Category: Kinda deep

I’ve been at this Bible studying for almost as many years as I’ve been alive. I attended Christian school, church twice a week and small group Bible studies beginning in middle school. I know my stuff. The old testament does not scare me.

I’ve also lived. I’m darn near half a century and I’ve seen things, experienced things, lived among people. In other words, I’ve acquired street smarts to go along with my book learning.

In this latest study, I’m returning to a familiar story with a more nuanced filter. And with nuance comes realization that the black and white soliloquies of our youth were a decadent display of blissful ignorance as we now meander through the middle of our lives mired in the messy grays of life. Still, stepping in to the pages of scripture and seeing similar hues, is an altogether more unnerving encounter. It means one must engage one’s mind when really, one would rather just be told what to do. Wrestling and asking for revelation, the kind that leads to transformation, is an art we’re unaccustomed to in our answer-driven, google-searching existences.

Study is such slow work.

If I were to guess, I’d say a good portion of the Bible readers I know are familiar with Esther’s story, at least in part, and at some point might have even uttered the phrase “for such a time as this” when needing to induce courage. It’s a good line for such a need as that.

But here’s what I never put together before. Esther’s beloved cousin Mordecai, the one who took her orphan self in and gave her steady wise counsel was also the one responsible for the predicament she found herself in. Yes. Mordecai made waves and got himself noticed. He chose not to show honor to an arrogant political prick and that, to put it mildly, poked the sleeping bear. Far as I can tell, it was a personal choice. God didn’t tell him not to. And there would be hell to pay.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the city, the King had asked for the fairest of the fair young ladies to be brought to him, for his pleasure. Esther was a beauty. So the virgin girl was taken from her home and placed on house arrest in the King’s court – for an entire year, awaiting her turn to be with the King. How wonderful. But as God would have it, she found favor in his eyes; meaning, he liked how she looked, or was drawn to her essence, or she simply had that “it” factor. We aren’t exactly sure, but we’ve watched enough American Idol to presume to know how this went down.

And so began her Queenliness.

But before that, Esther was a concubine and afterwards, a shrewd negotiator. All at the behest, the choices, the insatiable desire of others. One led an empire, the other her impressionable young heart. One could say she was but a pawn; a willing one, but a pawn nonetheless.

Ever feel like that?

I know I do. I get upset when I find myself in undesirable situations I didn’t create. Spend days whining to God about how unfair it is that so-and-so did this or that and here I am living in the aftermath. Wasn’t I somehow supposed to be spared the harsh reality that other people can affect the trajectory and dreams of my own life? (Remnants of my black and white ideal linger long.)

Esther is my new hero not because of her courage to face down one of the most powerful tyrants the world has ever known, but because she faced her life’s detours with grace. From what’s recorded, she wasn’t bitter. She didn’t suddenly turn a deaf ear to Mordecai, the man she’d rightly trusted. And honestly, I can’t even fathom being with a man who’d taken hundreds of other women and now as “the queen”, can’t approach for fear of death. But even so, Esther lived. Vibrantly. Throwing banquets, saving nations, writing words of good will and assurance to her people (#kindred), fasting and praying. She kept on, regardless.

The longer I live, the more inclined I am to want to know people’s story, especially those in Scripture. I love the one liners as much as the next person but I crave knowing, reading, seeing how men and women of faith survived their day to days more than conquered their Goliaths.

Because that’s what most of life is. Day to day. These visions of grandeur where plans move along according to timelines and destiny as some sort of birthright, keep us bound to end results. And the end should not be our concern. God is the end. He declared it. He is also the beginning.

So be of good cheer! These middle days have been orchestrated by One who knows the events you didn’t bargain for and yet perfectly designed you to rise up for such a time as this.

I love studying the lives of the men and women on the pages of Scripture. I find the parts of their lives not necessarily intended to inform is where I linger most. In that sense, I come at scripture through my own lens. I trust it’s part of the learning process or God wouldn’t have spoken to us in story book form. So I don’t shy away from reading between the lines.

This week I spent with Esther. Oddly, it wasn’t Esther’s actions that piqued my curiosity, but rather the scene-setters surrounding her. I saw her for the first time as a bit of a pawn in the games other people were playing. I admit I wasn’t looking for God’s redemption. I was looking at people. I made a judgment on her cousin Mordecai that had me questioning his intentions. Particularly the choice he made not to bow down (as a show of respect to a political official) to Haman.

I saw this choice as a personal one. A bit of a pissing contest gone awry. He and Haman’s forefathers had long hated each other. So there was history between them. I didn’t cease to see Mordecai as a man of good character, just one whose action drew unnecessary attention to himself, thus endangering hundreds of thousands of lives. Lives that Esther would eventually be required to negotiate for, at great risk to herself. 

Perhaps he was refusing to bow because in doing so he would be denying his allegiance to the God he wholeheartedly served, which is what I always assumed. But the Scriptures don’t say that. It was left to interpretation.

And I had never before interpreted his choice as anything less than honorable. 

Until this week.

I shared what I’d written with the group of women I’m studying alongside. Though they appreciated the deeper discussion, they challenged my conclusions and gave entirely different perspectives.

It was a great exchange of thoughtful dialogue between serious women. 

Yet I left our time wondering if I was wrong. Not just coming at it from a differing viewpoint, but actually wrong. 

So I’ve been asking myself, why did I react to Mordecai like I did? Why did I question his motives? Why did I think “political oneupmanship” and not fearless integrity?

In short, my lens. 

I’ve been living in the backwash of other people’s decisions for awhile now. Men who claim to follow Christ same as I do whose “judgement calls” have greatly affected the trajectory of my life and left me feeling powerless. Reactionary. Two things I loathe feeling.

{I should also take a moment to confess, I’ve been binge-watching House of Cards. That Frank Underwood is one stone cold SOB. He’s as ruthless as any real or imaginary tyrant we know. I can’t ignore that these hours upon hours of intake have undoubtedly seeped into my subconscious, further complicating my motive-meter.}

But back to my fervent study of scripture  😉  

The correlation I subsequently drew between all these choices and lives (including my own) is that wrong doing, left unpunished, emboldens. Which is why we need accountability by way of community. Not only to safely share and find acceptance, but to be called out. Challenged. Especially those of us who lead. And we all lead.

Today I was.

Oh so gently and not at all intentionally, but challenged nonetheless. My lens is in need of mercy. I’ve been dwelling on the actions of others for a long, long time. It’s tainting my view of myself. And worse, of God. Even my circumstances (which one would think are fairly black and white) are subject to interpretation. Just depends on the viewfinder.

I do know one thing though…Esther was tossed from one dire situation to the next with truly no say in if she wanted what she was getting or not. But she proceeded through each one with grace, finding immense favor along the way. She stayed true to who she was, regardless of what others did or their reasons for doing it.

Come political gamesmanship in the name of Christ, hardball in the name of business or simply honest differences, that’s who I want to be. True. Guileless. Other people’s actions do and will continue to affect my life. Period. It would seem then that surrendering to this notion is not weakness but the first step toward maturity. 

Thank you sisters.

I’ve gone round and round about what to write concerning our current state of political affairs and I have no consistent, singular thought.

Amid the hand-wringing and stress eating and earnest desire to understand what in the hell is going on, I keep coming back to the idea that politics has morphed into a caricature of culture.

It’s never been easier to run our own campaigns, what with the blogs, the FaceBooks, the Insta’s and the twitter accounts.  What we thought was a longing to connect, turns out was an insatiable desire to Be something.  Say something. Write something.

We spend large amounts of hours, culling through cleverly crafted information, gathering thunder, so we can re-write, re-produce and re-release our own version of similar thoughts in hopes of being lauded by our like-minded followers or shock the airwaves with bold soliloquies, daring the haters to show themselves.  It’s an addiction; and we are victims and peddlers alike.

Meanwhile, back at party headquarters, look who snuck up on us.

If you’re inclined to think that one candidate or the other this year was the actual devil in disguise, then you must accept that they are our devils, made in our image, because we as an electorate have been practicing their sorcery for quite awhile now.

calculating … hedging … extrapolating … angling … inflaming … pontificating

Yes. We. Do.

We the people have not taken our responsibilities as a republic seriously. We’ve sacrificed our mandate to form a more perfect union on the alter of individual grandstanding.  We’ve ceded the power of dialogue to talking points.  We’re essentially holding campaign rallies on social media; scrolling through feedback, giving the perfunctory, presidential-like thumbs-up to adulating cheers while escorting any hecklers right on off our stage.

Too bad for us.

If the sky appears to be falling, perhaps its time we close our computers and put down our phones.

For starters, christians need to stop being so petty. Just stop. We all bring traits of an incomparable God to his table of infinite worth, so there is room enough for pro-life supreme court watch dogs and immigrant/refugee policy influencers alike. God loves with equal fervor the unborn and the outcast.  We can and should advocate for both.

We aren’t all called to charge the same hill, though. Our great big God navigates injustice in all sorts of creative, distinct ways, often confounding the wise, so deliberate his plan and ability to execute.

But what we can do, each of us on our commissioned battlefront, is be the candidate we wish we could’ve voted for; we can be the policy we wish was now enacted.

What if we allotted each other the same grace we extend to those we champion?

What if we treated christians voting right of us, as strangers in an unknown land…that is to say, tenderly and without prejudice.

What if we treated christians voting left of us, as beating hearts at risk…that is to say,  deserving of protection.

Or this…

What if we remembered that we like each other? What if we remembered things we’ve shared… like college dorm rooms, random road trips, big time plays in big time games, the perfect song for an occasion, wedding bells and newborn babies, finding purpose in the middle years, all the secrets safely kept.

What if we did that all day on Facebook?

Then again, maybe history conjures up a pain, inflicted or received, that these dramatic themes expose, which might explain why this feels personal.

I don’t know.

While on another slow jog, lamenting these very things, the Foo Fighters popped up on my music shuffle (which lent to a quickening of my pace, but that’s not really important 🙂 ). Here’s the  challenge their song presented…

It’s times like these we learn to live again,

It’s times like these we give and give again,

It’s times like these we learn to love again,

It’s times like these, time and time again…

This isn’t the first and it won’t be the last, but now is definitely a time when christians are being defined. The question we must contemplate is one that Jesus posed (in the Gospel of Mark, no less) when the whole concept of “the church” looked like it may go under before it even got off the ground (and trust me, those were darker days than these)

“What good is it if we gain the whole {political landscape}, yet forfeit our soul? What can we give in exchange for our soul?”

The short answer is nothing and no good. No compassion, no empathy, no anything that’s real. Without a soul all we’ve got is a bunch of campaign bullshit.

The American church which I deeply love and ache for daily, I pray is defined by a love that never ends, not a democracy that’s destined to.

#werewithhim  #makehisnamegreatagain

What is the driving force behind your motivations, your decisions? Is it wanting to leave the world a better place? Is it personal happiness? A determination to be different than how you grew up or who you’ve become? The Golden Rule?

It’s definitely something. In a moment of crisis, when faced with a life-altering decision, not a one of us are islands unto ourselves, operating in a vacuum.  We’ve been taught, conditioned, educated or aroused by something that informs our conscience how to guide us in crucial moments. Not that we don’t get side tracked or succumb to detours along the dreary/weary/fraught-strewn way. We do. But when there is a heightened commitment to clarity, what is your guiding force?

Because this has come up a lot in this election. Who you vote for seems almost secondary to how you decide who to vote for.  It would seem we’re well beyond party affiliation or policy, and have forayed into territory we’re calling “the lesser evil”.  Just vote for that.

Easy enough.

Except it isn’t.

How do we evaluate the “evilness” of one action over another? Scale of 1 to 10 it? Problem is, we’ve no idea the scope of where one behavior began and where the other might end.  How then can we know with certainty which evil is lesser, when we don’t have the sum of their totalities?

Then all good christians everywhere shouted, “the Bible!” That’s our guide.

Agreed.

But is it?

Most christians I know follow better bloggers than I, listen to podcasts of amazing speakers, go to (perhaps even teach at) church weekly, and read well written, brilliantly researched books on every topic from A to Z, and thus believe the Bible is their guide.

While all of the aforementioned activities are super great, I think its more accurate to say they’re describing what we’ve been told about the Bible.

Which almost never stands up under the pressure of the bottom falling out of our life, or the desperation associated with critical decision making because we know we are the ones that will ultimately live with our choices. Not the awesome podcaster who really made us think.

So I’ll be honest; this non-stop daily waffling has rattled me. I’ve read the pros and cons of how to cast my vote from all sorts of people I respect. But strip all that away, and it’s just me and my conscience, paralyzed.

And I’m a fairly decisive person.

When one day last week as I was pounding it out with a slow jog (because I enjoy breathing), I looked over in a direction opposite of the way I was headed and saw Jesus standing there, leaning on an out-building, watching me (not really – no one was even there – but it was an impression I got). Suddenly it was clear: have my years of knowing Jesus meant nothing?  I started to cry (more perks of the slow jog, ability to emote), because the tension from the uncertainty of how to accurately weigh an evil or cast a vote, faded away.

But then more.

While my tear-stained smile still radiated, this came: Read.Your.Bible. I’m going to assume Jesus tossed that out there quick as he could, lest my dizzying pace get the best of me.

So I have been. Particularly the book of Mark, over and over again, looking for Jesus there on the pages, alive. He isn’t boring and he isn’t weird and if you think he might be, perhaps it’s because some boring weird person told you about him.

Which is not the same as knowing him for yourself.

So do that more. Talk to him. Out loud. How can this possibly still be a thing when just about everyone uses their blue tooth in public spaces? Or even more unnerving, while driving by themselves, appearing insane?  People freaking talk to people they can’t see all day long. We need to move beyond this as a stumbling block. He is there, with you, wanting to be known. By you. Awkwardness be gone.

Now that I’ve sufficiently gotten the Holy Ghost, I’ll settle down.

Dearest friends whom I deeply love, I really think the point of this whole election extravaganza has been to ask ourselves, then grapple with, what really guides us? What truly informs our decisions?  Dig deep.  Do we allow some unacknowledged driving force to pervade the space a still small voice is speaking? Do we do the work of Jesus relating, or do we contract it out to dynamic speakers and funny bloggers and thus conclude we’ve had our Bible for the day? Because however “more than” they appear to know or be, they’re not Jesus.

And Only Jesus will remain throughout the course of your lifetime events. Everything else has an expiration date.

But don’t take my word for it. Find out for yourself. Read your actual Bible 🙂

Because here’s another profound little tidbit: the lesser evil, by definition, is still evil. The best that you can do then, come November 8th, is know Jesus for yourself.

(I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post. I hope you can deal.)

It’s been quite a month.

In the world.

And in my life.

There was fear aplenty.

For me personally, it wasn’t the paralyzing kind, but rather the persistent, nagging, soul-sucking kind, known to most as plain ole stress. Stress and fear are two links of the same chain. Put another way, if sarcasm is anger’s ugly sister, then stress is fear’s obnoxious cousin Eddie.

As for the state of the world, my Lord.  I don’t need to rehash everything, but here are a few of the highlights: A lot of terror followed by a lot of Trump. That would be quite enough for one month, but for all the Hillary haters out there, I’ll throw you a bone…I finally watched 13 Hours. It about did me in. We abandoned our people on the frontlines. Of the war. On terror. Left them for dead. We won’t ever know for sure what happened after that, but need we more?

But the month had not exhausted the extent of its fury. Europe was suddenly thrust in turmoil and Rio had yet to contain the certain danger posed, and never mind that when I heard Brexit and Zika in the same sentence, I pictured two cool girls I’d like to know, not epic implications of worldwide panic. We really should be more careful when naming our referendums and viruses.  It distracts from the issues when we get too cute.

When I’m not busy being stressed (or victim of my own misplaced eagerness to make new friends), I’ve been reading through the book of Mark. I love the gospels because I learn a lot about Jesus just by paying attention to how he interacts with people. It’s fascinating. First thing I notice is he is drawn to faith like a heat seeking missile. Calls it out. Shines the spotlight. His ministry flourished in the face of it, floundered without it. Being God, I doubt he “needed” people’s faith to act, but ever teaching, I think he was outlining two very distinct approaches to life.  And Himself.

In faith or with fear.

You want to know who was most afraid?  Those with something to lose. Those having already lost, threw themselves at Jesus as their only hope. And you know what he did?  Asked them what they wanted. Then willingly, gladly gave it to them. Every time.

But those who lived in fear, held their cards close to their chest, hid in the wings, watched while others got healed, got loved, got free of false religion, while all they got was more and more afraid.  Of having less. Of being less. Of meaning less and less.

So they doubled down (such a tell-tale sign of fear). They’d whisper secrets to like minds, devising schemes on how to kill not just momentum, but the man; stop his grace-flow, turn the tide, get advantage back to them.  Afraid to deal directly (or face themselves at all), they hedged each interaction with clever misdirection, preoccupied with how to make this whole thing work out best for them.

Fear is stressful like that.

Now you might say, “hey girl, I’m just trying to pay my bills over here – not stage a coup. (I hear you, friend, me too.) Or, “you’ve got no idea what it’s like inside my marriage.” (oh, I think I might.) Or, “I’ve loved Jesus all my life, and it has not gone well for me.” (that’s the hardest one of all;  when what we thought this life would be, bumps up against what is. I think we all relate.)

Here’s where things get real.

For those who chose the life of faith (according to the book of Mark), when Jesus called they left what they were doing. Mid-task. Just up and followed him. (Uh, sorry dad, you’ll have to finish up without us, said the sons of fishermen everywhere.) When Jesus sent them out in pairs, to work on his behalf, they went with these instructions: no food, no coat, no wife and kids. Just go. (Really? Is that even wise?) And finally, for all the things that did not jibe (first is last and last is first, tell that mountain to move to the sea, the kingdom belongs to children, and stuff like that), they just kept on following, kept on listening, kept on walking with the man who turned the world completely upside down.

So I guess this is what it comes down to:

I can hold to power (through the mastery of each task). Hold to what I want/deserve/have worked real hard for in my marriage, in my life, even in my Jesus seeking, (but at what cost? For grace flows through the open hand). Hold to hurt, misinformation, and ideals that went awry (be it long ago or just the other day).

And in the end, here’s what I’m holding…a heart afraid to trust at all, a body racked with stress and strife, a mind filled full of worthless lists, and draining, endless contemplations.

Or,

I can keep on…being taught;

that every single tiny snag, is not my big undoing. Jesus covered that.

I can keep on…being tossed;

by winds and waves that blow and blow, because I know who they obey. Jesus mastered them.

I can keep on…being changed;

altered by the time well spent with him who modified this life for me. Even Jesus was transfigured.

And in the end here’s what I keep…my real, authentic, lasting life, hidden safely within Christ; my place beside the reigning Prince of perfect peace; the wonder that enraptured, when I first heard the teacher say, “Hey girl, come follow me.”

It was a very active month.

In the world.

And in my life.

But on the other side I see, faith abounding yet in me.

Over the course of a hard 5 years, or maybe it’s been 7, they start to blend at a certain point, I resigned myself to the notion that life will always be hard – so much more than we ever anticipated at the outset of adulthood. That’s not to say childhood was a cakewalk, but the beauty of being a kid is you really have no idea what you weathered until you look back and begin to pick it apart.  Once it’s been thoroughly combed through, you marvel at the strength of the human spirit, of what a child will endure to keep from being shut out of all they dream.

But of late I’ve found myself in this resignation that all we really have on this side is the hope awaiting us on the other side.  What we believers call eternity.  Wrongs made right. Tears wiped away.  The world and all her inhabitants as it was meant to be.  What a glorious day, that crossover day.  As a faithful follower on this side, I would learn my lessons well, bide my time, and pray to leave my sphere of influence better off for having come within my reach. But it would be hard – so hard – and mostly done by grinning and bearing it, and when the going got really rough, by simply bearing it and hoping my sphere would understand that I had no strength to grin, because I would be honest about it, and that was something.

Seemed like a logical, even Biblical conclusion, given the past 5 or 7 years.

Then I had one of the best conversations of 2016 thus far.  About 2 hours in to one of those blessed heart to hearts, when deep calls out to deep and easy can’t begin to describe the way words were exchanged, my listening friend simply said to the conclusions I had drawn,

but joy comes in the morning.  On this side.

In the days following that profound interjection, I thought long on if that could actually be true.  Until I stopped thinking and quietly sat on my porch and breathed.  It’s spring in Kansas City.  The air is crisp, cool even, this early morning. The trees are in full greenery, the sky a vibrant blue, my peonies, begonias and geraniums radiating pink, red, lavender and all the shades we’ve yet to name, and with each gentle breeze, perfume my presence with sweetness and calm.

But the crown jewel of today is the sun.  The beautiful, shining sun. A week of rain and clouds can make an entire community wonder if it ever will again.  I smiled to myself just last night, out on my deck, nearing midnight, when across the creek from where I sat, a fire pit still blazed and children, little bitty ones, ran and laughed and every so often called to their dads their whereabouts.  You see, the sun shone yesterday too, and this city came alive.  Every sidewalk bustled with runners and bikers and dog walkers.  Every ball field thumped with kicks and throws and catches. Most car windows stayed low, accommodating the swaying hair and arms and music of a people feeling free. Because of the sun. Even at midnight, young and old alike were clinging to the day.

So it dawned on me while sun again caressed my face, that this was natures way, Creator’s confirmation, that weeping may (and certainly does) last for a (sometimes very long) night, but joy comes in the morning.

Joy.

The dormant darkness eventually (but certainly) coming to life in the light of day.  Just look around.

Joy.

The heavy, hollow burden of hard – so hard – unbound and then let go by these new days, these fresh reminders, these worthwhile moments of sitting with the sun.

Joy.

It came to me this morning.

Weeping may remain for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:5

It’s been said I put a lot of pressure on myself. Generally speaking, I agree. When the pressure’s on, I function as if some catastrophic consequence is looming if I don’t what? Show up on time? Clean my kitchen before I go to bed? Rigorously exercise? Say the right things? Be completely cool and cavalier under all this pressure?

Who is it that makes these demands of me? Who gets inside my head and says, I must be so disappointing to you — “you” being the nonexistent yet ever present observer of my life?

Here’s where the pressure hovers on a grander scale…

Due to the influx of constant correspondence (via text), and constant comparison (via all the rest of it) my definition of “friend” has changed considerably.  When I am with a friend who’s exchanging continuous texts with other friends, I start looking around the room for a new friend because apparently my conversation skills aren’t what they used to be, nor would it seem, my proficiency at maintaining updates. I just don’t have people I text everyday, and definitely not all day long. Never have.

And what of the “friends” I socialize with through media? Well, this is a true quandary, because it makes me glad and sad simultaneously.  I call it glad/sad because I’m a master wordsmith. I’m glad because a simple thumb’s up on a friend’s posted pic seems to let them know I was thinking of them. But then I’m sad because we’ve essentially exchanged nothing, yet somehow feel like we have. That’s messed up.

The pressure whispers, ‘do I even know what friendship is anymore?’

Another area pressure has me hamstrung is security.  It seems I should have had the good sense to project manage my home like a responsible little DIY’er, make wise investments, and travel to half my bucket-list destinations by now. Oh, and buy health insurance I can actually use. Knowing how abysmal my attempts at these have been, I muddle along, perceiving some unseen others as victors in life because they navigated the big stuff successfully and have the spoils to show for it.

The pressure whispers, ‘my best years have been lost.’

Then there’s the whole “being productive” thing.  I can waste hours (translation: days), sitting on a couch strategizing how to execute my Next Big Thing, while supposedly everyone else is living their purpose driven life.  They’re living the dream, regardless of impediments.  Meanwhile, I feel trapped by the nothingness. How did they stay their course, find their stride and run their race with endurance?

The pressure whispers, ‘why am I so incapable, so lame?’

When I’m in my right mind, having a good day, a meaningful encounter, or simply taking a walk, I know these things aren’t true – I know there is no “other” out there doing a bang up job on all fronts.

It’s time to scale down the pressure.

The only way I know how to do that is to stop dwelling on myself, and think awhile about someone else. Like maybe Jesus. His humanity in particular.  When I recall from what I’ve read about him, that he sympathizes with me because he felt pressure in similar ways, I remember he had at least a dozen people following him around all day long, every day. I remember he had an actual audience.

Talk about pressure.

He basically had to climb a mountain to get a few moments alone.

And by virtue of being human (and therefore limited), he left some needs unattended, some expectations unmet, some longings unfulfilled, yet didn’t allow the pressure of those undone’s to dictate his emotional state or sense of well being.

Impressive that one.

But he didn’t stop there; he knew the day would come when I would crumble from the weight of my own unattainable standards of achievement.

So he took the pressure off me and put it on himself.

He took his life well-lived, well-managed, well-purposed, well-pleasing… and exchanged it for mine; my marginally adorable yet wholly convoluted attempt at a life lived full.  The ultimate switcheroo.

Christ in me, silences the audience.