Fr. Vaughn Q. at Branson, MO November 5th 1983

And at this time, it's my real pleasure to be able to introduce to you Father Vaughn.

The son maketh the clever sky. The earth may kiss the butterfly. The morning dough may kiss the grass.

And you, my friends,

I consider class.

All right

now I really don't know. Honest to gosh, I really don't know where I am. You know, I I speak a little bit funny as if I say the word out about her house. Everybody always asking where do you come from? And my real home is Montreal, Canada. They said, oh geez, up in Canada all they got is loose living women and hockey players. I say watch it, Mark. My 86 year old mother lives in Montreal. Yeah. What team does she play for? Right,

but Put picks me up this afternoon and breaks me to the hotel and hands me this magazine and I said, you know how many people are around here? He tells me. I said I get a little bit nervous and here it is. This is this. It's in your hotel room. Just you don't think I'm telling the truth. Go upstairs and check a travel post. Y'all got one of these? You're staying here, right?

Speech anxiety, common among even the most accomplished speakers. So how you get rid of speech anxiety?

Winston Churchill Winston Churchill said that he used to calm his nurse before speaking by thinking of his audience sitting in their underwear.

Now, do you know how ridiculous you look?

See, I think I don't know what what putt was trying to do to me, but I really feel pretty secure because the pot has to get up at 4:00 in the morning, drive me back at the airport because I have to get back to Detroit to catch another plane to go play hockey on our hockey team. But which I'll talk talk about. But the wise are very charitable. They went out and bought some alarm clocks.

Golfers alarm clocks. That's an in joke and since I'm being taped I'm not going to explain it to you, but it's sure to work.

It's a little candle that you put someplace in the anatomy and with the candle burns down to the right hour, which you've marked, the person automatically wakes up. So use your imagination.

So I feel sure he's going to be up knocking on my door and here because he already had to wake me up once today. Well, yeah. My name is Father Vaughn. Or Father. That's my name, Father Quinn. Father Vaughn. And I am an alcoholic, and that's why I'm here. And I really think this is a fantastically good turnout. My God, You know, 4 or 500 people for your first time at this part of the part of the state

and are you really to be commended on that?

And what we will talk about is all the different aspects of a a of recovery and especially to the new people that are here, the people that are just in the program a short time. You are the most important people in this room

and everything I say tonight will be stolen right out of this book. In in case you haven't seen this,

this is called a big book. OK, because

I, I didn't when I, when I was locked up in a twitch farm

and, and that's how I got in a, a because the nurse said to me,

Oh my gosh, she was a lovely lady. I, I can't even remember her name, but but she was great. She's very talented. This was a nut house and, and talented. Hell, she played defensive end with the Chicago Bears for eight years. And she said that the doctor thinks you should go to an AA meeting tonight in the hospital. I said, what me a Catholic priest with 7° and the holy orals of ordination hardly draw it on my hands because I'd already been there. I hadn't even ordained a year. And I said, oh gosh, I can't go there. Those drunks really go a bunch of drunks and get help.

I said, nurse, go out upstairs and have some shock treatment. I think you've had a psychotic break. And then I said, being a con artist, I said, will that help me get out of the hospital? And she said, yes, it will. I said I'll go, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go. I would have gone to Child Molesters Anonymous that night if I thought that was the way out of the hospital. But somebody had given me one of these books, not this one, because this is the new one. And

and said, read it. And I said, jeez, I got degrees in ontology and epistemology and cosmology. I can't read all this stuff. So I just threw it on my

on my bedside table there in the nut house and

left it there.

Now this was in dire Indiana. And the alcoholic stayed in that nut house 14 days and then they left. Now I stayed there six months. And so they were coming back in for the second and third time being carried in and I'm still there and they're carried in loaded saying, Holy Cadoodle Quinn, you're still here while you're really sick. So I went back to my room and checked in the big book, you know, discharge from a nut house. You know how to get out of a Twitch farm, you know, and that's when I started reading the big book.

And so that's what we're going to talk about tonight in all earnestness. Now there are 45 pages in this book, and here they are page 58 to 103.

Now, if I was to go to the American Cancer Foundation and say I have 45 pages. If the people suffering, whoever ever had to suffer from cancer and all of the families with them and all the human suffering and broken dreams and broken homes and wasted carnage and all the billions of dollars. And I guarantee if people would live by what's prescribed there, never again

they ever have to suffer any of the deleterious effects of cancer. You know, I could sell those pages for about, oh God, 10 zillion dollars. Well, there are 45 pages in this book, page 58 to 103, that absolutely guarantee

on page 85. Nope. 83

that the alcoholic and the person living with the alcoholic, the Alan. I hope there's some good Al Anon members here tonight. You know, because it takes a smart woman to see through her husband, but a good woman to see her husband through.

I always say that and get some friends

con but that's true. The family illness, family illness, family disease and only OK. But if the people will, will live by what is prescribed in these pages, absolutely guarantee

beyond any shadow of a doubt that never again would they have to suffer any of the ravages of what alcoholism is.

And I'm not talking about broken fenders and and turned over auto cars and burned down. I'm talking about the real spiritual ravages, the complete loss of dignity, the complete loss of self worth, the complete loss of any

enthusiasm for life,

for complete loss of self respect, the complete loss of hope, the complete loss of faith, of love. All of those things completely spiritually banker guaranteed

never again would they have to suffer those things. But they could live a very enthusiastic life. You know they should. Everybody should be reading these pages every day because

they're, I believe, divinely inspired and that you can read them all the time and still see something you see. Mines been read a little bit and

I still read him and I go holy cadoodle bond, how come you're still sober? You know, you haven't done that in a little bit of time. I haven't seen that. You know, I underlined something else and The funny thing is in the business, you know, and that is my business is in alcohol rehabilitation and doing an awful lot of

a a responsibility things, which is the capacity to say yes to life. All right. I find maybe about 8%. See, I got a lot of people coming back to me. I run a little treatment center in Detroit

that I started 23,000 Alcoholics ago. So I get a lot of people coming back to me right and they keep saying farther in the half in the bags. I was the best 12 stepper in my group and honestly

I don't know what Hammer and I were to slip and now they're half in the bag and they're saying

wrong. And I say well what's the 12th step? And they say saving other drums. I say no, it is not working with other Alcoholics. I say no, it is not rescuing other Alcoholics. I say no, it is not carrying the medal. I said, that's a third of it.

I said, where's your big book? Oh, my big book. I gave it to my first pigeon eight years ago when he got out of the hostel because he needed it more nighted. So I said, what's the 12th step? Well, OK, so we turn to page 60. Having had a spiritual awakening goes, oh, geez, here we go. I knew you'd do it to me. You priests are all the same, you know, here we go, Bible thumping to me with the spiritual part of the program, you know, all of this stuff. And I'm saying, Oh my gosh, you know, I say, well, what is the spiritual awakening? Did you have her have one? He says

looked all over for God. I couldn't find him. I looked all over him. I never saw him. I saw a few little green men up in the ceiling.

I said, well, did you take your third step with another understanding person? He goes, what, What are you talking about? I said. They turn to page 63.

We found it desirable to take this spiritual step with another understanding person.

The wording, of course, was quite optional,

so long as we express the idea, voicing it without reservation.

That means that means using the voice like the larynx and making voice without seekers, Alcoholics and Al Anon and a lot of people in the world. Kind of like imminent action, you know, It means the idea starts in your head and it ends in your head and no one ever helps know what goes on. Kind of secret life of Walter Mitty, right? And you never have to put your money where your mouth is, right? But this is an action program. It's not a program of ideas,

it's a program ideas. Then add L for love, which means action. And so it comes that we have to put our money where our mouth is and say, hey, this is how I'm going to live.

Here's the measuring stick. And when I'm not living up to these standards, as I said I would with as they're prescribed in the internalization of the 12 steps of AA, but then someone should be able to check me up on that.

I said I didn't do that. I said, well, did you write your four step? Oh, geez, don't write your four step. God, if you write your four step, you get drunk with all that negative stuff, you know, And it's only about 13 times, you know.

In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. That's once on our grudge list, that's twice. Referring to our list, again, that's three times. We place them before us in black and white. That's four times

I said we place them before us in Blackwood. I hadn't got drunk in my office once. Half in the bag again. Who said that doesn't mean write it down?

So I said, oh, it doesn't. So I let him keep talking and then I practiced my banjo chords or something till I saw his lips stop and I said you finished? He said, yeah. I said OK, turn the page. Next page we set them on paper, page 68. I said, now tell me that doesn't mean right. We have we set them on paper, page 69. We got this all down on paper and looked at it

13 times. It's written in here. Set them on paper, cook it down, write it down.

Oh yeah, here's the other one. Well, I haven't taken my 4th step yet.

Know if I am ready for it yet.

Don't know if I have been in long enough yet. How long you been in 18 years?

While my sponsor said that you got to be really comfortable.

Page 64

2 words that tell you when to take the 4th step at once.

No, OK, I were saying this funny, but we're talking about life and death. You see what the problem is, as I see it, is I go all over the country doing a A talks. I just did one down in McCallum, Texas or something. You know, I come in to McAllen, TX and I go, hey, yippee boy, is this ever a neat spot. How's everybody in McAllen, TX?

We're OK

What's happening here in this city, It's really nice. Nothing.

Well, what do you do for excitement? I mean to make life enthusiastic.

Nothing. Well, you go to a meetings. Yeah. Well, what else you do? Nothing

but why don't you? We're Alcoholics

shoved them.

You know, this is not a book on alcoholism. It's a book on a way of life to be a better way of life. You know, when we drank, we thought, boy, that was really where it was at, you know, You know what I mean? You couldn't dance with the darn, but you had three drinks and you made Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire looked like they had, you know, total paralyzed, right? Very shy with the girls and three more drinks and you were throwing more passes and Joe name has ever threw in a football career. Couldn't drive on, you know, five breaks. He drove the car like Parnelli Jones, you know, and GCC.

Even after I was ordained, I had a bottle of Hagen Hague. I preached a sermon. I'd make Fulton Sheen look like at a speech impediment, right.

Everything worked better. Everything. Well, you know, we really wrote a Symphony that's proved which Mozart wrote one without a soul, and boy, it was all great. Then the funny horse turned into funny peculiar and the funny peculiar turned into darn tragedy

and the bottom fell out of our world and now we have sobriety, a gift from God. And I really mean that. I don't know of one person. I live in the third largest county of the United States of America, Wayne County, where .88% of the Alcoholics are getting help tonight. That means 92 No 99.2 are continuing in the progression of the worry and the anger and the self pity and the depression and the lies and the hostility and the hostility and the hate and the revenge and the total stripping of any spiritual values,

dripping of any sense of dignity, of divine origin, of fun, of anything. And how come you and I are in this room tonight? Because of some great thing, I don't know, great idea that we had that I ever said, Vaughn, you better stop drinking. I never said that in my life. They locked me up.

Now I'm a religious Catholic priest of an order. That's much, you know. That means you got a father provincial, a big provincial of he says Beirut, you go.

So he sits me down. I know I'm only it takes me eight years to get ordain as an olive father. It's 363 days later. I mean, I was just getting ready to celebrate my first anniversary when they nailed me and this guy sits me down because all my friends went to him and he read out this tremendous act of all of the things that I had been doing. Our poor father. Koozie bear. He's a big guy, right? I used to call him Kusi bear Father Kushner, and he's reading this thing out and I can see the palpitation of his heart. He's

white shock, right? I mean for a religious priest and only ordained a year. And this is what,

you know, what I said? Is that all he knows?

Those, those amateurs all go to bed at 2:00 in the morning. They didn't know what went on because after that, so I said, he says you're going away, you're sick. I said gladly, I'll go away. I accomplished it. I'll go away for five days. You know, I'll come back and back in Canada I'll get a boat and I'll be a missionary to the Indians. I can reseat.

I stayed away 57 weeks. Not by choice, they just didn't unlock the door.

I never said, hey, I think I'm drinking too much. Hell no, there was nothing on that. Even they locked me up. I said on my parishioners. They're just a little over reacting to my Apostolic seal.

They don't know the fervor I have to stay out all night.

We had a brother wake us up. I used to meet him every morning, a little walk before breakfast. I'd be go up four days straight and it was great. Now all of they know. Then the tragedies happened and and now we have sobriety. You and I have sobriety in the Al Anon families too, and the Al Anons have a freedom, happiness, peace, and serenity.

And unless that sobriety becomes more meaningful, more purposeful, more rich, more fulfilling, with the greater zeal, with a greater enthusiasm for life, with a greater self acceptance, with the greater love of self, with the greater freedom to be yourself, with more purpose of life,

so that you can really see the picture as God painted it, Unless it has all of those great things happening in it, you're going to get bored. You're going to say this all there is?

Design blurs

and we know how to do to change our feelings. We know what to do or change the way we feel. I know a lot of people come to a A and they think a means, you know, go ahead, listen to a drunk log, drink a cold cough, eat a hard doughnut and buy them. They better get me. Well,

that means an awful lot more than that. That's what I really want to deal on as I go all over. You know, I'm saying here we are, You know, people were given a second chance in life or living on a daily reprieve with all of the tools of happiness, a way of life that brings happiness, that brings joyfulness, that brings enthusiasm, that brings us for life.

I mean, so many people,

women, alcoholic. I don't know what to do.

You got a job yet? No. Why not? Higher power? I didn't give me one year

wood wood me words. I'll let my wife work. My sobriety comes first. Who's dealing anyway?

I know guys go to 1980 meetings a week just to get out of the house. You know,

that's not what this program is about. This is not a course on alkalism. I could stand here tonight and talk to you for five straight hours of what happens when a Malomi, an oxidizing Hibbert, gets ingested into your liver as an extraordinary compound of alcohol dehydrogenase, which causes the oxidation of alcohol into a set Aldo, acetic acid, carbon dioxygen, water and the mitochondria in the cells in your liver with the

norepinephrine and serotonin accumulating levels of the brain which caused you 40 and die drunk tomorrow.

It's not what we know, but you people don't give a damn what I know, but you don't even don't even care what I know. But you'd like to know how much I care. Big difference. Big difference. And I'm not here to put on a show. You know, that's my one prayer I make when I'm coming into the room. Quinn, you are not there to put on a show

now. There's people here, you know, and especially the young people in the program, the people just coming in, you know, are screening for a little something to believe in, a little something to hope in and something to love.

And that's really what we're all looking for. And the only way they're going to get it, you know, is through other people in a. And the internalization of the book. Yeah, the going to meetings is very, very important. Very, very important. It cannot be had any other way. And then the internalization of the steps. What's happening inside Bonquin in between meetings? What does this step mean to me today? How about brutal honesty with self?

How about seeking what God's will is for me?

And that's what I want to talk about. Now what alcoholism is is is a conflict between behavior and values in the drinker. Is there a conflict between the Alcoholics behavior and the values in the drinker?

All right, now just to identify, I'm not going to bore you with my

drunk a lot because it's very, very dull. I would took me 8 years to get ordained as the Roman Catholic priest in the oblique fathers. Two days after I was ordained, I was called to say Mass at Saint Mary's Hospital for the repose of my father who had died in 1955. He was the chief surgeon, physician, obstetrics, Guy Collins Gynecology for 26 years. Jacqueline Santo Dana Priest Go to the Catholic hospital. Everybody shows up. You know, 83 nuns, 5000 people of Bishop, everybody showed up. You know, everybody kissing your hands because

newly ordained priests. All of that stuff was going on. And a day later I go out to play golf

and I realized I hadn't played golf in eight years and I've won. Very fantastic thing happened to me. I was a very unhappy hooker, but I went back to what my youth was and said a little pint of Mother Molson's Cure All and that's our brewery in Montreal is all you need to straighten out the hook and bargain. It worked straight, no talk. And that night, being an earlier Dane priest, everybody is very always making a big fuss over you. My sister was throwing a little party for me and I can remember how irritated I got when Martha, who was my sister, who I just left this morning

in Detroit and she went back to Montreal.

This was in 1965 or 6465.

And

she's serving all these drinks. And then, you know, she comes around. She says, well, is it a time put in my glasses empty, everybody else's glasses full. And she said, is it time for another drink? She said, oh, no, George hasn't finished his drink yet. I said, Oh my God, what the heck is George come here for? You know, Lord EB, Lord EB, my drunks all being an oblate father, trained in the missions, adoptable to any human condition. I volunteered to be bartender,

drove my mother home, who at that time was a widow for nine years. And she said, aren't you coming? And I said no, no, a priest is never ordained for his own personal sanctification, but to build the Kingdom of God and be about my father's business. I was thirsty

and I knew it was a good party

and I was on my way to that party and someone had just lent me a car. So I'm driving out to the party and I passed Ruby Poos nightclub, very prominent nightclub, Montreal, where I grew up and hung out when I was an athlete and also working as an account executive and all of those types of things. And I came back, this nightclub and parking lots jam go.

I said my God, how can that place be doing so well without my patronage. There must be a communistic inspired infiltration movement going on in there. You see I was thirsty again, I had 10 minutes to go so I went in. But again, I'm in the province to get back. 85% Catholic but very anti clerical. But being an oblate father who is adoptable to any human condition thing, this comes off that quickly. And the loose Lorna wired a portrait, a sport shirt appeared and goes in. And being shy and an introvert, it took me 18 seconds to get something going in there.

The next thing I know, I'm lying in a hospital. A nurse says, don't swear it. I said, oh, step, they know I'm a priest. And I opened up my eyes and I'm in the hospital and again. And I got a big pain in the back of my head and I finally mustered up enough courage. I said, nurse, what hospital am I in? And she said, St. Mary's Hospital, Father. And that's where I had been two days before, zapping everybody with grace. There I was lying in the emergency room with a pain in my head, not knowing that there are 18 stitches in my head, much less how they got there. Now that's slightly a little bit of a conflict between what I was supposed to be doing as a Roman Catholic,

just spent eight years in a seminary with God's grace to get ordained. A slight conflict. I mean, that was two days ordained.

Now the next 300 days it picked up. And I'm not going to bore you with all of that stuff, but I'm just saying that's how I identify things began happening in my life which I did not want to happen.

And when you're in the Catholic parish and you've got 900 people waiting for the 9:00 Mass and you show up at noon for the 9:00 Mass saying you've been on a sick call, well, the fits going to hit the shin.

And it did

and they locked me up.

I was God's gift to Christendom with my 7° ex pro athlete millionaires kid local boymaiden. There I was standing in my paper suit

when a honeymoon jacket that didn't close in the back. You always have to walk with your back to the wall numbers and a hat in the nut house

wasn't very funny.

Well, we had lots to do. Weed baskets. In fact, I played on a baseball team. The cotton ball was that big. So if you hit somebody, you wouldn't hurt them. I hit that sucker over second base once. I'm running around second base. I meant my own teammate coming the other way. Hi, hi, said. Oh my God, you know,

And he was a big guy, too. I'm only a smile, I said. If we have a tie at home plate, I'm dead right.

I had lost all privileges as a as

as a priest. I couldn't say Mass. I couldn't do anything.

So I stayed there six months. And that's how I got to a A. So I wanted to get out of there. And then after six months there, I went to guesthouse, which is a rehabilitation Center for a Roman Catholic alcoholic priests and brothers in Lake Orion, MI and I stayed there seven months. So my five days amounted to 57 weeks or whatever time. I can't have a little brain damage here. I can't figure it out. All right, So that qualifies me. And that's what 18 years ago doesn't make any difference how long you know, that's it's one day at a time program

to all. You hear those two stories about, you know, the two Alcoholics go and they call on a guy still drinking, you know, and they say, oh, come on. He says, how long have you been sober? And one goes 20 years. And he says the other guy, how long have you been sober? And a guy says two weeks, my God, how did you do it? How did you do it? Right?

Getting back to my friend, you see when I say he's in the bag and he's come to say, well, I've been in a a, I've been to the best 12 stepper in my group for eight years. And I say, well, you know, did you have that? What is the 12th step? And he thinks it's saving other drunks. I'm saying no, it's not having had a spiritual awakening,

I say, well, what is the spiritual awakening? I don't know. I looked all over for God. I looked all over everything. I got prayed and I prayed and I've asked God for all kinds of deals and I held out my hope and asked him to jump through it. No, God, Get Me Out of this jam and is what I'll do for you. I won't drink for two weeks, doesn't work. I said no, of course it didn't work. Look at the spiritual experience in the Big Book, page 569.

That's a very important number for anybody in Detroit, because my address in Detroit is 569 E Elizabeth took me about a day and a half to turn the city around to get that number, but it wasn't that hard because that's really what what AA and Al Anon is all about, the spiritual awakening. And William James, the father of American psychology, spells it right out here. It's an educational process,

an educational process

from the Latin word educari, which means to lead out of a person

educary, to lead out of a person a hierarchy of values, which was one fair

has gone dead, dormant, asleep, defunct

because of the primary illness alcoholism. The progression of that primary illness, alcoholism, that's what's robbed people for this enthusiasm of life, for this self dignity, for this self worth, for self preservation, for self respect, for joy, for laughter. When's the last time you left? Remember, before you came in a

for Al Anon, he hadn't laughed in years. He hung around for a while. All of a sudden you went, Oh my God, what did I do? I laughed. I laughed. I pulled three muscles in my back.

Joy. Imagine if all the joy in the world was dependent on you and I In some days. Who?

And that's what we want to talk about,

the spiritual awakening in order to get to get a sense of your dignity,

to get a sense of the gifts which you have in you. And that's what's going to be brought about by the 12 steps.

You know, AA is an awful lot more than just going to tables and talking about CI. We are all laughing about my drunk log that happened 18 years ago. You know, that was 1964. June of 65 is when I had my last drink. That's got nothing to do with what's going on in 83.

Nothing,

you know, and this is a now program action oriented to the future.

And we want to get, well, it's action oriented to the future, not living with a drunk log that happens in those 5-10 years, 15 years ago, for God's sakes. One thing when you're at AA tables and when you're at Al Anon tables,

share with people how you're getting. Well,

God, so many young people are coming to a now just screaming for something to believe in and we sit there and tell about a drunk log that happened 15 years ago. I smashed a car, I smacked, I smashed the truck. Oh geez, that's nothing. I rolled the bus with crippled children in it all. Can you top this? That's not what the programs about. That's not it. If you are painstaking with this portion of the program, you will know new freedom, happiness, peace, serenity.

Hey Judy, I'm forgetting that page. I'll find it,

but that's it. This is not some type of a masochistic society where we're going to, you know, going to prove, prove to everybody that I'm the most worsest person that ever came on the face of this earth. No, that's not what God created.

All right, all right, you got to be in. I'll be aware. OK, Page 83, If you are painstaking about this phase of the department, we are going to know freedom, a new happiness

with words, serenity, and you will know peace.

And that's what's guaranteed in these programs, in these steps, the internalization of the steps. Now everything I say from now on has been stolen from these pages. Also, everything I say is directly applicable to any alcoholic aged 2 or 200 and also to any Al Anon member, because sometimes I'm giving the a talking to persons going, you didn't do that, you didn't do that. Shut up. You practice your program, I'll practice mine. You take your inventory, I'll take mine.

Cheer program can do it your way,

not

you know, some people pick up the book and they read how it works. Rarely have we seen a person fail who does whatever the heck they want with this program, only taking to heart those things that are going to be convenient, fitting and pleasurable for them to do it. Of course, casting aside anything which might demand a little pain or a little discipline or a little growth,

they're sure to get well. Let it all hang out, be comfortable and enjoy yourself. It doesn't say that.

Hello,

I'm talking about life and death. I am. And it's your life and your death. And it's very, very serious to me. It's the most sacred thing that God's ever given me in life. And I'm putting it in those terms because if I have to tell you the real story, you know, we'd all be here wallowing in the morals of self pity. Because I see, you know, with 23, I have run to my place has what, over 200 beds in it, my place. He's listening to that. You know

the place I which I'm supposed to. I am the director,

but then I got 165 people working. They do the work I play, but I see death every week.

I mean, I'm going to scare you in a way, but you know, scare tactics don't work

as we say that it says. Rarely have we seen a person fail or thoroughly followed our path. Our path. There is a way of getting well and enjoying it and having fun and joining the party. I don't mean in the sense of a hilarious, you know, neat kapha for knee slapping, belly laughing 24 hours a day. No,

but things start making sense in life.

There is a reason to live and a reason to die,

and it's brought up over the shorts and individual program. Sure, it's a selfish program. What that means if Ron Quinn is willing to do the things that are prescribed in this program, go to meetings, read these pages, internalize them every day and say, hey, what does that step mean for me today? What am I really doing about insight? What's my vision of life? How am I relating to other people?

The word morality means a journey of recovery and relationship to other people. That's what the 4th step is all about.

I'll talk about that

doesn't mean that because I'm a priest and because I got all these degrees and because and I'm a director of large center and because, you know, I'm the star of the flying Father hockey team and because I, you know, do all kinds of I have 6 fire trucks, 3 Saint Bernard dogs and my God, you know,

I don't have to do that. Well, I did that in the seminary. I don't have to do that. Well, I did that in the hospital. Don't have to do that. Well, there's nothing me to do.

Go to the meetings and wait for other people to talk.

That's the loser. The loser at the table goes to meeting. You know, the winner goes to lift, goes and listens. A loser waits for his turn to talk.

Straighten these people in,

all right? So no, I'm not here just to do that. You know, really, it's your life. As I fly home tomorrow, bright and early, and I get my hockey equipment and the way I go to Bloomington, IL,

no, that's not I'm not here for. But it's your life and it's very, very sacred. The greatest You are an irrepeatable mystery of God's creation,

the Magnolia Day. And you know the tragic thing. The most tragic thing is you don't realize that. You don't know it and you don't believe it.

If I was to give you all a piece of paper and pencil right now and say write me 10 good things about yourself, you know the saddest thing in the world to be somebody here at dawn tomorrow morning going, oh, I got free.

I got 3.

Does making my bed count? Yeah. Yeah, I got 4. You know, Is that what life is about? Is that what life and loving and living and laughing is all about?

You know, and that's what's side when we're giving it right here and the fellowship and community and people and people to serve. And that's the only way you're going to be happy is to get out of yourself. The biggest pain which you and I have that stops us from living, from loving, from laughing, from growing, is self.

Analysis all the time. Self preoccupation,

Self preoccupation. We become so preoccupied with our own little world, our own little world and what's going to happen to us and me, me, me and I, I, I, poor me, me, me, I, I, I. And we forget. We forget about everything that's going on. And we do. We can't get out of ourselves anymore. And we just get so turned in.

And so that's what the steps are for

also, that we're going to be able to come alive,

that there is hope, that there is joy, that there is fun, that there is a reason to live, that there is purposefulness in life. And that's the only thing I'm trying. You can find it right here. And then practice these things

in the community. See, the first seven steps are AAR to find out what makes you tick in a positive way. You know, not, you know, this may be my best. No, not you all have, you know, irrepeatable. How come all of the psychologists today tell us we only developed 10% of our capacity to hear the beautiful music that is around us? We only develop 10% of our capacity to see the beauty that is around us. We only develop 10% of our emotions to respond in a positive way

situations in which we find ourselves. We only develop 10% of our capacity to love. We only develop 10% of our capacity to laugh, to live,

to suffer with a purpose. How come it means 90% of it goes undeveloped?

That's tragic.

And we're given the answers here

where we can live to be lived. The 90% of it

get out there and you know, make life worth living.

And the answers are here.

So that's what we want to do. That's what I want you to do. That's, you know, instead of saying nothing.

God, the whole AAA program is built that way. You know the first seven steps, what Makes You Beautiful?

I do AA retreats. I'm going soon as I come back from the three hockey games, I take off again the very afternoon and go do an AA retreat. 7A1 people

and we know my Here's the 4th step for those people. What makes you enthusiastic?

Answer that

you'll find out

what's like the boat. The whole thing in AA is to find out what makes you enthusiastic, what Makes You Beautiful, what makes you lovable, what makes you very nice to be around, what makes you fun, what makes it good things in life. I so that you can practice the other five steps, 7:00 to 12:00, which means go back into the community of your marriage, of your relationships, of your workplace, your enjoyment place, your leisure place, whatever, and share it with other people,

relationship to other people.

It's not a ME program,

no.

The 10 commandments are pretty direct, you know? They're kind of like,

you know, it would be nice if you did these things. It's kind of like God saying to you, if you love me, would you really please do these things for me? You know I created you and I'm sustaining you in existence because I love you and I want you to be able to reflect back the beauty of my creation in the twinkle of your eye.

And give a little credit to your mom and dad because, you know, they're the only ones around when you had to come into the world and they didn't have a whole hell of a lot to work with either.

And kind of what belongs to other people, leave to other people. Because if you get sticky fingers, you know, you're going to be in a lot of trouble. And it messes up the juridical system and it makes the docs and the files in the court system last forever, you know, And it just gets very messy and you know.

Be darned discreet where you sleep, because that can get tacky as hell and it can cause all kinds of community relationships, you know? And it's bad. Bad news breaks up, you know,

But this is a lot more direct,

a lot more.

This is a matter of life and death.

I kid you not.

People keep saying, oh, you know, well, how do you do it?

There's no must in a A and I go what?

Page 62.

We Alcoholics must rid ourselves of this selfishness. We must or it kills us. There's two months in two lines and we have to have God's help. There's two months and two lines