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Source: Chuck C – Surrender – Sacramento (1982) – Date Unknown.mp3 File: chuck-c-surrender-sacramento-1982-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:01:55
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Chuck C. from Laguna Beach. Thank you. My name is Chuck C. and I'm an alcoholic. I, because of people like you, a program like Alcoholics Anonymous, and a God of my very own whom I found after I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I haven't had a drink or a pill for 36 years and 10 months. That ain't bad for a tongue-chewing, babbling idiot. If you get the feeling tonight that I love this program and I love its people, you'll be right.
This thing we've got here is big and all outdoors. Would to God that it was possible to explain surrender. Would to God. But it isn't. The more learned we are, the less likely we are to embrace surrender. Personally, I never surrendered once in 43 years, not to God, man, woman, or the devil. And when the time came, I was surrendered. I didn't consciously surrender. I was surrendered. And I've had 36 years and 10 months of the easiest life that I've ever known and the only good life that's ever been mine.
It's a fantastic thing. I've totally concluded that the great significance of our surrender in Alcoholics Anonymous is to get rid of the human ego. I want, I don't want, I like, I don't like, aye, aye, aye, aye. That's got to go. On Wednesday night of this week, I was acting at Clancy's 24th birthday. Clancy called me his sponsor. He came down with Luann Sims when Koufax was pitching for the Dodgers, a World Series game coming up, Koufax was going to pitch.
And he came down with two tickets for me to go to that game, clear across town to my plant, down on Alameda Street. And he gave me those two tickets. And after I'd accepted them, he asked me to be his sponsor. I'd be damned if I was going to give him back the two tickets, I'll tell you that. So I told him he could call me his sponsor if he wanted to, but I wouldn't call him a baby, because I neither sponsor nor have babies, which is just the reverse of Clancy.
I've got a picture on my den wall with 168 people in it, and the only two people in the picture that aren't Clancy's babies are Clancy and myself.
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He's really got babies. And not only that, he has the biggest weekly meeting in the world today. The biggest in the world. Four years ago, I knew that he couldn't even get sober. Wasn't a chance for him. He was a dirty, stinking, no front teeth, idiotic, sickle son of a bitch. That's what he was. And he didn't even have any chance of getting sober. And I'll have to tell you tonight, I've never seen anybody in 24 years that has made greater improvement.
He's something else now. And he calls me his sponsor. Personally, I never had a sponsor. When I got here, I didn't know what a sponsor was. And when I found out what a sponsor was, I didn't think I was entitled to that much consideration from anybody. So I couldn't ask anybody to be my sponsor. And when the time came when I could have asked somebody to be my sponsor, I already had 500 and a god of my very own.
So I never had a sponsor. And I have never thought of anybody as my baby. Because I can't, I don't want to feel that I've had something to do with your sobriety when I couldn't even get sober myself. So I don't go too much on that sponsor-sponsee thing, but I don't talk about much of Unfancy. Because he is a sponsor man. When he is asked to sponsor somebody, he says, I'll sponsor you if you'll do exactly what I tell you to do.
And if you won't promise to do that, go get you another sponsor. Now, I couldn't do that. But he does, and he does it well. He's a fantastic guy. So I talked to his 24th birthday on Wednesday night, and I told a little story that was wrong, and I've got to apologize. Because I said down there that night that there's in our book something before chapter 5 that said that if we be alcoholic, we've lost a bit of life.
And we can't get out of the thing alone, and we have to have help, and it has to be from a power greater than ourselves. Now, it may be there because I haven't looked again, but actually what I was quoting was this. Prior to Alcoholics Anonymous, there was a fellow named Roland who was an alcoholic. Roland went to Dr. Carl Jung, who was a great psychiatrist. One of the big three. There was Freud, Adler, and Jung, all at the same time.
And they were big, big people in the psychiatric business. And perhaps Jung was the only one of them that was really oriented with a power greater than himself. And so Roland went to see him, and he was in dire need of help. And it was Dr. Jung that told him that people in his condition had to have a spiritual awakening, lest they die, that they couldn't get out of this thing alone.
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And Roland took it to heart, and he went back to his group, and he ran on to Ebbe. Ebbe was the chap that first went to Bill, told Bill about this deal with Dr. Carl Jung, and how Dr. Jung said this was something we couldn't get out of by ourselves, that it was necessary that we establish a relationship with a power greater than ourselves. And this was the start of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now Ebbe had trouble.
Ebbe Thatcher was his name. God rest his soul. And Ebbe, after taking this message to Bill, spent 18 years on the Bowery in New York, until Dallas, Texas, sent a little corporee of sober alcoholics up to the Bowery and kidnapped the old boy. Carried him off down to Dallas, put him in the hospital, sobered him up. And on his first birthday, Bill Wilson left my house in Beverly Hills and went to Dallas to talk at Ebbe's first birthday.
And he did. Then he went on back to New York. And Ebbe was drunk before he got back to New York. But they sobered him up again. And he had eight years. And I spent quite a bit of time with him during those eight years when he was not drinking. And I think I saw his problem pretty plainly. Because, you see, he was the man that really carried the message to Bill. And nobody in the world knew Ebbe. After the years had gone by a while.
And everybody knew Bill and Dr. Bob. And it was a matter of being hurt, you know. He thought that everybody should know him. Now, he didn't say that. But he said this. I said to him when I was with him the last time, Ebbe, will you ever be able to get over your resentment that Bill and Dr. Bob actually taking your deal, that you had given to Bill in the first place, and taking this thing away from him, and being the big people?
And I'll call this anonymous. Oh, he says, after a fashion. After a fashion. And I cried inside. Because Ebbe was a sweet little guy. He was a sweet little guy. And I can understand it, you know. Because here he was, the guy that carried the message to Bill. And Bill and Bob were the big boys, and nobody knew him. And so, after eight years, Ebbe got drunk again. And Bill sent for him. And he went up to Bill's house in Bedford Hills, New York.
And he got over his drunk. He died sober, but not too long, you know. But it's nice that he did that. But it's nice that he did die sober. Now that is a series of little circumstances that brought
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this thing of ours into being in the first place. And it's accidents like that that have been happening to us now for the last 47 years. Most interesting things that could happen to anybody, like somebody up in the Klondike taking the staves out of a barrel to burn and finding an A book at the bottom of the ice and getting the book out and reading it and getting sober. These are just things that have happened with us. Now it happened to me because in my first 43 years of life I never made a mistake. Nothing was ever my fault. It was your fault. I always had some place to point the finger. No drunk that I was ever on until my last one was my fault. It was your fault, it was the boss, it was conditions, circumstances, it was the so-called civilization in which I was born. Never my fault. It was my wife's fault, but more specifically it was her mother's fault. There was a king-sized reason for getting drunk. Her mother had only one kid, and I was married to her. In the last five years of my drinking she was living with us. Her husband had died. She had a grandstand seat, watching me crucify her only daughter. She didn't like me very good, and I didn't like her that good, because if she hadn't been living with us I wouldn't have had to crucify her daughter. It was all her fault. We had a mutual hating society that was a beautiful thing to behold. She lived with us five years after I sobered up, and I could spend the rest of the week telling you people what this program did for her. She never went to a meeting, and until she died she never would admit to herself or to me that you people had given me any help, or that I'd gotten any help from God. She'd come up and put her arms around me and she'd say, Oh son, I always knew that you had it in you. Well, I did too, but she and I were speaking about two different things.
But she would not believe that I'd gotten any help from you, or from God. Now this is the way it actually happened to me. I told you that I'd never surrendered once in 43 years. I had an older brother, three and a half years older than I and three and a half years stronger. And we had one fight that lasted 20 years on the installment plan. He could always whip me, but he couldn't make me believe it. And I left home thinking I could whip him, so I didn't learn very fast.
I became a periodic 11 years before coming to this program, because I was not going to be beaten by a bottle. That bottle could not whip me. So I became periodic, and I was dry as am
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tonight between every two drunks for 11 years. And I always got drunk again. It finally beat me in January 1946. I woke up the Friday before Christmas, 1946, feeling pretty good. Christmas was coming right up, and New Year's was coming right up. And I had two weeks or three pretty good drinking ahead of me. I could always get by with a little bit more drinking around the holidays than ordinarily. And I felt real good, and I went down to the office feeling good. But when I got to the office, I found a note that says, See the boss. And I didn't want to see the boss. I knew what he looked like, and I also knew what he wanted with me. He was going to fire me, is what he was going to do, the Friday before Christmas. And I knew that because I knew I had it coming. So he said, See the boss. And I went in to see him. And instead of shooting me, he started talking, which was a good sign. He said to me, Charlie, I was Charlie in business.
He said, You've had a lot of trouble this year. He never mentioned booze, but he knew that I knew what he meant when he said trouble. And he said, I think I know the reason for it. I think it's the pressure you are under. Now, says he, I have looked at this thing, and I have decided to take a little pressure off of you. Maybe next year you won't have so much pressure, and you won't have so much trouble. And on the Friday before Christmas 1945, instead of shooting me, he gave me $3,000 for a Christmas present to take the pressure off of me. Now, if you don't think he took the pressure off of me, you're nuts. There's one thing that's worse for an alcoholic than bad fortune, and that's good fortune. So I got drunk on the way home. Now, this is the strange thing about it. I don't remember the first drink, the middle drink, or the last drink. I don't remember anything until the 18th day of January, 1947. The 18th day of January. Now, Christmas, and that is the Friday before Christmas in 1945, fell on the 21st day of December. I did not know that until about a week ago. I've got a black son in San Bernardino that looks it up and sent me the dope on it. It was the 21st of December.
So I had 10 more days in December and 18 days in January that I am totally vacant on. I don't remember nothing. Now, I had to go, I had to be ambulatory because I had to get my drinking, my whiskey. That's what I had to get. Because for some reason, my family wouldn't bring it. And I went out and I got it, and I drank. And if my wife was talking right here now, she would tell you unsuspecting people that I destroyed seven quarts of whiskey every three days in that entire time.
Now, my wife says that. I do not. I can't even argue with it. Because, you see, I wasn't there, and she was. Furthermore, I don't think seven quarts is too much for three days.
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If you only go about 15 days. But if you go 28 days, it's either too much or just enough. And in my case, it was just enough. Because I came to on the 18th day of January with a clear head. And everything between me and me had burned out. All the I-wants had burned out. And all the excuses had burned out. And there was nothing between me and me. And for the first time in my life, I knew that I'd lost the battle of life. I did not know why. Because I knew nothing of the disease of alcoholism.
I knew much about jails. I knew much about DTs. I knew much about convulsions. I knew much about dirty beds. But I didn't know anything about alcoholism. But I knew I'd lost the battle of life. And I knew that I had only one piece of unfinished business left in life. And that was to rub out as much of the record as I could before I died. And I also knew that I couldn't rub out a record drinking. And I said to myself, how am I going to not drink right now? Right now. Because I didn't know how not to drink right now. And the second miracle happened. The first one was that I came to breathing.
And the second was that I remembered that morning that I had read Jack Alexander's article in the Saturday Evening Post. March 1st issue, 1941. Again, my good wife had found it. Had read it and thought it might do me some good if I'd read it. And put it on the left arm of the chair I sit in right now, open at the right place. And evidently I read it. But I hadn't thought about it one time in five years. Until the morning I needed it. How am I going to not drink right now? And I remembered I'd read that article. I only remembered two things about it. That drunks helped drunks and didn't drink. And they called it Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I said to myself, if I ever live to get out of this bed, I will find AA. And immediately my little period of sanity was gone. And I was sickened to death, drunk and insane. And I had a lot of dying to do. But the strange thing is this. From the moment of commitment until right now, I have not had one conscious desire for a drink. I have not had a drink. And I haven't had a sedating or tranquilizing pill. Nor have I wanted one.
This is the thing that is so hard to talk about. Surrender. Surrender. We've got to get out of our own way. The human ego cannot be satisfied. It is absolutely, it is divinely impossible to satisfy the human ego. It's got to go. Because the human ego is the father and mother of all the obsessions of the mind. I want it, don't want it, like it, don't like it. Ay-ya-ya-ya. I don't like Aya-ya-ya-ya. That's the human ego. Can't be satisfying, because it's all relative.
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For instance, in my last several years in the business world, I rubbed elbows with multimillionaires. I'd grown up with most of them. I was in the business of manufacturing, promoting, designing, supermarket fixtures. And I grew up with all those big firms down there in Los Angeles in the market business. And they were very rich, all of them. But none of them had enough. For instance, I had one client from Phoenix, Arizona. He was a Syrian.
He had a market chain. He'd gone from one head of lettuce to thirty-five million dollars. That ain't bad, I think. I don't know, but I don't think it is. And he'd come to me, and he'd say, Charlie, how can I be like you? And I'd say, Eddie, you can't. And he'd say, why on hell can't I? He wouldn't tell us what the original sin was. And he wouldn't tell us. And we decided the reason they wouldn't tell us, they were some naughty.
Or they'd have told us, wouldn't they? So we figured out what it was. We figured that it had something to do with Adam rearranging Eve's leaves. And you know something? I still think we were closer to it than they were. But they scared me bad enough that I tried to get saved at thirteen. Didn't make it. Read all the Bibles and the philosophies that there are, and got buried first in it, but didn't find out why I didn't get saved.
So I quit looking six years before I got the answer. I quit looking for that answer. And that's when I found you guys. You see, I had to find out how not to drink right now. And that's the reason I had to find you. Because you knew how not to drink right now. And I came to you, and you told me. The first night, you told me. Now, I knew that the men that were talking to me in that meeting were alcoholics. I knew they were drunks, but they weren't drunk.
Because that was thirty-six years and ten months ago, and there wasn't anybody on the Pacific Coast that were five years sober then in Alcoholics Anonymous. They were ten years sober back east, but on the Pacific Coast only five years sober, and they hadn't gotten rid of the headlights. And the bags under the bags, and they exposed wiring. So I knew they were drunks, but they weren't drunk. And I was comfortable then. Now, I didn't go there to get sober and stay sober.
I went there to find out how not to drink right now, so I could use the time to rub out the record. That's what I needed to do so my wife and kids wouldn't remember me as nothing but a tongue-chewing babbling idiot. Because I couldn't live in the condition I was in, and I knew it. But it was comfortable, and I kept coming back. And I'm still coming back. And it's still comfortable, and that's why I'm here. That's why I'm here.
Now, let me tell you what's happened to me in thirty-six years and ten months. Starting in, I had my first little inkling of what happens when we get out of our own way.
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Because at six months, I discovered I'd never had a drink or a pill for six months. I was very, very pleased with it. And I started trying to give this thing away. I didn't know much about it, but I thought, if it's this good, and you don't have to drink or take pills, I'm going to try to give it to somebody else. And a year went by, and I made another discovery. And that was that I had a family, and they were living like kittens.
Now, they were legally divorced from me when I got here. But here, it's a year later, and they're living like kittens. You know? And I thought that was pretty nice. And another year went by, and I discovered I was still down in the office trying to clean up my desk, and business was good. The boss came in to throw me through the window, but he didn't. And I was still there, and business was good. And another year went by, and I discovered that my own state of being was better than anything that I'd ever known in my entire lifetime. All of these discoveries. And six years came up, and I discovered that I had a God of my very own. Wherever I am, he is. And this is the great discovery.
And it's a discovery. It's a discovery. It's not something new. It's we discover something that's already been, but we didn't know it. It was covered up with misinformation. We uncover and discover in Alcoholics Anonymous, and then we discard the crap that was laid on us that is not true. This is Alcoholics Anonymous. And here the thing had come about that I had tried to bring about for thirty years of my life, and it never came about, didn't it? And I quit trying, and started doing these things one day at a time to the best of my ability, and discovered that it had happened. I had a God of my very own.
Now, this is very significant to me, because I don't think any of us can find God looking for him. Because what we're looking for, we're looking with. When you've got him located out yonder someplace, you can't find him. You see, it says in our bookie something about God as we understood him. God as we understood him. Well, that doesn't mean we've got to understand God. What it means is we've got to find our own God, my God, your God. And we have to find him where he is.
You can't find him where he ain't. You've got to find him where he is, and that's right here, right in the middle of us. Now, this is worth everything that you paid to get in here. Don't forget this, because this is fantastic. This is fantastic. We uncover and discover the thing we've been looking for all our lives. And this is absolutely contrary to all my conditioning as a kid, not only at home, but in school and in church. My conditioning was that you had to get out there in a salt mine and outthink, outperform and outmaneuver in order to eke out a miserable living out of an unfriendly universe. You had to be there firstest of the mostest.
The early bird gets the worm, the devil takes the hindermost. I was out there for 30 years doing that. Ended up without two coffers. So I don't think much of that conditioning. I was conditioned to believe that we had to earn, be worthy of, merit God's grace. And you better earn it and be worthy of it and merit it, because you're a born sinner,
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and if you don't get something done, you're going to hell. That's a hell of a thing to teach a kid, I'll tell you that. Anyhow, that ain't the way it is. I never looked in the dictionary to see the meaning of the word grace until I was 60 years old, and I'd been living in this program for a long time then. I finally, just for fun, looked in the dictionary, and the very first definition of the word grace is a free gift. That's the first definition of the dictionary in my mind. How are you going to earn a free gift? You can't. If it's free, it's free, isn't it? By accident I discovered this, by the accident of total failure, as a matter of fact, and then doing the thing that you people told me that you were doing. For sobriety only, not to get these answers, but the answers came. Because when we get out of our own way, there is no roadblock between me and you and me and God. It's absolutely fantastic.
Here is the way it happened to me. I'd been trying to get all my life, and I quit trying to get. And I got rich. That's what I did. I got rich. And I quit trying to go anyplace. I'd been trying to go someplace all my life. My plant was in the curfew district, to Watts down there in Los Angeles, and I couldn't even get to Watts. And here I'd been trying to go someplace all my life. And I quit trying to go anyplace. And I'd been all over the world where I wanted to go. All over the world.
I haven't been to the Orient, but I didn't want to go there, but I think I'm going now. My lad was over there to make sogon, and he says there's some pretty places over there. So I may go yet. I don't know. I'm not going to cry if I don't. But anyway, I've been all over the world where I wanted to go. And since I quit trying to run my life, my wife's life and our kids' life, we have become a family.
Now, this is amazing to me, because in my entire first 43 years I was the master of my fate. I was the captain of my soul. You know? The only trouble is that I ended up failing every department of life. I didn't run a very good ship, did I, son? No. But the little dealies that that I was looking at when I fired me were these. Something like, fear not, little flock, it's the Father's good pleasure to give us the kingdom.
If that's true, it's beautiful, isn't it? Wouldn't that be nice if it were true? I was looking at that. I was looking at take no thought of the moral, what you eat, what you drink, the world is all used to be closed. If you have any Father that knows what you have need of, who are you asking? If that's true, it's fantastic. Wouldn't it be beautiful if it's true? Now, the one that I was looking at was considered a lily of the field, as it goes.
They toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. And I said to myself, now how am I going to know? Whether these things are true or false? And this is my answer. You're going to have to act like it and prove it. Now, you act like it, you'll either prove that it is or is not. But that's the only way you're ever going to know. And it's just like our program.
Nobody, nobody, can know whether this program of ours works or don't work until he works
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it. You know? How many times have you heard people say, I tried Alcoholics Anonymous, it didn't work for me. Of course it didn't. It don't work for anybody. It's not something to do something, it's a way to do something. When we do it, something happens, and when we don't do it, nothing happens. You see? And that's the way with these clichés. They're either true or false. So how am I going to know? I'm going to act like it and prove it.
And that's all I've done for 36 years and 10 months. I've had the only good life that's ever been mine, the only easy life that's ever been mine, and I won't have an 80th birthday It's behind me. Now, what do you think of them apples? Now, back to the fun of the deal. In my last, say, 13 or 15 years, whatever it is, since I got out of the business world, I have been converting intellectual knowledge into conscious awareness. Because I found out that the more you know and the less you do about it, the more you have to suffer. And it isn't because God's got a stick, it's just the way it is. And so I said to me, OK, we're going to have to run these things down. And I started converting the intellectual knowledge into wisdom. And you know where my teachers have been? Outside my window. I've got some blue jays. And I feed them. They're pretty good friends. Also, I have some more friends, the blue jays and me. We have some hummingbirds, and we feed the hummingbirds, and talk to them, and they talk to us. So, I got to looking at those blue jays. Now, when my oldest kid, Bill, came home from the University of Indiana, he got messed around a bit and decided to go into the building business. And I financed him. And he lost all of his money. And I said to myself, well, maybe I should have apprenticed him out to a builder and let him learn a little bit about building before I financed him. And then I said to myself, wait a minute, my blue jays kids, when they leave the nest, they go out and fall in love and get married, and build them a nest. And they never saw anybody build a nest. They never saw their mother build a nest. They built a nest. And my hummingbirds, what a nest they built. Beautiful thing. Intricate. And they built it. And they didn't get apprenticed out. Now, the carpenter man said, in him we live and move and have our being. And that's what these people do. For instance, I've known for a hundred years that a salmon born at the headwaters of the Klamath River, when he gets so big he goes downstream, ends up in the Pacific Ocean. And before he goes back up the Klamath River, which he does, maybe he's been to Japan and back. That's 9,000 miles of water. And back, that's 18,000 miles. You know something? I get lost on the freeway with a sign
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every 90 feet. They go to Japan and back, and right back to the headwaters of the Klamath River. And I said to myself, you're turning this stuff around, you know. Who's your travel agent? So I had to swim with him in my mind's eye. And when I got back, I knew that God's idea of a salmon included everything necessary for its complete fulfillment, including going to Japan and back. We've got another little phenomenon down our way.
Every St. Joseph's Day, the Swallows come back to the mission at San Juan Capistrano. And they almost come back on the minute every year. Then they winter in Venezuela. Now, who's their travel agent? You know, that's a full piece down that Venezuelan bus. But they show up almost on the minute, every year in the world. God's idea of a swallow includes everything necessary for its complete fulfillment. And I can give you a lot of other little things that I love. But, time's a-wasting. I'm losing two people now.
OK. Do you kids think that God would do more for a salmon than he has done for you? Do you think he'd be more generous with a swallow than with you and me? No. Now, when we get simple enough to do these things, to go about our Father's business, and that's the only business I've had for thirty-six years and ten months, we discover that underneath are the everlasting arms. We discover it. It becomes a fact in our lives.
Now, I'm so grateful I can't see. This life is not even akin to my first forty-three years, when I was swinging the big bat, trying to conquer the world, to be and to do what I thought I should be and do. And I end up as straight as a husband, father, businessman, man, and drunk. And I haven't even got two coffers to rub together. That's what I accomplished on my own. And since I quit doing that, since I started to go about my Father's business, which is helping his kids do things they need to have done because they want to, all these things have come to pass.
And there's no God anyplace that would give me something that he wouldn't give you. You see? If one of us is God's kid, all of us are. If one of us is not, not one of us is. Now, the wonder of wonders, kids, is that it don't make too much difference when you do these things this way. Because someday, all of us have to come back home. Someday. The Carpenter said it like this. Who, by taking thought, can add one cubit to his stature? Which means we can't change the reality of our own being. We can only change our experience in reality. I'm going to give you two more little things and sit down.
In 1953, you people sent me back to the, I'll call it synonymous, World Service Conference. As a delegate, you sent me back to New York.
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And I was back there in 1953 and 1954 as a delegate. And at the end of the 1954, Bill came to me and said, Chuck, you've been back here two years, and you've never taken five seconds of my time. And it's time we were getting together. We've got to know each other. And I'm coming back to see you. Well, he lived in Beverly Hills, and I lived in Beverly Hills, clear across the United States. And I couldn't even answer him, because he was the head man, and I was a neophyte. And when I could talk, I said, Bill, if you're serious, we've got a place for you. We'd love to have you.
Now, this was the middle of April in 1954. And in the middle of June 1954, he was in my living room. And from then until he died in 1971, I had the good fortune of spending lots of time with him. And I fell in love with a little old Ed Darling. I don't happen to be Catholic. And he was Debbie. And before his greatest and biggest audience that he would ever have in his life, which was the 17,000 people who were out in front of him and the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, he forgot his teeth. He didn't have a tooth in his head. And he came out there with a towel, tried to hold it over his face so you wouldn't see that he didn't have any teeth. Well, I fell in love with the little devil. And we spent a lot of time together.
And these are a couple of things that he told me early on. He said, Chuck, your cross was alcoholism. He said, my cross was lack of faith. He said, I went to school 18 years and was ordained a Jesuit priest, and I didn't believe nothing. Now, I can imagine that would hurt. Here he is supposed to believe and supposed to be a Debbie priest, and he doesn't believe nothing. And then he said something to me that I couldn't repeat until just lately without trying. He said, I came to believe watching what happens to you people in Alcoholics Anonymous. And he wasn't even a drunk.
Now, I spent a great deal of time with him until 1960. He was supposed to come to our third international conference in Long Beach in 1960, but he died before we had it. And the last session I had with him was in St. Louis. And I talked, and he had given a little prayer for those who had died in the program since they started in St. Louis. And the thing was finally over, and Mrs. C. and I were going for coffee. And she says to me, Chuck, maybe Fr. Ed would like to go with us. I said, maybe he would. Why don't you ask him?
You see, I'm a sensitive alcoholic. I didn't want to ask him, and he turned down. But a non-alcoholic is all right. So she asked him, and he accepted. And he never drank much coffee. He just asked me questions for an hour and a half, and he wouldn't quit. And I'd say, Fr., I'd love to hear you talk. Talk! I'm sick of this. So he'd ask another question. And when we got through, he said this, and I want you to listen to this, because he was a Jesuit priest. He says, you know something, Chuck? And I said, what, Fr.?
You Know Something, Chuck? And I said, What, Father? He said, Sometimes I have to believe that heaven is just a new pair of glasses. You hear that? And I said to my wife, What's
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the difference? I sit in the same chair I sat in for fifteen years in hell and now thirty-six years and ten months in heaven. The same chair. Nothing happened to the chair, nothing happened to the living room, nothing happened to the wife or the kids, something happened to me. And I moved out of hell into heaven. And there was a new motivation, a new action pattern. And the motivation for everything I do and the reason I'm here tonight is L-O-V-E, love. I love you. You don't have to change nothing for me to love you. If you're drunk, you don't even have to get sober. If you're a liar, you don't have to quit lying. If you're a thief, you don't have to quit thieving. I love you.
Because I know who you are. Because I know who I am. You're God's kids. And nothing bad can happen to you in the ultimate. Someday we all have to come back home. And the sooner we give it, the quicker we start living. God bless you. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this recording and would like to listen to other talks on recovery, please visit our free website at recoveryspeakers.com. We have assembled the largest historical recovery audio library in the world and are adding new talks each day.