History workshop at the Men Among Men Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland

My name's Jay, and I'm an alcoholic. And god's doing for me today what I couldn't do for myself because it's a little before 2 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, and I haven't had anything to drink all day today, which for an alcoholic of my variety is a really cool thing. By way of qualification, for those of you who I haven't had the pleasure to meet yet, I came to you on the 2nd day of May in 1979. And although I've found it necessary on a lot of occasions, I haven't taken the front drink, smoked any of that non habit forming marijuana, done any of that Peruvian marching powder, or any of those other things that I found to be so consoling. So this is, an AA spiritual history workshop.

What I'm gonna do is run through some information, and then at the end, I'll be open for questions, and, we can talk a bunch. The Oxford Group. This is a, from the Lincoln Library, which was a reference book that was found in many homes in the United States in the thirties forties. Kind of a precursor to the the encyclopedias. The Oxford Group was a semi religious but informal movement founded by Frank Bookman while an undergraduate at Oxford University in 1921.

The name was first applied by the press of South Africa in 1928. The professed purpose of the movement is to solve personal, national, and international problems by bringing men and women everywhere back to basic principles of Christian faith, enhancing all their primary loyalties. Please. Without benefit of organization, membership, subscriptions, or definite creed, the movement gained adherence in nearly all countries of the world, particularly in the middle and upper class and was accorded recognition by the heads of many government. Adopting the slogan of moral rearmament in 1938, the leaders of the movement sought by spread of its principles to stem the rising tide of international hostilities.

Now the Oxford Group, that's a description of it by people looking from the outside, and this is from the inside. This is from a book called what is the Oxford Group? It was written anonymously by was the layman with a notebook. And he said, you cannot belong to the Oxford Group. It has no membership lists, subscriptions, 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 who are endeavoring to lead a spiritual quality of life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Please. Yeah. The Oxford group is not a religion. It has no hierarchy, no temples, no endowments, and workers have no salary, no plans but God's plan.

Every country is their country. Every man is their brother. Now every historian has a prejudice, so I wanna get mine to you upfront before we even get started. Okay? Mine is that I am allergic to fundamentalism in any form.

And one of the things that I saw in my AA community as time has gone by is there were people that were actually acting as if punctuation had spiritual significance. Do you know what the meaning of that comma is? I've seen people use Bibles and other spiritual literature in that fashion. And so one of the things that I like to do is I like to show that we in Alcoholics Anonymous are part of a spiritual continuum and that this is the movement that we grew out of. Now Bill Wilson, said that that if, we were to tell the story of Alcoholics Anonymous, we could start with Noah.

I don't have quite enough time to do that. So we're gonna start with with the Oxford group, which all the early members of Alcoholics Anonymous were members of. Now you have to remember, this is the United States, which very much like Iceland. You know? 70 years ago or 75 years ago, It's mostly Anglo it's mostly Caucasian.

Almost everybody's a church member. Most of them in 3 or 4 different religions or, I mean, 3 or 4 different churches. It was not the society that we have today. Now what was it that the Oxford group believed? Their main tenants came from a theologian by the name of Robert Speer, who was at Yale University, who had a lot of effect on the evangelist movement in the United States and then worldwide through the Young Men's Christian Association, the YMCA.

And he, distilled the Sermon on the Mount down. He said if you took a look at everything that was in there, that what Christ was actually talking about was honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. And the Oxford group believed that you could discern any movement in your life by these 4 absolutes. Now were they absolute all the time? No.

They're guideposts. They're like stars that we steer by. These are the things that we're growing towards along spiritual lines. And if you go to Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, they still have these on the wall because that's the program. That's where it came from.

It's these 4 absolutes. Now they also, the way that they carried their message, one to another, was what they called the 5 c's. 1st, confidence. In other words, you had to have confidence in me that I used to have this problem. And that I didn't have that problem anymore.

And then the second was confession in which you would say, yeah. I got that problem. I don't wanna have it anymore. And then the conviction that I could change and I could I could not have that problem anymore. And then the conversion that I'm gonna do whatever it is that you've done so that I don't have this problem anymore.

And 5 was continuance. In other words, that I'm gonna keep doing whatever it is that you've done so that I can keep getting what you've got. Now the, I mentioned this book to you, by Vick Kitchen. This was published in 1932. When Bill Wilson got out of town's hospital, he started going to Oxford group meetings, and there was a guy there who was sober, and his name was Vic Kitchen.

And he wrote a book about his experience called I was a Pagan. And in it, he says, the Oxford group had a power I did not have. They said, however, that I could have it, just as they did. If I would pay the same price, comply with the same conditions, and go through the same series of exceedingly simple steps. So what were those steps?

Well, the first step that the Oxford group had was the sharing they called it sharing. 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. In other words, their first step would be like our 4th and 5th step, but it would be in reverse. In other words, if we were together 1 on 1 and we had the opportunity to talk. They used to call it having an honest conversation.

And I would tell you about what I was like, and hopefully, you would respond. Because most of the people that came to these Oxford group house parties were folks that were having troubles. Now what were the house parties? The house parties were exactly what we're doing this weekend. There would be people who were brought from out of town generally because, as you all know, a prophet is not a prophet in his own meeting.

You know? So you get some clowns from out of town to come in and to talk about what had happened in their lives. And you give them a little more credence, right, because you don't know them, And you don't have all that baggage of knowing exactly who they are. Do you know who they used to that kind of stuff. So, anyway, so they're sharing.

So they would actually do a 4th and 5th step first. After that, their second step was surrender of our life past, present, and future into God's keeping and direction. So they do the sharing, then they do the the the the third what we'd call our 3rd step. Okay. Once oh my god.

I'm a mess. Help. Okay. Then the 3rd their third step was restitution to all whom we have wronged directly or indirectly. Notice there's no wiggle room there at all.

And then 4, listening to, accepting, relying on God's guidance, and carrying it out in everything we do or say, great or small. Now this is you know, a lot of people say, well, you know, the great thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is Jim Burwell and God as you understand God. Well, Samuel Moore Shoemaker, who was Bill Wilson's spiritual adviser, was one of the big guns in the Oxford group in the United States. His church was basically the clearing house for all the books and sent out a lot of the teams to work in different places. And, in a book that he wrote in 1927, called children of the the second birth, they talked about praying to God as you understand him.

So they prayed together, opening their minds to as much of god as he understood removing first the hindrance of self will, surrender of much of himself as he could to as much of Christ as he understood. In the beginning, we know only a little. But as time goes by, we learn more and more about ourselves as we work through our steps in Alcoholics Anonymous. And as we learn more and more about ourselves, we learn more and more about this power, whatever that power is. So here's a here's, from this what is the Oxford group, book.

Here's a thing now. I say 3rd step. They wouldn't call it a 3rd step, but this this is, I think, a wonderful thing. What is it when we're talking about surrender? It is a simple decision put into simple language spoken aloud to God in front of a witness at any time and in any place that we have decided to forget the past in God and to give our future into his keeping.

Nothing more need be added. Nothing can be taken away. And one of the things that I like about this is that it kinda says that maybe over time, even though I've surrendered my life to God, I might pick up a few more problems and I might need to do it again. You know, again, that we're it's not that I'm, you know, am I washed clean? Of course.

Or am I, you know, do I have a new life? Of course, I do. But over time, at least over my 27 years, I've tended to pick up a few problems and had to slough them off too. Vic's, now this is a great 3rd step prayer. I mean, we all know the 3rd step prayer in the big book, but here's here's one again from from, from I was a Pagan.

Here's Vic's, surrender prayer. I surrender thee my entire life, oh god. I've made a mess of it trying to run it myself. You take it. The whole thing.

And and run it for me according to your will and plan. Now, back to this thing about sponsorship. I love this. Again, this is Vick Kitchen. I was able to in in our book Alcoholics Anonymous, they talk about the how and the why of it.

This is where this comes from. I was able to supplement the all important why of life with the still more important how of living. I was able to begin really solving my problems, and for the first time in my experience, was given the power to begin helping others. Oh, back, please. Now if you take a look at, this, this is from I Was a Pagan and this is the the page that really got me all fired up about this.

If you take a look at the the way that the the typeface of the book is, it's almost exactly the way our 4th step the 3rd column of the 4th step isn't there, but the whole basic setup of the page is the same. See, what Bill Wilson was was he was a great synthetic thinker. I'm not saying that he ripped stuff off. That's not it at all. But he took things and he synthesized them in a way that works specifically for alcoholics.

And then it's this is this is, what they called the the Oxford group game. And you you think about well, these are these first Christian the the first name of the Oxford group was the 1st century Christian group. You know? And what are all these drunks doing with these good Christian people? I mean, what are they doing there?

I mean, doesn't that sound just a little bit odd? But here's how Vic described his old life. In my old life, I have most liked myself. Liquor, tobacco, and almost every other stimulant, narcotic, and form of self indulgence. Anything which gave me pleasure, possessions, position and applause, or pumped up my self esteem.

I most like to be left largely to myself, and I really liked my wife because of the comforting and complimentary way which she treated me. In my old life, I hated most poverty for myself, prohibition, right on, work, people who disapproved or tried to interfere with me, and any betrayal of my inner thoughts or feelings. So you can see now why it is that the guys felt comfortable being with these folks. I mean, because they were relaxed and comfortable. Okay.

Please. So that's the 4 step program. Now if you read the book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, in it, Bill talks about the 6 step program that the early alcoholics worked. So this is after they've split from the Oxford group, and, this is what the early alcoholics were doing before they the 12 steps were written. 1st, they admitted they were hopeless.

2nd, they got honest with their self. 3rd, they got honest with another. 4, made amends. 5, helped others without demand for payment. And 6, prayed to God as you understand him.

So that's just a little background so that you know about what it was that the Oxford group was when I speak about them. Okay? So it only looked like a chance encounter. This is how AA really started. Now this is Frank Buchmann.

He was founder of the Oxford Group. His family was German Swiss. They were Lutherans. They came to the United States, in the 18 fifties. This is a picture of, Frank.

Frank believed that he the reason that God created him ugly is so that he wouldn't be threatening to people. Back a little bit. Back, please. Now Frank, what what happened with Frank is that he he was his mother was very religious and he grew up, and he had an experience when he was young that he believed that he would be used. He had this vision not a vision.

The voice spoke to him and said, you will be used to remake the world. And there's a book called On the Tail of a Comet by Garth Lean that that's a biography of Frank. And it's real it's very long, but it's it's a remarkable, remarkable book. At least to me, it was. Frank, was, he was brought up in in Allentown, Pennsylvania and he became a Lutheran minister.

And somebody, accused him of being prideful, and so he's decided to show them. And he went into the slums of Philadelphia where he founded a hospice for boys. And this kind of hospice was what it was, was a place where people could get these boys could come together and they could get a safe place to sleep at night. And they could get a meal and they could get a shower and they could get some bible study, and they could get some help in getting a job. And what happened is is that stay with Frank.

Yeah. And what happened is is that Frank the place became so successful that the board of the of the the the board of the the boys home said we've gotta change things. We're gonna have to, cut back the food we're giving the kids. And Frank said, no. No.

No. No. No. You don't understand. You can't get to them if their bellies are empty.

He said, there's a reason we give them pancakes on Sunday morning. So they'll get up and come to church. You know, Frank was real, he was brought up his his, father and mother had a had a, a little hotel along the the railroad. And so hospitality was always a big part of him. In fact, the group initiatives have changed.

They they they say that one of the things that we're to do is is that we're supposed to practice radical hospitality. Frank, so Frank got ticked off and he and he left in a huff and he'd worked himself into exhaustion. He went off to Europe. And he was just resentful of these people. And, he spent a year traveling around.

And and he's a minister. Right? And so his whole gig is supposedly trying to help people, you know, make a decision for Christ. And over a whole year, he doesn't have anything at all happen along those along that along those lines. And he ends up in Keswick, England.

And, he's listening to a woman who is a Salvation Army preacher talk about the cross of Christ. And as he's listening to her talk, he see he he has this this idea of the cross collapsing into an eye. And he goes, oh my gosh. I was the 7th wrong man. It wasn't all them.

So he goes home, and he writes a letter of apology to each of these people, and he sends it off. And that evening, he took a walk with the young man, and he described the feeling of having all this weight lifted off him. And this young man says, I want that. And he made a decision for Christ that day. And so Frank has this this idea that in order for me to be a channel of spiritual power, I have to be clean.

And so that's why we have that think of the chaplain Keswick. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of this experience of this man. And I'm gonna be part of a group that goes there, and then we're going up to Visby where he declared moral rearmament, and then we'll end up in co in Switzerland. Now Frank Bookman's the most interesting cat I never heard of. I studied poor Stuart War European history in in in university.

And, he was nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Once before the war for his efforts to stop the 2nd World War, and then after the 2nd World War for his efforts in helping bring nations together. He was decorated by the, governments of France, Germany, Greece, Japan, and the Philippines for his work after the 2nd World War. He founded the Oxford Group at Oxford University in 1921. He changed the name of it to moral rearmament.

So we say that he initiated moral rearmament in 1938. And the reason that he did this is he had this this inspiration that all the nations of the world were rearming. And that the only way to keep the nonsense that had happened in the First World War from happening again was for the world to morally rearm. And then he was my my father taught me when I was young, my, he he taught me a lot of interesting things, like it's not adultery if it's outside the area code, font of wisdom and knowledge. I come by my alcoholism, honestly.

But he said, you can tell a lot, about a man by his friends, but you can tell even more about a man by his enemies. And this guy, Frank Bookman, was hated by everybody. He was equally vilified by hawks and doves, by labor and management. The fascists called him a communist. The communists called him a fascist.

Just every so fascinating person. Now this is Frank, and he's with a gentleman by the name of Blair Buck. Frank, when he came back from Keswick, he went, he went to the YMCA, and there he was directed. He was sent to be the chaplain at the most godless university in the United States, Penn State University, a place awash in alcohol and student unrest. And Frank showed up there, and he took a look around.

Now one of the knocks on the Oxford group and on Frank was that he was only interested supposedly in the well-to-do and in the powerful. But in the y in the Young Men's Christian organization, in any spiritual evangelical movement, or if you're involved in any kind of revolutionary movement, the the what the first things you're taught is what's called the key man strategy. In other words, you come into any town or any area and you take a look around you and you find who are the people that if they come over to my side are gonna touch the most people. And so the Oxford group was very big on what they called strategy. I mean, they really thought about where they were going and what they were doing.

And so please stay. So, so Frank, when he comes in, he thinks of takes a look at Penn State and he thinks of 3 people. One's the dean of men at the university because he's he's an agnostic. He's not involved in anything. The second is this guy, Blair Buck.

Blair Buck was as handsome as Frank was ugly. He was this incredibly energetic, good looking guy, and everybody liked him. And, and then the third guy was a guy by the name of William Gilliland. Now so Frank approaches, Blair, and they start to become friendly. And Blair was from this, family in Virginia, and they, they both liked horses, and so they their friendship kind of formed on that.

And they went along and and, at one point, Frank says to, to Blair, hey. I'm a Christian. What are you? And he says, well, I'm a Confucianist. He says, great.

He says, one of the things that I like about being a Christian is is that we like to try I I believe that what I do is that I'm helpful to people. How about you? He says, yeah. Being helpful is good. So he says, let's pick somebody and you try and help them with your Confucianism.

So Blair says, great. And they picked this gentleman, guy that I like to call alcoholic number 1. William Gilliland. Bill Pickle. And, and, Blair comes up with this this thing, and and it after about 3 months, there doesn't seem to be much movement.

And Frank says, well, what do you do you think there's been anything? He says, no. There really hasn't. So Frank says, well, why don't we try it my way for a while? Blair says, cool.

Says, let's try we, in Christianity, we pray for people. So what I'd like to do is I'd like let's pray for this guy. So Blair comes up with this prayer. Is that the next one? Is it there?

Okay. Blair comes up with, this prayer. And the prayer is, oh, god, if there be a god, please help Bill pickle and all the little pickles. Because Bill was living in this house that was all trashed and and, had lots of kids and all that. See, Bill happened to be the bootlegger that controlled the booze for the entire university.

And so they, they started praying this prayer. And one of the things that I like about this is that the Oxford group and I think, my personal opinion is is that in Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the things that we've lost is this this thing about we're not asking you to believe anything. But what we do ask you to do is make an honest experiment. That's all. And that I believe that this prayer is the linchpin to everything.

Because it says, oh God, if there be a God. So you don't have to believe anything. You can even come in doubt. You can even pray in doubt. And what happened is that one day, Bill had said loudly, publicly, repeatedly, from the time that Frank had come to Penn State that he would rather stick a knife in Frank than breathe the same air.

Not exactly of an approachable guy. But one day, Blair and Frank are are walking down the street, and Bill comes out of an alley in front of them. And Frank realizes that either I'm gonna approach this man or I'm gonna lose all credibility with Blair. Now Frank had this great big nose. So he got up really close to Bill, he figured so that if he hit him, he wouldn't break his nose too badly.

And he said, Bill, we've been praying for you. And Bill snapped around and looked at and looked at Frank, and and and the story is that all the fight went out of him. And he looked up, and he and he said, you see that that church up there on the hill? He said, my mother helped build that, and and, I've got a I've got a nickel from when I was a little kid that's under the cornerstone. And what had happened is his mother had committed suicide and wasn't able to be buried there at the church.

And so he'd had a justifiable resentment against religion ever since. And, you know, he'd lived this life of desolation. He didn't say that at the moment, but he he they just they started talking. They became friendly, and, Bill loved to bet on the horses. And so they go along and become friendly.

And at one point, they invite, Frank had given, Bill his beaver hat, which was the best possession that he had. And, they were going up to Toronto to a, temperance, young men's Christian temperance movement. And they invited Bill to go along. And Bill went because he thought maybe he could get a coat out of the deal. And while they were up there, Bill, this guy who's the bootlegger that's the you know, I don't know that he was an alcoholic but he was a chronic drinker.

He and Frank are sharing a room. He and Frank are going to bed. Frank says, hey. We can't go to bed. We haven't prayed.

He goes, I've even forgotten how to say the lord's prayer. Frank says it with him and his obsession to drink left. And he became part of this Oxford group. And he went when they came back down to Pennsylvania to college station, people were pissed. The man had gone over to the other side.

They would they they walked up. They'd pour booze on him. They'd put it as he never took another drink the rest of his life. And he went around the world helping Frank carry this message. Frank helped him while they were on that trip to write an immense letter to his wife, and then he was able to start a new life.

When they started at Penn State, there were 10 bible studies that had about 200 people. Now when the connection goes over to the other side in fact, the football team at Penn State was known for showing up to their games drunk, and that when within a year, they had, like, over 3 quarters of the men at the college were involved in bible study. And they were going through these steps that I I went through a little while ago about doing the sharing and then making amends and doing all this stuff. And all of a sudden, people from all over the world are coming to find out what had happened at Penn State University. Okay.

Where is he? Now another one of, the important people in the story is Samuel Moore Shoemaker. Sam Shoemaker was a close close associate of Frank Bookman's. Could you could you go back there? I'm sorry.

He was the most prolific Oxford group. I don't know what the this one. The most prolific Oxford group member. Now He's the he's the head of a big episcopal church, yeah, or Anglican church as you'd know it in, New York. And I was always wondering how does this guy have enough time to write all these books?

Well, you he wasn't writing the books. What they were doing was they were taking his sermons and putting them together and and and publishing them. He was the rector rector of Calvary Church New York. He was the founder of the Calvary Mission. Bill Wilson referred to him as a cofounder of Alcoholic Anonymous, and he was the confessor and spiritual mentor to Roland Hazard, Shep Cornell, Sebra Geraves, Bill Wilson.

And he was an amazing, he was an amazing guy. Sam, was another guy from Virginia from a good family, good looking, talented guy. And he decided to enter the priesthood and he ends up going to China. And he's in China and he's not having any success. He'd been given this bible study to run, and it wasn't going real well.

He was having a tough time. Number 1, he didn't like the Chinese. He didn't like China. The word god and pig were really close. So if you mispronounced it, it was, you know, completely off the board.

And he started out with this great group of young men, and by he's been there for, like, 3 months and he's down to, like, 12 guys. So Sam Shoemaker, is is there in in Peking. And and Bookman comes through. And, he's talking about these 4 absolutes. He's talking about that if you're going to, have an experience, you've gotta be clean yourself.

If you're gonna transmit any power that you've gotta be clean yourself. And so Sam listens to all this guy. I mean, he's from Virginia, and this guy's from Pennsylvania. You know, and he's a Lutheran. And oh my god.

You know, how can he have anything really to share with me? So what he does is he goes over to, Frank after they're done, and he says, hey, Frank. I need you to help me out. I want you to come to my bible study because I know that there's one key guy. There's this guy and if you get him, I know that everything will go fine and, you know, it'll it'll be wonderful.

So will you come help me? And Frank looked into me and he said, what's wrong with you that you're not able to carry a message? Well, Sam got a little upset. He went home in a huff, but he couldn't sleep that night. And he thought of all the places that he hadn't completely given himself to God.

And that night, he decided to make a surrender. He got together with Frank the next day. He he called this the night of his second birth. And, then he, went back to his bible study and he said, hey, guys. I'm sorry.

I hate China. I hate you guys. I'm really sorry. I wanna get better at it. Will you help me to do that?

And what happened is is that from that, the whole thing turned around and and it became this powerful group. So now here's a picture of, Frank Bookman and, Bunny Austin and Sam Shoemaker and, missus Edison at a, Oxford group rally in Los Angeles. And this is Calvary Church. Now after his experience, and when his term in China was over, Sam became Frank's kinda right hand guy. And they went around the world going to different missionary groups and sharing these Oxford group steps and really helping a lot of people.

And Sam became known as one of the great life changers. Now he has never had his own church. But in New York at this time, they're losing a bunch of people. So they want something vibrant brought in. A lot of folks are moving to the suburbs.

So Sam gets called to have this really great job at, at Calvary Church. And you can see here that there's this big building on the side, and this was part of the church property. And this is was a a housing area, apartments where Oxford grew people from all over the world would come and stay. Here's a picture of the, Thursday night, Thursday night meeting at the Calvary Church, in 1932. Same thing here.

Some lame guy up here speaking, people sitting there, and people telling their stories. Please. There's a great picture of Sam. Now after Sam had been there for a while, they decided that they needed to do a little outreach work. So the church owned some property down in the Bowery and they founded the Calvary mission.

And what this place was was a place that guys that were on the streets could be brought in. They could be given a place to have a, you know, a plate of beans and some coffee. They could take a shower. They could get cleaned up. They could go to, they could go to some Oxford group meetings, and then they could hopefully go out and and get a job.

And when Sam was looking for somebody to run the place, the person that came to work for him was Harry Hadley junior. Harry Hadley junior had been a very bad alcoholic and drug addict. His father was a bad alcoholic and drug addict, who had had a spiritual experience at Jerry McCauley's, mission down on Water Street. And, the old man had gone around the world, you know, being a prohibition and a temperance preacher. And then, after his father died, he'd wanted his son to, you know, get cleaned up.

The son wasn't able to. After dad died, the son had an experience and and carried on the family's work and was going all over the world. He was tired of doing that. And so he came to work for Sam running the cavalry mission. So there's a sober alcoholic running this cavalry mission.

This is Jim Newton. Now are there any is anybody here, bipolar? K. Bisexual? In America, I say bicoastal.

You know people that live on in New York and Los Angeles. Because if your mind can work on 2 tracks, this story's a lot easier than if it's just on 1. Okay? Because we're gonna start talking about Ohio, and we're gonna start talking about New York. Now this is Jim Newton.

This is another one of these really powerful people. Without this man, I don't believe I'm sober. Jim Newton was a was, a, he was a flimflam man. He was a he was a con artist. He would go into town selling stuff and, and then, you know, get the deposit money and leave and never bring the product.

There was a there's an old American show called the Music Man. And in it, the guy comes and he sells band instruments. Anyway, that's the kind of person that Jimmy Newton was. Anyway, he ended up at one of these Oxford group house parties. And when he's there, he he he listens to people talk.

He identifies what they're sharing. He goes up to Frank Bookman. He says, Frank, will you help me? Frank sends him to Sam Shoemaker. He goes down to New York.

He works the steps with Sam. Then he goes home. And in those days, his family moved down to Florida and his father was a land speculator. And his father had bought the piece of land that was between the Fords and the Edisons. And in those days, I know this doesn't have in Reykjavik, but land value tends to go up if there's rich people there.

People wanna be next to them and just kinda bask in the glory of it all. And, so, anyway, Jim's down there and he's helping his old man. And when he's getting to the details of the development, he started going over and asking mister mister and missus Ford, mister and missus Edison whether or not they felt that this would be a violation. They didn't wanna upset the neighbors. And they fell in love with him.

And Jim was, you know, he was he was very charismatic. Anyway, in those days, there mister Edison's birthday party in the United States was one of these events where all the politicians and all the, the industrialists came because they wanted to find out what it was that Edison was working on, and he would always, like, give a preview of what it is that we're working on because he'd done so much to change our our lives, you know, with electricity and and the movie and all this other stuff. So and you can see the old kinescopes that they used to show in the movie houses of Edison's birthday party. You know? And and there they all are.

And, anyway, they asked Jim if he'd run the party and because this Oxford group guy seemed to be able to handle all these big egos. And, and one of the people that that, that he met was mister Firestone. Mister Firestone liked, Jim so much, he invited him to come to Akron to become his personal assistant. He was grooming him to run the company. And Jim was a a really talented and an amazing man.

There's a biography that he wrote called Uncommon Friends that is about his relationship with, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alex Carrell, and Charles Lindbergh. Please. Now Firestone, Newton comes up to Akron and he goes to work for mister Firestone. Mister Firestone has some kids. And one of the kids is a guy that they called Bud.

And Bud just had a little bit of a drinking problem. He's one of these guys that when you read about him, you know, it's on Saturday in the little crime stoppers part of the paper. You know? Oh, let's see what he did this weekend. You know?

Anyway, he was a horrible alcoholic, kept getting into all these scrapes. When he's sober, everybody loves him. So Newton's there for a while. And after a couple years, he goes, god. This is really a problem.

And he's he he has an idea. He has some information. He has some guidance. And his guidance is he goes to mister Firestone. He says, let me go with Bud on his next dry out, and, you know, I'll find out what it is that he's doing.

And then when he comes back, I can help him. So the old man says, we've tried everything else. Let's go along. So they go off to this dry out forum in New York, and I'm sure it's just like what you got here in Reykjavik. You have to make your own bed, get lots of physical exercise, you know, you get some food in you and all that stuff.

And, and the treatment worked so well that when it was time for them to leave 30 days later, the best deal that Jim could cut with Bud was that he'd hold the bottle. He started drinking again immediately. And they're on the train back, and Jim's really upset. He didn't know what to do. He's going, I'm really in trouble.

The old man's gonna be pissed. And then he remembers that his friend, Sam Shoemaker, is at a, a bishop's conference in Denver. So they take the train to Denver, and they get on a train with Sam, and they're going towards New York. And on that train, Sam, who was known as one of the great life changers or the great soul surgeons, he gets along with with Bud Firestone, and the 2 of them talk. They make a decision, and Bud's drinking obsession leaves.

And they're so stunned, they just send him off to an Oxford group place in New York. Jim goes back to goes back to work. And a few months later, mister Firestone and the the family doctor go to visit the son. And when they got there, the doctor said this is a modern medical miracle. You know when really bad alcoholics get sober and all the pain goes out of their face?

And it was that prodigal experience. They had a walk. The son made amends to his father, and they came home. So that's Akron. Now it just so happens at about the same time on the East Coast, there's another guy with a lot of money.

You know, did you ever feel like if you just had enough money, you wouldn't have a drug and alcohol problem? Right? I've used all of my money, all of your money, all of her money, her retirement. Oh, and can I borrow your car? And it still doesn't work.

Anyway, this guy, Roland Hazard, comes from a family whose fortune came from selling blankets to the Union Army in the civil war. Lot of money. Burlington Northern, later they became the Allied Chemical Company. They've got lots. Anyway, he's the same guy.

I mean, beautiful. I mean, I'd do him for Christ's sake. I mean, charismatic, wonderful guy, except when he's drinking. And he bad to his wife, bad to the family. You know, they had it with him.

Anyway, they've tried everything. And then one of his cousins has been going to Zurich, Switzerland and has been involved with doctor Carl Jung. And so Roland ends up going to doctor Jung. And he goes back and forth with Yung a few times. And, and he gets sober.

He's not drinking. And then he shows back up after drinking again. He was he was, he was in Paris. Somebody asked him the wrong question. Would you like wine with your dinner?

He said, yes. Off to the races again. And he's off to the races for a while. He comes back to the doctor. He says, doc, you know, what's up?

And Jung says, sorry. I can't help people like you. And he goes, what? I got all the money. He you can't tell me you can't help me.

He says, no. I can't help you. Says the very best you can do is align yourself with the spiritual movement. There's a there's something that happens sometimes. There it's a it's a mystery to me, but, sometimes people get struck by a religious experience.

Now Jung knew about the Oxford group. Some of his some of his students were involved in it. Whether or not he said go to the Oxford group, we don't know. But he ends up back in New York. And where does Roland end up but at the, do you have a picture?

He ends up at Calvary Church. And, yeah, he ends up at Calvary Church. And there he's he's he starts going to these Oxford group meetings, and so he's drinking and going to meetings. And he's thinking that this is really a good idea. And then one day, he gets a copy of Vic Kitchen's book, I was a pagan, and he's on the train from New York to Detroit.

And he identifies, and he surrenders, and he quit drinking. And he became a member of the Oxford group. This got out of sequence somehow, and it's not her fault. It's mine. So let's go back to the Soul Surgeons.

Yeah. Okay. So we got we got, Bud Firestone. He's sober in the Oxford group in Akron. We got Roland Hazard and a bunch of his cronies, and they're sober in the Oxford group in New York.

Now mister Firestone is so excited about what's happened in his family that he does what many people did, which is that they would invite the oxford for group to come to their town and put on one of these house parties. And then what would happen is is that, Sunday, they'd they'd have the meeting over the weekend at a hotel and they'd have they'd have big speaker meetings and then they'd have smaller meetings where, like, the compulsive overeaters or the compulsive sex addicts or the alcoholics or the drug addicts would get together and talk in small closed groups. Men or women. Men's work for men, women's work for women, old Oxford group line. And then, at the speaker meetings, they do things like they'd have coal miner from from, Wales get up and talk, and and then they'd have some princess from Greece get up and talk, and then they'd have some made from the United States and some industrialists.