#98 The Walk

If you are a Faith practitioner or in a 12 Step program, the challenge is the same. Are my walk and talk in sync? Do I live the Principles I claim as mine, are they in my actions. Does my declaration ( of who I am, what I'm about) match my actions. Our actions, what we do and how we act always betray what we truly believe in our hearts.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Step Twelve
• 2:45 Awakening Before Carrying The Message
• 6:30 Thinking, Not Drinking
• 10:40 The Big Book’s Map Of The Steps
• 15:20 Why Speed Matters Through Four To Eleven
• 18:40 What Real Sponsorship Looks Like
• 23:10 Attraction, Identification, And Change
• 27:30 Emotional Equilibrium And Recovery
• 31:30 Saying Yes To Helping Others
• 36:40 Dr. Bob’s Four Reasons To Sponsor

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

My name is Roger. I'm an alcoholic. I've been server since October 11th, 1978. And uh that is a direct result of the 12 steps of the people in Alcoholics Anonymous. Um so tonight is on step 12, which will be really handy for Ing, and some other people that maybe uh need a tune-up here around this this topic. This is something this will be an eye roll for. So I we could do a whole weekend on this, just on this. So I'm gonna try and be concise and um make some points that hopefully will stimulate some discussion. The uh when I was new, helping someone else was not high on my priorities. I was not looking at the 12-step thinking, oh, I can't wait to get there. Right? And the step is having had a spiritual awakening as the result of the first 11 steps. I try to carry this met just to alcoholics, and when I'm not doing that, practice these principles in all my affairs, which is carry this message to everyone in my life, in the world, the non-alcoholics, right? Um, I carry that message to them through principles, higher principles, kindness, gentleness, courtesy, empathy, tolerance, patience, understanding. Okay, so tall order. So the question is I'm gonna inventory this. The question is, have I had the awakening? Because if I haven't, because I skipped some of the steps, or I just went one to twelve, if I haven't had that awakening, what do I have to carry? What do I have to share? Right? I have my message, and I'm gonna try not to get too soapboxy with this, but I'm really passionate about this idea of sponsorship because there's so much bad sponsorship, there's so much lousy sponsorship. Sorry, there just is. And the reason it's interesting to me, maybe not to you. Let me uh you know, I can't find it. Oh well, so we spend all this time putting our thinking through these steps, not our drinking. We're not drinking. Amy's not drinking, she hasn't drank for two months. This isn't about drinking. This is now about thinking. And what am I putting myself through in the steps? I'm putting my thinking through a drastic reappraisal and adjustment, going from what I was thinking about, selfish, self-centered, fear, shame, guilt, all that, to thinking about and moving towards a higher set of principles, or if you will, just the opposite of those will do. So this is just a little stat. And I'm you know, I'm a big book guy, so I'm not uh I'm not a product of treatment, I've never been to treatment, I'm not a product of detox, I've never been to detox, I'm not a product of hospitals, I haven't been to hospitals, I haven't been to jails, but it really didn't help too much. But the point is, um, and I know it's not as common now. It was more common when I got sober, but the only treatment I've had for my alcoholism and all my other compulsive crap is these steps in this book. And what I found was when you treat the source of the problem, which is disconnection from a higher power, whether you believe in it or not, it's I got lost along the way, and I got seduced by the world and the externals. So this is about finding my way back home to that state of consciousness I came into the world with that innocence, that kindness, that openness, that gentleness. So it's interesting to me. We spend 64 pages, the doctor's opinion, Bill's story, there's a solution, more about alcoholism. We agnostics on steps one and two. Then we make the decision, we do 13 pages on three and four in chapter five, then 16 pages to get five through 11. 16 pages. It's like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Because once you make the decision, you got to get yourself initially through the process. Because if you stay and you stick on four or having to do five or not wanting to you mention, if you don't get going and keep going, even if it's at a at a moderate or slow pace, you're gonna go back. Because I can't sit and hold all that pain, all those mistakes, all that hurt, all that shame, all that guilt, all that remorse. I can't hold that. That's why I drank. So it's imperative that we get through that process, not in its entirety, but good enough to be able to move forward. And it won't, it won't matter, you know. They say nothing counts but honesty and thoroughness. Well, that's true. But it's only as honest as you can be, and it's only as thorough as you can be. When you're newly sober, you can only know so much. God won't give you more that it won't let your head explode, right? So I gotta be in the game. And it doesn't matter in this sense. I'm not saying be disingenuous and be phony and half-assid. I'm just saying if you do the best job you can do, you'll be fine. Because what you miss will come to your awareness in 10, 11, and 12. Because it's imperative that you and I wake up. That spiritual awakening, think about what it means to wake up. When you wake up in the morning, you come from wherever you were when you were sleeping, unconscious to a different form of conscious. And I wake up and I become aware of my surroundings. Then I got become aware of the day, then I become aware of what's in front of me. Do my prayer meditation and my readings, and I uh sally forth in high hope. So we do all this work, and then we get to chapter seven, which is working with others, which tells me precisely how to work with you and precisely how I should be worked with, and we skip it. We just make it up. You know this? You've been to AA? People just make shit up, you know. Well, I've had, I can't tell you how many people I've had. I I had a sponsor, we went through the steps, but he didn't believe in four, so we never did that one. Oh, he didn't believe in prayer, so we never did 10 and 11. Oh, okay. Well, I went to a meeting. What did they say? Go to a meeting. What do they say? When you get out of here, get a home group, find a sponsor. I don't know what that's supposed to look like. So you walk in, I get a guy I'm working with, he said, I've been to AA, that didn't work. I said, Well, tell me about it. Well, they were just smoking cigars and playing cribbage. And they said, we just don't drink. That's what we do here. Put the plug in the jug, go to meetings. And if that's what you walk into, and you have no other information, you're gonna think that's AA. Same with Al-Anon. You go to an Al-Anon meeting, and all they're doing is bitching and whining, you think that's Al Anon. No, that's just one meeting. So I have to inform myself. It's on you and me. I have to inform myself what is a good meeting? Well, a good meeting sounds like this book to me. This is all my opinion, of course, but it's based on a lot of experience and some facts. So I want to hear in a meeting, I want to hear the solution. I want to feel lifted, or at least remotely hopeful. Right? And I'm along the way, you're gonna find some people, men or women, that you hear talking, and you're gonna identify with what they're saying and the way they're saying it. Gonna hit you here in the heart. That's a recognition of the truth that you're being exposed to. Ah, well, if you are resonating to something Claudia is saying, and you go, man, that girl's got it. That's right. That is identification, and you can't identify if you don't have it in you. If you don't understand, for instance, what honesty feels like, you'll never understand it from listening to someone talk about it. Right? So I'm in this process. There's very clear-cut directions and instructions and examples in chapter seven. They spend me, they spend 14 pages on working with other people. So for one, two, and twelve out of 103 pages to get through the steps, 78 of them on are on, Amy, are you powerless and is your life unmanageable? Amy, do you not believe or can you come to believe there might be a power greater than you that could solve your problem? Now go for it. Go for it. To the best of your ability, go for it. Okay, I might need some help. Yeah, we got help. But I need to pick someone. You go out and pick a sponsor. You hear people talking about this? I don't find someone I can get over. I want to find someone who's easy peasy. I want to find someone that I can roll over. So my program consists of compliance and conformity. I want, they want to say, hey, you going to meetings? Yeah, I checked that box. I'm going to meetings. Did you pray this morning? Oh, yeah, I prayed this morning. Got a sponsor? Yeah, I got a sponsor. Sure do. Yeah. They don't. When's the last time you talked to him or her? What are you talking about? Right? This is true for all the fellowships. It's not just AA. What are we about? My experience is this. Once you've had this experience, this awakening, this waking up to a different life, a different consciousness, a different lifestyle, part of you is going to want to help someone. And I didn't know that was even there. When I finally had the experience of these steps, what happened is people started to come up to me asking me for help. Not a minute before I finished going through that process. And I didn't know I'd changed. I didn't know at all. And you know, they talk about attraction. There's something about her. There's something about him. When they talk, I can hear it. That's identification, that's attraction. You know, I hear, I heard guys, I went to men's meetings because I got enough problems without going to mixed meetings when I'm new. And uh I would see these guys, and they just they demonstrated an amazing equilibrium emotionally. Good things would happen, bad things would happen. And they have the same approach to it all. They kind of just rode out no big ups, no big downs. They just kind of rode up, my cancer's back. Guess I'll have to praise them on. Oh, my cancer's in remission. Thank you. Okay. Just normal life, up and down, and they had a way, but they just kind of rode over it. You know, had great shock absorbers for life, right? They just could take the speed bumps and it didn't knock them off balance. And I'm watching that, I don't know what I'm watching. I'm watching men recovered in AA. Recovered from the state of mind and body they arrived in not perfect. Recovered, restored to sanity. I know the difference between a good idea and a goofy idea. It doesn't say you're a perfect person, but I've experienced a restoration and I didn't even know it until guys started to come up to me asking me to help them. Did I want to help them? No, I did not want to help them. I was busy helping me. Right? I got a I got a life to get back to. I gotta make this work. I don't have time to help these guys. God. Well, I found time. And what happened was something that was really stunning to me. And all of this is in retrospect because it was so subtle. Um, and this is pretty much true to this day. A guy would come up to me and say, Can I talk to you after me? I'd go, Yep. And he'd say, I suppose I should be honest. And I said, it'd help. And he'd look at me and say, Well, first I gotta tell you, I don't like you. And I would look at him and say, Well, I don't like you either. What's the second thing? And he'd say, you know, I'm on paper probation. And uh, if I violate again, I'm a habitual criminal. I'm going back, I'm doing 20 years. And I know you you beat this thing. And if I don't, I'm not doing another bit. I'll kill myself first. So I'm gonna ask you if you'll help me. And then I tell him what we're gonna do and how we're gonna do it. And the guys that did that are fine today. The guys that didn't do that, some are gone. I don't know where they went, some are dead, some were in prison. That's so here's the thing. I said yes. Why did I say yes? Not because I wanted to. Here's why I said yes. Dr. Bob laid it out really good for us in the book. It's on page 181. He talks about this. I spend a great deal of time passing on what I learned to others who want and need it badly. There's a qualifier for your sponsee. Do you want it and do you need it? Are you willing to do anything to get it? Right? But he he goes on. I did it for four reasons. Sense of duty. It's a pleasure. Because in so doing, I'm paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me. And the fourth reason, because every time I do it, take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip. It deepens my understanding and presence of the power. Whether you call the power God or whatever, it doesn't matter. But duty. You know, when I it took time, I needed a timeline. It took time to realize those guys, when I was so toxic and so new and so disgusting, they loved me. They didn't like me. They loved me, they allowed me to stay and they tolerated me until I got well enough that I wasn't such a pain in the ass to be around. Um, and then out of that, I felt a debt, a duty. You know, these guys did something that was not fun. I was not a fun guy when I was really sober. I was not a fun guy for the first several years. I was the good example of the bad example. So, in retrospect, looking back, those guys didn't say no to me, and I didn't say no to those guys coming up to me. Now it happens. Now I've got certain parts of this book that I'm very familiar with, and other parts of these depths that I'm not too solid of. I'm taking Tim through the book. And I know it's gonna take us a couple months to get to the agnostics, but I got to come up with some more depth and understanding. So I start studying. I think I'm studying for Tim. And sponsorship is a win-win. I'm studying for him. There's an English proverb the hand that gives gathers. I can't help you without being helped. I think I'm studying for you. I end up studying for me. I study for both of us, right? I I learned something really early, and my dad actually exposed me to the idea because I would go to his house and I'd bitch about all the all the goofballs in my meeting, and how I hated them all. And and uh he would say you don't have to like them, you just have to love them. And I didn't understand what that meant until I started getting the sponsors, sponsees, and I did love them. I started fun, my heart changed. I started finding out that I cared about them in a really different way that I didn't know I was capable of. I really wanted you to get this. I really wanted you to get it because it's been so damn good for me, but it wasn't good in the beginning, it has gotten progressively better over time. It's you've got to hang in there. In uh there's a solution, there's a line after it talks about the fantastic experience, says this we did, the steps, because we honestly wanted to. Gut check, is that true? And then it goes, comma, and we're willing to make the effort. That's a different group of people. There's a lot of people that want to want to. There's a lot of people that I've met that will talk to me about wanting to get sober, but they're not willing to do anything to get it. I had that experience when I was a new. I have some guys that I that I became very um enamored with, old guys, right? And I'd ask them how they got to their 20 years, and they'd tell me, and I just go, Jesus, that's you know, I want what you have, but I'm not willing to do what you did to get it. Well, then you're not gonna get anything, except more crap. So my experience, and this is this is this is my experience, okay? And Amy, try and hear me. Because this book is written in a funny way because of the time period it was written in. But if you can hear the emotional message of it, the landscape of it, chapter seven will tell you exactly what your sponsor is supposed to sound like, act like, what their job is, what my job is, how it's supposed to be. Then when I go out into the fellowship to find someone to sponsor me, I'll know what to listen for. So it starts out and it says this I'm on page 89. Um, this thing, sponsorship, works when other activities fail. This is our 12th suggestion. Carry this message to other alcoholics. There's a lot of controversy on what this message is, right? Is it the message for Amy? 60 days, the message is how do you not drink? Then it's oh, I got 60 days, I'm not drinking. Now, how do I like it? How do I learn to like this? Because I'm still more alcoholic, I'm still sicker than I am well. But, and this is I'm I'm I'm just using Amy for example because she was good enough to tell us where she's at. But there's a reason. Something's happened to Amy because she went from not being able to stop drinking to not drinking for two months. That's exactly how long Ebbie had when he went in 12-step bill. Two months. So when I ask myself what the hell's going on, I don't know, but maybe this is that mysterious higher power they're talking about. Because my head, which isn't me, my head is screaming at me that I need to do some of this old behavior and stuff that I used to do, and I'm not doing it. And I'm finding little pieces and little meetings and people along the way. So I think there's multiple messages. When you're new, we got a we got a plan for living. We have a plan for living that will produce a life that's so satisfying you won't have the need to drink. You won't have the desire to drink. You're not gonna have that on day 61. You're gonna have that after you clear away the stuff that's between you and having that experience. How do I clear that away when I'm powerless? Well, you don't. You don't clear it away. You create the environment with the steps for God or this power, whatever you want to call it, for something good to come into your consciousness and start enlightening you. Excuse me. Right? Revealing, revelation, revealing to you. Oh, there's a big chip. I never realized. I thought my life was unmanageable because I drank, but it was unmanageable before I drank. I thought, I thought all these defects came from drinking. Now that I've done a four-step, I see I've had these defects since I was a little boy, little girl. Oh. So did the alcohol create the defects, or was the alcohol the answer to the dis-ease I lived with growing up? Oh, now I find out that's why I drank. To kill the pain that I don't know I was in from my adolescence, from my growing up years. Oh no, it's a whole other conversation, but that's where it came from. So here's some promises for us if we're gonna work with people. Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends. This is an experience you must not miss. We know you won't want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other, the brightest spot of our lives. That's a picture of what it's gonna look like for me down the road. It's not the picture I have when I read this and I'm new. I hope it's true. Because I did not have friends, and all the friends I had ended up dying or leaving or were in prison. So I'm sitting in these meetings with a bunch of old people. These guys were all World War II vets, Korean vets. They were, god, they were all there like 65. No, I'm the old guy, I'm 72. And I came into that meeting, I looked around and thought, these are my new friends? Jesus. We got a problem here, Houston. Someone beating me up. You can't know what you don't know. And so I have to sign up for the experience. So then it talks about approach. It says, Where am I going to find drunks? He said, Well, in these days, in 1939, talk to your minister, talk to your rabbi, talk to the cops, talk to someone at the hospital. Now you don't have to do that at all. Look to your right, look to your left. Are you in a meeting? There's all kinds of people in meetings dying of untreated alcoholism. There's no problem finding people to work with. The harder problem is finding people that will work with you. Do you get what I'm saying? I'm willing to work with you. But boy, I'll tell you, as a preponderance of people that don't want to do the don't want to do the deal. So it talks about attitude. Don't be a reformer, don't be crazy, don't be telling people what the deal is. Just try and find someone to work with. And that's Benjamin says, when you discover a prospect for Alcoholics Anonymous, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, probably a duck. I'm just saying, you know. Um find out all you can about him or her. This is the part I like, because this preyed on my manipulative, tricky, detective mind. You know, find out all you can about. If he doesn't want to stop or she doesn't want to stop, don't waste your time. You're I'm not here to persuade you. I'm here to help you. If you're not persuaded, you're gonna go drink again. And that'll either kill you or persuade you. That's the problem. That's a mythology that's come out of treatment. I'm not bashing treatment, but I'm just saying when you tell someone relapse is a part of recovery, you tell them that we expect you to drink, we expect you to do dope again. Not everyone. Not everyone. And it's not a part of recovery, but the book talks about it and says, you know, if you screw up and you get a bad case of the jitters, um, and that wakes you up, it's worth the experience. If it doesn't wake you up, see the problem is we've all hit bottoms, those places where I'm go, I'm done, I'm through, I can't do it, take it another step, God, I'm gonna, right? But if you stay there and you don't engage in a process of change, eventually you come off the bottom. And it sounds like this. Well, I could probably have a beer. That's hardly even drinking, you know. Okay, I'm just gonna go have one, two, no more than three, you know, that kind of deal. I'm not gonna get drunk. Beer is not really even drinking from where I came from, you know. So, but what I don't understand is I have this thing called the phenomenon of craving. And when I get enough ethyl alcohol into my system, I can't stop. I can't stop. And until I learn that part of it, I don't have a handle on the powerless. When I go out to drink and my plan changes, alcohol and alcoholism is what's changing the plan. And it tries to let me think it's my idea. So if you don't want what I'm offering you, I'm to let you have your experience. I'm not here to persuade you, I'm not the AA rah-rah cheerleader team. Let's go to a meeting, give me an M, give me an E T. No, no, no. No. They the thing that's attractive, and it's subtle, it's very subtle. I'm around some people, and it's not everybody in the meeting, you know this from going to meetings, but I'm around some people that have lives at work, they have lives that they enjoy. There, there's a satisfaction and a contentment in them that's beyond what I can imagine for me. It's kind of mystical when you see it. You can't name it right away, but that's what it is. People with lives at work. Huh. So don't chase them. Got it. If there's any indication he or she wants to stop, have a good talk with the person most interested in them. Might be his PO officer, might be a husband or a wife, might be a good friend, might be his boss who called you to do a curbside visit with him. It could be anyone, right? Why do I want to find out all I can about you? Because I want to put myself in your place. So I know how I would want to be approached. I was a militant, evangelical atheist. So I don't want to talk about God. And I won't talk about religion. I need to know that about you so I don't step on a landline and turn you off when I do approach you, okay? So, and then it talks about explaining to the family, don't get too excited, don't get too over anxious, because he's gonna have to, she's gonna have to find their own way through this. And it's not gonna be pretty, but you know already from living with this, there's nothing you can do about it. Now, that is not to say I'm to leave the family in a situation where they're being abused. I will do some intervening on that. But as long as you're safe and bozo or Bosette is just over there drunk in the corner, that's just let it ride. Because what we've got to do is we've got to let them hit that bottom. Then it says, whether it's family or a professional, a doctor, have them direct them to you as someone who's got a solution. Oh, okay. Then it says, see them alone if possible. Then have a general conversation. You notice in this general conversation, I'm just feeling you out, see where you're at. And if you're in a bad place, you got a court date coming up, and you've just hit a jackpot and you've lost your car and you got your 14th DWI. We're gonna talk about the crap, right? We're gonna talk about what he or she wants to talk about. My legal problems, my relationship problems, my money problems, or maybe it's goofy stories. You won't believe what I've hit this time when I got drunk. I parked my car in a tree. And we so then I'll share some of that with him because we've all got stories to match these things, because all I'm trying to do is warm him up and help him see or her see. I was like you, I was like you, and then as the visits change, what I'm trying to get him to do is ask me, well, what happened to you? You notice in this chapter, the guy, me, who is playing the sponsor role, is not telling anyone what to do. There's no dictatorial bullshit here. There's no, you need to do this, you need to go to 20 meetings in three days. You know, there's none of that. What it is is this guy, what I'm doing with you is I'm sharing my experience. I'm not telling anyone what to do or how to do it. That's what the sponsor is supposed to do. Share their experience. And I have a lot of experience that's negative. I have a lot of experience in the areas of what doesn't work. And uh, I've had sponsees that I've worked with when they hear that story, they go, Well, I'm sure not doing that. I was never that way. I was never that way. So, second visit. I want to get him to ask me, How did you do this? Now he's given me an invitation. Now I'm gonna give him the reader's digest version. The first part of our meetings are what I was like, and now I'm gonna give him a little taste of what happened. I started going to these goofy meetings, and these guys have steps on the walls, and guys started talking about this blue book, and there's some instructions in it, and you know, and it led me to a different place. How did that happen? Well, by doing these steps, there's some ideas here about admittance, allowing in some new ideas. Powerless, can't manage my life to my satisfaction. Need to find a power, obviously. It should be obvious. If it isn't, you're gonna go drink some more. I need additional power, not in the terms of Johnny Walker Redd, but real power, transformative power, power that can get me to day 61, get me to day 70. Power, a different power. I don't know what it is. I don't even know if I believe in it, but I'm willing to believe in the possibility of it. Now I make a decision to go for it. And four through nine is everything that's blocking my relationship with that power. So that's what I'm doing with him. And the book says it there's a really interesting metaphor. Um and it says over and over if he's not interested in your solution, you may have to drop him. That's not the same as firing him. That's something that came out of the fellowship. I fired my sponsor. I fired my sponsee. Bullshit. That's not what this says. There's no hiring and firing going on. It's called spiritual companion in other disciplines. But I want to make him uncomfortable and I want to get him to ask me, what did you do and how did you do it? Then I explain the steps to him, okay? And I lay the kit of spiritual tools at his feet. What a beautiful metaphor. I don't shove them down his throat. I don't say, this is what you need to do. I'm saying this is what I did. And here's some of the things I learned from him. Now, metaphorically, if I'm laying this kit of tools at Reiner's feet and he says, you know, I think I'll go for it. I think I will. I think I will try this. Well, now it's incumbent upon me to show him how to use the tools. When you're new, you don't know how to do the steps. You know what the words say, but you don't know how to do it. Anyway, so there's a couple of things. I'm gonna wrap this up because I I know I'm going on and on. What I'm trying to do, when a guy, when a man or a woman comes to me and says, Will you help me? Whether they know it or not, I know it. They are literally putting their life in my hands. And I am not gonna give you bullshit. I am not gonna create, contribute to your demise. I'm gonna give you the truth, whether you like it or not. I'm gonna give it to you in a manner I hope that you can digest, that you can internalize. And if I can't, I will send you to Mark, I will send you to Reiner, I will send you to John, I will send you to someone that maybe you can hear. Okay? So it's not the matter of givingness in question, but when and how to give, that often makes the difference between failure and success. The minute we put our work on a service plane, this is not general service in AA. This is the minute I start doing for you what you can do for yourself, the alcoholic I'm working with commences to rely upon my assistance rather than upon God. Clamors for this or that, claiming they can't master alcohol until their material needs are cared for. Nonsense. So it's a very hard knocks to learn this truth: job or no job, wife or no wife, dog or no dog, money or no money. We simply won't stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence upon God. Burn the idea into the consciousness of every man, woman, that they can get well regardless of anyone. The only condition sounds so simple. Trust God, clean house. You know what Al Anon's promises? The Al Anon's in here, too. Al Anon's promise is we have a way of living we can introduce you to via the steps that you can have a life where you can thrive, whether Roger gets sober or not. That's a big damn promise. So the only condition, trust God, clean house. Yeah, help others. So, and the last thing I want to talk about is on page 100. And this is, I call it a covenant. It's by agreement with you. I know you're too sick to understand what we're doing, but damn it, I do. I do, and I know how critical this is. It says both you and the new man must mock our woman, must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress. That's the question. Not shooting pool, not sober camping trips, path of spiritual progress. That's what my relationship with you is about. It's about helping you to find, establish, and grow a relationship with a God of your understanding. Everything else is commentary. That's the goal for every one of us. You can't have an awakening without a power greater than yourself. Okay? If you persist, remarkable things will happen. It doesn't say for whom, but it tells you the principle be persistent. When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned. You need some timeline for this, don't you? You need some history to realize that when I trust this power, when I rely on these principles in my recovery, I do get better outcomes. But I don't know that right away. I have to do it for a while. And a while depends on how resistant you are to change. So follow the dictates of a higher power, and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstances. Period. That's the covenant. That's a holy agreement I make with you. Whether you make it with me or not is irrelevant. I need to know what this is about for me. Now close with this. This is uh this is Francis, Saint Francis, speaking to his monks in the year 1280. But it's addressed to them, but it fits perfectly with our recovery. Before you speak a peace, you must first have it in your heart. Before you talk recovery, you better be living it. Okay. We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what's fallen apart, and to bring home any who've lost their way. That's what we do when we meet each other. I relate, you relate. We start on this path. What am I doing? I'm walking you home. I'm walking you home to who you've always been, to who has always been in here. The I am, the divinity in you. AA talks about it in terms of deep down every man, woman, child is the fundamental idea of God. I'm walking you home to. That idea. This is the prodigal son metaphor. I'm walking you home, Francis, to the Father, to your creator, to where you were intended to be when you came in to that place of openness, love, honesty, right? So that's enough, I think. It's probably too much for some of you. So let me stop this uh recording.