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Source: 1960 Long Beach International Convention – Bill W surprise short talk at Long Beach.mp3 File: 1960-long-beach-international-convention-bill-w-surprise-short-talk-at-long-beach.mp3 Duration: 00:11:06
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Now it is my privilege to turn this meeting over to your chairman, a trustee, an AA member, and trustee of the General Service Board, Sum Campbell. Hi, everybody. This is a great pleasure for me to introduce these three men of the cloth, but we just had an extra dividend. One of our newest members has just come in, a ringer, and first I'm going to ask him to speak to you, Bill. I have been rude, I have crashed this meeting, and in my preoccupation with our dear friends over here, I sort of turned my back on you.
None of these things were really intended. It just fell out that way, as things do in AI. And I came over here full of gratitude and respect for these three and for all of their predecessors that go so far back as the cross itself. And it is through this transmission line that we have been able to learn what principles would be needed for our spiritual kindergarten, for this is what it is. There is going to be a meeting Saturday night. I would like to talk then about our relations with our friends in the clergy, on the whole good, but with some defects, all on our part.
So we shall bring the clergy to the fore again. And then comes another grand opportunity in which I shall venture to represent you when they lead our final meeting. So that's three whacks at the clergy situation, and it isn't enough. So this, and those other meetings, I think to be among the most important that we are holding here, because these people are in the line of our spiritual ancestors. They have given us the grace and the life substance on which we exist.
This in no wise diminishes the contributions of our friends of medicine, of our friends in communication who have carried our little message worldwide, of our friends in gentlemen. But these gentlemen hold a unique place in the sum of our gratitude and our affection. It is not only that they have brought us principles, they above all are people who talk about something more than the emotions. They talk about something more than right and wrong, and what is good psychology and social practice.
These men are talking about the soul and about its destiny, and in modern times I fear they have fallen in some quarters a little out of favor. And while it is true that we have no theology except in God as we understand it, we do have to ask ourselves, once we have apprehended God just a little in our kindergarten, who are we?
[00:05:19]
Where are we? Where, if any place, are we going next? And nearly all of us at some point in our AA development begin to ask these questions. So naturally we turn to the folks who have the answers. These kinds of answers on our purpose, which we all take universally, I think here, to be growth and freedom under God. We look to these people, for example, in greatness in spirit and greatness in action, and there we have found it, to a degree that we seldom find it anyplace else.
This is not said in praise. This is said in gratitude. This, my friend, is said in deep respect. And from the beginning we have been blessed by people like Harry Emerson Fosdick, who first revealed the AA book, and he said, folks, this is good. Come and get it. Then we think of Father Sam, who once was a member of a group that happened to emphasize the principles of self-surveillance, of confession, of restitution, of work with others, with no one of the usual demands in reward or pristine, of prayer.
They advocated some things that we couldn't use, but this was the advocacy stemming down through this long line of succession from the cross. And that has been the basis of bringing us an opportunity for a new life, for freedom under God, for assurance that no matter what the troubles of the world, God in his timelessness will make all things right. Should we, humankind, increasingly be worthy of his grace?
Some may say, well, this gent is pouring it on and he's going to tell us this three times. But three times still isn't enough. God bless you, my friends, and all of you. Now I have a little apology to make. I'm kind of hedge-hopping on these meetings, and I treasure the opportunity of intimately seeing you face to face. So I'm going over to where Sister Ignatia is in a hospital meeting, and she's a lady clergyman of one of the greatest stature, almost, of any human being I've ever seen.
And we hear more about that by Bob. So let's forever stop patronizing the clergy. After all, they ain't drunks. They simply lack the drunk transmission line.
[00:10:06]
But they have the business, and they have the ideal, and they have the message that has saved us, and will continue to save us as long as God wishes AA to exist. I'm hedge-hopping. Thanks a lot, Bill. To more or less set you on the same level a bit, I'm going to tell you that of these three men that you are going to hear speak, two of them are as nervous as any of you that have made your first talk.