.
It's stealing.
And so I went to her, and at that point, you know,
I was just not too far beyond the pouring coffee and helping guys get drunk.
I mean, helping guys get sober thing.
Now, I was past the helping guys get drunk thing, I hope.
But anyway.
And so I didn't have the money,
but I went to her thinking I might end up going to prison.
And she started.
I didn't get the reaction I thought, again, just like the church.
I got someone who said,
did you know that we knew you were in trouble and we had been praying for you?
And suddenly we realized that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Because increasingly, as my eyes began to awaken during this process,
I realized that it wasn't just God helping me now.
God had been there all along, trying to help, guide.
I was the one who wouldn't take the hand.
My final amend thing that I'll talk to that was probably the most significant for me in terms of my spiritual awakening.
When I had completed everything else, we sat down and we looked,
and my sponsor said, is there anything else?
And I said, well, there is one place, because I still felt at odds.
And I went back to the last church I'd belonged to.
And I walked into the sanctuary, and there was nobody there.
And it was a big church.
It's the church my dad still belongs to now.
My dad's 88.
My mom died a couple years ago, and he met a very nice woman in the widows and widowers group.
And at 88, got remarried last summer, and they met at Harvey Brown Presbyterian Church.
Yep.
He's driving.
He's an old test pilot.
And he does not know.
I know he can't see or hear, but he's...
So we're a little bit concerned.
But he doesn't know it, so, you know, it's perception.
But I go down that sanctuary.
I have no place to go.
There's nobody there.
I can't apologize to anybody.
And then I realized what I was there for.
Because if there's one resentment that I had,
more than any other, it was God.
And we say it at the end of this meeting.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And I was asking God every day to keep me sober and thanking him at night.
That's what I was told to do.
And this was a God that I hated.
I feared.
I resented.
And so I sat, got down on my knees, and started forgiving God.
And I had the most...
One of the most spiritual...
The two most spiritual experiences I've ever had I'm going to share with you.
And this was one, and the other one was when I was with Keith Lewis when he died.
And I'm going to end with that.
But as I started to forgive, I had this feeling that I weighed almost nothing.
And it was as though there was a wind that just blew through my soul.
And I was lifted up.
And all those burdens that I'd had for all those years and all that fear and all those knots in my stomach just dissolved.
They disappeared.
Because I had finally been reunited.
You can't hate your father and love him at the same time.
And I had forgiven my spiritual father.
And I was reconnected with my spiritual father.
And I loved him.
I loved him.
And I was reconnected with this God that I had been avoiding and running from all my life.
And I went through a period after that where I was on a pink cloud that they talk about.
And I had all the joy.
And there was great power in my life.
And I would have thought that would have been it.
And I think God gave me that so I would know that God was there.
But there was a lot more work to do.
But I was ready and I listened.
And shortly after that we went to Gethsemane one more time for this annual house cleaning.
And I was ready to listen.
And there was a priest up there.
And he got up and he said,
You boys know what God's will is, don't you?
You talk about it all the time.
And none of us, even though there were some old-timers,
ventured to guess because we thought it was a trick question.
And he said,
God's will is simple.
It is to do the best you can right now, this moment, with what God gives you.
No more, no less.
He said,
If you are a son, be a good son.
If you are a husband, be a good husband.
If you are a father, be a good father.
If you are a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, be the father.
If you are a friend of Alcoholics Anonymous, be the best member you can be.
If you have a job that you absolutely love and you're good at,
do it honorably and love people through that job.
If you have a job that you hate,
do it honorably and love people through it until God gives you something else.
He said,
This is not hard for us to visualize because we are God's children
and God sees us as we see our children but loves us even much more.
And for that reason, if you guys had two boys,
and we were all men,
he said,
If you have two boys,
and you give them both little red wagons,
and one of them takes that red wagon around the neighborhood
and spreads joy to the other kids,
and the other one takes that red wagon and kicks it aside and says,
I want a scooter,
who are you going to give more to?
And I had always been the guy that kicked the wagon aside and wanted the scooter.
I was never satisfied with what I had.
If I had one woman, I was looking for another.
If I had one child, I was looking for another.
I was never satisfied with what you gave me.
And the light went on.
My job was to be happy with what I've got right now and to do the very best I can.
And this goes along with what Sandy was talking.
My experience is that the spiritual life is one of efficiency.
The less time I spend thinking about what other people have,
the less time I spend doing anything except figuring out who I am,
what talents I have, and what ability I have,
and trying to figure out how to use that for somebody else,
the more efficient I can become.
When I look at these people,
Clancy helped me more than anything else one day a few years ago
when he answered a question that he probably doesn't even remember.
I was taking him, this was six or seven years ago when Cassini had his 40th birthday,
and I'm taking him to the airport and I said,
Clancy, how do you manage your time?
You sponsor all these people.
You're always there.
You travel.
You're dependable.
You show up for everything.
And you run this mission.
And he gave me several honest answers and told,
he gave me some things that could help me to manage my time
so I could be useful to a few people and to do it within my own ability.
That is 12-step work.
That's practicing these principles in all our affairs.
Finding out, you know, Clint Eastwood had one of his films.
I love all of Clint Eastwood's films, but one of them says,
you've got to know your limitations.
He says, as the guy he didn't like blows up
because he was a little outside of his limitations.
And so there's a very moral story in every Clint Eastwood film.
And so I went through all that.
Now, all of this stuff is happening.
Now I have this spiritual awakening.
I believe that I'm a child of God.
I feel good.
I feel like I fit in here.
Maybe I should get a regular job and do some other things.
And so right after that, that next week,
I went to the old-timers' luncheon at the Golf House in Louisville.
And if you've ever been around a bunch of old-timers,
they're not really –
they're really caught up in the crisis of the moment.
And I was telling them, I need a job.
I need a place to stay.
I need a car, and I need some money.
And it was Carter Redding and Mike England and that whole group.
These guys know them, and they're all sitting there,
and they're talking about a new putter, a Mercedes,
and somebody got a condo in Hilton Head.
And I don't even know what a condo is, but he got one in Hilton Head.
And so this has nothing to do with my urgent needs.
And they didn't say anything to me.
They just let me have it on,
and then they'd go back to their conversation.
Because it wasn't a meeting.
It was a luncheon that I happened to go to.
It was the old-timers' luncheon.
So obviously, I didn't fit in, but I was there.
And so afterwards, one of them said, come and see me tomorrow.
So I went to see him.
He said, bring a resume.
And shortly after I gave him my resume, I had a job.
I had a place.
I had a car.
And I had not as much money as I thought I needed,
but exactly as much money as I needed to stay sober.
I was the press secretary for the mayor of Louisville.
I did his advertising and press for six weeks while he ran.
It was kind of not a big campaign.
And suddenly, I'm the director of public affairs for the city.
Well, I was qualified to do that.
I mean, by experience, not mentally at that point,
because I only had a couple of years sober.
But there were a lot of AAs around me that kind of supervised,
make sure I didn't go off the deep end, and so forth.
You know what came out of that?
I found out that because when I came in here,
I was one of the biggest liars.
Because if you make up your whole life
and you're phony about everything,
you tell everybody different stories.
And it's impossible to have integrity if you're doing that.
You can't live spiritually if you don't have integrity,
if you're not one person.
And so I would tell all these different kinds of stories.
Well, if you're a press secretary,
you can't tell three different reporters three different stories
because they talk to each other.
So I had to come up with a plan.
And here is what my sponsor and other people said.
Tell the truth, keep it simple,
and don't talk about things you don't know about.
These were new concepts to me altogether.
.
But they worked.
They worked.
And I learned how to be honest
and how to talk to somebody
and actually not talk outside of my experience.
And it worked.
And they were helping me.
And my life was starting to get more integral.
I was starting to be able to...
And the second thing that happened was
I had been locked up 22 times.
And sometimes it took multiple officers to lock me up.
I was locked up at my senior prom
for two counts of assault and battery on a police officer.
It was an interesting experience.
I was locked up and put in...
It was Derby time.
It was the same weekend.
This weekend.
And because we have the Derby at the same time,
we have prom time.
And I was put in jail with the seven Black Panthers who were...
Because it was not a drunk thing this time.
I was put in jail with seven Black Panthers
who were locked up for carrying explosives in
to disrupt the Kentucky Derby.
And Dad was so proud.
And so...
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This was in high school.
And I had not been living at home
because living the way I was,
I was out and sharing an apartment with some older guys.
So they had no idea where I was
until that morning on television of Derby Day.
ABC, NBC, and CBS were there.
They're all...
The cameras are rolling.
And my parents are wondering where Dick is now.
We haven't seen him for a few days.
And there I am, the seven Black Panthers,
me and my little powder blue tuxedo jacket.
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and what do you make amends for
when you don't remember what it was you'd be amending for
so we started calling on these police
and they were killing them
because if they had a drinking problem
they lost their retirement
and Jack ran the program for L&N Railroad
and he said well why don't you see if you can put in an amnesty program for the city
so with two years sobriety
I didn't do it, Jack did the work
but I was able to help start the first amnesty program
where we had firemen and policemen who came in
the first six guys we 12 stepped
I sat at the police chief's office
and they would come in and I would tell them my story
and the chief loved my story so he'd sit there and cry
and he'd say you can lose your retirement or you can go with Dick to AA
and most of them chose to go with me to AA
and the second guy we got sober
ran the program until he died a couple of years ago
so God was using me for 12 step work
even when I didn't
I couldn't do it
I lived this life, it seems good for the first 12 years
and here's the problem
in the big book
if you read it, and I'm not going to read a lot of stuff
but in the big book
I was doing a workshop a while ago
but in the big book
in the seventh chapter it primarily talks about the mechanics
of working with a new drunk
after that
and the smack down
now we're at the 12 step
and just under the program matured
and Bill matured
this book, On the 12th Step, talks much more about the spiritual aspect of the way we live
and in 1956, Bill wrote about something called emotional sobriety
because when the book was first written they were put out of fire
how do we get people sober and stay sober ourselves? But then they found out they had to learn how to live
for a long period of time and they had to learn how to live for a long period of time.
live sober. Well, I was 12-step. I'm like crazy. But I wasn't practicing these principles in all
our affairs. Barbara and I got married when I was seven years sober. And when I was 10 years
sober and we were three years married, one of the guys I sponsored fires me. And he said,
you're trying to help me with my relationship, but I'm embarrassed for the way you treat Barbara.
I did not know how to be a husband. And I hadn't asked anybody how to be a husband.
And I had to go find somebody who, not somebody who'd been married four times and was doing
workshops on relationships, but somebody who had been successfully married to help me learn how to
be a husband. Because I didn't know how to be. I didn't know how to practice those principles in
all our affairs. And I tried it. And I was still fighting a lot of people and a lot of everything.
I was not. I had not stopped fighting anybody and everything. So when I was about 12 years sober,
I'd been active in everything.
Acting in service work, acting on the roundup, doing lots of things. And I started getting
burned out and I kind of faded away. And if you're going through this, there's hope for you. You don't
have to go take a drink. And I didn't take a drink. But by the time I was 15 years sober,
because I had distanced myself, I was going to meetings now and then, was only sponsoring one
guy who's really, really sick and didn't know the difference. And barely around. And I was angry.
And I was irritable. And I was discontent. And I was 15 years sober. And I found myself
out prepping a show. And I was in LA for a live show we were doing in Palm Springs. And I was in
a hotel room. And I felt like a big black hole was coming over me. And I knew I had to go find a gun
so I could put a bullet in my brain. And I was 15 years without a drink. And I cried out to God
again. And I said, and the only thing I got was go to some meetings for a week in Palm Springs.
And the first night I go to a meeting, Tom Whalen speaks. And he talks about a period,
and these were every, that whole week, somebody spoke. The next night, Cliff spoke.
And every night, somebody got up and spoke. And they shared stories I didn't normally hear. Tom
shared about when he got in real trouble, when he was 20 some odd years sober. And he felt like
he was detached from people. And Cliff said the same thing. Five people in a row got up and shared
with me that they had had problems in sobriety after they'd gotten sober. And I said, I get
the message. And I got a new sponsor. And I got a new home group. And my sponsor,
a sponsor said, a guy named John H., who's over at Hilton Head Island. He's celebrating 50 years
this coming year. And John said, you're in a spiritual wasteland. And I had to start over.
And when I started over this time, the first time I had worked on the first half of the 12-step. I
had thought I had a spiritual awakening. I was trying to carry this message. What I was trying
to do is just help people get to AA. But I wasn't working on practicing these principles in all
affairs. Now, I have something that I can do to practice. I have something that I can do to practice.
I start over simply. I sat in the back of the room. I did the things they told me to do. But I
started studying more of our literature. The big book says more will be revealed. And my home group
had been a 12 and 12 meeting. And we didn't read the 12 steps and gloss over the 12 traditions. We
read each one of them once a week. And if you'd worked that step or tradition, you could share
your experience. If not, then you could ask a question.
And if you needed help, people stayed behind. And I'm going to take five minutes. And I'm going to go
through the traditions just because I want you to take a look at these principles. I was told
that the 12 steps contained the principles by which we learn how to live with ourselves
comfortably. But the 12 traditions contained the principles by which we learn how to live with
others. And I had no clue how to do that. You can read the traditions yourself. But here's what I
get, the principle underneath from this.
The first tradition is unity. It's the basis of everything we do in our fellowship here. I learned
how to love a drunk before I could learn how to love my family. And I learned how to get along with
people here before I learned how to get along with my family or other people. And that requires
humility. It also requires faith. When Barbara and I disagree at home, we are not trying to seek my
will or her will. We are seeking God's will.
And so we will stop, pray together, and put it aside. And because we've done that, we're going to be married
24 years this year. Because never after the fact do we have somebody come back to each other and say,
I was right, I was wrong. We're looking for what God wants us to do. And it gets us back on the focus.
Second tradition, there's only one source of power, and I'm not it and you're not it. That is the
biggest, most important lesson I have learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, and it is the core of
everything I know spiritually. And I'm not it and you're not it. And I'm not it and you're not it.
What that means is, since you don't have any power, I don't have to fear you or resent you. Every
resentment I ever had was because I thought other people had the ability to affect my life. So I don't
need to fear you. You don't have any power that I don't have. I don't have any power either. But
because I am a child of God, I have access to my father's power. My real dad loved me, and he would
give me whatever he could, and I know my spiritual father will too. For years, I tried to go around
that. I tried to get money or something like that. I tried to get money or something like that. I
got all these cards with job titles. None of them gave me what I needed. The third tradition is
acceptance without judgment. That's the beginning of unconditional love. We let anybody come in here.
We don't judge them by their politics or what they dress or anything else. That allows me to listen
to others and to be useful to others. The fourth tradition, independence has its limits. Yeah, I can
be independent, but defiance is the opposite of humility. We can do whatever we want in our home
groups, but we can't be independent. We can't be independent. We can't be independent. We can't be
non-violent unless it affects AA as a whole, and that's the way I am. I'll give you a story that
I got four or five guys that I sponsor that are here, and one of them is sitting here,
Steve, in the fifth row back there. This happened. Steve, how long you
been sober now? Nine years? Eight and a half, okay. When Steve was brand new, Deb, his wife,
wasn't quite sure that this was a good thing. We were going through a rocky road and trying to get
Steve in the program. Steve was a good kid. He couldn't get over it. He couldn't get over it. He
you've asked me to sponsor him. And this taught me a great deal. I had a problem with my cell phone
and I went into the cell phone place and I explained that the cell phone didn't work
and that because of that, I would, my calls would drop out a number of times. So I was paying 10
times for a call and the cell phone didn't work in the first place. So I wanted a new cell phone
and I wanted my bill erased because I shouldn't have been paying for all those extra calls. Seemed
obvious to me and it seemed like it should be obvious to anybody else. But the woman I was
talking to, it didn't seem that obvious to. So I have worked often on the premise that if you
didn't understand what I explained, it was because you were hard of hearing. And so I explained it
louder. So a couple of weeks later, I'm sitting there with Steve, my new guy that I'm sponsoring.
I'm showing him how to live a spiritual life. And he says, were you in a cell phone company
of cell phone store recently? And I said, yes, why? And he said, my wife worked there. And she
said, you made the lady cry.
No, it's not that bad. Steve's sober. He's sitting here and his wife's with him.
Okay. And we're all friends. It worked out. But the point is,
the point is that if I'm living a spiritual life, my standard for behavior should be,
what if a newcomer was watching me right this minute? Could I explain my actions? Doesn't
mean that I always do the right thing, but that is a good barometer for me. And it takes a lot
of decision making out of my thing.
I don't have, if I use that as a standard, I don't have to sit and intellectualize what I'm
going to do. What if? And that's the way I look at it. The fifth tradition is what is my purpose
in this? And if I know what my purpose is, this is the most important thing I do today. Before I
walk into a meeting with anybody, I stop and say, what is my purpose in this meeting? And I may be
having a meeting with you to see if you're going to help fund a film, but the real purpose that
God is bringing us together is because you have a brother who needs to get sober. And I don't know
it because God,
is arranging whatever is going to transpire in this meeting. And so when I walk into it,
and if I forget my purpose, and it's easy to forget your purpose because you can confuse the
means with the purpose. In the 1930s, 85% of everything in this country was shipped by railroad.
And the railroad forgot that its purpose was to transport people and goods. And by the 60s,
they were going out of business because they didn't get into trucking lines and shipping and
airplanes.
They were going about UPS and FedEx. They forgot what their purpose was and confused it with their
means. The sixth tradition is, I have more than enough to do without straightening out other
people's businesses. If I remember that, that saves me a lot. It makes me much more efficient
spiritually when I'm dealing with anybody. Seventh is freedom from financial bondage. I can't go do
what God wants me to do if I owe a lot of money. I work for whomever I owe. And for me to be free,
to do what God wants me to do, I need to be out of debt.
And my sponsor
has a real good theory on
how you stay out of debt.
Live on less than you make.
I know people that make a lot
of money that still have debt.
I'm one of them. I'm a bad money
manager.
Eighth tradition. When do I
need help?
There are a lot of things I
do, but I no longer sponsor
outside. I'm no longer offering
somebody marital advice when
I need to get some for myself. I no longer
try to help somebody who's been abused when I never
was. I no longer try to do anything
that's outside of my realm. I can get help.
I know how to help somebody get some help.
Ninth tradition is keep it simple. Let go
and let God. Seek wise counsel, just like
Sandy was talking about earlier.
The tenth. Opinions can
defeat my purpose, whatever
my purpose is. I spent
years making amends to my
dad and to my family. My
dad was the best man in our wedding, and
God healed that, and it was a great thing. And then I would go
there, and we'd have these big blowout arguments because I'd talk
to him about politics.
When's the last time
anybody here won an argument
on politics?
Abortion. Iraq.
Immigration.
I'm not going to change
anybody's mind. I've been politically active.
I work for people. I do that. That's fine.
I don't carry any stickers on my car
because AA is so important to me. I don't
want that to get in the way of me helping
another alcoholic. And I can do
whatever I want, but I don't need
my opinion is not that important.
Eleventh and
twelfth both have to do with anonymity, but the
eleventh tradition is actions speak louder than
anything I say.
And that's
the truth. People watch
what we do, not what
we say. At my 25th
anniversary, a guy named Bill Roop
who got his 50-year
uh, uh, uh, uh,
chip from, uh, Clancy, uh,
a year and a half ago, um,
he stood up and talked about
how when he was 17 years sober, he had
been trying to figure out how to have an affair,
how to get rid of his wife so he could have an affair with another woman.
And here he was at 45
years sober, and he was
thankful to God that he could
be useful to her, and she was sitting there and he
changed her diaper twice that day because she had Alzheimer's
and she's since passed. But that
man was taking
care of a wife when he had
extra times he did, he, he did all,
uh, meetings in jails, he had his home group, he
was the guy who was always there, and when he had extra
time, he's 87 or 88,
he'd go down the street and, and call on
old people that didn't, as he said, old people that didn't
have anybody in nursing homes.
And this is a guy that I could relate to because he had the same
kind of personality as me, but he
was living the way that I wanted to live.
And I follow him.
The 12th
is give credit where credit's due.
The only reason that I've
got any, the, the power belongs to
AA, and the power belongs to God.
Every promise in the big book,
every one of them,
follow the dictates of a higher power
and you will presently live in a new and wonderful
world.
To the extent we kept close to
our employer, he provided all we
needed, says that if we will follow God,
he'll provide everything we need.
That's the spiritual connection
for me.
Because I've learned
to live that way, I'm going to share with you just two
stories and close.
In 2005,
this was put to a
test, because it's great to talk about how you live
spiritually until it's tested.
Barbara and I started
off that year, we didn't have any children, we started
off that year by putting our
18-year-old elk hound to sleep.
And it was the
weekend of the Atlanta Roundup, and
we went off to the Roundup and came back,
and we could not,
we didn't think we could cry any more than we did, and we
were holding him in our arms where they put him,
put him to sleep, and I buried him under, near our
lake, under a couple of big trees,
and we thought that was the end of the world, because
we don't have any children, we'd had him for 18
years, and he'd gone to over 200
AA conventions with us on the road,
and we thought that nothing worse could
happen. Just a few weeks later,
Barbara's
father died, and a week
later than that, her mother died, and we were the
caretakers for both of them, and did not expect
either one of them to go.
One of them had Alzheimer's, and the other was starting to get
some dementia, but they didn't seem to have any other
problems, but they died within 10
days of each other.
And within about 3 or 4 months later, my
mother died. And in the
middle of this,
I got, went to, in for
a regular physical, and I got diagnosed with
esophageal cancer, which is
98% terminal. And if anybody
knows about it, 98,
99% of the people who get it are dead within
6 months.
And I'm trying to figure out what to do
with this, and I can't tell my wife because
she just lost her mom and dad.
And I can't tell
you because nobody in AA
gossips, which would get to my wife.
So my sponsor knows,
my doctor knows,
my, and Keith knew,
and my sister knows.
And Keith was my,
Keith Lewis was my prayer partner.
And nobody else knew. And I'm
trying to find a place, he says, if you want a
chance,
then you have to find somebody,
there's a handful of doctors, four or five of them,
that do a lot of these operations.
And it was developed out at USC
in Southern California. So
we get connected with that doctor, we get
all of my stuff out there, they
look at it, they give a second opinion, said
yes, you need to come in immediately.
Then they check my insurance, and they don't take my
insurance.
And I tried everything I could.
I had Ed call him, Clancy, I had
I called Len Wilder because he sponsored somebody
who was a region at USC, and nothing's
working. And I'm speaking,
that next Saturday night down at Key West
at the Sunset Roundup.
And I go down there, and I'm supposed to have this
operation within 30 days, and it's already tied
up about two and a half weeks. And we
drive down to Key West, and I took one,
a newcomer with me, a guy that, I was
his grant sponsor, and we head down there,
we're in the car, and I'm trying to help
him, and think that'll keep, and I was praying,
and I could not pray, because I was so angry
that I was going to die, because they wouldn't take my
insurance. And I didn't
have another route. But you know what I
was praying for? I had gotten away,
from what I'm supposed to pray for, I was
praying for God's help in getting me in at USC.
And then I started
praying, I couldn't even say a prayer.
And a friend of mine said, say whatever you remember.
And I remembered
the 23rd Psalm. I mean, literally,
my mind was not working, I was so out of
contact with God and you, I felt like
I was totally alone.
And I started saying the 23rd Psalm
because I remembered it in the PTA in the third grade,
and I said, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
And as I started
to recite it over and over again, something,
something happened, I spoke Saturday night,
and when I got through, the fear
was gone. The big book says
we will lose our fear of today, tomorrow, and the hereafter.
And I had heard
that from Jack Sullivan when he got out of the doctor's
office, he had six malignant brain tumors.
And I asked him, I said, you don't even seem to have any
fear. And he said,
if God has been this good to me here, imagine
what he's got waiting for me on the other side.
And so
I said, if it's my time to go,
it's my time to go. And so I
accept your will, and whatever you want me to do,
I'm ready. And I can't tell
you, the fact that I was
ready to die
just freed me totally.
What else is it going to do
to you?
I'm going home.
It's like I'm going home.
I was concerned about
Barbara, she just lost her mom and dad.
I said, God knows what's going on,
so if he's taking me, he's going to take care
of her. That was
on Saturday, on Sunday night I got back to Atlanta,
Monday morning I got a call from USC,
and they said, we still
can't take you, but our chief of surgery,
who really has almost taken this to the next
step, just left here, and he went to a place
in Rochester, New York, called
at the University of Rochester,
called Strong Memorial Hospital.
Why don't you call him? So I'm going
to try to call the chief of surgery on Monday morning,
and he's going to call me back. So I call him,
and a half an hour, the chief of surgery,
half an hour later, the chief of surgery
at Strong Memorial calls me,
and he's like, hey, Dick.
Hi, Peter.
He gives me a cell phone.
He wanted a patient,
because he's going to develop a program there, and he wanted to teach
the other surgeons up there how to do this procedure,
and he didn't care about my insurance.
And he says,
come on up here. And so Barbara
and I get in the car, and if your
granddaddy was a three-star under Robert
E. Lee, you really don't want to go to Rochester, New York,
to make your exit, no matter where home you're going.
But we headed on up there, and
because I had been active,
and I'd been a delegate, there were some delegates
that called some other people, and next thing you know, they're all
waiting for us when we got up there. We had a new home group.
They did, we were up there for weeks.
They did Barbara's laundry. We got a whole family
of AA people that are new people.
And we walk in that hospital, and the first thing
we did was go into the
chapel,
because
we're not going through this without God.
We walk down there, and we look on that wall, and
30 feet high, in gold
letters, it says,
the Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want.
And
we walk out into the lobby
to see what place this
is that we're in. And it's
Strong Memorial Hospital,
named after Dr. Leonard
Strong, who was Bill Wilson's brother-in-law,
who was our first non-alcoholic.
Wow.
Trustee,
and without whom we wouldn't be here.
Now,
I'm pretty good
at organizing things.
But when I stopped praying for help, and I
asked for God's will, he worked out
all the details without any help from me.
This is the spiritual
life.
I had my last of 23
operations a month ago. I'm cancer-free.
I was on a feeding tube for six
months, but
I can start playing
tennis again next month, and I don't even have to go back
for a CAT scan for a year.
So what that means is,
it doesn't mean
that I'm a favored son. It means God
has something else for me to do. So here's how I'm
reacting to what God did for me.
I was doing some marketing and some
other writing just to make some money.
And I really wasn't, I was putzing around, not doing
that much with my life for a little while there.
And more important is that I know
a lot of really good stories about people
where God has done great work in their lives.
And I've got ten of them already lined up, and I'm writing
the book, and then we do a Hallmark film, and then
writing the book, and then do a Hallmark film.
And Bill B., who did My Name is Bill W.,
is working in me with this, and that's what I'm doing.
And when I leave here,
when I'm dead and gone, and nobody even needs
to know my name, because it's not important,
it's the story of what God did
in those people's lives, I will have
left something here. I will have left a legacy.
And that will be my legacy.
And that's what I'm put on earth to do.
So I have a spiritual purpose in this,
and I have a spiritual
life.
And this is what
I was always looking for. I was looking to be
connected to you. I was looking to be connected
to God. I was looking to have some kind of purpose,
to be of service to people.
And I had no clue how to do it.
But because I was here, and I followed you,
you gave it to me. Now I'm going to tell you
one last story before I close.
I want to share with you
about my best friend, because many of you know him.
And I want to share with you the way he lived
and how, if we live
with this kind of
spirituality ingrained in us,
if we practice every day to try to be
more effective and being useful to others,
this is the way we can make our passage
out of here.
Keith Lewis had a condition called
Lou Gehrig's disease.
And many of you heard Keith's tapes
and so forth. And about three or four
years ago, Keith started having difficulty.
He thought he had a disease. He thought he had a disease.
And he told me, I was his prayer partner
and Julia's wife. But he didn't tell a lot of people,
because if you're speaking, you don't want to tell,
sometimes you don't tell people you've got a depression.
And he wasn't even sure what he had.
But he was having more and more problems.
And he was starting to get angry, and he was starting to get frustrated.
And we dealt with things.
And Joni's here someplace,
and she chaired the 50th anniversary
of the Florida State Convention.
And Sandy was there. And Keith spoke.
And he did fine, because he always did fine.
But Keith was having trouble,
and he was walking around, and he was angry,
and he didn't fit in.
And it wasn't the Keith that we all knew.
And just
probably in the last
three or four weeks,
he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease.
But I had gone down to spend time
with him about six weeks before that.
When Keith died, he weighed 107 pounds.
He shuffled, he could barely move,
and he couldn't talk.
But I visited with him for a week,
about six weeks prior to that.
Because I had been talking to him
as best I could on the phone.
And I go to visit with him.
This is what Keith did.
Unable to talk, barely able to communicate,
shuffling at this time.
But I visited him.
He weighed about 123 pounds.
Keith could still get in the car
and go to a couple of places.
Every morning, he went to mass at 8 o'clock,
and he prayed for people.
And then he came back, and then he went over
to the church, the chapel by himself,
and prayed for people from 10 to 11.
And then he came back, and he made thousands
of rosary beads.
Those of you who heard his story
about making the rosary beads,
except this time he made them with the right number.
And he made them in marine colors, and army colors,
and air force colors, and navy colors.
And he gave them to people who could send them to the troops.
And then he would come back, and he had every meal that came,
at Wal-Mart, because Wal-Mart was, he knew how to get there.
And they had a subway, and he just got the special.
Kept it as simple as possible.
And he wore his Marine Corps hat, and then he'd go in.
And if you go to Ocala, if you are, Keith was 64,
and when he and I went in there, we were, you know,
it was like having a meeting with all our parents.
And, because it's an older crowd.
And so, so, so when we would, when he would go in there,
he'd have his Marine Corps hat, and he'd go up,
and he'd say thank you to your service
to all these other people that had theirs,
a lot of retired military.
So Keith would go have lunch.
And that way, he could connect with them.
And then he would, he would come back,
and he would make more rosary beads.
And from four to five, he would go and pray for people.
And he would finish by Julia coming over,
and them having dinner.
He'd want to go to Wal-Mart again.
She'd try to talk him into going someplace else.
And they'd usually go to Wal-Mart again.
And then a couple nights a week, he went to a meeting,
and he sat there, and, and he would just thank people,
and congratulate people, and, and so forth.
In the middle of a very debilitating,
disease, Keith was praying for people four hours a day.
I don't pray for people for four hours a day.
And when I asked him what he was praying for, he said,
I pray for the newcomers in AA.
I pray for the meetings in AA.
And then he had specific people that he prayed for.
He was having trouble with everything else.
Because Keith had been so programmed by seeking God,
his favorite word Sandy said at his memorial was God.
He had been looking for God.
He had been looking for God all his life.
And if you remember his stories about as a young boy,
that's what he was looking for.
Now fast forward about six weeks, and the last two days
of his life were spent in a very nice hospice.
And Sandy was there, and John Holmes, one of his other,
my sponsor and his current sponsor were there.
And Dumb Denny, and his wife, and his sister Patty,
and his wife Julia, and me.
And they were all there.
They all left at 1130.
And at 1130, I was holding a crucifix that had belonged
to Mother Teresa that he admired.
Keith, the last two days of his life, kept pointing at that,
had the rosary beads, and all he was saying is he's going home.
And he kept saying home.
And that last few hours, Lou Gehrig's disease stops your breathing.
And so he breathed.
About 40 seconds, 60 seconds later, he'd take another breath,
and that was it.
But unlike the normal thing, it was peaceful.
And at 1230, between 1130 when they left and 1230 when Keith passed,
there was this tremendous, it was the other most spiritual experience
I've ever had, there was this tremendous presence that
started to fill the room.
And it was this presence of joy.
And at 1230, when Keith was getting ready to go,
I was smiling.
I was smiling so broadly, I couldn't stand it because I was filled
with the spirit of joy.
And so was Linda, who was the Eucharistic minister.
And Julia, who had been not unable to sleep for three days,
got up and walked over and lay down next to him.
And it was as though as his body, this temporary vessel, was shutting down,
his spirit was so enormous in that room.
And if you knew Keith, you would know that.
This spirit was much taller than he actually was.
And this spirit filled the room.
And when he left, we were laughing with joy, all three of us.
I cannot, I don't know how to explain that.
I brought up the little thing that I wrote that night, if I can find it here.
Um...
In a room filled with peace and those who loved him,
Keith Lewis gently fell asleep at 12.30 a.m., November 15, 2007,
to awaken to the paradise promised by the God he loved so much.
His wife, Julie, was cuddled next to her loving husband.
His family and friends prayed him into this new journey.
The sense of joy in the room was unexplainable unless you knew Keith.
God certainly loves his children.
That's my awakening.
He loves his children, he loves me, he loves you,
and you have a wonderful journey ahead of you.
Thank you.
Thank you.