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Source: 1985 Montreal International Convention – Multi Speakers – AA AND THE CLERGY – RS 06412.mp3 File: 1985-montreal-international-convention-multi-speakers-aa-and-the-clergy-rs-06412.mp3 Duration: 01:10:07
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Trying to get AA started in my hometown, his basement, so for that I was very, very grateful. Will you help me open this meeting with a moment of silent meditation followed by the serenity prayer? The serenity prayer, God grant me the serenity, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. There may be some here who are not familiar with our tradition of personal anonymity at the personal level, public level. Our public relation policy is based on attraction rather than promotion.
We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, and films. Thus we respectfully ask that no AA speaker, or indeed any AA member, be identified by full name or photographed in published or broadcast report of our meetings. The assurance of anonymity is essential in our effort to help other problem drinkers who may wish to share our recovery program with us, and our tradition of anonymity reminds us that AA principles come before personalities. There will be tapes of this meeting available at the tape sales booth in the Convention Center. Again, welcome to this meeting of AA and the Query Tree, and our first speaker will be Lee A. Belford.
I am Lee Belford, and I'm not an alcoholic, but I share many of the experiences of an alcoholic. I was having a little difficulty, and my doctor in the small town in Mississippi where I live sent me down to the Baptist Medical Center in our largest city, Jackson, Mississippi, to see a gastroenterologist and to have a number of tests made. The doctor, after a liver biopsy and a few other things, came in to report, and he said, you are extremely sensitive to alcohol. Your liver won't tolerate it at all. You must never touch alcohol again in any form. Well, you know, I'm not a drunk.
My reaction was, you know, I know I never should have gone to the Baptist hospital. If I had gone to St. Dominic's, no doctor would ever have said anything like that. Well, at any rate, I am an Episcopal clergyman, and when I went to seminary we were taught a lot of very important things. We were taught answers to all sorts of questions. For example, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, there was a big controversy over whether Jesus' relationship with the Holy Trinity should be described in terms of homoousios or homoousios. I learned a lot of answers, but no one ever asked me the question, so I couldn't use my answers.
But what they didn't mention was alcoholism. You know, you were supposed to drink, that was certainly tolerated in my church, but you were not supposed to get drunk. That wasn't a gentlemanly thing to do. But back when I was ordained in 1938, I went to a couple of small towns in South Georgia, living in one and serving the other, and my most pressing problem was alcoholics. Now, these people knew they weren't supposed to get drunk, but somehow or other they did.
Now, they had problems, of course. One of them's wife didn't understand him at all. He was drunk and rather abusive, and he threatened to jump out of the window, and she said, if you get near that window, I'll push you out. That was not a very wifely sort of thing for her to tell to a husband. Another person drank because his father was the editor of the newspaper, and his father favored the younger son. Well, he used to call us at all hours of the night. My wife and I figured out an answer to this problem. Let him come to our house, and we would give him sleeping pills. So we made
[00:05:01]
arrangements with a drugstore to get some barbiturates to feed him sleeping pills. We thought that was one way to handle it. With another person, now this was a charitable sort of thing, a kindly thing to do. Any of you would do it, I'm sure. This person had written a bad check, and he was afraid he was going to jail, and he went to a loan shark to get some money, but the loan shark wouldn't give him any money unless he would have someone co-sign his note, and it wasn't going to cost me anything. I mean, after all, the only reason he'd gotten overdrawn was because he was drunk, and he wasn't going to get drunk anymore, and he was going to work hard.
Well, you know, the loan shark was charging him 10 percent a month, and after three months, when I saw the loan getting up to 30 percent more than it had originally been, and when I'd been reminded that I was responsible for it, well, I settled up, and then I spoke to his mother in regard to it. Certainly, she should have appreciated what I'd done. I mean, after all, I kept her son out of jail, but somehow or other, she didn't appreciate it. Well, I spent a lot of time working with alcoholics, and you know how successful I was? Well, I was just absolutely not successful at all.
People said, the Episcopal priest is a good old boy. He's a good place. You can always hang around his house. But no one stopped drinking, and no drunk ceased to be a drunk. Well, I don't know how to deal, how to counsel a person who is an alcoholic. I just don't know how to do it. You can be terribly judgmental. You can talk about his being a moral reprobate. You can talk about all the damage he's doing to anybody and everybody. He already knows that. You're just kicking him in the face. After all, a lot of drunks have had difficulty with the Church anyway.
So, what you're doing is simply adding to it. You are not indicating any sort of love. How much good does that sort of approach do? I don't think it does any good at all. But on the other hand, are you going to be kind and loving and understanding? Of course, he has all sorts of reasons why he's drinking. If you listen enough, he can give you plenty of them. But how much good does it do for you just to sit and listen?
But then I found out about Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, I should have learned more quickly. After the war was over, I'd been in the service with the 5th Marine Division. Our battalion was an alcoholic. We all made a sort of joke of it. He was an obstetrician, and we thought that maybe he drank too much because he couldn't practice obstetrics with the 5th Marine Division overseas. Anyway, his hand shook so much that we could understand really why he needed to drink, because he was really sort of trembling all the time. But after I got out of the service, I was working for a Ph.D. at Columbia, and one of my colleagues, who was working for a Ph.D. too, decided to do a study on alcoholism, and he worked through AA, and he had interviews with a number of members of AA. His name was Howard Kleinbell, and some of you are familiar with his book called Understanding the Alcoholic. It really turned out to be a good book. He lived out on Long Island, but he spent every Thursday night with us when he was having his interviews, and he told us a little bit about AA. But somehow or other, it didn't sink in, and that's the sort of thing that worries me because everybody ought to know about AA, but some people still have misconceptions and really don't understand very much about it. At any rate, I think I'm not breaking anonymity when I say that in 1957, I went with my wife to the first AA meeting I had been to,
[00:10:04]
and this really was a transforming experience, not only for her but for me. What a marvelous experience it really was. Now, I began an association with a church in New York after the war, the Church of the Epiphany, and I was supposed to counsel alcoholics, but I never helped any of them at all, and I mention this in all humility. But AA gave me the cue. When an alcoholic was referred to me, I could sit down and talk to him. The first question is, do you want to stop drinking? If he said yes, then I would press it a little further to sort of clarify. You had the feeling, if he finally opened up, sometimes he suggested that he really couldn't stop drinking, that he had made good resolves over such a long period of time and it never worked.
He could tell you a lot of other things, and I could finally say, I know people who have been filled with despair, as you are, and these people worked with a problem and they're not drinking anymore. Do you want to learn their secret? Do you want to be like one of them, a person who can look back upon this very sad and unfortunate experience in his life? And if the response was yes, then I could make arrangements to take him to an AA meeting.
And there were a lot of them in New York, and I'd gotten to know the names of a lot of the people, and I could take him and introduce him to people. Well, AA did my counseling for me. I, who had never been able to counsel or help an alcoholic, admitting failure, admitting my defeat, found the answer in AA, which was the only thing I knew of that could deal effectively with a person who had a drinking problem and wanted to stop drinking. Therefore, I'm indebted to AA for so many reasons.
I'm indebted for what it has meant to my wife and to our relationships. I told her, you know, before too long we'll be able to celebrate our 50th anniversary, and then we'll have our pictures together in the newspaper, and as we look at the pictures of people celebrating their 50th anniversaries, I'm not sure that's the greatest thing in the world. At any rate, I can certainly be thankful for these rich years that we have had, and I can be thankful, too, that those of us who should be concerned professionally with the cure of souls now have an agency that can assist us in the cure of souls, not assist us, but can act for us.
Now, that's really the end of my talk, but I would like to say something that's parenthetical. I'm delighted to say that seminary training, at least in my church, is radically different from the way it used to be, because in all of the seminaries in my church people are exposed to AA. In most instances they must attend an AA meeting or so. They must have this particular understanding. My church has recognized in a very real sense the acuteness of alcoholism and the problems that it poses.
In my church, being rather permissive toward alcohol at church functions, there was invariably the white wine. It's a simple sort of thing. The church now has required that when alcoholic beverages are served, such as white wine, non-alcoholic drinks must be presented in just as an attractive fashion. Don't put a couple of cans of tomato juice on a table next to this nice, chilled white wine, if you are.
And if you are serving, drink, or food made with alcohol that hasn't been volatilized,
[00:15:08]
that is, with the alcohol cooked out, it must be carefully labeled as such. Don't advertise a church function as a beef and beer bash, indicate that you are having a bully beef meal or something of that sort, with a bit or lot of warnings of that sort of thing. There is a prayer introduced into our prayer book used throughout the church for those suffering from afflictions of one sort or another. In my own parish we have, on Thursday evenings, an AA women's meeting, and the South Island meetings are completely integrated, and as you would expect an AA, people of every background, we have a lot of women of sort of timid disposition who need to be prepared for AA meetings, so that this is a sort of preparatory session for the big AA meeting which occurs on Friday night, and we also have a meeting at Al-Anon.
We have continued to make people aware of the availability of AA. We publish a little church bulletin of this sort that is mailed to every member of the congregation every Sunday, every week, and we decided to include a series of six or eight little paragraphs saying what AA is about, just a little paragraph at a time. So as far as the congregation is concerned, it certainly knows very much that AA is available.
It is right there at the Church, and they know how fully and completely the Church supports them in every way. And I think what's going on here is now fairly characteristic of the Episcopal Church, and I would like to think of churches in other denominations as well, when we come to the awareness of the fact that some people are going to drink, and that where people are drinking there are some who are going to develop problems in regard to drinking.
Once again I thank you for the privilege of being here, and I thank you for all that AA has meant to me personally and also professionally. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Belford. You have a good story. Our next speaker will be the Rev. Paul Liam Parker, Assistant Director of the Office of Religious Education, Archdiocese of Boston. Archbishop. I don't think I'll ever get that introduction in my diocese.
I do like red, though, that would be nice. Boy, isn't it a great convention? If I didn't know the struggle and the scourge that those in the Fellowship have experienced in their lives, I'd almost wish I could be a member. In terms of the number of people who, just from being around, have come up and talked and have told me about themselves and have shared their lives, have asked me to sign their books, boy, it's a great, great Fellowship that you have, isn't it?
Amazing. It's one of the greatest gifts to give to another, that kind of affirmation. Even just leaving here earlier, walking over to get something to eat, and you leave this kind of an atmosphere, just walking out on the streets of the city, you know that there's
[00:20:03]
something very special here. You just feel it. Have you sensed that? There's that bond. It's a great thing. Now, I'm going to be watching you, because that's how I'm going to know when it's time to leave here. In my church on Sundays, when I preach, I've figured out a way to find out when it's time to get off and get moving with things. When people begin picking up the Sunday bulletins, begin reading through things, that's the first sign, you know, you only have a few minutes left.
When they turn it over in the back, there's usually ads, and they start reading the ads from the local stores that pay for the bulletins, then you know you have even a shorter time. But when they pick up the miscellettes, small booklets in the pews, and they start humming the songs in the back. But the last sign, when you know it's time, when you've overdone it, in our church recently they put in fans in the ceiling.
It's a big old church, you know, to get the heat down in the winter. When people start going like this, then you know you're in trouble, and you lost them a long time ago. So I'll be watching you. But I do feel so enriched, so enriched as I've come to know both the principles, the program, and the fellowship of AA. You know, it's hard, Sunday after Sunday, especially with the same group of people in a parish church, to come up with something good to say.
And Sunday is going to mean something to people. You know, something that, the type of thing that they concern themselves with over their kitchen tables, you know, the stuff that really counts. What I find myself doing an awful lot is, and not consciously, but what I find myself doing is coming up with things that I've learned from reading the big book, and from studying the steps, and from slowly becoming kind of an auxiliary member of the fellowship.
You know, because you know that that is always at the heart of things, you know, and you know that it's a program that works. They told us in seminary that one of the best feelings to have, like when you're up there preaching, is when the congregation is no longer just a sea of faces, but when you've been in a parish a while, and when you look at those faces, you begin to connect things with them. You know, you say, oh, I was at that person's wedding, or I remember the terrible time we had when that person had a death in the family, and we were there, or you know, I remember going to that person's house for a dinner.
That whole variety of things, that that's when you know, you know what to say to people when you get to know them, you know, what's going on in their lives. And so as I look at a group like this, although I don't know too many of you personally, I know enough about AA that in this room there's an incredible amount of experience, and a fair amount of it has been terribly painful, hasn't it? And for every person here, there's another group of people who were part of that, you know, and who shared the scourge of the terrible disease.
But there's also a tremendous reservoir of strength here, and of hope. And it's that life-giving strength and hope that you have that is such a gift to the rest of us, who although we haven't yet at least had to struggle with the disease of alcoholism, have to struggle with the very, you know, the very same types of human problems that alcoholism compounds and makes all the more difficult. You have so much to offer us, and that would be one of the greatest kind of challenges that I would put out as a clergyman and as a non-AA member, that I hope you continue to find ways to include the rest of us and to get the good news out about the tremendous wisdom and strength and program, you know, that you have.
I love being a priest, but one of the scary parts about it is when someone calls you up and says, can I come in and talk, or even if you're in a confessional or in a room of reconciliation and, you know, the next person's coming in, you don't have the slightest idea
[00:25:00]
what the person's going to say, and it could be something from, you know, a real serious kind of real serious problem to something that isn't that way. And it's hard to always, to be able to say something that's going to be right, you know, that's going to click, that's going to be helpful. And it's the type of thing, it's the type of thing where you could be and are of so much help, both by your struggle and by the fruit of it, you know, by the program that collectively you've come up with and by the experience that you have, you have so much to offer, and we need it, we need it.
You know, the Church needs it, and clergy certainly need it. There's such a well of strength here, and of holiness, because that's what you end up being as you go through the steps, isn't it? Real holy people, and real holy people, not phony holy people. And it's that that we need. What a gift you are! What a terrible way to have to become that gift, but what a gift you are. And I hope you, you know, you always realize that.
And that, although, you know, I've heard in some of the other sessions I've been, the just to take care of other people who are alcoholic, you have more than enough to do. But I hope that the rest of us will somehow be able to find a way, you know, to continue to share in that. When I think of Alcoholics Anonymous, and, you know, the program, and the amazing way of life that you offer, the two words that come to my mind that sum it up and that mean the most to me are the words balance and integration.
Balance, that is keeping a lot of important things up there at the same time, and integration, that is getting things together. A nice way to say it, you know, getting your act together, there's another word that could go in there, right? Getting your act together, and that's what it's all about. That's what I've learned most from you, how to do that, how to keep a balance, and how to get my act together, and how to help other people to do that.
The balance of physical, emotional, and spiritual. The balance of those three things together, body, mind, and spirit. And I know that when I'm beginning to get into trouble in my own personal life, it's when I get out of balance, and when instead of getting my act together, things begin to unweave. And I think that even when I take a critical look at the situation of the world, if we were to say the dark side of it, or the side, you know, that's not as great as all of us know that it's not, the world a lot of times is unbalanced and unintegrated.
And we need that pulling together, and that keeping of many important things up there at the same time to make things work. That seems to me to be the mystery, you know, the mysterious thing that is the great gift that the program of AA offers. But there's an awful lot of lack of balance around. Physical, emotional, and spiritual. Don't you see a lot of unbalance, and just even people who get stuck at one of those three ingredients and forget the other two?
Or kind of just leave them out so much that they don't have the place that they should in their lives. Have you had a chance to see that movie, kind of a new movie out now, called Perfect? It's the new movie John Travolta is in. Have you heard anything about that, or is it around in your parts of the country yet? You may have seen it advertised. It's R-rated. I even saw it. They're the only good ones, right?
Perfect. You know what it's about? It's about health clubs. And the whole movie takes place in that. It's John Travolta as a reporter, and he's writing a story about it. And kind of like the whole theme of it was that health clubs are like the singles bars of the 80s. You know, instead of going out to places to drink, to meet people, to form friends, people are now going to health clubs. It's the new setting.
At least that was the thesis of the movie. You know, to make friends. And actually, lots of things go on in health clubs besides physical bodies getting in shape. Now, I'm not against that. I belong to the Y, and I love it. I belong to the Y and I love it. Laughter
[00:30:03]
But isn't it a shame that the name of the movie, Perfect, says it all? Perfection is having a beautiful body. And don't, do you see a lot of that in society? Looking good. Boy, do we spend a lot of money on that. Looking good. And don't we a lot of times connect our self-image with looking good? Even all the pain of lifting those weights and doing all that stuff. Boy, we put so much weight on that.
Laughter Looking good. It's as if perfection and fullness of life and happiness comes with having a beautiful body. AA says, consider the physical. You know, it's so important. But it says, don't stop there. It says there's so much more, there's so much more. The physical. It says, don't let the quest for taking care of yourself, don't let the quest for material things be the end. Boy, do we need to hear that.
It was as if you would say, as long as you're sober, if AA ended its steps with there, reaching sobriety, that's kind of like the equivalent of a lot of people in society, isn't it? On that physical level. Just the level of looking good. Of being physically all right. But that's where, you know, you have so much to tell us. There's those other two areas that have got to be looked at. The emotional.
Now, what about people here? Do you see an imbalance in people who put everything in that kind of, only in that area of their lives? An excessive and out of balance kind of stress on the emotional side of things. It would be people who kind of live their lives on how they feel at a given time. Do you sense that a lot of us kind of live and kind of make important life decisions on how we feel? Have you ever heard that saying, if it feels good, do it?
We get into a lot of trouble with that one. Don't you think? If we made important decisions on how we feel, God, there wouldn't be any faithful marriage, would there? There wouldn't be any faithful priesthood either. But there's an awful lot of stress. And isn't there a lot of sloppy decision making in people's lives based on just emotion or an out of balance kind of emotion? The principles and the program and the fellowship of AA hold up a giant mirror to society when your whole beautiful program gets put up before us and it says, hey, you're in trouble if you're living your life on that level, you know, if it feels good.
People who are only faithful to relationships, as long as they feel inclined, boy, nothing's going to last too long. And we're never going to be faithful to anyone, if that's the bottom line. If we stop at good feelings or guilty feelings and make our life decisions on those types of things, again, we're in trouble. Out of balance emotionally, AA says, no way. We need you to keep telling us that. And what about even spiritually?
Do you think there can be an imbalance of people even just on the spiritual level? Can you OD on religion? Now, don't put me out of a job. I don't think you can OD on true religion, but on religion, that really isn't the real thing you can. You know? There's a lot of people who complain about people who go to church. They say, ah, those people, they love to be up there and be seen and get all dressed up.
It's people who pray much, but when it comes to charity, they fall a little bit short, people who don't make the connection. We really can overdose on unreal religion, and that's always a problem, too. You know, when you look at, for those who may be Christian, I'm sure it's present in the writings of other religions, too, but when you look at the New Testament and the things that Jesus Christ got most upset about, it wasn't some of the great moral problems that a lot of times we talk about.
I think the thing he was strongestly, the thing he got most strongly upset about were people who were hypocrites. Remember the image, white and sepulchers?
[00:35:03]
Tombs of marble on the outside, but inside, corrupting bones, much like what a tomb is. Boy, that's what he got upset about. That's imbalance of religion. AA says, no way. You cannot stop there. Balance. AA says, and I remember a professor in the seminary, one of the most important things from a whole course that he taught, he said, you know, the longest journey in the world is from the head to the heart.
Have you heard that before? The head to the heart. And that really is a painful journey. Sometimes I think I'm just beginning to make that one. You can have advanced degrees in theology and be great at worship, but not be too religious because the bottom line is always charity. It's always how we live. And Alcoholics Anonymous, boy, do you make that clear. To be balanced and to be integrated physically, emotionally, and spiritually I think is the real key to success.
And it's what your example in any community and in any parish, why your lives are so important there and why I really hope that you are there. You know, there was a book, a book that's made a real difference to me and one that I've gotten an awful lot out of. It was written by a German Jewish doctor by the name of Viktor Frankl. And the name of the book was Man's Search for Meaning. Have any of you ever heard of that?
It's a great book, isn't it? Man's Search for Meaning. And he wrote it out of his experience in the concentration camps during World War II there. And for me, his message in that book puts together the balance and the integration that AA also speaks about. He said, you know, in the camps, and really looking back at it and kind of reflecting, very interesting, he said, the people who made it through the best.
And it was surprising. He said, you know, a lot of the people who first went in who were in the best shape, young, strong people, he said most of us felt that they would be the ones who would make it through, who would survive. But were they? What happened after just a few months living the terrible life that the camps put them into? Those muscles in their bodies degenerated very quickly, living on just a piece of bread and some water every day.
That kind of strength, physical strength alone, that passes quickly, right? Isn't it true? If you just miss one week of exercise, it's like starting all over again when we go back, isn't it? That type of strength and beauty fades so quickly. He said, as people's bodies broke down and as the Nazis tried to break down people's emotions and strip them of every shred of dignity that they had, the people who made it through the camps the best were those, in his words, that had a strong inner life.
People went into the camps, even if they were frail, but if somehow the Nazis thought that they could get some work out of them, it was people who had a strong inner life who he said made it through the best. People, and another way he put it in the book, he said people who had a why to live could put up with any how. And so he said the people who did that were people who had something inside that inner core and sanctuary which no one can take away and where our higher power nourishes us and gives us that strength and that hope to keep going.
He said people who were in touch with that were the people who made it through the camps. An amazing, amazing kind of message. People who had that, and that's the same type of thing I see A.A. in such a beautiful way. You tell us that to live fully and to be happy and really to be human, the only way is to integrate and to remember that there are deeper and deeper levels that we've always got to be giving attention to, the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual.
That the bottom line is, to use your language, if we're really going to be honest in a rigorous way, if we're really going to get down to where it counts, we're going to realize that it's those three things together that we've got to keep holding up, keeping in balance, weaving together, trying to integrate.
[00:40:03]
There was kind of a frightening statistic in the papers in the U.S. a couple of weeks ago. They did a poll of youth in the U.S., and they asked them to rank who the person that they most admired as an idol was. Now, do you know who it was? Did any of you catch that? Clint Eastwood. Dirty Harry. Make My Day. Have you seen any of his movies? A preacher, yeah. Pale Rider. He has a new movie out. To me, when I think of what he stands for, I get scared at that one.
I like his movies. I go to a lot of movies, as you can tell. But that scares me, because to me, he's an image of the Marlboro Man, the guy out on the horse by himself who has everything in control, who doesn't need anyone, who can control himself and the world, and don't get in my way. That's kind of like the values, at least in some kind of a way, he speaks, and at least those types of characters that he plays.
I'm talking about not him as a person, but the types of characters, a lot of his roles, that I think young people are making that kind of a decision on. Boy, your program says, we're anything but that, right? Your program says, we are dependent people. You're saying, we are fragile creatures, and we need a fresh grace every day to make it through, sometimes even the next hour. And that's the way life really is.
You offer such an idol, in a good sense, such a model by who you are and by what your program is, and boy, do we need it. It summed up for me in a saying by a great saint in the Catholic Church, Ignatius of Loyola. He founded the Jesuits in the 1500s. There's just one line that he always told his followers to live by, and it captures kind of like the paradox of wanting to be both independent and standing alone, but on the other hand, knowing that we need God however we understand our higher power.
He said to his followers, pray as if everything depended on God, but work as if everything depended on you. That's another way of putting the great program that you offer and that you live to us. As a clergyman and as a real good friend of yourselves and of your great fellowship and of what you stand for, I see you offering an amazing and effective, a truly gifted way of life and one that we need so much.
I hope you continue to grow strong in it and that all the rest of us can keep learning from you. Thank you. Thank you, Father Parker. And if it was within my domain of doing it, I'd make you at least a Monsignor. You are a real friend of the fellowship of AA and for that we are very grateful. Our next speaker will be Father Leo B. from California. Father Leo. Hi, everybody. My name's Leo and I am an alcoholic.
And it's terrific being here. It's absolutely wonderful. I don't know whether you know, well, you won't know, some of you, but it was my AA birthday yesterday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Leo. Happy Birthday, Dear Neil, Happy Birthday to You! I say eight years of sobriety is a wonderful thing and I said that to you because I knew you'd say happy birthday and I loved it.
[00:45:15]
So one of the things is that it's incredible that a lot of people don't understand really what this whole fellowship is all about and not just clergymen but a lot of other people too don't understand. And this was brought clear to me even yesterday because yesterday I got on the Air Canada flight to come here and there was a steward, you know, the man who says hello as you get on the airplane. He said to me, he said, Are you Father Neil? I said, Yes. He said, I've seen you at a meeting in Torrance, California.
I said, Hello Fred. He said, Fred A. I said, Hi Fred A. And I got on the airplane and he, being working for Air Canada, he told the pilot about it. So the pilot came, you know, sent with the stewards as we were flying up over California. This is true. And he said, I said, I wanted to watch the movie of Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep. It's a loving movie. I too like movies, Paul. It's terrific. And we were sitting there watching Meryl Streep and they said, Did you pay for your earphones?
I said, Yeah, $3.50. Gave him the money back. I tell you, this program works. And then, but this is, that's not the point. Then they said, you're in a DC-47, I think. There's 16 of them bought by Air Canada. They're terrific. It's all done by computers. You just press buttons and it works. And they said, Would you like to go and meet the pilot in the cockpit? So I went. And I'm sitting there and he says, Where are you going? I said, I'm going to an AA convention.
He says, Why? I said, Because I'm an alcoholic, you fool. Hope you know more about the bloody airplane than you know where we're going. Anyway, he said all of that and we shook hands and he says, You know, my wife's got a drinking problem, but she's not an alcoholic. She just gets sick every week. And I said, Ah, I understand all that, you know. And anyway, I got bored. So I went back to where I was sitting, you know, and I'm sitting there.
And that's when the point was made, because they came over to me and they said, I want you to know, fatherly, it was a real terrific pleasure having you aboard the flight. And the pilot wants you to know that, you know, as you're going to speak on alcoholism and as you're going to AA and everything, would you have a free bottle of champagne on us? Amazing. Well, all I can say, people don't understand. People don't understand.
I have eight years of continuous sobriety in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I got sober in England, as you know, where men are men and sheep are nervous. And I'm always reminded that perhaps one of the most important things that the recovering clergyman who's an alcoholic can do is to share something of his experience. And I think that probably, as we're talking about that, that's one of the things that I value more than anything else.
Not only me sharing my experiences, but also getting some of the experiences of others. And incidentally, I think that's one of the reasons why some of us use humor so much to try and convey the message of recovery. You know, I often say, many have heard me say it, but, you know, Winston Churchill was a terrific drinker. Now, whether he was an alcoholic or not, I don't know. He didn't go to AA, but he drank a lot of brandy, and everybody knows that.
There's a lovely story of Winston Churchill sitting at dinner with Lady Astor, and Lady Astor turned to Winston Churchill and said, Winnie, Winnie, you're drunk. And Winston Churchill looked at her in his inimitable way and said, Madam, you are ugly, but I shall wake up sober in the morning. Now, the only reason why I say that is because when I heard that, when I heard that, I didn't just think of a joke.
I heard the denial. I heard the denial. And I think there are many speakers, and there have been speakers today, Lee and Paul,
[00:50:01]
who've alluded to the fact that perhaps one of the biggest things that we in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous have given is our experience. The experience of what it is to be addicted to a drug that's legal, and that's in every home, and that's been part of our lives and part of our social lives for so long. And I suppose, for me, one of the things that I want to say is that I'm somebody who's coming in perhaps slightly different from Lee and Paul, and that is that I suppose with me, with this programme, spirituality, having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, for me, being a clergyman has meant less.
And being a spiritual person, which, by the way, is not incompatible… LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Ha! It's possible. But to me, being a spiritual person is more important. And a very personal… I'm going to say this to you. And a very personal thing for me. I went in with a very narrow God. He was English. LAUGHTER Very narrow God. Had T4, white, all those kind of things. Spoke like I did. And I think the thing about it is that…
Well, you've heard it. You've heard it in AA meetings, you know. When you were drinking, you thought you were God. You imagine being a clergyman and an alcoholic, huh? And I think that I went into the programme with a very narrow concept. Very narrow. I knew the rules. I knew the dogmas. I knew the saints. I was being trained in the Jesuit church and became an Episcopalian. So I got a little bit of both.
Mother's Roman Catholic, mother's Anglican. Got a bit of both. I knew the rules. I learned the rules. I learned what other people said about God. I learned how to say other people's prayers. I knew St Francis' prayer, Thomas Zachempis, Thomas Quinas. If I was going to say prayers in a school, I took my book. And found page 7 or 9 and read it. Very rare indeed. Very rare indeed that I expressed a prayer that came from me.
So, for me, talking, it's a bit of a reversal. Religion means less to me. And spirituality means a lot more. I find that my concepts of God had to change because it was so narrow. Oh, a lot of things had to change. A lot of things had to change. But one thing that had to change was that. Because it was small. And it came from an experience. It came from an experience, a very real experience that all of you have had.
And that was when I saw me. And I think, quite frankly, that that's what recovery is all about. And that's what the spiritual program is all about. It's having the ability to see you in a way that you've never seen you before. It's the ability for you to get to see that somehow or other you're the person that stops you going home to who you are. It's somehow or other having the ability to see that God doesn't just live in the heavens and doesn't just live in the churches or the synagogues or the mosques.
But somehow or other is alive in his creation. What I say that makes sense to me is that if there's something of the poet in the poetry, if there's something of the musician in the music, if there's something of the writer in the novel, then there is something of the creator in the created. And somehow or other I never really quite got that message when I was in seminary and when I was in the church.
I somehow or other found it easier to talk about a God who was a long way off. This is me. And I found happier talking about sin and judgment. And indeed, a lot of the things that I had to deal with were those kind of rules. And you see, when you're broken and when you're lost and when you collapse and when whatever of a facade of an ego or a personality or a pride you've built suddenly crumbles in the debris of alcoholism, then there's a sense in which you've only got two ways to go.
You go all the way. And let's remember on this 50th anniversary that many of our brothers and sisters, for whatever reasons, choose to do that.
[00:55:05]
Or you start to find something in you that's got dignity and something in you that's worth respecting. In other words, find something of divinity that's given. And that's what this program did. It suddenly made me find in the sharing of a Jewish woman who had about four years in Crawley in Sussex, England, my story. It suddenly made me realize in a guy who hadn't been to university and his family were just ordinary people, when he shared his addiction to drugs and heroin, it was my story, because it's my loneliness.
And I'm the one who needs to go home to who I am. I think that this program is a spiritual program. But I'm not sure that I want to call it a religious program. In fact, I know I don't. And one of the reasons is not just because I don't think it's… Well, how can it be? Alcoholism isn't a disease, it just affects Christians. Somehow or other there are people out there who are Jewish, we know it. Muslims, who they're kidding, those people running around with their masks on.
Buddhists, Hindus, you know it and I know it. If it's a disease, it's a disease. Of course, in America and in England and in Europe, predominantly a lot of the people are going to have a Christian background, and that's not the point. It's a religion, it's a program in AA that appeals to human beings, wherever they may be. And incidentally, I ask a rhetorical question that I don't want you to answer right away because you can't, there's too many of you.
But why is it that people don't have a problem accepting glucoma or appendicitis? Why is it that people don't mind you talking to your Auntie Fanny and you say, And you say, Auntie Fanny, James, he's got appendicitis, or he's got diabetes. And she says, I'm sorry, Jack's had a heart attack taking flowers. Why is it that they can say all those things and not feel guilt and shame? And yet when we're dealing with alcoholism, you all know and I know that the reason why so many people stay sick and lost and die is because they're ashamed and they're guilty.
Where does it come from? Now, programs and at workshops all over, I'm sure there are many doctors and there are many psychiatrists who are saying, For a long time, guys, we've got to take some kind of, we the doctors or we the psychiatrists or we the medical professionals, I've got to take some, not all, but some responsibility for why this has happened. You know, for a long time we were dealing it as a secondary rather than as a primary disease.
For a long time we were treating drug addiction with drugs and we know, or we're learning because of the AA program and people like you, that wasn't the way to go. And all I'm saying when we're having a panel with clergy, isn't there a sense in which we as clergy also have got to hold our hands up and say, Hey guys, there was a sense in which we also kept you lost and kept you down there. Because at some point there's a sense in which guilt and shame came from a feeling not of being sick, but of being sinful.
Not of being somebody who is in need of help, but of being somebody who's bad. Now I know in hearing people like Paul and Lee, and I know what I'm trying to say, it's positive. And it's accepting and there's no way in which we're not saying that together we can achieve great things. But in the world out there, in America and in Canada, there are a lot of people who are ashamed and they're guilty because they feel they're morally bad.
And I believe at some point we have to take some kind of responsibility and teach and talk about something that is far bigger than rules and regulations and sin. The other thing I want to say is that I think that it's terribly important for us to understand that spiritual… To understand that spirituality is in finding a God in many and varied things. I think that one reason why spirituality, for example, has been neglected for a long time
[01:00:03]
is that it's been missed from the physical and the mental. I think there's a great danger in sometimes presenting the human being as being physical, mental and spiritual because there's a sense in which that spiritual is separated from this kind of stuff, you know, flesh and the mind. And then you're left with talking about prayer and meditation. And I don't think there's anything wrong with talking about prayer and meditation, but somehow or other the holistic, the holistic viewpoint of somehow or other connecting the human being as the body and the mind and the emotions as being one is, I think, one of the great ways forward.
And I believe what spirituality is talking about. I think, for example, spirituality and sexuality are linked. I believe that. I think that spirituality and how you take care of your body, about whether you smoke or whether you don't smoke, about whether you run and jog, those are very important. And I think that in the twelve steps of recovery, more and more people are finding that the twelve steps don't just deal with whether you drink or whether you don't drink, but are also talking about all areas of our lives, all aspects of being a human being.
So it's much bigger. I think that's probably one of the things, as a clergyman speaking along with Lee and with Paul, that we want to say to you. What you've done is, you've made us, not just the medical profession and not just psychiatrists and not just others, attorneys and lawyers, you've made clergy from all the major religions stop and think again. And what it is, is that you've got a message, not just of love, but something which is very much connected with that, and that is acceptance.
Somehow or other, people feel that just being a human being is enough to belong here. Somehow or other, you know, because there's been gay meetings going on, divorce people going on, people who are not sure where they are but they have a desire to stop drinking. Somehow or other, in this room, people are made to feel that they're accepted and they're welcomed, and this is a place where you can be if you want to be.
It's not so much a membership. It's not a religious denomination. It's a fellowship, a fellowship that's open to all human beings. And I think it says something more. It talks in a way that's really radical, and it puts an awful lot of responsibility on every one of us. It talks in the twelve steps. We admit it. There's never a time with those twelve steps when you're not involved. There's never one time.
We admit it, came to believe, but it says that you've got to discover a God as you understand him. And even on that, there is a real sense in which it's talking about something that blows your mind, because it's saying that the involvement has to be something that you connect with and understand and somehow or other can reflect to other people. How can you talk about anything unless you know it? But not just know it.
Feel it. Feel it. There's a sense in which that God as you understand him breaks rules, breaks dogmas, breaks people out of just which Bible they read. I'm not saying there's nothing to be gained from them. There's a lot more. Why is it Paul and I are so interested in films and movies? Because somehow or other, we know, as artistic and creative human beings, that a producer and a director reflects God.
That somehow or other, in Armadeus or in the music of Mozart or in the paintings of a Picasso or in sculpture or in one human being reaching out and holding another, there is something of the miracle of God given. In other words, it's much, much bigger. And we narrow ourselves too much if we miss God in the small things as well as the big things of life. That's what the twelve steps of AA have given to me.
And you know what's incredible? I'm not sure who doesn't belong. I'm not sure who doesn't belong.
[01:05:02]
We have now AA, OA, GA, NA, CA, AA. You have Alanon, Alateen, and presumably there could be the equivalence of those for all those others. And then you've got a situation whereby there are many people and I think Paul referred to it when he talked about the difference between a false and a real religion because there's something scary about people who get addicted to religion. There's something scary about those people who are running around pointing their fingers at all the other people because they're not living or behaving just like them because that reminded me very much of how I used to be when I was drinking.
So what I'm saying is, perhaps in some kind of way, because I don't think there are many of us in this room who don't think that there isn't something of the inspiration of God himself in what's going on here and what's happening, how somebody like me or somebody like you can be here sober, perhaps in the Twelve Step Program we have an answer to the disease that afflicts all human beings, that disease of not belonging.
And some of us who have pretensions to being theologians have read at different times about the Fall. All that is, is man's separation from God and how we get back. And perhaps in the Twelve Step Program we're finding across a permeation of human needs and problems a way, not so much back to God, but of discovering God in our own lives. I've often, when I've spoken and given my story, ended my story not with a quotation from the big book or not with a quotation from a holy or respected psalm, but from, I think, a song that many of us remember, which I believe God says to every one of us, and I believe is at the heart of what the Twelve Step Program gave to clergy and to the world for people to use.
I believe God says to every one of us in this room, regardless of background, creed or sexual orientation, I believe God says to every one of us, Welcome to my world. Won't you come on in? Miracles, I guess. Well, they still happen now and then. Welcome to my world. And leave your cares behind. Welcome to my world. It was built with you in mind. Knock. Knock and the door will open. Seek and you will find.
Ask and you will be given the key to this world of mine. And who's the key? You are. The Twelve Steps are not to be read. They're to be lived. This program is not something that we talk about. It's something that we walk about with. It's good to remember with gratitude for what this 50 years is all about. We don't have a message. We are the message. Thanks very much indeed. Dr. Belford, Father Paul, Father Leo, anything that I might add would be superfluous.
Thank you for your participation and thank you for a great, great program, all of you.