Wisdom from the Sunday 11th Step Meetings At the Wolfe Street Center in Little Rock
Geno W., with William G. Borchert
Hazelden Foundation
The Eleventh Step: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
This book of meditations is a wonderful collaboration of two gifted men, the late Geno W. whose 11th Step meetings at the Wolfe Street Center in Little Rock during the 1980’s had a profound impact on hundreds of people in various stages of recovery, and Bill Borchert, also a recovering alcoholic, and a newspaperman, author and screen writer.
Borchert wrote the screenplay for the 1989 movie, “Bill W,” with James Woods, James Garner and JoBeth Williams, and he has more recently written a screen play based on his marvelous book, “The Lois Wilson Story: When love is not enough,” which has appeared as a special Hallmark presentation.
Wilson, many will recall, was a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935, and Lois, his wife, later founded Al-Anon, a recovery program for families and friends of alcoholics. Both are deceased.
Borchert and his wife Bernadette flew from their South Carolina home to Little Rock to kick off the book’s introduction at the Wolfe Street center where it all began 25 years ago.
I regularly attended Hour of Power meetings in its early days in the 1980’s, and Geno was a mentor and friend. During that time I wrote an article about the Hour of Power in the Wolfe Street Journal 15 years ago which appears below, exactly as written, to give you a sense of what it was like.
“Welcome to the spiritually packed Hour of Power,” the article began, “a Sunday morning get-together at the Wolfe Street Center where upwards of 225 people assemble to let God go to work.
”And go to work he does.
”With the eleventh step as his text, meeting chairman Geno W. follows the Serenity Prayer, Big Book reading, introductions and birthdays with a five-minute commentary put together in the predawn hours on the focus for the meeting. Geno, one of the Hour of Power meeting founders, has been chairman for eight years.
Living life
“The greatest gift in life may well be the knowledge of how to live that life. That is the gift of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous,” says Geno to introduce a theme for a recent meeting.
“In the past,” he continues, “we found the answers to life in people, places, material possessions, alcohol and drugs. They failed us, and we are here today as part of a much higher calling. We seek nothing less than knowledge of how to change and the power to do it.
“Geno develops his subject a little more then begins calling on people. One after another they stand and testify to the joy of lives lived clean and sober on the spiritual plane. Rich and poor, men and women, young and old, black and white, fresh recruits and bleeding deacons, AA and Al-Anon (it’s an open meeting)—there is a redemptive message in all their stories.
”Whatever their background, the people come to believe. Those who never believed join with those who once believed in celebrating the discovery, not of another religion, but of a true relationship with God. It is an experience which produces megawatts of love.
”Leaving a recent meeting, a woman said, ‘There is more love in this room than I have experienced anywhere.’
”It is available to all, lovable or not. Albert, a physician, was not lovable. At a meeting several years ago, he took the floor to tell those who were there that they were fools and that he didn’t need what they had. His power would sustain him, he said. They smiled at his arrogance and told him they loved him. Puzzled, he kept coming back to make his point and eventually gave in and got sober.
“It seems fitting that the Hour of Power was born in the humble Wolfe Street kitchen where a few recovering alcoholics—Geno, Gerald and Jenny C. and several others convened on Sunday mornings for grits and fellowship. That was in 1981, soon after the building was purchased by the Wolfe Street Foundation.”
A spiritual awakening
There are 52 chapters in Borchert’s book coinciding with the weeks in the year, and each chapter includes Geno’s introductory remarks at the beginning of each meeting followed by a prayer and a meditation. The following is a portion of his introduction of week 52 “A Spiritual Awakening.”
“It seems like I’ve been searching all my life, searching for something I never had, searching for something more important than everything else I did have, something that would satisfy the yearning, fill the gap I felt deep inside. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew I needed to find it in order to have any peace, any meaning, any fulfillment inside myself.
“During those terribly lonely times in my life when I felt myself sinking under the weight and torment of my addiction, I would look at other people—happy, smiling, seemingly at ease and I’d be filled with envy, jealously and resentment. It seemed like they had found what I was still searching for, and it angered me.
“There were times I even tried what others were doing—working hard, enjoying families, having good relationships, going to church, praying. It didn’t work. Nothing gave me any respite except another drink or another drug. Then after awhile, that stopped working too.
“I began to ask myself if I was the only one who trod that path that led to total desperation. Was I the only one who kept asking, seeking, stumbling along that dark and despairing road that had no signs or guideposts? It was a road that led to the top of a cliff. I stood there looking down, fearing I might fall into the abyss. Filled with terror, I called out for help. God came and lifted me up. I was put on a new road, a road that led me to recovery through the 12-Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
“Still seeking to fill that gap inside me, I was now given directions—the road map of the Twelve Steps of recovery. I was told the Steps would help me find sobriety provided I admitted I was powerless over my addiction and turned my will and my life over to the care of a Power greater than myself. That’s when a voice deep inside told me that my search was almost over, that what I had been looking for all my life I could now find—a relationship with a loving and caring God of my understanding. I knew it as the beginning of a whole new way of life.”
Amen, Geno. Amen
