>> Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-sunrise.com.

Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> >> Good evening.

My name is Michael. I'm an alcoholic. I have so many friends here.

This is like like a homecoming for me. Uh it is wonderful. I'm delighted to be here.

Now, I must explain something to uh all of this equipment that's here. I suppose you've been wondering what the rear projection screen was for. I must explain to you.

I've been to a lot of AA meetings. I've heard an awful lot of speakers. Everybody uh uh tells their story, you know, and but it's all just words.

Some tell it with a very brilliant word picture. It's still just words. So, I thought it would be kind of interesting to have visuals to go along with her and mine.

Hence the rear projection screen. However, as you know, anything technical anything can go wrong will go wrong. And so, although I had the infrared uh uh signaler to change the slides and to put on the rear where there's motion picture, it got followed up at the airport and isn't there.

So, I'm going to go back to the old-fashioned method and use a clicker. So, if I can have the first slide, please. Now, this as you see is part of the to from this Gilbey's Gin ad.

The very cold, crisp martini in a wonderful Baccarat glass with a twist of lemon. That is the leitmotif of my entire talk. The martini will be appearing from time to time.

Next slide, please. Now, this is you recognize it the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I grew up in San Francisco.

It's interesting about the Golden Gate Bridge is that the people who commit suicide by jumping off of it always jump on the city side, so the last thing they see is the city. It shows that people from San Francisco, even suicidal, have great taste. But, this is an honest program and I must I must honestly confess to you.

I say I grew up in San Francisco. I did I did was not born in San Francisco. I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

That requires some explanation. I spring from the lines of two rather unusual people. My mother and father were both doctors, and my mother was what she called a gynob, a g y n o b.

And she was almost close to 9 months pregnant. My father was in Tulsa on business. My mother wanted to go see him.

And he said, "You can't come to Tulsa from San Francisco. You're pregnant." She said, "I know, but you see I have this doctor in attendance, so everything is fine." She was a gutsy woman. And so she climbed on a a train and uh pulled into the station in Tulsa and said, "Find me a taxi and point me to the nearest hospital." And so they did and I was born.

Morning Side Hospital. Here's a picture of it being demolished. Now, this many of you will recognize.

It's a picture of Pacific Heights in San Francisco where I grew up. And this is a picture of the old Fox Theater in San Francisco. Now, there was a time before television.

Yes, I go back before television. When uh children went to the Saturday movies. Saturday morning Saturday matinees and they sat through you know a bunch of serials.

Those are like the like the television shows are now, cartoons and what have you. And I would always go to the Fox Theater. The biggest Fox Theater, unlike a neighborhood theater, at an intermission time there was organ music.

I was enormously fond of the organ music and so I would sit through two or three or four shows just to hear the organ music. To this day I am still affected by organs that rise in the dark. This is a picture of the Fox Theater being demolished.

I went off to school I went off to school at the University of Southern California. The only university in the world that has a statue of a Trojan in front. And halfway through my college career I decided to enlist in the armed forces and I became a a part of that ideological disparity we refer to as World War II.

And I was in the South Pacific flying the airplanes and things and came back there from and continued my education graduate. Then as happens quite often in the theaters of war they say there are no atheists in the foxholes and there are not. I guess when man's extremity is God's opportunity, we all identify with that, don't we?

And uh I became very intrigued with the Catholic Church. Uh I was not raised a Catholic. I was raised as kind of a a nothing, really.

My parents had no feeling about religion whatsoever. They said, "You can find out what you want." So, I did. I went around to whoever went to church, I went with them.

But, I got intrigued with the Catholic Church. And And as as is my want, and many of us share this, well, I don't do anything by halves. I went off to the monastery.

And uh I was at uh St. Bonaventure's in New York. And uh San Luis Rey in California.

And Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, the old mission. And then to a place in Huntsville, Utah. Uh community of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance, normally called Trappists.

If you can imagine me taking a vow of silence. I I mentioned that only because it was fascinating. The Trappists uh are devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

And they all of the the Trappist priests take the first name of the Blessed Virgin. And then the second name of a saint. So, the man could be very well Saint, I mean, the Father Mary Mark, or Father Mary Jerome.

My confessor's name was Father Mary Martin. Don't tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor. And he never knew why it broke me up.

And he never knew why I had a tendency to sing, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." Eventually, I left the monastery about mutual agreement with the Father Abbot and me. He said that I really didn't belong in the monastic. I belonged out in the world and so I left.

And uh left the look at the conventional life at least. And uh ended up in he told me to go to a place I'd never been before. Because he said start your life anew and be compressed.

So I did this kind of thing with a map and ended up in Portland, Oregon. Lived there for about 6 years. A wonderful place to live.

And uh the and found myself in the world of advertising. Simply because somebody suggested I would make a good advertising writer. And it makes a great deal of sense to go into advertising and marketing when you have an advanced degree in medieval Latin and theology.

Use it all the time. The uh Now mind you I have I've always drunk. I mean I have done some drinking.

I grew up when I I If you want to get out your calculators, I grew up when the Volstead Act was still in existence. And that was prohibition. And there was a thing called bathtub gin.

And maybe about 10, I knew how to make bathtub gin and a martini therefrom. Back then Christian in the monastic, there was never any problem with alcohol. As I have no some of you use sacramental wine.

I never had occasion to do so. Uh but now I moved on in in my new profession to San Francisco. And I'm happy to say that I am if I have any claim to fame, is I was one of the founders of the San Francisco Laura Montgomery Street Olive and Onion Society.

The Martini's. We got together with regularity and had meetings to determine what was the perfect martini. First we did a series of tastings to determine the proper balance between vermouth and gin.

And we went anywhere from uh practically no vermouth whatsoever. started with with old bartender's guide which was two parts gin one part vermouth. We finally ended up saying that the Italian way was the best.

Stir the gin and face Italy. Now then in San Francisco drinking is a way of life. Then we had a series of by the way we found that one to 10 is the perfect case that ever comes up you know.

One to 10 is the is the balance between gin and vermouth. We also then had a series of taste things to determine what was the best gin for Booth's House of Lords. What was the best vermouth?

It was a Palomino dry vermouth. What was the best garnishing green olive, onion, olive stuffed with pimento, olive stuffed with almond a pickled brussel sprouts. And for the Jewish establishment old foreskins.

Regardless of what your racial persuasion is you'll be happy to know that the lemon peel won. Now drinking was serious. We had a group that got together we called ourselves the Grant Avenue Improvement Society.

And we would meet on Fridays and drink and then then go on a no lunch forget it you know. Move on to parties around there. At one point we did all all the Sausalito and coming back from Sausalito I think I was one of the first people although this is not in history anywhere who streaked.

It wasn't that exactly. I pulled up to the bridge on the Sausalito Sausalito side and said it would be great to amble if you will naked across the Golden Golden Gate Bridge. And so I did.

That is I ambled halfway a black and white taxi pulled up. And a stunning muscular gentleman wearing a uniform said to you, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm walking across the beach." I said, "You're naked." I said, "No." Uh oh, where are your clothes? In my car.

Where is your car? It's back at the viewpoint. Why don't you get in our car and let us take you to your car where your clothes are?

There were a lot of other kind of goofy things of that sort. I moved from there. Uh the profession that I'm in requires I'm moving to Los Angeles.

And uh I suppose the only thing that's really memorable about Los Angeles, particularly professionally that is, uh a lot of drinking going on, a lot of drinking, was that I was a creative director on the Mattel toy account in advertising, and I made a serious effort to get them to do both Barbie and Ken anatomically correct, and they never would. I then moved on to to uh to New York. You recognize the skyline, of course.

And I was in public Madison Avenue in creative and cosmetics and fashion and all that sort of thing. You know, I saw the shows and bought the clothes and consumed the gin. No, not true.

At this point I had switched, as all serious drinkers did, from gin to vodka, because everybody knows that juniper berries in in gin make you crazy. Now this this ugly statue is called a Clio. I know it looks like something from Dildos R Us, but it's not.

>> >> It is the award given in advertising. It's equivalent to the Tony or the Oscar or what have you, and I accumulated a bunch of them and in part in course of what I was doing. And I generally began about when to lead the lush life.

Remember the wonderful song that Bert Bacharach song that that King Cole and others are recording some old without rotten some dive, you know, until I drink and some dive until I rock with the rest of all doing that kind of song five martinis for lunch were nothing. And I did the four five martinis and go back to work. I didn't know at the time that people were saying if you want to talk to Davenport and get any sense out of him, talk to him before lunch.

Much later I found that out. But I got to the place that I I could go back to work but I didn't got so that I had several martinis and I needed a nap. Of all the things in the world that I did not need was to get an offer of a job to move to Sydney, Australia.

That you recognize is the the Opera House. And we had a we had a group that met there again on Friday afternoons. We called ourselves the Poets' Corner.

Because p o e t s which stands for piss off everybody tomorrow Saturday. And I worked for a chain of department stores called the David Jones stores. The David Jones stores all thought of themselves as the Bloomingdale's of Australia.

They were not. They were the B Altman of Australia. Touch of J.C.

Penney I expect. But I thought it was just enchantment but a lot of it was not incipient but practicing rigorous practicing alcoholism. Australians drink a lot and I kept up with them with the good Australian wines and good Australian vodka.

And I got an offer to go to work for a small enterprising growing company in Kansas City called Hallmark. Well, Hallmark as many do know Crown Center redevelopment is the area where they redid the whole city in that particular part of the town. And I was promotion director for that particular effort.

But down in the lower level of the shopping center was a bar called 25 Grand. It was on the corner of 25th and Grand. Very smart name.

They used to They had happy hour and you ordered a drink and they used to set two in front of you. That's just the way it is. You order one.

And the bartender learned after a while that I would have come in and have three rounds while I was waiting for traffic to clear. And then plow of pearls six act handles deep down I-35 going home. But he figured out He did this all the time.

So he had glasses. Let me show you a picture of this glass. That's Uh they had a white brandy a white a burgundy glass and it was a little fishbowl with a stand, as you can see.

But he figured out that one of those held six vodka martinis on the rocks. And so yeah, I'd walk from the park from the entrance to the bar and there would be that drink sitting. And others would say, "What is that?" And he'd say, "Well, that's a mad teeny." I had to explain to you Don't know if I'm a member of the press here or they're taking pictures.

My name is Michael Anthony Davenport. My initials are M. A.

D. That tells you a lot right there. But that was called a mad teeny.

And when they closed the bar, they were redoing and redoing the the whole Crown Center. The 25 Grand was closed and they gave me a dozen of those glasses in memoriam. Well, at this point I realized I was not doing my best work or there was too much work for me to do and still had time to drink as much as I wanted to.

So I said, "I'm going to freelance." That means work at home. I dignified that by saying, "Well, after all, the President of the United States does it. Why shouldn't I?" So that was great.

I could stay home and drink. And take an occasional job whenever it was available, just enough to make some money to buy more booze. And for this was in 1978.

A little blizzard that year. And I had every reason in the world to pull the draperies and didn't bother showering as much as I used to. I didn't bother shaving as much as I used to.

I went out for more cigarettes and more vodka. And I was at this point a half gallon of vodka a day maintenance. Not counting the ramifications when I went out and did drink.

One night will be forever engraved in my memory because it was near the bottom of my existence. It was late at night. It was about 10:00 maybe.

The bar the liquor store is closed at 10:30. Those of you who know Berbiglia. Uh I was about out of cigarettes.

I thought it was down like that. I might just run out during the night, you know, and I couldn't wait till the next day cuz there was a blizzard going on out there. It was a blizzard It was a solid heavy snow I didn't have any ski clothes.

I gave up skiing a number of years ago. My front teeth got too long. And uh So I I started rummaging for clothing and in the bottom of the drawer I found a pair of black leotards.

No, it was not that they were from an all-night visitor. At some time I thought I was going to take a modern dance class and so I had But those are the nearest things I can find to long johns. So I put them on.

I put pajamas. Everybody keeps pajamas around in case you have to go to the hospital. That's the only reason you have them.

I put the pajamas in the bathroom and several layers of sweaters and a coat and put a cap on and then tied a muffler around under my chin so I looked fairly much like Katherine Hepburn. I went rushing off to Berbiglia's in the snowstorm. As I was coming back, it's two blocks away.

As I'm coming back to piles of snow where the snow plows had come along. And I walked a block and I was weak. I needed a drink.

So, I sat on the snow bank and up into the half gallon bottle of gin. It was an incline there and cars were coming down the incline and in the snow it's silent. There's no sound.

You can hear the the tires and the car applied the brakes and then and fishtailed ever so slightly. So, I sat there and watched that and drank from my half gallon of vodka. Began to think, "What if a car comes down that hill and they hit their brakes too hard and they spin out of control and they hit me and I'm taken to the hospital and I want my flea and shards.

Second ball. Years later when I was moving after I recovered, I found the leotards in the bottom of the trunk. So, I had them framed.

Tacky remembrances of my past. Uh I think for one at one point during that winter, I had taken a friend to uh there's a hospital on the outskirts of Kansas City. So, on a mission hospital and they had at that time a a very good one.

I think the only one really in Kansas City that alcohols in recovery unit. So, I had taken a friend there and uh so, I knew about it. So, somewhere along about the middle of April, third middle of April, I'd been holding, mind you, not being too careful about personal hygiene and drinking and pass out and drink and pass out and drink and pass out.

And one night something clicked. I know now what it was. And I thought, "There is got to be a better way.

There's something wrong." I remembered the the of the attending physician of my friend and I called him. I said, "You don't know me. My name is etc.

I need help." He said, "Can you get to Shawnee Mission?" I said, "Of course." And he said, "I'll call admitting and tell them you're coming." And so, after all this, you know, carelessness of living, I got myself gussied up, properly pomaded and pomaded and and and cologne, in a gray Pierre Cardin suit, suitably accessorized, and took a 20-minute taxi, drove a $20 taxi drive to Shawnee Mission. And they said, "At that time, the alcoholism unit was in an outbuilding." Not not an outhouse, but it was a building away from the main one. And there there was a tunnel that went under.

They said, "In a moment somebody will come by and and and and take you out to the to the ward." I said, "Well, that's not necessary. I've been here before. I escorted a friend here." And so, I grandly set off in this tunnel.

Like many tunnel, like many hospitals, there were, you know, a red line. They said, "This is the way to x-ray." And green lines said, "This is the way to help." The the the directions are put on the floors and on the walls. And I'm walking down this tunnel, and it was like something from a Hitchcock picture.

The lines begin to twist like angry snakes, and I passed out. And I I'd never heard that I had ever passed out of drinking. But this one I did, and awakened to to some of startling discovery.

I was in intensive care and had been in intensive care for 5 days. Uh I had acute alcoholic neuritis. I was paralyzed from the inoperative from the waist down.

The doctor had given instructions to the hospital staff that if he comes to an admission of sense, to sign a paper, a release form, "I want to take that body to pathology because I want to see the see that liver. It's got to be a classic." And they should have put a death watch for me. Uh I I didn't you know I didn't I did not die.

And here I am. And went through after I got out of intensive and I was in hospital care and then on to the ward. It was a good one.

Very, very good program. It was It was AA oriented. And uh, so uh, a couple times a week people were asked from the area to come and bring a meeting out to the hospital.

That's not unusual for any of us. Well, for those of you who don't know that area, it's sort of in the general area of an area called Raytown. Now, I must tell you, Raytown is the Velveeta capital of the world.

Part of the requirements for a living in Raytown are a pickup truck, a pit bull, a 12-pack in the back, you know, a flannel shirt with the underwear showing. Either a hard hat, a redneck, a blue shirt, or white socks, or French builder shoes. I mean, that's the standard uniform.

So, this bunch brought the AA meeting to the hospital. That was bad enough. I thought, "If this is AA, and I know nothing about AA.

I used to laugh at it. I'd say, 'I'm an alcoholic. I should have a metal alert saying, "I'm an alcoholic in case of emergency, give me a martini."' But I thought, "This is This is If it's to be a member of AA, I have to be that kind of a good old boy.

Thank you very much. I'm not all that enthusiastic about this." And one One night, one of the good old boys arrived replete with guitar and told his story in song. Badly.

I'm not talking about Willie Nelson. Well, I let it revolve. And even even even that early on in my recovery, I wanted to change things.

And they did. So, I I was encouraged to go to AA meetings afterward. I didn't have one that had no part of it.

I kept going back to the hospital for aftercare, and eventually moved on to go to a meeting in in Kansas City. Many of you may know it as the the Plaza Fellowship. It's the second oldest fellowship in Kansas City.

It's been in existence We just recently celebrated 40 years of this particular unit. It's a Friday night speaker meeting. Uh I it is it's a good good good group good bunch of folks.

A little geriatric, but then I belong. And uh They uh and it did the the the meeting room has crystal chandeliers and upholstered furniture and carpeted and there's a platform, and when the speaker speaks, the house lights dim and there are two pink spotlights. That's just nifty.

That's my kind of AA, so. And several of us who that attended the meeting was something about 100 or so of people attended it Friday. And it's considered an honor because it is a prestigious group to to ask to speak at the Plaza Fellowship.

But there are several of us who were attending there, and we were looking at each other with slightly askewed eyebrows. And back of the head and back of the eyes, you're going, "Are you?" And so, one night we were having coffee, and we decided, "Yes, we are." And there is no there is no gay AA group in Kansas City. And so, in 1979, we started one, which has become Living and I Live, which many of you know, with uh 21 meetings or so a week.

And we're about to do our 11th round up this coming year. You're all welcome. Please come.

Uh by the way, uh I somebody asked me earlier today I don't normally think about that, but somebody asked me, and I said with great pride, "In April, I will celebrate 14 years of sobriety. Thank you very much. Couldn't have done it without you.

Now then, I'm glad that the theme is the program we've got to live it because I've been living it rather intensely on occasions, rather really on other occasions. Read that word any way you want. But there I I want to point out to you some myths of AA that I have discovered that delight me.

So now we're going to go to I'm ready. Myths of AA. If you want to put on your glasses, that'll help, okay?

First myth. We do not take others' inventory. We are just helping you with your program in your absence.

Myth number two. We do not give advice. Myth number three.

These are but suggested steps. Sure they're suggested. I might suggest do not put razor blades instead of croutons in your salad.

Do not dance Swan Lake in the middle of I-35 at rush hour. Come on, noble friends. We're not talking about whether or not to wear white pants after Labor Day.

>> This is a matter of life and death, isn't it? Suggested that. Myth number four.

You got to try something to graduate. Anybody care to show me their wallet size before mother began? I should be the army.

We say there are four steps in the AA program. The army says there are four steps. Look, do, think, talk.

But you keep taking them over and over and over and you can take quite a long journey carrying quite a heavy burden and arrive well and healthy and happy. Myth number five. My life is now manageable.

I don't know about any of you. It just becomes more and more unmanageable as time goes by, but somehow I managed to to keep it all organized. I did chaos.

I just learned to live with the fact that if there's one thing I can't stand is one thing after another and another and there it is and there's nothing you can do about it. Along with this myth would be I've restored to sanity. >> >> Yeah.

I never knew what sanity was until I got into the program. I lived an insane life. It was insane by a lot of standards other than just in the consumption of alcohol.

And I'm reminded you go to a flea market or an auction. You see this wonderful table, probably apple whites, chicken dale, pine, fine lines. I'll buy it for $25 and I'll take it home and restore it.

Huh? So, I take it home and I take it apart. Later, I put green paint and enamel that later I put green enamel on the bottom of it and it's fine old first edition formica.

That's a I've never been restored to sanity. There's no restoration involved here at all. Next myth.

God can be anything. A door knob. A cypress tree.

Quiche. And just industrial carpeting and track lighting. I don't think I'd like to think of any of those things as a higher power at all.

Higher power is exactly what the word says. It is a higher power. And it it is a a power that I have to like anything any other form of power.

If the volume is too low, turn up the volume for higher power. If the illumination is inadequate, spiritual or otherwise, turn up the rheostat for higher power. I must tell you that my name for my higher power is Spook.

Spook is a nickname for a Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost. Because my idea of the deity is half poltergeist and half deity. And that suits me just fine, you know.

Spook is is always there, never visible, but does great wonderful things for me. I spoke at a for a round up in Memphis some years ago and I said, "Tell them about Spook." Afterwards, one of the kindly gentlemen said, "Mr. Dad, what I've to my fine talk, but I think I'll tell you that down here Spook means something else." But I don't mind.

It makes no difference to me. You know, spirit doesn't have any color. So, but I I need I need a higher power.

I don't I don't want to the idea of deifying a cactus tree. Somehow it doesn't do anything to contribute to my sobriety. Okay, now that this isn't exactly a myth, but it's a quote.

Well, what do you expect from a drunk? My gorge rises when I hear that. And you know, I I'm I'm sure I once was a drunk and I I've been laughing and I've been laughing when they say myself I'm a drunk.

As I have been laughing when they say with some after saying I'm an aged But I'm not just a drunk, I'm a recovering. I'm learning how to live the program. You have to live it and I'm doing it on a I'm improving.

I'm getting better and better and better. The alcoholics, I think I'm an awful lot. You know, what do you expect of a drunk, you know?

I'm no good. And then you combine a confused sexual orientation on top of that, you know, I'm no good. I'm a drunk.

I'm also queer to the bargain. Now, come on. Now, we all belong to a whole bunch of minorities.

You think about this. I belong to several. Let's see to begin with uh let's see, I'm Irish.

SGA Catholic Irish drunk. And I in San Francisco that Irish is a a minority. There's putting the parlor Irish and lace curtain Irish, you know.

And uh I am uh an intellectual, whatever that means. I've always have been. And uh uh I am and that gives me one more kind of minority to work out.

I also am a middle-aged, whatever that means, drunken It's like the only minorities I haven't covered are Hispanic and Hispanic and female. Give me some waffles and a casserole and I'll take care of that. But my way of living as as a recovering a lot of wonderful discoveries.

Now these are I discovered them. I'm sure that you know I I walked up to Mount McKinley and said, "Aha, I discovered Mount McKinley." Didn't know people discovered it before that. But I discovered and I'm told and guided by all my fellow recoverings to discoveries about AA that are enormously comforting to me.

Changes is the first thing that comes to mind because I have changed so much and so many times in so many ways as we all have. Any of the Any of you that I've known for over the course of more than 20 minutes, really. I'm looking at these faces of people I've known for a long time and dearly love and we all have changed.

Now it's surprising that that is the nature of the nature of the Serenity Prayer is accept the things I cannot change. Change the things I can. All I can change is what goes on inside of me.

My attitude, my outlook, my manner of doing and thinking. But and so that's what we're really all about. We get together to change for the better.

Most changes are for the better as long as we stay sober and chemical free. But boy, as AAers do we resist change? Say the Serenity Prayer at the end of the meeting instead of the front and three people will be up in arms.

You know They they they they they How many How many alcoholics does it take to change a light bulb? Five. One to change the bulb and four to complain about how nice the old bulb was.

And those who have said that you know, insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. It doesn't work that way. The The The The aspect of change is what is exciting to me about living the program of AA.

You know, there's a wonderful line from Beckett that says try try again fail again fail better. And I do. I do.

There are no mistakes in the world. And if there are really mistakes, so what? Pencils have erasers.

There are no mistakes, there are only retakes. It didn't work right that way. Do it some other way.

A mistake is evidence of my free will. I play some keyboards, not well, enough to amaze myself. But that's That's how I learn, by making mistakes.

That's how we learn anything, by making mistakes. And so the mistakeability in the program, the opportunity and the chance to grow. In inventory it take a lot of take a lot of mini inventories, of course as you do the 10th step through all of its variations.

And uh all these do is indicate A, where I have changed and B, leads me to the next change. Now, it sounds as if I had it down so pat and so cool and so under control. Ah ha ha ha ha.

Yeah, my life is manageable, right? There are times when I feel like one of those Dan Garfield dolls in the back of the car, hanging onto the universe with suction cups. >> What am I worried about?

You shouldn't worry. Life is not a game and sobriety. Life is not a game of Dungeons and Dragons.

You know, there there are times when I feel like the Log Lady in Twin Peaks. And but I changed. I have changed a lot.

There are vestiges of drunken behavior here, not but a lot of them are gone. I don't find myself walking into the supermarket and say, "I want to buy everybody in the yellow and blue bread." So, I'm getting better. And sometimes along the course of the last few years, I stopped kicking the tires of the program and getting really involved with it and and buying into it.

Time, the aspect of time is the thing that's the most remarkable for me in this everyday effort of living the program. And time is wonderful because it keeps everything from happening at once. And and and time time is a thing that's in the flow.

You you For several years not so far past, Unity uh out of Kansas City used to do a series of radio uh television uh 1-minute television spots called The Word from Unity. And they had the celebrities who were you know, it's And the word was so and so or whatever it was. The word was ideal or word was faith or and they they made them work.

One of them was Pearl Bailey God Robber. And her word was prayer. And she said, "Now, they made a whole bunch of words for me to say and I just can't say them.

I just want to talk to you now." This isn't Pearl Bailey. When you pray, you may think your prayer is not being answered, but honey, I got to tell you, you can pray all you want to and God's got a different wristwatch than you've got. And God and there's a thing called divine delay that makes each of you are making some terrible mistakes in God's own time.

As to the practice of the program, I Every time I hear this line, "We thought we could find an easier, softer way." I mean, I don't want an easier, softer way. No, I don't want that. Like the old lady sitting on her front porch and rocking saying, "God sends me tribulations, I tribulate." But it isn't bad.

I I I'm reminded of the astronaut who was interviewed and he said, you know, it it it gave me some pause traveling around in outer space and realizing that every piece of that equipment that was supporting my life had been awarded to the lowest bidder. Yeah. I deserve the best.

And I don't want an easier, softer way. I want a program that has to stretch me and it does. It does.

As soon as I think I've been stretched as much as I can, here comes another opportunity to to to to be stretched. You see, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is a product. As you said, it was exclusively from the top.

It's a product, but you see, I'm the consumer of this product, called sobriety. That's what I call the program. AA is the distributor of this program.

God, who is the manufacturer. And the promises are our guarantee. And if it isn't working, I can turn to my program and try another.

You know, so many years in my first AA program, I was content simply to not drink. I was content and happy when I was content. The chaos of the world I lived in the big book was to come out from the cellar and say, "Oh, isn't it nice?

The wind stopped blowing after a cyclone, but there's still this debris that has to be cleared up." But there's no plea bargaining for me about sobriety. And and and living a sober and productive life, that's what it's all about. But it isn't a magic thing that God does.

He lets me do it and helps me. One of my favorite gurus who dates back to about the 14th century, yes, he was there. Saint Teresa of Avila says, "My life is in God's hands, and these are the only hands that God has got." Well, living the program today is a fascinating exercise of the free givings.

Giving, forgiving, and thanksgiving. Now, I have to give, not only to others, but to myself. I have to forgive or give for to others and to myself.

And thanksgiving is exactly what it is, giving thanks. I'm not talking about turkeys and and pumpkins, but giving thanks is what it is. I don't like the word gratitude.

I don't The reason I don't like it, there are a lot of words in AA that I call library words that are engraved on libraries, you know, truth, justice, the common wheel or Gratitude is one of those words. And you hold a meeting and say, you know, "The subject of the meeting today is gratitude and everybody starts making up lies. Those heavy words, but Thanksgiving, giving thanks, I can understand.

See, AA gave me my life. Continues to give me my life. And I want to give AA a wonderful life.

If you're relatively new in the program, I want you to know it's safe here. It's a safe place to be. And the winds can blow and the and the the lightning can strike, but AA is safe.

And as I leave today, I was thinking about it coming in the for yesterday, day before yesterday, we had a delay at the airport before we could take off. And I thought, isn't it wonders? My life is like an airport, an airport runway, with great adventures lined up, ready to take off.

And all I need is clearance to be launched on another wonderful adventure in sobriety. This is part of that. This being here, this here and now.

I look at my watch, it not only tells me the time is moving, but it's also now by my wristwatch. And it's as good a time as ever to uh say the last slide, the old leotards. Picture of an AA meeting brings like this.

The martini, the souvenir coffee cup. There have been a few changes. And so we run out of slides, I run out of time, except for my gratitude.

I'm very grateful to all of you. Thank you very much for asking me to be here. Thank you for being here.

>> >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.

>>