The 12th step at the Saturday Morning Live Group in Washington, DC

well good morning everybody and welcome to the Saturday morning live group of Alcoholics Anonymous my name is sandy beach and I'm an alcoholic hi doing this morning

it's really good to see everybody here this morning

and as we do every week why we want to start out by welcoming anybody was hasn't been here before said the thirty morning live group we just hope you get something out of it hope you enjoy it

and we ask you to keep coming back

and if you're a new day if you're just arriving in our fellowship why I just want to tell you that everybody in this room wants you to make it they've all been through exactly what you're going through right now we all sat out there at these meetings in the very beginning wondering how we got here and how do you get out of here and

why do I feel so nervous and afraid and I don't think I'm going to fit into this outfit all of those things and besides they keep talking about not drinking and I don't think that's a good plans and so

although

internal conflict and everything if you will just stick around believe us all of that is going to calm down and there's a lot of wonderful things in store for you you just can't see him yet so take our word for it in this regard your better judgment and stay here that's all that's what we'd like to tell you and then later on you can make a judgment as to whether not all this is happening or not

it's customary to start our meetings with the preamble alcoholics anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problems and help others to recover from alcoholism the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking there are no dues or fees for a membership we're self supporting through our own contributions Hey it's not allied with any sect denomination politics organization or institution does not wish to engage in any controversy neither endorses nor opposes any questions our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety and you'll hear that rather just about every meeting and it serves as a wonderful reminder

all of us exactly what A. S. and what we're all doing here this morning and at about two hundred and fifty other a a meetings today and every day in the Washington DC area so there's a lot of meetings no matter where you live where you work in the morning noon and night time bands meeting women's meeting new name and so there's just plenty available

we got a couple of announcements to get out of the way forward okay if you have been here before let me say that we run the meeting a little bit different than most of our meetings it's done in a classroom setting and we talk about the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous

if you're new you're finding most of our other meetings or speaker meetings and discussion meeting but this was started this type of meeting was started twenty five years ago summers in their

and it was thought that it would be good to have a place where you could go and no I had a time that somebody had been in a long time it's going to Cher on the staff and therefore you can just sit back and relax and you wouldn't have to worry about what you were gonna say

in order to look smart when with your current during the discussion meeting or whatever

and so this meeting started I guess we're coming up on eighteen years somewhere in there

and we've been doing that ever since I think the other meetings all go through the steps three anytime we shifted over to one of the time so the format here and we're on Steph well today and that'll complete the cycle of the steps that will have one week on the traditions of a question and answer thing we'll see whether that works or not

and we have two weeks on the history of a a we talk about how this amount mazing organization got started all the funny stories and back in the thirties and forties

and then we start all over again and so it takes fifteen weeks to run through this whole thing

being on sept twelve today which is sort of the rap of our whole program

give me a chance to kind of review the whole package here this morning so it's a big mouthful to get through

talking about R. twelve step

but in order to even make a beginning at that let me just start because it's always new people in attendance and tell you a few things about our steps and then start talking about step well

I'm sure if you've been in a in a in a week you have seen the step written down somewhere somebody gave me one little card to the surrounding Ferrer and give you some literature and everywhere you go you hear people talking about the steps and may perhaps you've even picked it up and glanced at it and looked at it and like the rest of it you probably didn't relate to it at all you know you just read it in a minute very interesting but I've got a lot more pressing problems in this and I'll get around to that later on it's very hard to see the relationship between those steps and your own personal situation today

and that's not unusual that's very best and what happens to all of us

but those staff

our Alcoholics Anonymous that's what this whole program is those twelve steps

that is what individual members of Alcoholics Anonymous do in order to stay sober and happy

and you have to have both of those things happen I'm telling you that right now your new it is absolutely essential that you get sober and get happy with not drinking because if you don't it's going to be just like being on the wagon it's very hard to stay sober and miserable for any extended period of time that's what we did before we got there yet we price is just not right and make a big sacrifice and we walked around and people would see if it would go on during training you could see the neck muscles in your you kept track at all times you could say and I am address is six hours I mean it was just like a bomb getting ready to go off and use it was Saturday night and you watch and everybody else is drinking and the was it full of self pity and all that that this cannot go on for any extended period of time yes of the staff are designed to enable us to the power of the steps in this program

and not rank and very happy and comfortable with that right

and that is why there is so important to do

now in the very beginning we just hold on Franklin it's Tom but as we start working this programming going to meetings and talking with our sponsors we will be given this wonderful gift of sobriety and at first you may not recognize it as a miracle may not even see what does happen because it happens so subtly

but very often what's going to happen even coming around the stupid meanings for a couple of months and you're you know you're

you're not even telling me by you secretly like got a little bit because that would be cool

but something is going on and then you sort of have met some people and they're nice to you and they seem to understand you and the more people parked the more they seem to have the same problems that you pass

and then something very unusual happened and maybe even come around two or three months and also I need you to Kirsty you thank you for got to worry about drinking last week

you for got to worry about drinking is almost like you had a mental breakdown or something like gun

you have been obsessing about alcohol for years and all of a sudden you forgot to obsess about alcohol last week and you almost feel like writing down

that's about it I mean it's part of our nature it's hard to believe that it could be listed out but that is exactly what a spiritual solution looks like

something that has been bothering you for a long time stop bothering you and you don't understand why

it is very different than the intellectual solutions we've been used to before we came here we're used to problem solving instead problem removing we like to figure things out we assumed we would come here and learn all about alcoholism and we would study and learn what this does to our lives for and what it does to this and what it does to that and instead

we come in here and we surrendered alcoholism we just surrender to it we don't have to learn anything about acceptance gonna kill you drinking

doesn't matter why we started or what causes alcoholism it's irrelevant in the spiritual world because we're simply going to work towards its removal the one thing we know about your alcoholism is it bothers you

or you wouldn't be here it is causing you a problem and and that is your alcoholism whatever it is doing to your life it's probably very similar what it did everybody else's life but it's costing a lot of problems and

this program will show you

the follow that will cause those problems to stop happening without figuring them out now lot of times our intellect doesn't want to accept this kind of an answer

I don't like stuff just being removed I want to figure it out

please see from the west coast talked about it but you know alcohol and alcoholic who was on the Titanic standing up there at this going on during the life boat is sitting right here and he goes I'm not getting off this baby to like figure out what happened you know what I mean I want to know what caused this crash then I'll get off then I can let go of it we have a slogan let go and let god it works a hundred percent of the time we just don't want to let go you mean simply let him off the hook

when we're talking about resemblance to other people yes read on zero

wait a minute

I'm gonna I got a judgment here I got to think this through I don't want to just be free of all my problems

I wanna hold onto until I figure I don't know see you see what I'm saying our intellect isn't used to this type of an approach where you can be set free from your problems but I'm figuring them out we like to analyze everything we like to figure everything out we you will never figure out all this amount they've been trying to figure out Hollis mass and that's the whole purpose and I don't think they're any closer today than they were thirty years ago

I think trying to figure out the hall as the mountain balance similar to figuring sadness out

when they come up with a cure for sadness other than a higher power then on our on the track of the drugs we all knew how to cure sadness back when we were drinking

so anyway we all have the same time and then we come in here and we we are given this plan for a living called the twelve step and the main thing we talk week after week the main thing this plan does

it stops your plan

we have a thing in our chapter five words old ideas a bail that's nothing you and I put together a plan for living before we got here and it was a combination of our childhood and things we learned in school and things we learned from other kids and things we learned off the bathroom walls and things we learned in movies and things we learned in churches and all kinds of stuff to put together in our head and that was our perception of the world we put together some rules for a living and that with your little code of how to live

and most of us we're proud of our code because we put it together

but what's pointed out when we come in today and

we don't analyze your code at all we don't even want to hear about it

what we do observe are the results of your plan for a living

and generally they are through good

if you pay every day you have no friends you're afraid of your own shadow your family doesn't want to speak to the police are looking for you bill collectors looking for you all over the place you're thinking of suicide

I just want to hold on to the plan you know you see what I'm talking about

actually it's basically a pretty good plan it's just a few little areas that need and

and from my perspective if we feel you should get a far away from that plan if you

that's our feeling

and so when we start this yeah I do trying to live by the twelve step one of the great thing that happens is we stop doing the old plan stop living that way and try this and so that's one of the big pluses the other thing is this plan gets wonderful results so you don't compare the theory of your plan for living with a theory we compare the results of your plan namely you

with the people in AA who stand up and tell you I've got three months I've got six months I got five years I'm not brown and lined up tell their stories is the big show Intel operation you get to look at the results of the plan today meetings all the time so it's not that big a leap of faith at all

and then we make the statement chapter five if you want what we have this is how you get there just to the east well staff so that's what the steps are really the heart of the whole program for individual members of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the sponsors and all the rest of these things this is the atmosphere within which we encourage and pushed each other to keep doing the steps because no matter how long you been sober the steps will never looked like they were

they don't look like they were

meetings don't look like they were church doesn't look like it works K. it doesn't look like I'm gonna walk in there and then when I walk out I'll feel better now I mean but on the other hand a bar didn't look like it should work

it it

this is probably place the people who don't drink and they wonder why people go into bars I would you go in there why would you go in there

wonderful things happen when you go in there that's why you go in there I go in there to get a power inside of me that makes the world look wonderful why wouldn't you want to go in there and make the world look wonderful well the same thing happens here it just doesn't look like it should work needed in the steps now the only other difference is this takes longer to work it's not an instant change like alcohol and drugs were we went

so you have to be patient but it will work it is promised in our promises that all of these things will come to pass it won't take that long it just takes a complete willingness to let go of our old way of living and try this new way so now having said all that

we get to the door way into this whole thing and we've heard instead it's a spiritual programs so

that's scares most of us right back out the door because we're not very familiar with anything spiritual we may have had some religious

bad experiences as program or something and we've long since abandoned that or we stuck with it and are convinced that it doesn't work because we've been drunk all this time so we have old ideas about religion but we had very little knowledge most of us about spirituality as separated from religion and this is spiritual programs for them there is no religion here

religions are and he knew about a higher power and tell you what this higher power is what his name is in the history of it and all these things Hey we don't have any of that we used to have a higher power as you understand

so it's going to be up to near the termen what this higher power is but what we have

arson Hines has the principles that are common to many religions philosophies and the early experience today itself and these principles if followed will put you in touch with a power greater than yourself and then you can explain yourself with this power is but you will see you

will experience some changes in your life that are not attributable to anything other than spirituality and if you choose you can try to explain it and go back to the church and and you'll have your explanation for many of us it remains the power of the universe the paper saying and we're we're not is curious about what this power is we know this power by the results that we've achieved in our lives and so if you ask me what your definition of my own personal higher power I would tell you well it gave me this anything that you need that so my higher power is whatever gave me all this they can see we don't have to get hung up on is this higher power right now one's wrong right all of that we just thank

the reason and we talk a lot about this Hey that's not try to prove the existence of god

you're trying to do that we don't try to convince anyone of the existence of a higher power Hey what we do do and we're very good at this we specialize in convincing you of the need for a higher power

that's our position and we have found that as soon as people are open to the idea of a higher power because they need it because if there isn't a higher power it's all over

we talk often about our first and second step being powerless over alcohol being very similar to a person

for whatever reason maybe they were born into a family and perish you readers and they watched him put in the still in there and they saw that sometimes they were wrong and sometimes they were smoking and sometimes they were **** around and I just came to believe that it wasn't safe to use a perishing because they saw a pack so they were sort of non believers and they went through life and he was

no way I'm never going to do that I've seen impact and I'm never going to ever ever

have my life rest in the balance of the perish you

hello someone threw him out of a plane one day

what issue down and you're on your way down in your mouth

and someone sick yes

right you just pull the record anyway

even though you don't believe anything's going to happen what if you got to lose by pulling that

other than being wrong

some of us would go head

because he wouldn't wanna look bad

you didn't see me again and change my mind

and we think they're going to write a rock and roll song about us

well the guy hung in there all the way to the end what I hear what all right and if they do write a song it's called what an ****

so this is how our spirituality begins in AA and we come up against a situation in our personal lives through our drinking we were

hi

yeah we'll just stop

we're about to hit the bottom and that's what our first that says you're powerless over alcohol your life is a manageable

and when you say you're powerless when you understand it or not what you S. said is unless there's a higher power shrewd

that's a powerless says it doesn't say I have to go study and learn a bunch of things or it's all over because that's not what it says don't say your payment about alcohol it says you are our lives over alcohol

and so unless something comes along to take care of that you're going to keep drinking and you're gonna die brown

that's what being powerless is

so it's a good time to change your mind about a higher power

under those conditions and so that's why we specialize in convincing people of the need for a higher power and we talked about that first step because if you don't take it a hundred percent no programa work it just won't work because it's not intellectual program program if you know hopefully surrender if you aren't one hundred percent alcoholic if you think that I like all the rest of the low brows in this room

you have sort of an alcohol situation

you see what I'm saying

the rest of my can see they're they're all screwed up but what I have is sort of situational mallet judgment to alcohol due to unusual childhood circumstances and coming from New England so that could be

whatever the hell it is

so you use it in the middle of meetings sort of separate from the rest of the crowd that you don't tell him that you're one of seven so you sit in there but in your mind you're just a little bit different almost the same as everybody here you're almost an alcoholic almost need a higher power you almost need to sponsor you almost need to do the step and you almost get sober

you just missed it by that much and of course almost getting sober is like almost having a perish you

you're almost damned thing

it's it's the same as never having heard about a folks

and so that's why we say we have to do that first step one hundred percent hold Lisa render to the fact that we're out of that warehouse over alcohol

and that means we're powerless when we don't have any alcohol in my system

a lot of times we have to explain that the new people the problem is not that when you drink you get all screwed up the problem is when you're sober and you understand everything there is about yourself and your problem

you still take the first right and there's nothing that can stop me from taking that first drink that flipping powerless over alcohol is alcoholism of hers when there's no alcohol in your system

alcoholism occurs when there's no alcohol in your system in the drop

and any alcohol in your system for a week now alcoholism attacks and see you

go have a drink because life is so unbearable you need relief from life and besides this time it's going to be different

this time you're not going to get in all right problem this time are you going to get all screwed up again

and that's a P. powerlessness and believe me there's no way to get out of that on your own so we surrender to that J. your mind about a higher power and then our whole a journey thanks that's the step well the whole point of joining Alcoholics Anonymous and moving all the way through the steps and Haynes into words in the beginning of our twelve step and begin our twelve step says having had a spiritual awakening as the result of the steps required to Kerry this message alcoholics and to practice these principles and all our players

and he word is spiritual awakening having had a spiritual awakening as the result of the steps

so the steps starting right from the beginning are designed to do one thing

because the spiritual awakening so what do we mean by that is that some great books catches on fire in front of your eyes you know wow look at that

no that is not what is meant by that what is meant by a spiritual awakening is a profound personality change

we're a person goes from being a frightened angry resentful negative person whose view of the world is one of great turmoil and trouble into a very positive person whose view of the world and very positive white happy and joyful

and nothing in their lives change they still don't have a guy are they still are going through a divorce or they still haven't found their financial problems and they're still going to the doctor for some health problems but for some unexplained reason they're happy about it

there positive about it so the person change from this one personality to the other personality and there's no external reason for this change so it must have taken place in sign

eight

man this this location has bill wrote about how young was trying to call and rolling

takes place as a result of the meeting and the staff and recall it for lack of a better word a spiritual awakening

and it comes about as a result of taking the steps

so bill right well that

the rest of the staff our how we prepare ourselves to receive this dear because it is absolutely again yes give them free Lee anyone who makes themselves ready to receive it I think it's been there waiting to be handed to each one of us we just we're in not in a position to receive it it reminds me a little bit of the mail service you know if you live out in the country wherever it is and you won I have mail delivered to you got to put a mailbox up they got certain standards and sizes and put on a post in but on the road with a guy drives fine you have all this and maybe an alcoholic might just say again that just thrown on the lawn I don't need to go through all the trouble of building that just product rap off I'm thinking about there but that's not how the deal works if you don't

have this mechanism for receiving it then they won't deliver it you

and we made a claim I never hear any mail

no one never writes to me you see what I'm saying everyone else gets mail but I don't and so when we close ourselves off spiritually all the wonderful things that spirituality can bring none of them can get in

pausing us honestly feel they don't exist

no higher power or

it is very well they don't feel any you're all I come roaring through my life I don't think that's that's the real

and from your perspective my perspective well I got here it wasn't real I never had a glimpse of any of this so it caused me to think that people were making stories up or that they were different and I was or something was crazy what's going on

but I

I have a thing called free well which allows me to black out anything even a higher power I can block out but I can't block out the need for a higher power even as I block out a higher power

the pain of not having a higher power inside of me magnifies and I think a lot of times that's why a lot a lot of us alcoholics think about committing suicide and something inside of us is telling us that life is unsatisfactory that something is missing in our lives and it's and we can't go on without it and we miss diagnose what's missing and we think it's we think it's another relationship well we think it's money we think I gotta move tell why

I was there man this pain would be gone and it turns out that we missed diagnose the pain and the pain was spiritual pain

what was missing was a higher power what was missing was part of ourselves the spiritual side of ourselves as being left empty and it felt like it was mine and it felt like it was sexuality or not like it was power or whatever it may be that those were all wrong because many people whoever team these other things like the money was they still talk about

it's still not there and even in those circumstances with everything you could want people walk around miserable because they have an address what's really missing

so that's what the steps are designed to do is make us eligible for open if you will you're receiving this N. as we study our steps we find out that all the rest of the staff talk about removing obstacles to the flow of a higher power that's what inventories and Schering

yes they are blockages the three of a higher power in our lives

and so we got to set about figuring out how to get him out of the way and how to keep this channel open so that we are never deprive higher power coming into our lives it's almost like and and when we went resentments when things come along that upset us and we come to channel we start raining in other things

happened that happened really all that happened was we got cut off from our higher power almost I get cut off in a bar that's the worst thing that can happen in a bar right oh eight coming here anytime you want no drinks

why would I come here I mean then you

me off from you know it's kind of like going in the business I'm in the hospital I'm standing on their oxygen hose

doing your own doing pretty good well it's good to see you

well I don't know who I should call the doctor is going to get all the symptoms and trying to diagnose the whole thing is finally start stepping on the holes here

and all these other problems look like that we may need several new specialists and all kinds of things that we misdiagnosis of it yes

and the same thing here we just go around diagnosing all the problems that we have I got this I got that and then that's not it stepping on the homes down here get your foot off of there and if we come back to me and when you study steps well and bill talks about all the different problems that can come into our lives is one answer it just keeps coming back to this one answer they just roll more spiritually grown more spirit that's the first things first name in our slogan

is to learn how to put

here if you will

part of our lives ahead of everything else what is suggesting is if you will change the way you live to make a high priority of always checking your spiritual condition first and then take another look at all other areas here live you'll find those other areas right now by themselves

if they weren't the ones that needed attention that this was the

but it doesn't look like that it'll never looked like that and that's why we keep coming back to the meeting to remind each other of this I always tell a story about when I first got sober

and I guess I had two years of sobriety was a meeting every single night

in the marine corps so office to release me I was making a career I've fourteen years information service and they just said goodbye

well I thought I got screwed I mean I really thought that if you went to a meeting every night for two years this shouldn't happen that I should've turned my life around and run around

so I went to one of these discussion meetings and you know how the leader has a topic but he always says is there anybody here was something that

I got my hand I never raised my hand one of those places but I was so damn upset with this team since then I decided that I was going to bring it out here in the gaming so I raise my hand yeah I got a topic getting thrown out of marine corps that's my topic

so the group sort of cost a little bit and thought and finally some guy raised his hand in front of me for surrounding prior

that's obvious answer that serenity prayer I remember giving him that look you know

what about it god damn job you know you you know

I want to hear this

whatever that kind of advice you're given as I need something practical here you know it's ready for whoa whoa so anyway next person as a hand up report I would double up on your meeting a lot of time anyway double up on your

double up on the meeting you know

next person said thrown out of marine corps

work with new people get your mind off yourself we'll get a new person and and just help them with their program thanks a lot you know that last time oh oh not a ring for prayer Saint Francis right out of the eleven staffers Saint Francis perfect thanks again for another room for

I sat there and put all this in and said I'm getting a new home group that's what I

the

the predominant thought in my mind was I don't think I explained the problem right

I got to go home and take a course in communication because I obviously failed to communicate my problem or they nearly given me that kind of

what is that they just told me I mean it was just crazy and they told me that well so another

eight years went by I never raised my hand at this documentary at eight years I got straightened out and got the job done on all of a sudden

terrible things I'm suddenly being divorced another guys moving them out I go what is this all about going to meetings every day nine years from above last discussion waiting popping

topic

first guy from your house serenity prayer that's what you

next

in order to go double up on your meeting

your house work with somebody you get your mind off the network with somebody new last guy Saint Francis anything to get thrown out of the house we're saying France

perfect thing to do

six years went by and never raise my hand again one of those meetings and I was in the real estate business and my name on the mortgage money drying up I need money and I'm gonna be going into bankruptcy though a lot of years of sobriety and I'm just going to stay in school so I went in there I need some money so I was just drop at the meeting

going into bankruptcy

that's supposed to happen to nice people

you know what happened first bankruptcy

trending for

and bankruptcy and bankruptcy double up on a minute just don't put anything in the collection

work with me all right

the last thing pressing Francis so what we got here we got just one answer one answer

for all problem one answer for all from

does seem possible that's impossible there anybody in here started going one answer for all problems I find that difficult to believe you do I thought you were an alcoholic

what did you do before you got here did you have one answer for our problems are not

well I

I never remember having a problem all right boy here's one problem I won't be drinking over

one

so we already know about that while I was sitting here resisting that

one answer from problems that's what this was what all the steering wheel on the process understand

so if we went to this we can have this thing called a spiritual awakening spiritual waiting this personality change put in touch with the fact that this is amazing I read spirituality explained it mid town one night many years ago when the younger people started coming in more and more numbers and all of a sudden there was something like a sixteen year old girl is sponsoring a fourteen year old girl and she was explaining spirit well she had three years sixty years old has three years of sobriety and she's explaining spirituality to the fourteen year old as well as I ever heard explain his work right now and she said their work

basically saying paraphrasing what Clancy says that we end up making a series of actions that we don't believe in

first we don't believe in him because you can't believe them the last thing you do it

that's base is all about so we Hastings action even though they don't make sense to us ahead of time anymore than drinking made sense nine

the drinking look like they could show you how to dance

really looks like that

are you can how can you just just

yeah

and there you were just saying

you intuitively knew how to handle situations that use the map for you so one answer for our problems is that

and so that's what the second half of that stuff one is a problem but I did leave out the

Kerry the message alcoholics and that doesn't really need a lot of explaining because I think that comes intuitively

good news it's up inside you experience it personally

really do want to Cher I've never met anybody who didn't want to go give this good news for the next alcohol if it just needs to come

and is a wonderful lessons to be learned about yourself when you experience this when you find yourself running over you've only got too much to hear some guy with one week and you can see that he's right where you work six weeks ago thinking of leaving you have the most power to stop him up anybody else that needed some thirty years those are and proximity

is this weird guy but if somebody comes over with one more than him Hey pal I just got here a month and a half ago myself but let me tell you what's going to happen and you can tell him what he's going to feel like the next three weeks and everything he's not coming to you like glue

and this is tremendous power that you have we have the power over someone else's life you can exert a tremendous amount of good in someone else's life

the strange thing about spirituality is all of the very negative the worst parts of you that you couldn't stand

turns out to be your special yeah the same the next person because that's what they connect with they connect with your possible pasts and the recovery that you've made and that's why you can talk to them one six hi Christine

so it turns out our alcoholism all the ugly bill C. Brockton pass that we have is the wonderful spiritual here that we pass on to the next person and that's why they cling to us

they know we came out of saying cesspool that they're trying to get out of and so isn't it ironic that that very awful park turns out to be the most wonderful thing that we can pass on and we just go home with me I've been exactly in that hole that you're in I can show you how to get out and is a wonderful joy in wanting to do this now when that happens do you think about it

what is that in you that is reaching out to these people I thought you were self centered selfish

no good who cares about the rest of the world person maybe you're not bad at all maybe all that is just not the real you maybe for the first time in your life you are seeing what the real issue is it's a loving person it's not a heating person that's the wrong you that's why you're in so much conflict that's not who you are you are just like everyone else in this whole world a child of a higher power wow thank you love and it's been blocked by old ideas and buy whatever got us here in alcohol and all those things but the real you is going to be exposed by these twelve steps and Kerr is this spiritual awakening and because all these wonderful things that happened in this journey in work and that's what this sobriety is a during the N. word canny closing I I just when I always like to read something at the other I pasted in here first of all the last few sentences out of our big book