Topic: Have I Had A Spiritual Awakening?

SPEAKER_1 (0:06)

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Chip B (0:27)

So why is it for the people that are new, why is it that people get here and tell their stories? Why can't we just all memorize the big book and learn what we need to learn? Why do we have these speaker meetings? That's what I got sober on with speaker meetings. In a big book on page XII, it says, We hope you may pause in reading one of the 44 personal stories and think, yes, that has happened to me. But more important, yes, I felt like that, or most importantly, yes, I believe this program can work for me too. I saw one person when they entered the room, said that they were drinking today, but they stopped and they're sitting here in a meeting in their home safely, thank God. So the highest rank you get in Alcoholics Anonymous is sober, it's not speaker, believe me, it's not speaker. So what are we supposed to do when we get up here and we give our talk? And if you're new, pay attention, because one of these days, you're going to be giving your talk. Everybody gets to do it. When it's your turn in the bucket, it's your turn. And here's what Bill Wilson said that we're supposed to do. On page 29 of the big book, it says, each individual and their personal stories describes in his own language and from his own point of view, how he established his relationship with God. Notice it doesn't talk much about puking, arrest records, divorces, bruises, cuts. But believe me, I've been through all that stuff.

But we qualify, we tell our story about what we used to be like. And sometimes it really identifies with a lot of people. So that's why we do that. But we really are the guys that I hang out with love to embellish the part about recovery. So I'm going to get to that pretty quick. So at the 34 years, I just want to welcome the new people and just tell you this, this is what was told to me in 1987, that your price of admission has been paid. You don't have to say anything, pray anything or play anything. You just have to just welcome. Come all the way in, grab a seat, grab a cup of coffee, and just sit down and relax. Because alcohol has always had a noise to it. And for some, it still does.

If you think about the noise of your alcoholism, a lot of times it's screaming, yelling, gnashing, the crashing of metal and car wrecks, the crying of the children. Recovery also has a noise to it. We call it the music of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's what a lot of us do right now. If you imagine the 70 or so people that are in this room, even when you go sit in a face-to-face meeting, you will experience the music of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that is, when they said we're going to open the meeting with a moment of silence, my God, we have a moment of silence! You ever tried that in a bar? Excuse me, I'd like a moment of silence, please, before I... Nope, you're not going to get it. But in Alcoholics Anonymous, we have this moment of silence, and that's where you start hearing the music of Alcoholics Anonymous. For a bunch of first-while crazy alcoholics to be able to be quiet and listen to one person talk is an amazing spiritual experience. And the music of recovery has a lot to do with love, service, joy, tears, laughter. It's a whole lot different than the noise that we had in act of alcoholism.

So, I'm a retired Air Force guy. I spent 20 years, 10 months, and 4 days in the Air Force. You can tell I didn't count. And the last 6 years, I was sober, and that was the best part of my military career. I retired in 1994, and I opened up a construction business. To this day, I still have it.

And it's a busy business. It feeds a lot of people. And we have a lot of family members in it, and a lot of guys that have been with me for decades. I've had this business for 29 years. And Angie and I get to live in this beautiful place called Destin. We call it Disney Destin. It's a place where really a lot, it's like Disney, a lot of people dream about one day just being able to visit. Destin is a beautiful place. That's why we picked this place. For all these years, I lived 30 miles north. And I used to hate it whenever I had to leave these emerald green waters and the Sugar White Beach to go home. So we just decided that when we got married, we wanted to move to the beach. So we did. We have 11 grandchildren. You got to have something for a draw card. I was raised the son of a naval officer. He used to be enlisted.