Why Humility Is a Desirable Way of Life – Kenny D.

a divorce guy, and he was like, well, what is it? Do you want bankruptcy or divorce? I'll say, I'll take the bankruptcy today. Thank you, and here's my money. And okay, here's how it works. He says, you can take the kind of bankruptcy. He said, well, what type of bankruptcy do you want to file? And I was, well I didn't know there was any choices here. And he says, well yeah, there's the kind where you pay the money back and there'sthe kind whereyou don't. And I'm thinking, what kind of an idiot am I dealing with? I said, I'LL TAKE THE KIND WHERE YOU DON'T PAY THE MONEY BACK. How's that? okay yeah he so he took care of it all for me i filled out all the paperwork myself and and he did the filing stuff for the 125 or 175 or whatever and you know when i got sober and actually i was sober at that time but when i actually worked the steps uh and i started looking at my amends i realized that i could have paid that money back i did that out of convenience it was more convenient for me not to pay those people so I went back and the nice thing about a bankruptcy for anybody that's ever filed a bankruptcy they give you a nice list and address and phone numbers and everything for every single creditor so I had that there and I went and I took care of this years ago but I called everybody on that list and explained to them that I was a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous that I realized that I'd screwed them out of this money as a matter of convenience to myself that it was a selfish thing to do and that I wanted to pay the money back and most of them set up ways for me to do it A few of them didn't, and I did have that advice that if they won't take the money, then ask them for a favorite charity and donate the money to the charity. And I paid all that money back. So here comes my friend Bob. You know, hard and fast rules. Hey, I did it that way. That's the way you've got to do it. Well, this guy was, and still is, he's a real estate agent now, but he was a machinist at that time. And he'd been in an accident. He's got a hand that's kind of goofy. He's Got One. He's had a bad lamp, and he owed about $80,000 and he had back child support, all kinds of stuff so he had no money. His check was gone. But I was just like hey man, I did it, you're going to do it. You're going pay this deal back. And I just love him so much for sticking with me through this deal. He went out I told him, well now you've got to get a second job. You've got go get a second job, you've gotta pay this money back. He went and got a second jobs delivering pizzas at night. So he was working at a machine all day long. And then he got a second job limping around, doing his deal, going door to door. This guy's 50 years old. Delivering pizzas at night for two years. And at the end of two years, he still owed $80,000. It wasn't working. And I was thinking, well, what's wrong here? God's got to step in. Maybe he's got a... I pray that Bob gets some bigger tips at the pizza delivery this weekend so we could pay these men's back. And you know what came to me was, and I don't know exactly how it came to be, but it came to me that there didn't used to be bankruptcy. And so there used to be paupers, prison. If you owed money and you didn't pay, they would just put you in prison until you worked it off. And it ruined people's lives. You know, people would go into debt and they would never, ever recover. It would ruin their life forever. And Abraham Lincoln stepped in and said, hey, you know, I believe in forgiveness. It's kind of a part of our culture here. So why don't we come up with some way that we can kind of forgive the debt to people? It was a spiritual idea, this idea of bankruptcy. I took advantage of it. But Bob didn't. You know he actually filed because he couldn't pay and it was going to ruin his life. And two years into this deal, it finally occurred to me and I made an amends to Bob. And I said, you know, Bob, I think I've given you some bad advice here. You know, I think what we ought to do is I think, you Know, we oughta let bygones be bygone. I think you can do whatever you need to do spiritually but we're gonna, you Now, go the route of asking for this debt to be forgiven. That's why they have these laws. That's Why these laws are passed. That's What you went before a judge and he said, your dad is forgiven. No, you don't. And so his circumstance was different than mine. And it woke me up to the idea that I've got to be open and aware enough to realize that different people have different sets of circumstances. You know, it would have killed that guy if he would have kept having to pay that back. And you know, as soon as he was able to stop doing that, he replaced that pizza delivery with real estate school. He was able TO get away from the machine shop and start doing real estate. And he's actually been pretty successful. I mean, he makes a decent living for himself now. he's married now, he had a, he's got a daughter that's just a beautiful daughter, about three years old, and you know, he got some good things going in his life, and man, I have, you know that hard fact, I would have drove that guy right into the ground probably, and I think about that story now, I'm almost embarrassed about it, I am kind of, you know that I had this guy out delivering pizza at night like that. Just out of ignorance, out of a lack of inspiration and intuitive thought. I really believe that. So I like to really look at 10 and 11 as rather something like to kind of beat ourselves up with. The book warns us it should be something to inspire us. That's the whole purpose of this deal is to look for inspiration and innovative thought in our lives and to come up with these new ideals for what God's will is for all our day's activities and to go in and answer the questions and just kind of use it as a measuring stick, like where am I at and how am I doing today and being accountable to other people. There's a deal here on page 88 and it says it works, it really does. there's a there was a guy in my group back in Seattle and he's still around his name is Dan and and he was one of these guys that was heavy into the steps that priest that I told you that sponsored that guy Jimmy who was out making his amends also sponsored my friend Dan Dan was in a motorcycle accident when I was in early sobriety and he went underneath a semi truck and he lost his arm and his leg, both on one side of his body. And I didn't know him really well. I'd heard, you know, his story and his making amends and all that kind of stuff. And he was one of these guys in A that kindof came up and said, hey, have you found God yet? Kind of guy's name. You're like, oh yeah, alright. You know what? But he was always just a really positive guy and I'd hear about this horrible accident. I hadn't seen him in a while. And the first time I saw him was at an AA picnic. And he came walking towards me. He had a prosthetic leg on, the first thing I'd seen him since his accident, and no arm. And he kept walking towards and he came over and gave me a hug. And the fist words he said was, it works, it really does. It's the first words that he said. And then he told me the story of how he was laying in the hospital bed And some lady came out of the blue to visit him. And he was feeling really bad for himself. And some Lady came to visit Him and said, Listen, I don't mean to bother you, but I heard you were in a motorcycle accident. And she said, My son was killed in a motorbike accident recently. And I just wondered if I could take your clothes home and do your laundry for you. you know, she knew that like all his clothes had been destroyed. She took them and brought back some new clothes and some stuff for him. And, you know I've talked about like, I like my vision working with alcohol and stuff. I think it's kind of a, it's a good vision for me. It's not too over the top. But I really like big vision guys and we have some of those guys in AA. You know Don, Don C is one of those guy's that I see. He's just got these huge visions of changing the world. You know, he walked from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. He's an AA member, and he's really heavy in the Native American community. He does a lot of work, and, you know, he's got these visions of sobering up thousands and thousands of people. He's wrote eight books, and I mean, he's just, you Know, got a big vision. I like being around those kind of people, but Dan came out of this deal, and it was at the time that the Clintons were really pushing for national health care. Again, I'm not getting into politics at all here, but the Clintins were pushing for natural health care, And as we all know, it didn't really work out. But they had a bus that they were doing this tour on while they were trying to push Congress to pass this national health care bill. And they had this bus. Well, they heard about Dan's situation because the problem with Dan was he went under that semi-truck when he was passing on the right. It was his fault that the accident happened. And so there was no insurance. There was no assurance. And the bills were in millions of dollars. and it bankrupted him and it bankrupted his entire family and there was no way they could pay the bills and so he became a lobbyist for this medical bill and he was on the bus that Clinton's put together and they found out and heard his story through papers or something and they got a hold of him and said would you be willing to tour the country and talk about your situation and the need for national health care and he said well sure he would and so we toured the deal did the big tour and was talking with people and stuff. He's now got a career in politics. He's a professional lobbyist now, and he's got a gift, the gift of gab like you wouldn't believe. He just always has been that way. So he's got a degree in politics now. He got back to Washington D.C. and thought, hey, I like this. This is great. You know, I'm going to find a way to find some work, and somebody offered him a job along the way, and so he travels now between Seattle and Washington D. C. all the time. But there I am watching the State of the Union speech, and who is sitting with the first family in the balcony? This guy from the Fremont Hall AA guy that went under the bus and lost his arm and leg got asked to sit with the family. And he got a private audience with the President of the United States where he came and told the President his whole story about everything that had happened. Told him about being a sober alcoholic and stuff. Said the President cried when he told him this story. Isn't that amazing? You know, it's amazing the transformations that take place, you know, in AA and the kinds of people we get to be around. And it works. It really does. It works. It really doesn't. It's just an amazing thing that we get a part of. I couldn't imagine being a part. I mean, you now, I work with people. I do things. I just can't imagine leave all the booze and drugs and all the past behind. I just couldn't imagine a better way of life, you know, to get to be around and to be a part of these kind of stories and to see these transformations before our very eyes, all of these things. So I'm going to end there, and it's a little after 430. I know we've got dinner at 530, and then we're going to have the meeting at 8. I am going to open it up for questions and answers, though, before we go. So we do have some time. We will turn the microphone on. So I am going to pass this microphone around. And, yeah, turn it on before you start talking. There's a switch there. My name is Tony. I'm an alcoholic. I have a question about the nightly review in Step 11 where it asks the questions. My particular practice is I write it down every day because I can't seem to keep focus that way. But I know you mentioned the 12 and 12 earlier, and I could be wrong. If I'm wrong, please forgive me. But I Know in our 12 of 12, it talks a little bit more about where the questions in our big book are sort of – I don't know how to say it. Very specific about what we resentful, dishonest, selfish, afraid, yada, yadda, yedda. But in the 12 and 12, it talks a little bit more about keeping track of positive things, of assets per se in our 11th step. And I don't know if you have any experience with that or what you do at the end of the day when you do your nightly review and what you're keeping track in your 11th Step. Well, mostly when I do the 11thstep, I'm doing the 11st step out of the big book. It's just been my practice for a long time. If it gets stale, you know, and I'm glad you asked the question, that we shouldn't ever adhere to just one particular thing or to kind of sign on like this is my particular way because it will get stagnant and stale. And it's good like you do some writing. I'm not currently doing writing, but I'm going to do some more. I'm in a post that it might come to me someday to do some writing, but in that avenue of the positive things, that's what this is exactly. It's from these ideas are ideas from exactly what you talked about, the 12 and 12 and focusing on some positive things that this is the vision of God's will for me every one of these things on my list is a positive thing every one of them and the only thing I do is look at how I'm measuring up to them and hopefully there's a lot of positive stuff in that so yeah it's important yeah I've done a lot of different things. I like writing it. That doesn't mean I do it, but I like it. You know? I probably do it maybe...I said if I were looking in a year, there's maybe 30 to 40 nights out of a year where I actually sit and write, you know? I look at my journal, you know, because I have this journal that I started. It spans, say, eight years, you know? And it's like there's this date, you know? So I look back and I go, oh, well, this is the times, the nights that I've sat in and I've written, you know, my nightly review. But more often than not, I'm laying in bed and I'm putting it through. One thing, though, that I found very helpful in the last couple of years is that, you know, there's those days when I'm doing watching throughout the day my 10th step there's those days when it's way less than perfect I mean not a little less than perfectly but way less than perfect and I'll go to bed at night and I think do I have a resentment oh yeah this is a resentment that tonight I'm not going to sleep I'm going to have trouble sleeping and not that I do it all the time But more often than not, when I do have these days, I sit down before I go to bed and I write a resentment inventory just because I know I can't stand it. I've got to sit down and I put, okay, this is my resentment, this person, you know, why, what it affected, and then turn it around. forget the other person and just look where I'm at fault where am I to blame and I sit down and write that stuff it's not that I'm going to share it at night 10.30, 11 o'clock at night sometimes if I wake up at 12.30 and go oh there it is again but I have it and it's off my head and it is on paper so then I can call someone and share it the next day and I really like what you said that to keep it the same all the time, it does get stagnant. Just like my prayers, which I'm sure you're going to touch on later on and morning meditation, you know, morning prayer meditation. If I don't change that up a little bit, you know it gets old. Yeah. Gets old. Yeah. It's just like blah, blah, bla, blah. Yeah. You know? Anyway. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Janice. hi janice alcoholic thanks a bunch um what was i gonna say oh um i've had some experience and also some of the people i work with um in writing 11 step um and taking a look at what it says in the book it asks the questions and and some of them you know can produce a little guilt do we owe an apology where was I selfish becomes this whole thing what happens to me sometimes is it becomes this whole thing about remorse which it talks about in the fourth step if I take too much of a focus on what's wrong with Janice and what she did wrong today what happens is I start to do this spiral thing and I start to feel really bad about myself and what I've been doing is putting more of a positive focus on as far as yeah there's those things too and some of them I probably do need to discuss with someone but where it says were we kind and loving towards all I add the little thing with anyone you know was I nice to anyone today and I do ask myself you know was there something yeah um was i thinking of myself most of the time did i think of anyone else you know it's kind of like yeah who did i think about and instead of you know at all it's kind of okay who did I think about today you know and did I pray for my kids today did I think of my parents today and I try to take a more positive approach to it and the other thing I wanted to add to that part was you mentioned Emmett Fox and he's a favorite of mine, too. And in Sermon on the Mount, he talks about scientific prayer, which has become a real focal point for my prayer and meditation. And I'm paraphrasing, and I may be missing the mark entirely, but what I got from what he talks About scientific prayer is really putting a positive spin on prayer. Like there's petition prayer where I say, God, please help me, which is actually saying by default, I am nothing. I need you God. But then there's petition scientific prayer which is actually sort of affirming that yes, I am connected to you God and yes, you have given me the power to make amends and to make things right and to help other alcoholics. And what I have found is that my spiritual connection and sort of the science of my mind is much more grounded in God when I take a look at, how am I really connected to God? And getting current and sometimes applying gratitude. OK, what am I grateful for? Instead of always taking, for me it feels like a negative tact a lot of looking what's wrong with me and what I've done. And I do need to be careful of when I'm causing harm in other people's lives. But one of the biggest things that I do is I bludgeon myself with my own defects of character. In other words, I seem to still think at this stage that I should have enough power to remove my own defects. And I don't offer them to God. I just go, bad girl, and you better try harder tomorrow. And that kind of inventory does not work for me at all, and it does not help me feel connected to God, so I was wondering what you think about that. Well, the book warns us very specifically about that, you know, but it says but we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection for that would diminish our usefulness to others so you know if the tenth step begins to drift, it means if it starts going that way, we put a stop to it, you know we maybe change up something here and it does tell us that you know that we alcoholics are undisciplined so we allow God to discipline us in this way and it doesn't mean like discipline like the beating. It means discipline as in becoming a disciple of this AA way of life and I do change things up. I don't go and ask always for the you know these very same questions. I'll do that for a while and it will get stagnant and I'll go off. I do a lot of different meditation practices and morning meditations and sometimes I do currently you know my wife and I are really in a groove with a couple of things that we're doing. We're doing our morning meditations together in the mornings, and I have a place on my way to work where I stop and park every day. I park and I do some further meditation there, and a lot of it's not stuff that's in the book, but I will tell you this, that in times of trouble, in times where things are, I always know intuitively I go back. I break the book out and I actually read the questions and go all the way back to this, but it is good to, you know, we don't let this, it should never be about this drift into worry or morbid reflection is like I'm such a bad person, I'm so sorry. I'm not such a good person. I talked to a few people at one of the breaks about this and I don't know if I have a good answer for that but, you Know, we talked about it. We came up with a couple things but, You know, why is it that it's so much harder to forgive ourselves than it is we could go forgive all these other people but forgiving ourselves is hard. I'll make a wrong turn and end up getting off the freeway. Or even worse, sometimes I'll get on the free way going the wrong direction just because I, yeah. And man, I'll beat myself up like you wouldn't believe. I'll just be, God, you stupid idiot. You know, what are you doing? Why are youdoing this? You're going thewrong way. And, you know, maybe a five-minute deal. But I'm just really, I'lI be harder on myself sometimes than I will other things. and I think that AA did have kind of a realization that some of this stuff was occurring and a lot of the 12 and 12 stuff, I think people have a problem with it sometimes because our problem is rooted in selfishness and self-centeredness and I needed that beating of going through the steps the first time and having somebody really rub my nose in it and stuff. I needed to be able to do that but I don't take my inventory today to somebody that's gonna beat the crap out of me. I won't do it. I've been there. I've done that. It was a great experience. I'm forever grateful to that man for rubbing my nose and making the blinders come off, but I find people that are maybe a little more loving and compassionate today to read my inventory and people that aren't going to beat me up too bad because I beat myself up plenty bad enough, and I like that. Some of this stuff is a real positive spin on some of these ideas. It's a little different way to do our daily reviews. Yeah. I hope that addresses that clearly, that, you know, clearly we should never do that. You know, to beat ourselves up. It says in here it diminishes our usefulness to others. Yeah, Tom's got a comment. I'm an alcoholic. Tom? I just wanted to revisit that thing of the bankruptcy and all that. Yeah, yeah. And what this reminded me, we were up in Durango a couple of weeks ago at the men's retreat and this reminded us something that I found myself getting into a little bit and it's hard to talk about. It's hard to put it into words exactly but it kind of goes back to in the fourth step where it says talks about the grouch and the brainstorm are not for us they may be the dubious luxury of normal men it's like it's doubtful that that it's okay for them but maybe it is but for us it isn't okay for us it'll kill us you know and so it's kind of like I mean it's not kind of like it's it's exactly like that i am called to a higher standard than any than other people are i believe that and part of that is because i'm trying to uh lived in direct opposition how i lived my life before stealing from people borrowing money never paying it back you know just the disgusting way that i lived um i think i have to live opposite of that today and what we got into uh i don't even know if these guys remember but i hit on a little bit that uh more you know the general morals in our country today you know like a ceo or something you're stupid if you don't steal from the company you know take all this money and then run off and leave the stockholders holding the bag and that's becoming like the moral standard for our country now i mean i'm not getting into politics either i'm just saying i've noticed this on a on a national level over the last 20 years you know that i've been sober and have been aware of such things and i think we're called to do it differently i know we are you know and it's not because we're better it's because we'RE SICKER probably you know But at any rate, so going back to... Because we're spiritual people. Yeah, but I have to be. You know what I mean? It's the old thing of if somebody said, if any of us get into heaven, it'll be because we're backing away from hell. And that's been my experience. I wished I would do this stuff from virtue, but I don't and I never will, I don' t think. But that's okay. I'm not worried about my motive for it. I'm worried about doing the right thing. So with the bankruptcy thing, you know, today I think that the kind of the more of the country is like we'll go into business and take a big risk because it doesn't matter anyway. You just go bankrupt and you can get off the hook. You know, I mean, people do it daily. You know they do, you Know, and I don't think that's okay. I really don't Think that's all right. And I do see going bankrupt if you know you have to buy yourself some time like in the case of your guy. But a lot of people don't know this, and it's not a story out of school. I mean, he told me this, but Don went bankrupt at one point because he got into credit card debt. And the reason he did that was because it was going to affect Jackie. You know, it was gonna affect his family. But he paid off every cent of it. You know? He did. So my deal with that is that, you know, when I talk to guys, it's generally, don't go bankrupt. It's not good idea. If you have to, if you have too, to get the wolves off your back so that you can reorganize and get your stuff together. That's one thing, but just to, as a cop-out, I don't agree with it, you know? Yeah. No, no, I don' t. I just, I do want to address one thing that you said, and I hope that I'm not capping anything that anybody said, but this is another 12 and 12 kind of woo-woo thing, and I say that because I know that sometimes big book people, which I am, and I want to be very clear about that. When somebody comes to my house, I'm reading the big book to them. Don't get me wrong here. This is something that I might recommend to somebody that's been sober for a while and has been through the work in the big book, understands why they're saying some of these things. But Bill does say like in early sobriety, he says, it is a forced feeding on humble pie. He says, and that was the deal that I had in that first fifth step, the forced feeding of humble pie, I had to swallow and digest these huge trunks of truth about myself that I did not want to look at. But he does say that there is another way, this way of seeking humility as a desirable way of life. And I really do believe that that is possible even for a guy like Tom. To seek humility as desirable may not be real, real successful. I don't know how successful I am. But that's my vision of God's will for me today. I think that my vision of God's will for me is to be a guy that seeks humility as a desirable way of life. You know, I desire to have that humility that I see in my sponsor, Tim, on his job. You know? I desire that today. I desire the humility that we saw in Don and we see in so many of these other guys. I may not be there yet, but I sure do desire that. You know. I hopefully am not going to forever. My vision of God's will for me, I will say, is not to forever be having to learn lessons the hard way. You know, I think God has a bigger vision for me than that. And I'll say this, one vision I have, and I've shared this with a lot of people, and I think we'll wrap this up with this, but I'm not there yet. Believe me,I'm a long ways from this. But I'm going to get there, and I really believe I will, that I'm going to get to a place, and I hope everybody laughs at this because there is some humor in it, but I will get there. I'm gonna get to the point where I can sit in an AA meeting calmly and peacefully no matter what anybody says or does. Yeah. I believe that's the vision of God's will for me. That I can seat in an AAA meeting and be peaceful regardless of what anybody else has to say. And not only that, but in the big book tells me this, you know, the big book tells me that the more open-minded I am of other people's ideas, the more, what does it say? The more useful I become. So this deal is about being more useful. The less judgmental I am, the less attacking I am and the more accepting, the more opened-minded am, the book tells you the more useful I am says if I don't argue like they talk about when you go into a church or something And it says, if you don't argue, you'll find that you have a lot in common with these people. You know, these people are all possessed of the spiritual experience. If I don't come get down to a little walk, that really drives me nuts. I'm going to argue about this and stuff. So I don'T, you know, I hope I live long enough to get to that place, but it sure is, you Know, on this vision of God's will that I have for myself that that would be what God would have for me would be to be a person that was less judgmental. Shall we close? Okay, well thank you very much. I'm going to go ahead and we'll turn this tape off and we will take care of a couple of announcements. And I actually didn't wait for the thumbs up from Dave here. Dave, are we okay? So I will say one more time. Good morning everybody, I am Kenny, I'm an alcoholic. And we will be doing a meditation this morning, probably about a 15 minute meditation. So as opposed to starting with a prayer now and some silence, I'll take care of just saying a few things that are on my mind here this morning. And then I'm going to do another lead meditation. And so we'll just kind of gear down here a little bit. But I just want to take this time right now to thank everybody for having me come here to New Mexico and to be here at this retreat. And I'm just absolutely and completely and totally filled with gratitude this morning as a result of the experience that I've had coming here to New Mexico and meeting all of you and revisiting some friends and some acquaintances and making a lot of new ones. And I hope that you'll all stay in touch with me. I did put my name and phone number and email address up on this board, and I really encourage people to use this, especially if you're going to come to the Seattle area. please give me a call and give me some warning that you're coming that's always nice it's funny Shannon and I actually get a lot of those calls where somebody calls and hey I'm in town and we had no warning and we're like well that's great but I'm on my way out to the movies with my family so give me some warning and we'll take very very good care of you when you come So we'll give you the same kind of treatment. So, you know, I've had a great experience here. Besides this retreat, you Know, I have just been treated so graciously and I appreciate the gifts and the comments and the love that I've received from everybody here. This morning I've Had a chance to, You know, see Santa Fe at night with the beautiful lights and I've HAD a chance To get taken up to Chumayo. I've Hat a chance TO see the Laredo Chapel. I've had a chance to see downtown Santa Fe in the day and all of the vendors and stuff. And I've been to New Mexico a lot. And I have had a change to eat the red chili. So, I really feel like I actually have been to New México now. And I owe that to you guys. I really appreciate that. So, with that, I am going to be doing a lead meditation. I'll tell you a little bit about the meditation that we're gonna do. I'll kind of, I'll bring the chime. And just for the purpose of the burner there that's making the CDs, we are not going to tape this particular meditation. We won't tape this. So we will be shutting it off and turning it back on at the sound of the chime. But we're going to be probably in meditation this morning for about 15 minutes. And like I've tried to do all weekend, I've trying to give people a vision of where we're going so that everybody is comfortable. And I think that's really important that we kind of lay that out there. So this morning, we're going to do another lead meditation. We'll be playing the music. You'll hear the sound of my voice and I'll guide us through a meditation. And this particular meditation is going to be similar to the quiet place meditation. But this time, we are going to kind of go down a trail and I will describe the trail for you. And we are gong to go to a dock and we are gonna find a boat. We are gonna go out on a little lake and find a waterfall. And we're gonna go in behind the waterfall and in that space, we re gonna visit with the spirit. And so you will be visiting with your spirit, your spiritual guide, your guru, your savior. We'll be there when we get there. And I just want to remind people that... And we're going to visit. We're going spend some time there visiting and then we're gonna come on back to the here and now and then... We're gonna do two sessions this morning. And it's... We're here to talk about the 12-step this morning and I've got some really great stuff to share with you all about my experience and some things that have happened in my life and the lives of a lot of other people because of the 12-step, the 12 steps. So with that, we'll just start, and I just want to remind people during this meditation, if you find yourself getting distracted, at least just remember that this is a practice. It's something hopefully you can take with you if it's something that you enjoy. So we're just going to get comfortable. We'll kind of focus on our breathing a little bit and then we'll just kind of let yourself go. And also, there is a couple of little courtesy things for meditation. People wonder sometimes like, well, what do you do in meditation when somebody next to you falls asleep and starts snoring? And at that point in meditation, what you do is you do come out of meditation and wake the person up and just say, hey, then come back to the meditation. It happens more than once, especially people that may have stayed up all night playing cards or something so so we will be doing our meditation this morning and I'm gonna go ahead now and I'll start the music and set the time and we'll we'll go so I'll get comfortable Welcome back, everybody. So, we'll talk about the meditation just for a minute and then we're going to kind of bring our view back. and I hope that that is a meditation that you can all take back with you and use. It's a meditation that Shannon, my wife, and I use often. It's an meditation that was given to us by a minister that we know and one he used and we liked quite a bit and so I've used it in several retreats and it's a place, you know, that we do have this quiet place that we can go to or you can use this meditation or the other one that we did earlier and find that there is a quiet place that you can go to within yourself for answers to this stuff. And that is the when agitated or doubtful, we pause part of the 11th step. It can be the morning meditation part of the 11st step or the review at night. That can be their way that we review all of the sex security in society, the vision of God's will for us to go and find guidance to what our heart's desire is. So With that I'll say a couple of things I did a retreat one time In Akron, Ohio And there was a guy there that had Received A head injury And so he'd received you know A pretty bad bump on the head And he was with us the whole time But his memory His short term memory Was really had been affected by this accident that he had. So a day and a half into the retreat he would see me and he'd say, oh you're the guy that's doing all the talking, aren't you? Because he had this deal. In the moment he was present he would just come through with these brilliant things in the moment. When he was right there we got done doing a meditation and I said did anybody notice anything? And he raised his hand right away. in the meditation. And I said, oh yeah. And he said, well the music got louder. And did you notice, I don't know if anybody noticed but I turned the music down twice during that meditation. Got up and went over here and turned the volume down twice. He said, Well the music got louder and it didn't. I hadn't turned the music up. But it just got me to thinking a little bit that there's noise going on in my head. That chatter affects what's going on out here. You know, I can turn the music to a place where I almost won't even be able to hear it and start meditation. And by 10 minutes into meditation, it's just as clear as a bell. All that noise goes away. It's noise. Have you ever been driving down the freeway and you've got the radio crank and you're not talking to anybody? You're just by yourself. But you completely miss what's happening here. You don't even hear it because this noise is louder than what's going on on my stereo in my car. And meditation is the way that we kind of shut off that noise. It's not noise from the outside. It's a way to shut off noise from inside. And a sponsor of mine really helped me with this. I was done doing a fifth step, and this sponsor that I had, And he said that one of the things I do is I give him instructions right away when we're done with five for going home, doing six and seven. And I knew that he had a house. He was married. The woman he married had a teenager. And then they had just had their own baby. So he had an old baby. He had a baby at home and a teenager at home and a wife at home. And I know the teenager was kind of raucous and had a lot of friends over. And then there's the baby that's making noise. i was a little worried about him you know i was going to send him home to do his hour and i was thinking well it's going to be kind of loud there maybe we should try to find somewhere quieter for him to go and i mentioned i said alan i think that uh i'm a little concerned about you going home right now is there a place that you can go because you know the book says we go somewhere where we can be quiet and he said well kenny it doesn't say that we go somewhere where everybody else is gonna be quiet it's from like the from the mouths of babes right and it hit me you know everybody else doesn't have to be quiet for me to go to my quiet place in meditation I go into my room at my house and I shut the door I don't ask the rest of the family to be quiet I go get quiet I can go get quiet and this is the the meaning of matching serenity with calamity that if the world has to get quiet for me to meditate, I'm in trouble. The meditation is meant for this to get quite. That's what needs to get quiet. Not my daughter, not the dog, not the neighbors mowing the yard. If they have to stop for me to get by, I mean, I need a little trouble, I think. So I want to clarify a couple of more things that I thought about. One is that. I loved last night's, the AA meeting we had last night by the way. I was just absolutely touched by everything that everybody had to say. I just loved it. And one of the themes I think was that things don't always in meditation, in the 12 step process, they don't always work out exactly like we like them and it isn't always, somebody used the word Cinderella story or something last night and I really liked that that was brought up because it isn't always that way. And if I do have a shortcoming in that area, you know, it would be that. And our group at my home group in AA, we've talked about that even as, you know... In our group conscience, we have these yearly group inventories where we bring somebody from outside the group in that's not a member of our group and it's usually somebody from general service that will come and do our group inventaries to kind of see how we're doing. And one of the things we come up with sometimes is maybe we're a little short on this part of the program that says we are not saints, that no one among us maintains perfect adherence to these principles. And maybe in my home group in Seattle, we're just a little bit short on that because sometimes somebody that's in a devastating place in their life will come to my group and they hear everybody saying, oh, God is beautiful and life is great and I've got a brand new house and my wife is beautiful and life has been wonderful and I just got the new job and this person is in bankruptcy and they've had these tragedies in their lives and they're at this low place and they will quit coming to my meeting because nobody wants to be in the presence of that when you're feeling this way. And so, at times I think that maybe I am a little short in these retreats with not clarifying that issue a little bit that my life has not been all perfect. I do concentrate on that and it is a part of my spiritual practice to kind of accentuate the positive and anytime negative thoughts come into my mind i try to immediately think about god instead or positive things it's a part of my spiritual practice so it's why i'm like this but uh i do want to be really clear you know i i do beat the crap out of my lawnmower i uh have i have uh you know I've I've yelled and taken anger out on my children i've lost my temper i went through a divorce at seven years sober uh um you know i i haven't had a perfect life you know i built up a big financial deal in sobriety and i lost it all and now i've built it you know up again it hasn't been a perfect thing i've had a lot of tragedies my you know we've got uh drinking issues in my in my family i've got you know family issues my mother's really worried about one of my siblings and you know I've we've got all of that stuff and if I if I'm not clear on that I did want to mention that but that would would possibly not possibly but that would be a shortcoming on my part not to cover that here this weekend that that that you know life life does happen the only difference now is I have tools for those life situations and Audrey was so eloquently, beautifully stated that last night in her situation and others too. That we do have tools now to get through these times, the most difficult times. There's this idea, and I don't think it's just alcoholics, but there's an idea that people that come to AA are seekers. And I really believe that. You know, I have very rarely met anybody that's come to AA that wasn't. They may be seriously prejudiced when it comes to certain types of spirituality or certain types of religion and stuff, but I've rarely met somebody that wasn'T open to the spiritual life that comes to AA. I really mean that. You know AA people that come are usually seekers and it is our job to let people know that what they seek is real and uh um you know sadly there's a there's a guy that i've been working with and he's many years sober and and uh he started working with me and his sponsor who's even has longer sobriety than him and and is a guy who sponsors a lot of people and does a lot great work but but sadly this guy told told him he said i think what you're after doesn't exist and i really broke my heart because it does and and i think that's what you know hopefully we've established that this weekend that if you're here uh and you're looking for some better life or a deeper spiritual life that that that really does exist um I'll talk about the 12 step here a little bit that, you know, I think I said this earlier but my experience going through the steps the first time was so dramatic that I found freedom and it was really the first that I ever really believed that I'd found freedom from the boost and the drugs i i just you know i really was kind of resigned to that that you know once an alcoholic that that was just going to be my life that once a dope fiend always adult theme that that would just the deal for kenny that there was no way out of that and i rarely saw anybody that i knew that had actually recovered from that so i didn't have any evidence in front of me and and when i got a hold of that deal and i found that freedom i i did uh believe it and you And, you know, I look back on that, and I'm so grateful for that today. I'm så grateful that there was something within me that believed that, that they said, okay, Kenny, now you've got to give it away in order to keep it. And somehow I just bought that deal hook, line, and sinker. I mean, I went out, andI was desperate to find somebody to work with. And I chased a lot of people away, you kno, before I found one. And it was that part of the book that says, you kno, that you will find somebody desperate enough to accept what you have to offer. And I was so, you know, my self-esteem in this area of sponsorship was so low that I didn't think anybody would want me. Who's going to want me as a sponsor? You know, what if they find out I don't even have a year of sobriety? What are they going to say? And so I started going to this, there was a treatment center in our area that was especially for juveniles. So I thought, well, maybe one of the kids, you know maybe a kid would maybe I can kind of sell this deal to one of the kids so I went to this young people's deal and I actually worked with a couple of the kids there and when they came down to the car lot and saw how I was living and then when they found out that this was going to be serious stuff reading the book and showing up all the time they were gone pretty quick the first couple of guys I worked with and then I was at a meeting and Alan showed up And Alan was sleeping on a park bench down in Pioneer Square. And he showed up at the meeting, and a couple of the guys at the meeting knew that I was at this place to work where I should be working with somebody. And they'd seen Alan in and out and in and out and In-N-Out for years. And they said, oh, Kenny, here's the one, you know? Here's the One for You. Go talk to Alan. You know, this poor guy's been In-n-Out, In-and-Out for years, you just can't see him stay sober. And I went and made an approach on Alan, and I took him down to the car lot. And like I said, you know, I'd been hanging out at the hall so I had a girlfriend and I was, you Know, coming from where he was at, he was saying, You mean this guy just lets you stay here? You know, and I said oh yeah, yeah. He owns, my sponsor owns this car lot and he's thinking wow man, you got a kitchen, everything, bathroom. He's thinking, he, you Now, I had what he wanted. He's like man, dude, this is great. I was like yeah, you can crash here for a couple of nights. And he was the first guy I ever got all the way through the steps. And he had 10 years sober, and he relapsed. And he's had a couple of relapses since, but he is sober now. I was just with him last weekend, and we lived down in California. And during that entire time, all those years, now it's been about 16 years, I've never lost contact with him. And it was just that kind of a deal. And then from there to this day that I sit here, I have never not had a new person in my life that whole time and it's not been really by much of an effort on my part it's just just been that it's just been there it's no attribute of mine it just has been that that's just a part of my life now I just can't imagine that not being there you know that's part of My Meditation it's part of my weekly schedule is okay well who's gonna come over this week and when are coming and when i'm done with this person then i find somebody else and god just kind of takes care of it uh the other part i want to say is the book is clear that it says that the man who is making the approach and it means that we are people who make the approach you know i went up and talked to alan that night i've been real emotional this weekend more than most really and and uh and i think it's this group that brought that out of me and i really appreciate that you know it's so nice to get back in touch with that you know when i well up like that uh you know that really is just uh it's that memory of what it was like to be a drunk that's what it that's what that is and i just you know i have a big place in my heart for drums You know, I know that loneliness. So when I walked into Fremont Hall that night, you know, that I told you about, my life depended on asking for help. My life dependered on asking somebody to help me. Absolutely my life depended on getting up and saying, I need some help. I'm not making it here. I am dying. I need som help. And I was absolutely unable to do that. And if somebody wouldn't have come up and reached their hand out, I would have went back behind that McDonald's. And I guarantee you, you know, I don't think I'd have come out. I absolutely could not do it. I couldn't do it, I just sat there and the tears were running down my face i could not turn around somebody say you know hey would you be able to help me out somebody had to come to me and so i try to remember that you know a lot of people come into these meetings and they just can't really tell people what's going on you know you got to look for it like be intuitive and look for that that deal and go up and make the approach to the you know look forthat face of hopelessness that man on the bed thing that i talked about if you if you read that that story they say that hopelessness was written large on the man's face that's what we look for around here and uh and i've had the chance to to find that uh a lot and i'll tell you uh i'll tell you now and i i'll i'll tell you a little more about this story as we go here today we're gonna uh we'll probably go about another 20 minutes here then we'll take a break and we'll come back but but William James wrote a book called Varieties of Religious Experience, and it's way over my head, and I did read the book cover to cover, but it's still way over in my head. And I probably shouldn't try to paraphrase or quote that book because it's beyond my intellect. But I'm not going to let that stop me. One of the points he made, And, you know, he gave, this was a series of lectures he gave at the turn of the century in England that was turned into a book. And this was the guy that did a ton of research about these spiritual experiences and spiritual awakenings that people had. And he kind of tried to break it down into different categories. And in order to let you know what he was talking about, he said that I'm going to pick some of the most extreme examples. And that's kind of some of this stuff that I've done here this weekend. Try to pick some of those things of the most extreme examples so it's crystal clear what it is that i'm talking about uh um and he picked in the thing about that he picked the most extremely examples and one of the types of awakenings that people had uh he called these these people the twice born these people that just are one minute they're just like totally a wreck and then they have the white flash of bill wilson or whatever it is in the next minute they are a different kind of a person And he said, in order to pick the most extreme example of this, the example he gives in that book is the drunk. Of course, this is way before AA. The drunk that has this religious experience and comes out and his life is totally changed forever. That's the experience that he gets. So this is the example that I'll give you of 12-step work. I was at a retreat that was much like this. Much like this, it was in Seattle. I was just attending the retreat. Janice D. from Colorado was the facilitator at that retreat. And this woman showed up at this retreat, and she was just out of her mind, completely out of Her mind. She was 12 years sober. She was crying. She was shaking. She had had several complete and total mental breakdowns in the last few years. she'd lost her teeth in other words she'd left her teeth somewhere and couldn't find them I mean she was just you know completely and then she had, it was a retreat that wasn't recorded and that's our group conscience there that we don't record those retreats but she had brought like a little tape recorder with her and she was trying to get as close as she could to Janice And, you know, she was just hanging on, just looking for any kind of an answer at all. She was crying. And she was actually a woman that I had known in sobriety a few times. And actually, I'd done a – I'd sponsored a woman at one time. And this woman, when it came to five, I said, well, when I hear your fifth step, I would really like you to have a woman there in the fifth step because maybe there's something you're not going to be real comfortable telling me and I can kind of step out and you can talk to a woman. But I want you to Have a woman, at least there, in the sixth step with us when we do your fifth steps. And so she said, well, I know this lady that's just got a really good program. And she invited this woman. So I'd actually sat in a fifth step with this woman as the other person to hear the fifth step. And then here she was just in this terrible mental shape. And she, you know, so I'd known her and we were talking at the retreat. People, I was the person, kind of the go-to person on the business end of the retreat, so people were coming to me like, well what are we going to do, Kenny? She didn't pay. She came in. She wasn't registered, and she's taping. She's got a hidden tape recorder, you know? And so I said, well, listen, I'll talk to her. We'll ask her to leave the tape recorder in her car or whatever, and we'll tell her that she can stay. And she obviously needs to be here. So I went up to talk to him. My wife was with me, and it was just like this. It was like, she was like Would you be my sponsor? Would you help me? That kind of deal She's grabbing my collar I need some help And of course I'm looking around the room Looking for a woman that can help this person I'm kind of like well I'm sure there's somebody here That can help you And My lovely wife Thank God Saw what was going on in my mind And she said She looked right at me and she said I said, Kenny, you need to help this woman. And so I said well yeah, I'll be glad. I'll help you. I'll sponsor you. And and I so I got her number and we helped her through the retreat and I talked to her about you know, this work in the steps and she'd never really done that process that we talked about here this weekend and she had suffered some really traumatic stuff in sobriety that had left her in this condition and she really didn't have the tools to deal with what was going on in her life. And we took her, she called me, she ended up in the mental hospital in downtown Seattle in the Harborview Hospital which is kind of a place where they, it's kind of the main place for people that are really having, you know anybody, it's kinda on demand kind of place. So she was in Harborview hospital and I would call her she would call me from Harborview and I would read the book to her over the phone and I read the book tour we got her up to the third step she did it we did I did a third step prayer with Darlene over the phone and and she started kind of getting emerging from this deal and they noticed that she was getting better and they let her go and she had a son and and and we got her into a place she was down in the basement of this house where these people were doing methamphetamines and you know selling drugs and it was just insane and her kid was there they were in the in the basement of this house literally in a basement like with a washroom cement floors cement walls and stuff naturally and there was a bed there and there was a bet for her and her son were their son was about eight and we got them into an apartment and got her registered on you know some things to help her pay her bills and got her some assistance and she started coming to our home group and she went through the steps and we just had this, you know, I mean it was one of those transformations that is beyond description what happened to this woman. And today in my home group there is not a woman really in the home group whose lives have not been touched by Darlene. She has gone on to sponsor and she's sponsored and sponsored and sponsored so many people. And she came to me one time and she said, you know, Kenny, her husband and the father of her son had died of a heroin overdose. So he was gone. And she said you know Kenny, I just have a place in my heart for these heroin addicts. I just want to do something to help these heroin addictions. And she started a little treatment center there in her two-bedroom apartment in Shoreline in the Seattle area. She started a little treatment center, like, you know, didn't register with the state, didn't ask anybody's permission. She just put the word out that if you knock on her door that she will take care of you. And these heroin addicts started coming and word got out and there was times when she would have two or three of these guys and girls on her couch and she would be doing her laundry and she would be cooking for these people and she was hard core. She had a plan, she wrote this whole thing out like this is going to be my plan, this is how we'll do it. Day one, day two, day three, day four. Day one was take all the money, take their keys, take everything. Then she would have somebody from the program come over and she'd give them all that stuff and she said take this stuff and you don't bring this back until day nine and she told the person I don't even know where this stuff's going, and you're not getting it back until this day. And there's so many people in our group, including my wife's sister, who's clean and sober, that kicked on Darlene's couch. And they all said the same thing. She didn't believe we'd given them any drugs at all. So this was cold turkey. We're not giving you nothing. You're not Getting Anything. You know, she stripped, searched them, took everything, took it down. And she had a whole deal. You know this was the day she would do their laundry. This was the they got fresh clothes. This is the day they got their first bath. All of these things. And she was constantly calling people and she would just say, hey Kenny we got a kick, we got to kick. Can you come over? You know can you come about 8 o'clock and she'd want me to come over and talk to one of these guys for a little bit. But they all had this common theme and they all said that I don't know what it was but that was the easiest time that I ever went through withdrawals. It was the love that she was pouring into these people. No medications at all. Nothing. And a lot of these people are sober in the program and a lot of them have gone on and I told Tom, a lotof these cats went on and started NA meetings where they sponsor out of the big book. Which makes me extremely happy because I do believe that, of course they don't take the big books into the NA meetings because that would be a traditions violation and they're very but when they sponsor somebody they take them through the big book first and and the reason for that is what we've talked about you know that that is the foundation for all 12-step program you know, that's what gave birth to all of it so yeah you know it is a helpful tool for these addicts to understand where their own programs came from. The thing that I knew and very little people knew was that Darlene was HIV positive and I knew that there were days when she didn't feel like getting out of bed and she would get up and take care of these guys all day long and her recovery this is this is the amazing thing remember my wife saying you know you've got to help this person this is the amazing thing is that her transformation was so dramatic that my wife asked her to be her sponsor yeah Darlene was my wife's sponsor at one time it was my white sponsor at because I mean you just met this woman you just wanted what she had you were like oh my god you know how is she doing this what is going on with this person and that can just take these people in and just knocking on the door and just seemed to have this endless energy for taking care of these people. And it was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. I mean, she was as poor as a church mountain. I means, she had no money at all. And yet, she never wanted for anything. And she never worried about anything. She would call up and say, we need food. We need this. Once in a while, she'd call and say well, the electricity's going to get turned off. And a bunch of people would passed the hat. She called it the free bird house. They passed the hat for the freebird house and really it was just a little two bedroom apartment and luckily the apartment manager was the guy that was in the program and that's how we got her into this place in the first place but because probably that kind of thing wouldn't have flew at a lot of places but you know she did start to get sick and I noticed something one time was a little wrong with the way she was thinking And, you know, she would say something and then she would tell me again. And I'd say, well, gee, starting, he told me that a few minutes ago. He said, man, I'd really like for you to get in and let's get you into your doctor and just see what he has to say. And we got her into the doctor. And there's probably some people that know a little bit about medicine here, and so I don't know the name of it. But there is a brain infection that AIDS patients will get on the lining of the brain. And unfortunately, when they get it, there's no cure. You know, it is 100% fatal when somebody with HIV gets this particular infection. And we were hoping it wasn't that. We were hoping It wasn't bad. And it was. And she started trips in and out of the hospital. And, you know, as she started to fade, one of the things that had happened is that she had come to my wife and myself about three years before she got sick. She came to us. Her boy was eight when I met him. And, you know, it occurred to me, I was going over the response, it occurred To me like, well, this whole free bird scene is pretty cool, but it's gotta be pretty dramatic for this kid that's living in the back bedroom. Maybe there's a lot of drama here. And I knew his father died of heroin addiction, died of a heroin overdose actually and there was really no guys around and I just thought well you know maybe the sponsorship deal maybe I should be kind of helping this kid out too so I started taking him to baseball games Darlene and her son came for Christmas they came for, we never forget, always took stuff over there on his birthdays they were at our house on Thanksgiving, they were family and about three years before she got sick she was seemingly very healthy at the time And she came to us and said, listen, you know, Jake really loves Ken. And if anything ever happens to me, do you think you guys would be willing to take Jake? And we, you Know, he was healthy and she was, you know, it wasn't, we didn't think anything. We said, well, sure, you know, we'd be glad to do that. And we would. We'd be glad, but we didn' t really think it was a possibility. and so we signed all the papers and did all the work and I kept in touch with her son and that's the son that I've been talking about this week and Jake I've known him since he was 8 years old his mother Darlene passed away when he was 15 I was there with Jake when his mom died I told you about my mother is in this trauma prevention deal and a trauma intervention line. When I first got the diagnosis, I thought, you know, how in the hell am I going to tell Jake? And I went out, called him, and I went over to his house and I picked him up and I took him to a restaurant. And I called my mom. You know, I called me mom and asked, you know what, what am I gonna do here? You know I'm going over in 20 minutes to pick this kid up. I gotta tell him his mother's dying. And, of course, you know, he said, no, she's not. You know, these doctors are messing her up. They're giving her bad drugs. That's what's making her sick. It's the doctor's fault. And, you Know, I listened to the whole thing and agreed possibly that we're going to watch for that and we're gonna see what we can do here. But this is what they are saying and we'RE gonna have to... You know? She is gonna need to go to the hospital and he lived with us. I took him back and forth to the office twice every day. We'd go two times every day to the hospital To see his mom And all of these dope fiends All of these alcoholics And she helped so many women Alcoholic women in our program In our AA group When she was in the hospital They were just overrun It was an amazing thing to watch And these nurses are like Who is this woman? Is this like somebody famous? and when she passed away the Seattle Times ran a big story and they maintained her anonymity they left all the 12-step groups out but they just wrote this big story about it said the top of stories to Darlene Narkowitz helped addicts and they wrote this thing story about this angel of mercy that had AIDS but was out there helping other people taking these other people in and all these people that had recovered, and they interviewed different people that had kicked on her couch. And it wasn't a smooth, always a smooth deal with Jake. And I do call him my son. And I had that conversation, and I could just go on and on with these ways that my wife straightens me out on stuff all the time. And I may seem at this retreat to be a somewhat well-balanced guy, but I assure you it's not the case, you know. That I actually am a guy, you know, I just shoot sparks and I am flighty and I have trouble differentiating the truth from the false which I've told you about. And there's a lot of times when I have to, when I'm talking to my wife and she'll notice, she notices when I start to go down one of these little, and I don't know if I should use the word manic, but that's kind of what it is. You know, go down one these little... It's not like a clinical deal, but Like, I go down one of these little manic deals and my wife somehow finds a balance there. She'll see me going that route and she'll say, well, what's going on? And I'll tell her and she will be able to say, no, that has nothing in reality. That guy is not thinking that or those people aren't doing that. That's not what's gone on at work. Those guys are busy. That's why they haven't got back to you. It's not because they think you're worthless and those kind of things. She's really good about that. But, you know, I thought about that. And we're taking care of paperwork and different things. And I said, well, you knows, does that mean Jake's our kid now? You know, we did go to a court and get the full guardianship and got all the adoption stuff taken care of. So we were his legal guardians. And, you Know, I said well does that means like Jake's are kid? Like if we die we're going to leave stuff to him and take care of him and stuff. And she said, Well Kenny, if he's not our kid, whose kid is he? he's living in our house right and uh uh you know he had Darlene kind of let him just go totally he was like free oh you don't have to go to school do whatever you want and you know she just wanted to raise this kid just free as could be and he did actually turn out to be a wonderful kid and I do think a big part of that was that Darlena never shielded that kid from a thing And, you know, I mean, she was just as square and upfront with that kid and treated him, you Know, as an adult. And he's just grown up to be an unbelievable kid. But there were some times with, You know, the freedom that he had coming into our house. He was like, Well, this isn't the way we used to do it. That's not the way We did it. We took, I took, when his mom died, we went through the funeral. I did the eulogy at her service. We had a packed house, of course. and after the service I took three weeks off of work and I rented a van and I took my wife my daughter and my daughter Jessica and myself and Jake on a road trip we just said we're just gonna go just kind of bond we took his mother's ashes with us and so she went with us on the whole whole journey and the idea was that we thought that maybe she would find you know that Jake would take was kind of wondering what he was gonna do his mom where even we said well we'll take him maybe you'll find a place and and that you'd really like to go and Jake said on that trip he said he said this is a kid he'd never never been out of Washington State never been outta Washington State in his life and he said he said well I'll go I'll but I'm just gonna I'm gonna sit listen music I miss all go but I don't care about anything you know I mean he had a right to have a chip on his shoulder and I said okay you know just just go and we'll make you comfortable. We'll have a little video thing there if you want. He had a little thing and games and his headphones. We got in the driveway that morning and he put his headphones on and stuff. We headed out. We went over the mountains. We were going over eastern Washington to come out of the pass. Man, we weren't an hour from town and he was, look at that. Look at that and we went to Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California. All kind of made the big loop down through all the big canyons in southern Utah and went to Las Vegas and San Francisco. Everybody got to pick one thing that we wanted to see the most. His deal was Alcatraz. He wanted to sea the penitentiary. So we went to San Francisco and saw that and you know, that 20 days we kind of got, you know what I mean? We had all the smells in the car and the nasty in the arguments over where we're going to eat for dinner and who's going to get what bed in the hotel room and who is going to have to sleep on the cot. We kind of bonded as a family doing that. We kindof had all those little family arguments that you need to establish who's making the rules. We had a good thing. I guarantee you it's not a patriarchal deal in my house. It's not me that's making rules. We kind of bonded as a family. And, and, uh, you know, there was a time when I had to have a conversation with Jake and had to let him know that, you Know, I'm sorry that what happened to your father and, and it's, you know it's I wish your mother was still with us here. I loved her very much. I wish she was still here, but I've never had a son and you've never really had a father. So God's kind of brought us together here. And so we need to get a couple things square. This is how things are going to work in the family and that you show a certain amount of respect to everybody and you clean up after yourself and some of those kinds of things. And the thing about it is that he has just been, he's 20 years old now. 20 years older and he's living on his own and he works for the company that I work for, fishes up on the boats and he loves the fishing, loves the deal of becoming a man and having a man's job and, you know, having his own money and he's got a motorcycle and a dirt bike and, you know he's just a unbelievable kid and you know the reason I tell this story is like I told you I like the most extreme example you know this is this was a 12 step call that I almost wanted to give that I I almost did it wasn't for my wife I'd have gave that that 12 step fall to somebody else isn't that amazing I was like, man, I don't know this lady's probably somebody else could help probably one of the women or somebody's going to help this lady and I look back on that now and how grateful I am that my wife was there and that she saw the selfishness and self-centeredness that was going through my mind and stopped me in the moment and said no, no, you are going to help this person I think we'll go just a couple more minutes I'm going to come back, I'm gonna write a prayer, are we doing okay Dave? yeah we're gonna come back we're just gonna have one more short session after this but I'd like to just tell you this one more thing about this deal with Darlene I wrote a prayer retreat prayer on the board and I encourage anybody that wants to to kind of write a retreat prayer. When we take the break, I'm going to write another prayer up there called the return prayer. Both of those are prayers that I wrote and I've done a lot of writing. I really like it. I don't know that I'm any good at it but it just seems great when you get something down on paper if you start writing about the spiritual life and stuff, you will be amazed what comes out. I mean, I go back and read stuff and I'm just like, I didn't even know that and I still don't really get it but this is cool. I wish I could do this in my own life.