This week's Gospel text is from Matthew 9; "the parable of the seeds;"
3And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. 5Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. 6But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away.
7Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
9Let anyone with ears listen!” 10Then the disciples came and asked him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” 11He answered, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.
13The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand.’ 14With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. 15For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn— and I would heal them.’ 16But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. 17Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.
18“Hear then the parable of the sower. 19When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path.
20As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.
22As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. 23But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
Well, I'll tell you where my mind started going when I read this one...I was thinking about how people have found seeds in pyramids entombed with mummies as a grain offering, and how these seeds that are thousands of years old can still germinate and grow today. That always seems amazing to me!
Ok, so Jesus mentions the seeds that fall out in the open and get devoured by the birds, the seeds that germinate on the thin worthless soil, the seeds that get choked out by the thorns, and the seeds that were sewn on the good soil. But, I was thinking, “What about the seeds that just get hidden and don’t germinate for a spell...maybe even for years or decades?”
Well, in describing God as this indiscriminate seed-flinging dude, maybe because I’ve been hung up in seeing “temporal” lately, I thought, “yeah, and maybe he doesn’t care if they germinate tomorrow, either, maybe years from now is ok by God...so if we know we have this un-germinated seed of something put in our heart by the Holy Spirit, well, we should be ok that it will germinate in its own time.”
Maybe a seed put in my heart today is not MEANT to germinate today...maybe it is supposed to take root later. I mean, think about those things that are still “black boxes” at the time they are happening. If that seed germinated right then, it’s worthless. But later, when the time and conditions are right, well it germinates.
I thought about the pine forests at Yellowstone. Those seeds in the pinecones, in order to germinate, need to be burned by fire so they will crack open. The park service people discovered that the forest management was not about “preventing all fires” but that nature expects the pine forests to be damaged by fire, in fact it is what is needed for new life to begin. So they learned to create and manage fires (that big fire in the 90's being the exception, of course). But there’s another concept; for germination to occur, sometimes fire has to scorch our life to break open the hardest and toughest of those seeds.
The other thing that crossed my mind is that some of the seeds that fall our way are meant for sharing. Or maybe we share and don’t realize it till afterwards. Take one of my blogfriends, who goes by the moniker FranIAm; you've seen her comments on this blog. She has suddenly found herself without a job for the first time since she was 14 years old. Turns out she has been reading my blogposts with some regularity and says that I have been helping her through her pain. Yet I am only feeling limited self-help in terms of my own pain.
But my mind goes back to a realization I had about a year ago--that the most real parts of me are the parts of me that give bits of myself away with no thought to “what that means” or "at what cost". I just do it. I am a little like Peter when Jesus said "follow me" and he went, "Well...uh...ok".
Although I am not yet feeling much yet in the way of answers for myself, my ruminations seem to be of some help to FranIAm (well, and Episcogranny too, if you've been following her blog)—and somehow that still reaches me. In this case, I am giving away my “seeds” and releasing any chance of control as to how they will be used. I expected no return on those seeds, yet I have an excellent return. Go figure!
Here is what I am starting to surmise in my middle age about stress. It's different than the stress of your youth. When you were younger, each life stressor was new and different and it was hard to sort their importance in the grand scheme of things. Think about it--once upon a time, not having a date for the Homecoming dance was a major "my life is over" thing. Now? Pfffft.
Middle age stress is different. It's more often "new permutations of the same-o, same-o that constantly invades our lives." In some ways, I feel as strong and fit to handle stress as I ever will be. I've lived it. I know it. But the stressful part is that the stakes seem to get bigger, and the upping of the ante is what scares you. Financial stress at age 28, when you did not have the proverbial pot to piss in nor window to throw it out of, was not that big a deal, except for the newness. You had very little to lose then. Financial stress in middle age is a much bigger deal, because you find yourself already thinking about your retirement. Family stress in middle age involves more family members and often more in a "dependent" role. But you get the drift.
I have a feeling old age stress will be even different. It will be tempered with the realization your body is failing, you don't have forever to fix things, and some things will have the grim reaper hanging over your shoulder like never before. I see that in my mom a little. I get frustrated that she, at 70 and in poor health, can no longer handle what she handled well at 60. But it is the poor health that causes this, not "her" per se. It is hard to remember that at times.
But I spent some serious time today in Psalm 88...I've decided to add my interjections between the verses in bolded italics (see below)
Psalm 88
1 O LORD, my God, my Savior, * by day and night I cry to you.
2 Let my prayer enter into your presence; * incline your ear to my lamentation.
3 For I am full of trouble; * my life is at the brink of the grave.
Oh, tell me about it! I can write a book! Much of my life has been "poised on the brink of failure." Much of my life was staring at a house of cards and being handed a deck and being told, "Here, put these on and don't screw up." But in recent years, I am starting to realize an odd fact: I am still dealing with the house of cards, but I just recently noticed I'm doing this in a temple. What does that mean? I'm not sure. Does it protect the house of cards from falling down? Probably not. But I sense some level of protection I never saw before. I just, at this point, am not sure what it means.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; * I have become like one who has no strength;
5 Lost among the dead, * like the slain who lie in the grave,
6 Whom you remember no more, * for they are cut off from your hand.
This is a very typical feeling when I am down in my "sinkhole of pain." I want to get out but I cannot muster the strength; there is this sense of true separation from myself and from God. No light. No voices. Just pain. Then over time the pain seems to give way to strength and I can move again. But it is like when they put people on the ventilator in the hospital on pancuronium to get them to stop "bucking the vent." I feel like I've been drugged specifically to stop fighting and have to just lie there till it wears off.
7 You have laid me in the depths of the Pit, * in dark places, and in the abyss.
8 Your anger weighs upon me heavily, * and all your great waves overwhelm me.
This is very close to something Wallace and I talked about once regarding my penchant for strange things triggering my anger. He once told me that there is a quality of my anger that is not just "the thing I'm mad at", but also a quality of "feeling the pain of a broken world." I wonder if this is not what "the wrath of God" really is...not some imperious asshole God running around smiting folks, but a God so pained by His broken creation it just has a bit of a short-circuiting effect on the universe. Misguided energy. But of course, that brings up the possibility that God makes mistakes...that should send the fundies running!
9 You have put my friends far from me; you have made me to be abhorred by them; * I am in prison and cannot get free.
Oh, that's simple. No one likes me when I'm in a snit. I've been told by one of my best friends, "When you are in one of your moods, interacting with you is like asking to have a scab picked at repeatedly...so we just leave you alone till it's over." Good plan! The good news is although my bad moods are intense, they are not long lasting.
10 My sight has failed me because of trouble; * LORD, I have called upon you daily; I have stretched out my hands to you.
11 Do you work wonders for the dead? * will those who have died stand up and give you thanks?
12 Will your loving-kindness be declared in the grave? * your faithfulness in the land of destruction?
13 Will your wonders be known in the dark? * or your righteousness in the country where all is forgotten?
Wow, I get some powerful imagery here. How many times do we fuss or fret that what we do doesn't matter? That no one will notice? Or that in the darkness of our own pain that we ourselves forget the good we are capable of doing?
14 But as for me, O LORD, I cry to you for help; * in the morning my prayer comes before you.
15 LORD, why have you rejected me? * why have you hidden your face from me?
There's no doubt; when we feel separate from "God's herd" it feels like He's the one who bailed on us. The standard line we hear, of course is that "we have abandoned God; not the other way around." I'm not sure that's totally accurate. It's a little simplistic and self-flagellating to just lie on the floor and wail it is all my fault.
Maybe it's a little bit more like a Venn diagram:
(Click on it to expand it)...
The "rub" in all this might be an issue with moving the circles closer together. The important point to ponder is this...the ability exists for either of us to move closer to each other. Maybe when I am the one doing the moving, it is "me practicing the disciplines of my faith." When God is the one doing the moving, it's "grace." But it is important to remember that if God is moving towards me, moving backwards of my own accord is not a great idea!
16 Ever since my youth, I have been wretched and at the point of death; * I have borne your terrors with a troubled mind.
Oh, yeah. I used to think about stuff like this when I was "too young to be thinking about things like this." My grandparents used to call me out on it. They'd say, "You're just a little kid, you should not be all worried about this stuff. Where do you come up with this stuff? Sometimes I think space aliens came in the middle of the night and infected your brain with something that makes you think of stuff no one thinks about."
17 Your blazing anger has swept over me; * your terrors have destroyed me;
18 They surround me all day long like a flood; * they encompass me on every side.
19 My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me, * and darkness is my only companion.
That's the other thing when we feel acute pain. We are inconsolable. Our friends try to cheer us up, it doesn't work, they get sort of temporarily fed up with us. We are fed up with them b/c "cheering up" is a distraction and we really don't WANT to be distracted from our pain. We want to break through it. We innately sense that being distracted from it prevents progress. Yet we don't want to have pain be "painful" either; it's a hell of a catch-22.
******
Ok, back to my real world for a moment. What I am discovering is that in middle age, and only if you are bold enough, you can uncover healing in the middle of pain. It's like unroofing a blister and letting the fluid drain from it, or lancing a pus-pocket. In the beginning, it might be all you feel is the lack of the pressure of the fluid or pus, but in time you can feel the healing energy of the exercise. I have found that one of the disciplines of my faith that seems to help me in this regard is taking chunks of the Bible apart and "re-formatting it" to make more sense on a personal level. I may not still quite know what to do with what I uncover, but I can at least see a bigger picture and a grander scheme to it all!
Thanks to the "Who Links to Me" app I added on my page, I discovered a few more people in the blogosphere who have me on their blogroll, so I am returning the courtesy and blogrolling them...all very interesting and thoughtful bloggers.
Check out In a Godward Direction, Episcogranny, and Tradition, Faith, and Reason when you get a chance!
Episcogranny is my first "small world of the blogosphere" experience. She and I linked Facebook pages and she told me who her college roommate was...who just happens to also be one of my best friends for 25 years! I think we just missed crossing paths at Truman State University b/c she transferred to Warrensburg before I came to college, but a 25 year old bread crumb trail that can still be found is nothing short of amazing!
This week's text was Matthew 11:16-30, and Wallace's sermon focused particularly on vv. 28-30: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Now, I don’t know much about yokes, but I do know something about harnesses and horse collars! He mentioned in his sermon, “This yoke is easy, because it fits our nature.” The very first thing I thought about was the importance of having a collar that fits in a horse harness. If you don’t choose a collar that fits, the entire hitch is unbalanced; the horse is not distributing the weight of the load correctly, and it will chafe and rub the horse’s shoulders. When we broke my mule to drive, it was a bear to find the right collar for him. Mule shoulders are built differently, they’re narrower, and most standard sized horse collars don’t fit. If you don’t start with the right collar, he will resist in his learning, simply because it HURTS! It does not fit him. He does not have the balance he needs in the rigging to properly pull the load of the wagon. He cannot do the work he was meant to do because it hurts him.
How much of our lives do we try to live wearing a horse collar that wasn’t “ours”? In contrast, think of those moments that are filled with wonderment and delight where we are feeling the full force of God’s love. Nothing is rubbing or chafing—because we are wearing “our” horse collars. They fit perfectly. We work in harness and pull our load willingly because it fits us.
I thought about my week this past week. I had a lot on my plate, all of it seeming to be needed to be taken care of yesterday. I spent all week trying to pull loads with someone else’s horse collar on. I was worried about what I was NOT. That’s easy to do when you are wearing a horse collar that doesn’t fit. You can see the gaps or the places where it’s too tight. Instead of simply saying, “That’s not my collar,” I said, “I don’t fit.” I let the poorly fitting horse collar define me. So by Friday, I’m going, “This is stupid. I need to put my own horse collar back on, but my shoulders are still pretty sore.”
I could tell, though, that the week wore me down. I was not ready to pull my full burden. So I spent my 4th of July “decompressing.” That was very unusual for me. 4th of July is my favorite holiday; I love the picnics and the fireworks and just the complete lack of expectation for the holiday. But I simply did not feel up to being "large group social." So I stayed home, lay around the house, farted around on the internet, and read and reflected. Very very unusual. A lot of people would have said I let my holiday go to waste. But it was nothing close to waste.
When I get worn down, I have a real need to crawl into my den and lick my wounds. I can stay there for a while to the degree that it makes those close to me a little nervous. I am generally a very animated, active and quick-witted person...but I become very "subdued" when in my den. It can make people think I am depressed. But I don't tend to stay there long and usually crawl out in a day or two. However, when I crawl out, I don't leap out, I kind of come out in increments. I call it "decompression" because it is like a deep sea diver coming to the surface. Come out too fast and I get the "bends". So I surface a little, stay and have to dive back down a little--just not so far--then go up a little again--repeat the process till I'm at the surface.
But back to this "horse collar" business. I was ready to put my own horse collar back on by the afternoon of July 4; but I wasn't ready to jump in harness and just go to pulling. The problem is, when we put our own horse collars back on, at first it doesn’t feel right. It’s kind of like when you’ve been driving someone else’s car and when you get back in yours, even though no one’s moved the seat in your car, it feels funny. It’s like you forgot what your own car seat felt like a little.
So on Friday afternoon I gave Wallace a call and found out he had no big plans for the afternoon and felt like taking a long walk, asked me if I wanted to go walk with him. That sounded like a good idea--although I was not ready for "group social," I figured a "walk and chat" with the vicar was do-able. Our walks are generally good. We have a tendency to bounce all kinds of things off each other in an easy friendly way. It comes off more like a conversation between friends than it does priest-parishioner, although I'm no fool; he's secretly sneaking in the priest-parishioner interaction. The trade-off for him, I think, is that I am talking to him like he's an "ordinary mortal", and he probably doesn't get enough of that in life sometimes. So our walks usually come out to be mutually beneficial experiences.
I could have gotten used to my own horse collar again on my own, but I recognized I would re-adjust faster if there was someone else there to remind me that, yes, this is “my” horse collar and it fits, and maybe let that person pick the burrs out from under it and adjust the harness a little. So I, to borrow a phrase from his Sunday sermon again, “surrendered to a friend’s gentle concern and firm support.”
I felt a lot more "decompressed" after the walk. He already knew a lot of the details about my week. My end of the conversation was more about just feeling the need to come out from under the details a little. His end of the conversation was more about validating that my suspicions were correct, I was uncomfortable all week because I was trying to labor under the expectations of others vs. what I was capable of doing, which, at times is a form of self-betrayal. This self-betrayal can get in our way of feeling our connection to the Almighty. He was basically saying in a different way, “This is your horse collar, and it fits you perfectly...and my God, look at the amazing loads you can pull with it! Why pull like a dilapidated old plow horse in some other horse collar when you are a grand champion puller in your own?”
God picked out very special “off the rack” horse collars for all of us, I think. Some of us might well be running around in very strange horse collars, but they fit us, none the less, and we should feel free to labor in them and be assured they fit, and be satisfied with that. But we betray ourselves at times by thinking we ought to be wearing a horse collar that looks like everyone else’s...and guess what...they don’t fit, and they don’t fit every time we’ve been dumb enough to try them on again, and we have rub spots from all the times we have tried them on before, and they chafe us faster every time. So we run around in ill-fitting collars, thinking it's "us" that is the problem, rather than the fact we're not wearing "our horse collar." Go figure. But if we take on "Jesus' yoke" we need to be reminded that it is a yoke that fits us. He would never put us in a collar that doesn't fit and we need to trust that!
Padre Mickey posted a link to a recent NYT article that discusses the discovery of a stone tablet that may refer to a "dead three days and then a resurrection" story written decades before the birth of Jesus, but the object of the story is a fellow named Simon, who is mentioned in Josephus' history. It infers that "die/sit around dead three days/be resurrected" is more a creation of Jewish tradition than literal fact, if we are talking about Christ's resurrection.
Ok, this is coming from a person of deep Christian faith (me), who, on first glance, might seem a little rattled, but my response is, "Big Deal; so what." Yeah, maybe a little bit of a shocking response...but here's why.
Unlike the fundies, whose every tenet of their faith hinges on the unlikely chance that every "i" is dotted and every "t" is crossed in the Bible, and even the tiniest misprint risks throwing the whole concept out the window, it doesn't rattle my faith in the slightest.
After all, the Bible is a book of several books considered "holy" put together by multiple committees. It's a compromise, some got left in that maybe shouldn't have (cough, sputter, Revelationhackhack) and others got booted that maybe shouldn't. I have worked in academia long enough to know "all committees are compromised."
I have a feeling that stories about being resurrected after three days, may not be singular in antiquity to Jesus. Three is a very powerful number in the kabbalah. The number three--binah--is symbolic of "understanding"--it is linked to the womb and symbolizes growth and formation.
So we are back to my usual take, which is, "I am not interested in whether or not the stories in the Bible are literally true to the nth detail." But I do care about what they were meant to mean at the time they were crafted, and "What do they mean to me?"
There are plenty of other posts on this blog where I have struggled with the "literal-ness" of words like "resurrection" and "transfiguration." I have expressed my doubts about the "literal-ness" of these Gospel events. Yet I can still stand in church every Sunday and say the Nicene Creed and mean every word of it.
"How can that be?" some might say. Easy. Because I know something happened. I cannot explain that something, any more than my dogs can explain to me what two-day old mole scent smells like. That "something" changed the world. That "something" taught mortals to look beyond the law to please God and to connect to God through love; and that somebody who showed us that "something" was Jesus. He was connected to God in a way no one had been connected before, to gather enough attention to be seen. That in itself is divine. The factual details do not matter because the outcome speaks for itself.
It's like if you had your appendix taken out. It doesn't matter if the surgeon put six stitches in or eight, as long as you are healed of your appendicitis. If the surgeon remembers putting in eight, and in a fatigued moment dictated "six" in the operative record, who in their right mind is going to argue if there were six or eight if the operation was a success?
In the Anglican tradition, "I take the Bible seriously but not literally." These are the things I ask myself:
"How do these words connect me more closely to God, the author of the universe?"
"What, in my life, helps me believe the concept of a loving God and a place beyond death that is the seat of all that is good and right and true?"
"How can the words attributed to Jesus help me see this pure love of God that shone through his life, death, and whatever makes up his resurrection?"
"How do these words change my life to make 'the Kirkepiscatoid planet' better for the little circle of people my life touches, and the big circle beyond my little planet of people?"
All the newly discovered ancient tablets in the world cannot shake this quest. Period.
Sad news--Fr. Jake is hanging up his cleats--at least as far as his present blog is concerned. It's a loss to the blogosphere, fer sure. But I understand a piece of how Jake must feel at this point.
Jake's blog, in the earlier years of its existence was far more full of spiritual content and less full of the internal squabbles over inclusion in the Anglican world. He had a very wonderful way of looking at his spirituality, and his theology was strongly based in the "spirituality of the school of hard knocks." I could identify with him on a lot of those fronts.
But, over time, it became more filled with present tensions within the Anglican Communion over inclusion of women and GLBT folks in the leadership of the church. Good stuff, but the comments section started to be filled with spats between the "re-asserters" and the "re-appraisers". I started staying away because there was too much personal PTSD for me. It started reminding me of childhood days at the supper table, wondering when the explosion would happen that ruined our dinner and when the beatings would commence. It took me DECADES to decide that God was not lurking behind the bush, ready to spring on me and kick my ass over ever transgression or evil thought I had. I did not need to hear the so-called "orthodox Anglican" (more like "imperious Anglican") crowd dictating to me "what the Bible says" and cluttering up Jake's good articles, so I decided to quit being a regular.
But I have a feeling that might be a part of why Jake decided to move on. All this was happening right at HIS supper table. I can identify with that. Godspeed, Jake.
So...that leaves a hole for another link on this blog. I decided to add three...Susan Russell's "An Inch at a Time", FranIAm, and Mark Harris' "Preludium". All excellent blogs. Enjoy!
Last Sunday's Gospel (Matthew 10:40-42) had Jesus explaining the true meaning of the word "welcome."
One of the things I frequently do when a word is used over and over in a Bible passage is to start by attempting to understand the word both in "the vernacular of the time", and "the permutations of the word in the language in which the Bible is written." I always assume SOMETHING has been "lost in translation" between the languages, and between their time and my time. So I start nosing into the word “welcome” as it is used in Matthew 10:40-42. It’s the Greek word “dechomai”, which means “accept.” In some biblical translations, it is “receive”.
Here’s what the Greek lexicon says about “dechomai”. Pay VERY CLOSE ATTENTION to the very first definition!
Dechomai:
1. to take with the hand
1. to take hold of, take up
2. to take up, receive
1. used of a place receiving one
2. to receive or grant access to, a visitor, not to refuse intercourse or friendship
1. to receive hospitality
2. to receive into one's family to bring up or educate
3. of the thing offered in speaking, teaching, instructing
1. to receive favourably, give ear to, embrace, make one's own, approve, not to reject
4. to receive. i.e. to take upon one's self, sustain, bear, endure
3. to receive, get
1. to learn
I discovered this after I had "a tough day with my friend M." M.'s dementia has moved to the point where, although a lot of his mental cognition is still there, "the compass in his head is broken." He was getting lost finding his room, his chair in the dining room, etc. So he was moved to the Arbors (the dementia care unit next to Highland Crest assisted living) this week.
I had come to just spend a little time with him and "sit with him in his hurt place" for a while because unlike some people being moved to a dementia care unit, he KNOWS he's going to a dementia care unit. I was feeling horribly inadequate because all I had for him, the only thing I had left to give that was all mine, my magic “fixit abilities” stripped from me, was MY HAND.
I had no cup of cold water, I had no soothing words, I had no tools in my toolbox, I had nothin’ but my hand...and I instinctively gave it. I held onto his and said, “I won’t let go. I never have, and I never will. All I can do is even if this gets so bad you are not even aware it is me, you know that I will never let go of you. Not now, not ever.” I interlaced my fingers into his—and squeezed it with intensity.
Then I came home and did a little work on the text I had heard earlier in the day and discovered that the meaning of the word that translates as "welcome" in this passage is literally "to take by the hand."
There is a funny aside as I was leaving the assisted care place. As I was walking through the "family room" there was a little worship service going on, led by this fundie preacher. He was going on about how he “has a smile on his face, not because he’s a happy-go-lucky kind of guy but because he has the love of Jesus in his heart, and Jesus always puts a smile on our face.”
"OH, GAG ME!" I was thinking to myself. I had a brief fantasy about yelling, “Oh, piss off, buddy! I’m a SURLY Christian, and one who goes down into my own pit of pain at times, deeper than you’ll ever know, b/c you can’t wipe your doofy smile off your face!” But it made me smile, because I realized I wanted no part of his version of Jesus. I don't want a Jesus who deludes me in to not recognizing a hurting situation. I don't want a Jesus who hides me from the pain of the world, as a little kid is sheltered from the truth. I want a Jesus who shows me his grace and healing from the deepest realms of the darkest pothole of pain that the world can dish out. The one who helps me find my own bravery in the midst of my worst fears. That dude in the worship service, his Jesus won't help me with the real meaning of the word "welcome." I'll keep mine, thank you.
