company back on the East Coast. And I did. I was one of the leading salesmen in a national organization. No problems.

Had a little trouble getting in my expense account. We’d like to have you come to work for our company in Southern California. A position, no supervision, no direct supervision. The largest salary I had ever earned, an almost unlimited expense account, a bonus at the end of the year, and a company car.

And I was about to say no, I expect to take another position tomorrow. And the keen cunning mind of the alcoholic came to my rescue and I thought, aha, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. And so I accepted the position. The following day, the company of my first choice called and the vice president from New York said, we would like to have you come.

You had a wonderful record back in Virginia, Jack. We know that you will just do wonders in our Southern California territory. Largest salary I’d ever earned. A bonus at the end of the year, an almost unlimited expense account, a company car.

And I was about to say no, I’ve already accepted another position. But the keen cunning mind of the alcoholic came to my rescue. And I said, two birds in the bush is better than one bird in the bush. What if something goes wrong with one of them?

No supervision, overlapping territories, two salaries, two company cars, two expense accounts. Golly, you talking about falling up? You think I didn’t fall up? You bet I did.

Wonderful time in Southern California, right? Wrong. When you were drunk, you had trouble with one job, friend. Talk to me about having two at the same time.

And you’re not functional in either of them. That was the beginning of hell because my life at that time had become a total insanity. Not too long ago, Karen and I were in San Francisco and having dinner at a hotel at which I had dinner one night at a sales conference.

And I later that evening made an asset of myself in front of some executives with the company of my first choice. On the way back from San Francisco the next day by plane to L.A., I can remember as well as if it was yesterday, hoping the plane would crash, looking out the window and wanting with all my heart to have that plane crash. Was I thinking about the other passengers on that plane?

Of course not. See, one of the symptoms of the alcoholic is we don’t think about anybody but ourselves. We think about a lot of people like Garnet, but not very lovingly. There’s not very much love in us.

One night at a party, it was in an auditorium just like this, Tennessee Ernie Ford had been broadcasting from the stage. This was before taped television programs, and he was alive. We were almost next-door neighbors and were kind of friends, and I was there as his guest and friend.

The show was over, and he was entertaining the crowd, and I was standing at about right here. The platform was there. I was right there standing, an auditorium full of people. There were two drunks right over here giving him a hard time.

Now, I want to tell you something. If there was one kind of person I couldn’t tolerate, it was a drunk, a loudmouth drunk, and there were two of them giving my friend a hard time, and I gave them a hard time. Back and forth we went, and I looked up to the platform toward my friend Tennessee Ernie for his approval, and he was

looking not at them but at me. That look that you have received from someone or you would not be here, and there was a moment of truth. There was a moment in which my whole mind opened up and all my defenses, all the barriers were down.

The denial was not there. I could see clearly what I was, what had happened to me. I did not understand it. My buffers were gone, and I turned and walked out of that building and put the hose in the exhaust

of the car, attempted to take my life and almost did so. That was Saturday night, and on Monday I called the company of my second choice and the company of my first choice, and I resigned both those positions and went back to Virginia to live there until I died, until then I took my three sons and their mother back, and I went back over to the other side of the tracks to live that skid row existence until I died, and I would die tomorrow.

All I had was my unemployment compensation, $22.50 a week in Virginia it was at that time, and you can’t do much drinking on $22.50 a week, I’ll tell you that. And I stayed in that one room and would sneak out late in the day or at other times when I had to go down and sign up for the unemployment compensation. And the time came when that was not enough and I had to go borrow, and I borrowed out.

There was not another person that I could borrow from, and then I started bumming down on the market. I was back to my roots. I was back where my image knew that I deserved to be, back to my comfort zone. And one Sunday, a day like this, so sick, so hungover, so desolate, so hopeless, I

didn’t know what to do. And there was no action on the market, and so I did something that is the, it was the bravest thing I could do that day. I now know that it was the grace of God. I went up to the post office because I thought I might see some of my old friends, some of the old acquaintances.

I might see some of the people, some of the men that I’d worked with. I knew that they would be coming to the post office on Sunday, as they did in that small southern town, to mail their expense reports back to New York and Chicago and other places. I had done it for years. It was the last desperate move of a hopeless alcoholic, and no one came that

I could borrow, that I could bum something from. And finally, I stumbled out across the street, came to a red light, and it changed back and forth many times, and I tried to cross the street, and I could not, and I, I tried to go back, and I, and I could not. I could not move.

I was transfixed. I tried to go to my right and to my left, and there was no place on this earth for me to go. There was no one to turn to. There was no one left.

Everyone that I had known had deserted me, or I had deserted them. Do you believe in miracles? Finally, after many minutes, I stumbled across the street, and by chance, turned to my left. By chance.

I walked a half a block, and I turned to my right, and as I turned the corner to my right, I looked across the street, and coming out of a doorway was Joe and three or four other people. Now, Joe, every alcoholic has a Joe. Joe is that person that if you ever get as bad as Joe is, you’ll quit.

Joe was an alcoholic. I had known that for years. I had carried Joe home from Silver Gables, that was our favorite boozing joint, many times. Now, in Virginia, carry means drive.

You carry somebody somewhere, you drive them. Well, if you carried Joe home, you drove him, and then you carried him the rest of the way, and I had carried Joe in lots of time, nights, and stretched him out across the bed and had taken his shoes off and loosened his belt and went out into the living room and sat there with Jean for a while, and as we talked about poor Joe, her alcoholic husband, what was she gonna do with her alcoholic? And I’d go back down to Silver Gables, you see.

I didn’t have a problem like those other persons did. Why, if I ever get as bad as Joe is, I’ll quit. And I turned that corner, and Joe’s standing there with three or four other people outside of Alcoholics Anonymous. There it is on the doorway.

That’s my hometown. I know where those drunks meet. I’m not about to cross that street. Somebody’ll think I’m one of those drunks.

Insanity, denial. Joe saw me, and he came across the street where I was, and I knew he would. And we went around the corner, and I played the little game. I told him how wonderful things were in California, and he bought me some, something to drink.

I explained very carefully to him why I had left my change at home. Two weeks later, when I was about to jump out of a window, I called Joe, and I said, “Are you still sober?” And Joe said, “I am.” And I said, “Joe,” now I want you to hear this. I said, “Joe, there might be something wrong with me.

There might be a little something wrong with me.” Isn’t that insanity? And Joe said, “Where are you?” And I told him, and he came, and he brought Bud Moore with him. And that was the beginning of my opportunity to recovery. It was not the beginning of my recovery.

I went to my first meeting two nights later. I was too drunk to go that night. And after I was going to the meetings, I discovered in time that that was the worst AA group in the whole world. Now, you’ve heard there are no bad meetings and no bad AA groups.

I’ve got some disappointing news for you. That group had been there for seven years, and the oldest sobriety in that group was 15 months, and it belonged to a guy who had moved down from Brooklyn, and he was ready to move back to Brooklyn. You see, there was no program of recovery.

It was just alcoholism. Come to the meeting, go, and go out. No one knew anything about our alcoholic insanity and a spiritual awakening, the transformation of our identity.

So we stayed a while, and we got drunk, and it only took me a short time, and I was back out. That’s the only time, the only period of time, those weeks, that I have ever drunk and knew that I was an alcoholic, and it was hell. It was more hell than I can explain to you. And finally, when I did come back to the meetings, there were, there was the law enforcement departments of the city of Roanoke, of the county of

Roanoke, and of Montgomery County, and the state police were looking for me. I’ve been there. I know how it is. I came back to those meetings, and I thought I might be one of the hopeless ones.

And that was so good. If I’d been 2% smarter, as Chuck used to say, it would have killed me . I was so smart, I knew how to run the world. I knew how to run your life and everyone else’s life, but I could not run my own, and I was reduced to the bare minimum of

ego that would permit me to function. The first job I got was a job selling secondhand automobiles for a crooked secondhand automobile dealer, not like some that I see here with us this evening. Except every time someone walked on the lot to buy a car, I would run around behind the shack that,

and hide. Now, if you have to sell used cars for a living and you’re afraid of people, you’ve got a problem. I walked into the drugstore one day and asked for a Coca-Cola, and, and I just sat there. The girl said, “May I help you?” I said …

I couldn’t say anything. I was almost non-functional after the first week and the first month. My life was hell. It was pure hell.

The anger that was in me, the resentments that were there, my mind was so caught up with an insanity, life simply was not worth living. And there was no God. There was no …

It was just an interminable sentence living on this planet. And one day, after a few weeks, I did something that no self-respecting atheist will do. I lied to the used car manager, told him I knew where I could sell one of those old cars, and drove off beside the Roanoke River to sit there, to hear the water run over the rocks, perhaps to soothe my mind, and I prayed.

I didn’t call it praying or I wouldn’t have done it. I, I looked up in front of me and behind me, and I started talking to God, and I started off just right. I said, “God, I don’t believe you ex- that you exist.” And I say that’s just right because it was honest.

I didn’t believe that God existed. But I said, “If you don’t exist, I have a real problem. I’ve tried with everything that’s in me. I’ve tried to live, and I’ve tried to die.

I have a thousand things to do, and I do not have the energy to do one of those things. I have … I do not know where to turn. My life is hopeless and helpless.” And I became willing to go to any lengths.

I even became willing to be changed, and said so. And a remarkable thing happened when I s- asked God, in whom I did not believe, to help me. Until that moment, help had always been something external, something that I would get you to do for me. I would get Dick to do some things that I should’ve been doing for, for my own self.

In that moment, I didn’t say, “Help me,” I said, “Fix me. Change me. Make me over into whatever it is that I’m supposed to be,” because I became aware for the first time in my life that rearranging my outer circumstances was not the solution. I had gone all the way to California to leave my past behind me, and would you believe that in less than six months I had completely

reproduced the circumstances that I left in Virginia? Would you believe that? Everything was the same as it was in Virginia, except worse. Now, how could this be, except that you and I have the strange power of reproducing the circumstances

that exist in our minds? Have you had the experience of going somewhere else only to find you when you got there, and of recreating, almost in a mirror image, what you left behind you? I had the same people in my life.

They had different names, but they were just as unpleasant as the ones I left behind me. They caused me just as much trouble in precisely the same ways that those people had caused me trouble. And so what was I to do? Where was I to turn?

And in that moment in which I was talking to a power in which I did not believe, I said, “Change me. Fix me.” And the most amazing thing happened in my life. For the first time, I became aware that my problems had not been caused by anyone else but me, and Garnet. Wasn’t about to let Garnet off the hook.

And so I forgave them all, all of those persons, and became willing, even excited, about the possibility of change, and nothing happened. There was no lightning, and there was no thunder. Nothing happened, and I didn’t even blame God because I didn’t believe that God existed.

But three nights later, coming back from an all-night poker game in which I had lost and written some hot checks to some people that will come to you next week when the checks bounce, and I’m so depressed and frightened. I turned on the radio that morning, and there was a voice of … It was a preacher.

And if there was something else I didn’t like, it was a preacher talking, even if it was Norman Vincent Peale. And I turned off the radio, and would you believe that the voice was still there talking to me, except it was not the voice of a person? Would you believe that? It was in my head, and it was all around me.

There was this incredible presence that spoke these words, “Perfect love casts out fear,” and I promise you that was not my language in those days. And instantly, I felt so loved that I could hardly stand it. Before one wheel could revolve at 65 or 70 miles an hour, I felt so loved. It was like an everlasting love.

I did not know how frightened I had been all my life until that love took away the fear and the shame and the guilt and the remorse that I had experienced. I had been so full of fear, of anxiety. I have awakened a hundred times in the middle of the night in a catatonic state of shock, unable to move one finger because of the fear of

Every day of my life, I went out into the world forcing myself to do the things that I had to do in order to exist, waiting for the time of the day that I could take that next drink, and the drink would remove the fear, except it did not remove the fear. That’s alcoholism. Well, it was for me, and instantly the fear was gone.

And not only was the fear gone, but an amazing thing happened. Incredible. I was shown the nature of this big book. A short time later, I read what was told to me on page 42 of the big book.

Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all my problems. Spiritual principles would solve all my problems. My sobriety became paramount, and yet at the same time, it became secondary because it was revealed to me that this fabulous program was designed to recreate my life, that I could become not only sober and sane and happy as I was.

I felt so good that I could hardly stand it, and I knew that this was the way that a human being was designed to live. It’s what I had thought I had discovered when I took that first drink. And now, here it was, mine, but not mine. Anybody who would seek it with all the earnestness at their command.

You see, if there’s a tragedy in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, it is that we go on seeking sobriety long after we have sobriety, but not reaching for that other dimension of ourselves, for the transformation that’s promised, the transformation of the psyche from being a purely human being, but being transformed into something larger and greater than we’ve known. Someone handed me this badge today that says, “This is no ordinary person you’re dealing with.” All my life, I thought I was an ordinary

per- person, and I was trying to hide that fact to convince you that there was more to me than either of us believed. And suddenly, in that experience, I discovered that there had always been more to me than I had believed, and the program of recovery was now my opportunity to carry it out and to carry that message to other alcoholics who still suffered with fear and anxiety and a low self-esteem long after they set the bottle down.

How many of us still gather around the clubhouse inert, frightened, unable to work, unable to perform, saying, “Well, I’m sober, aren’t I?” How many times have you heard a speaker stand up and say, “All this program promises you is sobriety”? If you ever hear that, then you know that person has never read the big book. It promises you everything, including sobriety.

It promises you a life worth living, and it promises you success in your chosen field. And if you don’t know what your chosen field is, it promises you that your chosen field will be revealed to you if you’ll go into action to do the things that need to be done right now. And I can tell you, that day became the most exciting day of my life and continues to this very day.

My life has been changed a hundred times, a thousand times. It’s been transformed. You who have known me for years know that this is true. And when will it stop?

Never, ’cause I’m never gonna let it stop. I am never gonna get to the end of my recovery and of my setting of goals. Why are we so afraid to set goals? Why?

Some people say, “Well, they’ll get you drunk.” Getting drunk was my major goal. It was for years. Why should I then not turn around and begin to set some goals, worthwhile goals of what I want to do with my life, knowing that I’m perfectly free to set any goal that I want to as long as it does not impinge upon the happiness and the success or the welfare of another, and as long as my life is dedicated to the service

of God and the people about me, knowing that the good that comes to me must be shared, and that all of it stands for the glory of God? I have not made one religious statement. Everything I’ve said is right here in this book. It’s then that our lives begin to come alive, when you begin to see that your dreams were real.

In our church today, we had, uh, a Jewish cantor, a woman Jewish cantor, if you can cut that one, singing in our church the Rainbow Connection. You ever go to church and hear someone sing the Rainbow, the Rainbow Connection, and she is a Jew who is a cantor in a synagogue? Incredible.

Why are there so many songs about rainbows? You know why? Because we are dreamers and lovers of life. Why are there so many of us in Alcoholics Anonymous and in Al-Anon?

Because we’re dreamers and lovers of life, and yet sometimes we’re afraid to dream our dreams and to let them come alive again, and to become willing to be that person. Were you voted the one most likely to succeed when you were in school? I was.

And if you weren’t voted that person, you were the runner-up. Why don’t we go into action? And we can, because that’s what the program is all about. Did my life become exciting?

You bet. Three days after I had that experience, two days, someone ha- I, I found a copy of The Sermon on the Mount by Emmet Fox in a drawer in our clubhouse. No one had ever read it.

I later discovered that that was the original big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it was so exciting to me because that wa- was what was happening to me. And I read that book with such enthusiasm and joy, and one day I was reading it on page 52, and you’re not gonna find on page 52 what I found. I was reading it, and this voice that had spoken to me said, “But you’ve got to forgive Joe,” and I dropped the book. Gotta forgive Joe?

You see, I was going through this process of change, and I loved everybody on the planet. I still spent a lot of time, though, thinking about Joe. I was gonna… I wasn’t gonna fix him, but I had some things I was gonna tell him.

And the presence said, “You’ve got to forgive Joe.” And I said, “I will not.” And the presence said, “But you must.” And I said, “I won’t do it.” And the voice said, “Well, it’s not for Joe. It’s for you.” And I said, “Oh, it’s for me.” You will not grow another inch. You will not experience another miracle.

You will not change one whit until you forgive Joe. And then I knew that I had gotten fixed, and I said, “No one can forgive Joe. That’s too much for the human mind to conceive.” And the voice said, “I’ll show you how.” And an image of my youngest son, Alan, came into my mind, and Alan was two years old with long, red, golden curly hair, smile on his face, and he’s never stopped smiling

to this day. The voice said, “Pick Joe up in your, uh, pick, uh, Alan up in your arms and love him,” and I did. And I loved Alan so much that I could hardly stand it. And I picked him up, and then the presence said, “Okay, now that you’ve got that feeling, switch it to Garnett.” And I did, and it quit, and I said, “See?

It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.” And I was forced to try it, and I worked day after day and week after week. I worked three or four weeks on switching it to Garnett. I would get the feeling of love going for Alan, and I would switch it to Garnett, and one day, it didn’t quit exactly.

And I didn’t like Joe, and I didn’t love Joe, but I began to understand that Joe was just, correction, that Garnet was just like I was. He had done the very best he could possibly do under the circumstances that existed. He couldn’t help it any more than I could have helped it. Shortly after that, I was driving one of those old clunkers one day, and it was the fall of the year.

Excited about my life, and I saw passing the first new Buick or Oldsmobile that I’d seen that year. You know how we feel when we see our first new model car, especially if you don’t have one? I looked over and I thought, “That’s the prettiest car I ever saw.” And it passed me going about five miles an hour faster than I was, and I looked over, and you’ll never guess who was driving that car. It was Joe Garnet.

And as I saw Garnet driving that car, I loved him, and the tears just flowed down my face, and I knew it worked. Shortly after that, I went to Garnet. I made my amends to him, as it says in this book.

I told him that I would go to the people that I lied to about him, and to the best of my ability, I would correct the things I had said, and I did. Garnet never said one word. He did not nod his head in approval or denial.

Not long after that, Garnet had a heart attack, and he died. And you see, one more time, I followed the guidance and the direction that was there, and I was at the right place at the right time to do the thing that needed to be done by me. I really do believe in, in miracles.

I believe that every time that we take one of these steps or take some action based on one of these steps, we are creating at that moment a future event that will work in a very serendipitous way in our behalf. It works that way. It is that way.

That’s why it says that our lives are changed as the result of these steps, that we’re creating a new kind of consciousness that we must then take into action to clear away the wreckage of the past. And it’s, was so easy to clear away the wreckage of the past of those years, but what about the more recent wreckage of our past? We who have been sober for a while can talk very bravely about years ago, but what about last week, and what about this morning and yesterday?

What about the Joe that you’ve got in your life, or the Garnet you’ve got in your life right now? Recently, has your life been changing dramatically? Have your prayers been being answered? Have you lost your enthusiasm and your joy?

Is going to AA meetings become, becoming a boring experience? You’re listening to those guys like me talk, and nothing is happening in your life? Get out those steps and take that pad and paper and look for your Garnet, and you’re gonna find your Garnet there. You’re gonna find a number of attitudes that have crept back in.

You know, our old insanity is still there waiting to happen to us again, and it does in a more subtle form because we’re very nice people now, very sober people now. Still very goofy people now, if we’re not very careful now. My life is good. It really is good.

Some days it is so good that I can hardly stand it, and I love it. I love my life. I love my life as much as I hated my life. I love people.

Sometimes I love people so much that I can hardly stand it, especially waitresses. I’ve got a thing for waitresses. I don’t know what it is. I just adore waitresses, but not just waitresses, waiters and people and you, and, and Karen knows it’s true, and the, and the people that

I spend a lot of time with. I love myself. I love myself as much as I hated myself. As a result of these steps, as a result of this program, I have an incredible life, surrounded

by the most remarkable people who live on this planet, and all of them are not drunks. They’re some remarkable people. Still goofy as we are, but remarkable. And I see, I really see miracles happening in people’s lives.

I see this transformation. I see people making changes, making adjustments in themselves, and every time they do, there’s an equivalent change that takes place in their world. You want to change your world? Change yourself.

Right now, change yourself. Let go of your present old ideas and watch what happens to you. I’ve been sober 10 years. Been sober…

I’ve had my 10th birthday twice. I was still living in the city of my birth. My life was wonderful. It had been transformed and changed, and success was there and happiness.

And one day, I received a call from the vice president of the Norfolk and Western Railway. And Bud and I were invited by the president, the vice president of the Norfolk and Western, to be guests along with another, a number of other community leaders. We’d become community leaders.

Imagine that. I, who had been kicked out of the country club, was a community leader. And we were invited to take a… Oh, it was a weekend in which we were being honored for work that we had done in the community in the preceding year, and I didn’t want to go because I was busy with my fourth

step. It was my 10th birthday coming up. And besides, I really felt like that he was asking me because my contribution to the community the preceding year had been that I had taken his brother, the drunk, to his first AA meeting.

I was his brother’s sponsor. That’s why the vice president wanted me on that tour going over to West Virginia. But he prevailed, and Bud and I decided to go, and on… Late in the day, we arrived at the station in Ronald

City, my birth. And on the passenger train, not so long now like they used to be, were two railway cars, private cars, executive cars. And in the center of each of those cars, there was a dining table that would seat about 10 persons. The– We got on the car.

The vice president welcomed us, turned to his porter, and said, “John, these gentlemen will have coffee,” meaning they’re members of Alcoholics Anonymous. No anonymity. I was introduced to one or two people in that car that I did not know, and then there was a jerk as the train began to leave the station, and the vice president said, “Come with me, Jack. You will dine in the next car.

Let me introduce you to some people here that you have not met.” We walked through the doorway into that car, and would you believe that one more time I was standing at exactly the right place at precisely the right time? It’s one of the great miracles of this program. We will always be where we need to be as a result of these steps. And standing there, being introduced, I suddenly remembered a vision that had not been in my mind for years, the

vision of a ten-year-old boy sitting on the bank of a railroad wanting to be on a train going west. Incredible. I prayed to be on that train, and I had said that day when I was 10 years old, “Could anybody on this earth love a little boy like me?” And standing there on my 10th AA birthday on that train going west with these people, I broke down and cried just like I did in your presence

a moment ago because I knew what I would see in just a moment. There was Shenandoah Avenue, Fifth Street, Sixth Street, Seventh Street, Eighth Street, and my heart almost stopped because I knew that in a moment I would look right out that window and see the bank on which I sat as a boy wanting to be out of that alcoholic insanity. And the miracle was not that I had found people that loved me, but that I had discovered the love in my own heart for other persons.

Most importantly, that I had been given an intense desire to help to make this world a better place while I’m in it. And I saw that spark, and I felt their presence, and I know that it’s the result of this program and the miracles.

Would you believe that in the last two months… You will believe it. I’ll tell you. In this year, in the last year, my oldest son, whose name is also Jack, has been to Montreal to Gilles and Lillian Desjardins.

Gilles and Lillian are there. They have one of the great recovery centers and systems for alcoholics and addicts anywhere on the earth. My oldest son has been there recovering from his alcoholism. He became so enthusiastic about what happened to him, the, the awakening that happened to him, that he sent his wife back.

He spent a month and sent his wife, Jenna, my Al-Anon daughter-in-law, for her recovery. And three months ago, my middle son, Gary, the alcoholic, was there with my granddaughter, Terry, who is 16. And Terry’s a, a musical prodigy, not an alcoholic, but she is recovering from the goofiness that’s been imposed upon her by the alcoholism that preceded

her in this lifetime and the incredible things that have happened. And Gary is a miracle. You would not, you would not recognize him. The transformation that’s taken place in that son is amazing.

It’s the result of these steps. And my youngest son, Alan, the one with the long red hair and the smile, he said, “I guess it’s my turn next,” and he’ll be going soon. Do miracles never cease?

Not unless and not until we want them to. A man stopped by a Little League baseball game the other day, and he walked up to one of the players, one of the little boys, 10 years old, and said, uh, “What’s the score?” He said, “Well, we’re behind 18 to nothing.” The man said, uh, “Gosh, 18 to nothing?

You really don’t look like you are disappointed.” And the, the kid said, “Disappointed? Why should we be dis- be disappointed? We haven’t even come to bat yet.” If you’re– If you feel like that you’re behind 18 to nothing in your life, it’s not true.

Let’s you and I make a commitment right now to begin our lives all over again, to begin our sobriety all over again. Pick up this program, these, these books, these steps, and go to work because it’s always there. I’ve been sober a year, and I was given this prayer of a chief of the Dakota Sioux, and in closing, I’d like to share it with you.

“O Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me. I come before you, one of your many children. I am small and weak. I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty. Make my eyes ever to behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made, my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise so that I may know the things you’ve taught my people, the lesson you have hidden in every rock.

I seek strength, not to be superior to my brothers, but that I, but that I may be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself. Make me ever ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes so that when life fades as a fading sunset, my spirit can come to you without shame.” I want to thank you for coming here to share your love with me.

You’ve touched me. I came here the way I was, but I will not leave here the way I came, and I’m grateful.