 This is the OGM weekly call for Thursday, December 7th, 2023 at the end of last week's check and call. We had a really nice idea show up, which was basically how to talk about honoring all things or re-sacralization or other things like that and what role that plays in everything else we've been talking about. And I would love to kind of dive in wherever anybody is moved to take us in that topic. I got a nice note from Gil who is having cataract surgery this morning and won't be able to join us. So we'll be down him, but I'm eager to see what this topic actually sort of even means to all of us. So whoever would like to step in, please do. I'll step in. I'm really disappointed in humans in the way that they interact with. That's a great start. But especially animals and especially animals in our meat market systems and wildlife harvesting systems and stuff like that. It is just shameful and it makes me embarrassed is not a strong enough word to be human when I see what other humans do to other species. Different than most people, maybe, I don't know. A lot of people go, well, it's a shame what those people did to those other people and it's like, yeah, okay, but at least they're both humans. I mean, humans are really terrible to other humans. All the time, whatever. But to go outside of your species and just like, you know, subjugate and torture and mutilate and kill and it's like this ridiculous. So I've got friends who will pick up a rock and say, look, this rock is you know, listen to this rock and it's saying things and, you know, do you want to take it away from its place, you know, listen to the rock before you take it someplace. Maybe you don't want to bring it home. Maybe it wants to sit right there. And I kind of get that too, especially in the presence of somebody who has who can feel the energy of rocks, which I've been with those folks. But at least I think the rock is a little bit, you know, a little bit, it has a longer, you know, longer timeline and stuff like that. But, you know, like looking at a cow or an octopus or a chicken or a dog or, you know, it's like, oh my God, please, people, what the heck are you doing. And, you know, the thing that the other thing is, I have this feeling that it's one thing that you're injuring the whatever the word for humanity is for people who aren't human. But it's one thing that you're injuring their agency and their, you know, well-being and their, you know, their right to existence and things like that. The other thing is, when you're doing something, when you're subjugating somebody else, you're reducing yourself. You are the one who is taking agency in that situation. And, you know, it's like, okay, I want to be, instead of being a good human or a good dog or a good cow or a good frog, I want to be less than that. I want to torture that animal and be less, less good than that even, you know. So, not even like, you know, like it's one thing to harm something, but then to harm something, you're putting it, you're putting yourself at a lower level than it. It's like just insane to me that we do that. And yet we do that wholesale and have been for a really long time all around the planet. And it's the very tiny minorities like giant people and others who take to heart what you just said and do the opposite. And a bunch of people who abstain from eating animals as a bigger group, but still not that larger group. Thanks, Pete. Yeah, I just wanted to pick up on Pete's theme. I mean, the violence that is so visible on animals that are, you know, identifiable to us, big enough so we can see them and it's, you know, more feel them. That's one thing, but think about life inside the soil. There are more microorganisms inside the soil and the spoon of soil than there are people on the planet, and we are killing them. I mean, the way we treat the soil, which is a living thing by dousing it with chemicals and plowing it up and so on, it's just, it's just unconscionable. It's just, it's just more difficult. Indigenous people, I mean, I'm now thinking about South America and so indigenous people, they do have an intuitive understanding of that life, a tree is life. Now, plants are living. And so the, this violence that we, and it's not even, I mean, it's violence on one level, but on the other level, it's just neglect. Being divorced, right, being unconscious of what they're doing there. So it really is nature itself. It's not just the species of animals that we can identify with. It's really all of life, you know, where we are completely reckless and just unaware, you know, in ways that are now really starting to hurt us. Totally agree. Judy. Part of the reason that I raised this topic was that for many years now my form of meditation has been to sort of connect with what I call everything, which is the earth, the animals, the creatures, the trees, the stars. It's just, it is truly everything in kind of caps. And there's a very stable energy to that. When you connect with that from a meditative standpoint that is allows one to sort of appreciate all of those dimensions that are affecting our existence we're just one of many that are in that much, much larger ecosystem. So it's, it's a healthy perspective and I wish there were a way to enable others to feel that connection, because it alters how you feel about everything you do. Thanks, Judy. I love that. John. Yeah, I'm open. Okay, great. Wow. I have five reactions. I'm going to edit the list. One is the first one is just kind of a footnoting thing to, I mean, come back there to think about, although I'm happy to discuss it in greater detail or somebody wants to. I had this reaction. I think many people know who Temple Grandin is not autistic. Professor of animal science. She's just amazing. I mean, you know, the first thing you got to say is, wow, you know, here's this person who had a significant, what we would normally classify as a significant disability. And did a wonderful, you know, outreach, I mean, really extended herself into areas of knowledge and expression that are clearly quite difficult. You could also take the view that. People take the view that she's a humane. She's a humane mediator or humane supporter of mediators because she wants to make the process of processing. And she said it from the cattle's point of view. And I mean, there's so many places you could go with that. You know, you could, you could say, yeah, that's okay, you know, or you could say, no, no, no. And I don't kind of really want to go there. I just kind of want to reference that I found reading her both enlightening and disturbing at the same time. And it just, it just made me think a lot with a lot more complexity and detail about this set of issues. I really appreciate Pete for raising this point. He's points, multiple points. Pete, your views are a bit more extreme than mine, but I really appreciate them because they're a good stretch. And this idea that, well, the idea of diminishment is sort of a subset of the idea of who are we and what are we doing here. And so you can, you could be called pro animals and pro species. That's one way to look at it. It's interesting to take this other view that says, hey, no, no, no. We're asking you to be nice to animals, you know, because they're enough like us that the, the, the, the ethical complications are disturbing. No, no, no. We're asking you or we're inviting you to expand your notion of. In a way, if you can look at this way. John, we lost you last. So I'm, there's other places I could go lost your last sentence because the signal just the last we've been following you pretty well so far. Okay. I, if I can recall, not asking you to like animals because they're like us, we're asking you to expand your idea of what it means to be human. So it's actually an enrichment of humanity, not a trying to up level animals to our level. Does that make sense? Anyway, that's, there's a lot more here, a lot more material, but I'll stop. That's good. Good place to stop. That's great. Thanks, John. And thanks for giving us a view of downtown San Francisco, I think, San Francisco Oakland, where are you right now. I'm in San Francisco now I'm walking to the grocery store. Sweet. Thanks, John. Pete, then Stacy. Thanks, and thanks, John. The touchstone for me is compassion. Compassion means together and feeling thinking, you know, pushing yourself in the, in the other being's place and thinking about what's happening to them. So I actually really appreciate Temple Grandin. As I said in the chat, I'm not anti eating animals. I'm anti torturing animals. You know, so, so by the way, I have a personal story. I've never, I've never really said this to anybody except my wife, Joanne. My, my, one of my kids in particular, both of my kids were animal sensitive growing up. I was animal sensitive growing up. I think my wife would have been except her parents and her family situation held her back from being with animals. So I grew up with a few dogs, not a bunch of them, but I was really close with them. And really good at, at being attuned with them. My daughter picked that up too and so she went through a series of volunteering with animal shelters and animal rescues cats and dogs and horses and, and the zoo and the wildlife museum growing up. Same as her older, older sibling. Some of that time, my wife and my daughter were walking dogs at PHS Peninsula Humane Society. So I got a second hand view of what it's like to run a run a humane shelter. What it's like to be a dog in a humane shelter. We ended up with, we ended up with two of the rejects. So, and living with our two dogs that were rejects in the, in the humane society taught me a lot. So where I'm getting to is kill or no kill shelter shelters. There are a bunch of super well meaning people who say, Oh, it's a shame that we have so many dogs and that they put them down. Oh my God, they're going to put down dogs. Yeah, dinky. The two dogs that we had, both of them got into the shelter system, however they did. And then they spent a long time in there and they were terrified the whole time they were in the shelter just absolutely terrified. One dog was a mom, she came in pregnant and had puppies right away and then they took puppies away from her, which drove her insane and crazy. And she got actually really violent with people. She was on the list to get put down because she was just unmanageable unmanageable because they took her kids away. And she was such a sweetie that some of the volunteers lobbied for her and they got her off the, you know, the, you know, this dog is, is won't even be able to be put out for adoption because she's just too violent. We, we, this was our second dog actually we got our first one dinky first but then we got her to kind of try to modulate dinky. It's the sweetest thing we fostered or we didn't want another dog, but we fostered her. She was a sweet and loving, wonderful dog, once you got her, you know, out of the shelter situation. I have a bunch of stories about the reason we ended up fostering her and then adopting her because the pound didn't want her back. The whole the whole time she was in in her little cage with a few other dogs. She was in the corner just like cowering like just scared to death right her tail was all the way tucked in. Joanne and and when he would come in and pick her up and she would be so happy because she got a little bit of time outside for a walk right. Dinky our other dog, very, very kind of smart and genial dog very thoughtful. Lovely to play with. He and I have, I've learned a lot about dog language and actually being a little bit more assertive from being with dinky. And it was a dog trainer who's a little bit, a little bit controversial there's a dog trainer Caesar Milan, who teaches people how to be better, better humans went with their dogs. There's a whole bunch of dog body language and behaviors and stuff like that that make no sense to people and they're actually like counterintuitive to people. And once you kind of know the language and why a dog is doing a thing, they make a lot of sense, more sense than than people do usually. So the problem with promise dinky is that he was kind of irredeemable. And the dog that was in the system for more than a year. I think he should have been put down because he was just stuck in the system. And, you know, and, and the volunteers there talked about how he was a dog that kind of got along with people and over time he got, you know, less and less. And at the end of that year, year and a half or something like that, he got adopted out to somebody who couldn't manage him. So he came right back. Dinky is a super sensitive little animal and he picks up the smallest little cues and he he tries to be, you know, he tries to be really attentive to what you're trying to say and he'll he'll follow that right whatever it is kind of. And so having that situation where he gets adopted out, you know, and finally can relax a little bit he too was kind of, he was violent in his in his cell, rather than cowering, but it's the same thing he was in fear terror the whole time. So, somebody couldn't take care of him and brought him back and I can just imagine what it was like for him you know wow I get, I get to learn to how to be with somebody and then I get put back in jail again right and I have to protect myself and I have to be fearful. I, you know, I love him he's turned into a wonderful dog. He was in an, you can tell from his behaviors, if you if anybody raises their arm like this, and surprises him, he will bark at you and what happened I can tell from his behaviors. He grew up in a, in a abusive home where the man hit the woman a lot. And I can tell that because of the way he acts with me and my wife, even now he's got programmed to be like that right. But still he's a wonderful dog I love him he loves me, except when he's barking at me because it's late at night and his conscious brain is switched off and his unconscious brain is still protecting his previous owner. Still in all, it would have been more kind in the arc of his life to put him down early. Right. So we have a different problem which is why we have too many dogs. That's a completely different problem. But for me this is it's a it's a weird thing to say, hey, folks that, you know, if, if you're sponsoring a no kill shelter because it's a no kill shelter, shelter. Think about what you're doing, you know, think about. Okay, so if you've got 100 dogs and a shelter and you're not killing them for a year. What does that mean? What, you know, would you want to be in that situation? Would you want to be in a situation where nobody can even explain to you from day to day why you're, you know, in terror, you know, essentially tortured every day of your life. It drives me crazy that that people will stand up for a cause like a no kill shelter and then not follow through and say, Okay, so that means that every dog in there needs to have, you know, natural behaviors. People who love it a pack who loves it at least all that kind of stuff. So more of my, you know, more, more thoughts. And it's hard it's difficult I get it but humans do a terrible job. Um, Stacey. Thank you Pete. If it was anybody else talking, I would have gone off screen and not listened because I, it's so hard for me to hear that which brings me to my the initial comment was a really short one. You know, so much about our evolution and where we're going in my mind has to do with becoming aware of things and mindfulness. I know dinky. And I was just going to mention it was it was so weird as I was like scrolling on Facebook. I saw people arguing apparently some teacher somewhere. Maybe it was Alaska I didn't even bother to look at that part, but had brought in a dead animal. And he was going to teach the kids how to quarter it or whatever. And the people were arguing, you know, how disgusting it was or whether it was life skills. But I was just thinking to myself, what hypocrisy that they weren't arguing that you shouldn't eat the animal. They were just arguing that children shouldn't know, or that you shouldn't see what you're doing. And I know that's a hypocrisy I have within myself. I would not be eating meat. If I had to go and kill the animal I know it wouldn't happen. It just wouldn't. Although I do I mean I would like to see different form practices. I'm not like Pete said, I'm not anti meat eating by torture. And I think I also wanted to say I got so thrown off because it's, it's hard. It's, you know, it's, I think it's harder because it's such a gentle nature. There's such an innocence there it's almost more difficult for me to hear about. Yeah, I'm not even going to go there. So that we should see more of what's happening. You know I've spoken to people that are like you know they're vegans and they've always been, you know, they're feeling is 20 years ago, when they were working in this field. It didn't matter if people saw what was happening people know what was happening. And my answer is, this isn't 20 years ago. I think it does make a difference. If people were actually, if you actually had to see what was happening. I think people understand how people that work in those fields, get desensitized and dehumanized. And I think that maybe there's more of a connection, how those things bleed into the rest of society and when I say those things I don't mean anything that leads to desensitization. So, I'm all over the place here but I'll stop for now. But you're making lovely points. We're putting a little bit of noise Judy I think from your mic because your rectangle is lighting up for me, but it might not be. Thanks. Doug please. I'm convinced that every animal knows more about what's important to them. And we know about those things. That's pretty powerful. But stronger is that I believe that every animal, including insects, have a stronger desire to save their life as we do. Can you say a little more about that. Well, it's hard because we think that smaller animals have a smaller nervous system so that their pain about facing death must be diminished. But I no longer believe it. I believe it's actually as intense as our own. If we're threatened. We have a deep visceral reaction and animals do too. And it's not proportional to their size. It's part of the equivalent of the possession of being an animal. Thanks. Can you post it in the chat about what people which is sort of a soul hunger and things like that and it reminded me that a piece of our conversation around this before was kind of about God and belief systems and the decline of religion and the rise of nuns. And I don't know whether you're adding went to go to a conversation from that vector at all. I think there's lots of different ways in which it fits here. But, but one of the questions in my head is what's the path toward filling that spiritual hunger because I think a lot of people are busy looking for belief systems to close that loop and that that's a fail mostly and and so there's this massive set of wishes desires filled desires, hunkers, etc, etc. And, and you've been walking the Buddhist path for a really long time which I think does a reasonable job of filling those desires by focusing on them and almost setting them aside making them explicitly a part of a belief system in some sense. But, and I'm just dancing around the issue here but if you would refund that for a moment I'd appreciate it. So, the, the Buddhist path has this idea of hungry ghost, our ghost are depicted as these enormous beings with the huge huge bellies and tiny tiny mouths. And no matter what they do can never get enough they're always grasping they're always, you know, and people can be taken over by hungry ghosts. And I can't get rid of them but what you can do is, is set a boundary and say I give you this much and that's going to have to be enough, and then you go on and figure out how to, you know, live your life without devoting yourself to the feeding on your ghost, which is a very interesting path because my understanding and I am not an expert on Tico but from an indigenous perspective it's a, it's very similar to hungry ghost, it's a mind virus and I'm very intrigued with his idea because I think people will say, you know, we, we do a terrible job you know humans are awful and it's like, there's a group, a subset of humans that that are doing this not all humans. And I think it's important to make that distinction. You know, so, when you take it over but we Tico you are no longer sense yourself in relationship with the rest of the world, it's there it's a threat, you become consumed with fear and you try to control things, and that can lead to all the things that we're seeing going around today. I don't know that it's possible for 8 billion people to live on this planet in the kind of way that I think most of us on this call would want to see. My despair and despair is not even strong enough a word I have huge despair for the fact that in my lifetime in 66 years. 70% of mammals have disappeared off the face of the earth 30% of insects. 5 billion birds were 30 billion birds depending upon who you're talking to this is a tremendous loneliness that I think only people live close to the land or aware of. And those are folks who are not in cities people in cities have no idea that it's happened. And, you know, I don't know how to deal with that. How do we honor that, you know, I try to honor that my own way. We're talking about honoring things. How do we honor omniside. You know, how to reverse omniside, which is the term that it got from Amitav Ghosh from the net makes curse. How do we recognize the operational mind virus ourselves and we can go back if you want to the Neanderthals it's a very good chance that Homo sapiens murdered and they did the Neanderthals, you know, Homo sapiens as a species tends to be pretty blood thirsty, but not all of us and I think there's there's something that occurred in our evolutionary path along the way. And Matron would say we started to conserve some really bad behaviors. And how do we recover behaviors that will allow us to live the world as relations, you know, you do if you see the entire world as alive if you see the world as a set of relationships that you are intricately connected to you behave in very different manners than if the world is inner and only useful when you're exploiting it from classes point about the soil to the way that we, you know, keep putting rockets up and just ripping holes in the in the atmosphere through that I mean, we live in a culture that is extremely out of balance. And what's the way back, how do we restore that balance how do we honor the fact that we are all of the earth, you know, you do not find humans anywhere else in the universe we came out of the earth the earth was here before us and we will go as if Alan wants to say the ceramic model that God, you know, made this earth in place this year to do whatever we want and that doesn't work that leads to the kind of breakdowns that we're seeing everywhere around us. So I don't know, I'm, you know, I'm very much in the, in the mystery and the question of, you know, what is right relationship what's what's the path that that supports and sustains all life and creates well being. I think if we're not paying attention to that then we then we go down the rabbit holes that lead to the kind of destruction that we're seeing all around us. Thanks Ken a lot. You're reminding me of another question that swirls in the back of my head all the time which is a paraphrase it in the chat here must carrying cultures always fall to warrior cultures. One of my beliefs about history is that there have been many civilizations that figured this shit out, and then it lived well on the land and well with each other and sort of doubt how to figure out conflict and all that kind of stuff and the problem is, it's a little bit guns, you know, when somebody shows up over the hill, when somebody shows up over the hill who's got more powerful weapons than you and you haven't spent a whole bunch of your time developing weapons or defense because doing the rest of it was more interesting more fulfilling and pretty much occupied your time as well. You're done. And that saddens me tremendously. And that has to do with the other people over the over the hill being able to assemble an army and make those weapons and all that which implies civilization. So, so the word civilization for me is pretty pretty tainted in so many different ways. Klaus then curl up and Hank, you must know Gandhi's when someone else Gandhi what they thought about Western civilization said, I think it's a very good idea. Yeah, exactly. I joined a progressive church, and I was in my early 30s when my wife got pregnant and I realized that I had no idea what it meant to be a dad other than I didn't want to be my dad. And so, since my wife is a good found girl with very strong ways of expressing her opinions. So we ended up in a church, but it was, it was one of the progressive evangelicals where the pastor and the group of pastors actually had to decrease one's theology and one in psychology and in particular evolutionary psychology. So, I ended up leading a Sunday school, maybe about 50 families and was a big church with maybe 8000 members or so. But the teaching was amazing, right, because of this pastor really brought history to life, you know what to be what did people really mean when they were saying heating ashes on your head. You know what did this mean 3000 years ago, but it was to burn off your bad thoughts and to apologize for maybe you have slanted someone. So to put these things into context. But when I, and we spent maybe 16 years there and our kids grew up in this environment and now into men's study Bible study and Sunday school and church and all of that and it really anchored me in a lot of ways. To be together with a group of other men who were in the same stage of development little children and professional and so on. But we, in all the topics we picked up we never once really talked about this issue of what is our relationship with life and nature. So when I when we moved to Hong Kong, I lost touch and when I came back 10 years later, I realized that my friends had sort of stayed in the same place where where I left off 10 years ago and I wasn't there anymore. So I haven't really been able to reintegrate myself here for a number of reasons, but the Pope Francis wrote an encyclopedia about the cry of mother Earth. And I forgot what it's called it's and hope is a day or now I need to look it up a post it, but he wrote and that actually made me cry when I was reading it, you know, because in the opening statement. You know, he's saying what we're doing is unconscionable and Pope Francis is this historical figure, you know, who who was all engaged with nature and the natural in mind. I'm not out to see that's it. Yes. And when you read this when you just read the opening statement of it, it is just it's just phenomenal, you know, in an appeal and a plea to pay attention to to the world around us. Because the challenge, the challenge really is, I mean, we can acknowledge that now we have lost our connections and, you know, and what can post it. What does it call again, what you call. Yeah, no, so that completely summarizes it, it's very accurate, but the question is how do we get out of this hole. And how do we communicate with with people who really need to speak in these symbolic languages, you know, and the end Pope Francis got just got a bunch of hate, you know, in response to his lot to see. I mean, the American Catholics and I mean, everyone just refused to even to even acknowledge this, but just taking no doubt to see and inserting it into the conversation with Christians. And if we ever were able to reach that open mind, there is the foundation is there. The language is there. The idea is there. It's just very difficult to open it up and find, find people that find in a progressive pastures and spiritual leaders to embrace this and and translate it and use it now. So, I think it's, it's, it's astonishing, you know, how we have lost really the ability to to use this religious language and and and make it common because this language penetrates into into minds that are more into logic more into into science, you know, it really permits through the entire sphere. I would call it the colors of the spiral. So, anyway, Thank you so much. Thank you. Carl, then Hank, then Judy and take your time stepping into the conversation, please. And thinking about these issues over the years there's kind of two clusters of things you've got a power of the word I mean if you translated what what's been translated as dominion. It's a two word shift, actually. So I mean, at this age of domination I mean a lot of it is the desire to for to be able to predict to have a to have a stable life. I mean, it's like, I know I can go get in my car and drive downtown and be my office and I have about 20 minutes and there's like a 99.9 whatever present chance I can do that. And things so there's that side of it. It's like the can we can we say we won that part but nature is going to win their mother nature and father time or tag teaming right now. So can't kind of the indigenous like the coji people which we've brought up a couple of times before. So there's that, and then several things I mean they, the, the indigenous consider themselves like the elder brother and western civil, the weird civilization is the younger child. It's also the sense of time. So I mean we have the paradise of the Garden of Eden, and the world's been going to hell ever since, or you've got the, the progressive thing that the, the future can be better. I mean, some, I've been getting a lot more into that and some of my research you have Robert Rosen with his anticipatory science. I found an article that's talking about the not yet that's emerging so live. Can you be. It's the opposite of psychological projection I mean people are imposing their the pathologies from the past on the present, can we be seen can we be envisioning the better future and be embodying and living into that future in the present type of thing. Yes. So those are the two big, those are the two biggies and then, well the other thing too then is this messianic thing it's like, we are going to save you or we'll kill you your choice. That's a simple choice. Yeah, I guess I'll leave it at that now. Carl, thank you very much. That was very helpful. And going to be like, I made a special effort to be home at this time this day when I read what the starting question was, because the last couple of months I've been taking a course in humanism and religious belief. What is the area between them. And that's on a Thursday afternoon in different cities so it's not always possible to get back in time for this conversation. And I'm really happy to appear to have heard the contributions so far. So I want to just tell two things. I'll tell more but maybe later. Our starting question for today is how might we honor all things. Well, there's a, a spiritual and political contribution I'd like to make I'll begin with the political. In 2006, there's been a political party for the animals in the Netherlands. And since 2006 they've always had at least one, sometimes two, sometimes three seats in parliament. And it's not only a party for the welfare of animals, but also for all issues contributing to a healthy world we can live in universal health care, economic systems change. Europe, international solidarity and things like this. So, at least in the Netherlands it's possible to have a political agenda, which attracts thousands of people and makes a statement against. What we have here in a lot of European countries as a right wing populist anti human and anti animal political centers. The other thing I wanted to talk about is, I'll mention his name and I'll put a web link in the chat. There's a professor of nature and landscape conservation ecology and natural philosophy who studied comparative religions at the university in the Netherlands and his name is Mattis Scouton. There are a number of interesting articles by him in English online and YouTube films. He's made online. But in terms of how we can honor all things, one suggestion he made at a meeting I was at was to take some time every day to pay attention to something that is not man made. And whether that's a an animal or an insect or a stone or a tree. Take a minute or two several times a day to pay attention to things that aren't made by man. And I have started doing that. Since I heard him say that a couple of months ago. And I think it's helping me to understand ways to honor all things. Well, that's my contribution to now. Thank you so much. Judy, and you may have stepped away. Paging Judy Benham, please approach a white courtesy telephone. Whenever you come back, I'll come back to you. Doug C. You're muted. And feel free to take your time. I did not raise my hand so far as I'm aware. But since I'm here, the spirits raised it for you, please proceed. Conversation is really powerful. And when I say that animals are smarter than we are about what is important to them. I remember bringing home two kittens. In a three story three bedroom to story house. And within five minutes they knew every entrance and exit to every room in that house. That was just amazing to watch them put that map together. So I'll stop there. I'm reminded by what you just said about the wisdom of horses and I'm not a horse person, but I have enormous and like growing respect for horses, which are like large antennae for emotions and sensations. And they are unbelievable. There's a kind of therapy called family family constellations, which is usually done with people where you take one person who's the client of the session. They picture their family constellations sort of who plays what role, etc. They write down the different names on little slips of paper. And then the rest of the group and I might be making up parts of this, but this is just from memory. And for people who have offered to help pick up the roles and just without necessarily looking at the slip of paper, put them in their pocket. And then whoever's running the meeting asks everybody to stand relative to the client, however they feel they should stand relative to the client in the room. And it turns out that that is really evocative because people end up going to places that are meaningful for the role of the parent or the child or the uncle or whatever the abusive uncle who knows. And it turns out that you can also do this with horses. And that's a thing. So fascinating stuff. I had the pleasure of being in several constellations, both business constellations and family constellations and even a country constellation for this, the country of Bulgaria when I was there a few years ago. And I got to tell you, it's, I have no framework upon which to hang this that makes sense because there's stuff that happens that is really woo woo. I was asked to represent a man who'd been a defrocked priest because he'd been having affairs with parishioners. And so he resigned and then he went to a different church and became a pastor sort of affairs with parishioners and I was representing him and his wife was was watching as was his best friend and I was asked a question and I made a very flippery mark. And I immediately apologize that that wasn't really appropriate and his girl, his wife's girlfriend humor said, not only was that exactly what he would have said, your face took on his, you looked exactly like him when you said it. Wow. I was like, whoa, this is really strange, you know. I also was in a constellation where I had gone to lunch and had really lovely conversation with this man at lunch. And then an hour later we were in a constellation or he was, he was the uncle of me. And we're just standing together, and I thought we're going to get into a fight there was so much tension energy. You know, and I was instructed because the dynamic was this uncle had been very cool to this to the nephew. He said, you know, take this rock and give it to him and say, this is your burden I refuse to to receive it. I put it his feet and I said, I refuse and I said, no, no, you really have to do this with intention. And I did and I just burst into tears, and I cried for about 30 seconds and I was fine. And so there's, there's stuff in constellations that I, if you've never done it go, it's really amazing. I haven't had my own done but I've been in about six or seven of them now and it's you get information. It may not be may or may not be the truth, but it's really useful information. My friend who teaches cosplay just looks just information do with it what you will. And there's all kinds of variations but it's, it's pretty incredible stuff. I really appreciate your, your first 10 story there. That is wonderful. One of my amateur theories of humans and nature is that babies see things that we then train them out of that they can see or is and all that and that people who have that capacity are the ones who let that sort of survive through socialization. And that animals also see those kinds of things, they can sense a lot of this energy in us in different ways. And that there are a lot of phenomena that we have rationalized away out of our lives that are in fact real things. One of the things I loved about the healing wisdom of Africa by Melodome Sone was that it was the first time I read something where I was like, Ah, crap, here's here's a guy who was raised in Western civil, you know, Western educational system Western traditions and so forth. And then had an experience where he saw through the gateway into some other place and that shamans who are legitimate are the guardians of those gateways. And that there's another piece of life that many traditions in particular some indigenous many indigenous traditions honor and value and make a part of normal life that we have managed in Western tradition sort of normal Western, including religious tradition and certainly scientific traditions to say if you can't measure it it doesn't exist therefore it isn't the thing or, or to demonize, even if it wasn't measurable because it was not a scientific it was a religious tradition. Anyway, Judy you had your hand up earlier and you are back I'm wondering if you'd like to jump in and then I've got Stacy and bill after you. And you're muted so you're going to have to unmute. I actually put my hand back down because I forgot to put it down before. So, but I've made some comments and chat I'll let it go. I would maybe introduce the topic of humility as an opportunity for healing. Love that. Thanks. Stacy, over to you. Maybe this will tie into humility. I'm going to just say this like a story, because I don't know that I have the words and I'm just, I don't know that I'm going to be able to make the point but I'm going to try. So my heart, all of your hearts, my heart's a magnet. If I follow my heart, consciously, or unconsciously, it's still going to draw certain situations to me. It's still going to magnetize certain energies to me in the form of people or situations. And maybe it draws those things to me because I need healing. In those situations, I'm usually less conscious of that. And that's why maybe it doesn't feel good and I'm like why is this happening to me. And that's usually the why. But if I'm conscious, and I'm following my heart, and I'm using my mind with my heart. Because, you know, in the past I was always taught you're supposed to leave your mind behind. And I fought that tooth and nail. And I'm glad I fought a tooth and nail, because it's meant to work with my heart. But if I follow my heart, what I find is that situations and people that are resonating at around the same level. Come into my sphere. So if I could connect that to the question of, like when Ken was saying there's subgroups. That helps to find the subgroup that's creating the reality that I want to be a part of. So in that way, it's starting with me. And the people that, and again we're not all the same because it's just an energy, different things are going to happen within that energy. But it's creating a neighborhood, an energetic neighborhood. And I think that's where we start in the small energetic neighborhoods, and if I could just connect to obscure things to that Jerry when you were talking about the, the weapons and the military and the force. The only thing that I have ever thought can compete with that is relationships. And so real true relationships like I think that we're making here in small groups. That's what really counts, not just that oh you know somebody or, you know, we're part of the same group that doesn't mean anything. And I think so many people are learning lessons of betrayal. And that's another, that's another topic. And there was one other thing. Oh, when Carl, Carl mentioned predictability. And this morning before I got on this call, I came across, Urban Laszlo was interviewing Eric Braden. And it was the first time I heard it said that the better you know yourself, the less fearful you are 100% agree with that. But it was interesting. So it was interesting to hear Carl talk to talk about predictability, because again, that goes to the more aware of ourselves we become, because we're always asking how can we be less fearful because fear is behind all these bad things that seem to be made and this tendency to use force. So, again, I'm rambling a little bit but there's a lot of dots that need connecting and hopefully I threw a bunch out. That's excellent. Thank you. Bill then class. I just want to go back to something Jerry said about sort of how we're, or have been in our lives, trained to not pay attention to a lot of things that we actually, I believe can pay attention to so I know this sounds completely weird but there are two things so one experience I've had in my life, we talked about I had an intuition, you know about this but I didn't pay the attention to it, and over and over my wife and I like this. Well, I don't even pay attention to my intuition, you know. So the way I've characterized it to her is like so your intuition is like this little tiny voice over in the corner whispering. It's something very, very important to tell how I hope this is really, really important. And you're like what is that noise just like get rid of that I don't really care about that. No, it's really. Anyway, you know, so I have that experience but the other so we have tried to be a little more attentive to that but it's still really easy to miss piece of information that you're receiving. Just because you're not really aware of like wait, what was that. And the other thing I will share with you all is if when I'm, I'm able to see people's horrors. Not all the time. And I, if I can calm down enough I can actually but very often I can. And it's like a completely different kind of experience. And, and I've also had this experience and you all may have it but you know in various little when I was working more and I was in all these little meetings and meetups and you'd go to a conference you'd be here and there and my first experience in many of these situations is an emotional one. I remember walking into a big conference kind of thing, and all the hair on my neck went up and I'm like, okay, build you got to pay attention here. I'm sorry. It's just, you know, it's just like I had. I've had these experiences and I can't pay attention to them and sometimes I just don't because I'm actually you know have been in a culture which doesn't really practice paying attention to these things. In your experiences like that. Do people have consistent persistent or as order they fluctuate with instantaneous emotions and other sorts of things how does that kind of. How does that work. Like, doesn't work like that doesn't work like that. Okay, I don't have a thermometer. You know, it's like, yeah, it's not that kind of an experience. Just cool. Thank you. Class and Judy. Yeah, I really relate to what Bill is saying here. Around the same time that Laudato see came out. That was roughly the time when I had retired and started taking courses and introduction to sustainability took a course with Jeffrey sucks in their introduction to Columbia University and so on. Another voice that came out at that time was Jeremy Rifkin. It's the empathic civilization. Very, very powerful. 15 minutes. I must have watched this a dozen couple dozen times. But what he's really saying is that there is an empathic gene embedded in us. You know that that that has us experience with the other person experiences. And what he is arguing in this, in this 15 minute video there, and in his book that summarizes his book really is that we have the capacity to to bring out empathy. And in our empathic sense. We have to work it. And I think we talked a little bit in this thread about fear, how fear disrupts the ability for this empathy to really function. I think you have to have a sense of peace first. You have a sense of inner stability and harmony before, you know, you're able to to experience that but this is. And another totally thoughtful way to to find, you know, a connection with with the general public that needs to that needs to begin to understand needs to really come into an understanding of what we're doing with nature and why this is so destructive and so dangerous at this time. I don't think this is an exaggeration but nonviolent social action seems to me to be designed to evoke empathy and others. The principles and dynamics of nonviolent social action are to accept violence and to accept hatred from other people. But I think rely heavily on that being seen by others through media, like you want the reporters there. You want cameras on it so that it's not just local witnesses but rather the world that winds up seeing that you're being mistreated in a public way and in a horrible way and that that's not right. It's caused a tremendous amount of change in the world for the good that hasn't solved the problems but really works. And so it feels like triggering that empathic responses is an important and functional tool. And one of my concerns now is that when the enemy knows that that's what you're doing they can disrupt that as well and that's happening actively now. And add that to the fact that humans are so adaptable that we get enured to violence and to images like this and we start to just, they're either overwhelming or they're boring by repetition or who knows what but they lose their effectiveness that way. And that scares me a lot because that human empathic response is really, really important. And in a generation raised with first person shooters and God knows what else. I don't know what's going on there. I worry about that a lot. Yeah. Thank you. Judy and Ken. One of what I'm thinking about here is that when we think about the massiveness of all things if we were to be able to humanly to minimize humanity and think in terms of all of the other dynamic living forces that would connect us more fundamentally to questions of the type we're but I also think that our society or human centric society has minimized the effect or impact of empathy and the ability to connect to other people. There's no isolationist in many of its teachings and tenants that there's no systematic process, other than the parental environment to encourage children and young people and other citizens to contemplate the inherent empathy that they've lost touch with. And I don't know how to address that because it's sort of almost a mysticism concept for many people in Western civilizations. But the fact that we've lost touch with the smallness of human humans in the scope of the entire ecosystem of the world and the planets and everything else is disturbing to me, but I don't know how to address it. A couple of years ago, my heart broke a little bit when I read an article about how they were trying to teach like second graders empathy by bringing babies into the classroom. And I was like, Oh, God, like, like, we were really broken if this is what we're doing. And glad they're trying something, but, but, you know, we're born with this. Well, I just remember an admonition that I got that set me back when I was younger my mom thought I was too trusting. And so she thought that I shouldn't trust people unless they had demonstrated that they were trustworthy. And that stuck for a while and then I realized the inverse was what I needed to do that I want to trust everyone until I have evidence that they're not trustworthy. Then I can change my evaluation. And that was something I did 30 years ago or so. But that early childhood training was unhelpful. And you just described beautifully those the two approaches to it, like is your default setting to mistrust everyone until they prove that they're trustworthy or opposite. And I agree with your read on that completely. Mr. Homer, whenever you feel like something you may know Steven Mitchell. Steven used to live here in Marin, I'd seen pretty regularly on the trails and spirit rock and he spent many years as a student of Zen, with a Zen master in problems with Allen. And he decided he's a very brilliant man author translator reads and writes many different languages Greek, Latin, Aramaic. And he thought, I really want to explore the life and teachings of Jesus or a book called the gospel according to Jesus, you know, back to the original Aramaic texts that he could find. And he said there's two things that Jesus said more than anything else. The first one was fear not. I said, you know, having been trained in a spiritual discipline I was looking for authentic spiritual teachings because in my experience. A teacher does not proscribe behavior, but rather gives you useful information about how to behave not how not to behave. And a lot of the information in the Bible is not authentic from a spiritual teacher standpoint but rather from the early church fathers who were trying to control people. And Thomas Jefferson had what he called the Jefferson Bible. And he would copy out parts of the Bible that he thought were authentic. And he said it's as easy as picking diamonds from a dung hill to check to pull out the real nuggets of wisdom there. And so I love this idea that Jesus said, you know, fear not that was his main teaching was do not be afraid because the minute you become afraid, you contract you lose connection. You lose connection to resources both internally and externally, and you start to see threats and it puts you in a place where you become reactive rather than reflective. And it leads to the male side of the amygdala of the fight fight freeze as opposed to the female side of the amygdala which is tend to be friend. Another thing that Jesus said, among all of his teachings, more often than anything else was love thy neighbor as thyself, which is an amazing systems teaching. Because if you love your neighbor as yourself then before you react react to your neighbor in a poor way you say, Well, how is this something that's reflective of me. You know, and if I've got something one of my neighbor that is challenging to me, how do I relate to that within myself to project that out on them, or do I examine where's that coming from. So to me this is really so useful, you know, to know these things I'm not a fiest I'm you know that's not my my path but I find this perspective into the teachings of Jesus which is you know, he's had a profound influence on a lot of people. But I don't think a lot of people recognize this they have not delve deeply into see what did the man actually say more than anything else. The other story I want to tell was about some of us may now with his wife. I did workshops with both of them, 30 years ago when they're out here in the Bay Area. And some of who was telling a story of was Jefferson, sorry, was Jefferson's work and influence on Mitchell. Yeah, it was part of his research he read the Jefferson Bible. Check out the book and sir. But so Bonfu was telling a story of being in Burkina Faso and they, which is where she's from. And they brought a group of women from Germany. And these women were just talking and talking and talking and they were not paying attention to anything. And she took them down to the river and had them lay down next to the river and covered them in mud. It's just be quiet. Just stop talking just be quiet and feel yourself on the earth and listen to the river. And it was transformative. After that, they began to notice things they began to become much more aware of the world around them. And this is another really powerful teaching for me of, if you take some time to connect with the earth, the earth will tell you things, but you have to be open you have to be willing to let go of all of your weird Western educated rich industrial democratic mindset and open yourself. I read a story of from a man who takes some troubled youth on wilderness retreats up in Alaska and he said take some about you know first they freak out because we take away their phones and all their games and stuff. And the first three or four days they're totally they don't know what to do they're having outcomes of anxiety. So after about 72 to 96 hours, their eyes begin to resolve the world in a new way they start to see patterns in nature they start to wake up. Nature is there it's alive. There's an African saying the whole world's alive and talking to you. You know, and you you begin to come into a different way of being a different set of relationships. And I think that's, that's another piece that those of us who live in cities or even those who live in the country but don't spend time really connecting with nature, we could all learn something from just take some time every day get on the side of a friend who as long as it's not raining she goes out year round and lays on the ground for half an hour every day. So this is my, this is how I stay rooted and connected. So a couple things that were just thrown through my mind as a result of this conversation. Thanks Ken, I think it's a nice moment for a pause so let's just go into silence for a bit. I'll bring us back out and then we can see where we go for our last little stretch here. We can see that maybe when summer is back we can have a call where everybody is lying on the ground. And our job is to call in with our phones and we'll have a call we'll have an OGM call. That'd be lovely. Right now, not so good in Portland. Yeah, you've had flooding up there you okay is everything. Everything's fine and we're flood warnings but it's just been raining a whole bunch. And in another three days it'll clear up for a bit but there is no drought here the aquifer is being replenished nicely on this little corner of Oregon I think this is other parts that are more toward drought. But thank you. I ran an experiment with some friends one day in New Mexico of laying on the ground and grounding into the sky. Interesting practice. Come on Bill, you know just tough it out man. I would tough it out but I have a very severe reaction in the parts of my body that get bitten swell up enormously. So, no, but I will. Since I was a little child I've always been interested in clouds for some reason, I thought I was going to be a meteorologist but whatever. But so I'm, you know, it's like the most cheapest entertainment around it just look up into the sky. And if there are clouds there. You know, it's actually quite. It's lovely. It's pretty interesting. It's nice. It's nice at night to. Thanks Bill. Hank then john was probably walking back with his groceries. Thanks again everybody. I just have a quick question. If anyone can steer me to some resources about it. Next week I'll be with a group of 16. Government officials from different countries. We're doing what we're calling a wilderness camp in the middle of Finland near the Russian border, where they're mostly only trees as far as I've been told that of course there are some cabin for people. I would like to introduce them to some resources about the, the immaterial value of the wilderness, the value of the wilderness that cannot be put into commodification by society. Because any sources of people who written or spoken about that. I really appreciate it in chat. Thanks. Thanks Hank. I think there's a couple books out like the mother tree and things about the wood wide web that might be interesting that are probably better known. April just went to a week long happiness master class and she taught a piece of it in Finland, which was really, really interesting and it was held at our resort out in the woods someplace. I'll get the name of it, just in case it's the place you're going. John floor is yours. Thank you. Okay, so a short tribute and warning and advice and plus warning about Norman Lear first attribute. Amazing. Amazing gift to humanity. Lots of things you could say. There's a lesson and a warning in Archie bunker or in all of the family. The lesson for all of us is in relation to this talk is, you know, we're, I would say that we're a, a sort of a flexibly wrote woke group. We're not rigidly woke, but we're woke, you know, let's, in the sense that we, we have a rich set of references that we can accurately assume we share with the other people and therefore, we may not be as accommodating of the, let's say the Archie bunker position. So the lesson is, you know, if we were going to do a scenario that involves training or offering training for folks along a continuum that might wind up where we hope it would wind up it might need to begin with, you know, let's stick to cute and the bears or you know, in other words, the idea of quote unquote, dumbing down the, the, the bigger picture, the connectedness. There's a way to do it this respectful that's that's not dumbing down but does take into account the fact that they're going to be people who are going to come in at the panda level that's I'm just, you get what I mean, you know, they're going to they're drawn into the cuteness. And that's okay, you know, you want what you want to do is you want to have an entry to ramp that's there. And then you want to ease people along as, as, as well as they can, and given the scarcity of resources. I'm the horse thing is amazing. I, I don't have direct experience of this, but I have a lot of indirect experience. I have a family who've done horse trainings. And yeah, you want to, you want to maybe save that for at least for now, when it's pretty hard to do and pretty expensive you want to save it for maybe some of the young people who are having a much greater difficulty adapting to their, to their situations. There's two notes. Oh, and the warning up from from Archie bunker is they did some surveys. Carol Connor that the actor who played him, you know, gave an interview late in life and said, you know, he did, he'd done some, they've done some interviews with people and he was worried about the Archie character was for some people reinforcing rather than questioning that point of view. And they wanted they basically said, yeah, Archie's right and I'm like Archie and you know, that's how things should be and and meet had really is a meet and so, you know, we have to, we have to be a little careful when we design that that continuum of experiences that it goes from the perhaps the simplified perhaps the cute or the sweet, and then it eases into, you know, getting in the mud, or truly, whatever else something what many of us have done, you know, in our, in our experiences. Okay, so that's it. John, thank you and thanks for sharing your bus ride with us. That's awesome. Are you not on the bus you want to add a bus shelter. No, I'm actually I'm at a, you know, I'm at a post COVID restaurant or a COVID restaurant. In other words, it's the outdoors of a closed restaurant. There we go. All these things, instead of parking parking, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's an amazing hallmark about our culture and the time that we've been to, and I hope we keep them I hope I hope they don't log down. I think they're, they're very interesting in terms of how they disrupted our notion of public space. I was sad to see a lot of the park let stuff go away when people thought the pandemic was all done. I think we're going to keep, we're going to keep in here. Too many, too many restaurants made too much money. Yeah, exactly. Or survive because they have so they're going to fight to keep them. Exactly. Part of what you were saying was, was about the journey or the path that I'm really, really interested in, which is how do you and how does one engage people who might not be open to some of these messages or thoughts in a way that works for them. It's a bit of what Hank was saying too. And then, and then what is the journey from that point, like, and how do we meet someplace in the middle and one of the things I think I admired a lot about Archie Bunker and all the family was how it dealt with social issues really pretty bluntly, but in a very humorous way. And it, you know, I miss shows like that and why you've heard me say some of you've heard me say before that I hated the comedy of the 90s because it was Seinfeld and friends and the show about nothing and a show where I couldn't tell who was sleeping with whom and I didn't care. And it was just so opposite and different from Norman Lear and other other attempts to sort of address some of these issues, dangers not withstanding. So that's with closing thoughts for today's call about sort of reflecting on on the topic and ways that you would like to revisit it or extend it or anything like that. I'll go. Thank you. Thank you all for a lovely call. It's been really thought provoking and interesting for me. I want to acknowledge that I started in anger. I'm angry at humans. I hear Brother Ken's conveyed wisdom, not to walk in fear. And so walking in anger is, is, you know, akin to that. I also hear Brother Ken's exhortation to remember that that it's not all humans that are terrible. And I still have problems with that one, because for me, it's kind of a 10 year own house thing. You know, if there's a human torturing some non human thing. Any human and all humans should go over and say, Hey, we don't do that kind of thing. We're not that kind of species. And so I know I don't do that in my life. I don't go over to people and say, Hey, you know that concentrated animal feeding operation. Let's not do that because I think we ought to be better than that. I don't do that. But I live in a society where I'm pretty sure that would not be, you know, not, not have have the impact that I would want it to have. So, So I can ignore my anger, I guess, but I can't let go of it. Thank you for those reflections really appreciate them. That makes sense. Plus Carl that I'm hoping Ken has a poem to take us out. Yeah, I'm just reflecting how how to structure communications to to reach that empathic nerve, you know, and actually, you know, as we're talking, what what is sort of becoming to the front is that 10 years ago, there were a lot of voices talking about what we're doing to nature and how dangerous that is. So I'm talking about the Lord Odyssey and Jeremy Rifkin came out with this Prince Charles Charles at the time Prince gave a speech at Georgetown University that was amazing. We're talking about how we are, how we have created a completely unsustainable food system that will exit that will run out. But then these voices have fallen silent. So the last few years, the ranker has increased. There is an adamant rejection of the kind of changes that would be required to to reconnect ourselves with the natural world and to pay attention to the issues that we have created in nature. And so, and I mean, very deliberately so, and that's really scary. I mean, you mentioned a cherry that the peaceful protests are a powerful tool if there's a camera on it and people can see it. But also that has been sort of successfully taken out because the media is captured. So we're in a really precarious time and to figure out how to how to structure mind pictures in ways that they resonate. I think that's really that's really a task. That's a task of our time sort of. Carl, then we'll sneak Stacy in and then can. Classes comment there remind me of they saw something Peter Sandgate talked about our, the, the US food supply Travis 2000 miles per pound. And, and then also Institute for the future they were talking about. They talked about planetary energy I mean it's like, like millions of barrels of oil kind of thing so they came up with cubic miles of oil and we get for about 42 cubic miles of oil worth of energy from the sun every day. So just that idea of units of measure can kind of get maybe can spark people to think a little in a different way. And the last thing was I posted a link to brother David Steindal Ross there but the grandfather of gratitude but maybe I listened to quite a few things over the Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe we can get more people watching that just feel gratitude for things that kind of a theme for for what we've been talking about today. And thank you for those things. I just wanted to throw something out real quickly to be talked about maybe another time. In all of my life experience. What I found is that the most success and connecting has always been through grief. And I think that that is a place that we should look to like when we're trying to come up with how do we do this. There's something in connecting through grief and so much longer discussion and the lovely opening. Thank you for that Stacy. And that reminds me of a story that I heard Jack cornfield tell 30 some odd years ago of after the Vietnam War. And it ended when the Americans pulled out. There was a very famous Buddhist monk who gathered all these people together in Vietnam. And these were folks who'd been on both sides and they were wounded people and people who'd suffered tremendous loss to family and property and homes and, and, you know, there's a lot of tension. And we really want to know what is this man going to say how is he going to help, you know, all these people who are suffering. And he came out and he just chanted, hatred never ceases from hatred, but by love alone is healed. This is an ancient and eternal law and he just kept repeating that. And slowly one by one people just began to weep at all of the loss that they had had and recognizing that the anger and the hatred was not going to help. And it dissolved something very hard in that field and allowed a different way of being to come forth. And I think that's always worth remembering that I have to remind myself often. You know, I've had a lot of anger in my life and a lot of, I've had a lot of hatred in my life and really been working hard these last 30 years to soften that and cleanse that out of my system. And that showed up in the story with my father, you know, maybe he read my, my post in Plex and I was really pissed at him for a very long time. But I had to come around and look through his eyes and see what was going on. And that helped me to let go a lot of my anger. Before, before poetry can thank you for that post and Pete, thank you for creating a vessel for that post that was really special to read. It's first time I've shared that you're only the person who's seen that as my wife. I wrote it, you know, 13 years ago now but I came across it this week I'm like, you know, I want to and in honor of the call, you know, I want to honor my dad here. You know, appreciate. I've had a couple of you know me directly and say it was moving to them I really appreciate that so thank you if you, it reached you anyway. Okay. How about we go to DH Lawrence escape. When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego. And we escape like squirrels, turning in the cages of our personality. And we get into the forest again. We shall shiver with cold and fright, but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in and passion will make our bodies taught with power. We shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down. And institutions will curl up like burnt paper. From your lips to God's ears. That's a really lovely way to end this call. Thank you. Thank you all. Awesome.