Wiping Out the County Wheat Crop with a Prayer — That’s an Ego Problem – Howard P.

Hi, everyone. My name is Howard, and I'm an alcoholic. Well, we got that far. I remembered my name. I have made a list of names, however, that start with Lyle P. and Barbara in Roswell, New Mexico, a couple months ago. When Lyle, out of the back of the big book and the story grounded, and I shared at the New Mexico Convention. And they introduced me to Jeanette and Malcolm, who then later introduced me to Kevin and Annie, and here I am. It was just divine order as far as Pat and I are concerned. And in addition, and the list keeps getting longer because I don't know for sure who's going to do what. From here on out, but I will tell you this. Kevin and Annie's Hill is rightly named God's Hill. That is truly God's Hill. And we met Matt and Joe, who took us to Winchester, a tour through the cathedral. Our pictures, in fact, our Christmas cards beside the tombstone. And. And then Pat went shopping, I think, in three minutes, 20 pounds. We got, we got her out of there as quick as we could. And then Peter and Lucy had us for the typical English Sunday dinner of pot roast yesterday. And it was just a perfect meal. And, and then tomorrow, I think Dave and Christine are going to take us someplace. And then Peter H. is going to take us back to London where we get on an airplane and go to Phoenix, Arizona, where we have God's mile high dust storms, which are just as real there as God's. So, this has really been a marvelous. Pat said the other day, it's like waking up in a fairy tale. And it, it, it really is. So, you know, this is part of her great life that I have been given. And I look at my watch now. And from time to time while I'm talking. Not to see what time it is, but to give. Those of you that are worried about it, a sense of optimism that I care what time it is. I, I don't always care, but, so, I, it started, my story starts a thousand years ago when I was born in Los Angeles, California. Now, I don't remember. I don't remember anything about California in my childhood. The first home I remember is in a little farm community about 45 miles southwest of Wichita, Kansas. In an area where somehow I came to know that this is the Bible Belt. I don't know if they have a Bible Belt in England or in the United Kingdom, but we have. We have it in the United States and, and you grow up to believe it's in Kansas, but then you find out the people in Oklahoma think they're in the Bible Belt too. And Texas, and then North, and, and then you realize nearly everyone in California, in, in the United States believes they're, everybody except the people in California and New York City. They know they are not. Not in the Bible Belt. And they're very, very happy about not being in the Bible Belt. But the rest of us think this is what it's about. And in this little farm community back a thousand years ago, they used to have free movies for the farmers to come into town and spend their money at our stores in this little town. And one of the free movies involved training wild elephants in India and they took the baby elephants out of the herd and they started their training by putting a rope around their right front leg and then tying the rope around a huge tree so that they were snubbed up to that tree and there was no getting away. It fought and pulled and fought and pulled, but what happened was it came to believe that when that rope's tied, it's futile to pull. Then they went through the rest of the elephant's training and at the end of the movie there was a huge elephant that was taking tree trunks hooked to his harness and pulling them out of the forest for harvest and at the lunch break, in order to hold the elephant where they wanted it, they drove a relatively short stake deep enough in the grass to get it to down on the ground. They put the rope around his right front leg and then wrapped the other around that stake and it could walk around but once the rope got tight, it couldn't pull against the tight rope. So they held it. Not with the stake, not with the rope, but they held it with the limiting belief that they had imposed on him when he was evading allen's surgery. and had validated through the rest of his life. And I was in a meeting with one of my favorite all-time speakers, a guy named Don Gates, who passed away several years ago. Don shared in his story about him being either a Democrat or a Republican. I forget which one he was, but after him explaining the party philosophy and all that, he then said, but really why I'm what I am is because that was what was imposed on me when I was growing up. And I left the meeting thinking about the baby elephant and its belief and the fact that I have approximately 550,902, approximately, baby elephant beliefs just like the one with the state. And somehow I have to, those beliefs that I don't even know I have, I don't know I have the beliefs or what they mean, but they have to be true. And I live my life like they have to be true. And certainly my sense of well-being depends on them being true. Yet I never experienced that truth. I was taught about God. The first thing I was taught. The first thing I taught about God was he was an anthropomorphic God behind the pearly gates on the streets of gold. Therefore, he was separate from me. God was off someplace else, and I was here. If they said he was in Kansas City, I would have known we were separate. And I did, you know, this being separate just became part of my life. And at some level, I think I knew. I knew I was separate. I felt separate. But at another level, I didn't realize how that was limiting me. I learned very early. The first time I remember praying and who I was praying to and what I was praying for was I was four or five years old in a Protestant church in this little town in Kansas. And it was Sunday morning, and we prayed for it not to rain. So that the farmers could harvest the wheat tomorrow. It rained that day. It rained as hard that day as it did here Thursday. I mean, the place was flooded. The wind blew and destroyed all the wheat in Sumner County, Kansas. And while nobody pointed their finger at me, I knew whose fault it was. I knew who wasn't doing what you did. I knew who wasn't doing what you have to do to make God pleased so that he would answer your prayer. Now, if you're four or five years old, and you've assumed the entire responsibility for wiping out the Kansas wheat crop, what you have is an ego problem. The old ego, you know. And this is something else that's kind of imposed on us in America is you must be... become an individual achiever. And by that, you must compete against and defeat the other person. And the reason to do that is to gain a position of authority, prestige, and ultimately money so that you can feel good about life. I can tell you a lot of biochemical reasons why that won't work, but we will spare you that. The fact is, we lack the power to make that happen. We can somehow achieve things that we would think would make us feel good, but the good feeling isn't there. Not for us. And we discover where you find the good feeling. I was 13 years old, and I drank about a half of a half a pint of bourbon whiskey. And I remember sitting there thinking, oh, this is what a good feeling is. This is what feeling good is. This is the first time I ever felt good, which I think was the truth. Hundreds of times I've heard in AA meetings over the years, people share, when I first drank alcohol was the first time I felt normal. Well, I don't believe that. I believe we feel three to four times better than normal. And certainly three times better than you ever need to feel. You just don't need to feel that good. But there's no place where you can naturally, you know, go from feeling bad to feeling normally good. We somehow lack that mechanism. So we just go right to the top and then we become addicted to that. And that becomes the hub of our life. And that, certainly, became the hub of my life. That good feeling. And I fell in love with Pat. You know, she said they should have the speaker before dinner because I'm going to go to sleep. She said after dinner, and I expect about 40 or 50 of the rest of you will too. But I fell in love with her when we were in the seventh grade. And she was my girlfriend for about two weeks. But I was still in love with her through the whole grade school and high school thing. But she was never in love with, well, I don't know if she was in love with me or not, but I was always in trouble and she was never in trouble. Never in trouble. And the only time she ever got in trouble was when she was with me. And, and, uh, uh, so she wasn't with me as much as I had hoped she would be. And I went to the Navy during the Korean War and she went off engaged to this guy. And, uh, uh, my, you know, my life was empty and going to be empty forever. But I never told her I loved her. And there was a guy in the Navy, who was my mentor. And he said, you mean you never told this girl who you love so much that you love her? I said, no. Well, he said, you're not only a loser, you're a loser loser. A loser is a guy that'll ask her and she'll say no. And you'll be a loser. But a loser loser doesn't have the guts to ask her. And, uh, then we came home from Korea and I heard that her and him had broken up. And I put in for leave and went home the next day primarily to tell her I love you. I've always loved you. My life is empty without you. I hope you'll write to me. But it wasn't any more of a, but I sure wasn't going to be a loser loser. I didn't ask her to marry me or anything because I knew that answer would be no, but at least I told her I loved her. And then we started writing each other. And, and a month before I got out of, uh, uh, the Navy and I was never going to get out of the Navy. I was going to be in the Navy for the rest of my life and not go home anymore. But now we're married and, and I can't tell you when I got out of the Navy, what anxiety I felt, what kind of fear I felt from the responsibility of having married the girl I loved. And not being able to gain her, bring her the life that I wanted to, but I couldn't say that or act like it, but I could drink whiskey and whiskey took all that away. And, uh, uh, so we left Kansas a few years later, a year or so later, and we went to San Diego where I got a job as an entry level engineer. I was going to school to get a degree, but I didn't have a degree. And I got a job that requires a degree. And I knew I was in trouble. I mean, I was immobilized with fear. And, uh, I knew I just conned my way into this. And, and yet, as it turned out, I would, I, my, my job title was process analyst. We analyze processes. And, uh, I was very good at this. I understood process. I knew how they worked. I have a logical mind. I was a good process analyst, but you have to write reports. And I don't know what to write, which causes me anxiety, which just immobilizes me. I just get sunk and there's no way out. And I get criticized for my report writing, and one Wednesday I brought the stuff home to write a technical report. And, uh, after dinner and the table was cleaned, I sat there and had the same immobilizing anxiety that I would have had at work. And I, and, and then without any specific plan in mind, I got up and went over to the refrigerator just to see what's going on inside the refrigerator. And what was going on was a neighbor had brought a pint of whiskey over to last Sunday's patio party where I served beer and he didn't like beer. He wanted whiskey and he left a half a pint of whiskey and Pat had it in the icebox refrigerator to take to his, uh, take back to him. Well, I knew he was my friend and, and I don't drink during the week unless I have an opportunity to drink during the week. And here was an opportunity. So I poured myself a couple of ounces and I'm sipping it. When all at once the thought comes to me, why don't you start the report with a brief description of what prompted you to do this analysis in the first place? And, and then you can succinctly describe the significant results of the analysis and you could close the report by making recommendations to improve the process based on the analysis results. I get up and go get the bottle out of the refrigerator and I sat there and I wrote a great report. I discovered the technical vocabulary. That I didn't know I had. I mean, anybody that would read that report would have thought, boy, this guy knew what he was doing. And, uh, and I took it to work. They typed it up. Everybody signed it and approved it. And the next week my boss's boss's boss brought my report out to my desk and said, Howard, did you write this report? I said, yes, sir. He said, this is a good report. And I said, well, thank you. He said, we knew you could do it if you'd just give us the effort. My head said effort. I gave you effort. It wasn't effort. It was whiskey. But my head also said, don't tell them whiskey. Let them think effort just so you know, it's whiskey. That's the important thing. You know what it is. Now you have the answer. And I had the answer. I started, I got better reviews. I got promotions. I had pretty soon I was getting so many good assignments that I had to start Monday night working on my reports after I got home. Then I got a report to summarize the history of Atlas missile failures, what caused them and what was done to correct them. And, uh, that was secret information and you can't take those reports home to analyze, but you can go out for lunch and you can have a couple of double shots or a couple of martinis and then go to the security library and get these reports and do the analysis and, and write the report and then have it classified. It was a secret report. And it turned out to be, uh, a best seller. This report made the vice president of my division look good and it made his counterpart in the Air Force look good. Now I had nothing really to do with that. I just analyzed the report, but somehow I became more favored and I got promoted from a process analyst to an engineer, then to a senior engineer. And, and this is in San Diego and I saw in the paper that Hughes tool company aircraft division was looking for engineers with my background. And I applied there and, and we moved to Culver City, California, where I went to work for Hughes and I become a senior engineer and then an engineering manager. And that's not setting the world on fire. Uh, but that's a steady progressing series of promotions that I got because I drank whiskey, which I would have never gotten if I didn't drink whiskey. Make no nine. That that's not fantasy. That's the truth. I could, I was immobilized if I didn't have whiskey to share all the records, you know, so that I could function. And, uh, now my boss, after a while, you develop a tolerance for whiskey so that pretty soon before you become right before you become brilliant, your speech becomes third. Your wife thinks you're drunk. Your boss thinks you're drunk. The people that are working for you think you're drunk and they all let you know in their subtle ways about this. And you know, I, I've always thought my life, I haven't always thought this, but in retrospect, I think my life was always in divine order. Now we'll take time now to define divine order. That is the pervasive presence of all the intelligence and power necessary for the right outcome of every circumstance and event in the universe. In this instance, the right outcome was a guy in the tattletale lounge where I drank every day twice a day was selling little white pills with crosses on them, which he sold in rolls wrapped in tin foil. Now you had first, I saw those. I thought those looked like lifesavers. Those were lifesavers. I mean, they were Benzedrine and Benzedrine and booze help you in every possible way in your life except controlling your body function. Don't help you much there, but boy, I'll tell you, I flew high for about two years and then my boss called me in and said, I've warned you. I've warned you. I'm now taking you out of management. The people that work for you have no confidence. I have no confidence in your ability as a manager. I have no confidence in you. You better get your drinking squared away or you're going to lose your job here altogether. But I'm demoting you and you're now working on facial assignment for me and I'm going to watch you. You better get squared. Well, there's no problem. I'll quit drinking right now forever. That's what we call a solid bottom because I stopped drinking and I'm, I'm going to quit drinking. I'm going to quit drinking. I'm going to quit drinking. I'm going to quit drinking. I'm not, I'm on the solid bottom. So it occurs to me, well, I can drink now. I could drink. I just want to be careful and not drink so much. By March, Pat or the 850th time is suing me for divorce. She goes to an attorney. He says, Oh, you don't want to divorce him. You guys have been married since your kids. Why don't you get him to go to AA? It sounds like an alcoholic. She came home and told me, told me that I said, Pat, alcoholics anonymous is for people whose drinking has gotten their life in trouble. Our life's not in trouble. If you just get off on my back, we would have a good life. And, uh, uh, so she stayed, see, and that, and I told her I'll quit forever. I, if that's your problem, I'll quit drinking. No sweat. Four days later, I said, Pat, we need to talk. I said, we've been married. The lawyer was right. We should stay married. We've got kids to raise. We need to raise them together. Uh, but if I can't drink at all, I guess you'll have to go. Now I had, I had not hoped that it would come to that. I, I didn't want that, but that, that was the way it was. The cold truth was, but all I, all you need to do is let me drink a half a pint a day. Just a half a pint a day is all I need. It'll just keep me going and I can function at work and, and we can have a good life and a good raise the kids and all. And she said, okay, just a half a pint a day. Now, those of you that have done that know that the morning frequently starts at six o'clock in the day, and the morning frequently starts at six o'clock in the day, and the morning frequently starts at six o'clock in the day, in the tattletale where you have two double shots because you're hung over from yesterday. And these don't count in today's drinking. These are also hung over from yesterday. And you leave the tattletale, you go by the quick stop liquor store, get a half a pint of whiskey, which you're going to baby through the rest of the day, which is going to be gone by 10 that morning. But your thinking's better. And you think, well, I didn't mean, I didn't mean to her that I was going to drink exactly a half a pint a day. I'm going to average a half a pint a day. And there's going to be a lot of days when I don't want, I don't even want to drink at all. Now take tomorrow. I won't want a full half pint tomorrow. I think I'll go get tomorrow's half a pint today. And I'll drink a little of that. And I'll drink a little of that. And then whatever's left is all I want tomorrow. Tomorrow's is gone by two. And then it's, I'll drink if I want to. I'm paying the bills, which I wasn't doing. I was not paying the bills. But I'm paying the bills. And, and I'd get that third half pint and drink it. And even if there were some of that left, I'd stop and get a fourth half a pint, so that I could walk in and break the seat, so that I could walk in and break the seat, break the seal in front of her and say, God, it was a jungle out there today. And take a hit off of that, which would account for why I smelled like I was drinking. Then I'd finish that and pass out on the living room floor. And she'd tell the kids, your dad can't even drink a half a pint now. And as you know, it was that way day after day. And I was getting further into debt. And there was more stress, more stress from every way. And I had an opportunity to sell some equipment that I didn't own. Equipment that I found right before the United States government lost it. It was electronic test equipment loaned to Hughes for use on government contracts. And it's calibrated test equipment. Now, I don't think this out. Anybody that's stealing stuff. It's dumb. You know, whiskey is no longer making you smart. You're doing stupid things. And stealing from the U.S. government calibrated test equipment is not just dumb. It's dumber than dirt. Because this stuff is calibrated. And it has a due date when the calibration lab calls it back. And when they can't find it, the people who are responsible for it have to tell security. Who ain't ever going to find anything. But they're going to fill out reports to the federal government. And agents from the FBI. And I saw this the next morning. Agents from the FBI are going to be making arounds at all the watering holes. Saying, hey, do you know anybody in the place where I can buy electronic test equipment? You know? And I've told people. I've tried this. Anyway, on the 26th of July, 1972, I woke up on page 8 in the big book. I knew there was a big book. My dad died sober at an AA meeting. And my whole family were Germans. And I don't mean happy-go-lucky, Bavarian, beer garden Germans. I mean Nazis. And I don't mean Nazis. All the Nazis from Russia and from Prussia, disciplinarians, do what you're told. Why did you do that? I don't know. Well, you'll know the next time. Actually three times, I was at least a week in recovering. One time several weeks in recovering from the beatings. And that don't make an alcoholic. But I never got where I liked being beaten. Now, I understand there are people in California. They want to partner in Patreon missions. If they want to log on there, much is otherwise not unquestionable. On the coast, they get where they like that. They hang them up there and beat them, and they're happy. But I'm not like that. You do that to me, and I'm mad right now, and I'm going to cry. But my dad also had died sober at an AA meeting in 1951. He had three years of sobriety, and he died of a heart attack. So I knew there was an AA, and I had his big book. I had not exactly studied it or anything, but I had it. I knew there was a big book, but I didn't know what it said on page eight. And I still may not. I make up stuff, make up page numbers, say, well, this is on page so-and-so, and nobody. Give her checks. But it adds credibility to my talk, so I put that in there. On page eight in the big book, it said, no words can describe the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand, quicksand stretches out in all directions. You see, there's the bottom. When there's a solid bottom, that's not a bottom, because you're going to put more weight on it, and then you're going to find a new solid bottom, and a new one until it's not a solid bottom. And your life is sinking. It is deteriorating. And there's nothing in my life to stop it. And I know that I wouldn't have stolen, and I, for the first time, realized, I'm a candidate for hope. Hard time in a federal penitentiary, and I'm not even a thief. I am not a thief, but I stole. And there's no way out. The fence that I got the equipment to took off, and I lost him and the equipment. And I didn't get any money. Stealing is stupid. Anyway, I knew I had to stop. Stop drinking. And Pat had suggested, I thought, I know the president of AA worldwide. And for the new people, one of the traditions implies, says specifically, a part of AA is never organized. AA as such ought never be organized. But AA is organized. For us to be of service. It is never organized to put anybody in a position of authority over anything or anybody. In that respect, we are not organized. But in the tattletale, we knew that Kenny Sixbury had joined AA and had become Kenny S. And he was now the president of AA. And he was the president of AA. And he was the president of AA worldwide. What a deal. I knew the president worldwide. Which is wrong, of course. But we don't know we're wrong in the tattletale. I don't know about your bar, but we were deep thinkers in the tattletale. We had deep thoughts. Life is never as easy as it looks. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. And at the worst possible time. Maybe. Man, that's the fundamental truth of life. Put that on the bulletin board. We need to remember that. Life sucks. And then you die. Put that up there. And don't ever trust anyone. My God, is that ever the truth? Put that up there. And so we were deep thinkers. And we were very pleased that we had the president of AA as an alumni of the Tattletail. And I called him and asked him if he was still a member of AA. And he said, yeah. And I said, well, sometime I'd like for you to take me to a meeting. He said, how about tonight? No, not tonight. I've got stuff to do tonight. I've got important things. And, you know, he talked me into it. First, you know, he said, are you drinking now? And I had just finished a half a pint. So I could honestly say, no, I'm not drinking now. To which he replied, well, try not to drink anymore. Because if you're any drunker, the meeting can't help you and you can't help the meeting. I didn't get it. I mean, that went over my head. And yet I was one of the smartest guys in the Tattletail. And anyway, I ended up agreeing to go to the meeting. And on the way to the meeting, after having that day, drank four half pints, and taken a lethal dose of other pills and drugs, I could honestly, being rigorously honest, I could say to Kenny, I'm not really an alcoholic. Because I didn't think I was an alcoholic. And, of course, I didn't know what an alcoholic was. He took me in to the meeting. He introduced me to a guy named Frank. If I had four hours, I couldn't even start to tell you what a great person Frank Giroux was. To me and to everybody that met him. He was just the greatest guy I could have met. As was everybody else in that meeting. It just turned out that night. I just... Just like it did the night you came. That you found the perfect group of people to help you. And that was the perfect group for me. And Frank, I'll show you. You know, Frank... Kenny said, Frank, I want you to meet Howard. And Frank kind of looked up. And he said, this is Howard's first meeting. Now, Frank smiled. This was his smile. And he got up and shook hands and smiled. And he said, Howard, welcome. And he said, I hope you will join us. And do the things we do. And don't do the things we don't do. And in a very short time, your life will become magnitudes better than you ever dreamed your life could be. In spite of my training at the Tattletail, somehow I trusted Frank. He didn't... I mean... Maybe the fact he didn't smile or glad hand me, maybe that was it. I know what it was. Today I know what it was. But I know I trusted him. And I was ready for AA. But I'm... Okay. The first... At that first meeting, when they read Chapter 5... Some meetings, you guys read Chapter 5. I was at one the other morning. And it says... Remember that we deal with alcohol. Cunning, baffling, and powerful. My head says, cunning? Alcohol isn't cunning. Cunning requires an intellect. Alcohol does not have an intellect. Therefore, it cannot be cunning. They got that wrong. Two sentences later, they said, But there is one who has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. First, my reaction was, God? Are we going? Do God in here? Because I ain't going to do God. But then my mind said, They just got this thing, alcohol is powerful. Now they say, God has all power. Now, if God has all power, then alcohol does not have power. And if alcohol has power, God doesn't have all power. He just has all power except the power that alcohol has. Now, the fatal flaw in that kind of thinking is you're missing stuff that could save your life. If you could just listen with an open mind and not have all the answers to all of these things that your head gets you in trouble with. But that's where I was, and that's who I was. And I stayed that way, way the hell too long. But I didn't drink. And I asked Kim, I got drunk one more time. I'll just tell you, I discovered that I experienced a craving once I started because I nearly drank my way out of a job, out of a marriage, out of everything. And, boy, I was, anyway, I survived that. I said to Kenny after my next first meeting, I said, God isn't going to be a part of my life. I don't believe, I believe in God. But I don't believe God interferes in the circumstances and events of human lives, whether they're in problems, whether they're in prayer or pleas. God doesn't change anything to accommodate us in our problem. It's going to rain when it rains. And that's it. And I said, furthermore, I'm not going to work the steps. By this time, the new people had asked me if I understood that the fourth step is where you list the stuff you stole. And then the ninth step is when you take it back. Well, I ain't going to do either one of those things, you know. That puts me right in this federal penitentiary, and I ain't going to do it. And Kenny, God bless him, said, I said, can I not believe in God and not do it? Can I not do the steps and still be a member of AA? And he said, yes. I'll tell you what, let's make your entire AA program for you to go to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous every day for 30 days. That's it. That's it. That's all I got. And you'll be a full-fledged member of AA. Man, that, I tell you, and that is not just... That's just a good thing for me. But I feel like that's a good thing for AA and everybody in it. You know, it's kind of like seeing the horses and the deer free along the road in the New Forest and God's Hill. That's not just a freedom for the animals. We all experience a freedom from that. Everybody does. That's a great thing. And I felt that for AA. And it's accepting me. What a great thing AA is that it will accept somebody like me. And I went to meetings. I stopped drinking and I went to meetings. I didn't take any speed, nothing. I just stopped and had terrible anxiety and I would show up at an AA meeting. And I would hear something that I could take home with me and kind of have hope. I heard a guy say, if you make a mistake and brood about making that mistake, you've made two mistakes and the brooding is the worst consequence of the mistake. Man, that's brilliant. I'm taking that home with me. Now, could I stop brooding? No. But I had hope. When you take something home with you from AA, you're getting hope. And in the tattletale, we learned, don't get your hopes up and you'll never be disappointed. How stupid is that? You know, you're just buying into a hopeless life. In AA, you're buying into a hopeful life. And that was what I was getting. I heard a guy say he was 36 years and learning that all the people that he hated didn't feel the hate. And it was killing him. I thought, man, I'm going to take that home. I hate too much. I hate too many. I'm going to take that home. Well, all I took home was hope. At that time, I just took home hope. Later, I heard a guy, an actor that most of you would recognize. He passed away years ago. But he was sober in AA. And he said, I was so busy this week wanting what I was getting that I didn't have time to worry about getting what I wanted. And in AA, we try to learn to live in the now, right now. And whatever's happening right now, including my talk, love that. Because that's what's going to happen anyway. And the biggest source of restlessness, irritability, and discontentment in our life is not wanting what's going to happen anyway. My head said, let's stick him in the eye with a sharp stick. It's history. It's history. Let's put it to test. Let's see if he can love that right now. Because that's what my head said. I went outside, and it's raining as hard as it can rain in the Palisades in California. And I've hated the rain since I wiped out the wheat crop. And my head, when I got to the car, my head, which always has talked to me, always told me, don't trust anyone. My head said, why don't you just love the rain? Because it's going to rain anyway. And I went home and got ready for bed, and we had wooden shingles on our house. And I heard the rain on the shingles, and it was soothing. And I loved the rain. And I went to sleep. And I woke up, and it wasn't raining. And my initial reaction when I realized it wasn't raining is to not like that. And then I thought, no, no, you've got to make that adjustment. Now, I was able to love the rain and to make the adjustment, just that one little thing. Now, how was I able to do that? Well, I can tell you, but for the newcomers, if you would have told me this, I would have asked somebody else. But what that is is called God's grace. It's God's gift of his goodness. It's God's grace. So that I can have a sense of well-being about A, the A that will bring me back to the next meetings. Just like trusting Frank. I had no reason to trust him, but I believe that was God's grace. That if we just keep coming, taking home a little hope, we will start being able to do things that we could never do before. Now, I heard Don Gates. I quit AA a lot of the time. AA was dumb. It don't work. I'm not going to those meetings anymore and grin like a baboon and say, isn't this wonderful? It isn't wonderful, and it's never going to be wonderful, and I'm not going. But by the time it came meeting time, I had forgotten that I wasn't going, and I went, grinning like a baboon, saying, isn't this wonderful? You know, because it was. One night, I got there. And Don Gates was the speaker, and he said, if you're new in AA and you're not working the steps, AA will stop being fun. And you'll decide that AA don't work. And you'll decide you're not going to AA anymore. You don't go to AA for a while. You'll go back to the bar and order a drink. And when you do that, if the bartender says, what's the matter? I thought you were going to AA. I thought you was going to AA. Don't AA work? He said, if you're not working the steps, be honest with him and tell him, you don't know if AA would have worked for you or not because you wouldn't try. And there was nothing in my head to pop off of that. I knew that was the truth. I cannot believe AA won't work for me if I don't work the steps. That's the key that opens the lock. And I decided on the way home to work the steps. And what that meant to me was I admitted that I was an alcoholic. I already believed God and I believed what I believed about him. And I didn't do the second half of the first step. Really, nothing in the second step or the third step. But I didn't inventory. Kenny Sixbury had moved out of town and I was kind of sponsorless. I didn't do the second half of the first step this time. So I led myself through the fourth step for the first time. And about what I got done was a resentment list. A very good resentment list. And let me tell you, since 1960, I had my dad in my head. My dad died in 1951. And every problem I had from 1960 on, I laid it off on my dad. It was... If you've ever done a... A Fortran computer program, there's a thing called a do loop. And there's an if statement. If this happens, then do this. And if a problem happened, I would do my dad. Damn him anyway. Or damn Pat. Or damn AA. But just damn somebody besides me. And when I got through with that inventory, my story, this voice said, you know, your dad isn't your problem. Your problem is right now. Right now you have a problem. Your dad died in 1951. This is 1973. Your problem is you are filled with fear and you always have been. Dad may have been a part of that. But he ain't the solution. So he ain't the problem. And I don't know what the problem is. But I know it isn't dad. It isn't Pat. It isn't AA. It's me. Now that is a major, major change in my life. There were some things that had happened to me when I was in the fifth grade during World War II. I was 10, 11 years old. I was molested by a Protestant school teacher. I want to emphasize the Protestant to let the Catholic priest off the hook in this one instance. And there wasn't anything that bad that happened. But I knew it was wrong and I felt guilty. And when I was 40 years old and going to make an inventory, I left that. I was going to leave that out. I'm 40 years old and I've carried this for that long and I'm not going to even list it. And then I decided to list it but not to tell anybody. Skip the fifth step on this. And then when George and I, he became my new sponsor. He was going to do my fifth step. I said, well, how do you want to start, George? He said, why don't we start by you telling me the things you had decided not to tell me. Because those are the hard things. And we want to get those out of the way first and then the rest of it will be easy. And you know I did it. I told him those things. That now I tell groups of people. But I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't even write it down when I started on this process. And I noticed just a few weeks, less than two weeks after I had done the fifth step, the guilt and the remorse had dissipated. They no longer existed. The memory was still there but I had to deliberately remember that. Now that is a tremendous thing. For somebody to experience going through the steps. And getting rid of the things that make it impossible for me to make the steps work. I can't not dread things when I'm filled with that kind of dread. But as you get rid of those things, you start to experience mistakes and not dread with them. You stop hating things in people. You know, you get better at it as time goes on. And Pat went to Al-Anon and things were just fine. And then she turned on me. We were three years sober and she stopped caving in to everything I wanted. And I had no idea I was that way. But I went to tell George, Pat has become unreasonable. She said, I'll listen to your reasons. But you always have better reasons than I have. And my sponsor says, no, it's a complete answer. And the reason I'm not going to do that is because I don't want to do that. That's all. Well, is that unreasonable or not? That is unreasonable. And I told him that and he said, no, it sounds like you need to go through the steps again. I said, I don't think she's gone through them the first time. I would not have believed he thought I should do the steps. But I did the steps again. And part of it was the things that we had in that morning meeting the other day where we list where we have been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened. And when I inventoried that the way we did in 75 before Joe and Charlie came in with the fourth column, we did it different. And I still did it. I still do it different. But I realized I'm a taker. I'm a total taker in every area of my life. I'm a total taker at work. I'm a taker at home. I have to have my way when my way isn't important. Don't play Bobby Dylan's music when I'm there wanting Johnny K. Pat would say, your dad's home now. Shut your music off. How sick is that? That I have to have my way about how long you cut your hair or let your hair grow. God, these are paramount things in my life. Well, they're not. They're just me. And I never saw that before I went through the steps the second time. And I learned to forgive the second time through. Now, life started going good. You know, Pat, I read part of that inventory to Pat. And it kind of made her mad because she saw, really, for the first time, the depth of my self-centeredness. And then she saw that I saw it. And I said, you know, you say I have better reasons than you do. The reason you say that now is because you're going to Al-Anon. You keep going to Al-Anon so that I'll have to keep looking. So you can find the strength for me to keep looking for where I'm wrong. Because that's the heart of the answer. And that actually worked good up until I got my final promotion. I reached my career goal. I was promoted to manager, technical section of the systems engineering department, helicopter design division on the Apache helicopter. That was as high as you need to go. And as I was a baby elephant, I learned that the stress and tension is going through the stuff you have to go to get there. But once you get there, then the stress and tension will be gone. My experience is it's gone for two days. On the third day, it comes back in the way of an assignment to make a presentation that involves jillions. Well, it involved a billion dollar contract in the long run. And I'm not the guy for that. I am not the guy. And yet I was told you got a 30% pay increase. Because you are the guy. And if you don't want to be the guy, then you don't want the 30% pay. I'm like, of course I want that. So anyway, I meditate. Frank taught me to meditate in my first year. On August, on October the 1st, 1974, I made a commitment that I'd meditate for 30 minutes a day for the rest of my life. And I kept that up until July of 2002 when I had open heart surgery. And meditation was way the hell lower on my scheme of things. It really wasn't. I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't meditate then. But this day was in August of my ninth year of sobriety. And I got this assignment. And I meditated the next... Well, I didn't meditate exactly, but I obsessed on the dreadfulness of my life. And how nothing is going to work out the way I want it to work out. In spite of all my hard work and everything, it just isn't going to work. And if you happen to have picked the group as your higher power, let me tell you about the group. When you're going to make a technical presentation to a two-star general and his staff and three PhDs from John Hopkins University, the group isn't going to show up. Everybody else shows up. And you have to. But the group ain't going to be there. And that kind of dawns on me. And in my meditation, towards the end of it, I actually got into meditation. So when my timer went off, I was relaxed and I had that sense of well-being. But I knew, don't back out from that, because you're going to back out into dreadfulness. Nothing has really changed. Why can't I just have a sense of well-being without this? And then, as if it was an answer to that question, I had a vision. Well, for the old timers, it was a vision. For the new people, it was a fantasy. And my fantasy was a vision. Of a frozen lake. And I knew that that lake, the ice was as thick as the laws of physics will allow ice to get. And I don't know why I'm thinking this. I'm conscious. But I'm also into the vision or the fantasy. And my head says, the ice on that lake is thick enough to hold a Sherman tank. And then, the voice said, or the thought came to me, Howard, walking across the lake a step at a time is a good metaphor for living your life a day at a time. Be careful, because it's slippery. And by the way, Howard, if you're not absolutely convinced that the ice is thick enough to support your weight, you will dread every step you take. Which follows, I will dread every day I live that I am not convinced that I'm supported in the things that I need a sense of well-being. As a sense of well-being, I needed to be supported. And I could back out. And I made a commitment to make the presentation. And then I started working on coming to believe. Which is one of the reasons that, that passage that they read is one of my favorite passages. Right after that one, it says, the prosaic steel girders are made up of electrons swirling around each other at incredible speeds and in accordance with precise law. Science tells us so, and we have no reason to doubt it. The perfectly, and this is out of context, but the perfectly logical assumption is that underneath the material world, and life as we see it, life as we see it includes the circumstances and events of life. Includes the character and quality of the circumstances and events of life. Underlying the material world and life as we see it, there is an all-powerful, guiding, creative intelligence manifesting order, harmony, and goodness in every aspect of all being. Science tells us so, and we have no reason to doubt it. I didn't search the scriptures to find God. I searched Dr. Einstein and read science books. Then I searched the scriptures. But I had become convinced of the pervasive presence and power necessary for every circumstance and event in life to have the right outcome. However, it's essential that I know that the right outcome is not necessarily me having my way. Me having my way isn't going to be the answer. Wanting what I'm getting, which my experience tells me would have always been goodness. My experience tells me everything I ever feared didn't happen 95% of the time. The other few times it did happen, as I look at it, turned out to be the best possible things that could have happened. Now, I wasted a lifetime filled with fear and anxiety and tension when things were always, you know, and the big book says, fear is a corrosive thread pulled through the fabric of our lives. Let me tell you what it is. A golden thread was being pulled through my life through every circumstance and event. But I was afraid I would not have my way. I had no idea, you know, if I would have had my way, I would have been a less than mediocre toolmaker. You know, rather than an engineer. My experience as a toolmaker made me a magnitude better engineer, but I never forgave the universe for me getting laid off as a toolmaker until I worked the steps and looked back and saw these things all, if I had my way, you know. So, the answer isn't me having my way. It's me wanting what God has given me. I've read a lot of books on meditation. One of my favorite is Meditation in the Silence. In that book it says, whatever way you find God, that is the right way for you. If you find God like my wife does by just being able to quiet her mind, and experience God's presence, that's the right way for you. But if you have to analyze the finely tuned processes and parameters that are manifest in the order and harmony of the universe to find God, that's the right way for me. And if that's what you have to do, that's the right way for you. But remember, wherever you find God, mark that spot and go sit in that window again. Alcoholics Anonymous is my window. This is where I have come and found God. I'm just very deeply grateful to you guys for that, and thank you for letting me come and share it with you.