Why the Result of an Amend Is Not the Response – Bill H.

About This Speaker Tape

Maplewood, Missouri, second grade. Bill H. remembers being a "butthead on the playground," punishing a girl because her father moved the family to New Mexico. Decades later, that trivial childhood grudge still sat on his resentment inventory, a small brick in the wall blocking him from the sunlight of the spirit. Bill argues that Step Nine is not about the response of the other person, but the result in the speaker. He describes the "bondage of self" and the grit required to face someone—not via text or Zoom, but face-to-face—to admit he was wrong.

He recalls the "totally stupid" suggestion from his sponsor to read a three-page apology letter to his dead father in a Kirkwood cemetery. He wanted to lie about doing it, but the act of reading it aloud released things inside him he didn't know he was holding. For Bill, the goal is to stop being the man coming out of a cyclone cellar claiming the wind has stopped while the house is still in ruins.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Discussion on willingness as a choice and the role of the sponsor in setting priorities.
• 2:15 Laughter: Story about Janet K. and the second-grade resentment inventory.
• 7:40 Analysis of the Step 3 prayer and the 'bondage of self'.
• 11:20 The requirement for direct amends: face-to-face vs. digital communication.
• 16:10 Discussion on the 'helpful and forgiving spirit' and the difficulty of the first category of amends.
• 21:30 The 'Tornado Story' from the Big Book and the concept of the 'long period of reconstruction'.
• 26:45 Personal account of reading an amend letter to his father at the Kirkwood cemetery.
• 31:10 Reading the 'Big Promises' from page 83 of the Big Book.
• 34:20 Closing thoughts on the future tense of the promises and the 'world of the spirit'.