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Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome back to Sober Readings. Today is Thursday, the eleventh of June. My name is Scott, and I'm glad you're here with me. Let's begin today's episode with the Serenity Prayer. Grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Daily Reflections for june eleventh Family Obligations. A spiritual life which does not include family obligations may not be so perfect after all. That is from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, page 129. I can be doing great in the program, applying it at meetings, at work, and in service activities, and find that things have gone to pieces at home. I expect my loved ones to understand, but they cannot. I expect them to see and value my progress, but they don't. Unless I show them? Do I neglect their needs and desires for my attention and concern? When I'm around them, am I irritable or boring? Are my amends a mumbled sorry, or do they take the form of patience and tolerance? Do I preach to them, trying to reform or fix them? Have I ever really cleaned house with them? The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. That last line is from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, page eighty three. From twenty four hours, June eleventh, AA Thought for the Day. We alcoholics have to believe in some power greater than ourselves. Yes, we have to believe in God. Not to believe in a higher power drives us to atheism. Atheism, it has been said before, is blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere. That's practically impossible to believe. So we turn to that divine power in the universe which we call God. Have I stopped trying to run my own life? The meditation for the day. Lord, we thank thee for the great gift of peace, that peace which passeth all understanding, that peace which the world can neither give nor take away. That is the peace which only God can give in the midst of a relentless world and surrounded by trouble and difficulty. To know that peace is Is to have received the stamp of the kingdom of God. When you have earned that peace, you are fit to judge between true and false values, between the values of the kingdom of God and the values of all that the world has to offer. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that for today I may have inner peace. I pray that today I may be at peace with myself. And for today's final reading, we're gonna pick it up where we left off in AA Comes of Age, and this is a speech that Bill W was giving. And where we left off, he was in the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, and he was pacing up and down the hallway lobby. There was a bar at one end and a church directory at the other end. And his last line here is For the first time, I deeply realized it. I thought You need another alcoholic to talk to. You need another alcoholic just as much as he needs you. And so I'll pick it up from there. Then followed a strange chain of consequences. Choosing at random from the church directory, I called up an episcopal padre by the name of Walter Trunks, a great friend of AA to this day. In frantic eagerness, I poured out my tail to him. I asked if maybe he knew some people who could put me in touch with another alcoholic. I thought he might know some of the Oxford groupers around Akron. When the good man learned that I was an alcoholic looking for another alcoholic to work on, he at first apparently envisioned two people drunk instead of one. But he finally got the point and gave me a list of about ten people who might be able to direct me. I immediately began calling them up. It was Saturday afternoon. People were not at home. Others were not interested and made excuses. The list quickly dwindled until it came down to one name at the very end. That name was Henrietta Sieberling. I had a vague recollection from my Wall Street days of meeting an elderly mister Sieberling, one time founder and president of Goodyear Rubber. I could hardly imagine calling up his wife and telling her that I was a drunk from New York, looking for another drunk to work on. So I went back downstairs and walked up and down the lobby some more. But something kept saying to me, you'd better call her. So I finally rang up. Unexpectedly, a young Southern voice came over the wire, which turned out to be that of a Seberling daughter-in-law. I explained that I was an alcoholic from the New York Oxford groups who needed to help another drunk in order to stay sober himself. Very quickly, she got the drift of what I was saying. She said, I'm no alcoholic, but I've had my difficulties. When you talk about spiritual matters, I think I understand. I know someone you might help. Won't you come out here right away? I live in the gatehouse of the Sieberling place. When I got there, I found a person of charm and understanding. She said she had worked through many a hard problem and had found her answers in the Oxford groups. She understood deep suffering. When I had told her my story, she said, I know just the man for you. He's a doctor. We all call him Dr. Bob. His wife, Anne, is a grand person. Bob has tried so hard, I know he wants to stop. He has tried medical cures, he has tried various religious approaches, including the Oxford groups. He's tried with all his will, but somehow he cannot seem to do it. So how would you like to talk with doctor Bob and Anne? Soon Anne S was on the phone, AA's much loved Anne. Quickly, Henrietta told her about me, an alcoholic from New York who wanted to talk about his drinking process. Could she and doctor Bob come over? Anne said, I'm sorry, Henrietta, I don't think we can make it today. Bob always makes a great fuss over me on Mother's Day. He's just come home bringing a big potted plant. What Anne didn't say was that the plant was on a table and that Bob was under the table, so potted that he couldn't get up. Henrietta said, What about tomorrow? Why can't both of you come over to dinner? Anne said they would try to make it. Next afternoon at five o'clock, that wonderful couple, doctor Bob and Anne, stood at Henrietta's open door. This was the man who was to be my partner and founder of Akron's group number one. With the remarkable sister Ignatia, he was to care for five thousand cases of alcoholism in the time when AA was still very young. This was the wonderful friend with whom I was never to have a hard word. This was doctor Bob, AA's co founder to be. But at five o'clock that Sunday afternoon, Bob did not look much like a founder. He was shaking badly. Uneasily, he told us that he could stay only about fifteen minutes. Though embarrassed, he brightened a little when I said I thought he needed a drink. After dinner, which he did not eat, Henrietta discreetly put us off in her little library. There Bob and I talked until eleven o'clock. Just before leaving for Akron, doctor Silkworth had given me a great piece of advice. Without it, AA might never have been born. Look, Bill, he said, you're having nothing but failure because you are preaching at these alcoholics. You are talking to them about the Oxford Group precepts of being absolutely honest, absolutely pure, absolutely unselfish, and absolutely loving. This is a very big order. Then you top it off by harping on this mysterious spiritual experience of yours. No wonder they point their finger to their heads and go out and get drunk. Why don't you turn your strategy the other way around? Aren't you the very fellow who once showed me that book by the psychologist James, which says that deflation at great depth is the foundation of most spiritual experiences? Have you forgotten all about that? Have you also forgotten that Dr. Carl Jung in Zurich told a certain alcoholic, the one who later helped sober up your friend Ebby, that his only hope of salvation was a spiritual experience? No, Bill, you've got the cart before the horse. You've got to deflate these people first. So give them the medical business and give it to them hard. Pour it right into them about the obsession that condemns them to drink and the physical sens sensitivity of Or allergy of the body that condemns them to go mad or die if they keep on drinking. Coming from another alcoholic, one alcoholic talking to another, maybe that'll crack those tough egos deep down. Only then can you begin to try out your other medicine, the ethical principles you have picked up from the Oxford groups. And I'll stop right there for today. So remember that is from AA Comes of Age, and that is Bill W giving a speech. About his own experience before getting sober. And I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again. It's so interesting to read this because I've read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous a hundred times, but this one is so much more detailed, ⁓ and it's really interesting to read it like this. So I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am, and I hope you'll listen more, because I'll get back into that in a few days. So that's it for today's episode of Sober Readings. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please do me a huge favor and hit the like button. And share this episode with someone who you think might need it and drop a comment and please let me know what you thought. ⁓ also if you'd like to be a guest reader on sober readings, just send me an email at sober readings with scott at gmail.com. And if you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's readings, go to my website, soberreadings.com and click the donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening today. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Until then Take care of yourselves and each other, and remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.