The topic of "How AA Really Started" at the 2000 South Bay Roundup

Thing that was available was religion. And one of the fun things I I'm I'm afflicted with a number of problems, and one of them is is that I love to read. It was the first escape that I ever had, and I love history. And, I have a friend up in Santa Barbara who's a book binder, and he's a Franciscan monk. And, I needed a bible, and he bound this bible that was from 1905.

And it's just a gorgeous, gorgeous piece. And, in it was this temple splice. And so before Alcoholics Anonymous, guys like me, what what we were offered was something like this. We hereby solemnly promise god helping us to abstain from all distilled, fermented, and malt liquor, including wine and beer, bummer, to employ all proper means to discourage the use of and traffic in the same. What an order.

I can't go through with it. This this afternoon, what I'd like to talk about is the Oxford Group, who the people were and what it is that they believed in. Because I I believe that in knowing where we come from, we get a better understanding of who we are. And so this is kind of a story about who it is that we are. And what I'm going to do is, I'm going to share with you a lot of different things that I've been fortunate enough to, to read over the years.

And one of the things that I need to share with you is about my friend, Dick Burns. And Dick Burns has done a lot of marvelous books on AA history, and the most important thing is that he's a person who has done a great service to the fellowship in his archival and almost megalomaniacal pursuit of what exactly happened. I mean, this is a man who's willing to sit for days and days at a time and go through every page of Sam Shoemaker's journal to find out where it was that Sam said that Bill Wilson came in the office. Remarkable. And anyway, so one of the things I'd like to recommend to you is a couple of his titles.

And, the one that that today were, that I found very, very helpful over the years was a new light on alcoholism. Sam Shoemaker and Alcoholics Anonymous. The Oxford Group was a semireligious, but informal movement founded by Frank Buckman in 1921 while he was an undergraduate doing some undergraduate work at Oxford University. The name was first applied to the group in South Africa. There were a group of them from England, from Oxford that were down doing some missionary work, some conversion work with people.

And a guy from the newspaper looked at the train car that they were on and there was a little sticker that was put on there to identify their car and it said the Oxford Group. So we took that. And it was short and it was easy to describe who this group of people were. So kinda stuck. But they actually never had any affiliation with Oxford University, of any kind whatsoever.

Can you hear me okay in the back, Dottie? Okay. The professed purpose of The Oxford Group was to solve personal, national and international problems by bringing men and women everywhere back to the basic principles of Christian faith while enhancing all of their primary royalties. This definition comes from an old encyclopedia called the Lincoln Library. And in the Lincoln Library, published in 1955, it's very interesting.

There's 3 paragraphs on the Oxford Group and there's 1 paragraph on Alcoholics Anonymous. It goes on to say that without organization, membership, subscription or definite creed, the movement rapidly obtained adherence in nearly all countries of the world. This isn't just a, you know, a strange little band of folks in in England and in and in, and in New York and and Ohio. Particularly in the middle and upper classes and was accorded recognition by leading figures in many governments. Adopting the name moral rearmament in 1938, the leaders of the movement sought by the spread of its principles to stem the tide of hostilities.

These men and women felt that it was their mission to try and stop the evolution that became the 2nd World War. Now I'd like to read you the Oxford Group preamble. This is from a book called what is the Oxford Group, and it's available from Hazelden Press. You cannot belong to the Oxford Group. It has no membership list, subscription, badge rules or definite location.

It is a name for a group of people who from every rank, profession, and trade in many countries have surrendered their lives to God and are endeavoring to lead a spiritual quality of life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Oxford Group is not a religion. It has no hierarchy, no temples, no endowments. Its workers have no salaries, no plans but god's plan. Every country is their country, every man their brother.

Sound a little familiar? Every historian has their conceit. And what I want to share with you is is that I'm not here to tell you that something is right or that something is wrong. All that I want to do today is try and expose you to the language and thoughts that our founders synthesized and used in order to found Alcoholics Anonymous. The leader of the Oxford Group was a gentleman by the name of Frank Buckman.

This guy was nominated twice. Once before the 2nd World War for trying to stop it and once after the 2nd World War for, the work in trying to get nations, not individuals to, to reconcile with each other. He was decorated by the governments of France, Germany, Greece, Japan and the Philippines for his work after he founded the Oxford Group. In 'thirty eight, they changed the name officially into moral rearmament. And it's really interesting that this group and I'll touch on this later, was equal he was equally vilified by hawks and doves, labor and management, liberals and conservatives, fascists and communists all over the world.

Everybody just like this guy that had any agenda. Frank, for for the purpose of this story, in 1907, Frank has been an ordained Lutheran minister for about 5 years. He's been involved in in church work in Pennsylvania. He ran a boys' home, And he went, he got involved with this boys' home and he grew it so much. There were so many folks that were coming to it.

So many young men. They were given a place to eat, a place to take a shower, they were given Bible instructions, they had fellowship meetings, And they were given a place to stay and they were fed. And the thing got so the response to it was so great there in the slums of Philadelphia that, the board that he was working for got upset because there was all this money going on. And they decided that what they were gonna do was that the best thing they could do to save money was to cut the rations that the boys were eating, and Frank got upset with that and he quit. And he decided, well, he's gonna go off and he's gonna spend a year in Europe preaching and and studying and and meeting with other people.

And, while he wasn't and he kept trying to do personal work, trying to convert individuals. And, what happened is is he wasn't having any success. One day, he's in he's in Keswick, England, and he's listening to the Salvation Army woman talk about the cross of Jesus, and he has this image of a big I, the letter I. And he came to believe that he saw in that moment what his problem was. It was himself, his ego.

And that what he had to do was he had to get right with God and himself if he was ever going to be any use, if he was ever going to be able to preach effectively. So what he did was is he went home that night, and to the 6 members of this board, he wrote them letters of amends. And he said, I've harbored ill will for you. Please forgive me. And the most amazing thing happened the next day.

He was walking and talking with the kid, and the kid asked him about this inner life that he had, and he had his first experience of sharing with someone in over a year. And this this kid made a decision for Christ. And And so what happened is that Buckman believed to the very core of his being that what was most important was that, that a person had to get clean first in order to have any kind of a spiritual life. From 1907 on, he started to go out to different countries preaching this message, and the message generally he was preaching was to people who were involved in missionary work. And the last slide that we showed was of him in 1915 meeting with the Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhi said that Buckman's work as in the Oxford Group and later in Royal Re Armament was the most important movement to come out of the West. This is a man who between 1912 1961 when he died had contact with just about every major political figure in the West, some in a few in Eastern Europe, in Africa and in South America, trying to talk about working a set of spiritual principles. Later on, what happened is that, he went back to Frank went back to Pennsylvania and he became the, the head of the Young Men's Christian Association at Penn State University. And there he was in charge with with, helping with the moral life of the of the students there. And, in 1922 in in Penn State University, there was a lot of drinking going on.

A lot of drinking going on. And at the time, only 15% of the young eligible men were members of the Young Men's Christian Association. And, so he was trying to figure out what he could do. And Frank came to believe that the way to confront any group was you find the most outrageous sinners, and those are the people that you approach. And at Penn State University, there was a gentleman and his name was Bill Pickle.

And Bill Pickle was the son of a bootlegger and was a bootlegger, and he was a tough, mean, nasty, irate guy. And he said when Buckman started doing personal work at the university that he'd just as soon stick a knife in him as to breathe the same air that he breathe. And one day, Frank's walking along with a guy that he's trying to pass the message on to, and they see Pickle. And he knows that if he doesn't approach Pickle, that he's gonna lose this guy. And he's scared to death.

And he walks up and he approaches his line and he says, Bill, Pickle turned around to him and he said, we've been praying for you. And the story is that all the fight went out of the man's face. And over the next 3 weeks, he went around to some other meetings that that Frank was going to. And Bill made a decision for Christ, and he quit drinking, and he quit bootlegging. And nobody could believe it there at Penn State University.

The connection went to the other side. It was horrible. And Bill Pickle never took another drink in his life, and I believe that this is where the where the the slang term being pickled comes from. It's actually from him because over the next 4 years here and there, he would actually go out with Oxford Group teams and testify to what happened in his line. And what happened with Bill is, is that Bill couldn't read or write and he sat down and with Frank and he shared the things that troubled him the most.

And for Bill, it was the way that he treated his wife and his family. And he wrote Frank wrote these letters to the children and to his wife, and, the guy's life just changed. When we talk about Buckman, we're talking about a Lutheran minister. So we're going to talk a lot of Christian stuff. That's all this is.

You know? And what we are is is we're the outgrowth of this group that believe that there was absolutely no problem, no human problem that cannot be addressed by spiritual means. And what we've been able to do is take their vision and expand it a little bit. And we have a movement now that encompasses what? Maybe 500 different, anonymous fellowships all over the world.

The same solution of applying spiritual principles to personal problems. But what, what Buckman saw was that the big thing that got in between people and god was sin. And what Butman defines sin as was, was anything that got between you and god or that got between you and your fellow man. And in this wonderful book, the the Oxford Group authors had great titles. And, this is for sinners only.

I'm qualified to read it. And then it this is you know, we we sit around and we think, how can these monks have put up with all this Jesus stuff? Well, you know, we have to remember what the country was like in those days and who these people were and how they were raised, but also that this was a dynamic message that people hadn't heard before. Buckman described, sin was anything contrary to the will of god, and that he said that there was no complete catalog of sins for everybody since what was sin to 1 might not always be sin to another. Sin might be drunkenness or pride, murder or dishonesty, selfishness or refusal to love god or one's neighbor, coveting another man's wife, or loving the husband of another woman.

It might be overeating or vain boasting or over calling your partner a bridge. It might be graft or greed, pugnacity or fear, waste or meanness, aversion or perversion. Such sins and all others were included in the one major sin of independence toward god who should be first, last, and at all times sought as taught in the 10 Commandments in the New Testament. Now Frank actually people would say to him, you know, well, is this a sin? Or or what do you think about this?

And what what Frank would say is, he said, you should do anything that god lets you do. Remarkable. Now what Frank would do is is that he would work with people and they call them personal interviews. And these people would go through a set of spiritual exercises. Oh, okay.

Yeah. And what I'd like to do is share with you the steps of The Oxford Group. The Oxford Group had 4 steps that they believed that anyone who applied them to their lives would have the ability to have a spiritual regeneration. The first one was the sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian life given to god and to use sharing as witness to help others still unchanged to recognize and acknowledge their sins. So they're doing steps 45 first to clear you up so you can do what we call step 3.

They said surrender of our life past, present, and future into god's keeping and direction. The third step, that thing which could finally clear us up so we were able to have a spiritual experience was restitution to all that we have harmed directly or indirectly. And finally, the fruit of that work is, therefore, step, listening to, accepting and relying on God's guidance and carrying it out in everything that we say, great or small. Men and women started to do these things, and they started to change. One of the things they used to call the life the Oxford Group was the life changers or the soul surgeons.

And they'd actually say stuff like that. The life changers are coming to town. And what would happen is is that Butman would get together a group of people, normally people that wouldn't next. There'd be a a society housewife and maybe a star athlete. There'd be a a German count and maybe a British noblewoman, a guy like Bill Pickle, a normal housewife.

And they would send a team, and they called it the reason that that, Butman said that he liked to work in in teams was is because that's what Jesus used, which he had a team. And what these teams would do is they would go into a town, and they would carry the message. They would get up, and they would tell their stories, what they used to be like, what happened as a result of working their steps, and then what their lives were like now. And one of the great things for us is is that in 1931, a guy by the name of, Bud Firestone met a man by the name of Samuel Shoemaker at an Episcopal Bishop's Conference in Denver. And on a train line out of that, Bud worked those steps, and Bud, who was a horrible alcoholic's obsession to drink was removed at that moment that he did his sharing his his 4th and 5th step, his first step with Schumacher.

And from that, I mean, his family was amazed and the family doctor even called it a medical miracle. The family was so grateful that what they did is, is that they contacted after watching the guy for a while and seeing that he actually had changed. They actually invited the group to come. And so a team came to the town of Akron where the Firestone family was, and Frank Buckman and a group brought their message of working these steps to that western town. Mhmm.

And what happened is is the message was heard by some men and women. And the people that were sitting in the audience were t Henry and Clarence Williams, Henrietta Seiberling, Bob and Anne Smith, the reverend Walter Tuntz, James Newton, Roland Hadid. All these folks, well, not all of them that are here, but this is a list of the major players. And and after the talk today, if you want, we've got some, we've got a list of these people with little bios and, some notes about what it is that we're talking about today. So if you enjoy them, we'd be happy to make them available to you.

So what would happen is is the team would come in. And one of my favorite stories about The Oxford Group is is that in 1933, an Oxford Group team, went through Canada. K. This is the height of the depression. There are 60 people.

They never had more than more than a week's expenses. Frank never collected money. He never asked for it. It was people like Firestone saying, you know, I'd like you to come. Here's some money.

We'll rent the hotel. It was the voluntary contribution to people who were at the meeting. They never passed a hat. And for 8 months, this group of people went back and forth across Canada, sharing this message. It started out when it started, there were like 3,000 people at their first meeting in Ottawa.

By the time they got to Vancouver, 30,000 people are showing up to listen to these people. Now in Akron in Akron when Buckman and the gang came, there were 1600 people that showed up for those meetings, which is just stunning. Anyway, The other thing I'd like to tell you about Buckman is the kind of guy that he was. He believed that the people that were closest to the flame, the people who had been converted the earliest were the ones that had the best message. Give me a man that's 30 days sober.

Does anybody give a better pitch than the guy who's got or galley who's got their 1st year birthday? You know, we really ought to record it so we can give it back to them later on down the line. But, anyway, here's a description of Frank. Sir, Arnold Lund, the author and inventor of the Tlalum and downhill races in skiing, used often, to criticize Buckman in his books. Later on, he went to the Morrill Re Armament Center in Switzerland to study Buckman and his work at first hand.

Thereafter, he went there most years over a 10 year period, probably because he enjoyed the company, yet still Buckman puzzled him. And he's talking about Frank. Right? He has no charisma, I can see. He isn't good looking.

He's no orator. He has never written a book, and he seldom even leaves a meeting. Yet statesmen and great intellects come from all over the world to consult him, and a lot of intelligent people have slept with him full time without salary for years when they could have been making careers for themselves. Wow. Life changing, soul surgery, a a mission, a pleasure beyond description.

When we talk about Buckman, one of the things that's really important to do is is to understand that this guy at one time, he's on a bicycle. He's he's he's in England, and he's and he's riding his bike at night, and he gets struck with a very, very loud voice. And it says, you will be made you will help to remake the world. Guy was 45 years old at the time. And when we look at what it is that he did with his life, you have to understand that that's what he was doing.

Every decision he made, everything that he tried to do was in pursuit of that vision of remaking the world. What it was that The Oxford Group taught and studied isn't anything brand new. They had the 5 c's, which I'll talk about in a minute, the 4 absolutes. They recommended reading first Corinthians, chapter 13, and they absolutely insisted on quiet time. Absolutely.

And in fact, when you take a look at the our literature, and and what it is that the people that what was important to early AA members, it wasn't the meeting. It was getting direction of god from god on how to how to approach your day. It was the quiet time and the sharing of their stories with other people. The, the 4 absolutes were, first came up by an evangelist by the name of Robert Speer, and he believed that if you took the New Testament and all the teachings of Jesus, but more specifically the Sermon on the Mount, that there were 4 absolutes and the Oxford group really referred to it most most of their literature as as as standards after they first talk about these. That that if you have any question in your life, any conduct, any any dilemma at all, all you have to do is, is it loving or not?

Is it honest or not? Is it pure or not? Is it selfish or is it unselfish? And those were the 4 absolutes. And one of the things about Corinthians that, which is the the great thing that we hear at weddings when we go to weddings and sometimes at funerals and the descriptions Paul has above.

The Oxford group believed that if you really wanted to change, that what you would do is is that you take that passage from the bible and that if you read it every day for 30 days, that you would never be the same again. And, one of the great, twelve step stories is they run into doctor Bob and missus Lumenitz. He's in the DC. What should we do with her? And he says, get Henry Drummond's book, which is the greatest thing in the world, which is still available in in in any Christian bookstore.

Get the greatest thing in the world, give it to her, and have her read it every day for 30 days, and she'll never be the same again. Now during the late teens, Buckman is going back and forth from the United States to England, and he's on he's on a he's on a cruiser cruise liner and he's talking with people at the table. And one of the things that happens is he's talking with this woman, and the woman says to him, you know, she's interested in this. This thing about about being a life changer, about about having something in her life that's based something on something aside from herself. And she said, you've gotta if if you're gonna teach me this, you've gotta break it down.

You've gotta make it really simple for somebody like me. And so Buckland said, okay. And the next morning in his quiet time, what he came up with was what we called what he called the 5 c's. And the first, and I don't know how many of you have read or do read the 24 hour a day book? I don't know if you've seen the last the last 5 days.

Remarkably, it's been about the 5 c. The, the 24 hour day book is actually a a reworking by an Oxford Group member, Richard Walker, of a classic, Oxford Group book called God Calling. And like almost like much of the Oxford Group, material, it was written anonymously. AJ Russell is the person who edited it. Wonderful story about this book is is that, these 2 women sponsors found that they didn't like each other, these 2 English women.

So they recommended that they spend their quiet time together. Hard hearted sponsors. It's a long lineage. And so they started to and what happened is that when you would spend your quiet time, one of the things they recommended was because the old Chinese proverb that one thing that's written is is, is more powerful than the strongest memory. They would always recommend so that you'd remember what god told you while you're sitting there is that you'd write down what it is that you heard or what you felt.

And, so these gal started writing, and what came out was not something that either of them were familiar with at all. And it was it was almost like an automatic writing and they didn't know what to do with it. And AJ Russell was an Oxford group member who was the editor of the, the London Daily Mail's religion section. And, so they sent him off to him and he he took a look at it, and he couldn't believe what it was. And so what they did is is that they published it, and they say that it's by 2 listeners.

So if you take your 24 hour a day book and you go down to, a library and you pick up God Calling by AJ Russell, what you'll find is is the meditation, the prayer for each day the the meditation for each day actually comes from this. It's reworded a little bit for people that have a drinking problem. And when I go through the 5 c's, I'm also going to, refer a little bit to it in that fashion. The first C was confidence, that there must be a connection and identification of depth for a person to be changed. In other words, that I've got to believe who you are.

I've got to believe that what it is that you're telling me is authentic. I have to be able to have confidence that you've actually had the change that you've had, and that's what I got when I went to my first AA meeting. I heard people speak about their drinking stories. And what these Oxford group members would is they'd tell their story. The second thing was confession.

2nd, cease confession. And, Buckman's lines on confession were when you when you heard when somebody shared their story, the first thing was, and I think you may have heard this from a few sponsors online, never betray an appearance of shocked surprise. If you're really trying to help somebody through a 5th step, be ready to convince your own shortcomings honestly and bluntly and finally keep every confidence absolutely sacred. The 3rd c is conviction. And what the what the Oxford Group people would say is that a person the person that you're working with has to be convicted of the power of sin, about sin's binding power, sin's blinding power, and sin's deadly power.

And I don't know about you, but when I came into my first few meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous, what I learned was alcohol's binding power and alcohol's binding power and its deadly power. The 4th is conversion. And what Buckman described conversion as was it's a transaction between a person, soul, and god. That that's what conversion is, when that transaction happens. They used to always say that god outside of us is a theory.

God inside of us is a fact, and they believe that no one could go through these set of steps, work through these 5 c's, and not have an experience with god. They viewed this stuff as absolutely practical. There wasn't anything, you know, starry eyed or or that this was cold, hard, fast. One of the great conversion experiences, was, in William James' variety of religious experience. And the great conversion story that's in there is about a guy by the name of S.

H. Hadley, who was a horrible alcoholic and had a really, really bad time. And this is and you wonder what was it in that book that got got Bill's, Bill's attention. And, the way that it's described is when the invitation came, I knelt down with a crowd of drunkards. I halted but a moment, and then with a breaking heart, I said, dear Jesus, can you help me?

Never with a mortal tongue can I describe that moment? I felt the glorious brightness of the noonday sun shine into my heart. I felt a free man. From that moment till now, I have never wanted a drink of whiskey. I've never seen enough money to make me wanna take one.

I promised god that night, if he would take away the appetite for strong drink, I would work for him all my life. He did his part, and I'm trying to do mine. And then the 5th, of the c's was what they called conservation. Or or I'm sorry. Continuous.

Excuse me. And and what that meant is is that you wanted, as soon as possible, to have the experience be vital to get somebody out working with others. Following conversion, the new convert must be set to work to win others. He should understand inevitably the means of his own spiritual development and not the means of successfully serving others. What would I do without my fabulous wife, Adele, who did all this magnificent work for us?

And God bless her. The next personality that I'd like to share with you is Sam Shoemaker. Oh, thank you so much. Sam Shoemaker was the was the, rector at Calvary Chapel. Frank was in China as a missionary in 1918 when Buckman and h a Walter came to China to work with missionaries about this vital personal work.

And what happened is that he hated Buckman from the beginning. Who is this guy? Who is this guy? Running around telling people how they ought to do stuff? So Buckman comes into town, and Shoemaker was, was, a marvelous marvelous guy.

He had a he had an amazing personality. In fact, let me this is again from, Centers Only. This is, AG Russell's description of Sam Shoemaker, the antithesis of Buckner. Whenever I looked at him squarely, my gaze was irresistibly drawn straight to those magnetic eyes of his, those eyes that were always bright and twinkling merrily, one or the other ever closing and anon in that impish wink one comes to love and respect. Get near to Sam and you at once feel his magnetic personality.

His happy faith and contentedness so permeate the atmosphere that you feel it unnecessary for Hoover to declare the depression officially at end. This is a southern boy who was used to getting his way, And, and he's in China ain't going his way. And this guy, the life changer is coming into town, and he knows that Sam knows that if he gets this one guy, that that guy, if he can change him, that everybody else will line up, that he can really have some success. So this big gun comes in. He says, well, why don't you go work on on this guy?

And Bugler looks at him and says, what's preventing you from doing this? And Sam got a little upset. And he went home that night. He was just furious, but he saw the truth in it. He saw that he had never completely given himself to God.

And so that night, in 1918, he gave himself the next morning he got together with Buckman and he shared with him all of his sins and all the things that he had done that he felt was was keeping him from being of maximum service to god and his fellows. And the most interesting thing happened. Sam took a walk with the man and the man decided that he'd like to become a Christian. And from that time on what happened is that Sam believed that working with Buckman would be doing that kind of work would be more rewarding than anything that he could do. So they went out.

And for the next 7 years, they went all over the world together into South Africa, they came to the United States, they went to South America, always doing this what they call personal work. In 1925, Sam was an Episcopalian minister, an ordained Episcopalian minister and he was called to Calvary Church in New York. And so he left and went and established himself as director there and his church became the center, the clearinghouse for Oxford Group information throughout the United States. And one of the things that, Sam did is is that he wrote about 15 or 20 books on this personal work. And one of the fun things that's happened of late is that, because most of these books are out of print is Bill Pittman and Dick, Dick B, Dick Burns got together and we've got another Courage to Change book.

But this particular one is a compendium of quotes from a lot of shoemaker's, sermons and books and it's a great fun. Sam was looking for a vehicle to bring a vibrancy to this church he just came to. And there was a property that was down in the Bowery and he decided that, that this might be a place that they might be able to start a mission for, drunkards and and, and indigent men. And god sent a man by the name of Harry Hadley, who is s h Hadley's son, who's 3 days after his father's death had had a conversion experience. And Harry Hadley became the director of the Calvary Mission.

The other thing about Shoemaker is, is that he was known by everybody as somebody because of his personality that had the ability to make people comfortable. He was able to express his own spiritual problems well enough that other people would respond in time and want to share. And so he was known as someone who was very good at bringing people to Christ. And the people that he worked with were Roland Hazard, Shep Cornell, Deborah Gray, Eddie Thatcher, and Bill Wilson. He was the man who taught spiritual principles to these people, principles that we have received, you know, in our in our book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

Sam also was, he assembled a group called the Businessman team. And what he wanted to do was get guys from Wall Street, major investors because as you all know from any contract with New Yorkers, they believe that they are the center of the universe. And he figured that what would be best is to get a group of these people and they would actually go out, a team of people would go out and talk about spiritual principles in business. And these are the members of the business needs team. The people that are here, Roland Hazard, Russell Firestone, Shep Cornell, DC Kitchen and, were actually sober, not drinking through the Oxford Group and active members of Calvary Chapel when Bill Wilson was released from town hospital to last time.

And then Charles Kraft junior got sober just about the same time. He got sober just a few months after Bill, and he wrote a book called the the big bender that's really a lot of fun. What it is that Sam had was this talent for getting people to share. And again, what he was trying to do is get them to clear away the wreckage of their past and this is the way he described it. We can hardly resent painting our sins in bright colors and making ourselves heroes and heroines of the great spiritual conflicts we have fought.

Although we may have succumbed to sin in the fight, pride is better as a serpent and can enter even our accusations against ourselves giving us, although we may not acknowledge it, a perverse enjoyment of our confession. In the book, what is the Oxford group, they describe sharing they said sharing does not mean divulging in discretions that involve another person by name. It means confessing our part in sinning. Placing the blame on others and making excuses for our weakness is not sharing. It is merely negative, selfish cost.

Can't it be a nice song in the Ronald said? The membership has dropped. Again, these are the things that this why is it that these guys are attracted to this guy? This is what Shoemaker said what he learned from quiet time when he was looking at himself. He said, I discovered 4 things which needed putting right in my life.

1, there was a person who'd wronged me who I would not forgive. 2, there was restitution that I would not make. 3, there was a doubtful pleasure which I would not give up. That's before the Internet. 4, there was a sin in the long past that I would not consent.

When these were straightened out, I not only came into new power and release but for the first time I began to get daily guidance which I knew could be relied and acted upon that I knew could be relied and acted upon. Oh, yeah. This is, this is from, his book, Twice Born Ministers. But this is a professional god person talking about his problem. That's why these candidates could listen to him.

He wants to ask it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These are on the these are on the handout.

Now, again, when it comes to quiet time, this is what Buckman said about his own life I'm sorry. Shoemaker said about his own life. He said that there's need for rededication day by day, hour by hour by which progressively in every quiet time the contaminations of thin and cell will are swept off, so they have a way of collecting. And we are kept in fresh touch with the living spirit of god. This is a guy who's got problems like me, and I believe that it was these expressions that allowed our forefathers to listen to him.

And by reading his stats, and what happens is is that you see that the language and the steps and the things that we practice were developed by these spiritual pioneers. This is a list of the the major players again. Bill Wilson said in a wonderful talk that he gave that, if you were looking for the start of Alcoholics Anonymous, we could start 2000 years ago with the birth of Christ or he said there are many of our friends who would even push it back further than that. But for my discussion which is from the Oxford Group that Frank Buckman is the person who carried a message of depth and weight and a practical application of spiritual principles to mental and physical and psychological problems to Sam Shoemaker, who shared these with Roland Hazard and James Newton. Roland Hazard was a childhood friend of Wilson.

James Newton was an Oxford group member that, that carried the message to, Russell Firestone about turning turning his life to Christ. Shep Cornell, was one of the men who was sober who helped Hazard rescue Ebby, and we'll talk about that later about the when we do the long form of the Akron Miracle. We'll talk about chef's relationship with Ebby. DC Kitchen was was sober and in the Oxford group at Calvary Chapel when, when Bill came in as well as Abby and Roland. The reverend Walter Tunk, who we'll see in a couple other places, he was the Firestone family rector.

They belong to the Episcopal Church there in, in Akron, and he was the biggest Oxford Group supporter. He was the guy that welcomed Buckman and the Oxford Group team on behalf of the city, when they made their visit in 1933. T. Henry Williams and his wife, Claire, T. Henry was the developer of a tire molt that all the different tire companies in Akron used and he was a person who made his home available for the West Hills Oxford group meeting, and those members were, Henrietta Seiberling, Robert Holbrook Smith, Anne Smith, and then, of course, I've got up there our friend William d Silkworth, who was, the physician at Towne's Hospital and, and, of course, Bill Wilson.

Now the last thing that I'd like to do is I'd like to read you a piece from of Sam Shoemaker's. He wrote poetry. It was one of the things that he liked to do. And, this is an apologia for his life, and it's called I Stand by the Door. I Stand by the Door.

I neither go too far in nor stay too far out. The door is the most important thing in the world. It is the door through which men walk when they find God. There's no use my going way inside and staying there when so many are still outside and they, so much as I, crave to know where the door is. And all that so many ever find is only the wall where a door ought to be.

They creep along the wall like blind men with outstretched roping hands, feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door yet they never find it. So I stand by the door. The most tremendous thing in the world is for men to find that door, the door to god. The most important thing any man can do is to take hold of one of those blind groping hands and put it on the latch. The latch that only clicks and opens to that man's own touch.

Men die outside that door, starving beggars die, on cold nights and cruel cities in the dead of winter, die for the want of what is it within their grasp. They live on the other side of it, live because they have not found it. Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it and open it and walk in and find him, so I stand by the door. This is the man that when a member of the Oxford Group came, Bill Wilson, who was being accused of not being maximum, of not being involved enough in going out to change American business because he had an obsession with helping drunks sober up against the group conscience of all of his friends and his mentor, said, Bill, you're right. Following because he believed that Bill would be able to put people's hands on the door.

Thank you. I will be happy to entertain questions, but please make them simple enough that I can repeat them into the microphone because we're being recorded. Yes? I don't, but our web our, our email address is here, and we'll be happy to send it to The, the book list, all the slides all the way we're capturing here in California, and the the, sources are at the bottom of the slide with the author and the date. Most of a lot of it's set out of print.

The stuff that that is in print, which I would really recommend to you, is, 1st and foremost, the thing that's fired me up or the thing that's originally fired me up the most was I Was A Pagan by VC Kitchen, but that's not available. But a really fun read is this, I'm sorry, is this, what is the Oxford Group? It's got a this is brand new, from Hazelden. There's a reworking of it and kind of new age of parlance in the front called Practicing the Principles, but go to the back and see how much of it you really recognize it. It's tremendous.

The other thing that I found you and I could talk for another quite a bit on Buckman is this book called On the Tail of the Comet. It's by Garth Lean and the best place to get it actually is Amazon. It's not available much in bookstores. It's put out by moral rearmament. And just another little aside about Buckland, In 1957, Morrow and Armament teams went to Littelbach, and they showed a film that they put together in Africa to help with African tribal problems to the National Guard, to governor Davis, to the n d NAACP people and all these different groups kind of one at a time and what it did is it changed the dynamic of the city.