The Big Easy retreat in Feliciano, LA

Yay. And it's my wife. She takes care of me, but she's me.

Excuse me?

So let's be quiet for a minute together before we wrap this thing up.

Thank you.

So when it comes to step 12,

we have the entire

body of kitchen table AAA with gumbo, All about duck gumbo with no shotgun pellets.

Not canal duck either. Not canal duck either. And nobody who speaks English had anything to do with the preparation of this meal.

And

so, but we'll, we'll talk for just a few minutes on on Step 12.

Sam Shoemaker, who is Bill Wilson's spiritual mentor,

said that

in order to get a spiritual experience, you had to give it away. You did not know what it was until you had given it away. He was in the process of the giving that one receives

OK And one of the

difficulties in the fellowship is, is that there are lots of people who have never actually given the stuff away.

And they say, well, I can't.

I've tried it a few times and it hasn't worked well. Bill Wilson worked with hundreds of people his first six months of sobriety and no one got sober.

Why should it be any different for us?

I should be in a different trust. So I said the overarching philosophy of this entire kitchen table

thing that we do is that

if they're sick enough to ask you for help,

you can't possibly hurt them.

That the higher power is in charge. That is everything at a question it says

isn't higher power always there, ever present? Yes, I'm the present, omnipotent, omnipotent, omnipotent and

and so we don't have to worry. All we're doing is showing up,

you know, it's the higher powers responsibility. I'm not.

Can you imagine trying to take responsibility for Built Cleveland sobriety? I mean,

in the Akron manual it says you are

saving your life, but not for the

ladies.

My apologies to the ladies anyway. So, and, and so that's the, that's the overarching thing in this is that

another thing that they, they always used to say in the Oxford Group, if you're not winning, you're sinning.

When Sam Shoemaker had his crisis and asked Frank Bookman to help him with this group of Chinese students, what Frank said to him was, what's wrong with you that you can't transmit the message?

So, you know, if you're not transmitting the message, maybe there's something you haven't finished up.

And we've talked about all those steps in detail.

Lastly, this.

This is the great pleasure.

This is the great.

This is the great joy.

If you ever meet someone, you know, I mentioned pray and meditate the way that you used to drink, drink and you just try stuff and see what happens

and you will come across. I've come across lots and lots of people. I've been involved in many, many splendid groups of

spiritual seeking groups and all of them at one point or another said, well, Jake, why don't you come along with us now?

Because you know that AA is, you know, it's just, it's, it's human consciousness. It's not really that great a great a thing. And, and

they will never understand

and you will never get, you will never win an argument with anybody about a, a being spiritually sound

because they're not alcoholic and they don't know and they don't need to know.

They have their level of understanding. And that's fine. But we do what every spiritual master ever said to do.

We feed the hungry, we clothe the naked. We go to the hospitals, we go to the prisons,

but what we really do is we raise the debt.

I think I'd like to do something worthwhile with my life. Why don't you just come along? I'll teach you how to raise the debt.

Billy Lazarus, be a Lazarus,

Bill's dad said, and he died with 45 years of sobriety. Gordon used to say that every woman and man in this room

there is a person whose life you have the power to say.

And if you want here available in Alcoholics Anonymous, when that person comes through the door,

what will happen to them?

Because it's your story, not mine,

that will take care, you know, that will leave them out of the darkness.

Part of the illusion about this format that we have in this celebration of

sponsorship is that there is hierarchy. As you can see, I get corrected frequently by members of the lower RT and the rebellious youth. Yeah. And

but I want you to know that the Alcoholics Anonymous that I came into in 1979,

that the Alcoholics Anonymous in 2011 is far superior.

The evolution of spirit,

the effectiveness, the amount of people that are carrying the message, the availability of the message is far superior.

And that my job is to share this with somebody and to give them the tools so that they are a better a a member than I was.

Matthew has more information than I ever had at 18

because of what's what's what's happened and the people that he sponsors and that we're sponsoring now. So this is not hierarchical.

The the reason that we spend this time and that our families are generous enough to share us with you is so that you can become better a members than me.

And I know these guys, believe me, they were nothing special when I met him.

So that's enough. Just give an example,

but some of the things that built that Jay said and and we have a we do three days on sponsorship. You know, some of you have been there for that,

but I just want to give an example of

the effect in my life and just a snapshot. You know, one of the things when I read the book with a guy, we usually get at least to where Jim and Fred or drinking. You know, Jim owned the car dealership and then he gets goes out of town to find somebody to buy a car. I just love his thinking. I'm going to go away from the humans to find a customer. But one of the things that's interesting that always kind of extends a chill down my spine is it says in there all went all went well for a while for Jim, but he

to enlarge his spiritual life. And so a few years ago, I sponsored this guy named Liver Mike and we call him Liver Mike. We called him Liver Mike because when he drank, he turned bright yellow, like yield sign yellow because he had no liver left. And they knew when I was sponsoring him, he was doing OK. But they, you know, he knew from the doctors if he drank again, he would die.

Well, he wound up in a hospital about two blocks from my house,

ready to die. He's in ICU and in a coma. An alcoholic coma. He had filled up every waste basket in his house with his own blood that he was vomiting up

and they found him and dragged him off to this hospital and I had been to visit him when he first got in there. He couldn't hear me or I don't know if he could hear me. He was in a coma.

And you know, it's hard to get into ICU if you're not a member of the family. But Mike's family drank themselves to death, the whole family.

So I would say, hey, you know, he's in here in an alcoholic coma. I'm a sponsoring Alcoholics Anonymous. Do you think maybe I could see him? And they take my card and stick it in this, You know, I have to convince the nurse and go in to see him and he lie there, you know, he's in Tacoma. So I promised him one day that I'd come visit him every day. And I was so mad at myself. I promise. And I So there's one day I'm up in Pasadena, which is about,

on a good day, about half an hour from Long Beach, where I live. I'm working in Pasadena.

It's raining and that doesn't happen very often in Southern California. So I took it really personally and, and my doctors were being really real jerks. I'm trying to talk to these doctors and it just seemed like, like, I don't know, it was my wife calls them broken shoelace days. But everything was frustrating, you know? And

I was in a bad mood, and I knew I was in a particularly bad mood because Derek and the Dominoes version of Leila came on my radio, and that's the masterpiece of rock'n'roll. And I said, God, this song is so stupid. I've overestimated my entire life. You know,

that's how that just to give you a spiritual temperature.

Dwayne Allman and Eric Thomas, like these guys are

tax.

So I'm in a bad spot, and I'm driving down and I remembered my promise to Mike. And I'm like, oh, crap, I don't want to go to the hospital. It's raining. Everybody in California thinks it's raining. We must tailgate. And so I'm trying to keep my company car from. Yeah, that's what I thought. He's in a coma. He won't know. But when I have these thoughts, I often remember that Alcoholics Anonymous is the place, the first church I've ever been to where they showed me and they didn't tell me.

They just show you. They don't say go on panels. They go, come on, we're going on a panel. They don't say take a commitment. Jay with 30 something years of sobriety is the greeter at the Monday night meeting. He's showing me we dictate people from coming in because they don't want to. Yeah, they see Jay and they run to the next. And he swept up the the house the other day. I just watched Jay and and they show me. And so I knew I had to go and I did not want to. I was, you know why I didn't want it. And I want to be honest. I didn't get a shit about the guy.

I had nothing for him. I'd love to tell you I'm full of love for all these new comers. It's just some days I barely can stand them. And I was mad because he's going to die now of alcoholism. He didn't have to. So in my bad altered state, I was like, I don't want to go see this guy. I just don't want it. But I knew I was going to my car, went there, you know my house. I was trying to go to my house, but my car's like, aren't we going to see Mike? So I actually sat in the parking lot in the rain and I had a really nice suit on and I thought, I don't want to walk in the rain. I was telling myself all these reasons I did not have to see

anakoma. So I go in there and, you know, it's a rainy day in Southern California and ICU at a small hospital is probably the most depressing place. These nurses don't love their jobs. They're watching people die all the time. They're standing there and it's a whole new crop. So I got to argue with them about who I who I am and why I should see this guy. And I don't even want to see him. So it's hard for me to get behind my own argument. And I go in there and say, yeah, I know he said I'm not next to Ken, but he really doesn't have next to Ken. And I think my cards in there. She turned the pager. Like four of my business

guards have been stapled in there. So that's me,

she said. OK, you can go see him and I, every time I ask him, I go, how's he doing it? I'll look at their shoes

so you know he's not coming out of there.

So I went in there and it's dark in his room because he's in a coma. He doesn't need any lights. And I'm sitting at the end of his bed and I'm looking at him and he's got his mouth on these great big guy. He's got his arms are strapped down and he's got he's, he's got no teeth. I'm looking at his mouth and he, I remember he used to tell me he hated dentist and I didn't realize he had false teeth because his teeth were gone.

And I'm looking at them and thinking about the day and it's just dark in there and I'm feeling terrible. I just, nothing's gone, right? I'm again, I'm going back to that place. I, I got the wrong job. I'm a crappy husband

looking at him and I thought I'd give him 15 minutes.

So it's been about 15 minutes and I stand up and I walked up next to the bed and I'm looking at it more closely because I'm a little curious and I've never seen someone died alcoholism right in front of me. And I lean over and I slip my hand into his hand and he sat bolt upright.

I'm gonna shit my pants. And I was like, yeah. And he's. And he squeezed my hand and he looked around the room like he was looking around at lost in the forest. He didn't know where we were. And he's holding me. He's got my hand. And he looks at me and he kind of his gaze falls on me. And he said,

why do you love me so much?

And a minute ago I didn't.

And I lived right at him in his eyes. And I don't one of those days. We don't know why you say what you say. And I said, because you're just like me.

You just like me,

and I felt that room fill up with life.

I felt my heart fill up with life.

He felt it too.

And we sat there for while he was, he was toxic from his liver, so he couldn't make any sense. And he laid back down and I hung out with him and I walked out that door. Thank God for that guy. Thank you God for this guy. Everything lined up the the universe lined up. I had not failed to enlarge my spiritual life. I didn't have want to go. You don't have to want to go.

I didn't do anything. I sat there and judged his dental work.

That was my function,

and I happen to stop by the side of his bed so he could grab me and impart to me a spiritual experience. Any one of us could have had it. I just floated home.

I'm going to be the best man in Mike's wedding in December.

Be sober. He's alive.

We all worry about him all the time,

but I don't know how that happens. I don't know where else this happens.

That's all I got to say.

They say

it in a that

you got to give it away to keep it.

No, you got to give it away to even get it.

If you're not giving it away, you don't have it.

The way you find that out is by doing it.

He raised me in a A

and he called me one night in the middle of the night and he said

God is drunk in Wilmington

and he needs us

now. I've taken a lot of acid,

hung out with some

strange people, and I don't remember anything stranger than that.

And he came and got me and we drove down to Wilmington on this 12 step call and he's giggling all the way. I'm scared to death because we're going to Wilmington in the middle of the night, which is not a friendly place. And he's just giddy like a teenager, you know?

And that began a series of midnight rides. You know, he would take me on 12 step calls with him.

Been laughing, giggle about it, you know, and, and just this is going to be fun. We're having a good time. This is fun. It's not serious stuff. We get to point and laugh at the alcoholic, you know,

give him some shit and listen to a great story and take him to the Illinois club or you know something's going to happen. It's an adventure.

An adventure.

And then pretty soon it was my turn to take somebody. You know, it's my turn to call a guy up and say something weird,

which is fun to do. You know, I got this one guy one time, his Memorial Day

and Memorial Night on the weekend, Saturday night and

and this guy Derek with me and we get in the car and I go.

We got a half a tank of gas and a half a pack of cigarettes. We're on a mission from God

now. When do you get to actually say that? You know, live it.

Here we go, man.

And just crazy stuff, You know,

what if you open your heart to this work

and because there is no other job in a A, there's nothing else to do.

Should everybody sponsor people? Absolutely. There's nothing else to do.

Well, there's all kinds. Those are activities. We're talking about the action now.

You want to change your life.

If I want to change my life,

get rid of caller ID,

quit screening your calls. Have faith that whoever is calling you is supposed to talk to you. That's why they're calling. It's not a mistake. You know, you answer the phone, answer the phone no matter what you're doing, no matter what time it is, no matter whether your favorite rerun of Law and Order is on and you're watching it. You know, it's like,

what's more important than answering the phone to whoever might be on the other line?

I'm not hiding from anybody. I don't have any secrets to keep. You just answer the phone all the time. That simple fact alone. I mean, some of you are sitting out there going, oh God, I can't do that. You got to look. You know, I don't, I don't want to talk to him or her. They're a pain in the ass, you know, and and you just answer the phone. Don't look anymore. Just answer the phone. It'll change. That'll change your life.

Rule #2

rule #2

Just my opinion.

I love that

rule #2 never say no.

Have faith that what they're asking you to do is what you're supposed to do. Whatever it is, whether it's in or out of a a, whatever it is, it's whatever it is. Have faith that your life is being directed. You know, one of the things that we talked about in The First Step is that

my life had become unmanageable. My life doesn't need to be managed,

it just unfolds. I mean, it's obvious what I'm supposed to do. They call me and ask me all the time,

and I'm. Well, yeah. OK, sure. Why not?

I mean, sometimes you get to come to Louisiana, which we just love to come down here. We love you people. And I mean that seriously. We love the warmth from the hospitality. We love the humor. You know, we we just love it down here. We love the food. We love the music. There's nothing about this place that we don't like. But there are quite a few rednecks here,

but we try to get that right and there might be some in the room here.

You know, you know who you are

times you end up in Rialto, CA which is not a happy.

You know Bakersfield isn't a classic one, but you know it all works. I mean, it's all about me getting in the car now. If you open your heart to this work, I promise you something.

Whatever prejudice you have, whatever it is,

will walk across the room and ask you for help.

Now you have a decision to make.

Send it away. If you want to hang on to the prejudice, if you want to keep your life small, send it away. And you can find a lot of support for sending it away there. There are people that will back you up. Yeah, man, you know, we don't have to work with people like that.

Whatever it is, you can find support for it. You find a lot of people that will tell you, well, I don't sponsor people. I do other things. It's just not my thing,

you know? And my feeling about that is like, what other things? What replaces that? What replaces that story?

What could you do that would replace that story? And all of us have those stories. He's got more than one.

I mean, we, I've had, I mean, I'm serious stunning experiences. I mean, things that just like shook me to the floor, you know, the experiences that I've had and they're my experiences, you know, and when, when you relate them, it doesn't come across like when you're standing there.

One of the early ones, I was probably three years sober, maybe four. I don't think more than that. And I'm sponsoring lots of guys. I'm real active. And I've got this guy Al. And this is before cellphones and stuff. And Al was taking care of his mother who was dying. And this was not a really nice woman. She was a pretty ugly situation. They didn't have any health insurance. He had other family members, but nobody was willing to do it.

Guy was changing her diapers and popping her hip back into place and doing all this stuff. And he wasn't doing it gracefully. He'd yell at her and stuff and then feel guilty and then come and talk to me about it. And, and I'm, I'm observing this from afar. I'm not going to the house and seeing her and stuff because I don't, you know, I don't know anything about this. I don't know what's going on. You know, there's, there's limitations, right? There's boundaries, right? You know, there's some things that we just don't have to do. Is it's your life. It's not really had anything to do with me.

I don't want to insert myself into a clearly a very intimate and delicate situation. So, you know, I'm basically scared shitless out of it. You know, I have no idea what to do with anything like this. And he's bringing

some information that's just stunning. And I'm like impressed by what he's doing. Yet I can't really show him that because I'm the sponsor and he's the sponsee. I'm his spiritual guy, right? So I'm playing this role. So they finally take her to the hospital and he leaves the hospital and leaves my phone number with him, 'cause he's coming to my house and she's in the throes of death and he's really

agitated about all this. He doesn't know what. It's a new experience for him.

So he's standing in my kitchen and we're talking about the situation and the phone rings. It's the hospital. And they're they're essentially telling him, you know, Al, you better get over here. She doesn't have much time left. You better get, you better come back.

And so he tells me that, but he's not leaving.

He's just standing there.

And I know what he wants,

and I don't want to go.

I've never seen anything like this. I've never experienced anything like this. I barely know this woman, you know, I don't know him that well. You stop and think about it. You know, how long have I known him? You know, I'm reading the book and working the steps, but you know, I just don't want to go. I mean, there's limitation. We don't have to do all this stuff. You know, It's like all I'm here to do is read the book with you and work the steps. I'm not real. I don't really want to get into your life,

you know, and the stuff. And

so finally I said to him, I said, do you want me to go with you? And he looked at me and he goes, would you please?

I mean, he was scared. Now he has a family. He has a sister, He's got aunts and uncles stuff. But for some reason, these people trust us more than their own family. They feel closer to us than they do their own family.

Isn't that interesting? What is that? Why? Why would that be?

So I go with him. I go there and I walk in the room

and it's awful. I mean, she looks like hell. There's tubes and lines and there's monitors going off and it's just creepy. It's ICU and, and I and I walk right by the bed, you know, you know, And I go find a chair and I sit over in the corner

and AL's pacing back and forth. He's all jacked up, you know. So finally I look at her and she's laying on her side and she's kind of facing me. Her eyes are closed. And I look at her and it's like Corbin, I'm just staring at it. And this feeling came over me

very difficult to describe. Essentially what the feeling was is that everything's OK here, Bill,

there's nothing wrong. This is not a mistake. It's all right. Just relax

and I just take it took kind of took a deep breath and I just relaxed and I understood that feeling to be the truth. I got it and I really relaxed and I looked at Al and I said there was another chair sitting next to mine and I said, you know, Al, come on over here, sit down, man. And I held his hand and he's a great big guy like me. He's even actually kind of larger. He's a Carpenter. It is a big calloused hands, you know, And I and I held his hand

and I looked him right in the eye and I said, you know, everything's OK,

There's nothing wrong.

Just relax. This is the way it is. It's all right. It's all right. Just relax.

And I said, let's say a prayer and lowered our head and we said this where I have no idea what the prayer was. I said something, it wasn't just a serenity prayer, but I made some stuff up, you know, and, and I'm, I'm good at that, you know, I mean, there's no depth to my prayer life, but I say really good prayers.

I've got I've got good language skills

and while I'm saying the prayer, he's holding, really gripping my hand

and I can feel his hand relax in my hand.

That is intimacy.

That's intimacy

and I miss it all the time.

I'm looking for a head rush and it's very quiet. It's real soft

and peaceful.

He just believed me

and he relaxed.

1015 years later,

I'm taking care of my father as he's dying. Do you suppose the significance of that moment? Going to the hospital with him missed me.

It took that long for me to look back and go, what if I said no?

What if I just said no to him?

Would I have been ready to take care of my father? Because what happened, saying yes to him? There was a chain reaction. And I have. Jay and I and Matthew as well have sat with many people over the years that were dying,

Guys that we sponsored, people that we've known.

Patrick Keelan or the devil of all liars. We were with him when he died. Jay was in the room with saying prayers. The family let us in

and we took care of him essentially spiritually for a long time as he was dying and it was tragic. Broke my heart when he died. I loved him,

I loved him. My friend Chris Gantner, 7 year son, 7 year old son, died of leukemia

just same age as my children. Scared the living shit out of me. I went into that hospital room to see that kid and I walked out of there and I called Jay and I said I can't go back in there. And so he came, didn't even know these people. He came down and went in there with me and for the last few months of his life we were there almost every day. The last few weeks anyway, we were there all the time, just sat there with that little boy and with Chris because he wouldn't take the medication that they wanted to give him to get through the experience.

And so we let him go outside and yell at us and we made dark. You know, sometimes what you and I can do as Alcoholics is we can walk into a horrible situation like that and say outrageous off color stuff and make people laugh. And family members can't do that,

but we can walk in with the alcoholic that's going through it and we can say dark, horrible dying kid jokes and they'll laugh and break the tension. And that was kind of our job.

I hadn't, I had a like what I felt was a heart attack while I was in there one day. I think it was just indigestion. But Chris looks at me and he goes, God, you don't look good. I don't feel good. Nurse. They put me up in the cardiac care unit and hooked me up with monitors. And Ganttner, the father of this little boy, my my alcoholic friend, came up and he goes, this is the most shameless ploy for the center of attention I've ever seen in my life.

You can't stand that my kid is dying and he's the center of attention. You got a fake, a heart attack.

Remember that. Never forget it. Never forget it. No one was surprised even,

But you know, my my wife had a pretty serious stroke about 10 years ago that altered our lives forever. And she was hospitalized a couple of times after that for other things. And her great line about this is when I opened my eyes and there's fluorescent lighting and Bill and Jay are hovering over me. I know something awful is happening because these guys just show up

and the theme, the theme is God does not bring two people together to help, just one of them.

We are not saving them. They are expanding our spiritual consciousness.

I didn't mean to interrupt the flow. The the

whatever fear that I have, whatever prejudice I have, will be confronted through this action.

This is the mechanism that the steps use, that the manager uses

to correct our defects of character

and to add depth to our emotional life by adding those things that we're missing completely.

This is how you learn compassion.

This is how you learn patience, intolerance. This is by doing these actions.

People say pain is a touchstone of spiritual progress. I'm not so sure about that. But uncomfortable is definitely part of that. And I don't know if it's pain, but the only time I change or I have an experience that I wouldn't have had before, which is what change is all about. If I keep doing the same stuff over and over and over again where and I'm in a certain comfort level, nothing really is going to change. I'm in my comfort level. If I step out of that and I become uncomfortable, I'm going to have a new experience. Is it going to cause me to deepen as a person

just by having these new experiences? And when I get on my knees and I ask for help, I shouldn't send it away. When it shows up and it's going to look a lot like you, you're going to come into my life. You're going to ask me for help. I had a guy walk up to me and say, would you be my sponsor? I think I should tell you that I'm gay. And I said, wouldn't you rather have a gay sponsor? And he says no. He says I don't have a problem being gay, but drinking is an issue,

you know,

I mean, who knew

I'm supposed to be the sponsor? You know, who's really getting educated here? You know, really, it's serious this good question,

isn't it? I mean, you come into my you've added so much richness to my life. And if I'm going to stay here for the rest of my life, just go into meetings is not going to cut it. You hear this stuff, you know, go to lots of meetings. Don't drink in between bullshit. You know, meeting makers make it. I'm not so sure about that. You know, is going to meetings important? Absolutely. Is it part of the program? You bet it is. Of course it is.

But why? But is it everything? Why are you going, but why? Are you going to get something out of it or are you coming to add something to it?

I mean, the best thing I can do, no matter how many years sober I am, is when I'm walking up to my Home group or any meeting is look around for people I don't recognize and just walk up and say hi. That simple, that simple. You know, you got a cup of coffee, you need to. I had one guy sit out there in front of me. He goes, I don't know anybody here. And I feel so uncomfortable and I look at him. I go, you know everybody here.

And he goes, no, I don't. I've never been here before. I said you know me and I know everybody.

You're in.

You're in, you know,

you're one of Bill C's kids now, man. You know, we got you, dude. Step back. You looking for some help? You better watch out. Here it comes. You know, we got lots of help for you, you know, I mean, that kind of thing. It is. That's all you're doing, making people feel comfortable. So these experiences sitting across the table from some guy in the middle of the night and reaching across the table in some coffee shop somewhere and holding his hand and looking right in the eye and go, you're OK now, man. It's all over. It's over. The war's over, man. You're all right.

You're with us now. You're safe.

That'll change your life. I mean, when I look at him in the eyes like that scares the shit out of them because I'm holding their hand for one thing, you know, But I mean it to the death of my soul. I mean it. I know that that's the truth. If you come and do what I do, you'll be OK. This guy Ganttner was with me on a 12 step call one night, one day. And we're in the living room of this guy's house and he's sitting there in his underpants, you know, and he, the guy is sober 7-8 years and he'd gone out and he'd been out for a bunch of years. And we go on this 12,

he's sitting there and he's looking at his TV and he goes, what happened to me? What happened to my life, man? I watch religious television all the time and you know, I ask God for help and God has forsaken me. God, God has forsaken me. And I looked at him and I went, no, he hasn't. He sent you us.

And my friend Chris goes, God, you can't say that.

And I reached out and I said take my hand, I'll save your life.

You got you can't say that that's not right. He's yelling across the living and be sitting with a left,

but I drove

and then the guy took my hand

in his underwear.

Oh shit, what am I going to do now? You know there's no script for any of this and I looked at him. I go brother seemed appropriate.

Do you have any alcohol in the house? And he goes, yeah, I do. I got a whole half gallon of Kessler in there

and I go, well, let's go pour it out because you don't drink anymore. And we all went into the kitchen and ganders looking at me going, he's man, the devil's going to get

this is not good, you know?

And we go into the kitchen and the guy takes the bottle out and he hands it to me and I go, no, you got to pour it out. And he goes

and he took that bottle and he poured it out, and he cried. We all cried.

Oh man, you know you're good.

And then we all stood in middle of the kitchen and hugging. I was going to start singing Rock of Ages or but I knew Chris had hit me that you know, and we took the guy to the

club and, you know, a couple years later he died. You know, I mean, he, he drank himself to death and he tried. People there remembered him and knew him.

You can't buy this kind of experience. It doesn't come in a package. It comes in Alcoholics Anonymous. And you know, this is just my opinion, but

just a second, they didn't get that right. It's just my opinion.

It's a really good one.

There we go, but there's nothing else

to do here. This is why we're here. This is why our lives were saved, to do this work. And do we receive something for it? It's immeasurable. It's hard. It's we all we can hear. We've been talking about the change that has happened to us, and hopefully you can identify and the core of this change is doing this work. It's the reason the three of us are here. You know, we're all sponsors and we're all sponsees.

We're all doing it because it's been handed down to us.

This is the heart and soul of Alcoholics Anonymous is sitting across the kitchen table from each other and reading the book and sharing our lives with no, no parameters, no boundaries fully open. I'll do anything I can for you. You know I if you would let me, I will enter into your life and what Ioffer you is my time. You can come and enter into my life. If you want what I have, you can have all of it. There's nothing I have that I wouldn't give you.

My wife sponsors a lot of girls. I sponsor a lot of guys. We try to keep them separated, you know, and sometimes she tries to pair them up, which is not good given the gene pool, you know? But I live in the kind of house that I was raised in, and there's no better way to live, you know? I mean, do we talk about you all the time? We sit and talk about our responses about what's going on. What's up with Angela? How's it going? I mean, we're out of ourselves and into other people.

That's the whole key to how do you do that? How does that happen? You start working with people, you fall in love with them initially, maybe out of the ego of it to get the hash marks that goes away. You can't maintain that. You come to realize that you're just a conduit. The wisdom isn't springing forth from you. It's flowing through. You know, you're part of this chain. You're an important link in the chain and there's many, many links, but I'm one of them. I'm connected to you in a way that I can't get away. I can't get away because I'm

connected.

It's a wonderful way to live. Thank you.

I think,

I think it's good

Henry,

yeah, sing a song. But the one thing that I'd I'd like to to to to pass on is a line from Henry now.

And it's that anytime in this work, your heart will be broken.

We do fall in love with them,

but every time my heart is broken, it is broken open.

There is more of it to share.

And over 32 years my heart has been broken open repeatedly

and I have a very, very large, large heart

and there is now space for all of you