to give you now just a little bit of background information on the Oxford group who they are
what they believed in probably the best way to do that is to give you a very brief biography of its
founder and that was a man by the name of Frank Bookman and Bookman was a Lutheran minister in
Pennsylvania and a essential parts of his story go like this he was running a home for young men
in the Philadelphia area and he had a visit from his board of directors one evening and they said
to him Frank you're spending too much money on these guys with the food bill could you please
cut it down and Frank like maybe some of us had a big ego and he got angry and he basically stormed
out of the room quit his job was codependent so he borrowed money from his parents and he went
on a tour of Europe he was actually going to a conference there in a town called Kecak England
and what he learned from the resentment that he developed between himself and those six men on
the board is actually the beginnings of the of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and maybe a
way to help you get an appreciation of that and of what he learned we just do work here on the
board what-what Bookman knew was he had anger between himself and in this case those other
Pete there's others six men there was blockage he was isolated from them angry with them resentful
with them and as he went around England on his way to this conference what he recognized was to
the degree that he was cut off from these people to that very same degree he was cut off from God
and the literate a literature they talk about the sunlight of the spirit while the sunlight of the
spirit could not get through to Frank Bookman it was closed off and he had an experience the
experience was basically a surrender experience where he went into a little chapel got down on his
knees and he surrendered basically what we would call in a a circles step three he then went and
he wrote a letter of amends to the people who were on that board and as he wrote the letter what he
noticed was as he's letting go of this resentment a flow starts coming in to him from here and this
this was really the essential ingredient of the the contribution that he made and it may sound
small now but it's really phenomenal because he saw this as the model for changing the world he
got together with a young man the next day who was at the conference and he told him what happened to
him and he asked do you have anything like that in your life and the guy said well yes I do and as he
shared it that guy started getting right right with God and you know if this is throwing you
at the beginning and it's always it's always good to kind of pause I had a dear teacher in recovery
who struggled with this word and the truth is nobody understands this word if you think you
understand God you're kind of delusional we are incapable of understanding God but we are we are
quite capable of experiencing God and this fellow had all sorts of terrible things done to him in
the name of God and what he did when he came into the probe was instead of just writing God he put
another oh in there and world good and I think that man was probably more accurate and in touch
with with what what is essential to recovery it is that goodness is flowing through us that that
spirit of recovery is flowing through us that and that is the change that is the death of the ego
that we spoke about a little bit earlier so what you what you see here is a connection to to the
to the world to changing the world to what your role is in the world and it's all based on your
spiritual condition when Bill Wilson came along he got sober in the Oxford group and what he did
was he attempted to capture the essence of the Oxford group program and write them into a series
of steps and the twelve became the number that he landed on the Oxford group people never had
steps but they did have a program they did have a process and there's kind of broke down into this
the first part of the process was connection and that really became the first three steps
to connect the self to something beyond the self all right to connect it one two three the rest
or the maton eight major part of the program now becomes this correction what is it that is
blocking this flow which Bookman believed ought to be natural it ought to happen his question is
why is it not happening in his case it was because of the hatred that he held in his heart for those
six guys and when he let go of that he began to experience it the last three so this is this is
what this is four five six seven eight and nine this is where we make the correction the change
make a list of the people were harmed share that with another person this becomes Wilson was asked
where did you put the central ingredient to to the the Oxford group program which was honesty
purity on selfishness and love those those are the four absolutes he said they were Annie's that
where did you put them he said I put them in six and seven I put them in six and seven so this is
where we're really willing to change at a huge level to let go of everything that gets in the
way okay and then eight and nine we make amends the last three steps had to do with receiving
direction and that's ten eleven and twelve ten is it taking daily inventory eleven is the prayer and
meditation practice that we're going to talk about in just a moment and then twelve is the action as
I carry that out into the world it's pretty soon alcoholics began coming to the Oxford group in the
1930s because they needed to change they weren't so interested in changing the world like Bookman
was they were interested in changing themselves changing their or their own lives so what happens
is Roland Hazzard helps a man by the name of Abby to get sober Abby then carries the message to Bill
Wilson Bill Wilson carries the message to dr. Bob and down the chain of events it goes to where we
have two to three million people now working some variety of the 12-step programs the thing
that I learned in in doing my studies about the Oxford group and early AAA practices came down to
this in nineteen thirty eight people in AAA were trying to to get some money from JD Rockefeller
for this new program that they had and Rockefeller sent a man by the name of Frank Amos to study it
examine it it wasn't even called Alcoholics Anonymous but at that but he was looking at
the people who got sober in Akron in New York and saying what's happening what's going on here and
the report that he brought back and this is reported in dr. Bob and the good old timers
basic a literature that the members of that time did not consider meetings necessary to maintain
sobriety now that's gonna sound like heresy today okay meetings they believed was not what
was necessary they were helpful they were good but they said in his report morning devotion and
quiet time however or musts this is this is not something that's optional this is something that
if you want to have that transformational effect in you quiet time is the way it's going to happen