Tuesday evening in Hillsborough, the Rev. Marguerite Serrine, pastor of the Presbyterian church that Alice and I attend, offered a prayer of confession to begin a service of solidarity (in memory of George Floyd and other victims of recent police violence) in the parking lot of a neighboring congregation, Piney Grove Missionary Baptist Church.

A hundred and fifty or so people of various races, cultures, and faith traditions attended, all of us voluntarily with face masks on and carefully socially distanced from one another. For me it was a powerful and helpful experience that restored a degree of hopefulness to my own human spirit, and I am sincerely grateful to Justice United of Orange County for organizing the event.

All of the comments, prayers, and preaching we heard was powerful. But Marguerite’s prayer at the beginning was, for me, especially moving and set the tone for the service. I have asked her permission to share it with you. She began with this introduction:

“The purpose of this meeting is to demonstrate solidarity across our communities; to condemn the recent murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor; and to propose action to meet with local law enforcement in Orange County. But before we get to all that, it might help to start with a confession.

“Confession is that Christian tradition of owning up to our own wrongs, so that we might develop a little more compassion when we see others go wrong. It is following Jesus when he said ‘take the log out of your own eye before removing the splinter from your neighbor’s eye.'”

She then continued:

“Please bow with me. Holy God who, for some of us, is expressed in the Tetragrammaton, for others in Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for others in the great mystery of benevolent presence, but who, for all of us, is beyond anything we can totally describe or imagine, we have much to confess before you and one another in this painful time.

“We confess how much helplessness and anger there is that brings us, once again, to gather because Americans of color keep dying in the custody of white American police officers.

“We confess how much guilt there is on the part of white America and anger on the part of black America that, once again, we see the wages of the sins of slavery being paid by people whose race has set them at disadvantage with regard to law enforcement, opportunity, and health.

“We confess the fact that we are here again, and we grieve the fact that we are here again with thoughts and prayers, having failed at creating the land of the free for every citizen and guest.

“Lord, we confess that we would rather condemn others out of self-righteousness than listen to them, trying to learn where we might be wrong about them and they about us, and confessing all we learn to each other so that your transformative grace might become more than just a prayer, but our way of life. 

“Lord, forgive us. Help us. Hear us. Create in us the mercy, grace, forgiveness, and compassion that would enact the change in the world that you want to see in each one of us. Amen.”

Thank you, Marguerite. At the conclusion of the service, which was brief, it was announced that Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood has already agreed to meet with Justice United leaders soon to discuss local police policies and procedures and how changes, if and when needed, can and will be made.

Stuck here at home as so many of us are now, I’ve had the chance to watch and listen to a number of preachers do it online recently, from churches of various sizes — all of them, though, (the preachers, that is) seemingly “progressive” theologically and compelling homiletically.

And I’ve noticed something.

Except for Thursday evening last week (Maundy Thursday) when the preacher used the Epistle for the day, I Corinthians 11:23-26, all of them based their sermons on a lesson from the Gospels, most from John, which is the book for the readings suggested by the lectionary this year, but one (yesterday morning) from Matthew’s telling of the Resurrection story, which was the alternate lesson suggested for Easter Day.

In every instance where the Gospel text was used, the preacher read and then preached as though the lesson were an accounting of something that happened long ago just that way and just as the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible now presents it to us.

But it didn’t, of course. It couldn’t have.

The Gospel writer who called himself “Matthew” (or who may have been given that name by someone else to make him seem more legitimate) didn’t do even  a  first draft of his book until late in the first century, 50 years or so after Jesus’ crucifixion and 80 years from the time he was born. That’s a long time! Think about it.

Plus, we know Matthew got what he wrote about, at least some of it, from stories that had been passed along by word of mouth for decades and some from accounts that others, like the writer we know as “Mark,” had written earlier, again, decades earlier.

Moreover, “Matthew,” like the other Gospel writers, had particular reasons for telling the “stories” the way he did. The most important of these was that he pretty clearly was a Jew who wanted to convince his Jewish sisters and brothers at a time after their Temple had been demolished and the Romans had taken over completely that Jesus had indeed been the long-awaited Messiah. They needed to get on board with the program.

Same for the writer we now call “John.” His Gospel version wasn’t published, nor maybe even written, until close to the very end of the first century, possibly not even until the early second century. Likewise, as with Matthew, John had his own special reasons (and particular audiences) to tell the Jesus stories the way he did. And those reasons were different from the reasons of Matthew, as were the reasons of all the gospel writers different from one another.

So why don’t preachers ever say this when and as they hold forth?

Is it any wonder that youth, young adults, and even older folks say “Huh?” when they hear these stories read then expounded in sermons? And is it any wonder that so many of them leave, educated as they are in the physical sciences and scientific methods?

Now, please know that I’m not slinging accusations toward preachers about things I never did from the pulpit. At least, I hope I’m not. Looking and checking back, I did it much the same way. But I shouldn’t have, and I wish now I hadn’t.

I did, however – or most always did – introduce the gospel readings for the service as “The Gospel according to…” whomever. And I generally tried, best I could, to offer some context and a bit of background before I read the lesson for the day.

Still, I wish I had done more. Because nowadays I’m thinking it’s critically important. Else the people in the pews who are saying “Huh?” leave and never come back, and the Church and other faith-based institutions — which are the only institutions I can think of that carry values such as civility, decency, loving- kindness, and fairness forward to the next generation and the next – shrink from irrelevance into oblivion.

Then where will we be?

Sorry to end on a bummer note on a Monday-after-Easter morning. Just saying.

Thanks as always for listening.

Today at lunch at Hillsborough Presbyterian Church, where Alice and I attend, the chair of the session’s community outreach committee did a “TED Talk” on how Orange County Justice United and other organizations like it affiliated with the 70-year old Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) are bringing back power and influence to churches that no longer have it (i.e., power and influence) in their communities.

Her “Talk” blew me away. See, churches (and other faith organizations), fairly recently actually, have been supplanted by other institutions “of power and influence,” institutions such as local government, school districts, and the business community, she said.

No surprise there, I suppose. But what seriously impressed me was her illustration of how the once-powerful-on-their-own-but-no-longer churches, parishes, and synagogues, when they gather themselves together intentionally and begin to know and trust one another intimately, still have the power to confront and gain the respect of the new power brokers of our age…and make systemic change happen.

Witness what has happened in our own Orange County, NC community with issues such as actually affordable housing for poor people in Chapel Hill, absentee Hillsborough lower-income apartment complex landlords actually paying attention and fixing things, and a district attorney who agrees to ignore the technicalities of “the law” so Hispanic drivers are no longer targeted unfairly as “revenue streams” for the county.

Institutions of faith coming together and regaining the lost power they once had — up until fairly recently — made these things happen.

Just as importantly, these same faith institutions, in their coming together to accomplish the common goals that their respective traditions call them to address, have discovered across the racial, ethnic, denominational, and many other divisions that separate us, our common humanity.

Not sure if I speak for all of the 30 some people who attended this afternoon (though I have a hunch I do for most), but thank you, Jane (and JU coordinator Devin Ross, whom Jane said she heard describe the concept initially) for your “Talk.”

In his Letter from A Birmingham Jail 56 years ago (August, 1963) Martin Luther King explained to eight “well-intended” Protestant ministers, all of them white and all of them men, why the movement for human rights simply couldn’t wait for a better time, as they had urged. Over the years, I’ve come to think he spoke the Gospel truth. We can’t wait for a better time, ever.

Recently – well, last summer – the Presbyterian Church (USA), my own faith community which itself is as skillful at waiting, for good but tedious reasons as anybody else, I guess, began the process of considering whether Dr. King’s letter or portions of it should be added to our constitutional Book of Confessions as a contemporary statement of what we also believe.

Yesterday at Hillsborough Presbyterian Church, Robin Cooper, a member of the session and also third year student at Duke Divinity School, led us in an affirmation of faith that he had adapted from the letter. It seemed to me a wonderful example of how the letter can be really effectively used in our present national moment of indecision about who gets in and who doesn’t, who should be caged then returned to where they came from, who gets justice and who doesn’t, and when should justice happen.

I asked Robin’s permission to publish his adaptation in this very occasional blog of mine, and, happily, he gave it. Incidentally, his sermon, Difficult Habits, based on the encounters the dopey/smelly/shepherd-vine dresser/old-rocker Amos had with both the king and the Lord and on the story of the good Samaritan was also profound…and appropriate. Here’s the affirmation, right out of the bulletin:

    “We believe that sin is separation from God and from other humans. Thus, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

    “We believe that Jesus Christ taught a Gospel of truth, love, and justice. Thereby, all of God’s children are called to seek out justice even when to do so might cause disorder in our communities and in our churches. We reject teachings that hold order above justice.

    “We believe that progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless effort of people willing to be co-workers with God.

    “We affirm that we seek to follow Jesus Christ who was an extremist for love, truth, and justice, and thereby rose above his environment.

    “We reject all teachings which seek to make firm the distinction between sacred and secular. Therefore, we affirm the siblinghood of all people regardless of ethnicity, gender, class, or legal status. All are one people in the body of Jesus Christ. We are a colony of heaven called to obey God rather than humans.

    “We work to bring about a Church that is a thermostat which transforms the mores of society rather than a Church that is merely a thermometer recording the ideas and principles of popular opinion.

    “We believe that one day the radiant stars of love and siblinghood will shine over the world with all their scintillating beauty.”

Thanks again, Robin. And thanks to all of you, as always, for listening.

Robin Cooper, a seminarian at Duke Divinity School and member of Hillsborough Presbyterian Church where Alice and I attend, preached there this past Sunday. I wasn’t there, but Alice was and reported back that Robin’s sermon was seriously compelling. So I asked him for a copy, which he graciously sent, and then asked him for permission to publish it, which he graciously gave.

I think the sermon is excellent. For me, it offers important hope in a time when the church seems as polarized as the world. I had begun to think, in fact, that a pastor’s job is so difficult nowadays that it’s almost impossible to preach prophetically. Someone is sure to be offended, rightly or wrongly. But Robin, who is a personable and likeable guy, seems to me to demonstrate that it isn’t impossible.

I’d like to know what you think. Here’s his sermon. His texts were the lectionary suggestions for the day, I Samuel 2:18-20, 26 and Luke 2:41-52:

In these two stories, Samuel and Jesus are young people growing in the faith.  It’s unclear exactly how old Samuel is, but we do know that Jesus is 12 years old.  Do you all remember being 12 years old.  I do.  My twelfth year was the most difficult year of my life.  I was in the 7^th grade, and I was awkward and funny looking.  My voice was doing weird things, and I had an oversized head.  Some of the 8^th graders made fun of my big head by calling me “Helmet Head.”  I had recently moved to a new town, and I had a hard time making new friends. 

To the middle schoolers worshiping with us today, I would like to tell you all that your life will most likely be more pleasant in adulthood.  As an adult, you’ll find that you no longer have to impress people in order to make friends and be well respected.  Trust me, there is nothing impressive about my life, but I have friends, and most people tend to treat me with respect.  I hope you can find comfort in knowing that even Jesus was once your age, and even Jesus suffered most of whatever you might now be suffering.

One of the more awkward things about being a twelve-year-old is the way your relationship with your parents begins to change.  Most twelve-year-olds begin to distance themselves from their parents.  Or was I the only one?  I doubt it. 

As a pre-teen, I both loved and resented my parents.  I loved them because they took care of me, and they loved me.  But I resented their tendency to embarrass me in front of my peers.  Like many parents, my parents had cute little nicknames for me.  Mama used to call me “Bunny Boy” and Daddy used to call me “Scooty Poop.”  As a pre-teen, I lived in constant terror that he would call me “Scooty Poop” in front of my peers.  How could I ever attract the eye of my crush if she knew my dad called me “Scooty Poop?”

Not only do I know what it’s like to be twelve, but I also know what it’s like to be a twelve-year-old who has been left behind by his parents.  Mine were great parents, but it hurt my feelings when they forgot to pick me up from school or when they left me somewhere else.  They were not bad parents, and neither were Mary and Joseph.  We can all be a little neglectful sometimes.  Can’t we?

An early version of this sermon sought only to provide a word of comfort to our youth and the parents of our youth.  I believe that interpreting today’s scripture in this way is both sound and important.  I hope that we can all see that message in today’s text.  It’s okay if your parents leave you behind from time to time.  But don’t worry.  They’ll come back for you.  Jesus too suffered this indignity.  Your parents love you. 

Sometimes, being left by your parents might even lead to experiences of great learning.  I can only imagine how much Jesus must have learned during his five days of studying with those who taught in the Temple.

Today, I feel called to present a different way of looking at this text.  A way that provides insights for all members of the Church.  To do this, perhaps we should ask different questions of this text.

Have you ever thought of the Church as a parent?  It was common for early Christians to talk about “Mother Church.”  I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve learned some very important lessons from the Church.  In fact, much of the wisdom my own biological parents have taught me is actually the Church’s wisdom.

Today, we should read this text while asking ourselves an important question.  How has the Church – as parent – left our siblings in Christ behind?  How has our own congregation done this?

I am extremely happy to be a part of this congregation.  I love you all, and I am convinced of your love for me.  We worship every week in this beautiful sanctuary.  I like to describe our sanctuary as being just plain enough, or rather, just Presbyterian enough.  This place is plain enough to not distract from our services, but it’s not so plain that it become uncomfortable or awkward.  I am thankful for this great sanctuary that is over 200 years old.

I am also especially thankful that the architecture of this space constantly reminds us of our former sins.  We have this beautiful balcony.  This beautiful balcony that many of our youthful sisters and brothers enjoy worshiping in.  But this beautiful balcony reminds us of our ugly past.  That balcony was originally built for slaves.

When the Kirklands and other slave owning Presbyterian families came here to worship, that balcony gave them a place to put their human property.  That balcony allowed them to feel good about themselves for sharing their faith with their slaves, while allowing them the misplaced dignity of not sitting with black people.  That balcony allowed the whole congregation to quite literally turn their backs on their non-white siblings in Christ.

Our first pastor was John Knox Witherspoon, Jr.  If that isn’t a Presbyterian name, I don’t know what is.  Reverend Witherspoon wasn’t a particularly radical man.  To my knowledge, he never spoke against the institution of slavery itself. 

He was, however, asked to leave this congregation for saying that slave owners had a responsibility to teach their slaves to read so that they could read the Bible themselves.  This was before the chancel where the choir is sitting was built, but can you imagine him standing about right there saying this in the presence of both slave and slave owner?  I can see how all of this was just a bit too much for the Presbyterian gentry of the day.

Of course, we do better now.  Right?  We’re a congregation that takes our call to be constantly reforming ourselves seriously.  We no longer ask non-white congregants to sit quietly in the balcony behind all of our backs.

We have opened wide our doors to everyone.  But do we listen to them?  Do we learn from those we previously walked away from?

Katie Cannon passed away earlier this year.  Dr. Cannon was the first black woman ordained as a teaching elder in the PC(USA). In other words, she was the first black female Presbyterian preacher in America. And she was one of the founders of what is called womanist theology.  Womanist theology endeavors to show the ways that the Church has historically turned its back on black females. 

I am happy that Katie Cannon helped found this most helpful school of thought.  But I wonder how much we – as white Presbyterians, as white Christians, as white people – have sought to learn from her. 

Jesus studied during the time between his parents leaving him at the Temple and their return.  He had much to share with them.  How might we learn from Katie Cannon and the many others our church has left behind?  We are happy to open wide our church doors, but do we seek out the very people that we have historically marginalized?  Do we seek them out and try to learn from them?  Or do we simply open our doors to them, expecting them to come to us?

It’s easy to see the ways we marginalize people who don’t look like us, but I feel called to take this question one step further.  How do we leave behind those who don’t think like us? 

Lately, our denomination has seemed to do a good job of reforming itself.  Once reformed, always reforming.  But might we have begun to leave behind folk who have sound theological reasons for disagreeing with our latest reforming?  Might we be beginning to leave behind people who don’t think like us?

Let me be perfectly clear about who I am wondering about when I ask these questions:  I am wondering what worship in this place might feel for someone who opposes same-sex marriage.  I am wondering about people who oppose safe sanctuary for people whose lives are in danger in the country of their birth.  I am wondering about people who think that the president is a good model of how to live a faithful Christian life.

Is it possible that we have all become so self-righteous in our own beliefs that our church is no longer able to mother people who hold a certain set of ideals?

It takes a lot of humility to admit when we’ve wronged someone.  And it takes even more humility to go back to those very people a have dialogue with them.  But doing so makes the Church stronger and truer to its mission.  Doing so makes the Church true to its mission to parent the children of God.

Friends, know this: Christ gives us the humility to do this difficult work.  Colossians 3 tells us that Christ renews us and that “In that renewal, there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!”

People who look different from us and people who think differently than us do not lack Christ.  No one argues for or against one of the Church’s stances because Christ is or is not in them.  Christ is in all of his children.  We just need to humble ourselves in order to see that.

If the words of Colossians 3 are true, then we have the ability to do this most difficult work.  With the Holy Spirit we can help this church be a beacon of God’s Word in this community.  The gospel promise means that we can hug the descendants of those who were forced into our balcony.  Have you hugged someone of a different race lately?  Have you hugged an immigrant lately?  Have you hugged a hardline conservative or liberal lately?

Friends, it is time for us to clothe our church with the love which binds everything together in perfect harmony so that we may return to those we have left behind, so that we might do the tough work of reconciliation, so that we might learn from those we’ve left behind, so that they might feel Christ’s love in this church.

Amen.

Yesterday morning in celebration of All Saints Day at the historic Presbyterian church where Alice and I attend, I read excerpts from John Donne’s 17th century meditation from the church balcony.

The reading began: “The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all.” And it ended, of course, with: “Any[one’s] death diminishes me, because I am involved in [hu]mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

The pastor had cleaned up Donne’s gender-specific language. Still, as I sat in that same balcony where slaves such as Elizabeth Keckley sat in the mid-19th century and where “free” Blacks would have been expected to sit well into the second half of the 20th century, I couldn’t help but wonder what they might have thought if they had heard Donne’s words.

The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions. And all that she does belongs to all. Really? Elizabeth Keckley, who later went on to buy her freedom and eventually move to Washington D.C. then become Mary Lincoln’s dressmaker and eventually write and publish her own life’s story, was owned, beaten, and occasionally loaned out to other white men for “services” by the Rev. Robert Burwell, the pastor of the very church I was in. What might she have thought had she heard Donne’s altruistic but, for her, hollow words?

Or what might she have thought sitting in that balcony had she heard the ending of the meditation: Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. How might Elizabeth Keckley ever have become more “diminished” than she already was by anyone’s death save her own?

Conversely, it was death, the death of a way of life and thinking in this country, one that somehow justified slavery and the dominance of certain beings over other beings, and the death of more Americans in a war more horrible than any other that gave Ms. Keckley expanded and enlarged life or at least the hope for it. Wasn’t it?

Still, as I sat in that balcony yesterday morning, I couldn’t help but also think, would that it were true. Because it isn’t.

In a way that is very much real, there are still Elizabeth Keckleys who must sit at least symbolically in the balconies of our worlds, even our churches, listening to the bedazzling words of those more powerful or their pundits. Blacks are still expected to sit in such places, if you think about it. So are women and homosexuals, and people of other colors and races than white, and the learning disabled, emotionally fragile, undereducated, impoverished, otherwise disadvantaged, and all the rest who simply cannot become more “diminished” than they already are by anyone’s death, even their own.

So, please, let’s not ever read or recite John Donne to the poor or powerless of the world ever! Talk of them being diminished even more by anything is a crock if not plain silly.

Rather, let’s speak it only to the rich and powerful, which by and large was the case with the mainline congregation in whose balcony I was sitting yesterday, come to think of it.

It’s the rich and powerful — us — who need to hear Donne’s words. Because for sure it is they — us, rather — who are diminished by the death or continued suffering of even just one of the poor or powerless of our world. Because they are the [hu]mankind that we are involved with, like it or not. They can never be diminished, but we certainly can be if we don’t get about the tasks of loving and caring that the preacher talked about in her sermon.

Amen.

Oh, wow! The silly p*****g contest among Duke Divinity School faculty members reported by the Raleigh News & Observer today reminds me of the contests for power and position that happen in our nation’s capitol.

Except, in the latter instance the contests really matter, and the consequences of who wins  have serious and even lethal and literally destructive consequences; while in the former instance, i.e., in the case of theologians and biblical scholars calling one another time wasters, racists, and ad hominem debaters, the consequences by comparison seem not to matter at all. Indeed the e-mail mudslinging that has gone on at the Div School for several months now among some of the PhD’s there seems more like the behavior of children determined to prove whose is longer or bigger.

I mean what have we got here…at Duke Div, I mean? In the one corner we have a widely published and fairly famous — famous among theological academics, at least — 61-year-old male full professor of Catholic doctrine resenting that he and all other faculty members, I gather, are expected by school administrators to spend two full days attending “racial equity training.” So he emails his faculty colleagues, urging them not to attend. “Don’t lay waste your time,” he says according to the newspaper. The event will be, “I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid.” Horrors!

In the other corner for the aforementioned “p*****g contest” is a tag team consisting of two women who appear from their photos to be considerably younger than the cranky, old Catholic guy. One of the two is an associate professor of Old Testament (Why do they say that? The truths of the Hebrew Bible aren’t “old” by any means, and certainly not in the sense that they have had to be expanded, enhanced, or replaced by something “new” as in New Testament. But that’s a beef for another day.)

The other “young” woman is, in fact, the dean of the Div School, the paper says. Don’t know whether she’s also “faculty” or even a PhD, but I bet she’s both.

In any case, both women enter the contest with powerful streams of words. The associate Bible prof starts out the whole thing by asserting — at the time the faculty were “invited” — that “those who have participated in the (racial equity) training have described it as transformative, powerful, and life-changing.” (Italics mine.)

Whoa! Can’t you just see the older, longer-lived, longer-experienced Catholic theology guy almost gagging? And, no surprise here, he rises to the occasion and lets her have it with his own blast. He concludes his “waste of time” response to her, which he writes the same day, sending copies to all of his faculty colleagues, by predicting the event will include “bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty,” and then says, “When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show. Events of this sort are definitively anti-intellectual.”

“That’s when the trouble escalated,” Jane Stancill, the reporter who wrote this morning’s News & Observer article, says. The also youngish-looking woman dean tags in and lets the crusty, old theology teacher have it right between the eyes. She doesn’t mention his name specifically, we’re told, but, hey, when she mass emails the same faculty “within hours” who wouldn’t know, huh? And she says, “It is inappropriate and unprofessional to use mass emails (Italics mine, again) to make disparaging statements — including arguments ad hominem — in order to humiliate or undermine individual colleagues or groups of colleagues with whom we disagree.”

And she goes on: “The use of mass emails (Mine again) to express racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry is offensive and unacceptable, especially in a Christian institution (And yet again).”

Gaaaak! And double gaaaak! I’m not sure who’s won this contest. The crusty old guy hasn’t, certainly. The paper says he’s now resigned, effective next year (the beginning of the next academic year in the fall, I presume). But I think maybe the two young women tag team and the Div School itself have also not won. The “Old” Testament associate professor may well have come across to some (like me?) as a bit Pollyanna and peaches and cream-ish. I mean, “transformative, powerful, and life-changing?”

Give me a break! Racism and sexism and all the other stuff doesn’t get gone that easily. Maybe the crusty old Catholic theology guy had a point. One would also think that seminary faculty these days would come into their jobs with those particular short-comings fairly well under control. If they haven’t, the process of hiring seminary faculty hasn’t worked.

Which would be the dean’s fault, right? Which brings me back to her. Since when do you use mass emails to criticize someone for using mass emails? And why is bigotry offensive and unacceptable “especially in a Christian institution?” Isn’t it that everywhere? That we should define Christian institutions as places where people engage less in sinful activities suggests why the church simply isn’t relevant to much of anything anymore.

The church isn’t, I’m afraid. But Washington surely is. Which circles me all the way back to where I began. Thanks, as always, for listening.