Working the Steps and Surrender – 12 Step Workshop – Part 3 of 3 – Bill S.

And I'm going to sit down for a lot of this this morning, and this afternoon too. I'll begin by saying my name is Bill Sanders, and I am an alcoholic. By the grace of God, I'm sober this morning. And that's the most important thing that I will share with you at all today, that it is by the grace and the love of God and His gift to you and this program to me that I didn't take a drink today and didn't want one, not so far. and it's been quite a few 24 hours since i have it's great to be here i want to thank fred and the committee for the invitation to come and share with you one of my favorite subjects in this world and that's the set of this program this magical wonderful program called alcoholic it was also great to wake up this morning and step out onto the balcony of this beautiful hotel and look out there at the ocean and to say good morning god instead of good god morning and there's a lot of days that i did that and i'm grateful that i no longer have to live that way and that i no long have to uh to live in the tyranny and the prison of alcoholism. Now, here's the plans for today. We're going to share for about an hour here, then we'll take a break, and then we're going back for another hour, and then it will be a long break for lunch. And the lunch plans, I believe, are in your program. There's the restaurant here that has a special rate for us for lunch, and then when we come back at 1.30, spend another hour on another break, and then close out the set. Now, if there are any steps along the way that you feel that don't apply to you and that are not necessary for your recovery, you can feel free to skip those steps. And good luck to you. I tried that. You see, when I got here, I thought that these steps were multiple choice. I had a sponsor, thank God, who informed me otherwise. he also pointed out to me that the steps had numbers by them for a reason he said inform me that those numbers were for smart college boys like me so that i could follow along with everybody else you see when i got to the program of aa i had tried about everything under the sun to try to get sober or to try and get control of my drinking let's be honest about and nothing had worked and I had read I had spent a fortune on self-help books and self-health courses and self health tapes and they all had these little exercises you know one of them was I'm okay and you're okay and nobody else is either or something like that and And they all had these little exercises that you do, these, quote, step-by-step ways to get absolute control over your life. And I don't think there's any out there, at least up until the time that I got sober, that I hadn't tried it one time or another. I never finished any of them. I mean, I never finish anything. Except bottles. finished all of those but the and when i got to aa unfortunately i saw the step as another quote exercise or a set of things that if i did this uh by the time i finished it you would give me a membership card in aa and then i would have finished the course and be a full-fledged member of aa when i finished whatever the test was at the end of step 12. i'm sorry to have to admit that but that's the way i looked at the steps i looked at them as some sort of continuing ongoing exercise or activity that was somehow supposed to qualify me for membership in aa and again thank god for good sponsorship that let me know that I was fully qualified the day I walked through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. I needed no further qualifications whatsoever and the thing that made me love this program so much is in those very early days of recovery, I could immediately identify with the people that I found here. Now, the small print down there says although they restricted themselves to one drink at lunchtime, Howard and Tom still found that they were not at their most productive in the afternoon. Now, what I identify with these guys is if I'm going to have one drink, I want it to be one like that. just like they had so that I could come back into work and say well I only had one drink that's my idea of one drink today we are going to learn how to not drink one or any one day at a time I heard somebody out in the lobby a few minutes ago ask me said, are you our teacher for today? And my blood ran cold. No, I am not a teacher. I'm a student of this book and I'm a student to these steps. And God forbid that I ever reach the point of not being teachable because the answers are there in these steps and if I one day at a time will continue to study them, then there is hope for this alcoholic in this lifetime. I always like to share with people that I am on the 26th edition of the big book. Now, they're talking about the fourth edition coming out soon. I'm way ahead of them. I'm on the 25th edition already. And people look at me a little funny when I say that. The reason I say is that I have read now so far this book 26 times cover to cover. And every time I read this book, they've rewritten it. There are things that were not in there the last time I read it. You experienced that too, huh? I know today that in reality that it's God speaking to me through this book and through these steps that he reveals to me as I am capable of hearing and comprehending or at a point in my life when I need what is unveiled to me at any given time in reading this book. And it occurs to me that if I don't read this book and if I do not continue to study these steps, then I am going to miss a message. I am gonna miss an answer from the God of my understanding. And that's why I continue to studying these steps and that's what I like to share these steps. Because in these meetings like we're having today, i continue to learn i learned from you i learned every time that i go back again and preparing myself for a uh a session like we're having today all of a sudden something comes up that i never saw before and i'm grateful for that i was told a few years ago by a man on his 40th birthday in alcoholics anonymous that it's still getting better every day for him I was told by him that he was still getting new revelations every day and I think that's fantastic because you know we alcoholics being what we are if we got all the answers in the first six months what would happen to us we'd be drunk we'd get bored but if the carrot is always out there in front of us if there is more more will be revealed to us as the book tells you, that I'm going to stick around because my first sponsor was very fond of saying I want all the goodies that AA has to offer. All of them. And I got here and just not drinking was all I came for. But I quickly found out there's a lot more goodies than just not drinking. One day at a time, I want all of those goodies. As we begin the journey through the steps, I wanna give some very special acknowledgments to the wonderful people in my life. First of all, of course, foremost gratitude to the doctor and the stockbroker who are pictured here, for giving us this great gift of sobriety or passing it on from God to us. My first sponsor, Doc C., that you'll hear more about and I'd share my story tomorrow evening. And of course, Joe and Charlie, those wonderful pair of drunks from Arkansas who do such a wonderful job of bringing this message of the test to all of us. And to my late sponsor, Dr. Paul O., for his guidance of me through the test to continue the journey and, of course, the millions of you drunk who keep sharing with me and keep sharing the wonderful message of recovery in alcoholics and non-alcoholics. Are you going to hear anything new and exciting today? Probably not. I used to try to come up with that in meetings. I would sit in meetings of AA with my first sponsor. And especially if he was leading the meeting, he would always call on me first. And I knew the reason that he called on me first because he knew that I would have something extremely profound to say that would set the tone for the meeting and that it would only go up from there. In reality, I learned that he called on me first because he knew if he didn't that I wouldn't hear a thing for the rest of the meeting. I'd be sitting there planning what profound statement I would come up with that would save souls and have them lined up picking up white chips. And what he informed me of is there has not been an original or new statement made in Alcoholics Anonymous since about 1939, that everything since then has been rehashed. Everything since then is just a rewording of the same message. The message never changes. And the message of these steps never change. This is a refresher course to simply take us back through. And for you newcomers, this is the beginning of a wonderful journey for you. I always envy the newcomers because they are beginning that exciting journey of what I call the whole series of wows. As you go through the steps and something comes out, pops off the page at you going, wow! Never thought about that. Never knew that. Didn't know I could do that. And you're beginning a magical time. Grab onto these steps. they are your lifesaver for the drowning drunk they're the only lifesavers sometimes I think we do a disservice to people with a little line that we use it sounds good on the surface we say just don't drink and go to meetings and you're going to be okay that's not true folks any of you people who have been around for a while know that you can stay sober on fellowship for a while you can stay in the lobby of the fellowship of AA for a While and it will work for you but sooner or later you've got to go into the program and you can wait in that lobby forever for an elevator and it ain't coming you can look around for an escalator and it's not there the only way you're going to get in is to take a step that's the only way in and up and out into this wonderful fellowship of alcoholics and non-alcoholics so don't wait for somebody to take you by the hand dive into the steps grab you someone and get you a good sponsor and begin this journey. Now, I do encourage any and every one of you to do this journey with a sponsor. And those of you with any length of sobriety know the reasons for that. You know, I went through a period of my sobrietry of about a year and a half basically without a sponsor and I learned a great deal in that year and half Principally that when I sponsor myself, I have a fool for a sponsor and a bigger fool for a sponsee. Because you see even after some length of sobriety in this fellowship, I am still perfectly capable of conning myself to no end. I can rationalize anything, but with good sponsorship and the principles of this program, I'm less likely to do that. How it works tells us that in this program that a lot of us tend to look for an easier, softer way, and to me the steps are the easier, softer way. They are the highway to a life that's happy, joyous, and free. And by taking these steps one at a time, we're going to change our lives. Now when I first came in, I heard this saying that the same person will drink again. That either you change or you're going get drunk. And I of course immediately went to my sponsor and said, how do we change? Is there another book? I had a lot of books. And I thought maybe some of them might be able to help. And I asked my sponsor, is there a book or something I need to be reading to start to affect this change that you're talking about? He said, no, we'll worry about that later. Let's just concentrate on the steps right now. So we began the journey through the steps. And then we got down to a point where I felt like, you know, that I was concerned about this not changing. And I went to him again and I said, Doctor, don't we need to be getting into this other material on change? No, no, no. Let's just keep concentrating on the steps right now. Those of you with some recovery under your belt knows what happens. on the steps right now those of you with some recovery under your belt knows what happens because while you're working your death and not looking you're changing you can't work the step and not change you're going to change and it won't be on your turn because you won't know it's happening and I'm going to leap ahead for a second down to the seventh step I had this vision in my mind when I got to the 7th step that I was going to ask God to remove all these defects of character and that I would sit back and watch these little balloons float off into the air as they all kind of disappeared it didn't happen God didn't remove a single one of my defects while I was watching he did it suddenly and quietly in ways known only to him. But I had to get out of the way. There are several keys to getting sober that our founders learned as they began the journey. First of all, you had to understand the problem. Well, there has been understanding basically of the problem of the alcoholic for many, many, Many, Many years. long before 1934 when Bill Wilson got sober, or 1935 when Dr. Bob got sober or 1939 when the big book was published. There have been basic understandings of alcoholism as a malady of sorts. It's only been in recent medical history that we finally, it is recognized as a disease, disease of the mind body and spirit and you know all of these the one-liners that are used about our disease of alcoholism Dr. Silkworth understood the problem very well he knew that this allergy of the body coupled with the compulsion of the mind was deadly. He understood the problem from the clinical and medical standpoint. It was also understood very well by Dr. Carl Jung. He understand it as a physical, emotional mental spiritual malady he came to the conclusion ultimately in um in in dealing with a uh an alcoholic that made repeated trips to him that the only solution the only way that an alcoholic had any hope whatsoever of recovery is to have a profound uh spiritual change a profound change in personality but in reality he didn't have a clue of how to go about it these learned men who studied this disease and there were they were there were many before um dr silkworth they understood the problem they absolutely understood the problems but they didn't know what to do about it the best that Dr. Silkworth could say is basically make them comfortable wait until such time as the mind or the body goes put them away in an institution or a mental hospital somewhere and take care of them and change their diapers when they reach that wet brain phase of the progression of the disease. The second part of getting sober is understanding the solution. Well, as I said, Dr. Young had a grasp of the solution to the extent that he realized that the only thing that could help would be a profound spiritual change, a profound emotional and mental change in the individual. He did really not have a formula for going about that. He had known and had seen cases of religion, of evangelical movements and so forth that had made attempts to deal with the alcoholic and to find a solution along those lines, But none of them has ever been consistently successful. Ebi Thatcher came along, as you know, and played a visit on his old buddy and drinking pal of many, many, many years, Bill Wilson. And he came in and told Bill, I've quit drinking. If you remember from the book and from, if you saw the motion picture My Name is Bill W., Do you remember how thrilled Bill was to hear about that? Not, as the kids say today. But he did ask him, how'd you do it? He said, I found religion. He had been involved in the Oxford Movement. He had, we'll get into that briefly, historically in a few minutes, But he had found religion, and through that religion, at that point in time, was not drinking. Did it work consistently for him for the rest of his life? No, it didn't. But at least Ebi had a grasp of something in the journey toward trying to conquer the disease of alcoholism. And, of course, the final element in the three-part getting sober is a workable plan of action. It's fine to understand the problem. It's time to have a solution. But if you don't have some sort of a plan to put it all together, it's not going to work. If any element in The Formula is missing, there will be no sobriety. Some of you ladies who are looking up here Are close enough to the screen To be able to see it That's a recipe up there for chocolate cake Can you glance at that recipe And tell me if there's any problem with it Pardon? Oh, is something missing from it? Well let's try it again now we add the chocolate if you have anything missing from that recipe you're not going to have chocolate cake now you can substitute something else in the place of chocolate let's say you put just some extra self rising flour in there or let's say you just put baking powder in its place of the chocolate. You get something, but it's not going to be chocolate cake. The same thing is true in our magic formula for recovery. Dr. Silkworth, as we said, understood the problem. Dr. Young understood the problem, Dr. Gelinek back down the road that understood the problem? There have been a number of doctors through the years that understood it from a medical standpoint. Abby Thatcher understood the solution. He knew that a spiritual change was necessary in order for the alcoholic to have any hope of recovery. The circle was completed and Bill Wilson found a workable plan of action. The 12 steps equals sobriety. Any of those three elements missing, there will be no recovery. With those three element present, sobriete is not only achievable, it's virtually assured. The Oxford Group was so important in the early days of AA, and there's so much that can be said about it. There's a wonderful book that I'll recommend that if you haven't read it, you may want to get it and do so if you want to know more about it." Dr. Bob, in his last major talk, said we had both, meaning he and Bill, they'd been associated with the Oxford Group, Bill in New York and I in Akron, for two and a half years. Bill had acquired their idea of service. I had not, but I had done an immense amount of reading that they had recommended. Bill's biographer said they had both wound up trying to give shape and meaning to their lives by adhering to the excruciatingly high standards of the Oxford group. The Oxford group was so important. They had, for example, the four absolutes of recovery. the Oxford group for absolute had to do with the mind, body and spirit the first absolute of the Oxford group was absolute honesty absolute honesty means the honesty to ourselves, the absolute truth to others as truthful as we are to ourselves, tempered with common sense and time with it Absolute purity was the second absolute. It demands a clean mind, a clean body, and embraces clean conduct in business, in work, in play, in our interest in world affairs, in the use of our possessions, our attitudes towards relationships with friends. It demands absolute purity. Then absolute unselfishness. now this means unselfish according to the love that we bear toward the object of our unselfishment it is the sacrifice of ourselves and our interest to other people's interests without thought of reward it's an unconditional unselflishness and of course the final, absolute love absolute love is best lived by the principles of the other big book in chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians, which begins faith, hope, and charity or love. But the greatest of these is love. Now all of these absolutes are embodied in the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you want to know more about the Oxford Group, there's a book called Design for Living, The Oxford Group's Contribution to Early AA by Dick B. And Dick lives in Hawaii. I think he has a web page and you can go in and order the book i think it's available from some other bookstores as well it's a an excellent book on uh the oxford group contributions to our recovery so what do we have we have a workable plan of action that was introduced to us in the 12 steps of aa i like to look at it as a toolbox now what's important about any toolboxes you have well first of all you got to have a tool for every problem that comes up you have something you know gotta have some stuff to work on the bathroom plumbing you gotta have something to work on the board that pops off the side of the house and the outside or a shingle that comes off the roof the tools have to be able to get the job done you'd have a hard time getting that board or that shingle nail back on the roof with bathroom plunger. He's also having trouble unstopping the toilet with a hammer, although in frustration I've tried it a few times. We have to know how to use the tools that we have. We've got to know to make them do the job that they're intended to do and we gotta practice using the tools on a regular basis or when the crisis comes we won't know what to do with them. The steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, to me and my way of thinking and living, are the most powerful set of tools that we could possibly have because there is a tool in that box for every single thing that comes down the pipe. When I share my story tomorrow, I will tell you more about how I finally came to that understanding and that conclusion. But suffice it to say, it was through good sponsorship. Because I arrived here believing that the steps were something that you practiced and worked on at AA meetings. And when you got in the car and left for AA meeting place, you sort of left them there picked them up when you got back. I really didn't see that they had a whole lot of practical application out there. Those who have been around for a while know that that's absolutely not true. We arrive at Alcoholics Anonymous ego-driven. Ego-driven, all right? Came to Alcoholics Anonymous was virtually zero self-esteem. It didn't exist. It was gone. All I had left was ego. I thank God for that ego because that ego is what kept me alive long enough to get me to AlcoholicsAnonymous. I'm also grateful if you had an alternative for it and that's the step the steps to help guide me to a new way of life now different people see the steps in different ways i see them this way i see three sets or three categories of steps the admission set the cleanup step and the maintenance step one two and three are the admission steps preparing us for the journey that four through nine are taking care and cleaning up the wreckage of our past and of course 10 11 12 which in different ways you could draw all kinds of lines back to other steps from 10 11 and 12 but they are basically the maintenance steps that keep us happy, joyous, and free in our recovery. So we come in ego-driven. We take those steps, and where do we end up once we have worked our way through those steps? We are God-directed. You know, as I said, God controls. It's a God-direction. And that's what the steps are about. So we began the journey with step one. We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Now there's a process to this step, a procedure just like any of the steps that we'll study today and I wanted to begin by looking at the process of step one as being two-fold. Name the problem Admit defeat. Pretty simple. Step one is in essence, as most of you know, hopefully, two parts. Admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. Now when I got here, my magic magnifying mind was seeing what he wants to see. I read that step as admitted that I'm powerless over alcohol, and as a result of that, my life is unmanageable. That isn't what the step says. As a matter of fact, that step never acknowledges that my life was ever manageable, and mine wasn't. I never had any manageability to my life. I was a loose cannon I was out of control most of my life did alcohol cause that no because I spent the first 15 years of my lifetime or most of the first 15 years of my lifelong drinking was there control in my life not really except that it was at the end of a bolo paddle or a belt yes my family believed in corporal punishment. I was at my mother's over Mother's Day weekend last week, and we both acknowledged the fact that if she were raising me today, that she would be arrested in a heartbeat for child abuse. She said that she'd do it again anyway. she knew i needed it and yet she won't let us lay a hand on their granddaughter why are grandparents like that i don't know call them and send them home okay we acknowledge the problem we were powerless over alcohol that our lives were unmanageable the unmanagability of my life was self-evident i believed that it was the result of drinking. I did not understand that alcohol and alcohol drinking was merely a symptom of the far greater disease called alcoholism. As many of you know from the number of times that Clancy has visited this weekend, as Clancy says, if your problem is alcohol, your answer is very, very simple. don't drink and you're going to be fine you will absolutely be okay so any of you in here today if your problem is alcohol don't think don't dream bye bye we'll see ya have a good life but if your problems is alcoholism and you take away the alcohol from an alcoholic you're gonna end up with a basket case on your hands that you don't replace The first step, we are acknowledging what the problem is, and we are acknowledging defeat. Now, a lot of us resist admitting absolute defeat. You want to hold on to our old ideas as the book tells us but it also tells us what the result of that is it doesn't say that the result was questionable it doesn' t say that the results was semi-successful it says the result was nil zilch zero we're told on page 30 of the big book just how serious the problem is to awaken to face those hideous four horsemen of terror bewilderment frustration despair unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand. That's on page 151 of the big book. It's not surprising, as the book tells us, that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove that we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday, he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of any abnormal drinker every abnormal drinkers the persistence of this illusion is astonishing many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death now folks if that's not defeat I don't know what is the constant absolute unending repetition of the same behavior and expecting different results. If that's not unmanageability, I don't know what is. The delusion that we're like other people or presently may be has to be curtailed. Is that what the book says? Has to be limited somewhat. What does the book say? It has to been smashed. It absolutely has to be smashed. In other words, we admit defeat. We admit the fact that our lives have brought us to this point in total defeat and in total failure. Now I keep emphasizing that and I emphasize it in the step studies that we do at home for a simple reason. As long as this alcoholic believed that there was another door, there was an option over here, that there would be another way that I might be able to escape, that there is another possibility, another avenue I might take. I am living in perpetual mortal danger. I had to believe that I was at the point of nowhere else to go and that's, thank God, the way I felt when I came through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. Family and friends were gone. career hanging by a thread and I knew that unless I took this road of recovery that I had nowhere to go but out of this world. What gets in our way? What gets in ourway of trying to reach this point? What gets in the way of surrender? Ego and self-will. Those are the greatest to Terence to step one and taking it fully. God will not enter where self-will dominates. Never. Look at the years that he allowed us to live like loose cannons. Look atthe years thatheallowedus to drink. Was he gone? No. I believe the God of my understanding was right there waiting watching, hoping that the ego has to go before God can step in and direct. But the good news of this is that there's a great, great AA paradox. There are actually many of them, but one in particular. We surrender, but we win. In surrender, we find victory. How many of you felt when you got out of your chair and took the 450-mile walk to the front of an AA meeting room and picked up a white chip that that was the lowest point of your life? How many have you felt like that you had just reached the bottom of the barrel, the bottom of the pit, and it just can't get any worse than this? I hope most of you. and yet in reality if you look back it was the greatest moment of your life it was the greatest victory of your life because what happened is you quit trying to beat booze on booze's terms that is a battle you cannot win thus the only answer is surrender well what kind of surrender step one is about surrender of facing what in your life the truth the truth about ourselves it forced me in looking at my life to say it was never them it was never her it was never that job it was about me and I had to quit blaming everything and everybody the only hope that I had was to face the truth and to surrender to it then we go to step two which simply says we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity for some of us that was simple but not easy I don't know about you I came to this fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous believing in God I grew up a southern baptist when the church doors opened we were there sometimes didn't want to be there sometimes didn'T understand what I was doing there and a lot of times when I was there I wasn't all there but I grew up believing in God and I grew up believing in a God that had two great big tablets and it was every time I did something in my life I got a mark on one of those tablets And I had no doubt of which list was the longer. And I hade a pretty good idea of what a lot of ministers and what a lot of evangelists had told me was going to happen to me when that list got long enough. So I came into AA believing in a God, but the God of my understanding was somewhat distorted. I know when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I heard a man at a I was meeting Cher one time with a young fellow who was saying he was having a hard time with this God thing, that he didn't believe in God. And he said, well, actually, that's not true. I did go into church, but I just, you know, I don't want anything to do with God. And the man asked him, said, well, describe to me this God that you're talking about. And he gave the explanation that I gave a moment ago and added to it that, you knows, he was going to burn in hell for the rest of his life and that if he did bad things, God was going to zap him. And he went through, and after a while the man began to shake his head and he said, I don't blame you. I wouldn't want anything to do with that God either. It doesn't require us in this step that we come in with a definition of God. It just says that we came to believe power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. So simple. So absolutely simple. And yet we balk and we fight and some of you even say, well, I'm skipping that part. I'm not going to participate in that. I'm just going to do it. I'm never going to. And that was one of the first steps that I wanted to skip. And then they threw that line in front of me that says there's a principle which is a bar against all information which is proof against all arguments which come out fatal to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation. I don't know about you guys, but the first time I read that, that really ticked me off. That forced me to look at this stuff they were talking about. I didn't want to deal with it. I didn' t want to face it. but it said i was going to be perpetually perpetually ignorant if i did not and so i decided to look at what it was that you were trying to tell me well step two tells us that we can now look for a solution that there is one out there in step one we admitted we were powerless to fix the situation, we're now ready to believe that someone, somewhere can solve the problem. The key word, well let's find out what the key word is. Believing is a state of mind that we must have before we can begin anything. You know if I decide I want to go next door and get some coffee, I've got to believe that there's some coffee over there. You know, if Fred announces there's coffee in the next room, stop over and have some and drop a coin or two in the bucket to pay for it, but there's coffee over there, and we all get up and decide to go over there and get some coffee. We have to believe it's there before we're going to go. Believing defines the limits of our lives. We can't get any more education than we believe we can. We Can't Make Any More Money Than We Believe We Can. We Cant Be Any More Successful than we believe we can. It was the great industrialist Henry Ford that said, if I believe that I will fail or if I believe I will succeed then I'm right. So the key word is believe. Believe is a heavy duty word I'll share with you a little personal experience from my life many years ago I was a young network reporter covering a human interest story in the hills of North Georgia where a man by the name of Carl Wallenda was coming to the mountains of North George and for those of you familiar with that hill country up there those who grew up around Royston and places like that know that there's a big gorge up there called Tallulah Gorge, a great big hole in the ground. Carl Wallenda, as many and most of you know probably, was the patriarch of the greatest probably aerialist performers that the world has ever known, and I don't think that the feats that they accomplished have ever been surpassed. But Carl Wallenda was a man close to 70 years old at that time. He announced that he was going to walk a tightrope across that great big gorge. Well, thousands of people gathered as all the preparations were made and the cable was strung, and thousands of People gathered on a Saturday afternoon on the banks of that gorge, I believe they came to watch an old man fall to his death into that great big hole in the ground. He had to be a fool to try that. I knew better because I had done my homework. I had studied a great deal about him because I knew I was probably going to have an opportunity to interview him, that I would have to talk a lot about his background as we got ready for the broadcast that day of the event. And it ended up we had to talk for hours, it seemed like, because they were waiting for some wind direction to change and all this. Actually, I think they were just waiting for the crowd to get bigger. But finally the old man came out of the little trailer and he walked out to the edge of the gorge. He looked over and he shook the cable a little bit and he came back and stood in front of us reporters. Why he singled me out, I don't know. But he pointed at me and said, Young man, do you think I can make this walk today? I said, certainly do, sir. I believe, based on my research and study and the things I've seen here, you're the greatest tightrope walker and aerialist in the world. He said, do you believe that I can do it pushing that wheelbarrow propped up against the tree or against the stanchion that held up the cable over there? And I said yes, sir, I don't have any doubt. I've see you ride a motorcycle, I mean a bicycle out onto a tightroke and stand on your head on it. I certainly believe you can do it pushing a wheelbarrow. And then he asked me a very crucial question. Do you believe it enough to get in the wheelbarow? You see, there are different levels of believing. I certainly believed he could do it. But I didn't believe it enough to give him that wheelbarower. Well, folks, I hate to tell you the bad news. This program requires that we get in the wheelbarrow sooner or later. Sooner or later it requires that you get in that wheelbarow. Step two, believing is the beginning point. That's the starting point of our recovery in the second step. Believing leads to a decision. We begin that decision process in step three, but we have to believe before we make a decision that we're going to go next door and get a cup of coffee or that we are going to take the next step toward recovery, and then we go into action. Believe it. the decision and take the action what is this ultimately lead us it leads us to faith and the truth faith that this program guides us toward in these steps is the faith that says get in the wheelbarrow yeah the journey scary sometimes. It's real scary looking down from a high place like that, but what a view. And what a viewpoint of life we have when we are putting our faith and our trust in a power greater than ourselves. And yet, so many of us get so hung up trying to understand what that means, a power greater than ours. Because I can tell you something right now, folks. I got here to this program, and I could do for you a 14-hour, nonstop, without a word repeated, total dissertation on the nature of God. What he was like, what he could do, where he came from, where He was going. Today, I can't give you 15 seconds. because, you see, we wasted too much time trying to figure out who is God. Am I supposed to define him? Where is he? Does he have a long white beard? All I know is that the God that can do what I've seen God do would defy any definition I could possibly put on him. So I gave up trying to define Him. It is far more important that I believe and know that he understands me than that I understand him. With that guidance into that step, I was able to simply say, yes, I believe that there is a power greater than me that might perhaps be able to restore me to sanity. I didn't have to decide who he was I didn' t have to decide where he came from or how long he's been around or what he looks like or what He wears I don't have to decide that anymore, it's not important It is simply important that I show up I believe that there is a power greater than myself and you know, look at the various understandings of God that we bring to this program. The founding fathers were so wise and so well guided in saying God as we understood him. They didn't allow us to bring in into these rooms a specific, narrow definition of God. And then we can sit in a meeting room and we can talk about God, we can talk about Jesus Christ we can talked about Allah we can talks about Buddha we can't talk about Muhammad I said we can talk about we can bring those understandings with us and they'll all fit neatly under that umbrella of God as we understood him the story is told back in the late 1940s 1940s, of a man who was doing some research on how people perceived then King George of England, who was, of course, the father of our, the present Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth. And this journalist who was during this research went to the outbacks of Australia, very, very primitive tribesmen there of the aborigines of Australia and they asked, who is King George? And they said, King George is a mighty ruler who sits on a giant fiery throne in a place called England. And if he is angry, he blinks his eyes and lightning bolts come out of his eyes and will strike you down. And he went on with that definition. Then he went into Canada and he asked some people in Canada who is King George. They said, well, King George is the ruler of the mighty English-British Empire. King George was a great ruler who provides for us, who gives us guidance and leadership, who makes laws that we live by. The journalist went to London and he asked, who is King George? And the people on the streets of London said, well, king George is a figurehead of the British government. In reality, he doesn't have that much power anymore that King George is simply a figurehead. Parliament passes most of the laws, but King George was a good and benevolent man, and I see him ride by in his carriage as he goes hither and yon into Westminster Abbey and back to the castle where he lives. And then the reporter got an opportunity to ask Princess Elizabeth who is King George. And King George, she said, is my daddy. And when I am afraid, he holds me on his knee and he puts his arm around me and he loves me and he hugs me. All of these people, all of these distant, disparate people had different points of view or definitions for who is King George. And yet in reality, none of them changed what he is. None of them altered the reality that is King George. They were merely different perceptions of the same person. This step does not say, God's as we understand them. It says, God as we understanding him. So it's okay to bring different understandings. It's okay to bring different comprehensions. It's okay to bring different viewpoints. It's okay even to come with none whatsoever. I heard a man in a meeting say one time when a young fellow was having difficulty believing in any God, and that it was stopping him from his progress in recovery. This man looked at the young fellow and said, okay, I have a suggestion for you. build yourself a wall between you and God. Make it as thick and as wide and as high as you can. Make sure that wall is sturdy and will not topple. And then just get on working the steps. And then with a twinkle in his eyes, he said, and you will be contacted. And you're going to say, that's not who I thought you were. So that's who you are. So it's okay to even come with no understanding of God, no concept of God. Even no belief in God. It's okay. He's waited this long. He'll wait a little longer. Just come on in and believe that somehow, some way, there is a power who can lead you into this thing called recovery. I just got the signal of our first break. We're going to, if you believe there's coffee next door, and if you want some coffee nextdoor, or if you wanna get rid of some coffee, we'll be back in 15 minutes.