“You Only Go Around Once: Grab All the Living You Can” – Gene D.

As an alcoholic, I base that identification on how I interpret the definition of the word alcoholic as defined in the third chapter of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. For those of you who may not have gotten that far in the book, it says that we alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking, and that's all we are. It makes no reference to how much you drank, what you drank where you drank or what happened as the result of your drinking. It doesn't say in order to qualify as an alcoholic or a member of AA, you've got to visit drunk farms and insane asylums and prisons and penitentiaries and divorce courts. Just because we have to have sort of a desire to stop drinking and seek what this program has to offer. And what this trial program has to author was very well described by our late co-founder Bill in his book as Bill sees it as a new way of life, you know. That's surely what I wanted when I came here. Many of you are here to tell you the truth. I come from a very small town, 2,000 population, and we live in the Napa Valley which is world renowned for wine. And then you see the soap opera that's on Friday night following Dallas called Falcon Crest. That's where I live. That's what I live They call it Tuscany Valley in the series but the real name is the Napa Valley And we're no big deal in the Nappa Valley It's a very slow growth oriented place Easy moving No big fast hustle It's the kind of place you'd expect to see Tom Sawyer walking down the street I'd say Up there they call people who drink wine connoisseurs where I come from they call them widows you know I've been called a lot of things I was interested in what my dear friend said the other night Sandy when he was talking about he he never felt as though he was anything I never had that problem because I've been something all my life and people were always reminding me of it too that Duffy's a son of a bitch oh what an asshole that Ducky is is. Ducks are a jerk. I had a lot of identities, a lot of identities. And as Tracy says, you know, it's traditional that this meeting be referred to as a spiritual meeting. And the man I probably admired more in my lifetime than any other man, the late Chuck C., Elston's lovely husband, once made a remark when he heard that I was assigned to the spiritual meeting in Salt Lake City. And he got a little upset over that and I don't really remember what he said, but since then a few other of my intimate associates have pitched up on that and made reference to the real me as opposed to talking at a spiritual meeting. And they said that to have him speaking at a spiritual meeting would be similar to talking to Ethiopians about the Scarsdale Bias, you know. but Clancy put it well you know he said the spiritual doesn't mean religious and I certainly would not want to represent myself here to any of you this morning as a religious person not that I wouldn't like to be but I broke from any form of religion a long, long time ago and for reasons you know that even I don't know of I haven't picked up and I don't practice any formal religion today. I have never had any problem in the belief of God. I was raised in a very Christian home by a Catholic mother and father who told me about God. I was educated in a parochial school for citizens. I've always known of the existence of God My problem always was accepting the fact that this God had power. That was what I never could understand. You know, when we look back early in our recovery period and we realize that, as the book says, we came to believe, it can almost fill the sequences that brought me eventually to that point where I believed. Because truly, when I first came here, I did not believe. leave. I was not willing to turn my life and my will over to the care of something I couldn't see, something I didn't know, and something that I really wasn't too sure was there. But I had been brought low. I had suffered my defeat. I have participated in what the book refers to as countless vain attempts, trying to become a so-called normal drinker. And I had lost, and I had locked. You know, every time I say that, I sort of get clammy. And I'm not known as the guy that has too much tact, to tell you the truth. And sometimes I say things that, even though they're truthful, they won't fit too well with me. But I say of course, only out of love. And I'm about to say one of those things right now. I didn't plan on saying it, but it just came upon me, you know, of our approach to recovery. You and I, very tragically and very sadly, that everybody in this room this morning has not finished drinking. Now, I certainly don't want it to be that way, and I know you don't want it the experience tells us that. But there are people in this this room right now who will drink again, who will literally as alcoholics plate everything. I notice a few of you looking at me askance, you know, some of the bits that that's for, you know. Those words are not original for me. Oh, no. Those words are in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and if you haven't gotten that far, I'll quote them too. This can say, many who are real alcoholics by every form of self-deception and experimentation will try to prove themselves the exception to the rule. Those words are in books. But the sheer insanity, you know, the insidiousness of it all that really sort ought to frustrate me at times is when I think, and I certainly number myself amongst the possibilities of drinking again. I'm no different than anybody in this room. And I know that based on the character that I am and that if I relax any kind of a vigil that I have, that it's only a matter of seconds that my priorities can change and I can be drinking. And why would I want to drink? drink. Why do most alcoholics drink again? Well, the book tells us that. They persist at certain... they persist in an insane illusion that somehow, someway, someday they'll be able to control and enjoy their drinking once more. In other words, to be normal drinkers. Now that's bad enough But the insanity of that In my belief is that there's not an alcoholic Who walks the face of this earth That could ever tolerate for more than three seconds The conditions that surround normal drinking And yet many of us will risk our lives To try to become a normal drinker Have you forgotten how normal drinkers drink? Have you watched them? I had occasion last night to watch in that lounge or whatever the hell they call it in there, you know. They're ridiculous. They leave half of a drink on the bar and go dead. And they talk and chat and they say they're damn to think. No thanks. I've had enough. Who's my limit? Let's eat. They put the cat back on the bottle. And that's how normal things are. I know that I couldn't handle that. I know it. I know what I could handle. When the time came for me, I'm certainly no example of the success of this program, and incidentally, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink or put a needle in my arm or any of those cute things since Memorial Day of 1964. And as my late friend and a friend of many of us in this room Norm Alfie would have said, that may not impress you, but it impresses the hell out of me. But before that, I had reached that point in my life, and I believe everybody. I heard Clancy mention the word dilemma, and so did Dottie Adele, and I believed even Elsa said dilemma. And I love words. Clancy doesn't like what I'm going to tell you because he gets his fist off at me. I don't have an education, see, and he gets all upset over that. I'm born and raised in the Lower East Side of New York City, and due to circumstances, I just was a dumb kid. You know, I grew up without any good schooling. Telling somebody last night, I'm from the Mark Twain School of Education, you know. Mark Twaine was quoted as saying, you now, he never let schooling interfere with his education. And that's sort of how I am. So I've always been sort of a student of words. I like to look up words and try to improve my vocabulary And dilemma, I can remember, was a great word for me because it sounds exciting, you know. It sounds like something's going to happen, you know. Dilemma! And of course the most common place it's used in the book is where it says lack of power was our dilemma. Sandy tried to define dilemma a little bit the other night, but it wasn't defined the way it was told to me. A guy told me once at school teacher, he said, a dilemma is when you have the opposite answers to the same question and both answers are valid. First I thought he was going into the early stages of male menopause when he said that. But then after taking a quick inventory, I recalled in my own career and I guess in the careers of all alcoholics how we face a dilemma because there's somewhere in our literature it says in general a dilemma will precede our decision to continue on in our of madness ought to reach out for their available help. A dilemma. I know where my dilemma was. My dilemma came about at a place called Big Rothschilds. That's a scum of a place. It's a snot-bag saloon on West Madison Street in Chicago, Illinois. It is a regular sewer. And I had relegated myself to being a star customer in Rothschild through my efforts of being a social drinker. And I was such a good customer that there was never any need for oral communication anymore because I'd come shuffling in at 6 AM in the morning and they'd look at me disgustedly and put that paper cup up on the bar, seven ounce paper cup and pour four ounces of cheap keep wine in it for 15 cents and then just leave me to my misery. And that's where I faced my dilemma. Now I realize it. I certainly didn't realize it then. And like the book says, I believe we all have to come to that moment. There comes this time when we face that dilemma. Because I can remember looking at that drink crying, you know, all alcoholic, unskid-broke cry in the morning. Never forget that. Don't let anybody tell you any different. Before they get that first drink, they cry. Maybe it's in private. It's off away from everybody. We don't want to expose these weaknesses. But that's perhaps the only moment, the only second of that day that they'll have anywhere near, you know, a realization of what's really going on in their life. And they're ashamed of it, distraught, humiliated. And so we reach out for the drink and, of course, life starts to get better as soon as they drink. But when you first look at it in the morning, you know, and we're not dumb. I've never subscribed to that theory that some people do when they pluck their teeth and go... So a poor alcoholic, he's the last one to know it. Oh, shit. I knew and you knew long before anybody else. Maybe not that we were alcoholics because we weren't ready to concede to that. But we knew that there was something different. There was something wrong in the way we drank. First signal for that is always when we hide it. People always think that we hide booze because we're afraid somebody will take it away from us. We're too clever for that. We hide boozed because we don't want anybody to know how much we're drinking, what we're drinkin', and when we're drankin', and how often we're drunkin'. We're concerned about our drinkin'. And so when I'd come in there in the morning and shuffle up to that bar and I'd look at that cup in front of me and them tears going down my eyes, full of that shame and that remorse, you know. But I'd look at that damn drink and trembling inside and outside and every muscle and every nerve in my body ready to scream out, convinced like many of you that if I don't get a drink, I'm gonna die. I believe that and I'm sure you believe it too. If I don' t get a drinking, I' m gonna die and I've looked there at that drink and I know full well Jesus Christ, if you drink that, it's gonna kill you. I knew it was killing me, and I knew it was going to kill me. But yet in the back of my head, something else was saying, but if you don't drink it, you'll die. That's the opposite answer for the same question, and they're both valid. If I drink it it'll kill me, no, I don't think it'll die! How do I know that? And I made the wrong decision. I tried to continue on in my madness at that time. I came here when I was 21 years old. Wedding wife. Wedding I believe somebody else mentioned it yesterday, you know. Everything that happened to me happened to be after I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, you know? I probably would have been better off if I'd never run into you. I knew nothing about drinking Sterno until I came here. I didn't know you could take Griffin's Shoe Polish, the four-ounce bottle, and sift it through a loaf of porous white bread and get a half a teaspoon full of alcohol until I sat at one of these discussion meetings one night. So as a result of living a life like that, I stayed drunk for six years on AA. I rebelled against everything that you offered me, everything you suggested to me. I had the same answers that the young people of today have. I was only 24. How the hell can you be an alcoholic when you're 24, you know? I'm a war hero. I'm not supposed to be an alcoholist. You know, I haven't done this. I haven's done that. I'm out of here. And yet there I was sitting in a meeting of alcoholics synonymous. Bitter, bitter. I treated AA as though it was a punishment and that the meetings were a penance, you know. Boom, boom, boom. You're certain to say AA and penance. You've got to make seven AA meetings a week for the next 96 weeks, you knows. Holy Christ, you knows. And when you're sitting in there with that kind of attitude, there's no opportunity for growth at all. I learned a little bit about the program. I understood what you were talking about. I knew it was steps. I thought, man, but yet I just couldn't seem to grasp onto an essential now recovery. And it tells us that, and it was read here this morning, in the three pertinent ideas. I certainly don't want to start any controversy, but I believe the only guarantee in this program was recited to you in the second and third of the three ideas. You know, it says that we believe that we were alcoholic, you know, and that no human power could relieve our alcoholism. No human power. So that eliminates the sponsor, the doctor, the clergyman, that even eliminates me myself. itself. And then the third idea makes a very definite statement. And if there be any majors of English language here, you know what a definite is. Definite is a word that goes beyond theory. And it says, but God could, and could is a definite statement, and would, and would is a definitive statement. God could and would. The statement is made, the guarantee is there. And then they place the burden right where it belongs back on us, if he were thought. And there seems to be the difference. We're given the answer, but somebody even mentioned it yesterday. We can't follow directions. Or we don't want to follow directions, so we want to do it all the way, you know. Well, that religious stuff, you don't have to talk about it. And you hear that over and over again around AA. Talk about all that religion, you know, you might turn the newcomer off. Yet it's probably the most essential part of our program. God could, Ed would, if he he was soft. So the time was going to come in my life where I had to seek that power, even though I couldn't accept it. And the opportunity was brought to me when I used to race harness horses. I was at a racetrack in Chicago, Washington Park Racetrack, in Chicago, Illinois. I would sit around one night in a shed row, you know, talking it over with a couple of guys from AA who were always there to help me. By golly, guys slow overstepped me for six years. I could never say that it was A.A.'s fault because the opportunities were numerous. This one fellow was Ned Fink. I'll never forget that fellow. He was almost a fanatic and a spiritual part of our program, and he was the guy that brought this opportunity to me that night. You know, as we sat there sitting there in a couple old bales of hay, you know, and I thought I was kidding old Ned. I had some wine in an old rusty thermos bottle, you knows, trying to make believe I was drinking coffee you know my lips were getting bluer and bluer and blurer you know and Ned says you know there must have been God in your life at some time somewhere in your life has been the proof of the existence of this power and I said no Ned you're wrong you're right you're probably you know I've never been deeply religious and I just can't accept it I'm one of the guys that this program isn't for I guess you know and he says can't you ever recall a time in your life when you called upon God? And I thought for a minute, just trying to be polite, just try to be polite. And I said, no, not really, Ned. I said that was a time I guess when I might have thought about it, but that was just a coincidence. And then that's when that lit up that smirk on his face that only them old-timers get when they they know they've got that, you know. He says, why don't you tell me about the coincidence? So I said, well, it was a long time ago, a long time ago. He said, search for the power, Duff. The evidence of the power has been in your life since the day you were born. Search for it. So I thought back about this coincidence. And it happened when I was about eight years years old. And I was in attendance in those days at a parochial school, a place called Mount Vernon, New York, a Lady of Victory Church. I was just a brat little kid, you know, and going to mass every morning before school. I had to get there at 8 o'clock up on the front row, kneel down, nuns behind you cracking you with that stick, you know, and sit up, kneeled down, put the baseball cards away, stopped talking, cracked me. Jesus Christ, I looked like a stagecoach driver. And it was monotonous as hell. Monotonous as hell Now before I go any further I want to say something I'm going to say some things in the next few minutes that to some of you may sound blasphemous It may sound a little disrespectful towards any organized religion I assure you that I am in no way trying to be disrespectful That I am in no ways trying to be blasphemious I as you am bound by a moral It was me to tell you the truth. And I'm about to tell you the true. I'll tell you how I'm in a statue. What does a statue do? At every place I look, there's statues, statues, and people talking to the statues. And I don't want to laugh and mimic them at times, you know, and figure, what fools, what fools. How could these innate things, these ornaments have any kind of power? Who would be the fool to call upon one plaster of Paris. Something that you could buy between Tijuana and San Diego on any Sunday for $1.89, you know, in all sorts. So I'd sit there and I'd investigate all the surroundings. And I lived in what was called Little Italy. The church was predominantly Italian people. It's not just to be disrespectful either, but the Italian people are the greatest mourners in the world. At least they used to be. How can they mourn, you know? As soon as somebody dies, it really comes out in a blast, you know. Zorro, Zorro. But they were interesting and they helped pass the time that half hour in church because I'd watch them come in and I'd be up there in the front row kneeling down looking at my baseball cards, you now. And you'd hear the shuffling going down them side aisles. I wasn't allowed in them side aisle. I hadn't received my first Holy Communion yet so we weren't allowed to go down the side. And you really couldn't see what was over there because it would get darker and darker over there. And I used to wonder, what the hell is over in the side, you know? These Italian women would come in shuffling and crying and the rustling of the beads, you known. And I'd watch them and then they'd disappear into the corner. And I couldn't hear them. But I could hear them! And I knew something was going on in there, you kno. And then before mass was over they'd be finished and they'd get up and as they'd leave the church they'd come to the center of the altar they'd kneel and turn and come out to Middle Island right past me. I never realized way back there in the early 30s that I'd be telling this story in Houston, Texas in 1985 but the thing that I remember so well was that every time that them Italian women were leaving the churches they came by me and I'd been looking at them like that you know they looked better Something happened in that corner That made them look better And I had no idea what the hell it was But I remembered it And I was remembering it one day when When my coincidence took place My brother Jack, who recently retired as an officer In the Longshoremen's Union in New York City When he was a small boy, 12 years old He was afflicted with double pneumonia and streptococcus Which, of course, since the introduction of antibiotics, is no big deal. The fact there in the 30s, that was almost fatal. We were very poor. We lived on relief, which was the welfare system of our day. It was the middle of a depression. And my mother was doing the very best she could do to hold our small family together. So when my brother was sick, he wasn't allowed to be placed in a hospital because there was no money at home and the city or the county or some agency had brought a hospital bed bed to our home. It was set up in the parlor, and a nurse would come by from the county or the city maybe three or four times a week and administer medications or do something for my brother. And a doctor would come back. I don't know how often he came by, but maybe once a week. And I remember very vividly one night when the doctor was there visiting my mother, and Mother had put me out in the kitchen with the big wooden doors to listen together so I couldn't hear. But as an inquisitive little bastard, you know, I had my ear to to the door listening. And I heard the doctor, a man of science, medical science, said to my mother that my brother was going to die that night and that if he didn't die that night, he certainly would be dead before the sun went down next day. Well, I wish I could be dramatic, you know, and show you lots of compassion and say I ran to my brother's bed and went to my knees crying. Knowing my makeup then, selfish, I probably was wondering will will I get his baseball mitt when he dies, you know. Because it didn't shake me up at all. I went off to bed and next morning I got up as I got up any other morning and mother got me ready and off I went to school. Didn't stop in to look at my brother to even see if he was alive. Didn't even think about it. And I went out to school doing the same thing that I'd done every other day that I went after school. As I went by one of the neighborhood candy stores with the newsstand out in front, I ran by quickly and grabbed five pennies off the top of the rack of the newspapers and ran like hell with the shopkeeper in hot pursuit of me trying to catch me you know so i'd have money for candy i was a poor kid and that's the only way i would have got candy was to steal the money and i remember going to school that day first i went to church in the morning looked at the statues watched the italian women come in and out got hit with the crop a couple of times looked at baseball cards just like any other day and i went through the school day At 3 o'clock I got out of school, walked down to the corner, was standing in front of the church waiting for Mr. Schaefer, a cop that stood there for years, waiting for him to give me the signal to cross over so I could go on down the hill and go on home. As I was standing there, the full realization of my brother's possible death fell upon me. I realized, my God, my brother is probably dead. And I guess being of an alcoholic personality, I began to magnetize the whole thing, make it bigger and bigger. And I envisioned him being placed in the ground, and being covered with dirt and flowers. And then I began to cry because I loved my brother, and I didn't want to face the possibility that he wouldn't be there when I got home. And right in the middle of the crying, I sort of turned and I looked at the church, and i remembered the Italian women. and I remember the corner of that church and what in hell went on down in that corner so I bravely and it took a lot of courage to do this for an 8 year old kid and any Roman Catholic in this room will value that because I walked into that church forbidden to go down to those side aisles by the brothers and by the priests and bythe nuns for fear that hair would grow on my hands or that my ears would grow out big but I looked around the church and there was no representatives if there was a rectory or anything like that, and so I boldly went over to the side of the church and went right down to the front. I was disappointed as hell, though, when I got down there to thefront because there was nothing there but another bunch of statues. And I looked at them disappointingly, you know, and wondered, what in the hell am I going to do with statues? I must have realized as long as I'm here, I should pray. I had been taught to pray. I've been taught a lot of prayers, those meaningless things that you're taught and you have to memorize and then you can recite it verbatim but you don't even know what they mean. And it went over. And they always said praying was talking to God. Well, you don''t talk to God like that. And I went to my knees, and I don't know if I looked at them statues or talked to them statues about it. I'd be a liar if I told you I could remember what happened that morning. But I know one thing that didn't happen. I know I didn't recite any of those moves. I talked to some kind of a God, whether it was represented in one of those statues or not, I don't know. And I talked from a place inside of me that I had never talked from before. Way down in my gut and up through my heart. And I thought about my brother and I cried. and on one side of me was a big brass thing with a whole lot of candles in it and about half of the candles were lit and I saw around this brass tube that said offering ten cents and I was fingering them five pennies that I had in my pocket for my candy and I rationalized even then I guess that I'm a kid I ought to get it for half price and I took them five pence which meant so much to me and I put them in that little tube and let them run down in there then I lit every candle that wasn't lit twenty of them and then I left the church well my brother Jack is alive and well I certainly wouldn't be that self-centered to believe for one minute that my prayers had anything to do with his recovery I'm quite sure my late mother prayed with a lot more sincerity a lot more oftener and with a lot of reality, and other people prayed. And so as I told this to Mr. Fink, I said, you see, Ned it was just a coincidence, just a coincidence. He says, yeah, yes, you're right, but he knew he had me, he knew, because he kept pushing me and he kept pushin' me, and he says what we all have to do is to continually search search for the proof. The proof and the evidence lies in the lives of each of us in this room of the existence of this power. If we do, as it says, an impertinent idea. If it were sought. So I continued to see. He said, was there any other time? And I said, well, I don't know if you'd call this one then. And he said, tell me about it. I said what It all happened in the same place, only it was about five years later. It was the end of the semester. It was June and time to graduate from the eighth grade and go on into the public school system. And everybody was happy and joyous. And the nuns came amongst us handing out their report cards. You know, you are hereby promoted on into eighth grade. Everybody was happy now. And they gave me an envelope with a letter in it. A letter to take home to my father that under the consideration of the faculty of Our Lady of Victory School it was their opinion that due to my inability to do certain things that I'd be held for one more year in the eighth grade. I was left back. My God. In an Irish Roman Catholic home, you know, parochial education is sort of like this. They figure eight years of parochia education is equivalent to a doctorate at SMU, you now. And here they were trying to tell me that I was too too dumb to go to the public high school. And I was full of fear, full of fear. I thought my father would kill me. My father would be serious over that. And, I can remember strange thoughts going through my mind, you know. Is it really true that if you keep digging, you come to China? What's the age limit in the Foreign Legion? Does it hurt if you burn? Because I didn't want to face my father. I was scared to death. Being the last day of school, we had to empty our lockers out and take all of that valuable stuff home, you know. Half-finished bookends from the woodshop, busted loose leaf binders, one sneaker, torn gym shorts, couple of dirty t-shirts, beat up old softball. And I had gathered all of this stuff together and Mother had given me a nickel to take the trolley car home, knowing that I'd have all of this gear. And as I left the school that afternoon, I went down to the corner, standing in front of the church waiting for Mr. Safer to give me the signal to cross over. And it dawned on me, you know, what I had to face at home. Then I remembered my brother. I remembered the Italian women. I remember the corner of the Church. And I felt a nickel in my pocket. And I went back into the Church . . . I was allowed now to go down the side because I had since received my Communion. And then I went down the Side and went down into that corner and again I faced them statues. Still not believing anything that they represented, and again, I got down on my knees and I talked to a God somewhere from someplace in here with more meaning than I'd ever talked to anybody before in my life. Please, God don't let this happen to me. Then I put the nickel in and I lit every candle that wasn't lit and I left. I went on down the hill lied like hell to the conductor around the trolley guard told him I'd lost my and Nicola went down the sewer, and of course those days they didn't care just told me to get on and shut up. And I got on that trolley car that afternoon about 3.30, a quarter to four. Never, never at that time of day was that trollney car ever filled up. But that day it was. There was only one empty seat on the trolley. Two people to a seat. So I wandered down the aisle into the middle of the car and sat down with my knees out into the aisle because this big guy was sitting in the seat. And I had all of my crap on my knees and me trundles along for a few stops. All of a sudden, this huge man said to me, Just getting out of school for the summer? I said, That's right. He says, Boy, I'll bet you you're happy. And boy, it was like pulling your finger out of the dike. I just let loose. And I cried and I bawled and I expressed all of the fear and all of the emotions that I had that were all built up inside of me and how how ashamed I was of what I had done in school and why I wasn't facing my family. And when he let me go all the way through it, he told me, he says, didn't anybody tell you about summer school? He said, there's an opportunity in the public school system. He said that if you'll give up your summer vacation for eight weeks and you go to summer school and you just concentrate on English, that was the subject I had failed. You'll get an opportunity to take another examination after the eight weeks and if you pass, then you'll be promoted on with the rest of your classmates. I don't know if they were going to notify me about that or not on my family, but I hadn't heard anything of that. So I told him no. But I qualified that by saying, how could I possibly learn something in eight weeks that 22 weeks hasn't done any good, you know? Then he started to tell me certain things. He said, well, you probably have to leave them baseball cards home. You probably have stop looking out the window when you're not supposed to be. When they give you them lessons to take home at night, you have to do them. And I listened to this man who seemed like a kindly sort of a guy. I said, do you really think that I could do something like that, a guy like me? He sort of smiled knowingly and he says, would you try all of those suggestions that I just gave you? And I said of course I would. I don't want to be left back. And he says well with that kind of an attitude you'd probably pass. The man I was talking to that day recently retired as the superintendent of schools at Mount Vernon, New York. The day he was sitting alongside of me on that streetcar his name was Hamilton B. Ryder. and he was a young student teacher assigned to teach the English course at the summer school section. And it's a very dear close friend of mine to this day. To this very day. He was very close, you know. And he gave me that opportunity. So you see, the evidence was there if I continued to search for it. And you know and I know that I can continue here for the rest of the morning recounting now, now many times during my lifetime and you in your lifetime when we did call upon this power So the proof of it was there. This power does exist! And God, you have to believe that! Could there be anybody in here who could not believe it? How many of you in here are fathers? Who? All right. I don't want it this way. I don't know hardly any of you on a personal level. But I'm just cocky enough, you know, in order to perhaps try to prove to other people that this power exists, just to use you as the example. I'll tell you when you talk to God, and I wasn't even there. Take for one moment all of you men. Clear your minds now for that moment. And perhaps, perhaps you're in a maternity ward at some hospital now. They have just taken the most important thing in your life. Your wife. Just take her off into a delivery room to present you with the greatest miracle you'll ever know. A miracle of birth! And in case you forgot, let me tell you what you were saying. God, please, God, don't let anything happen to my wife. God, I don't care if it's a boy or a girl now. Just make it whole, God. Make sure it's got arms. Make sure its conceit. I don' t want much, God! Just a normal kiss. And if you say that you never said that, you've never been a father. You've never been a father. And if further proof be needed, there sits amongst us, I know, combat veterans from our different wars. Don't tell me for one minute that you never thought to God. If you deny that, you were never there. In the old man's war that I participated in, World War II, too. We had a very famous saying, I guess it's carried on through all wars, there are no atheists in foxholes. And that was true. I called upon God daily and nightly, and any time I could get my mouth open, God get me out of this, you know. So the power has always been there. So I was comfortable with that, the knowledge and the proof that the power existed, but God. Who is God? And Clancy put it so well last night when he said that he sort of had another figure that just represented what God should be, but was not really God, but it was the figure that he could use to bring up the respect for the existence of of this power. And that's what I was lacking. I had to have some kind of a vision or some kind of proof that, that this wasn't some silly, childish thing that we were talking about because I was doing business with my life. And I searched, I searched. I went to different churches, read different books and looking all over for God. And And I found God, or the image that I had to respect right here among you. And he had been here all the time. We were closed in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous once in a place called Crystal Lake, Illinois. And as we stood up to say the Lord's Prayer, I had been thinking about God. And then I stopped. I was going to listen to the Lord. The Lord's prayer. Our Father. Then I knew. Then I know. and I don't say this in any way to create the impression that my father was God but I loved my father I loved my father more than I've loved anything in my entire life my father was the greatest thing and has been the greatest person ever in my life the kind of a man he was our man in the eyes of the state of New York and the district attorney by the name of Tom My father was a criminal, and in the eyes of most of the people of New York City especially, my father was more of a Robin Hood than he ever was a criminal. And he had to pay a hell of a price for that, a hell of a prize for that. But that never discouraged me or anybody else from admiring this man for the man that he was, you know. God, he was everything. If I could just be one fraction of what my father represented, I'd be so fulfilled, you know, so fulfilled. My father stood about six foot four. And I guess he weighed up to about 240. He was a big guy. And he was a tough guy. He had a reputation of being a tough God. Not a mean guy, a tough man. I never saw him tough. I always knew him gentle. I can remember one night so vividly in my life that displayed his gentleness, you know, that I've been able to discount any kind of a remark that he has done. One summer evening, you now, he and my brother Jackie and I were sitting on the steps of the stoop of the tenement house we lived in in the South Bronx in New York City trying to cool off from the hot humid air that was around. My brother raised pigeons up on the roof of the a tenement house that we lived in. And as my father and I were just sitting there chatting around with the people, walking around on the sidewalk, my brother came down from the roof crying. In his hand he had his favorite pigeon. And the pigeon had gotten its wings somehow caught in the chicken wire. And it couldn't fly. It was just hobbling around one leg. And there was a tragedy in my brother's life. I can remember my father as though he standing here right now. He took the pigeon from my brother, and one hand was all he needed. It made almost a giant net, and he placed that pigeon in there, and took a little Popsicle stick with some thread that he pulled from his shirt, and he just flew around a little bit like that. And pretty soon the pigeons got to go, and he wouldn't get out of my father's hand. He was well, he was well. And he handed the pigeon back to my brother and took the tears away from my brother. I remember saying, my God, you know, he could have crushed that pigeon, you know, with that hand. And that's how he was. And he had a zest for living, my father. Oh, God, how he loved life, you know. He used to tell my mother, you know, my mother was constantly asking my father about money problems, you spend too much money, you gamble this, you do that, and you give it away. And I can remember my father, my mother was under five foot, so it was here like that. And he'd always say, Julie, Julie Julie. He'd say it three times. He said, stop worrying about money. Money can do nothing but cause trouble. Jesus' secret is to get rid of it as quick as you can. That's sort of how he lived. That's kind of how He lived, you know? We didn't know from one day to the next whether we'd be riding in a limousine or hanging on the back of the trolley car, you know? But the big thrill for me was Sunday mornings. My father didn't practice any formal religion either. But Sunday mornings he used to take me to the Elks Club. That was his church. And boy, how I remember that. I told you we lived in Little Italy. So when you got a name like Duffy, you've got some tough strikes against you already. Because there's a lot of little Watt bastards who want to get a piece of your action all the time, you know? And if we'd walk, you know, down through Lexington Avenue or whichever way he'd go to the Elks that day, it seemed like he knew everybody. He knew the guy in the produce store. He knew a guy in a bakery. This guy's giving a bag of apples. This guy gave a loaf of bread. The guy from the meat department was giving liver for the cat, and somebody from the roof would holler at him. He was always lending people money, collecting money, doing this. And he was just a hell of a guy, and he didn't laugh. He roared. You could hear him ten blocks away when he'd laugh. Oh, oh, oh! And he had black hair used to come out of his chest. And it was like wire. In fact, I remember a little kitten told me up close that it was scratch. And I'd go like that, you know. And he wore a derby. My father wore a Derby. And he knew everything. My father knew everything, anything I asked him, he had the answer for. He knew why grass was green. He knew where the sky was blue. I realize now that everything he knew was probably all bullshit, you know? But as a young kid, his word was everything to me. And I can remember holding that hand. That I remember well, holding that giant hand that would almost just cover everything I had right up. I'd walk down Lexington Avenue with my hands in his hands and none of them would fool with me as long as I had that hand I knew that that if my hand is in the hands of my father I'm going to be alright and you know that's why I consider myself the luckiest guy in AA because I'd get to it any time I wish and in general every morning and every evening to be with my father When I pray, which I pray every morning with my father, and now I know that it's just like being with my Father. That if my hand is in the hand of God, it happens to mean nothing. And when I question God, now I get the same answers that my father would give me. And I know they're true, and I know their truth. And I loved my God as I loved my Father. And as my Father, my God is the most important thing in my life. The power was there. And I took the power and the knowledge of the power with the vision of God, placed them together and I came up with the strength that I needed. I knew now how to turn my life and my will over to this power. Now a lot of people you know And I wouldn't blame them to sit out there hearing me say this and say, well that's all crap, you know. Eastern California, they make up their crap out there and they cannot write scripts about this bullshit. Yeah, you hear that all over, you don't you? Well, that's your problem if you want to think. But I'm a cocky guy at times, you no? And I like challenges and I like to be part of a little tussle, you kno? and so I want to set you a little bit before I get the hell out of here because I'm so cocky that if there sits anybody in this group right now this morning that denies the existence of this God I can almost prove that existence to you that's a hell of a statement to come from a blood-selling whiner with no education but I believe I can if you'll accept the challenge I challenge you I challenge anybody to pray, whether you believe in it or not. I challenge you tonight just for just for a click to call upon some power and talk to this power in prayer. And if you're ashamed to display this apparent sign of weakness you could wait till you're off alone someplace by yourself. Or if you are one of them circumstances where you have to share a room with somebody and it's It's going to bother you. Just pull the blanket up over your head like they do in the penitentiary. That way they'll think you're masturbating. And you don't even have to go like that. And you're not having to get down on your knees. Hell, you can smoke if you want. And here's what I'd like to have you do. too. I'd like to hear you say something like this, Dear God, make tomorrow a better day for... And then you put the name of anybody you want, preferably somebody that you're going to be able to see tomorrow. Dear God make tomorrow a better day for daddy and then put out your cigarette go to sleep I mean you wake up tomorrow morning which will be Monday you keep your little secret with God just between you and God and then I challenge you to observe what takes takes place tomorrow in the life of the person that you pray for tonight. Challenge you. If you need any evidence of that, is there anyone in this room so sick and so full of denial that could deny the strong possibility that we all sit in this world in this morning with some semblance of dignity back in our lives only as a direct result result of someone else's prayer. A mother, father, a child prays. Prayer is not alone in AA. Talking to God is a universal thing. Many people have prayed for you and I and continue to pray for you. So the acceptance was there and the power was there. And the was ashamed. I was ashamed in my drinking career. I have done things that I am horribly ashamed of and one of them has to do with God. I've stolen from graves, stolen from churches and priests and rectories. And when it came mentioned that I had to seek this God, I just couldn't do that. I had that fear that unknown fear I guess that many of us have that if God knows I'm here he's going to do something about that because he wouldn't want a lice like me well I'll see good people like you it's ironic that we meet here in Houston because where I heard the answer that I needed for that particular problem came at the top of Texas Roundup many many years ago in Brownsville, Texas and it was polled by a guy that isn't doing too well now because he decided to drink again. A guy by the name of Talbot Haygood, and I'm quite sure some of my friends here, Clancy, Al, Stanley, and Dottie, certainly all of them must remember Talbot. And I sat down there in that auditorium, if that's what you want to call it. It was more like a pizza oven, full of hate, full of resentment that particular Friday night, wishing the hell the meeting would come to an end and we'd get the hell out of there. And all of a sudden I heard this guy from the podium saying, I had an awful time reaffirming my faith in God. And my head went up. You've heard it often. Especially you'll hear what you have to hear if you keep going. And I was there tonight that God had the thing for me to hear. And I told about a little sharecropping family family that was used as this example of the murder they were talking about. They said their sharecropping family lived in Georgia and tried to make a living out of the soil in Georgia. If you've ever been in Georgia, you know what a problem that would be. Never had nothing, never had nothing. They just scraped a meager living out of the soil each year. And at the end of the year, they only seemed to have enough to harvest the grain, buy the seed for the next year and just get back, just get by. And they were a close family. They were a loving family. And one year after the harvest was in and the bills had been paid and everything had been taken care of, they discovered they had a five dollar bill left over. And they were joyous about that because they were wise enough to realize that five dollars would be a gift. So they decided to buy just one gift that the entire family could share. So a decision was made to buy a mirror, a looking glass. His family had never owned a mirror. Everyone in the family knew the beauty in each other, but no one in their family had the mirror around them or gathered it in the kitchen or around the table. He opened up the package and let the father, the head of the family, be the first to look into the mirror. Now he knew the Beauty in his wife and his teenage daughter and his little son. and when he looked into the mirror and saw himself for the first time he did exactly what elderly mature men would do he blushed a little bit and gave his nose a couple of pokes you know, and pulled with his glasses and pulled on the strap of his overall and blushed the little bit more and he turned and he handed him a mirror to his wife who knew the beauty of her husband and of her children and when she looked upon herself for the first time, she also did what mature women would do. She blushed and fooled with her hair and jumped with the collar on her house soap and fooled us with specks and blushed a little bit and turned and handed the mirror to our teenage daughter who was a beautiful girl who did exactly what teenage girls would do to tee hee and giggle a little and blush and fooled with the ribbon in her hair and giggled some more because she knew the beauty of her parents and of her little brother and then she turned and handled the mirror to her little Brother who was only seven years old He knew all of the beauty in his family. But when he had only been one year old, he had been standing alongside of his daddy while his daddy was milking a cow. And the cow had kicked out and struck that little boy and it kicked him right in the face. And what was supposed to have been an innocent little boy's face was nothing but a mess of twisted, ugly flesh. It was awful, awful. When that small child looked into the mirror and saw what was supposed to be his face, he was in almost total shock. And he pulled back and he ran right to his mother. And like a little boy would say, he said, Mama, I don't know, I can't understand this. Have I always been this ugly? And she said, No, you haven't always been that ugly. He said, But what I really can't understand, Mama, is how can you love me when I'm so ugly? And she said, because you're mine, because you're mind. And that's the relationship that I have now with God as I understand him. See, he besides myself is the only other person who has known me in my total ugliness. When my family was just caused had to turn away from me because of my ugleness. When my friends also was just cause had to turn away. I stood like many of you, alone, bewildered, hoping to make a decision. And you said that God could and would if he was far. And I sought this God as I was told to seek him through prayer and through meditation. And it wouldn't be that self-centered for one bit to think that God himself came upon me and took me by my hand. No, God did it always he went out right amongst you people like you and he selected one of you as his instruments and through you he brought to me this message of recovery for that I'm eternally grateful God bless you and thank you for having me