Matty F. Step 7 - Step Series at Twelve Step House - 5/20/2025

Matty F. Step 7, Step Series at the Tuesday Night Step Group, Twelve Step House, Fort Lauderdale, FL. 5/20/2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Where are we
the world famous twelve step puts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
every day. Got that out of the way right away.
And again, my name is Matty Fair and I am

(00:20):
an alcoholic. My sobriety date is March thirty first, nineteen
eighty nine. I am a member of the East Naples
Men's Group Delhi. Delhi is our thing. So why I
have no idea, but why it's called the East Naples
Men's Group when it's in Pembroke Pines is a long story.
But that being said, it's a bunch of alcoholics, right so.

(00:47):
And I'm also a lifetime member of the Belford Clearview Group,
which meets also on Tuesday nights in Middletown, New Jersey.
And I've been, I've been. Yeah, it's a long drive
and sometimes like the old Wallflower saw right with one headlight,
all right, one eye closed, one headlight. So here we

(01:11):
are in step seven. First, let's get a little shout
out to Mustang Sally, who I saw Saturday night and
they supplied a brand new microphone and cord and you
know they're inputs in that, and how good is it
that that's true service. If you're anywhere, you know I'm

(01:36):
seventy years old. I'd be seventy one in September, you know,
if you're my age, and i'd made the remark when
the feedback and everything was going, you know that it
was I need a chipmunk from Woodstock, and Woodstock was
August of nineteen sixty nine. Here's here's my quick little
Woodstock story. So if you were paying attention as I

(01:58):
was sharing some of my stuff, my first drink, now,
my first drink, my first drunk that was horrific was
the night that men landed on the moon, if you
remember that part July of nineteen sixty nine. I'm just
I was able to get out of most of the
trouble that my friends had gotten into. We had a

(02:19):
larger family, we had things, so I was able to
skirt around. So here it is now August, and a
lot of guys in our town, all the older guys
are going to Woodstock. So we us four who had
just been in trouble in July, come up with this
Nestor plan. So we're gonna say at Chris Dilger's house,

(02:41):
his brother Bobby and his friends are going to Woodstock.
So we said, if we did this and cocked little stuff,
could we like arrive with you guys. So he like
laughed it off, but we thought we were going. So
we all sleep over Chris's house. These guys get up
at like two three in the morning. They're packing up
their car, their tents and everything, and they're going, we're

(03:03):
trying to sneak out. And there's Chris's mom and dad
at the front door like this, what do you do?
And I have the link, went steak, you're going, you know,
we're going to go, and they turn right or wround.
You're all on probation from last July's spectacular outing that

(03:25):
the four of you had, so it was not to
be not to go into Woodstock. It was just, you know,
the thinking process of a fourteen year old who had
just started his his journey on alcoholic drinking. So here
we are at step seven, Step seven, Braden, would you

(03:46):
read step seven? My name is Branden and alcoholic humbly
asked them to remove our shortcomings. Thank you, Thank you.
Extra credit. Who's hand going up first? Really? Awesome? What's
your first name again? Awesome? Gold star for you man.

(04:07):
Awesome humility. I sent the naturally. If I don't send
it to Clarissa, she gets upset. So we're gonna we're
gonna do prayers, We're gonna do a bunch of stuff.
But it's me, that's me. Where's my first of you

(04:30):
read it? Read C. S. Lewis, Please, it's for me.
It was the easiest, most distinctive, best description of humility
that I heard when I first came to Ai. Yes,
I love it. True humility is not thinking less of yourself.
It's thinking of yourself less perfect. There's many great descriptions

(04:52):
of humility. That's one of my favorites. Okay, so it
all starts. There's so much little in the big book, right,
it starts on page seventy six. I believe, yes, which
is what it is. Remember we spoke about the two
paragraphs and that, and again I don't know if this

(05:13):
is urban legend, if divine intervention, whatever, how great Bill Wilson,
if anybody doesn't know, that's our co founders over there,
Bill and Bob. And as we said last week, you
know step six four sentences, Step seven four sentences. You

(05:34):
know in the book. Here the main part, and we'll
get into it. Because I'm going to need your help
with this. But step seven has Braden just read how
cool is it? Wants the shortest step seven step contained
seven words. So seven's are wild. Mickey Mannin was all

(05:55):
over this. Sevens were wild. If you know who he is,
you know that number, so and here it is. I'll
wait on that anybody that would care to join me.
Here's what the big book starts off. Now remember step five,
we've gone to wrongs. Step six we've gone to defects

(06:17):
of character. Step seven we're at shortcomings. Wrongs, defects, shortcomings,
all meeting the same thing. It's what made us the
alcoholic that we became. Our defects of character. We just
review quick. After you've done your fifth step, you take

(06:40):
your book off the shelf, you spend an hour alone,
you meet up with God and you discuss your first
five proposals, and then you go in and then it
says when you've done your sixth step, because remember we
were entirely ready. When you're entirely ready, you go into

(07:02):
step seven. It's so cool, it just flows. You've done five.
That burden is over, you've taken the hour. You're feeling good.
You got I shared you my lunatic fifth step story
with the guy into Delhi. But I did calm down
after that, and I did have my time with God
and with Don two. And he then went in and said,

(07:25):
it's now time for Step seven. When entirely ready, we
say something like this, so if you know it, please
say it with me. We're going to recite the seventh
step prayer. Okay on three, you're ready, one, two, three,
My creator, I am now, Lily, that you have all

(07:48):
of me, the good and the dead. I pray that
you'll remove from me every single defective character which stands
in the way of my usefulness to you, my fellows.
Grant me strength as I go from here to do
thy visit. Awesome Amen, the end you're done, five, six, seven,

(08:13):
and here it is you're going to be looking at
these defects of character. By now, you're probably intimate with
my relationship with Ronnie Shiver, my first sponsor, who I
did the first nine steps with my bro I shared
with you guys that we would have a little gift

(08:35):
and means before there were gifts and memes, right, and
we named each one of the steps right, And when
we got to step seven, then we you know already.
He always made me write to the principles down right,
and I think he thought that I was well on
my way. I hadn't been drinking for months now, and
he had noticed. He had seen the change of me.

(08:57):
He had seen the change, he saw my defense for
a start to fade. Let me share show you the
kind of man that he was. If he sponsored you
and you were married with children, or if you had children,
he wanted to meet your scouts, and he wanted to
meet your kids, so he would come up to the house.

(09:19):
Now I am, I had met shared with you guys.
I had lost my job, I had lost my home,
I had lost my license, I was thousands and thousands
of dollars in debt. I'm living in a tenement kind
of house with my wife and four kids. And he
came up upstairs. It was a two three story walk

(09:40):
up and it was a small little place, but it
had a roof over I had if I'm trying to
stay sober. So we said, we sat down, introduced, you know,
my wife, Liz, and my kids. They went into the
other room and he says, to me, how about some coffee.
I said, yeah, that sounds a good great idea. So
I shoot my wife from across the little kitchen. They'll

(10:02):
look like, so you want to start making coffee? And
he looks at me and he says, and he called
me a derogatory name that starts with as he said,
I want you to get up and make a pot
of coffee. Again another resentment. Why did I pick this
guy to be my sponsor? I can hate him? So

(10:24):
now I make a big example of pushing the chair back,
going to go make the coffee. I didn't know how
to make coffee. How much goes in if I'm making
how many cups? How many scoops going to win? John
Lett say, I still have an issue with a lot
of that there too. So then it was that. So
you know, that's thirty six years ago, the fining moments

(10:49):
in your recovery. For all you guys that are here,
that are that have been here this past six weeks,
you know that you keep coming back. That's awesome. I
really appreciate it. But these are the things you'll never forget,
these moments in your life if you don't drink our
drug again. So when we got to you know, we're
done with all that. I remember I told you I
made ab up on the cliffs of the Hudson River

(11:11):
in Hopeboken where he lived, and that whole thing. So
I did five, and then I worried the six, and
now at the seventh, and you know, we had done that.
So when it came time to name our little step,
he had said to me again, never out that. But
I felt it. I could feel that he had the
confidence in me that there was a good chance that

(11:33):
maybe I was all in and understanding that the steps
of alcoholics anonymous. So he said to me, it's all
about humility. It's all about being humble. Right. That word humble,
How did we ask? We humbly asked? Humbly is one
of the most powerful adverbs ever. Humbly right, an adverb

(11:57):
is going to put the unshine on the verb ask.
That's all God wants us to do, just humbly ask.
But then that humility word comes in and that sometimes
all I knew about humility was when people would say,
you have to have a force feeding of humble pie. Now,

(12:21):
the only thing I knew about humble pie was I
saw humble pie in the early seventies at the fillmore
Reest with a young Peter Frampton yep, and their big
song was thirty Days in the Hole. Thirty day I
could hear the opening chords. Now. See, when my mom
worked at the Guardian and I worked here, my dad

(12:43):
was there and I would soon get there. I had
access to concerts all the time. And here I am
at sixteen at the fillmore, you know, not remembering anything
that got bout it, but thirty Days in the Hole,
and I was thinking about it. I played it today,
I said, Alexa, play thirty Days in the Whole by
Humble Pie, And I'm thinking, man, who knew then at

(13:04):
sixteen that I'd be spending like thirty years in the
hall in alcoholic drinking and behavior. Actually it was twenty,
but that's the kind of things that the memories and
stuff that we had. So he would say to me,
if we are in any finally included himself in something.

(13:25):
We're up to step seven and I'm not. He's not.
He's taken the credit. But it's not like me, and
you will do this. It was you, you, you you.
And then he said to me, if we are not humble,
we may just stumble, right, we may just stumble. He
hated the word slip. You know, he would say, there's

(13:48):
no such thing as a slip back. You know, back
in the eighties, guys, I had a slip, you know,
old time it's bs. You know, under every skirt there's
a slip. They would say, nuts where that came, that's
what that was. So we got to that, and we did.
We went through the whole thing there, and then he

(14:11):
made me write his favorite definition of humility, right, A
clear recognition. It's in the book, right, it's who knew that.
I mean, he was an old timer. Then when I
picked up my ninety day pen, you know, our medallion,
our little thing Ronnie picked up ten years the same night,

(14:36):
you know, that was remarkable. But he would say, humility
is a clear recognition that we learned in step five,
a clear recognition of what and who we really are,
followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be. See,
there were many nights when I would sit on the
barstool as my life was falling apart and staring in

(14:57):
the mirror and trying to figure what's going on? What
did I do wrong? And I would pray to my
God at that point, knowing that there was something terribly
wrong with me, and it just kept getting worse. See,
alcoholism is disease that centers in our mind, and it's
progressive by nature, and it will eat your soul continuously

(15:20):
if you permit it. But my problem was from fourteen
to thirty four, I made various attempts to stay sober,
but I loved the lifestyle so much. And I've shared
this with you guys before. If you do that, and

(15:40):
it's progressive, you'll take head after hit after hit. It
progressively gets worse, never better. And you know what, As
I'm destroying not only my life, my parents, my brothers
and sisters, my wife and kids, I cared, but I
didn't care. I was willing to continue to take the

(16:03):
hits because I did not want to give up that lifestyle.
And then the day that I surrendered, it wasn't like
one of those unbelievable things that I've had in the past.
It was just it was my time. You know, I
know today that it was the God of my understanding
put his hand in my shoulder and wasn't calling me home,

(16:26):
but he was telling me it's time to straighten out
your life. I want you to start to be the
man that you're met today. And it was like Wow, No,
I don't know that then, but I know it many
years later. You know, no more thirty days in the
halt I'm getting now. And so when we started the

(16:47):
work again, it's only the one paragraph of four lines,
the seven words. So we go to to the genius
of Bill Wilson. Thirteen years later. You're not familiar. This
is the twelve and twelve. This was given to me
by him. Now, this was from rehab when I got

(17:10):
to a century house. You know. It was the old
hardcover with a little church, little thing. And here's what
we went to when we started. We started on page
seventy one on step stock. So we're going to talk
about this and then we'll get into it a little bit.

(17:31):
But just listen to the genius of his writing, how
he describes the past, the present, in the future, of
how this disease, as I said to you before, will
rob you of everything. And for me at the end,
it was robbing my soul. For thousands of years, we
have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige,

(17:55):
and romance. When we seem to be succeeding rank to
dreams still greater dreams, when we were frustrated even in
part we drank for oblivion. Never was there enough of
what we thought we wanted. I want when I want,
when I want it. The heck with everything else. I'm

(18:16):
just going to take it, not worried about the consequences.
In all these drivings, here's the kicker that slaps me
across the face again. In all these drivings, so many
of them well intentioned. Our crippling handicap had been our
lack of excellent. Man, this is some class. This is awesome.

(18:43):
I always wanted to be a teacher, you know, even
when my kids were growing up, and man, they used
to hate me when they would make them do their
homework and I would check everything. Now i'm sober and
I'm checking all their stuff and the lists and stuff
that we had. It was, you know, Dad, you're not
my teacher, I said, well, in way I am. So

(19:06):
that was part of that so excellent class here today,
all right. So, and again he continues, we had lacked
the perspective Paul and I talk about are to least
use words in AA perspective and shift. Paul Baker is
my current sponsor, perspective and shift. We had lacked that

(19:31):
perspective to see that character building and spiritual values had
to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the
purpose of living. You know, when I first sat down
with him, you know, I said to him and we
started the step work and we were formulating this plan,
and I said, n you know, I got to get

(19:53):
a job. And like O'Keefe's John, his sponsor would say
to him, you had a job, but I want a
good job. You had a good job. You know, all
the things that we give away. I said, you know,
I'm thousands in debt, and we would just go just
for today, try not to drink. We'll see what happens.

(20:15):
And those were the things there. Then we moved into
ont page seventy two. We would highlight all this and
it's still highlighted here because we're talking about character. I
shared with you last week. You know, a lot of
us are character, but character is something internal that comes
to us. It makes us the men and women that

(20:37):
we are. It makes us that humble person that people
can count on today, something that for years, for twenty years,
I could never do. I wanted to. I would have
a flash of it here and there, but that calling,
Like I spoke last week about walking past Max's briefcase

(20:57):
pub calling me and calling me in and sitting down
and taking that first shot and beer. It was that
feeling was there. And then five hours, five days later,
who knows what it was gonna be, but it was
that feeling. That feeling comes magnified a hundred times more

(21:23):
with my relationship with God in the Twelve Steps of
Alcoholics anonymous and one day you guys will get there.
But we went into a bend about the character building.
So seldom do we look at character building as something
desirable in itself, something we would look like to strive for,
whether our intellectual needs were met or not. You know,

(21:45):
I always thought I was the smartest kid in the class,
but I wasn't. I was far from it. I was
the scaredest kid in the class a lot. But I
would never let you ever ever see that, you know,
So when I drank, I became a tough guy. Sometimes
that feeling, that release that it gave you that I
didn't have to let you know the scamb little boy

(22:06):
that I was. You know, for as long as we
were convinced that we could live exupposed to by our
own strength and intelligence, just for that long period of time,
a working faith with a higher power, my God, father, son,
and Holy Spirit. Is impossible. Now there's no getting around

(22:30):
the definition of that word. Impossible is impossible. But there's
possibilities that if you don't drink or drug and you
start to follow these steps, and if you're already at
step seven, you're on your way. Then he asked me again,
underline this, because what's the basic ingredient. The basic ingredient

(22:54):
of all humility is a desire to seek and do
God's will. You know, God's well my rest shared with
you last week. When you know, I love my acronyms,
and as a kid growing up my first FM transistor radio,
listening to Alison Steele the night Bird on WNWFM in

(23:15):
New York and and I forget some of the other
Dennis Elson's all the all these are either dead or
in their eighties now and listening to FM us IF
like that, and it was like, wow, you know, how
does this happen? How does this happen? Like that? So
then as we would we would catch on and then

(23:38):
God's well. Remember I was saying to you the acronym
WNEW and then the station that came out later was
w PLJ So then I was working with that and
I said to Ron, hey, I came up with this
great idea about God's well cause we had gone over
the notes and I told them w plj W is

(23:59):
the work. This is the work, the books, the relationship
with your sponsor, most importantly, relationship with God, P prayer, prayer,
L love, jay joy. Remember we spoke the last couple
of times, happiness is fleeting. I'll accept all rounds of applause.

(24:27):
Last week, not yet last week. I've been playing golf
for twenty years. And last week May fourteen, fifteenth, whatever,
on whole number ten on Orange Book West, I had
a hole in one that was happiness. Happiness is fleeting.

(24:51):
Because here's why that was whole number ten. If you
know anything about golf. The next five holes I double
bogied everything that happiness, that joy was fleeding in God.
But when I went home and everybody knew that joy
will stay with me forever. I'll have that with me forever.
But that's the part that we get into there, or

(25:13):
to the joy. So then as we were moving forward
onto into step seven, we got into this is all humility.
We guys know that, right, It's the whole thing is
all about humility. We may still have no very high

(25:34):
opinion about of humility as a desirable personal virtue, personal
how important it is to me, but we do recognize
it as necessary for our survival. I mean, listen to
the words impossible, survival. You know, I just can't speak

(25:55):
read through this. Tell him I did the work like
some of my guys have done it in the past,
you know, and just say, you know, while I'm done.
If you're done, if that's how you want to do it,
then you'll probably drink it again. But this time, when
you practice that part of humility, here's the promise that

(26:15):
are littered all through steps of it, because by this
time we have gained some measure of release from our
more devastating, handicapped, devastating, impossible, devastating what was the other
one that he has? Whatever that's cool? And then here's

(26:38):
the promise again. This our perception, our perspective of humility,
has its starting to increase and get stronger. And we're
understanding it because your life is changing and your eyes
begin to open to the immense values which have come
straight out of our painful ego punching until that happened

(27:03):
to me, and I've shared with you guys many times.
Missus Delaney I only met once when she came to
our home group in West New York on our I
think it was fiftieth anniversary, and she's spoken she had
ran the Aleena Lodge in Jersey, and she was the
one who I think they give credit Toude for the
famous phrase she was an ego maniac with an inferiority complex.

(27:27):
God bless her inferiority complex. Man. I could understand that.
I could really understand that. Again, it's over and over,
and in four lines, one paragraph becomes the seven pages here,
and every thirtieth word is the word humility. During this

(27:52):
process of learning what more about humility? The most profound
result of all was to change and our attitude towards God.
You know, when I was doing my prepping and reading
that and going over all my own notes and I
went back and I had written in here, I don't

(28:13):
know nineteen sixty eight. You guys know how I've shared
a lot about our important use. I mean, I wish
I took guitar lessons for about three weeks, and it
was I didn't want to. I wanted to be a
lead guitar player, but I didn't want to practice right
sound familiar to the latter. I didn't want to devote
the time after school to meet mister de Graul, the teacher,

(28:37):
to practice, because I might miss something out there. You know,
I wanted to. I wanted to be Keith Richards, but
you know, Jimmy Pate, Yeah whatever, But I was neither
or that. But my love of music has always been there.
And then when I was talking about our relationship with God,
and it all starts in the Senate step with prayer.

(29:00):
If anybody remembers, you know, nineteen sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine,
I was a big doors man. I had loveball music.
Doors have an album called soft Parade. Jim Morrison opens up.
Way back then, I was in seminary school. There was
something there that put forth the proposition that you can

(29:22):
petition the Lord with prayer. And he says it over
and over. Then he screams, you cannot petition the Lord
with prayer, and I thought, man, at thirteen, fourteen years old,
I thought that was so cool. You know, this is
I'm in a house full of you know, you're going
to church every Sunday, and Grandma and everybody's there. But

(29:44):
you know how your mind at such a young age
can be so influenced by that. You know, it was
like for years, I never know when, and my sisters,
like we had ages right after each other, so we'd
all be listening to that. And you know when my
sister Kathy would say to me, mister Mojoe Rising, you know,

(30:06):
she'd be singing that, and I'd be saying that she
goes Mada. Do you know that take all the letters?
Mojoe Rising is Jim Morrison said, Wow, these brilliant things
that I learned. That's where my hype was at. And
I'm sitting there and again I told Alexa to play that,
and I'm listening to that, see, because it gives me

(30:26):
the focal, the focal point to go back on these
decades of my life to realize where I am today.
And here it is the words. This was the turning
point for me when I fully understood it, but the
words of myself, I am nothing the father do with

(30:46):
the works, it began to finally carry great promise and meaning.
You know that was really really important for me, says.
We continued along and and you know we've got into
some of the stuff there, and you know, but by
years later I would as I've shared with you many

(31:07):
times about when I first had I'm sober a little
bit while, and I told you guys in my home
group in Belford, the Clearview Group, we had a step
meeting and then we had our home group meeting and
it was one of the reasons why I picked these naples. Course,
it was the same format, and one of our guys
came down from Miami. I've already shared you that I

(31:28):
came back with a cassette of six cassettes of rail
keep doing the steps in North Miami events. And again
I've shared with you there's two men in my life,
two disembodied voices, men I never met but have only
heard or seen aunt tape that have changed the course
of my sobriety. And Ray was one of them. I

(31:49):
said that all the time. And he's pretty right to
the point about Step seven, and he says, when I've
worked with my guys in Step seven, it's about three things, money, power,
and sex. Those three things. Now we're talking about defects
of character, those basic instincts that have been warped. Right,

(32:14):
And then he said, when he was able to finally
start to understand alcoholics. Anonymous and his sponsor told him
that AA the program itself can be narrowed down to
these two words, honesty and humility. So by this point
now in step seven, you know, I'm honest most of

(32:38):
the time of my life. I'm preparing. I know what's coming.
When you know, we will talk or listen to that.
You know, when you're ready to get eight. We'll get
into eight last next week. But don't look at nine
before you look at A. Just eight's a list and
we'll get there next week. But it was raised things, right.
I tell my guys too, what are the two things

(32:59):
I'll take you out finance and romance? B two things
you can have honesty and the ability, or you can
have finance or romance. Now, those two things are important
to all of us. They if they're not, then there's
something wrong with you. You know. You know what does
Russell said? You know about money? You know it's really

(33:22):
not that important, almost you know, just as important as oxygen,
you know. But it's when they're twisted, that's the word twisted,
those defects where we lose sight of its proper purpose.
Each one of them asked God gave us those instincts,
and how do I do that in my prayer, in

(33:42):
my petition? And that's what made me think of that
when I read that about the Jim Marrow something. Prayer
is not a demand. You know, I'm going to say
this in almost every head will shake, you know, for
those of us that I did it again, did it again?
You know that you're banging on the steering wheel and

(34:04):
your driver's license suspend, suspended, and the cops are pulling
in behind you, and you're saying, please, God, please get
me out of this one. Please get me out of
this one. Please get me out of this one. The
cop comes up to the window with the knight stay.
He bangs on the window and he's a friend of
your uncle's. I'll follow you home, Maddie. I'm seventeen, I've

(34:28):
had my license like six months. I'll follow you home.
You know. Coincidences, Now, those are what I thought were coincidences.
And there's hundreds of those behaviors that I have. But
it's God always, and again there's a clear example he
lives up to his end of the bargain. And for

(34:50):
a brief moments I said, Okay, thank you very much,
and then I'll take it from here, you know. And
then shortly thereafter I developed this relationship with my God. Well,
it's through patience and help. Help is what we do
for each other in the room. Help is when you

(35:11):
have when you decide that you're going to stick around.
If you're all in, then there was things that you
hear at a lot of meetings. These are suggestions. Suggestions
is a pretty loose word, you know, Get a sponsor,
get a home group, get active in that home group.

(35:32):
Six words we live by at East Naples. I trust God,
clean house, help, others been God. This was an add
on I got when I wanted up here a couple
of months back. So as I'm progressing with him and

(35:53):
my life is starting to change, and I think a
character would still come in. As you know now I'm sober.
A few years my job came back. I share with
you guys, people in my group went out of their
way to help you get my license back. I'm driving.
We got out of the tenement that we have and

(36:15):
we have a nice little home down to Mammoth County,
New Jersey, and life is getting good and it's starting
to get good, but problems will come. I have teenagers
at this point in time that are going off the
rails a little bit going off the rails, and I'm
not happy, and I'm not happy and I'm trying to

(36:36):
keep it together at this point in time. My favorite
guy we're watching, did you guys are watch the series
Ray Donovan? Right? Man? That guy is so cool. Right
He's an evil man. He was not a nice man,
but he was a fixer. And that's what I thought

(36:59):
I could do. I could fix my wife, I could
fix my kids, I could fix my sponsees, and I
couldn't even fix myself. Most times say I'm not a fixer.
I have to become a listener. And that's what his
need to be. If you read Emmitt Fox, Today's was

(37:21):
really pretty cool. I wrote it down on this blank
spot on the page here. There were only two feelings
for human kind. If you have a relationship with God
or you haven't had one yet, there's only two feelings

(37:42):
as a human being who wants to take a guess
one excellent John gold Star for John, Love and fear.
And he goes in, this is what won me over
and you'll love this. He's a pretty smart guy. Emit
Bill Wilson did a lot of em and Fox listening.

(38:04):
There's a there's a slender thread that linked those guys
together with the secretary or I don't know the whole
basis of it, but Bill and Emmett knew of each other.
But Emmett says this today of the two things that
China just pointed out, and just think of this, because
if you're on good spiritual ground, this is how we

(38:25):
should be. Love. Love is creative, fear. Fear is destructive.
Think of all the fears in your life, real or
imagine and the destruction that they did to him. And
then we get into you know, it's humility. Is this
new attitude that we have that we that we went

(38:49):
into that this Saturday night, Saturday Friday night, you did see.
I went up to Pompino to hear Dion and Adam
Jay the two speaker meeting at Saint Ambrose, and I
love dd is my great grand sponsor, and I was

(39:13):
hoping that he would get into He has a relationship
with God that I admire, and he always talks about
Bishop Baron and he's one of my favorites. He introduced
me to Matt. He started listening to Bishop Baron and
during COVID. That's what we started to do when when
Men Fully Alive was born back in March of twenty twenty,

(39:34):
and he would talk about those things there, and he
would talk about that I learned at Dobbosco High School
Saint Thomas Aquinas and the four the four substitutes for
God that Aquinas talks about. And if I closed my eyes,

(39:55):
it sounded like it was coming from Rooki or any
other senior member of AA that's been through hell and back.
What are the four substitutes that we not that most
people but especially alcoholics. Right, So we had money, power, sex,
we had romance, finance, but a quitnas right hundreds of

(40:17):
years ago. The four substitutes for God one, wealth, pleasure, power,
and honor those perfectly great instincts when they're out of focus.
Then that's where my life starts to change for the worst.

(40:41):
I want to read one little thing and then and
we'll start to wrap it up here from a little
read book. Bless God, blessed you all right? So you
know we talked about prayer being the petition. Well operate
on that when we get to step step eleven, right,

(41:04):
because what do we do? We see when we get there.
I saw it through prayer and meditation and our focal
point in my life. But that's a couple of weeks away.
We're on seven nin But prayer is the key. Prayer
is the key when it started in five into six
into seven, my daily petitions with my God. Prayer is

(41:24):
our highest type of mental energy. It serves a threefold purpose.
By it, we ask for God's help, we thank him
for our recovery, and we ask him to maintain contented
sobriety two perfect work, contented sobriety. That's all we can
wish for. I want sobriety, but yeah, I'd like to

(41:47):
have contented sobriety. There was nothing outstanding about an alcoholics
prayer to God. It's just a simple sincere affair. The
alcoholic has nothing to lose, right. It starts with please
get me out of this one, but then that changes.
But stands to gain sobriety, He gains samee behavior, he

(42:09):
gains peace of mind, and happiness will come to him
for him and for his family. Man, let's think about that.
The promise is that we're given and we're only halfway through.
Well that will come and step nine that famous line
about being amazed before you halfway through. But this is

(42:32):
just through seven five six, seven, done and you're moving.
Let's go, let's go. I'm gonna end with this. I
hadn't said this in a while. This is.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
From a plaque in doctor Bob's office.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Excuse me? What is that again? Should be better? Prepare notes?
Search there. It is from a plaque on doctor Bob's desk.

(43:29):
A lot of you guys that have been around for
a while will understand it. I remember on two of
these lines. I had a very trying point in my
life a few years back where I had to do
exactly what this prayer says. And here's what it says.
Perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble.

(43:52):
It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore,
to wonder at nothing that is not to me, or
to feel nothing done against me. It is to be
at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am
blamed or despised. It is to have a blessed home

(44:17):
in myself, in my soul, as I always looked at it.
Now I can go in and shut the door and
pray to my father in secret, and be at peace
as in the deep sea of calmness, when all around
and about is seem trouble. Right when I was leaving

(44:43):
in the car down here, I always put on Hillsong
United and play Oceans. And well then with this, when
these things happen to me, there's only one thing that
I need to do. I petition my Lord with prayer.
Sorry jim m and I think of of the Hillsong
United Tala saying, I keep my eyes above the waves,

(45:08):
and you guys tund