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Source: Father Barney – A Meditation on the Eleventh Step – Seattle (1966).mp3 File: father-barney-a-meditation-on-the-eleventh-step-seattle-1966.mp3 Duration: 00:48:55
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And it is now my privilege to introduce to you, speaking for AA today, Father Barney from Portland, Oregon. Father Barney. Applause Well, I'm Father Barney, and in the spirit of this convention, I am a very, very grateful alcoholic. I want to assure John and you that this little talk is not one of the series of those sermons that I gave, I don't know when, he mentioned here. I'm not here to give you a sermon, this is Sunday morning, but it's not going to be a sermon. It's not even going to be a talk.
Rather, it's going to be a meditation. A meditation on the eleventh step. You know, I once heard that the heart, or if you want to put it a little more realistically, the guts of this program is the third step. You make that third step, then you're in business. You're in partnership with your higher power. Now, if that statement is true, that the third step is the heart of this program, then certainly I think that we can say that the eleventh step is the blood that gives beat to that heart.
It's the source, chief source of our spiritual strength in this very, very spiritual program. And for that reason, I think it's important, not only for myself, but for anyone that's trying to work this program, that we give it consideration. You know, when you come on this program and they take the bottle away from you and then they say, now, brother, we want you to start to meditate. It's quite a switch.
But that step, that eleventh step, is as important as the first one. They're all important. As I say, to bring a guy off the bottle and say, okay, now let's start meditating. Well, actually, that isn't too big a job, because the Alki is a natural meditator. I don't know of a better one. It says here, We sought through prayer and meditation. Did you ever stop and think why they say prayer and meditation?
These are merely my own ideas. But what we're interested here is not just meditation, but prayerful meditation. When you were meditating on how you were going to hide that jug from your wife, you were meditating. Boy, that was a profound meditation. And when you, Al-Anon, were trying to figure out where the heck is he hiding it, that was another profound meditation. But it wasn't necessarily prayerful.
So you see that there's a little distinction here. It says we sought. That would indicate to me personal desire. Desire. Isn't that a tremendous thing on this program, desire? That's what we've got to have, a desire, the willingness to do these things. We sought personal effort as far as I'm concerned. I remember one time I was giving a talk to a group of Presbyterian ladies in the basement of their church.
I wasn't talking on religion, I was talking on booze. I was invited by the minister. And here all these little ladies were sitting there with all their finery on. And I thought, gee, this is going to be something. They say one out of 13 is a potential alki. And I said, well, boy, there's not even one here. They didn't have much to work on or with. But anyway, I gave them this pitch. And then I said, now, are there any questions?
And boy, I never had so many questions thrown at me. In fact, I had three 12-step calls that came out of that one little talk. So you see, you don't know what you're going to run into. And one little lady got up and she says, Father, does the alcoholic ever lose his thirst?
[00:05:05]
You're going to say, which one are you talking about? So I told her, I said, well, let me put it this way. I'm going to answer yes and no in that kind of perplexity. You can't go wrong when you're going to answer both ways. I said, if you're talking about an habitual urge, yes. Maybe it'll come back sometime, occasionally. The habitual urge, thirst for a drink, we say yes. The physical compulsion to lose it.
But if you're talking about the spiritual thirst, no, no. Particularly an alcoholic. Because that's why he was drinking in the first place. He was trying to solve, to satisfy a spiritual thirst by the use of the spirits of alcohol. And he failed miserably. He nearly destroyed himself. So when you take him off of a bottle, off of the spirit, you've got to give him something in its place, the spiritual.
That's why this is a spiritual program of necessity. We're all spiritual. We sought through prayer and meditation. Why do they use the word through? Because I've got a very analytical mind. Now, when I give this talk like this, I'm very analytical. But when I work in this program, I'm as simple as A, B, C. Two and two equals four. That's how I say it goes. Through. Prayer is not the end. The means, what's the means?
I can't get it. I can't become so spiritual that I forget what I'm spiritual about. I'm glad that you all stood up a moment ago to give rest to your bodies. Because it's awful tough to speak to a group of people who are restless physically. It's a very spiritual program. In fact, there's a step there that we're not saints. But let alone that, we're not only not saints, we're not angels. We've got bodies.
[unclear] The purpose of this 11th step, as I see it, is what it says. It's to get in contact with God. Now, if you can do that by bouncing your head on the wall, go ahead and start bouncing. If I get so involved in the mechanics of prayer and meditation that I forget why I'm doing it, then I'm missing the point. You can get so involved in the 12 steps that you forget where the heck they're going. So we sought through prayer and meditation to improve our consciousness.
If you haven't been meditating, you've already got some consciousness. You don't improve something that you don't have. You improve something you already have. Now, where did I get this contact with God? I'm on the 11th step. I must have got it in the first 10 steps. I must now be in contact with God. Not necessarily in a conscious way, because that's being brought to my attention, but I'm in contact with Him.
If I get this far, I'm in contact with Him. I'm in partnership with Him. It says, Rarely have we seen a person fail [unclear]. To me, we're on a journey. This journey, for me, first of all, brings sobriety to my life, the way it is. We just heard a beautiful explanation of the next thing we're looking for, serenity. But we've got to go farther than that. I'm in partnership with God. What's He going to get out of this?
What does He want? This is the will of God, your sanctification. It says in that fifth chapter that we are not saints, but it doesn't say anything that we shouldn't strive for sanctity. And that's what we're looking for. What is sanctity? Sanctity is contact with God. Saints are people who have this contact in a very, very eminent degree. At least in our own little way, we understand God and strive to get His contact.
[00:10:03]
You know, sobriety to me is fourfold. It's a package deal, just like you have your six packs and the beer. Sobriety comes in its pack. I like to compare it to a baseball game. Physical sobriety is first base. If you don't have physical sobriety, you're not even on base. I've known guys that have been up there striking out, swinging at that ball for a long time. I knew a fellow that took three years before he got on first base.
He tried the tolerance of this particular group for three years. He finally made first base. He got physically sober. He not only learned that you must stop, but you must quit. He'd stop until his wife came back, and then he'd resume. He didn't get the idea you're supposed to quit. But I can stand on first base all day long and never score. And if I stand out there too long, I'll get picked off. Boy, old John Barleycorn's got a terrific move to first.
We see that happen. A guy that comes on here and settles for physical sobriety and gets no farther, usually they say, what happened? He got picked off. Because he's supposed to go to second base, which is mental sobriety. And then he's got to go to third base, which is emotional sobriety. He's getting a little tougher to steal third. But the purpose of this game is to come home and score. And I come home and score when I live a life compatible with my conscience and I have moral sobriety.
I've made the circuit. And then I go again, and again, and again, 24 hours at a time. That's the path. I've got to be aware of that, and this step keeps me aware of that. Because it wants me to be in conscious contact with God, to be aware of this step. You know, we talked about this being a journey. I'm not going to go into a long, detailed story of my drinking career. First of all, I'm in overtime right now.
Extra innings. We're running a little late. All right. My story is the story of every alcoholic. I was trying to control something that was impossible to control in my situation because I have this disease. I made the route from the T to T. From teenage drinking to audio DT. I was very happy to hear our two main speakers, Ben and Tom, tell me they both started at 14. I started when I was 14. I started during Prohibition days.
Of course, that's nothing new to the teenager because it's still Prohibition to the teenager. Except then it was Prohibition to everyone. So what did we do? Well, we followed the example of our elders. If you couldn't buy it, you couldn't make it. So we made it. Homebrew. And it was made at home. I remember the first batch I made was in the basement with my companion, who is also an alkie today. But the mistake we made, we brought it up too soon into the kitchen where my mother had been baking bread on this old wooden stove and it was very hot.
You know what happened. It went into orbit. The kitchen ceiling. As I say, I can look back now and that's where it started. I was as alkie then as I am today in my thinking, my emotional life. Some of you are probably aware that I'm very interested in a little program for teenage alcoholics known as Judo. Boy, when I sit down and talk to these kids, I'm right with them. Used to be in the old days, you know, and when we started telling our story, it was when we went over that imaginary line.
Boy, that was a good many semesters after the first drink, too, that somebody mentioned last night. What happened before you went over the imaginary line from the time you took your first drink? What were you then? Before you then, you were an alcoholic. I was an alcoholic. Well, anyway, as I say, it started then, as I went into the seminary, of course, out of necessity, I was a periodic, like most of you are, I suppose, and that's the toughest job in the world, because you say, I can quit for six months, quit for a year.
[00:15:26]
So anyway, it was under control during those years, out of necessity, if no other reason. But then as you go along and get a little more freedom in this business, it began to assert itself. So I'll just skip over to the time I became a busy pastor. I was busy about many things. In fact, I was too busy for my own good. I was putting in about a 17-hour day, for the glory of God, not getting enough sleep, not eating enough, have to keep going.
And I found out that alcohol helped me to keep going. It made it possible for me to do my work. Being a priest, knowing what it would mean if I gave scandal, I fought any notion of scandal. I was a loner. There was only a couple people in the whole place who knew I drank. I had to hide. I used every subterfuge in the book. I used to eat so many of those Clorets that when I talked, I looked like St. Patrick.
And you never could get within breath's length of me, I'll tell you. Well, I thought I was doing all right, but actually what I was doing, I was developing the physical part of this thing. I was handling the emotional part, keeping it under control, but I was sure developing the physical because I was adding to my capacity. And periodically I'd have to go to the hospital, get off of it. Well, I was in a fairly small town, and I knew that it was getting out of control, and if I didn't get out of there, I was going to blow the town wide open.
So I went to my superiors and told them just that. You better get me out of here because from now on I'm a poor risk. So we tried the geographical cure. They moved me to Portland, put me in there with the men in the retreat house. You know, I was a little allergic to women during those periods, the alder society and a few of those. I used those as a good excuse sometimes to have to take a few belts after the meeting with them.
So you see, I know how you guys feel about the wife. I had the same thing. I had a whole club of them. And at least one of them ever meeting could get under my skin. So I could use her for an excuse. So I got down there with the men. Supposed to be a man's man, and they said, this is going to be the kind of work you need. You've got to get away from all those school kids and those ladies, alder society. So I figured, boy, I'm going to really make this. I had every intention.
And I went along pretty good for a while. So good, in fact, I thought I had it licked. So I started nipping. Boy, the old merry-go-round starts again. And again, it was the old question of hiding, covering up. Well, I did for the majority of the cases, I did cover up. But there was one guy that made that retreat, who later turned out to be my sponsor, and I didn't fool him one bit. He came in one day, he was making the retreat, and he came in and he sat down and I said, well, what can I do for you today? You know, might as well turn away. He says, I didn't come in here to talk about my problem, I came in to talk about yours.
That's about as straight as you can get it. You know, I never felt so much relief in my whole life. Boy, did he get it. I told him the whole thing. So he said, now, he said, Father, he said, he was a Catholic, he said, I'll take you on under one condition.
[00:20:07]
He said, I'm afraid of you as a priest. I won't touch you as a priest. If there's an alcoholic, I'll take you on. So I'm going to have to change your name. You're going to be baptized, re-christened. From now on, you're Barney. That's my second baptism. And boy, I'll tell you, that was my rebirth. So then we said, how are we going to do this? I was the only priest that I know at that time in the Northwest Territory, at least the Oregon Territory, who was going to go out into the AA Territory. So he said, well, we've got to be careful now. We're going to have to really be anonymous.
So we proceeded to go down and buy Barney a pair of slacks and a pineapple shirt. That was my AA costume. And then he said, you know, we could go one of two places. We could go down to the Mountain Home Hotel, the business professional people. But he said, we don't want to go down there because you'll have to run into some of the retreatants. He said, we'll go down to Gleason Street, Skid Row. I'll guarantee you, you won't run into any of them down there.
And not only that, you're going to run into guys, maybe a priest or a doctor or a lawyer down there on Skid Row. And I want you to show you where you can end up if you keep drinking. That was gut AA if I ever heard of it. One of the first talks I heard, a guy got up and he said, when I came into AA, I had to look up the definition of God in the Webster's Dictionary. And then he proceeded to give one of the most beautiful spiritual talks I ever heard. I thought, gee, this must be a great organization to do that.
And you know, I felt at home with those guys. You know, I felt more embarrassed about that pineapple shirt than anything else. But I felt at home. These guys seemed to understand. They had what I wanted. But the only problem I had was that the Archbishop, I hadn't told him about this. So every time the door would open, Barney would turn to see who it was. It was automatic. It was like that. Even when I couldn't hear him, I would turn. Super-sensitory something, I don't know that the Elkie has, to see who this guy was. If he knew me, I'd know him. Well, when I'd leave some of those meetings, I was a wreck.
So my good sponsor told me, he said, this isn't going to work. You're going to have to go down and you've got to be thoroughly honest in this program. Turn yourself over to the care of God. Take off, boy. Go down there. The first thing you've got to do is phone up and make an appointment. So I figured, well, he's a busy guy. Maybe it'll take two months. So I called, and to my chagrin, they said, come down tomorrow at 2 o'clock. So I came down at 2 o'clock.
This archbishop is a fantastic man. We just commemorated his 60th year as a priest and his 40th year as the archbishop of Portland. Fantastic man. And the tremendous thing was, the terrible thing was, he thought I was a great guy because I'd helped him out at one of the schools down there in one of his parishes. He knew me by name. He thought I was fine. Gee, that was terrible. Because he was going to find out how wrong he was. So I started in. Our story's disclosed, what we were like, what happened, what we're like now. We have to do it, the big book said.
So I started out. I didn't know how far I was going to get, but I was sure going to try. And as I continued my story, I noticed he was very calm, fatherly. And then I noticed as I began to talk, a little tear formed in one of his eyes as I was talking to him. And I thought, well, maybe it's hay fever. Then another one. And then it started to flow down his, trickle down his nose. And he made no effort at all to brush it away, to hide it.
So I kept talking. And that's the way it went. As I talked, he wept. And when I got through, he says, I want you to kneel down. Which I did.
[00:25:14]
And he put his hands on my head, as you might say he does during ordination. And he [unclear], and he says, you have my blessing. And you have my prediction that you'll have a great apostolate. He says, I admire you. God bless you. You see, rigorous honesty always pays off. So I threw away my pineapple shirt, and I put this back on. I was on my way. So you see, I'm very grateful to God and to AA. We sought through prayer and meditation to increase our conscious contact with God. You know, there are two kinds of prayer. There's what we call spontaneous prayer. And I'm sure even in your drinking days, you experience this.
You say, oh, God, get me off of this one, and I'll get off the next one myself. Or, oh, thank God he's going to AA. It comes right from the heart. Oh, God help me. That's a beautiful prayer. But it's so rare. It's so rare. And then there's practice will prayer, where you set out like in the 11th step to meditate. Maybe you don't want to. Chances are you don't. You know, there's the inner need, the inner thirst we all have for God.
But inside there, there's something about us that says, no, I don't want to go. I don't want to go to God. I don't want to pray. It's spiritual sluggishness, or whatever you want to call it that's in there, battling. It's that conflict that we're confronted with until the day we die. And it's a conflict we've got to be aware of and admit, because this is part of our problem, trying to blot out the fact that this conflict exists. It's always there.
I have a little boy that I'm working with in this Judo program who's 15 years old. We got him when he was 13. He's been sober a year and a half. He's a very discerning little boy. I found out one day I was quizzing him. I said, now, Larry, how many kinds of alcoholics are there? And he says, well, there's the potential alcoholic. There's the incipient alcoholic, which I am. There's the active alcoholic when you're rolling, and then there's the recovered alcoholic when you get on a hit. And I said, that's fine. You've learned your lesson well. He said, no, there's another one. I said, really?
He says, yes, the dead alcoholic. It's a pretty discerning remark, the dead alcoholic. Now, in this prayer, practice prayer, it just doesn't come automatic. We don't learn this program by friction, as it was brought out last night, Tom brought out, by osmosis. We've got to practice the principles of this program. We've got to practice it. I said, you'd have never developed your alcoholism if you hadn't practiced all those virtues of patience and endurance and the rest of it to get the booze, would you? You've got the virtue, you've got the desire, just have to turn it around.
I know a fellow who's one of the biggest thugs that I've known for a long while. He ran all the speakeasies in town, the slot machines and the beer parlors and the rest of it, and yet he didn't smoke, drink, or gamble. And I asked him one day, I'll come. You sell all the booze in this town, all the gambling joints, and you don't smoke, drink, or gamble. He said, Father, the day I begin to smoke or gamble or drink, I'll become like those chumps that I'm taking. He was practicing virtue to take the chumps.
Well, just as we have to practice effort to get the booze, we've got to practice effort to keep and maintain and to grow in our sobriety. That's the way it goes. The First Thing I Have to Do is Practice Recollection, Prayer is Essentially the Act
[00:30:13]
of Our Inner Selves, We Are in Outer Space Today, We Get So Much Publicity About Outer Space, Millions and Billions are Spending on Outer Space, I Have Nothing Against That, I Wonder Why, Maybe We Are Giving Up on This Space, It's True That People Probably Know Far More About Outer Space Today Than They Do About the Inner Space Themselves, How Many People Really Understand Themselves Inside, How Many People Have Got the Guts Enough to Look, They Probably Have More Courage to Go Out and Get In One of Those Machines and Go Around the Moon Than To Take a Good Look at Themselves, Can Take More Courage You Know, Take a Look at Me With Rigorous Honesty, That's Part of Sobriety, To See Yourself As You Are, To Face Reality, Now This Requires Concentration, I Don't Know How You Guys Are, But This Booze Does Something to Your Brain Cell, Maybe It's Just Old Age, But Boy I'm Telling You, I'm Getting More Absent Minded All the Time, I Can't Remember Anything, I Started Out, Come Up Here, You Know What I Forgot, My Collar, I Had Already Given Twenty Cents to Get On That Toll Bridge in Vancouver and I Get Across and I Remember I Don't Have My Collar, So I Got to Pay Twenty More to Go Back and Get the Collar and Come Back Again, I Was Ready, I Said Well, I Practiced This Serenity Prayer. Recollection, Think, The Word That Impressed Me More Than Anything Else When I Walked In That Skid Row Group Was the Word Think, That They Had on a Card, Oh They Had Tolerance, Humility, All Those Things, The Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, But There Was Only One Word, Think, I Had Never Seen It Put So Brutally in My Life, I Had to Be Told That I Should Think, We All Have to Be Told, We Have to Think Straight, We Have to Think Firmly, Honesty, Objectivity, That's This Program, Think, Mental Sobriety, I Don't Know We Have Some New People Here, I Don't Know What Your Drinking History Is, But I Know If You're Anything Like Me, You're The Poorest Risk I Know, For The First Six Months Up To The First Year, I Wouldn't Bet a Dime on You, You Better Go To A Lot of A Meetings and Stick Around the Prose, Or You Can Make One Stupid Mistake and We'll Kiss You Goodbye, Hang Tough, My Sponsor Told Me, He Says, Now If You Don't Know What to Do, Don't Do Anything and Call Me, That Was His Vote of Confidence, And I Thank God That I Followed His Instructions, I Did Just That, I Remember Too, A Good Doctor Told Me, He Said, Now These Are Not habit-forming, Father, And You're Very Nervous, Which I Was Letting Him Know I Was, So He Said, Now You Take These Pills, They're Not Addictive, They're Not habit-forming, I Used To Wonder Why The Heck I Was Always Looking At The Clock, Going From Mountain To Central Time and A Few Other Things To Get A Hold Of Them, We're Way Ahead Of This Daylight Saving, Boy, We're Jumping That Clock All Over The Place, And I Remember One Day My Sponsor Came In and He Looked At Me, He Said, Where Are They? I Said, What? He Said, Where Are They? Oh, I Said, Oh, You Mean The Pills? Yeah.
So He Gave Me A Little Lecture, He Said, You're Going To Have To Make A Decision, You're Either Going To Lose Me Or Those Pills, Now Make Up Your Mind, If You Don't Throw Those Things Out, I'll Never Look At You Again, I Said, I Don't Have Much Choice To It, In Other Words, You Have To Force An Alcoholic To A Free Decision, The Next Thing In Recollection, We Must Become Present, We've Got To Avoid Running, We Got To Stop and Stand Still, That's Not Easy, We Got To Stop, Boy, That's A Tough One, We Got To Gather Ourselves Together, Recollect Means Just That, We've Got To Become Alert, Aware Of What We're Trying To Do, We're Trying To Come Into Contact With God, The Second Step, We've Got To Visualize God, See Him, With My Imagination, Memory, Whatever You Want
[00:35:10]
To Use, Or A Picture, I've Got To See Him, You Know, We Talk About This Higher Power, That's Wonderful, Particularly If We Get A Person Who's A Little Bit Allergic To A Personal God When He First Comes In Here, So We Talk About Power, But It's Pretty Hard To Fall In Love With A Power, In Fact, Power Is More Apt To Generate A Tremendous Amount Of Fear, I Don't Think I Could Fall In Love With An Atomic Bomb, I Wouldn't Want To Sleep With One, Have One Around, But Personal God, That's A Different Thing, Our Father, Who Art In Heaven, A Personal God, I've Got To See Him, As The Good Shepherd, Or Whatever It Might Be, Your Understanding Will Be Different From Mine, But Got To Be There, The Third Thing, And The Third Step In Prayer, Is To Establish Contact, And This Is The Most Important Part Of The Whole Business, This Is The Purpose Of The Whole Business, The Rest Is Like The Runway That Gets Us Up, The Big Thing Is Contact, Now, It Can Be One Of Two Kinds Of Contact, God As We Understood Him, Or God As We Misunderstood Him, And This Is A Very Critical Stage Right Here, If It's God As We Misunderstand Him, The Reaction Is Going To Be Unfavorable, Unproductive, Positively Harmful, And We See This In A Age, Here An Elkie Comes Into Contact With This Power Person That He Fears, That Maybe All His Life He's Looked Upon In Nothing But Horror, Dread, And Fear, I Had A Fellow One Time Tell Me, He Says You Know I'm A Scare Of God, I Said Why Do You Say That, What Is Your Idea Of God, And He Began To Tell Me, And When He Got Halfway Through I Said That's Enough, I'm A Scare Of That, God Do, Move Over, I Said I'll Be Way Out Ahead Of You Brother, If That's What God Is, You're Not Going To Keep Up With Me, I'm On My Way, But That's Not God, That's Not God, I Had A Fellow One Time After I Given A Talk Like This, He Came Up And He Said You Know, I Didn't Think Much Of That Talk, I Said That's Your Privilege, In Fact I Violently Disagree With Many Things That You Said, I Said Again That's Your Privilege, And I Thought Boy He's Going To Poke Me, So I Thought I Better Get Down To The Source Of This Thing, I Said Well What Are Some Of The Things You Disagree With, He Says This Is My Idea Of God, This God Stuff, So I Said Well Again That's Your Privilege, And So We Went On And We Were Talking About God And Trying To Push It On Him, I Said Now Listen We're Not Trying To Push God On You, He Says Well I'm An Atheist, I Said That's Your Privilege, But I Said What Do You Want To Be, A Drunk Atheist Or A Sober Atheist, We're Not Going To Haggle About Whether You're An Atheist Or Not, Are You Interested In Sobriety, If You Are Come On In, And Then After Talking With This Fellow A Little Bit, I Found Out That That Wasn't His Problem, He Wasn't Any More Of An Atheist Than I Was, He Believed In God So Much That He Had To Get Rid Of God, God Was Bothering Him, Bugging Him, Making Him Feel Uncomfortable, So He Had To Get Rid Of Him, He Hadn't Lost His Faith In God, As I Told Him, I Said You Have Not Lost Your Faith In God, But You've Lost Your Trust In God, You Don't Trust Him Anymore, And I Said I Can Understand Your Position, That Happens To Lots Of Elkins, See You're Living A Life Incompatible With God, With Your Conscience When You're Drinking, You Can't Do Those Things And Feel Confident In God, So You're Scared Of Him, So Come On In, Dry Out, As You Dry Out And Get On This Program, God Will Come Back, You Come Right Into The Picture, You Take Over, Then There's
[00:40:02]
A Favorable Reaction, This Is What We're Looking For, God As We Understood Him, God Who Is Infinitely Good, And I Stress This, Good, And Infinitely Power, You Can't Beat That Combination, You Know As Elkies We Are Very Impressed With Power, I Think That's Why We Have Such An Affinity To Booze, I Don't Know Anything That God Has Made On This Earth As A Creature That Is So Powerful And Works So Inevitably As Booze, Fantastic, I Think That's Why We're So Impressed With It, What It Can Do For Us So Fast, And For So Many Years, Until It Turns On Us To Destroy Us, But Up To That Time, Oh Boy, With A Magical Lantern, We Have To Just Touch It, And You Can Be Whatever You Want To Be Or Don't Want To Be, Fantastic, You Fellas That Had Your Al-Anon Wife, Tremendously Good, I Don't Know Of A Group Of Women In The World That Are As Good As Al-Anon, And Yet They Lacked The Power, They Were Powerless Over An Alcoholic, It Wasn't Lack Of Love, Lack Of Power, Or We Can Know People Who Have Tremendous Power To Help Us, But They Don't Have The Love To Help Us, So They're Not Going To Help Us, But When I Have The Combination Of Both, Power And Goodness, You Can't Beat It, And That's What We Got Going For, Therefore When I Come To Pray, I Should Come With A Reverence For This Tremendous Goodness And Power, Not Fear, But Reverence, Awareness Of Something Beyond Me, Above Me That I Need, And There I Am, You Know Reverence Is A Tremendous Virtue, When You Lose Reverence, You Lose Much, When You Lose Reverence, You Lose Self-Respect, You Lose Respect For Others, You Lose Respect For God Himself, You Lose Respect For Your Fellow Man, And Unfortunately That's What Booze Can Do, It Can Destroy Self-Respect Forever, When I Come To Pray, I Should Come In Humility, I'm A Needer, I Need God, The Booze Has Proven That, You Know In A Way, To Be An Alcoholic Is A Tremendous Blessing, A Tremendous Blessing, Because The Booze Makes It A Necessity, That You Either Go To God Or You Die, You Live In Hell, It Doesn't Give You Any Choice, You Either Go To God Or You Die, Now There Are A Lot Of People In The World That Don't Have That Choice, They Are Not Anywhere Near God, They Don't Deny God, They Are Completely Indifferent To God, They Don't Need God, Their Stomachs Are Full, Their Pockets Are Full, They Are Healthy, They Are Wealthy, They Think They Are Wise, They Don't Need God, They Don't Need Him One Bit, But The Poor Sick Alcoholic, He Has God Or He Dies, So We Have No Choice, So In A Way You Might Say It Is A Tremendous Blessing, That Gives Us Humility, I Have Had People Say Father, If You Did Nothing Else, But Get Up And Acknowledge Your Problem As A Priest, You Would Have Given Me All I Need, In Fact You Have, You Are The One That Got Me Into A, Because If You Have The Courage Enough To Do It, I Can, And I Say Now Don't Overestimate This Thing, I Quote We Are Not Safe, I Don't Have Any Choice, I Have Got To Do This, Or Die, Or Go To The Nut House, I Don't Have Any Choice, And I Am Glad, Because I Don't Want Any Choice, I Want To Be Just Where I Am, In This Whole Total Picture Thing, This Is The Way I Was Created For This. So I'm Lucky, Gratitude, This Is the Tremendous
[00:45:06]
Lesson of This Conference, Gratitude, I Once Read That Gratitude Is Memory of the Heart, It Doesn't Have Much to Do With Your Brain, But Your Heart, I Can Have a Genius Who Has Absolutely No Feelings of Gratitude for Anything, Because He's Probably Proud and He Expects Things, If He Doesn't Receive Them, He Feels Slighted, But the Humble Person And When They Get It, They're Grateful, It's Memory of the Heart, Love, And I Think That's What We Have This Morning, Gratitude, Gratefulness, I Know I Do, Next Year I Will Be Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of My Priesthood, 25 Years, I Am Grateful to AA for This Opportunity to Be Able to Do That, We Have a Group Down in Portland Known as the Loyola Group That Was Started Just for Father Barney, 13 Years Ago, Going on 14 Years, I'm Grateful to These Folks, I'm Grateful for My Sponsor, Whom I Had the Sorrowful Privilege of Burying, Just 5 Years Ago, the 25th of This Month, I'll Never Forget the Last Time I Talked to Him, It Was in an Abandoned Methodist Church, Where They Used to Hold the Meetings, Out at Lake Grove, I Think This Was the 6th Night in a Row That I Had Been Talking to an AA Meeting, And One of the Things I Used to Tell Jim, I Said, What Am I Going to Do With All My Time When I Quit Drinking, He Said, You'll Find Out, You'll Find Out, Well, Anyway, He Was Sitting in the Last Pew, Just Before I Went Up to Talk, And We Were Talking, And Just as I Get Up, Go Up to the Podium to Speak, He Grabbed My Arm and He Says, Barney, I Want to Ask a Question, I Said, What's That Jim, He Said, What are you going to do with all your time?
The Last Words He Ever Said to Me, I Went Over to Spokane That Night, and Two Days Later I Heard the News of His Sudden Death, and I Came Back and Buried Him, I'm Very Grateful to That Man, As Far as I'm Concerned, He Was God Sent, As He Could Possibly Be, And I Know This, And This Includes Every One of You, That For Any Good I May Do as a Priest, In My Priestly Career as a Priest, You All Share This, Because Without You I Wouldn't Have It, And For That I Am Deeply Grateful, I Make Public Acknowledgement, I Want to Thank God for A.A., I Want to Thank God for All Those Graces, That He Gave Me, To Bring Me In and To Keep Me This Many Years, But Above All, I Want to Thank God For God, May God Bless You.