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Source: DICOBE-00451 – Dutch W – THE PRODIGAL SON – 1958-01-26.mp3 File: dicobe-00451-dutch-w-the-prodigal-son-1958-01-26.mp3 Duration: 00:51:52
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Our speaker tonight is the Sky Pilot of Lynchburg, Virginia. Dutch? APPLAUSE You know, I don't know whether I can last the evening out. This is the first time in my life I went to an AA meeting or convention where things actually ran on schedule. Tom Burnett sent me the schedule a few weeks ago and he said, now he had the thing picked out to a minute. I said, b'roy, I can see our Stark Raven drunk going off here now because that's all going to fall into our cockeyed hat.
I remember two years ago at the Virginia State Convention, the thing was set up on a minute schedule. They rented a big orchestra. They were to start playing at 10.30 at night for the crowd to start dancing. And they hadn't even introduced a featured speaker by 10.30 at night. And when he got through by 11.15 at night, they were to throw books at each other, leave alone dance. But this thing is right on schedule, so I've got nothing left to do. I've got no excuses. I've got to get through on time.
Tom said, now, we'll give you 40 minutes. Is that enough? Well, I tell you, if I'm just a speaker at a convention and I have no time, no time limit, I can just ran on endlessly. I can start on January the 1st, 1908, and bring you right up to date. But when you've been on radio and on television as much as I have, you've become a disciplinarian. If a man said 30 minutes, 30 minutes. Now, let me tell you something.
When you're on television and they say 30 minutes, you can keep talking all you want to, but you're going to be awful lonesome. They punch the button, and that's the end of it. You've had it. We had a fellow in a radio station a few years ago when I was on mutual network, and he had 15 minutes. 15 minutes was a lot to his time. An hour and a half, he was still sitting there talking. And he was so indignant when he found out that he'd been off the air for an hour and 15 minutes, he never did come back no more.
I got reminded here, talking to this large size audience here, and this big AA meeting of the speaker that was invited to speak to the annual convention of the Daughters of the American Revolution. There was a big turnout too, I want to tell you. He was a little nervous, he had some butterflies in his stomach. And he decided that just before he'd go on and speak, he'd better go over his speech one more time.
He moseyed off the main floor, and he found a nice empty room, and there he was walking up and down and just pounding himself in the fist as he was trying to make point after point. And finally a lady walked up to him and said, Oh, good evening, sir. You're the speaker tonight, aren't you? He said, Yes, I am. Well, has he got your speech already? Yes, ma'am, I certainly have. Well, then what are you so nervous about?
He said, I'm not nervous. He said, You're not? What are you doing in the ladies' dressing room? He came to Washington and Washington Airport, and, you know, they got these one-armed bandits sitting all over the place. Put a nickel or a dime in a nickel. He goes to say, I'm dating myself a nickel. Since when can you put a nickel in anything and get something out? Put a dime in there, they tell your fortune, tell your weight, tell this and tell that, tell everything else in the world.
This fellow got and spun one of these machines, he put a dime in it. Now it came a card. Your name is John Jones, you're 26 years old, you're catching the 5.15. He looked at that thing, he looked around. That's impossible. Weight, yes, some silly fortune, yes, but his name, his age, and what he was doing at Washington Airport. Put another dime in. Card came out, your name is John Jones, 26 years old, you're waiting for the 5.15.
That slew him. He walked around and walked around. Kept one eye on that machine, see if anybody else was going to be suck enough to try it. And he said, well, some people have been over there. And he said, ah, I know, two or three of those things and something else is bound to come out. He waited a little while and finally he went over, put another dime in. Out came a card. Your name is John Jones, you're 26 years old, you fooled around too damn long, you missed the 5.15.
But I am glad to be with you tonight. I say this with apologies. I felt guilty. I had been invited to be the speaker at your annual banquet last May. I couldn't come at that particular time for reasons which are well understood amongst my friends. And Tom Hampton grabbed me at the Blackstone Retreat. I wasn't there five minutes. When he was setting his tape recorder up and grabbed me and said, I've got a bone to pick with you.
And he caught me while I was off base.
[00:05:01]
And I committed myself to come speak tonight. And not even the airlines could redeem me. I had to come on Piedmont, the only one who's not on strike. They did have to put an extra section in to get me over here today because all the other planes were filled up. But I'm here and I'm delighted to be with you and I'm glad to be here. Now Tom introduced me as the sky pilot from Lynchburg and I'd like to qualify that statement.
That's true in both respects. I am a man that holds a commercial pilot's license. But I also am a minister. I'm one of the five ministers who came out of the Medicine Street AA Group in Richmond. My name is Dutch W. I'm an alcoholic. I never was very anonymous when I was drinking and I don't see any reason for being anonymous about it now. Nobody here knows me. I'll probably never come back here again.
So it doesn't make any difference as long as my friends know me. Now, my 40-minute start. I'm from Virginia, you know. This southerner went up to one of these New York nightclubs, up to the stock club, you know, and he was trying to impress the people around there with his capacity for drinking. He said, you know, down in the south. So he says, where I come from, when I get up in the morning, I call for a quarter bourbon, a pound of beefsteak and my hound dog.
The man looked at him and said, you call for a quarter bourbon? That I can understand. A pound of beefsteak and your hound dog? What in the world do you want with the dog? Why, sir, somebody's got to eat the beefsteak. I've told you that I'm a minister. The people that invited me here knew that before they invited me here. And many of my friends in AA, whom I've already met here tonight, who've known me for a number of years, know it too.
And I rather think that they'd expect something from me a little bit different than the usual AA talk I would make at a little group someplace. So tonight, I want to do something altogether different, with your permission. Somebody asked me, what are you going to talk about tonight? I said, I'm going to preach a sermon. He said, I'll buy that. One of the greatest parables, if not the greatest parable that you'll find in the Bible, is the immortal story which the great teacher told of the prodigal son.
It's the story of the true relationship between man and God. It is the story of that freely given wealth with which you and I and everyone from birth on is endowed with. It is the story of the ridiculous, profligate use we've made of this tremendous wealth which we inherited. It is the story of the efficiency of our AA program for those who are honest with it and truly work it. And it is the story of the true nature of God, that power greater than ourselves, which led us back out of the abyss and the labyrinth of insanity into a life of sober serenity.
You'll find it in the 15th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, beginning in the 11th verse and running through the 24th. In a very, very real manner of speaking, this is the epitome of all of life. No one escapes. Everyone is caught up in the story someplace, and if you think that you're not in that story, read the next three verses of the Elder Brother, and you'll surely find yourself in there. Now, I've been privileged to tell my story near about all over the United States, where I haven't been in person, and I know tapes of my previous talks have been sent.
And so tonight, with your permission, I want to tell my story, as it is reflected in the story of the prodigal son, and show you how in that story of the prodigal son, our twelve steps are incorporated. Speaking from long experience, I know that these meetings always attract a goodly number of noviciates, novices in our AA program, who, while they are sober right now, never have been able to accept or grasp the spiritual program, which truly undergirds our entire sobriety and keeps us happy.
Now, let us be very sure about one thing right now, and let it never be misunderstood.
[00:10:05]
Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization, and it must never become one. Not anymore than it ever dare affiliate itself with any political, social, civic, or fraternal organization, lest some wrong motifs enter into our organization. Now, others may have other ways of getting sober, and to them we say, more power to you, God bless you, go ahead. But this is our program, this is the way we like it, don't mess around with it.
You don't like it? Get out, go find yourself another method of doing it, but leave us alone. We in AA like it this way, we don't want it changed. And yet, to deny the spiritual force is to deny the power which undergirds us. And to most of us in AA, this spiritual awakening came to us like our alcoholism did. We looked for neither of them. None of us started out with the intention of becoming an alcoholic.
None of us ever dreamt of becoming a religionist. We finally discovered one day we couldn't cope with the one, and woke up one day and found we had the other, and we just simply wouldn't let go of it anymore. For many of us this religious awakening had to be a very guarded sort of affair, treasured for a long time. Since AA was new and anyone who came into one of these meetings and freely and openly admitted or confessed to any spiritual awakening was considered as an oddball, and if he was a preacher to boot, well brother, he's had it.
And so for ten miserable years I had to go along sort of in a double anonymity, as sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality, wearing one face to one gathering and another face to another gathering. The fact that we can come to these AA meetings and be known for what we are and for who we are just is another indication that, as our second big book tells it, AA has come of age. We've grown up. We realize that there is something else to talk about besides our blow-by-blow description of our insanity and of our uncontrolled obsession over alcohol.
So I want to say to those who want to dismiss the scriptures as non-consequential and of no effect, as well as to those who have already discovered the haunting beauty of these everlasting truths, that I want to take this matchless parable and demonstrate how it runs all the way through my life and I'm sure most of yours as well. Perhaps the best way to do that is to tell you the parable. I don't think that any of you sat down and memorized it.
I'm not particularly the kind of man who sits down and memorizes scripture, either just for the sake of memorizing it, but there are some things that stick with you. And if you were to turn to this parable in the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, you would read this. Jesus said a certain man had two sons. The younger of the sons went to his father and he said, Father, give me the share of the goods that fall to me.
And he divided his living among them. Not many days later, the younger gathered up all that he had and he took his journey into a strange country, and there he wasted his substance in riotous living. When he had spent all, a great famine came over the land and he began to be in want. And he hired himself out to a citizen of that country who sent him out into the field to feed the swine. He gladly would have eaten the parts that the swine did eat, but no one gave unto him.
And when he came to himself, he said, In my father's house are many servants who have bread enough and to spare while I here perish. Enough and to Spare While I Here Perish, I Will Arise and Go to My Father, and I Will
[00:15:04]
Say to Him, Father, I Have Sinned Before Heaven and You, I Am No Law Worthy to Be Called, Your Son, Make Me As One of Your Hired Servants, And He Arose, Went Home. While He Was Yet a Long Way Off, The Father Saw Him Coming and Had Compassion Upon Him, and He Ran Out to Meet Him, and Fell Around His Neck and Kissed Him, and the Son Said, Father, I Have Sinned Against Heaven and Before You, I Am No Law Worthy to Be Called, Your Son.
But the Father Called to the Servants in the House and Said, Quickly, Bring Out a Robe and Place It Around His Shoulder, and Put New Shoes on His Feet and a Ring on His Finger, for this, My Son Was Dead and Is Alive Again, He Was Lost and He Is Found, and They Went into the House to Make Mary. This Reads the Scripture from Luke 11 through 24. I was born in Germany at a time when that country was riding the crest of world popularity and respect. It was the birthplace, it was the incubator of all the arts, the culture, and the sciences. Its schools, even in my day and age, were far ahead any educational system then or now being used anywheres in the world. I became a product of that educational system.
Born not exactly with a service spoon in my mouth, I nevertheless was born of that peculiar taste system which existed during those years, which enticed me to the advantages which ultimately became mine. Beginning in a solitary home for unwanted children, using that word rather than orphanage, not because I had no parents but because I had a mother who didn't have any time for her only son. She was too busy with his social life. In fact, I think she was trying to find herself another husband. They told me that she divorced my father when I was nine months old and that he died of acute alcoholism.
I entered this home when I was six years old. I was soon removed from there to an institution of higher learning somewhat similar to our military academies at the age of eight. I stayed there for two years and was moved up again to another institution of higher learning, the equivalent of our prep school here. I stayed there until I was twelve years old and I was transferred to a junior college from which I graduated at the age of fifteen with two years college credits by the American University Senate standards. At the age of ten, I spoke German, Latin, French, and a lousy English.
I majored in math, geography, biology, physics, and history. I went to my classes at eight o'clock in the morning and I was through at nine o'clock at night. Now, the younger of the two said to his father, Father, give me the share of the property that falleth to me, and he divided his living among them. You see, I had quite a treasure when I went to my Heavenly Father and said, Divide the portion of the goods that falleth among me.
I had a wonderful education. I had a sound body. I had an alert mind. I came from fine stock, they told me. I had everything to recommend me. I had every reason to become a success. Well, let's go on with the parable of the prodigal son. Not many days later, he gathered up all that he had and took his journey into a strange land. Now, I don't know that all of you could follow this parable quite as literally as I did, but you're going to discover before I am through that we all took the journey into that strange country. I took advantage of the restless conditions after World War I, and now I'm beginning really to date myself, and got myself a job as a cabin boy on a combination freight and tram steamer, and immediately upon coming to New York jumped ship. That was the easiest way to get
[00:20:03]
to the United States. Can you think of a better one? Imagine all the red tape I cut. No passports, no visas, no immigration quota, just a bundle of dirty laundry underneath my arm, walking ashore in New York City and been here since. It didn't take me long to polish up on my English. I soon was fluent enough in it to enlist in the Navy as a native-born New Yorker. Of course, I forgot to tell you I enlisted in the Deep South, and they thought I was just plain Yankee talk.
I served my enlistment with honors. I became the inter-service lightweight champion. Ballyhootin', groomed as the future lightweight champion of the world. But I didn't keep on fighting very long after I came out of the Army for many reasons, but one of them of all—one of the prime reasons was that I didn't want to get my brains I had knocked out. Now, there's nothing in the story of the prodigal son which suggests that he went into the strange country and fell into desolate ways immediately. You can't accuse him of that. Not any more than any of us started out in life with the intention of becoming alcoholics and human wretches. I think the young man started out with the best of intentions. I think when he acclaimed his inheritance from his father, that he went out into the strange country to make a living for himself, to become a self-made man. He went away like I went away to make his own way in life. He came to this country like any other immigrant does.
Like each and every one of us, I went to my Heavenly Father and I said, Father, give me the portion of the goods that falleth to me. When I came to this strange country, my cup wasn't full yet. I added to the riches I already had. I completed my education. I went to Detroit and entered City College and finished my engineering degree. I made $400 a month when the men who was worth a million dollars last year were standing on the street corner peddling papers and selling apples for a nickel to keep body and soul together after the crash of 29. You see, I had quite a treasure when I gathered up all that I had.
But then I did the same thing that Jesus said the man in the story of the prodigal son did. I claimed my inheritance from my father and as soon as I got it, I turned my back on him him from whom I had received everything. I claimed no inheritance in my father. In that egocentric mind of mine, I owed him absolutely nothing. Now I really was in the strange country. And the story goes on and he wasted his substance in riotous living.
Now those are beginning to be very familiar words in our ears, aren't they? He wasted his substance in riotous living. About every one of us has wasted at least a fortune in riotous living. When I went on the strange country, I burned all the bridges behind me. I could work out my own salvation. I needed nobody's help. I had no idea in the world whatsoever of ever returning to my father's house. What a perverted sense of values we alcoholics do develop. I took my first drink in Detroit in 1930. It was homemade liquor and I'll have you know that it was made in one of the finest apartments in Detroit.
For I was now living with the finest people in Detroit in society and when in Rome you do like the Romans do and it seems in 1930 the Romans in Detroit were drinking bootleg liquor. They were drinking it because there was a law said thou shalt not drink. He ate the prohibition and we archies being by nature diametrically opposed to any authority
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whatsoever. That's the reason we're drinking in the first place. We drank homemade liquor. You know there's that story of a monkey sitting up in a tree and the world has been destroyed by an atomic war. Nothing but waste and desert all about him. Not a living thing around. He's sitting up there and this cartoonist has captured this look of desolation and desertion in this monkey's face and he's so hungry. And all of a sudden in the next picture a little girl monkey appears and she sees him sitting up there and she sees where she can make a deal. And she disappears and comes back and has an apple in her hand. Gives it to the boy monkey and he looks and he says for heaven's sake let's don't start that stuff all over again. But that's all you had to do to us say no.
And then we did it. Not because we particularly wanted it but just because somebody said we shouldn't do it. How many times do you come home your wife said now honey don't you think you've had enough? Sure you've had a snootful if she'd have kept her mouth shut you'd have never took another drink but just because she said she had enough she had to have at least two more. This is part of our alcoholic pattern this diametrical opposition to any authority from any quarter. Two weeks after my arrival in Detroit I actually and literally picked myself up drunk out of a gutter in Hamtramck the gas house district of Detroit. Now won't go into the gory details of that tonight. But I got good and plastered on homebrew and mystique some sort of a Greek liquor they made there. Boy it is rough.
That was in 1930 and little did I recognize then that what that was to be a prophetic portent of what was to happen to me 17 years later when I was picked up by AA out of Skid Row. During these 17 years between my first drink and my last I realized every dream, every ambition, every hope any young red-blooded boy ever dreamt. Only to let them all slip through my finger because of this insane obsession over drinking.
I became one of the finest automotive engineers. I became a commercial pilot. Every boy wants to fly. Two drunks are sitting up in a hotel room which reminds me of what I told Tom this afternoon my only other experience in Baltimore that I've ever had. It's something I don't know anything in the world about. Not a thing in the world but in one of these nightclubs here in Baltimore in 1936 I pitched a Lulu. I came back two or three days later in Portsmouth, Virginia.
But I was with I was an engineer with General Motors then and and they used to make the finest provisions for us up in the Ambassador Hotel and and and this story just just comes to my mind of these two drunks sitting up there on the 10th floor drinking their highballs. After a number of them one of them went over to the window opened it up and looked out and said I think I'll fly around the hotel one time. And the other drunk looked and said yes ever go ahead.
So out the window he goes. Ten flights down. Smears himself all over the street. Ten flights down. Smears himself all over the street. Of course it isn't long the police opened the room there and said what's the idea of throwing that man out of the window. He said I didn't throw anybody out. But how'd he get out there? He said well he just walked over to the window and opened it up and said I think I'll fly around the hotel one time. Which wasn't what you let him do it for. Well how the hell did I know he couldn't fly?
But I've got my commercial pilot's license and I realized every dream in the world I ever had. Only to let it go and slip away from me. Now I reached that place where my drinking became uncontrolled. It it became an obsession. Nothing mattered to me anymore except that I was very sure where the next drink would come from whenever I wanted it. I held the most lucrative positions. Increasingly I was the most lucrative person in the world.
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Those of You Who Know My Wife Will Thoroughly Agree With Me When I Say That I Married One of the Most Beautiful Women in the World, Who Became the Mother of Four of the Finest Children. I'm Going to Miss Them. They're at Home Right Now. I Haven't Seen Them in a Long Time. My Boy Came Home from College After My Plane Took Off, and My Girl, Which Is Married Now, and My Boy Was Married, They Are Coming Home This Afternoon for a Visit, and They're Going to Eat Dinner There Tomorrow, and They're Going to Have to Go Back, But My Plane Doesn't Leave Till Two O'Clock, and I Won't Get Home Till Three-Thirty, and I'm Going to Miss Them.
But I'm Here to Talk to You, and in This Program, We Have to Put Our Own Interests Last in the Interests of Others. You'll Discover in a Minute as We Go Along with This Parable and with Our Program. I Increased Myself Financially, Socially, and Civically in Any Way You Want to, in Spite of My More and More Increasing Incarcerations in some Local Bastille here or There. I Lost My Driver's License Just as Quick as I Could Get Them Renewed, Paying Exorbitant Premiums for Insurance, until After the Third Conviction I Lost It for Five Years.
I've Got My Driver's License, My Sobriety, and My Call from God all in the Same Year, 1947. Well, Let's Go on with Our Story of the Prodigal Son. When He had Spent All, there arose a Great Temptation in the Land, and He Began to Be in Want. Have You Ever Noticed How Your Friends Disappear and Evaporate when Your Money is Gone, when Your Financial Solvency has Departed, when Your Political Influence and Your Social Standing has Gone?
Do You Recognize the Want in the Story of the Prodigal Son? He Began to Be in Want, and No One Gave Unto Him. Here is Your Skid Row Alcoholic, Begging, Bowing, Stealing, Lying, Betraying Himself, His Friends, His Loved Ones, just to get his finger on that drink that his aching body and mind is crying out for. And He Began to Be in Want, and No One Gave Unto Him Anything. Oh, I had my moments of sanity. I was sober for nine months one time. I volunteered for the Army when I was thirty-six, and they sent me in the infantry.
I was going to be a Spartan. I was a man of intelligence. I knew how to lick this problem. I didn't need any AA or anything else. I'm a logician. I'm a student of Plato and Socrates. Logic figures out anything. All I had to do was separate myself from my source of lecture and my drinking friends. Nothing to it. Nine months I went without a drink, and it worked. Worked. Was sober. Was healthy. Had my self-respect back. Kept everything until I took my first drink when I came home on my first follow.
Then I lost it all with the first drink I took. Well, the end came rather rapidly. The war was over, and my well-meaning friends in Norfolk by this time suggested that I ought to go in business for myself. That's exactly what I needed. See, now I could do all the drinking I wanted and let somebody else do my work for me. You know, we alcoholics are geniuses, every one of us now. You've got to give us credit for that. No ordinary bum can make the grade.
Cost money. You don't think so? Let me tell you something. Here's a little alcoholic arithmetic. Try to figure this out. If you've got your mind made up you don't want to quit drinking at all, at least make some money at it. Go give your wife ten bucks to buy the first fifth of liquor with. Give her five bucks to buy the first fifth of liquor with. Then go buy all your shots off her. You save the money off a barroom license. And after that first fifth is gone, she'll have enough to buy another five dollars and fifty cents to put in the bank.
Now after ten years, when you die with the snakes in your boots, she'll have thirty-seven thousand dollars, five hundred and fifty cents. That's enough to bury you, buy a house and lot and pay for it, and marry some decent guy and forget she ever knew a bum like you. Well let's go on with our story of the young man. When he came to himself. Enter our AA program of twelve steps now. When he came to himself. Step number one, we were admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable.
[00:35:18]
Now don't you boys go around bragging, you girls either, I don't want to neglect you. Don't you go around bragging, telling people how smart and brave and courageous you are. Don't go patting yourself on the back and knocking yourself out. Nobody comes to that decision by himself. We're ahead to this discovery. When we journeyed out in this strange country, when we wasted our substance and righteous living, when we thought that we had spent all and there was nothing left, there was something left.
To us it has been meaningless and it has been useless. It would never get us a drink anyplace so we never considered it worth having, we just completely disregarded it. We never bothered with it. But it was there, it was there all the time. That father whom we saw so merrily dismissed from our minds and out of our lives when we started out in that strange country, that father on whom we either deliberately or unintentionally turned our back once we had claimed our inheritance from him, had never turned his back on us.
He was waiting all the time. He knew what the ultimate result would be. He had had other sons who had walked out into the strange country and who weren't lucky enough to come back. What's more, he never cares how we get back, as long as we get back. God isn't interested in the mechanics of salvation and if one agency fails, there always is another to take its place, ready to be pressed into the service.
Since the beginning of the Christian era, the Church has always considered its sole agency to be the means of man's salvation and so it is, so it should be, and so it has in its ignorant way tried to be. But you see, so often it's failed because of the human element which is involved in this. And since it is still made up of the human element, it's going to be faulty. But there's a bright spot to the thing. The Church is reviewing and reexamining its particular views on every front.
It is gradually beginning to open its doors now to our AA groups. The welcome mat is out in large letters because with all of its faults the Church is honest. It recognizes its errors. It's willing to make amends where it is proven wrong. But meanwhile there are other agencies that work for God and for us alcoholics, God lit the divine fire in the hearts of two men and AA was born 23 years ago. Not a holier-than-thou fellowship, but a brotherhood of sufferers sharing a common illness, fighting a common enemy, filling a common need. And when the glorious day dawns that the Church becomes united into one single fellowship the world over, it will be because it last has learned to adopt one part of our program at least.
Not who's right, but what is right. When my friends, fraternal, business and social, had parted and given up on me, they were still two good friends in AA who, like God, never had given up on me. But we were helpless until I was ready to let them help me. But when he came to himself, he said, how many servants in my Father's house have bread enough and to spare while I here starve? I will arise, I will go to my Father and I will say to him, step number two, came to believe that a power greater than ourself could restore us to sanity.
Step number three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Confession comes before salvation. Self-recognition before restoration. Number four, made a searching and fearless inventory of our moral selves.
[00:40:00]
Number five, admitted to God and to one other person in ourselves the exact nature of our wrongs. Number six, we're entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character. You see all of these steps sort of just run together. They follow one each other immediately if you once take that first step honestly and sincerely and follow up on it. By this time the sheriff had not yet repossessed my house, though he was but just a few days away. I knew it. The bank knew it. My creditors knew it. The only one who didn't know it was my wife. But I realized that I couldn't put off the inevitable very much longer.
It had been mortgaged over and over again. There wasn't a bank, personal loan, real estate office on Bush Street that didn't have a mortgage to my house. I had no equity left in it. It was the only way I had left to get a few bucks for the next bottle of liquor. My business was at a standstill. It was dead. It was gone. But I was still living in my house when finally I did give it up. It wasn't taken away from me by a sheriff.
I made a voluntary sacrifice of it in order to keep food in my four children's stomach and clothes on their back and trying to put them through school while I was serving a little church which couldn't raise the money for their pastor's salary. But this day of my awakening, when I came to myself, this day of my awakening began like one of these horrible days ought to begin. I came out of one of these endless blackouts.
I don't know how many days I had been out. That's when the 12-step work of some wonderful friends began to pay off. I came to myself. I arose and I went to my father only to discover that even though I had disowned him, he never had given up on me. He was waiting there for me all the time. I only asked him to remove all of my shortcomings. Step number seven. Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.
Do you recognize the remorse with which we confronted ourselves every time we came out of one of these awful binges? Oh, Lord, help me get over this one. I'll get over the next one by myself. So help me, honey. It's the last drink. I'll never take another one as long as I live. May God strike me dead if I leave you so much as look as a glass of beer. Didn't you know something? Nobody was ever more sincere in those promises than we were when we made them. We believed them. We meant them. But we failed because we were still trying to work out our own salvation, still depending on our own ability to help ourselves.
Well, this particular morning God called me and I answered him. No more small talk now. No more rationalizing. No more promises. No more justifying my actions. Just a total, wholesome surrender to the love and grace of God. Just embracing divine love. A prayer of thanks for Alcoholics Anonymous who were standing by, ready to jump over and take over once I'd let them, once I was willing to give up. At long last that foolish pride of mine lay shattered and broken at my feet. Thank God I was free. And I was free. Oh, it was a pretty hard pill to swallow at first.
I shared my new conviction with God. Five o'clock in the morning I went in the house and told my wife about it. By eight o'clock I'd called up everybody in the world I knew to tell them of what had happened to me. Number eight, made a list of all the people I'd harmed and became willing to make amends wherever it was possible. I went down to my place of business. I went down to my place of business by 8 o'clock, first time I'd been there by 8 o'clock, and since I opened the business, if I had other people open my place of business for me, my time down there was when the first two, three dollars had been taken in,
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so I could go down to my friend, the bootleg, and get my first double shot. This morning I was the first one there at 8 o'clock, and I closed the doors, and I said, Gentlemen, whatever money I owe you, sorry, we'll pay it out before the end of the day is over with, but we're out of business. And then I started that horrible trek down 21st Street in Norfolk, that's Automobile Row, to see all my creditors, to make these amends Stepnum Bay talks about.
And I was scared. I was scared. And I found God's love reflected in the face of every man I faced that morning. Somehow or another they saw something in my eyes they'd never seen there before either. They saw sincerity, they saw honesty, they saw humility. No one questioned my sincerity that morning. Some forgave me all I owed them, some took a pittance of a dollar on the bills that I owed them, but by 12 o'clock that day I knew something I had never known before in my life.
I knew what serenity meant. I knew what peace meant. I knew what it meant to be able to go down Granby Street or Monticello at 21st, not have to dodge in some hallway because somebody would grab me by the collar and say, Dutch, when are you going to pay me what you owe me? I learned that there were people in the world who went out to just try to get the best of me, greedy. With the hands in my pocket I found out there were people in this world who loved me, not because of who I was but because of what I was.
I turned to my AA associations and I found true pals and true friends who stood by my side, sang at my house, helped me get a job. It was quite a letdown, believe me, stepping down from a renowned engineer to become an assistant mechanic's helper's assistant. But you have to start someplace. When it was over I had serenity. My fears were gone. I could face everybody. I didn't need to make any explanations. I didn't need to tell any lies.
I didn't need to give any more excuses. I was free, free. Being the kind of man I am who never does anything in halves, I wasn't satisfied with working just half this program either. A man who had been given at the outside two weeks, two weeks, before he would succeed in committing suicide. I had made several suicide attempts before. Two weeks. Who would either succeed in committing suicide or they would have to commit me to an institution for the mental incurables of Ed Brain.
If I could make it, then others could make it. But never unless they hear the story. Never unless they hear it told. Step number 11. Thought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God. As I understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will and the power to carry that out. How do you explain a call to the ministry from a chief engineer? That'll take two, three other meetings and two, three nights in which I'd have to be the only speaker, wouldn't it?
There are a number of signposts along Life's Road I had to travel. But for me, one of the primary points was that I just simply couldn't stomach the kind of a God that some of the preachers and Sunday school teachers I had listened to was representing. What in the world did they know about God? Bishop Cannon Temple, in a book some years ago, wrote, he said, people don't believe in hell anymore because they haven't tasted of the love of God.
I suppose, amongst other things, that was one of the incentives I had. I had to go out to tell this world. There's a God who knows and cares and loves, who isn't condemning you or me because we're alcoholics, but who loves us twice as much because we need to be loved so desperately. And who's willing to help us if we only let him, only let him. Number 12, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and practice these principles in all of our affairs.
It was quite a decision that morning when I went in to my wife and said, seems to me the Lord's got it in for me. Won't let me alone. She said, what's the matter now? I said, well, maybe I'm crazy, but he wants me to preach. How do you know? Well, so many people have come and told me. He said, you ought to go tell others what you know. You ought to share this experience with others. You've got no right to keep it for yourself.
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Well, she said, what are you going to do about it? I said, well, how do you think you can manage on $1,500 a year? 1947. I used to make $15,000 in 1938. Well, she said, if the Lord wants you to preach, I guess he'll provide. He promised to give you what you need, not what you want. He has. He's kept his bargain. And I went out and served small churches. And I went to my bishop. I'm in the Methodist Church.
Be out a bishop. Don't mean anything, but he does give you an appointment. He's got to. Can't help himself. I said, bishop, I said, I'll tell you what I want. I want the churches who can't go. I want the churches who've given up. Send them. Send me to them. I never made any less money than I'm making now. And I never had more than I have now. And he arose and he went to his father. And while he was yet a long way off, the father saw him coming and had compassion on him.
And ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to his father, Father, I've sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants. The father said to the servants, quickly, bring the best robe and put it around his shoulder. And put a ring on his finger. And shoes on his feet. Go kill the fatted calf. Let us make merry for this.
My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and he's found again. They were in the house. They made merry. Can you believe me?