I think I never feel as lonely as when I see a beautiful thing, when I read a beautiful turn of phrase, when I feel for the first time the first snow, and I turn, and there is no one besides me to exclaim it to. Because in that moment my whole heart is exclamation – filled to the brim with those eternal questions – Do you see it too? Do you feel it? Can you hear this sudden flurry of wings, this earthed lightning? Do you hear what I hear, do you see what I see? And it is tragic, for no reason can close the gulf between two men – and perhaps, it is even more disappointing if the person besides you does not see, does not hear – or that you turn, and all you’re faced with is a stubborn blindness.

image source by chonquesha

I feel sometimes the entire essence of love is to spend one’s whole life turning and saying – look – here is the thing, the very thing, temporarily incarnated, temporarily dwelling as if at the centre of the universe – this one melody, this one angelic line, this one streak of white cut across the sky. And it is bodily felt, it shudders through you to the very bone, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh – and this is what it is to be one, or to yearn to be one with it. And in moments of grace I feel it, and the One I turn to is no other. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh – you, who are my own, my very own, who have loved me from the inception of my soul, from the conception of my flesh, from the first flicker that fanned into the flame of me. And you are so ravishing, it is you that I see, in the sun and its water, in the trees and their skies – and every breath I draw is a miracle when I see you, for you are all I see.

And I need not turn to another, there is no one continually missing at my side, for I am not alone; you are beside me, drinking in all praise and all beauty, and I, radically decentred from my universe, in some nameless ecstasy – for you looked upon the earth once, and said, it is good, so very good – and this is all it is that is good and perfect and held completely in the thing of you! And you are my one hope, my one vision, my one passion, and my one sorrow, it is you I feel and long for, and it is to you that my thought tends, like a plant towards the sun. And nothing, nothing takes that place, that secret place that was ordained for you.

You are all beauty, and you are all light, and I am in awe of you. I do not know what you did to love me – to lure me, to seduce me with the utter otherness that is you. You are utterly and utterly you – I cannot but say it, for you are the utmost and I have no words to describe the thing that is, the thing that surely all the world is of – that huge thing beyond the thought of man, beyond my grasp, beyond my comprehension. You are that great foundation, that great back turned like a whale upon the waters, holding up the entire universe. I wish that you would be like this to me, that your absoluteness will always be before me, for I am always a creature between two gasps, gulping for air between lungfuls of grace. And I cannot make you You – O, only you choose to appear and disappear before my eyes, although my mind knows you are everywhere.

It is only in you that I am free – only you, only you, and I’m enthralled, enraptured, and I do not want to leave – I am captured and I would not be anywhere but here, because I know I’ll wander, Lord, I know it – for though you may show me your face, I walk away and in a minute it has left no trace. I want to bottle up this radiance, so I will always remember, because truly, there is nothing, nothing worthy except in you, and it was this that I was made to do.

What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 8:4

What is man, that he should be clean? And he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity as water.

Job 15:14-16.

Search me, Lord – Search me, for you alone know my inward parts. You alone understand these things within me, these things that I am so ashamed of I hide them in the dark even from myself.

You and you alone I have loved, and you and you alone I have longed for. You, and you alone, have I known before I drew my first breath – it was you I knew in my mother’s womb. It was you who loved before I came to the world, and it is you whom I will find when I leave this earth.

Oh my God, I have looked far and wide and high and low in every last corner of the earth, and I am looking, and am still looking, and the thing I want to find was you. I have scoured the earth for knowledge, I have dug deep into thought, I have raged my way through the systems of my country to cross great oceans in search of wisdom and knowledge. And because you loved me and gave me many gifts, I looked and found everything else. My God, my God! My whole life I was longing for you, and instead I found everything else! And one by one by one, I made them my purpose, and one by one, you tore down my idols.

And I have wallowed in the mire of my own sin, and made myself queen of it, and thought myself a very fine specimen of a thing, and crowned myself the sovereign of a little kingdom, thinking it was the whole world.

Penitence, acrylic on bamboo plate. By Larry Poncho Brown.

And I have lusted after all the wrong things, each one finer and more delicate and more refined and more subtle than the last, and I have molded myself to them, in imitation of them. And I have torn with great violence the things I was given, ravaged from limb to limb your children you told me to guard, tossed carelessly to the pit the brothers and sisters you gave to love. And I have prostrated myself before the subtle altars of success, of art, of intelligence, of beauty, of romance, of respect, of regard, and thought all the while you were my God. And I have declared a twenty-year war against the Most High God, and charged again and again against your heart like a battering ram, insistent and fierce and relentless and mad, and you have said nothing, but bore it for the sake of your love for me, Lord. And I have poured scalding oil down the sides of my last defenses, all over your army, all over the servants you’ve sent to try reach me, I’ve attacked them with the very gifts you had bestowed me, and I have wounded countless, Lord – I’ve led your sheep astray, I’ve betrayed my own parents, I’ve disobeyed their teachings, I’ve abandoned my house where I was loved and gone wandering foolishly, spending the inheritance you had built up – the inheritance of absolute mercy, absolute love, not knowing the price of the thing that I spent.

And I don’t understand why you still hear my cries. I don’t understand why, finding myself at the same old groove in the same old circle around the same old millstone like some stubborn, dumb mule, you are still patient with me, still loving to me, still hopeful that I will make something of me. I don’t understand your enormous forgiveness; I don’t understand your judgment’s delay. I don’t understand how you can stand by while I rip, again and again, your heart in pieces. I don’t understand how you mutely accuse me while I hammer the nail straight into your palm. I don’t understand how, in all my wildness and pride, in my restless impatience, in my careless violence, you don’t give up on me, and say, it’s time to take that one home – look what she’s done with her mind, what she’s done with her body, look at the state of her ravaged soul.

I don’t understand how you stood by and watched as I lived in pride and lived by lies, when I lived in lust and sloth and greed, and how you allowed my life to blaspheme to high heaven, even while I wrote on my forehead, your Holy Name. I don’t understand why you didn’t bind me more tightly, why you didn’t take and seal my fluttering heart, when you saw once again I was following some idol, like a child in a supermarket following the wrong green dress home, all the while thinking I would get home to my God. And she turned, and I ran, in complete and utter horror, for her face was my face, and again I had turned my self into my god. Oh, my God! I don’t know the first thing about what I have done.

And I’ve been so unfaithful, it amazes me that when the scales are finally measured on that last day, you will count me as one of yours – for I’ve chased after every wind, been buffeted by every wave, been tossed right and left by every distraction, yielded to every last temptation without even a blink of a thought. And I try to keep my eye straight on you, my God, but I’m only a woman, and I cannot see what you see. I keep my eye on you, but cannot feel you walk beside me. I pray to imaginary audiences, I pray to imaginary lovers, and I do not pray to the loving, living God. I long to see your face, but all I see is what I see. And I have for my life the living God as my companion, and yet I live functionally like an atheist, a materialist, and refuse to take the small gifts that you offer me daily, like some relentless lover.

And too often it fixates on what is just another human being, or the works of my own hands, and I am so, so willing to make him or her or it into a god. And I long for things that are lesser than you, good things, but I know that I am still too susceptible, am still a serial idolater, liar, adulterer, and that if given the chance I will abandon my God. And I know that until I have so trained my eyes on the beautiful thing that I do not see, I will always superimpose another image, another icon, and fall in love there instead. And I know that you are more beautiful than everything on earth, on the earth, in the sky, or beneath the earth, and I know that my whole heart will not be still until I see.

And I just beg you to let me see, because for me, all this is desert, a long and lonely desert even with all my dear friends, and I don’t understand why you allow me to be weak. If you are indeed sufficient, if you are indeed strong, then demonstrate now your great strength – I challenge you, I throw down the gauntlet to the living God. I’d wrestle you, my Lord and my God – I’d wrestle you fiercely and refuse to let go. No, I’d never let go until I have had your blessing. I’ll never let go til you walk past the corpses of animals lined up on either side, and vow to me, to me! that you will never, ever leave. I’ll never let go til you put my small hands up to the bleeding side of you, and whisper to me that I’d pierced that old wound, that I’d made it bleed, again and again, but that you love me. Do not leave me, Lord, for I’m afraid of the pit, that yawns open beneath me each time I try to pray. Don’t leave me, don’t take your spirit away from me, don’t leave me don’t leave me, don’t leave me.

And my God, I cannot do this – I can’t do it alone. I try, and every time I try to play Jesus, I end up doing more harm than good. Why did I have to be born? There is so much pain here in the world, which I am sure you remember, for you walked this blighted earth once, yourself. There is so much that is broken, so much that cries out for rescue, and all I can do is the little that I do. And then I try too much, and then I try too hard, and just that little strain makes me an idol, to me, too, and worse, an idol to another. And oh, my God – how difficult it is to break idolatry! I don’t know why, I don’t know why you don’t come in and cut me down, how you think a gentle rebuke is enough! Oh, I long for your judgment, then shrink away from it. I long for your presence, then beg that you take it away, for it is too much, too much for me.

But your rod and your staff, they comfort me: -  how it smarts, the corrective smack! How it aches, the dull thud when I fall to the floor! How it chills, when I’m dunked into the cold sea the moment I look down to see how I’m doing it – pulling the world from out underneath my feet, I slip, and fall in love again. You cannot know how it feels like to be jerked around, to be made the fool of, again and again – except that you do, and you, too, prayed an agonized prayer for the cup to pass you by. And you, too, knew what it was like to have the world offered up to you on a silvered golden platter, if only you would bow down to the one who holds it in his grip. And you, too, know that anything worth it is not going to be easy, that the bread won’t taste sweet without the sweat to plow it. And you knew, too, the only way to save a thing was to let go.

How I hate the way before me! Two ways branch out, and both I loathe. I have two hearts, two minds, two natures: absolute Depravity, absolute Beauty – and in my heart and my mind and my body is an eternal War. And these two armies, they seem terribly balanced, my Lord, even though you tell me that in Eternity, one, the bright one, has already won. I am bewildered, for you have appointed an unlettered schoolgirl as queen of this land, and I don’t know what you want me to do with the rioting masses, the ones firebombing the gates of my palace right now. I don’t know why you don’t descend from the clouds right now, and instead leave me with this shaky sovereignty.

My track record alone would make you shudder to give me the reins; I’ve been a slave and a tyrant, too willing to give up power, too stubbornly in the grip of it; I dare not ask you for power, because of what I’ve done before with it. Sin has stripped me of all dignity – I am like an old king, strolling proudly on the roof of his palace, well pleased with what he has done with the land, and whom, in that moment of exultation, is cast down and made to eat the grass like a wild beast. Oh, I have given in to madness and envy, and what remains is bestial – I am a dumb beast, an intelligence  divorced somehow from my body, whose reason abdicates at the slightest sign of unrest.

Oh God, I am so very good at thinking, theorizing, making pretty diagrams in the safety of the walls of my head, but not at all at acting, at embodying Jesus Christ – the moment I try to be Him, I do the exact opposite, and again and again that old mare pride tosses her head and once again I am beguiled. I don’t understand this business of being human – the spirit I understand; the body I cannot govern. It riots against me each time I try to guide it; its hungers and appetites I cannot even begin to know to control. Why you decided to make me the way you did I do not know, but I do know I am utterly depraved without you. And if you do not put your name upon me, if you do not divorce me from this sin, if you do not make a claim on me on your own honor, swear by your own name, I cannot love, I cannot love at all. For nothing I say or do, nothing I bind or loose, nothing I promise to you or any of your children is of any worth, for I am as changeable as the evening sea, whose bright colours are seeped out into storms and darkness, and which must wait through the night for the sun again. No, nothing, nothing I do is worth your love, and without your love, I am bereft, for I am worse than nothing without you.

When the LORD saw that Leah was unloved, He opened her womb; but Rachel was barren. So Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben [literally, 'See, a son']; for she said, “The LORD has surely looked on my affliction. Now therefore, my husband will love me.” Then she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the LORD has heard that I am unloved, He has therefore given me this son also.” And she called his name Simeon [Literally, 'Heard']. She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore his name was called Levi [Literally, 'Attached']. And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Now I will praise the LORD.” Therefore she called his name Judah [Literally, 'Praised']. Then she stopped bearing.

Now when Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister, and said to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I die!” And Jacob’s anger was aroused against Rachel, and he said, “Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?” So she said, “Here is my maid Bilhah; go in to her, and she will bear a child on my knees, that I also may have children by her.” Then she gave him Bilhah her maid as wife, and Jacob went in to her. Then Rachel said, “God has judged my case; and He has also heard my voice and given me a son.” Therefore she called his name Dan [Literally 'Judge']. And Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, “With great wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and indeed I have prevailed.” So she called his name Naphtali [Literally, 'My Wrestling'].

When Leah saw that she had stopped bearing, she took Zilpah her maid and gave her to Jacob as wife. And Leah’s maid Zilpah bore Jacob a son.Then Leah said, “A troop comes!” So she called his name Gad [Literally, 'Troop' or 'Fortune']. And Leah’s maid Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. Then Leah said, “I am happy, for the daughters will call me blessed.” So she called his name Asher [Literally, 'Happy'].

Now Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.” But she said to her, “Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes also? And Rachel said, “Therefore he will lie with you tonight for your son’s mandrakes.”

When Jacob came out of the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, “You must come in to me, for I have surely hired you with my son’s mandrakes,” And he lay with her that night. And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. Leah said, “God has given me my hire, because I have given my maid to my husband.” So she called his name Issachar [Literally 'Hire']. Then Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. And Leah said, “God has endowed me with a good endowment; now my husband will dwell with me, because I have borne him six sons.” So she called his name Zebulun [Literally, 'Dwelling']. Afterward she bore a daughter and called her name Dinah. Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. And she conceived and bore a son, and said, “God has taken away my reproach.” So she called his name Joseph [Literally, 'He will add'], and said, “The LORD shall add to me another son.”

Genesis 29:29 – 30:24

It seems to me that when self-professed Christians who express nostalgia for a “golden age” world order somewhere in the distant past, who advocate for a return to “Old Testament morality”, they display a profound misunderstanding of genre. The passage above, for example, is a historical narrative (not Rankian History as we know it today, but rather history when history and literature were not too different from each other). History is not the same as Law: Genesis is descriptive of a certain society at a certain point in human history, and not a prescriptive recommendation for building the ideal society. Just because polygamy was present in the days of the patriarchs doesn’t mean that it made God happy – on the contrary, almost every instance in which polygamy occurs in the Old Testament ends in strife and division.

Not Ideal.

image source

The words that describe God in this passage do not suggest smiling approval – rather, they are express  judgment in the face of sin, and compassion in the face of suffering. A woman’s worth in society in Jacob’s time was defined by her husband and children, thus making marriage and childbearing matters of life or death, honor or shame. It is heartbreaking to read about Leah and Rachel’s bizarre arms race, in which their female slaves, their children, their sexuality and beauty and ultimately their husband and their selves become weapons wielded against the other. It’s even more heartbreaking when you realize they were literal sisters, born of the same (rather despicable) father. And yet, jealousy spiraled out of control, overwhelmed any sisterly affection they may have had for each other, and they ended up enemies under the same roof, sister against sister, desperate to prove themselves by winning the love of a single man.

Also, just think what the effect those names they gave their sons had – imagine calling out “Hire! Hire!” or “Troop! Troop!” or “Look! A son! A son! A son!” while calling your little boys back in from the fields while your barren or unloved sister watches on… It is hardly surprising that it is the sons born in moments of closeness and surrender to God – Reuben, Judah, Asher, Joseph, who end up with relatively undamaged psyches, as we may deduce from their actions as adults -  Reuben saves Joseph from their brothers’ murderous hands, Judah decides to sell him off rather than leave him in a pit, Asher receives a good blessing from Isaac instead of a curse, and poor, cocky Joseph gets to save them all, but only after he’s been sold off and left for dead for a good many years… And so, once again, the sins of the fathers and mothers are visited upon the next and the next generation…

Unlike some of the other patriarchs, Jacob was fooled into polygyny, rather than choosing it for himself (the most spectacular case of this is, of course, King Solomon, who had 1000 wives. I’m not even sure how that works out logistically, but it must have been tiring…). Although I’m personally skeptical that he really had sex with Leah without noticing that it wasn’t Rachel (and it certainly would have voided the contract if he hadn’t “gone in to her”), he certainly didn’t object when Jacob offered Rachel as a second wife, although that in itself was demeaning to Rachel, the woman he really loved. And he also didn’t object when Laban “sweetened” the deal with poor Zilpah and Bilhah – so Jacob, half-knowingly, half-unknowingly, ends up with four wives (two slave, two free) all competing for sex with him, all competing for his favor. No wonder the poor guy is angry when Rachel threatens suicide – he must have been  exhausted!

Wherever men wield disproportionate power over women, and there is no taboo against it, there has been polygamy, and the field of bioanthropology has increasingly demonstrated what the Old Testament has narrated all along: Polygyny is always disadvantageous to the women, and by extension, to society. God, in His wisdom, made the proportion of men to women 50:50 – a perfect natural balance that ensures that for every woman there is a man and vice versa. However, whenever a man is powerful and demands women as tribute or to cement alliances (very evident in the ancient – and modern – world’s monarchs, chiefs, Big Men, and captains of power, celebrity and industry), he deprives one of his subjects of a wife. When you get enough single, frustrated males in a group, it’s easy to see why they might form a militia to overthrow the tyrant. Steven Pinker, in his fascinating book How the Mind Works, postulates that all wars are at heart about securing property and women – certainly in the vast majority of evolutionary time, and in modern hunter-gatherer societies, this is very conceivable. But you needn’t even look to biology or anthropology to tell that the multiple child brides of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints are getting the short end of the stick:

“‘We have thousands of women pulled out of school at an early age, forced into marriages with older men, kept isolated from society, constantly impregnated, and often placed on public assistance with no financial means of their own. They are forgotten citizens facing abuse and fear. On top of it all, the victims are constantly taught that God is just pleased as punch about the whole deal. It has to stop’.”

- Utah state Senator Ron Allen

But before we get too pleased with pulling punches on easy targets like the FLDS, consider carefully the kind of culture that we swim in – a culture in which there are more Christian women than men (Why? Is the church failing to speak to men?), in which sex is cheap and can be had after a mutually gratifying grinding session on the dance floor, in which scores of skimpily-clad college girls line up outside frat houses for the validation of getting in the door, only to be abandoned on the dance floor because the sex ratio is something like 5:1. In which women, who (for good reason) demand commitment more quickly and to greater exclusivity than men, are forced by the culture to approach men (who are considered sleazy if they approach women), and try to “have sex like a man” (the starting premise of Sex and the City – which ended in her marrying the guy, by the way) and hundreds of strong, smart, educated, beautiful women I know personally are puzzled why their friends-with-benefits aren’t interested in settling down with them.

What is crazy about this state of affairs is that it isn’t even a zero-sum game between Rachel and Leah. It isn’t that in the end, Rachel wins and Leah loses. Everyone loses – there are no winners at all, only Mutually Assured Destruction. Men who are able to “play the field” and get many women to like and sleep with them earn the label “stud” – a badge many wear gladly. But if you look at the true condition of such a man, it’s not a badge of honor, but one of profound brokenness. Jacob is a stud in this story – a mere beast, slave to his women – even prostitute to Leah, who “buys” him for the night with a handful of mandrakes.

A stud is a beast – a horse, a dog, a bull who is led blindly by the nose to rut with a female, any female. It is heartbreaking to think of Jacob frantically shuttling from one jealous wife to another, from one female slave (only God knows the pain of Zilpah and Bilhah – I am just glad they were dignified with being named in the Bible) to the next, trying to sow his seed as equitably as possible. In those moments, instead of being dignified, instead of feeling fully human in the sacred act itself, fully a Man becoming one flesh with one Woman, he is instead cast out from that grand vision of marriage – the metaphor Jesus uses for His love for the Church  – a contract of true love between two beings, conquering their base natures with the spirit of God.

The Declaration of Consent

N., will you have this man to be your husband; to live
together in the covenant of marriage?  Will you love him,
comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health;
and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you
both shall live?

The Woman answers
I will.

The Celebrant says to the man

N., will you have this woman to be your wife; to live
together in the covenant of marriage?  Will you love her,
comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health;
and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you
both shall live?

The Man answers
I will.

- Book of Common Prayer, Marriage Rites

Although my mom has not-so-fondly nicknamed two of my cousins “Birth” and “Control,” they gave me an amazingly intuitive answer to my uncle’s question. People always say that having children taught them a lot about God, and after this weekend, I definitely understand.My cousins and I were playing a rousing game of duck duck goose, when one of them – Casey, age 8 – decided to sprawl out all over the floor instead of just sitting in his place. This unfortunately led to my stepping on him by accident when I was running around, and I apologized and asked him to sit up straight. Sometimes God makes the first stages of our sin hurt, but that pain is supposed to be a warning to stop what we are doing. The first time, Casey listened to me, but a few minutes later, he was sprawled out again. As another cousin, Adam, ran around the circle, he had to jump over Casey to continue the game. Then, Casey intentionally grabbed Adam’s leg to try to trip him.

At this point, I realized it was time to discipline Casey. I stopped the game and asked him to sit up straight. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and he stopped responding to my questions. I tried to explain to him why tripping someone was unacceptable – there was a glass table next to us, and Adam could have easily hit his head on it if he had fallen. I attempted to convince him why it was dangerous to be laying on the floor instead of sitting up normally – did he like getting accidentally stepped on? But Casey would not listen, so finally I had to deliver an ultimatum: either he would sit up straight so that we could safely play the game, or he couldn’t play at all. At that point, he yelled that he didn’t want to play and ran out of the room.

I wasn’t a megalomanic recklessly asserting authority over the game. I simply saw that Casey’s behavior could easy cause someone to get hurt, and I knew that I needed to prevent that from occurring. Playing the game was not a reward I could arbitrarily met out. I wanted Casey to play, but if he was going to jeopardize the safety of himself and those around him, I had to remove him from the situation. Although God wants everyone in heaven, He can’t allow people unrepentant of their sin to ruin it. In the end, it is we who choose to make Jesus Lord over our lives. Casey was the one who chose to walk away when he didn’t want to do what I demanded. All God asks of us is to respect His authority and do what He asks. Ultimately, His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

So when God tries to discipline us with our sin, how do we respond? Do we listen the first time and then fall back into it? Do we throw a tantrum because we don’t want to listen? Do we walk away from Him because we’d rather follow our foolish whims? Or do we humbly respond because we recognize God’s higher wisdom and concern for our safety? When we appreciate sin for what it is, and understand God’s authority, it’s fairly intuitive that heaven simply shouldn’t be a reward for everyone. It suddenly makes sense that it is only to those “who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

Maybe my uncle just needs to have some kids of his own to understand.

2. You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep my commandments.

3. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

4. Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

5. Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you.

6. You shall not murder.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

8. You shall not steal.

9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.

10. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, and you shall not desire your neighbour’s house, his field, his manservant, his maidservant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbour’s.

- Moses, recapping the 10 Commandments to Israel in his final sermon in Deuteronomy 6: 6 – 21.

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD your God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”

- Moses, summarizing the 10 commandments in Deuteronomy 6: 4

In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible – one of the most foundational texts in my personal formation (both as a Christian and as a writer and critic) Reverend Hale, the man investigating the witchcraft accusations in Salem, Massachusetts, asks John Proctor, the only “good man” in Salem, to list the ten commandments. Proctor has not been going to church because he considers his priest corrupt, but feels he has been keeping the faith, even though he has been having an affair with Abigail, the ringleader of the girls accusing everyone of witchcraft. He’s going pretty good with his list, until he gets to the tenth one, which he can’t, somehow, remember. It’s a heartbreaking moment when his wife, Elizabeth, quietly reminds him what it is – the seventh commandment, against adultery.

I’ve used this device recently in a couple conversations, and it is very telling what comes at the top and the bottom of the list. It’s pretty fascinating, but for one person in particular, the first that he listed was a sin someone was sinning against him, and the last commandment he listed was the one he was breaking himself. I’m no psychologist, but there’s definitely some relation between the things we forget about God’s nature and the sins we end up mired in. What disturbed me, though, is that in almost no case (including when I make the list myself) do I get a list in the order set by God Himself, as related to Moses. The most common pattern is that the last five commandments make their appearance first – the simple “Do Not’s” – murder, adultery, theft, covetousness, lying. But surely there is a reason why these are the last five and not the first – and surely there is something sinister in the fact that we often think of the first five last. God is an orderly God – He doesn’t simply give us a random order of laws – in the priority there is meaning.

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The one which most often comes last in my recent conversations with people while on the road has been the Sabbath. And it is #4! Also note the huge chunk of elaboration God devotes to elaborating the first five, as opposed to the one-liners in the second half. But even before he gives us the first commandment, God’s first sentence is not about law, but about love:

“I AM the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”.

This statement of profound love, this establishment of the relationship between a people and their God – rather than an impersonal law, is what begins the ten commandments, and it is this statement which we leave out completely when we list out the ten commandments! For God loved Israel first, and therefore calls his people to account to return that love which he generously gave to an enslaved people. Moses’ summary is more telling – and there is no excuse, for those who would say we only got the greatest commandment in the New Testament, because here it is, right here in the Old:

“Hear O Israel! The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.”

It is thoroughly worrying that, from forgetting this beautiful relationship, we have slowly but surely devolved into a society that blithely dismisses the first five commandments as unimportant – we regularly swear in God’s name even if we don’t believe in Him, and worse, toss it around as a curse. We happily take up jobs that require us to work on Sundays, or worse, carry around blackberries and iPhones that ensure we are on the job 24/7. We imagine we can get along without our parents’ guidance, as we empty into the great metropolises as 20-somethings to work crazy hours, with no family support, no social network, no time to even go to church regularly, and then wonder why we have no friends or people we care enough about to spend time with. And from there we move to break the most insidious and important commandment of all – the first and greatest commandment: placing just about everything on the pedestal – prestige, financial security, material goods, romantic relationships, sex, drugs, partying, alcohol, travel, exclusive club memberships, networks, careers, art, marriage, children and our expectations for our children - except the Mighty God who gives us every breath of life, and who yearns to release us from our blindness and our bondage.

And then we complain that the God of the Old Testament is a kill-joy, only interested in banning us from doing fun things, like lie and cheat and covet and lust and hate and foul up our bodies – that he’s as controlling as some stern parent who doesn’t love us but expects us to conform to some completely unattainable perfect image. And then, exhausted and drained from not keeping the Sabbath, we wonder why we wander in the desert of despair, of depression, of egomania, of slavery to companies and industries and countries that will not care for us when we’ve lost our youth and health and beauty. And we wonder why our “friends with benefits” won’t commit to marriage, why our marriages fail after “living together” seemed to work out fine, why our serial hook-ups or on-the-side adulteries are less than fulfilling. We wonder why we are bad-tempered, insecure, anxious, drugged, running around like headless chickens and having quarter-life crises when we’re laid off when Wall Street crashes. We wonder why the degrees we have worked so hard – so desperately hard to get – do not assure us a lifetime of plenty and ease, do not cobble us into a perpetual motion machine of man’s making, when just across the Jordan lies a land flowing with milk and honey that we refuse to cross over to see, that we refuse even to consider. And we whine that God has forsaken us, when He simply stands across that river, arms wide open and filled with anticipatory joy, willing to part the waters for us to cross the moment we take our first baby step.

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments”

- Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 22: 37 – 40

Irreligious - Epistemology and god: Rationalists are from Mars, Empiricists are from Venus (3) -
Terence Lee writes his third post on ‘“Epistemology and God”, an ongoing series of essays on the theory of knowledge and how it relates to God’.

ONGs on the way – Japanese husbands, love your wives… – The Ongs, who are (full disclosure) my cousins, write about the Japanese stereotype of the Male Chauvinist Husband, and how a couple of Japanese pastors honor their wives.

World Traveler – “For the Sake of my Brothers” – The writer talks about Paul (and other Biblical characters’) Messianic statements – that is, offering their own damnation in exchange for their brothers’ salvation.

In the appendix, Jack describes his “Bible talk” – his small group that would meet weekly to study the Bible. The members of the Bible talk – who come from all sorts of backgrounds – encourage each other, pray together, help the poor together, and invite friends and strangers to the Bible talk. Jack’s Bible talk, a group not more than twenty, has baptized three or four people into Christ every year.

This post, however, is not about Jack’s Bible talk, but about something Jack said after explaining how his Bible talk accomplishes what it does: “It’s not easy, but it is simple.”“It’s not easy, but it is simple.” It struck me as an observation that was both obvious and eye-opening.

What is Christianity about? Simple! Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Simple – just not easy.

How do I love God and other people? Simple! Praise God and give thanks to God in prayer. Meet weekly with other Christians for prayer and true fellowship. (That’s what Jack does.) Invite friends and strangers to your church or to your Bible study group – and, if you don’t have one, start one! Stop spending your money on yourself and start spending it on others. It is all very simple (really) – just not easy.

Too often, I can feel impotent to change myself or the world around me – and I am hardly alone in this matter. Christians around the world, and especially in the United States, are wondering how to recapture the heart of a society that is increasingly post-Christian. We are wondering how to read the Bible (it seems so stale) or how to pray sincerely (it seems so forced), how to bring people to Christ (they seem so hard-hearted) or how to serve the needy (they seem so beyond reach). We realize that our faith is not where it should be and that our lives are not Christ-like. And so, naturally, we ask ourselves, “What is the problem?”

At various times in my life, I have more or less believed that the problem was my parents, my sister, my youth ministry, my campus ministry, my church’s theology, my church’s preaching, my church’s music, postmodernism, fundamentalism, socialism, evolution, hip-hop…. And perhaps those are all problems.

The real problem, however, is generally my unwillingness to do the good and simple things that are staring me right in the face: being friendly to strangers (let alone sharing my faith with them), spending time with fellow Christians whom I do not know well, asking people for advice and correction, praying and reading daily (and, if that becomes too difficult, enlisting the support of friends to ensure that I do read and pray daily)…. These are not complicated things; they are merely uncomfortable. They are simple, but they are not easy.

G.K. Chesterton famously wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” There is no mystery about any of the things I have mentioned. Not one of them requires a degree in theology or even a high school diploma. We know how to be kinder people; we know how to love genuinely; and not much more is required of us if we wish to seek first the Kingdom of God. (Christianity may not be so easy a caveman can do it, but it is so simple a caveman can do it.) The only thing really stopping us is us.

Christianity is about Love – and Love, though it is not always easy, is fundamentally simple. My prayer is that all of our philosophy, theology, and praxis – all of our fancy words – can be rooted in a simple, active, and overflowing love. Jesus demands nothing more and nothing less.

The only reason I really gave Song of Solomon a second thought came when I was thumbing through the Bible in search of my daily devotional’s assigned verse. When I happened upon Song of Solomon, I decided to stay and peruse it for a few minutes, as it was one section of the Bible I hadn’t heard excerpted in church or covered in my Bible studies. What stunned me most is the incredible poetry and artistic construction of the verses. It is God at His artistic finest, even if the content is, at times, admittedly cheesy and a little awkward. But the intense love between two people that is communicated in each passage speaks to me not only of our capabilities for love, but also of how strong God’s love is for us.

Song of Solomon is the only love poetry that I’ve come across so far that has truly captivated me, and engaged me emotionally in a way that I can’t duplicate or really describe. I am left in awe of God’s vision, His creation, and the capability for love and romance that He has so generously given us. The Bible is full of beautiful storytelling and poetry, but I have to say that Song of Solomon is hands-down my favorite book and favorite set of poetic works, period, that I’ve ever come across. I would love to read the original work in order to more fully experience the artistry of it, but that, unfortunately, requires knowledge and capabilities beyond what I possess.

I’ll leave you with my favorite passage, quoted from Song of Solomon 5:10-16:

My lover is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among ten thousand. His head is purest gold; his hair is wavy and black as a raven. His eyes are like doves by the water streams, washed in milk, mounted like jewels. His cheeks are like beds of spice yielding perfume. His lips are like lilies dripping with myrrh. His arms are rods of gold set with chrysolite. His body is like polished ivory decorated with sapphires. His legs are pillars of marble set on bases of pure gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as its cedars. His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely. This is my lover, this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.

In Romans 12:3, Paul calls us to look at ourselves with sober judgment – to think truthfully and honestly about who we are. Then he calls to love one another, and specifically to “let love be genuine” (Rom 12:9). I am convinced that there is an underlying logic to the progression of Paul’s thought at this point: that we can only truly love another, without hypocrisy, when we think vocationally, when we truly and graciously identify, accept and embrace who we are.

Any other posture is burdensome; it cannot lead to genuine love. Sometimes our generosity is misguided and our love for others is offered out of a busy and hectic spirit rather than out of serenity and joy. Sometimes we are caught up in the desire to be loved, in the hope that everyone will like us, and this inevitably undermines our capacity to love genuinely.

When we think vocationally, we are freed from what A. W. Tozer calls the burden of pretense and enter into the freedom of humility. Tozer reminds us of the joy that comes when we are freed of artificiality, of the burden of trying to impress others. When we recover the principle of vocation, we are able to embrace authenticity, genuineness and truthfulness. This is freedom; and it is a freedom to love others authentically.– Gordon T. Smith, Courage and Calling

It is said that Martin Luther King, Jr. sought a particular freedom, an emotional freedom from two things: an inflated head when praised and a crushed spirit when criticized.  – Gordan T. Smith, Courage and Calling

Consider the tree – The Giving Tree, that is, the tree which I invoked in my previous post, Why I am Liberal. I ended the post by affirming the importance of giving – that is, of unremitting Generosity. (Let’s just say I am taking this concept out of politics for a while – those are murky waters I’m not too familiar with, so let’s say we are in the realm of philosophy and literary criticism and creative non-fiction). However, there is a very important caveat to Generosity which I didn’t talk about in that post – Prudence.

Prudence is one of those virtues which has fallen out of fashion. It sounds like a girl’s name no one but a Puritan would give to their daughter (and by Puritan, I evoke the stereotypical Puritan, with a dour outlook on life and a perverse delight in squelching other people while hanging around with a plank in his eye). But all Prudence is is practical Wisdom, and one manifestation of Prudence is the ability to adjudicate to whom you give and when. It is guided by Telos – the fundamental question – Why? Why you give should guide the who and when and how. If you were to be asked – what is the most basic question that exists in the world? The answer would be: Why? Why the stars? Why the earth? Why are you you? Why mum? Why dad? Why me? It is the question any three year old would arrive at.

This is teleological thinking, and I am increasingly convinced it is the very key to the Kingdom of Heaven. To apply Telos to oneself is to search for vocation. What was I put on this earth to do? What must I pursue in the limited span of my life? I am still in the process of doing so, which is why I am reading Courage and Calling. So far, I am convinced it is my duty to give. I am convinced it is my duty to Love, to attempt to embody Love, and to Love extravagantly. Why? Because Jesus first Loved us. I have answered the first question. But now Prudence comes in – Love, yes, but who, and when, and how? These are impossibly important questions! I could unleash hell, still, even with Jesus at my side, if I answer them incorrectly! And all too often, I already have.

So let’s get back to the Giving Tree. When I first read this, when I was about nine, I was completely enchanted. It spoke to me. In fact, it spoke to me so much I wrote my own version of it, except with a giving river instead of a tree. And most people in my class of other nine-year-olds thought that the tree was right, and the boy was wrong. I mean, the tree loves so unconditionally! She gives, and gives, and gives – how can that be wrong? And the boy, he’s so selfish! He just takes, and takes, and takes…

However, upon reading it again at age twenty-four, I realize there is something profoundly broken in the tree’s giving: it breaks itself to give to the boy, and never lets him know that slowly but surely, her heart is breaking. Of course the Giving Tree is a love story. The tree resembles a mother, or a tireless lover, whose love is unrequited or at least unmatched by the one she loves. The Bible warns us against being unequally yoked. Paul said that in the context of not marrying a non-Christian, but I think it also points to the fact that love has to be equal. Perfection, I think, is a cube – Equality in three dimensions. The Love of God – three-pointed, the spirit issuing forth between the Father and the Son.

The Giving Tree is an impossible love story for this reason: She is a tree! He is a boy! Of course he will go and fall in love with some human girl. Of course he will want to see the world, for who wants to remain in a garden with a tree all their life? But aside from all that, the tree also makes it impossible for the boy to love her, because she never makes any equal demands of the boy. She never protests. Their friendship was appropriate when it was limited to swinging from branches, from giving apples, and from resting in her shade. But when the boy grows up, her love for him becomes inappropriate. She wants him to remain a boy forever, and she will not accept that he has to grow up, and will have different needs – needs which she cannot meet, and should not meet. She encourages his dependence on her, and turns him into a selfish taker by her reckless indulgence. In the end, the old man and the stump are equally depleted, because of her indiscriminate acts of giving. For all her giving, the boy has not grown up well. He’s grown into a twisted, selfish man, completely oblivious of the tree’s love, unable to hold down any other love. And for all her gifts, he comes back empty-handed.

And you know what? She is equally culpable in the story. If she had not given her branches, she would still flourish. If she had not given her trunk, she would still grow. If she had not given her heart, she would be able to love all the other children who exist in the universe and need trees to swing from. She tries to be all things to this boy, and ends up being the enabler of his selfishness. She may even feel self-righteous for giving, and we know that pride comes before a fall. She wants to be the boy’s one true love, but she is a tree, not a human. She becomes Daphne, a woman stuck in the form of a tree. And she cannot become fully human until she admits that human beings are radically dependent and out of control. Humans, unlike trees, cannot even make their own food from the sun. They cannot bear the whole weight of the world. They cannot save everyone they meet. They have limited energy – their passions are governed not just by their will, but a complicated amalgamation of the weather (how humbling!), whether they’ve had a square meal (how sobering!), chemicals like alcohol or drugs or medication (how terrifying!), their stage in life (let’s not forget that age matters), their relationships with their family, the state of their friendships.

Real friendship means accepting someone for their flaws as well as their strengths. We are not Atlas – we cannot hold the whole weight of the world. I try to do this sometimes. Or rather, it is my instinct. When I feel my pain, I go into the dark, and I cry. Because not only do I feel my pain, I push down the imaginary boundaries between me and other people, and somehow extrapolate to the world’s pain – If I, who am so privileged, so coddled, so well-fed, can feel this earth-shattering pain in my breast, then what of the world? What of the world – that is destitute, that is diseased, that is hungering for a God they do not even know to need? And I weep (I swear), for the world. And in that moment I am Atlas, trying to bear the brunt of all sin and all horror. But you know what? I can do that for an instant, but almost instantly I forget, and am my self again. And that is a blessing, because to presume to bear the pain of the whole world is the greatest blasphemy there is – it is the devil’s lie, to think that I can save the world. Because only One Man has ever done that, and will ever do. Only Jesus can bear the full brunt of Sin. Only Jesus holds the world in his pierced palms. I need only deal with the consequences of my own sin – and even then, the wages have been paid – so long ago, time out of mind – even before the dawn of time, I have been redeemed. Because if I think I am Jesus, there is only one solution: that is, to be crushed utterly, and to die. And O, I would die rather than kill! But it was I who hammered in the nail – and because He died, it has been given to me to live – the most unfair exchange under the sky. I’ve been commanded to live – I know not why.

In the deepest pits of my despair I pray this prayer to God, the Creator of all. I think of Him as the Cosmic Poet, if you like. As a poet I understand Him this way, because when I create a person in my head, I love him. And it is my love and my attention – my loving focus, that keeps this man alive. The moment I forget about him because my attention is elsewhere, he disappears. I imagine that we are all little flames in the mind of God, fueled only by the gas issuing from the kitchen stove of His Consciousness. The gas, perhaps, is composed of words – words, words, words – like Homer, reciting the Odyssey, around a fire. When the words stop, the men of the Iliad disappear like ghosts at a cock-crow, leaving not a rack behind. In my despair I yell at God and say, turn off that gas for me Lord. Stop uttering me. Just turn it off, I don’t want to burn anymore. It is given to You, and You Alone, to turn off the flame of my life. Extinguish it, for I do not want to exist anymore. It is a terrible prayer, but a true one.

And He says to me, very gently, every single moment I pray for it, No. No – you have work to be done. No – it is a sin to kill. It is a sin to hate, and as bad a sin to hate another as to hate yourself.  And look, all the saints whom you love intercede for you. They love you through the words they’ve left: Donne, Herbert, Shakespeare; David, Solomon, Mary, Elizabeth, Paul, Peter, John. If you are worthy of their love, how can you hate yourself? If you are worthy of My Love, how dare you denigrate yourself? The whole cloud of witnesses whom you know and love say it is not possible, not possible at all that I AM not, because if I didn’t exist, then every truth you have loved which you have known instinctively was Truth uttered by them, or embodied by their actions, was a Lie. And while you can deny yourself, you cannot deny them. No – little one, you have been given to Love, and the world does not have enough Love, and your great Love is needed in the world.

With these words he comforts me and by these words he bids me: Live. And so I get up out of my bed, and go. My God, I have loved you with a passion. Teach me the government of my tongue.

Risking his standing with the religious establishment, Christ preached radical teachings that confounded the Pharisees.  Gambling his image with society, he frequently crossed cultural and social taboos to eat with the lowest of the low, teaching his followers to do the same.  By investing in twelve uneducated Galileans who were prone to failure, Jesus, fully human, risked his own expectations and patience.  And ultimately with Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, he risked and gave his life for us sinners.  From the life of Jesus Christ, we see what true boldness looks like—a willingness and readiness to risk all aspects of our lives for the sake of the Gospel, fully confident that the sovereign God reigns over our actions.

There is a great difference between a professor teaching military tactics and the field commander leading his men against the enemy.  The boldness of Jesus is manifest in his entire life, not merely his words.  Jesus lived with those to whom he ministered.  He shared his entire life with them, eating with sinners and tax collectors (Matt. 9:10) and sitting down with adulterers (John 4).  Investment and risk go hand-in-hand—one’s investments reflect the risks that one is willing to take.  Jesus certainly possessed the wisdom and power to be a famous and popular teacher.  Yet Jesus’ foremost investment is not in his popularity or image.  Jesus chooses to live a humble, impoverished life among the sinners that he sought to save.  To teach with great wisdom or to give grand displays of power would bring no risk to Jesus.  Instead, he lives boldly by patiently investing his life in relationships, risking disappointment, betrayal, and sorrow.  His model of ministry actively engaged in risk because he sought to invest in broken and sinful people.  Through Christ, we see that the God of the universe is bold enough to take on flesh, exposing himself to all the risks brought forth with life surrounded by sin.

The greatest risk and the greatest evidence of boldness in Christ’s ministry is his willingness to form meaningful relationships.  A televangelist may boldly preach the gospel to millions, yet form relationships with none.  The man at a busy subway station may boldly distribute tracts to hundreds of travelers, yet a printed tract does very little in terms of relationship.  Relationships simply cost more.  They take time and energy and are unpredictable.  Rather than explain to people who he is, Jesus connected and invested in people in order to show them who he is.

Before ascending to heaven, Jesus does not command us to preach from afar, but rather He commands us to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19a).  The purpose of evangelism is not merely to make converts, but disciples.  The word matheteuo is a command to make learners, people who will be trained by other Christians.  Jesus devoted time to teaching the Twelve, explaining his parables and challenging their faith (Luke 8:9, Matt. 14:29).  The Apostle Paul invested so much in Timothy that Timothy became like a son to him (Phil. 2:22).  In the Great Commission, we are commanded to invest in relationships for the purpose of maintaining lifelong growth in Christ, and such an investment carries heavy risks.  Actively seeking to reflect Christ and advance the Gospel in our relationships in the face of rejection or disappointment demonstrates a constant and internalized boldness.

Given the centrality of building relationships, where do we see Christians act boldly on campus?  Perhaps a student goes out on a limb and invites a friend to church, at risk of introducing an awkward dynamic to a friendship.  Some may take small stands for the faith in conversations with classmates or professors.  The particularly bold may loudly preach the gospel open-air during campus outreach events. Actions such as these mean very little in isolation.  What would be the point of engaging in a “bold Christian event” once a year, but then avoid risks the rest of the year?  Jesus knows the state of our hearts, and it is that internalized boldness that matters.  At the same time, it is better to engage in a modest act of boldness than to do nothing at all.  The simplest solution for feeling reluctant to be more vocal about Jesus amongst friends, for example, is to go out on a limb and take a small stand for the faith.  There is no easy way around doing something—one simply must do. As these small stands become habitual, this will naturally lead to the development of an internalized attitude of boldness.

A natural consequence of a bold life is that people will notice. As Jesus began his ministry in Galilee, “a report about him went out through all the surrounding country” (Luke 4:14).  A woman who fought her way through a crowd because she believed that just by touching Jesus’ robe, she would be healed (Luke 8:46).  Five thousand men followed Jesus as He traveled around the Sea of Galilee because they recognized Jesus as a healer (Mark 6:32).  Even a centurion knew of Jesus’ reputation for healing, asking Jesus, “Say the word, and my servant will be healed” (Matt. 8:7).  Clearly, Jesus became well known during his ministry as a great healer and a teacher with authority. This image of boldness naturally follows His actions.

In considering what it means to be bold, from the condition of our hearts to the decisions we make, we cannot underestimate importance of faith—the confidence that God reigns over our actions.  We can be bold because we know that the One who calls us to be bold now sits on a throne in Heaven.  We know that our hope is in Christ and that He is and will be victorious.  Because of the redemptive work of Christ, we have nothing to fear, freeing us to be bold.  We also cannot emphasize the importance of being filled with the Spirit.  The love of Christ enables us to sustain even the most difficult relationships.  The wisdom that comes from the Spirit enables us to act appropriately.  The Spirit also supplies us with the courage to even act at all.  We cannot be bold without the sustaining love of Christ, perfectly expressed when He died for us.  I just pray that we would be bold enough to live for Him.

As the famous verse goes, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13, NKJV)

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Tony Shen ‘12, a Neurobiology concentrator living in Quincy House, is Special Projects Coordinator for The Ichthus.