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Source: Frank L – Speaker Talk (1968) – 1968-08-14.mp3 File: frank-l-speaker-talk-1968-1968-08-14.mp3 Duration: 01:06:14
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Now, before introducing our speaker, I'd like to introduce his wife, June, and ask her to stand. June's meant a lot to me, too. In 1956, in Columbia, in a little Greek restaurant, I had the pleasure of sitting with this couple several hours, and we talked like AAs do, a wee hour morning, and we cracked a few jokes, we told our stories, and we shared, and I think we cared. In 1960, two o'clock in the morning, I saw 2,000 people sit to hear this man talk in Los Angeles. In 1964, in Greenville, South Carolina, he gave us our baskets full.
Tonight, I'm a substitute for Manny B., and Manny B.'s a substitute for a fella from Florida, and Frank's a substitute for another guy, but I think God ordained it to be just this way, and I think when he gets through talking, you'll know what I mean. I give you Frank L. McClellanville, Virginia. Thank you, Jim. Well, it looks at least like the years have been good to both of us. You've got an entire substitute team tonight, and by the time we get done with you, I imagine you'll be back asking for your money back, but we don't care too much. Our expenses have already been paid, and we can get out of here real fast.
I would like to say that Harry called me Monday night, and he said that Alan couldn't make it, and could I be here Wednesday evening? Now, I'm not like other speakers at conventions. You have to twist their arms. You've got to sort of cajole them. You've got to tell them what their duties and responsibilities are, but not me. You just ask me, I keep a black and a blue suit packed all the time. You see, whenever you give an Irishman a captive audience, he's not going to miss that opportunity, and if he does, either his ethnic background is wrong, or he's just a plain fool.
But I would like to thank whoever invited me, or said, call Frank. And I'm always grateful when I am, and I hope that I'll always be more grateful than gratified when I'm asked, because I'm the kind of a drunk who finished my drinking on the streets of Washington, the nation's capital, with 38 cents in my pocket I panhandled, a jug of wine, the clothes on my back. I had a history. I had no future. And surprisingly, now I know, I wasn't even living in the present.
And so when I'm invited anyplace, I'm glad to come. And it's been 18 years since I sat in that street, as alone as God should ever permit a man to be alone and not take him from this earth. As ashamed as God should ever permit a man to know his own shame and still permit him to live to face his fellow man. As hopeless as God should ever permit a human being to be hopeless and not take him from the terror of that kind of a night.
And when I arrived at that position, I simply had to make a simple decision. You know, when you're invited here to a convention, and Harry told me who the list of speakers was, and I guess you'd say it read like a who's who of AA. And I'm eternally grateful to God that this platform will never be a competitive platform. Because if it were, I could not have come tonight.
[00:05:11]
But he asked me to come as a simple drunk who walked along in a torturous and tragic and terrifying road. And he walked it in the space of 28 years. And I just passed my 46th birthday a few days ago. And that tragic path in those 14 years, if Almighty God chooses to take me from this earth tonight, he has given me the privilege to walk to the gates of hell and to stay 18 years with you. People and have a little glimpse of what the gates of heaven must look like.
My name is Frank. Like many of you, I'm powerless over alcohol. And like all of you, I hope, I've been sober today. And in those few words, I have told you everything you must know about me. I have told you my entire philosophy of living. I have told you my entire being. I have told you all I know about the God that I have always understood, drunk or sober. You see, I told you I was a drunk who finished on wine. And if I accomplish nothing else in life, it'll be said of me at least I was consistent.
For I got drunk on wine the first time. The only difference, it happened to be blessed the first time. And the last time, I merely was blessed to have it. I say my name is Frank because that's the simplest thing and the only thing here in Alcoholics Anonymous. For I have a very simple and a very logical program. And it was taught to me by a man whose story is in that big book. For Dr. Bob pulled him out of a jungle in Akron, Ohio. And he taught him a few simple precepts and asked him to follow a few rules of a code.
And he managed to stay sober and is still sober this day. And he pulled me out of my own jungle and gave me the same simple thing. And so I say I'm Frank because that's all that's important here in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's all that will ever be important. For here we will and we have and we shall deal always with a program of principles and not personalities. Here he told me I would have to relinquish the wonderful, beautiful luxury we drunks always want and always had to have to be number one.
And never again could I afford this. And so it would not matter what my name was, whether it was the most esteemed in this nation. The fact is when I walk through that door, I'm asked only one thing. Do you have a problem? Do you want to do something about it? Do you want to be sober today, Frank, more than anything else in the world? And I can answer to that yes. And then I say I'm powerless over alcohol. I have never said I'm an alcoholic from this platform.
And I never shall because I don't know what one is. And I doubt greatly if anyone else does either. And when I came here I had neither the time, the energy, the strength, nor the mentality or intelligence left to try to sit down and find out, nor was I asked.
[00:10:10]
My sponsor asked me this simple, immutable question in fact of my life, which is the only question asked in the first step of our program, as it was written, as it is now, and as it always shall be. And that was, was I powerless over alcohol. Oh yes, I could understand this with the sickest and the foggiest mind. For I only had to look back over the years, over the tragedies, over the jails, into the prisons I'd been.
And oh yes, I could answer yes to that, an immutable fact. For every time I took a drink, from the youngest age to the last drink I had, it always was the same. I could never guarantee my conduct as a sane and a rational human being. I could never guarantee how it would end or where it would end. Only that it would end and it would always end with me losing something else and a little more. No, I don't know what an alcoholic is and I'm not interested, nor have I ever been interested. I leave that to the researcher and the scientist and those more learned than I.
But I know the immutable fact of my life is that I cannot take a drink safely and survive or guarantee my conduct as a sane and a rational human being. And I didn't have time when I came. I didn't have time. And I think sometimes I see those who spend so much time, time that is not allotted them, time that has run out on them, wondering, examining, analyzing. Pseudo-intellectuals who adopt Freudian complexes and not ask themselves a simple, honest question.
Are you a drunk or aren't you? And that was the question that was asked of me by my sponsor in the most polite and tactful of terms. He looked at me and he said, for he was a gentle one, what do you want, bum? What do you want? And I looked at him and I said, I want an answer. An answer to a problem that I've gone around the world five times over. An answer that I know has always existed on the face of this earth since the day I walked out of a school where men who knew the answers told me it was someplace but not there.
And he said, yes, we've got it. And then the big question, are you sure you're a drunk, that you don't want to change your mind? Well, you see, that night I couldn't change my mind because I had made my mind up. I made my mind up that that was the last day I'd spend on God's earth. And for me, a man who came from a background that I could suffer all things but not even suffer the thought of destroying myself, had come face to face with a problem I no longer wanted to exist with.
And in order to remove that problem, if I must remove myself from this earth, I would do it that day. For not one more day would I spend in the humiliation and the hopelessness and the terror and the fear and the aloneness. The aloneness, the aloneness we drunks know, man can survive loneliness, God gives him this character to do it, but we drunks know what aloneness is, to be in a world of people, and to know you're all alone,
[00:15:22]
to know that you have talent, and to know you'll never use it, to know that you're capable of love, and yet you fear being loved for you know whatever you touch will turn and die, and you'll corrupt it, oh the aloneness we drunks know, and so I didn't have the time to find out what an alcoholic is, and you know it's a peculiar thing, it depends upon where you stand what an alcoholic is, go to a good competent physician, a medical doctor and ask him what an alcoholic is, and he will and he must if he has stayed with his profession and read his manuals, he will say this is a physical disease, this is a biochemical change where the body no longer can tolerate alcohol, we don't know why, but we know it exists, we can go to the doctors of the mind, the psychiatrist, the sociologist, the psychologist, and we can ask them what an alcoholic is, and if they're versed in their profession they will and they must say this is one who suffers from a mental illness, a mental disorder, a sickness of the mind, this is the phenomena of compulsion, not unknown to the world nor new, now we can go to the doctors of the soul, the priest, the minister, the rabbi in an isolated case, and we ask him and he must if he has stayed with his vocation, he must say this is a sickness of the spirit, this is a moral sickness, this is some moral degeneration, this is if you please a sickness of the soul, ask a judge what an alcoholic is, he's a judicial frustration, he doesn't even belong in his courtroom and any competent jurist knows this, but he doesn't know what to do with him, so he jails him like they jailed me, because society in its own ignorance cannot face its own problems, ask a policeman who rides that proud car out there tonight what an alcoholic is, he's 4000 pounds of hurtling metal careening down a road, ask the policeman who walks the beat, he can be sudden death coming out of any corner, ask the child what an alcoholic is, oh he's a heartbreaker to that, ask a wife, ask a husband, you can even ask the self-righteous people of the world what an alcoholic is, ask those who usurp the very power of God to judge me or to judge you, oh in God we know what they'll say of us, weak-willed, moral indigence, no willpower, oh how that grated on my nerves so many years, I was sober 10 years when I went back to an old book I had as a young student, it's called Thomas Acampus, Imitation of Christ, it's a priest's handbook practically, and there was a surprising part about willpower and I felt so good for us drunks, because all the time I wanted to prove they were wrong, but you see they were so more intellectual than I, so more learned and so more holy, and you know there's only one place where the philosopher and the theologian agree, they usually disagree, and rightly so, for a philosopher can only teach you a way to live, a theologian will teach you a way to die, and few men ever learn that properly,
[00:20:10]
but they agree on one thing, willpower, they say it's a positive assertion of the will to change a condition that it exists, and it doesn't even matter whether that condition is good and bad, as long as the change is tried the will is used, and I thought back to all the times that we drunks tried, all the world can say we were guilty of trying in the wrong places, but I'll stand before God and argue that I was never guilty of not trying, nor was any other drunk, we changed from beer to wine, from wine to booze, from booze to slivovitz, I even changed to perfume one time thinking it would improve me, it made me smell better, but I got just as drunk on it, we changed jobs, the geographical cue, we moved, we changed the hours we drank, where we drank, how we drank, we imposed disciplines on ourselves that no other being would have asked us to impose, or we tried, I often think that if the rest of this world climbed as many steps of rectories and churches looking for answers as we drunks did, it'd be a far better world we have than we have now, now ask a thousand people what an alcoholic is and you'll get a thousand different answers, multiply it a thousand times over, and a thousand upon a thousand different answers, maybe you've got time, I didn't, for time had run out on me on the morning of November the 11th, 1950, in the city of Washington, and time ran so close on me that no longer would I even seek God, I'd defy him that day, and then I say I am sober today, and in saying that I tell you that I have accomplished all things today, I tell you that today Frank, Frank is a successful human being, just as you are, if you have remained sober this day, you have accomplished the impossible, you have accomplished what man has always sought to accomplish, not fame or riches, not prestige or power really, we drunks have accomplished the one fact in our life that we never were successful in, and that was to be able to freely stay sober by our own choice, not sober because someone disemboweled us to, not sober because someone put the fear of God in our heart instead of the love of God, sober because as free born men, created by God with dignity and respect, we have this day here and now elected to stand sober when within all our power and all our kin, each one of us individually have the right, granted by whatever God's made us, to be drunk today, to choose to be drunk, men can accomplish many things, but in the last analysis, the real measure of a man's life will be not what you know of him or I know of him, for Jim has said nice things about me, but that is all he has said, and I am cautioned by those remarks, for I remember the advice of an Irish grandfather who spent a lifetime fighting the British and always lost,
[00:25:24]
but once a man said a wonderful thing about him, and he looked and he cautioned me, and he said, what men will say of you will be your reputation, it is what they know of you, it is not important, what God knows about you is your character, and only you and God know that, Frank, that is important, and maybe that's what we do here, maybe when all the histories are written, and they wonder what we did as we sat these years staying sober, I doubt if any human mind will fathom it very well, perhaps it will take an angel to put it to parchment, and perhaps all he'll write is, they learned about themselves, and they learned to be successors as human beings, you know, when you come to a convention like this, you have a tendency to want to speak as an authority on something, but this isn't too bad, you see, because have you ever heard of a drunk who wasn't an authority?
I never have, now there may be someone new here tonight, and they're looking for an excuse to get drunk, so I'll give it to them, if you don't honestly think in your heart that it was the day almighty God made you, he threw away the mold, and never shall walk again on this earth a man like you, with all the knowledge of the world, and all the talent and wisdom and skills, if you don't believe that about yourself, you've got some more drinking to do, you're really in the wrong place, now I know there might be some jet set AA that wants to save your soul, but believe me, get out of here quick, you're wasting your time, you've got some years maybe ahead of you, now I never met a drunk who wasn't an authority, you remember the guy you used to sit with in the ballpark, he'd say I saw Ruth when he hit it over the center field at the Yankee stadium, that was in 1929, the guy's only 30 years old, he believes it though, he believes it because he's a drunk, because he's the victim of his own self delusion, perhaps a disease that is the greatest self deluder, I stood before so many drunks with two policemen holding me up, two beers judge, two beers, my wife had a little trouble when she came in, see she's only got 17 years, she's a kid, and another guy and I, we're 12 stepping her, of course all the wise holy men in AA were full warning, they said this kid, this Frank don't have a chance anyway, we'll just be nice and tolerate him, then he'll get drunk and go away, but now he's involved with this babe and she's drunk, score zero, but she managed to stay sober a month, and in those days we used to knock those excuses out, I don't know why we're so polite to each other lately, we used to be honest to each other in AA, the men I love the dearest in AA are still the guys who told me what a bum I was at a given time, and they're the ones that are responsible for me standing up here tonight sober.
For me standing up here tonight sober, they're the ones who have helped me all these years to keep the simple contract with God that I made those years ago, they loved me enough, not to win a personality contest, but loved me enough to say, Frank, you're way off base, buddy boy, and you'll be drunk if you keep it up,
[00:30:23]
they weren't taking my inventory of poor defense, they loved me enough to tell me the truth, and so this chick decides all of her problems, she's been drunk for 20 years or whatever it was, simply because her apartment didn't look right, it didn't have the right colors, well maybe they're not writing these in the latest books being taught in the higher universities, so we simple drunks knocked that one out quick, we moved six guys in with step ladders, paint, and we were going to paint that apartment, and we were doing a bang up job, we had a couple of professional painters in there supervising, recently off Skid Row, but 18, 20 years ago, we weren't getting rushes like you who drove Cadillacs, college educations, still had a home, I'll tell you something about myself, it's honest and it's true, five years, I wouldn't make a 12 step call on a guy in a house, I made them all on Skid Row, and you know why, it took me that long to comprehend, how could a guy be a drunk and he still got shoes, when he sells the shoes for a bottle of wine, that is my baby, I don't do too well in these drawing rooms now, must be something about me, my manner, so anyway we went out, painted the place, we were doing very well and ran out of thinner, so we went down to the hardware store, now there were six Skid Row drunks, she wasn't, oh she was a classy girl, five months drunk in her own apartment, mother in Tennessee used to take her to the hospital, been the vice president's secretary, you know, but anyway, six Skid Row bums, all sober, who knew every trick in the book and this doll has got a fifth stashed on us and we shook that apartment down, so we come back with the paint thinner, she's standing there in an empty fifth, this is all inside of 15 minutes, blind, in a stupor, I said how did you do it so fast, she said that's what's the matter with you people, you're always accusing someone of doing something wrong and I haven't had a drink and fell flat on her face, she laid in that paint because we let the step ladders, the paint, the brushes, told her to drink the rest of the thinner and we got out of there, but no, we're really all tempted to be authorities, I don't think it's bad, I think it's bad if we really try it, I don't think it's bad to think about it, and I'm the same way, you know I'd like nothing greater than to be able to stand up here tonight and to authoritatively talk to you about alcoholism, but you know if I did that you'd have a fraud before you, because number one, I'm not interested in alcoholism, that's a subject fit for researchers and scientists, not me, my business is the business of sobriety, my business is the bigger business of this program which is the business of living, the business of living and understanding, understanding myself, trying to understand my fellow man and above all things if I can accomplish something in this, maybe I'll be able somehow to understand this infinite power that I call God but don't really comprehend too well,
[00:35:16]
it's much like electricity to me, I don't know how it works but I know when I push the button the light comes on, I'd be a fraud and then I'd like to authoritatively talk perhaps about the AA program and if I did that I'd be a fraud too because how can I? This program is a personal thing, these twelve steps are given to each individual to use, to use with whatever capacity God gave him and with whatever capacity he has he will be successful, it's his to use with whatever understanding he has, to go to whatever depth he wishes and so for me to talk about it would be fraudulent, I'm not qualified to and then maybe I'd like to talk authoritatively of matters of a spiritual nature and if I did that I'd be a bigger fraud.
But you see I'm neither trained nor educated nor do I have any dedication and there are men who are trained and dedicated and have a vocation and it is not for me to tamper with men's souls for I shall play very well the game if I can manage to save my own. And yet as a drunk we cry out, we cry out because maybe we have to be authorities and we want to be unique and be different and I don't think God dislikes this, we want to be something sort of special and I think every human being should be and we want to be authorities.
And so tonight I can talk to you as an authority and I am the only authority on the face of God's green earth, I can tell you only about Frank. I can tell you why I got sober, I can tell you why I stayed sober and I can tell you why I want to stay sober and I'm the only authority on that subject. You see I'm the only one who really knows Frank and the God that made me, he's the only other one and he's not even telling you how bad that is.
I got sober for no great spiritual reasons, unlike Saul of Tarthas I was not knocked from any horses, nor did I see any blinding flashes, nor were there lightning on mountains. No I was neither that bad nor would I ever be that good. I got sober for a very human reason, I got sober because for 14 years I walked the face of this earth looking for an answer to a problem I knew was destroying me. You know I don't have to tell you my story blow by blow, it serves no purpose for me, it will serve none for you. If you are a drunk you know my story and if you are not you will never, never know my story.
It is much as Augustine once said, to a man who knows God no explanation is necessary, to one who does not none is possible. And so for me the simple story was a human being, lost and wandering, hopelessly seeking something that within his innermost soul he knew existed on the face of this earth.
[00:40:03]
For all I had left the last day of my drinking was a faith given me by God the day I was born, one which each one of us had and a spark of hope that all the suffering and aggravation, that all the terror, all the disappointments, all the pathetic plights that I found myself in, that one little bit flicker of hope that's eternal in all men until they die or extinguish it themselves by total despair, told me, told me there was an answer somewhere on God's earth.
And I sought it from the learned and I sought it from the holy and I kneeled at a lot of altars to God. But what I didn't know was that as sick as I was, I was going to places that could not help me in a sickness. And so I wandered those years. I wandered and you know how I wandered if you were drunk. You know with the wonderful gift of imagination which God gave us, which children retain surprisingly, but which you and I through life becoming sophisticated choose to throw away and not use.
And little children use it and they are kings and queens and they're masters of the world. But you and I are too sophisticated. We become too much of an intelligentsia. We're too intellectual and so we throw this wonderful imagination away, the thing that can carry us over the places we can't even see. And you know with that gift of imagination I can go back in time 5,000 years in the recorded history of man and I know that at the foot of a mountain a Jewish giant descends with tablets of stone to give man a little better way to live a little more decently.
But I know one other thing as a fact. I know there's a drunk at the foot of that mountain then and I know what he feels. And as he looks at this patriarch and he wants to believe, the nature of his illness doesn't permit him to. That's why you're so sick and so was I. And so he does as I did in many of you. He wanders away aimlessly and hopelessly the face of the earth hoping perhaps against hope that he'll find some sort of peace somewhere. Maybe he does.
And 3,000 years of history rolls on and so did the drunks. Still wandering, still hopeless, still aimless, still seeking. And another Jew, a younger man carpenter by trade, comes out of the hill country of Galilee and he stands on a mountain with his golden hair and he tries to give to another people a little better way of living, just a little more decency. And there's a drunk at the foot of that mountain and you bet your soul on it, not your life. And he looks, he looks at this carpenter that some call teacher, some call God, and here in Alcoholics Anonymous there is no proper reference.
And he looks and wants to understand what this Jewish giant with the golden hair who will hang on a cross within a few years, what is he trying to say? But the nature of his illness doesn't permit him to understand and he walks away aimlessly, hopelessly, but at least perhaps the eyes, the compassionate eyes. The eyes, the compassionate eyes, of the cop and to find him, as he walks away and he finds some peace, and history still rolls on and so does the drunk, and still aimless and hopeless, still seeking, and oh, hurting, hurting so very much, hurting so very much,
[00:45:19]
and then finally, some thirty-five years ago or so, perhaps God, in his infinite disgust, looks at a world gone mad and sick with their hatreds and their bigotries and their smallness and their pettiness, and perhaps he asks his angel of history, is this all that is left, and he says, no master, the drunks are still left, they're still on the bottom of the ladder of humanity, they always have been master, and perhaps, even with infinite humor, I think he rather takes and wraps up perhaps what a Jew carried down on tablets of stone, what his son taught on a mountain, and he said, put it in a nice package, and put a big red bow about it, and send it down to that drunken broker from Wall Street, and you know, maybe those drunks, if they think they invented something, they'll understand what I've been trying to teach them all these centuries, and you know, we bought it hook, line, and sinker, but he sent it down in a way that we could understand it, and we understood it as all men will always understand great things, we understood it because we suffered it together, because we knew the hopelessness, because no man is annihilated, and no man is alone, and each one of us in our own rights, in our own places, whether we come from high places or low places, pray God we never forget whatever oblivions we came from, and so we hurt enough, we hurt enough to want not to be what we were, and so I got sober, no great spiritual reasons, I got sober because I was a human being who got sick and tired of being sick and tired, sick and tired of humiliation, sick and tired of walking and thinking and living like an animal, when I knew almighty God made me to stand erect with dignity and respect, he gave me that the day I was born, and a bottle took it away from me, and then another drunk like you, one day, one cold day, at three o'clock in the morning, gave it back to me, and he didn't have to take my bottle away from me, because I was ready to hand it to him then, and I was starting again to stand erect like a free man should, a man created by God, and that's where you came in, that's why I stayed sober, I stayed sober because that night on that street, I made my contract with God, a very simple one, I've added very little to it through the years, but I have kept the one that I made, I sat as alone as I'd ever been, and I thought, and I looked, and then I prayed, not a very ecclesiastical prayer, I prayed in Latin once, this was a simple prayer, a supplication of a hurt human being, like a poor broken animal, and the prayer was so simple, perhaps that's why he heard it, but I imagine he was waiting around a lot of years to hear it, and that prayer was simply, God, what happened, where did it all go wrong, what happened to the young guy I once knew,
[00:50:05]
and then I thought of a drunk I had heard in a jail in Virginia, a man I mocked and laughed at, who was later to see me stay here and pray, and I thought of what he said, and he said, if you want to be sober, more than anything else in this world, on any given day, you can stand up sober, if you'll pay the price, and so that night, I made a contract with God, and I asked God, please stand me up one time, one time in this street, let me stand up and look unashamed at my fellow man, stand me up one time and give me half a fighting chance against this phantom that destroys me, and if I do nothing else in this world from this day on, I shall promise you the day you see fit, I no longer exist, I'll try to bring that sobriety back to you unbroken, and on November the 11th, 1950, history of churches and cathedrals may record that God was in their holy places, and I doubt not that he was, but I can tell you he walked a dirty street on a skid row in Washington, D.C., and he took a wonderful cloak and mantle of sobriety, and he threw it over me like Jim said, and he said, stand up Frank, stand up and keep that clean, until I call you home to return it, for you see, I'll have to send it down for someone else, don't get it dirty on me.
And that has not been easy, nor will it ever be easy for us drunks, but it is the least a man can do for the God that picks him up from a gutter. I stayed sober because the goodness that was in the hearts of people like you, the grace of God which you had, and which many of us use as a cliché, but he had given you so much that a lot of it rubbed off on me, so I didn't have to do anything but just sit really, sit and want, want, want until I hurt, and the goodness and the warmth and the love that was you, you gave to me, and once again I was no longer alone now, I was a part of the universe.
I was needed again, I could be useful, I could be loved and I could love, and you retaught me all the things I had always known to be true. For you see, Alcoholics Anonymous is not my tabernacle, for I have always known that I must someday find the tabernacle I believe has always existed, and that is a place where the God that made me resides wherever it may be. So you are not my tabernacle, but you are the only key God gave me to open the one eventually that I must, and you looked at me as sick as I was, as dirty as I was, and you asked me nothing, you demanded nothing, you just gave.
And you gave a commodity that is not a shame for one in this sophisticated world, the commodity, love of one human being for another, and the wisest of men have said, until you learn that you are not capable of knowing the love of God. And you gave that to me, and you looked at me with my Irish dreams, and my head in the clouds and you didn't laugh, and you said, okay Frank, here it is, here's your program you've always looked for, here's that wonderful river of hope, jump in and swim, swim as far as you want to go.
[00:55:02]
Swim all the way to the headwaters and find that God you tell us you believe in, but look out for that river Frank, look out, it's treacherous, it is swift, and its tides will fool you. And you'll get weak, and you'll tire, and you'll want to give up, and when you do, just call us, call us, we'll swim alongside of you, we'll hold you up until you get your strength back or you get your courage back.
We'll hold you up until you get all of that back Frank, and then we're going to turn you loose because you're going to swim that river yourself, we're not going to carry you. No, thank you for not stripping me of my dignity, and thank you for holding me up, the times I wanted so much to quit, the times I got so tired in the middle of that stream. I stayed sober because, oh of no special things, I stayed sober because the goodness of God which was in you just held me up long enough that I could see perhaps the headwaters of the God that I understand, and was willing once again to strike out and look for them.
No great mystery is it, really no great shakes, pretty easy when someone else, God and the people who love you do most of the job for you, all they asked me to do was to try. And why do I want to stay sober? Perhaps there is no one else in AA who wants to stay sober for the same reason I do. But that doesn't matter, for I am the only man on the face of God's earth who must remain sober. I pray each day of my life that every drunk who walks this earth someday can stand erect with the dignity and respect he deserves as a human being. But whether he does or not, I'm the only man who must.
For you see, I made a simple contract in 1950 on a cold November morning, a simple contract that no matter what hell or high water, I'd try to get back home sober. And each day of my life I live much as St. Francis lived it. I expect it to be the last day of my life. No, I must stay sober to keep a simple contract. I know that here we have a program with which a man can build a pigsty or a palace, and I'm still drunk enough to want to go for the big bundle. I want it all the way.
And you know, it really won't matter what the world thinks of me, good or bad. I don't know who God sends for human beings, perhaps an angel. But whatever or whoever he sends, I want you to teach me this program well enough and good enough that I'll make no mistakes. And I want you to teach it to me so well that when Almighty God says, step off, Frank, I can walk as a man should walk, erect, unafraid, with his eyes only looking on a horizon, and however long that is, is really immaterial.
And wherever it is that my God resides, when I arrive there, I will not be afraid. I will not be interested in what the world thought of me, good or bad. I shall be primarily interested in what the arch-historian of them all, the recording
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angel, shall write of me. And when I arrive, perhaps, he shall say, Frank, the drunk they said was hopeless, master. He has arrived home safe and sober. And from in and within, perhaps the booming voice of a carpenter shall say, write in your book, Eternal Happiness. I think you have a program good enough to do that. And I wouldn't even dare bet my life on it. You see, I'm betting my soul on it. And when all the histories of man are written, when they're all put in place, there may come a day when you and I and AA is no longer necessary.
And if God should ever choose that that day should come, then let the historian put his pen to paper and write of you. They were a hopeless lot. They were the bottom of the ladder of humanity. And when all the minds of the world and all the knowledge could not help them, like fools, they banded together and in loving each other learned the internal secret of loving God. Let it be written of you. They were a gallant group, for they kept the faith and they were good and humble servants.
I shall not thank you for my years of sobriety, for I would offend and insult you. But I will thank you if you do your job well enough for an eternity of happiness. And let's keep it simple. Dr. Bob asked us that in 1950, the year I came in, and he said in his last talk, let's not louse it up with a bunch of Freudian complexes. This is a simple program that asks each individual created by God one simple question.
Are you a drunk and do you want to do anything about it? I pray that people like me with a few picayune years of sobriety never forget the oblivions they came from. I pray that those of you who seek your sobriety, that you find it. And for those of us, and there shall be some of us in this room, who shall choose to exercise our God-given right and not choose to be sober, then I pray whatever gods exist, that they watch out for you, for you are in God's hands.
No power on earth can help you. Thank you and God bless you. Thank you, Frank, for a wonderful message. A message of hope, a message that all of us can take with us and use in our daily lives. In days gone by, someone did it under the least of these, and he will do it under you if you ask. The theme of our conference this year is unity. As I read the last paragraph on page 164 of the Big Book, as I read the last paragraph on page 164 of the Big Book, describing our program as best it can be described, I would
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ask you to join hands and help me close this meeting with the Lord's Prayer. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to him and to our fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the Spirit, and we will surely meet some of you as we trudge the road of happy destiny. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Heal us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.