The Ickabog 

by J.K.Rowling @2020, on Audible.com

“Rowling has captured a sense of our common humanity, while appealing to adults and children to be just and kind to all creatures and teaching children to recognize vile behavior.”

I'm sending out love into the universe for J.K. Rowling. Her negative detractors always seem to fill the web with their venom, so I'm posting a positive review of The Ickabog.  Yes, it's grim, but light. Yes, it tells a story of political intrigue, extortion, menaces, abuse of power, and, yes, murder...numerous murders. Grimm's gruesome fairytales were hardly a picnic, almost always ending in someone's eyes being gouged out. Just saying.... 

 “Ask any small child to tell you which characters in this story are good.  They know.  Children are not dummies.”  

I'm loving The Ickabog by J.K. Rowling, a darkish fairytale a la Roald Dahl tradition. It's dark... No, I shouldn’t say “dark” just because it has a “monster” or deals with heavy subjects. It’s more like twilight, that space between dark and light, because while the content of the machinations of greedy people may seem dark, there are plenty of light moments and glowing characters.  The Ickabog is satirical, humorous, vivid, and the best of the fairytale genre! As an adult, I've known, in some capacity, each of these characters or, in the Roald Dahl tradition, caricatures.  To be sure, no real adult is ever completely vile or completely good.  We all share both moments of glory and of shame.  But for the fairy tale genre, villains must be pure evil and saints must be transcendent. And somewhere in the middle, Rowling has captured a sense of our common humanity, while appealing to adults and children to be just and kind to all creatures and teaching children to recognize vile behavior.

The villains, Lords Spittleworth and Flappoon are completely vile, duplicitous and obsequious; Lord Spittleworth being the biggest liar of all.  The clueless, vain King Fred the Fearless is thoroughly idiotic, but redeemable.  Ma Grunter, matron of the orphanage, is a greedy lush.  Captain Roach is an ambitious soldier, willing to overlook just about anything for money and power.

The clear-sighted, grief-stricken child, Daisy, is valiant and outspoken, speaking truth to power with compassion.  All of the good folk are capable of transformation.  They may willingly blind themselves to some truths, but eventually they come to their good senses and do the right thing.

As the narrative unfolds, it brings to my mind Roald Dahl's Matilda-esque, avaricious, despicable adult characters with a hint of The Emperor's New Clothes, and yet, it remains a unique story in its own devices.  The glorious, delicious descriptions of the little country of Cornucopia are as sweet and warming as morning sunshine after a long, cold night.

As I listen to Stephen Fry narrate on Audible, I feel gratitude for such warm, wonderful acting talent. Fry, as always, is flawless in every role, every voice, every character. He is the most marvelous of storytellers, while Rowling is the most magical of tale weavers or yarn spinners. 

I will also purchase the bound copy of the book. I normally read each book on my own first, before listening or watching someone else's interpretation of a story, but when I saw that Fry was narrating, I had to listen to his rich voice immediately.

Anyone who has known me knows that I'm a fan of the fairytale genre. I'm sure there are more than a few early blogs on the importance of fairytales and what they bring to our understanding of the world. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien , and G. K. Chesterton wrote of the value of fairytales as literature, so I won't go on.

So, for J.K. Rowling’s critics who say this fairytale is too dark or heavy or frightening for small children, I say you don’t understand the purpose of fairy tales in the first place.  Fairy tales have the ability to convey hard truths to children in a way which is less frightening than hearing the evening news or some juicy bit of gossip about someone who died in a car accident or hearing of wars and mass deaths due to a global pandemic.   Why?  Because those true stories do not provide a buffer in a way a fairy tale can.  The best fairy stories always begin by distancing the reader from the harshness of reality now...”Once upon a time, in a land far, far away” or “Long, long ago in a distant land...”

And yet at the same time, fairy stories may provide “whole worlds of experience” to young readers or listeners (C. S. Lewis).  To be clear, Rowling does not go into gory detail on how people die.  The deaths are not graphic as some critics would lead one to believe.  But death and avarice and power- grubbing, abusive, manipulative people do exist in real life.  These almost comical,  yet thoroughly despicable characters are one way to teach children that NOT ALL adults are to be trusted. Then whom should children trust?  Ask any small child to tell you which characters in this story are good.  They know.  Children are not dummies.  This humorous tale teaches those eternal qualities of forgiveness, kindness, justice, loyalty, compassion, solidarity, hard work, honesty, courage, and humility.

So, if you do get a chance to read or listen to this tale, I hope you find it as delightful as I did.

Anyhoo, hope you are finding things to celebrate today. Today, I celebrate fairytales!!

Funny story...true story...

 Gratitude for fresh air...

Hey, 

Hope your day is going well.  Thought I’d share my day with you. 

My humorous, older brother, Dale, is notorious in Texas for his epic fart wars with his father-in-law, Bob.  They have been known to try to stink one another out of the house...or “duel” in stores: each dropping a stink bomb in an aisle, then quickly leaving said aisle, while the other one is left in the nuclear fallout as other passersby give nasty, accusing looks to the “guy left behind”.

Let’s just say that the Oshman’s Sporting Goods staff reach for the gas masks when Dale and Bob enter the premises.   In one particular episode, as Bob strolled down the aisles, he sounded off as a machine gun with rapid fire farts, or potent poots, then scrambled to the next aisle, while my brother trailed behind only to be given the evil eye, you might say “the old stink eye”, by a poor, unsuspecting woman who got caught in the crossfire.  But Dale plotted his sneak attack, stalked his prey, walked up quietly behind his father-in-law Bob in the next aisle, detonated a silent-but-deadly (SBD) bomb, then turned and headed for the hills!  Over his giggles, he could just hear the same innocent victim, coming around the corner, gasp LOUDLY behind him as Bob laughed heartily while vociferously protesting, “It wasn’t me! It was that other guy.”  

So today, while minding my own blissful business at our local grocery, I was reminded of the silent-but-deadly fart wars.

While I naively meandered through the aisles, I was assaulted!  Humming happily to myself, in blissful ignorance of what was to come, I ever-so-politely kept my social distance and patiently waited for the man who was blocking access to the cereal.   I should have known something was amiss, when the man, after deliberating for several minutes in front of the cereal, abruptly left empty-handed, averted his gaze, and rushed past me!  As I innocently waited my turn to choose a cereal, unbeknownst to me, he had cracked off a silent stink bomb, then made a hasty retreat!!! He was already around the corner when it hit me!  Even my mask could not save me from the putrescence emanating from the furtive perpetrator!

As you may know, I have spent a great deal of time in the last year in deep meditation and maintaining a state of non-reaction. So, my first response in a challenging situation is to take a deep breath and repeat my mantra: “Breathing in, I smile to my heart....”. NOPE!!! 

Shallow breaths? No! That won’t work either. God, no! Lord, help me! My eyes watered. “Hold your breath!” I told myself as I gagged .  I wanted to laugh, but that would require me breathing or, worse, opening my mouth...and possibly tasting the toxic air....bleh!  Then looking up,  I saw another unsuspecting patron headed into the toxic superfund site zone, and as any kid would do, not wishing to be the object of the imminent, accusatory glares and eye daggers of a stranger, I quickly turned and ran for the next aisle (in the opposite direction of the stink bomber), leaving the other patron to deal with the fallout.  I was too much of a coward to warn her.  In my defense, warning her would have required that I BREATHE!   I  waited a full five minutes for the air to clear before I ventured back in to the cereal aisle.

I almost couldn’t bring myself to go back into the offending war zone .... like a timid squirrel who has been frightened off from a pile of acorns... I went back, but with some trepidation of breathing normally.  

A victimless crime, you say? I think not! 

But as I often do, I turn to music for solace...only all I could think of in the wake of this noxious cloud was our garage band songs-“Gimme Shelter”, “Dust In the Wind” or Gary Moore’s “Trouble Ain’t Far Behind”...

May we never stop giving thanks for fresh air and may we never lose our sense of humor. Amen. 

The I am that I am rejoices over you

 As I wrote this little interlude to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries in our little community, I was reminded of Zephaniah 3:17 (NLT); “For the LORD your God (the I am that I am or Yahweh) is living among you.  He is a mighty savior.  He will take delight in you with gladness.  With his love, he will calm all your fears.  He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”  Parentheses are mine.  

Now THAT is something to get excited about!  For all my wonderful, sweet, misguided, judgmental Christian friends who live in guilt and who love to shame others, there is incredible joy and freedom in this revelation from the prophet Zephaniah.  GOD, the Great Spirit, Presence, Being, the Light of the world, the I am that I am, the creator of the universe LOVES you and delights in you.  

I wanted to capture in this tiny snippet of music the feeling of dancing and joy and delight.  God delights in us.  He is not shaming us, guilting us, berating us, or looking for us to stumble or fall.  He is making up joyful songs about us, singing over us, laughing with us, and celebrating us!  THIS is the GOOD NEWS that the first disciples understood.  God says we are good (Genesis 1)!  The kingdom of heaven is in our midst, the universal Christ is everywhere and in us, too.  

Can you find Christ in everyone and everything?  That is our call.  We do that by being present now, not worrying about the past or the future.  We are called to be now.  And in that stillness of being, we find that Christ is in us, through us, for us, with us, and in every particle of the universe.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in the Christ.

Reflections on The Universal Christ in music

 Fr. Richard Rohr reminded me this week of that saying in Romans 1:20- “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities- his eternal power and divine nature- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”  In other words, you can see and understand Christ in everything.  God is in all the universe.  As Rohr points out, this is not a pantheistic worldview (which is a belief that nature is god), but a panentheistic worldview, in which God is in every bit of creation.  See The Universal Christ by Richard Rohr.

The Eucharist interlude

 This tiny tune was created for the Eucharist, as a way of celebrating the tangible expression of Christ’s love in a physical world.  Eucharist is one expression of the connection between form and formless, spirit and material world, the universal Christ who is in all and through all.

  

Minor hymn for the Scottish Communion

 Another short video and interlude created for online church, inspired by Fr. Richard Rohr and Eckhart Tolle.  I’m still learning to make music, so my attempts are not professional or perfect.  But I do enjoy creating...

Tiny tunes, form and formless, structure and space...

 One of the challenges I accepted this week was inspired by Eckhart Tolle’s Freedom From the World conference, in which he described music which allows for the space or stillness between notes.  I had always thought of music as just the notes, the structure, the form.  But in his description of spiritual music, he pointed out that music is also music because of the pauses, the space between notes, the silence.  In that silence or stillness is being.

Just like in the Tao Te Ching, where it mentions that a cup is useful because of its emptiness.  If it is already full, it is of no use to me.  Its very essence of being empty is what makes so valuable, because then it can receive whatever is needed.  

Tao Te Ching 16-

“Effect emptiness to the extreme.

Keep stillness whole.

Myriad things act in concert.

I therefore watch their return.

All things flourish and each returns to its root.

Returning to the root is called quietude.

Quietude is called returning to life.” 

And again in TaoTe Ching 11- 

“Thirty spokes join together in the hub.

It is because of what is not there that the cart is useful.

Clay is formed into a vessel.

It is because of its emptiness that the vessel is useful.

Cut doors and windows to make a room.

It is because of its emptiness that the room is useful.

Therefore, what is present is used for profit.

But it is in absence that there is usefulness.”

So, in my first attempt to create music which honored the space between the notes, I wrote this little interlude.  I suppose if it needs a title, I would call it...Sunday Lament.

Music inspired by Tolle and Rohr...

 Inspired by both the writings and teachings of Father Richard Rohr and Eckhart Tolle this week, I’ve really enjoyed creating new music, or as my sister calls them “Tiny Tunes”.  Written specifically for interludes in our little Episcopal church online forum, these little songs are usually around 30 seconds long, sometimes as long as 1.5 minutes.  

The balance of form and formless, movement and stillness...

“The natural world is its own good and sufficient story, if we can only learn to see it with humility and love. That takes contemplative practice, stopping our busy and superficial minds long enough to see the beauty, allow the truth, and protect the inherent goodness of what it is—whether it profits me, pleases me or not. Every gift of food and water, every act of simple kindness, every ray of sunshine, every mammal caring for her young, all of it emerged from this original and intrinsically good creation. Humans were meant to know and enjoy this ever-present reality—a reality we too often fail to praise, or maybe worse, ignore and take for granted. As described in Genesis, the creation unfolds over six days, implying a developmental understanding of growth. Only the seventh day has no mention of it. The divine pattern is set: Doing must be balanced out by not-doing, in the Jewish tradition called the “Sabbath Rest.” All contemplation reflects a seventh-day choice and experience, relying on grace instead of effort. Full growth implies timing and staging, acting and waiting, working and not working. All the other sentient beings also do their little things, take their places in the cycle of life and death, mirroring the eternal self-emptying and eternal infilling of God, and somehow trusting it all—as did my dog Venus when she gazed at me, then looked straight ahead and humbly lowered her nose to the ground as we put her to sleep. Animals fear attack, of course, but they do not suffer the fear of death. Whereas many have said that the fear and avoidance of death is the one absolute in every human life. If we can recognize that we belong to such a rhythm and ecosystem, and intentionally rejoice in it, we can begin to find our place in the universe. We will begin to see, as did Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that “Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God.”

From Richard Rohr- The Universal Christ- How a forgotten reality can change how we see, hope for, and believe. 

From Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle: “Feeling the oneness of yourself with all things is love.”

Other quotes from Tolle’s Stillness Speaks:

• “In the Bible, it says that God created the world and saw that it was good. That is what you see when you look from stillness without thought.” 
• ‘To be still, look, and listen activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you.”

How do we recognize beauty, truth, or goodness?  Are these just cultural concepts, human concepts that must be taught with words?  Or do you recognize beauty when you see it, without words, beyond thought?  This is what Tolle means by the non-conceptual intelligence within you.  There is a wisdom, a spiritual “truth”, an elegance in the universe which resonates with you, without needing words to actualize or describe it.  You just know it.  You feel it.  You recognize it. You sense it in the form of a tree, without naming the tree, the species, the genus, without enumerating the particulars, and yet at the same you feel the rootedness of a tree which does not strive to be.  You feel its inner beauty, without form.  And at the same time, this formless presence gives shape to the form in front of you.  This is the wisdom of love in the universe.  This is the wisdom of the formless, eternal presence, the I Am that I Am at work in us and through us and for us, drawing us deeper into grace, into love, into the universal Christ. 

As I’m listening to Eckhart Tolle’s retreat, Freedom From The World, on Audible.com,  I am reminded of a sermon I heard years ago when I attended a Chinese Baptist church outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma.  Yep.  You read that correctly, a Chinese Baptist church in Oklahoma.  I hope you giggled a little at the thought.  I still do.  I loved those people.... The services were bilingual.  But back to the reminder, the pastor of the church had been a Tai Chi master in Singapore.  One Sunday, after quite a few of us had been up all night playing cards and games, he chided us gently to live a life of balance.  Tai Chi is all about balance, he said, and our call to spirituality is all about balance, not about perfection.  

As Tolle discusses in the 3rd session, or Chapter 3 on Audible, music which pulls us into the spiritual dimension points to a balance between form and formless, structure and space, notes and silence.  As I let this concept sink in today, I feel like I want to try to create music this week which honors that balance between structure and space, form and formlessness.  Can I give more space to the silent parts of a song?  It’s a challenge in which I find joy and delight.  It’s not something I feel compelled to do, in the sense of obligation, but in the sense that I feel pulled toward.  Does that make sense?

I recognize that what Tolle is saying is only a pointer, it is not ultimate truth.  Keeping this balance between ideas or concepts, which are only forms, and true spirit which is formless, is key.  Again, the old Buddhist saying that “the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon” hints at this revelation.  Can a “spiritual song”, that is, a song that pulls me toward oneness with Being be birthed through me, this form that I have right now?  It will be fun to explore this.  Will the product of this exploration, i.e. the song, have meaning or impact on others?  Who knows?  And ultimately, that probably doesn’t matter at all.  

Oh, the monkey brain...right?  This also reminded me of singer, musician extraordinaire, and songwriter, Michael Gungor, formerly of The Gungor Band, Gungor, the Liturgists Podcast, author of the book, This, and now known as Vishnu Dass.  Watching his transformation over the years, since he was a teen leading worship at his dad’s church in Oklahoma, gives me incredible HOPE for this new generation.  I still love his old music from the early days, and I’m excited to see what will continue to come into the world through this open, ever-questioning, mystic musician.  I hate to categorize him as just a musician.  He and wife Lisa are obviously so much more.  Even the word “mystic” is limiting.  I’m looking forward to what comes from them next.  

It took me 50 years to wake up.  That’s why I have such incredible hope in this younger generation.  They are already so much more “woke” than I was at their age.  Even my 15-year old nephew is incredibly “woke”, that is, less tied to the world of forms, less attached to the ideas of forms that we often put on each other. I can see that he and some of his friends are already less attached to the labels we put on ourselves and others: Christian, conservative, gay/ straight/ Bi, male/female, American, black/ white, etc.  And this in a group of kids who are going to a private “Christian” school.  The fact that they are already challenging their assumptions of how the world is “supposed to be” comforts me.  It’s encouraging to see my nephew already open to the perception of form and formless.

And now, I am going to practice stillness for a bit with Tolle.  Maybe this will seep into my music, maybe not.  I’m okay with that, too.

Thoughts on time and freedom...

“But there is something about Time. The sun rises and sets. The stars swing slowly across the sky and fade. Clouds fill with rain and snow, empty themselves, and fill again. The moon is born, and dies, and is reborn. Around millions of clocks swing hour hands, and minute hands, and second hands. Around goes the continual circle of the notes of the scale. Around goes the circle of night and day, the circle of weeks forever revolving, and of months, and of years.”

• Madeleine L’Engle

I have always loved to think about time.  When I was a young reader, I read L’Engle’s trilogy on time and space travel, beginning with A Wrinkle in Time.  It’s fascinating, thinking of tesseracting.  As an adult, I loved L’Engle’s personal journals in which she celebrates the passing of seasons, and embraces the moments that seem to define our lives; birth, death, and all the ordinary moments in between.  I love the feeling of grounded-ness in her approach to those ordinary moments, lived out as extraordinary worship, connection to God, reflection of the one life lived now in this temporary form through the celebration of chaos, glory, entropy, exhilaration, banality, and decay. 

And yet, the only time that ever actually exists is now, this present moment.  Future and past are illusions of the mind.  Only now ever exists.  As Tolle points out often, if I remember the past, I am remembering it now.  If I think of the future, I am thinking of it now.

And when I get caught up in reaction to others or life or something I did or didn’t do, I lose touch with the present moment.  I forget to be at peace with reality.  Reality is only ever NOW.  

I was reminded of Eric Fromm’s groundbreaking work, Escape from Freedom, as I exam my own mind structures and episodes of fear or judgment.  If you are not familiar with his work (or that of Hannah Arendt), here is the blurb from Amazon about the book: “Why do people choose authoritarianism over freedom? The classic study of the psychological appeal of fascism by a New York Times–bestselling author.

 The pursuit of freedom has indelibly marked Western culture since Renaissance humanism and Protestantism began the fight for individualism and self-determination. This freedom, however, can make people feel unmoored, and is often accompanied by feelings of isolation, fear, and the loss of self, all leading to a desire for authoritarianism, conformity, or destructiveness. It is not only the question of freedom that makes Fromm’s debut book a timeless classic. In this examination of the roots of Nazism and fascism in Europe, Fromm also explains how economic and social constraints can also lead to authoritarianism.”

It explains so much of the last 5 years in America and the cult of Trump.  

That is not a judgment.  It is a reminder to me that we humans constantly look to externals (life situations, leaders, others, possessions, etc) for a sense of peace, safety, or identity, a sense of self.  

Of course, external, temporary forms cannot truly fulfill us.  As I listen to Eckhart Tolle’s Freedom From The World retreat on Audible, I am aware of my own descent into ego structures this week.  

I love this first reminder from Tolle, “you are not upset for the reason you THINK you are”.  You are upset because you have lost touch with the present moment and your oneness with all of life.  To be in touch with the oneness that you are with the entire universe is to enter into abundant life.  To accept this moment, life, reality as it is is to be at peace with now.  You are the formless, timeless one life in the universe, not just this temporary form of body and mind and emotion.  

At the same time, this temporary form is a part of who I am now.  So I don’t reject my body form or even all these thoughts which pass through my mind.  When I am one with this moment, accepting life as it is, I am able to see that thoughts are not ultimately me.  They are just forms which are passing through.  They can also serve a purpose, but they are not my identity.  We lose ourselves when we try to grasp or cling to externals as our identity, or when we see “them” (externals) as the “problem”.

Yesterday, I totally devolved into the old ego self, or as the New Testament calls it “the carnal self”, for those who still speak Christianese.  I was upset about something.  Someone didn’t do something the way I thought they should and it made a bunch of work for me.  At least, that was the story I kept telling myself.  And the more I told my story to myself (and anyone else who would listen) the more it became entrenched in me.  It was a classic case of the Velcro/Teflon theory of neuroscience, how the brain loves to cling to “bad” stories and how it so easily lets “good” stories slip away, like cheese on a hot Teflon pan....  My brain was running away with this story of inconvenience.  Soon, as it often does when we tell and retell stories, the hours that I spent fixing this “problem” were inflated.  Like an old fish tale about how big the fish really was, it kept growing with each retelling in my head.  Soon, I had convinced myself that I was on the verge of burnout.  

Yes, I totally let my ego take over, trying to inflate my sense of self and self-importance in this little drama that was running in my head.  I was upset most of the day, even when I caught myself repeating the drama, and I was able at one point to say, “okay, this is the story I am telling myself right now”, I was still caught up in the emotion of being “a victim”, of vociferating the injustice of reality, of the “how dare that guy make me have to do so much work to fix his mistake?”  

And then, I listened to Tolle on Audible, starting with this little pointer:  “If you are upset about something, you are not upset for the reason you think you are.”  You think it is because someone did or did not do something, or that life is not the way you think it should be.  Or maybe you think you are upset because YOU did or did not do something that you should or should not have done....  Nope.  You are upset because you have lost touch with BEING in this moment, now.  You lost sight of this present moment.  Because if you and I could live in the present moment, we would recognize that reality or life is as it is.  Life happens.  It cannot be otherwise (as Tolle often says).  So why am I upset?  I’m upset because I am in conflict with the present moment. I’m either living in the past or obsessing about the future.  Past rehashing looks like:  “He should not have...or She should have...Or Why did I do...?”  Groan!  Future obsession looks something like this:  “If only I could...If only I had... or If only I were..., THEN, I’d be __________ (fill in the blank: happy, fulfilled, rich, enough, loved...)”.

When I am at peace with what is, and that’s reality, (for the pragmatists or realists in the group), when I accept this moment or life as it is right now, I am not upset.  I am not disturbing myself.  When I accept what is happening now without reaction, without judgment, I am at peace, because I am one with reality.  Not some imagined future, not some judgment about the past, eg.  “He should have...she should have...They should not have... Life is not supposed to be this way...I should not have...”. But when I accept what is, because life is as it is, then I enter into oneness with all of life, with God.  AND THIS IS FREEDOM!  Freedom from my sense of self, freedom from the compulsion to defend my “victim” self or the compulsion to make myself superior, freedom from judging others, freedom from fear, anger, bitterness, etc.   

If I am upset, it is not for the reason I think I am upset. It is not some external stimulus that has created the drama in me.  It is my own internal dialogue which creates the “upset”.

So, I am learning.  I am beginning to wake up to spirit self more often.  Sometimes, I can quiet the complaining mind quickly, immediately.  Other times, it takes over and runs my brain for a few hours...until I remember to ask myself: Do I WANT to be upset, unhappy, or angry?  Do I WANT to be the source of drama for myself and others?  Or do I want peace?  Peace chooses to accept life as it unfolds.  If I am upset, it is not for the reason I think I am upset.  It is not some external stimulus that has created the drama in me.  It is my own internal dialogue which creates the “upset”.  I can choose to be miserable or I can remember to reconnect to this moment, now, and accept what is.  When I accept the “isness” of this moment, as both Tolle and Meister Eckhart call it, I can act out of a place of calm being.  Okay, so the music needs to be edited, that’s fine.  I will work on it when this moment calls for me to do so.  And then when I am in the moment of “working mode”, I can address the issue calmly, rationally, without judgment or reaction.  I can even work on it with joy or enthusiasm.  I no longer see the is-ness of life as a “problem to be fixed”.  Life is as it is.  

Ahhhh.  Thank God for Meister Eckhart, Eckhart Tolle, and others who are shining a light for me to see the world differently.