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“Hello --It is May 16th and welcome to Wonderland Fellow Griever. — “You've just stepped Down the Rabbit Hole — where mental health meets madness after loss. Let's get real, together. This is your daily dose of truth, grief, and yes, just the right bit of madness.”WEEK  3: Control & SurrenderDay 16: Today's truth is: "The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things..."  Idea: Talking about the hard stuff. We avoid talking about suicide. We avoid talking about grief. We avoid talking about mental health — especially when it's messy, raw, and unfixable. The stigma looms large and heavy.Silence is heavy. It isolates us. It shames us. The blame-shame game is brutal after a suicide loss & definitely not where we should surrender control. Take away its power by talking about it --- everywhere you can.So today, say one hard thing out loud. Maybe just to yourself. Maybe to someone safe. Maybe just whispered into the wind. It's a step towards healing, towards breaking the silence.There's power in truth. There's freedom in saying the things we're told to keep quiet. And you don't have to carry that silence forever.Every time we choose to voice our thoughts and feelings, we reclaim a piece of ourselves, fostering connection and understanding with those around usSo, that's all for now... that's the nugget to carry todayTake a breath. Take what you need. leave the rest. And come back tomorrow because, remember, you're not broken—you're grieving. And you're not alone in this madness. ---I'll be right here Talk Soon."[P.S... Like this podcast? Support the show by clicking...thank you]SEE YOU TOMORROW!!! __________________________________________________________________________My WEBSITE "The Leftover Pieces; Rebuilding You" is support central.If you, or someone you know, is struggling ww suicidal thoughts, reach out:CALL 988 in the US or Canada OR, you can also TEXT the word "HOME" to 741741 in the USA & CanadaSupport the show

Summer Holidays!Lenten Hymns are my main preoccupation at the moment. I have a special bunch of Masses around the feast of the Annunciation this year.Turns out there are quite a few arrangements of Audi Benigne Conditor on CPDL.org, some of them for 3 parts and designed to alternate with the chant. I love this hymn. It's one I didn't know back when I assembled A New Book of Old Hymns.Back to the Little Office, January is still Christmas time or Office 3. The feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, now known as the Presentation of Jesus, 2nd February is the last day for Office 3. The beginning of the changeover to Office 1 comes at the end of Compline. Instead of finishing with the Christmas antiphon Alma Redemptoris, you change to the next antiphon, Ave Regina Caelorum. Then the next hour, Matins, is Office 1.I often describe Ave Regina Caelorum as the Lenten antiphon, though that isn't strictly accurate. Purification to Sacred Triduum is a better description, but it's a bit more wordy. So this change doesn't catapult us into Lent or even Septuagesima. Septuagesima Sunday falls on 16 February this year, so your last Alleluias happen at None of Saturday 15 February. From Vespers Saturday 15 February, use the “Laus tibi Domine” options.With regard to my own Little Office PDFs and reprints, a keen reader found that I had left out the third collect for Compline, so that has been remedied. The up to date PDFs are always at https://littleoffice.brandt.id.au/#bookletsSomeone else noticed that a shop description of my truncated Benziger Brothers Little Office had a misleading description. It is a bit confusing. I have four variations of the Benziger 1915 Little Office:* The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary - 257 pages, paperback - lulu or shop.jubil.us* Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Office of the Dead - 433 pages, paperback - lulu or shop.jubil.us* Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1915 - 257 pages, hardcover - lulu or shop.jubil.us* The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1915, blue hardback - 257 pages, hardcover - lulu or shop.jubil.usSo only one of the four gives you the complete book with the extra commemorations and the Office of the Dead. The other three have been shortened to just the Little Office and they share a listing on Shop Jubilus - there's a drop down menu there to select which one you're after.As the school year resumes here in Australia, I have a new list of projects to work on:* a course on singing Roman Compline according to the 1962 rubrics* a video (or two) going through the rubrics section of the Benziger 1915 Little Office book* an explanation of how to sing PsalmsThese are responses to queries from kind readers like you. I live in a lovely bubble where I can go to the Latin Mass on Sundays and sometimes even on weekdays. My family sings Compline together most evenings. I've learned so much about chant over the past two decades, often volunteering for things way over my head - you don't know what you don't know. When you ask questions, it helps me reflect on my assumptions and track down the reasons for how I sing.It's still frustrating that a conventional Catholic education completely overlooks these aspects of the treasures of Catholic music. But again, you don't know what you don't know. It's by learning and passing on this information that one day maybe a good majority of Catholics will be able to sing together confidently, transcending boundaries of age and language with timeless repertoire. It will take a while for our Catholic education systems to catch on.So, I hope this message finds you well. Let's pray for each other that we may accomplish our goals in 2025!God bless. Get full access to Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary at littleoffice.substack.com/subscribe

What if you never stopped discovering, learning, or pursuing life with curiosity?Today I want to introduce you to Matt, Matt is one of those people that the more you get to know you realize just how much they know. There is something about humility that allows others to learn in a way that develops joy for what we are learning.Matt is one of those people, one that I get to learn from when it comes to jiu jitsu, one that approaches everyone around him with a gentle humility, desire to know more of who they are, and finds genuine joy in sharing what he knowsWe chat about everything from drunken noodles to deep life changing loss, from the peace in jiu jitsu to anxiety, and what it means to view the world with curiosity and a strong desire for polarity to be less a part of our worldHe shares why he wishes more foreigners would talk to us individually here in America and how he believes, and I know him to be among those of us here who deeply value knowing others and learning from what isn't like usSo tune in today and meet Matt, one that is effectively changing the world by showing up for his students, his friends, family, and fiancé with love, sincerity, and a genuine curiosity for what makes each one who they are And to you Matt thank you, thank you for not only taking the time, but for allowing me the honor of sharing more of who you are with others, for the joy that is found in learning from you on and off the mats, and for the way you share genuinely and humbly of who you are continuing to be in this world. It is an honor to call you a friend

Bitcoin's price may have stagnated in the past 24 hours, but the broader crypto market has been busy! For Bitcoin, the downward momentum appears to be weakening, which some believe indicates a reversal. A new report shows why the weekends are becoming so volatile, and the world's largest Bitcoin miner is raising $250 million to buy more BTC. In other news, an Ether whale is dumping thousands of ETH worth over $150 million after holding it since its ICO, a Canadian crypto exchange founder was found to be using customer deposits to gamble with, and a US Court of Appeal has reversed the dismissal of the HEX manipulation case against Binance.US.Further reading:Why Bitcoin is still poised to break $74K before end of yearBitcoin risks ‘sharp weekend price swings' as ETFs suck up liquidityWorld's largest Bitcoin miner announces $250M raise to buy more BitcoinBitcoin miners record lowest daily revenue of 2024Whale continues $154M dumping spree with 5K ETH deposit to OKXWhale buys nearly $13M of Ether, but price needs to reclaim $2.7K for next leg upCanadian crypto exchange gambled away $9.5M of users' Bitcoin and EtherUS Court of Appeals reboots HEX manipulation case against Binance.USSo, grab yourself a coffee, and let's get into.Rise'n'Crypto is brought to you by Cointelegraph and is hosted and produced by Robert Baggs. You can follow Robert on Twitter and LinkedIn. Cointelegraph's Twitter: @CointelegraphCointelegraph's website: cointelegraph.comThe views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast are its participants' alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. This podcast (and any related content) is for entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice, nor should it be taken as such. Everyone must do their own research and make their own decisions. The podcast's participants may or may not own any of the assets mentioned.

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd TRANSCRIPT: Announcer (00:06): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:13): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. So here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode of this show, my guest and I will have probing, provocative and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historical context in which these events occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live on today's episode. The issue before us is anti imperialism in the US today. What is it and what is it not? And for insight into this, my guest for the discussion is the chair of the coordinating committee for the Black Alliance for Peace, an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and the Green Party candidate for vice president of the United States in 2016. Ajamu Baraka, as always my brother. Welcome. Ajamu Baraka (01:21): Good to be here, Dr. Leon. Thank you. Wilmer Leon (01:24): So today's topic is based on a piece in Oroco Tribune entitled Anti Imperialism in the US Today, what it Is and Is not. It's written by Stanfield Smith and he opens his piece by quoting the late Cuban president, Fidel Castro, saying there is an enemy that can be called universal, an enemy whose attitude and whose actions threaten the whole world, bully the whole world. That universal enemy is Yankee imperialism. Ajamu your thoughts on Castro's assessment, especially in the context of the recent president Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of lawmakers urging the Republican controlled House of Representatives to take up this $95 billion military aid package for Ukraine, for Israel and Taiwan and other allies, especially understanding if the United States wasn't using Ukraine as a proxy, you wouldn't need that money. The United States is funding the genocide in Gaza and is also trying to use Taiwan as the tip of the spear against China. Ajamu Baraka. Ajamu Baraka (02:45): Well thank you so much for that question because it's a very important question and a very important conversation that we have to have. Fidel's position is in alignment with my position, the position I've been advocating or arguing for the last few years that one of the issues among left forces in the US primarily and also in Western Europe is that they seem not to understand the difference between a primary and the secondary contradiction. That is that they don't seem to recognize that for many of us in the colonized world, in the global south, in the northern states, but in those parts of the northern states where we are exploited and nationally oppressed, that for us the primary enemy, if you'll emanates primarily from the US and is Western European allies, we see the US and Western European allies as Fidel sees them as in fact representing an existential threat to the rest of collective humanity. (04:02) Therefore, that enemy becomes the primary objective of our political activity. Now, some western left leftists, they confused by that and so they will look at some of the issues or contradictions and some of the emergent socialists countries or countries with socialist aspirations, countries that are just trying to build some kind of progressive movement in their nations to have some breathing room for development but who find themselves as a consequence in the crosshairs of the US and US policies attempting to undermine their projects and these leftists will focus in on those internal issues, giving left coverage and rationalization for the targeting of those nations. We see that as fundamentally contradictory. We see that as in fact reactionary confusing what should be the primary objective, which is the defeat of Western imperialism with the internal issues in these various states as equal and they are primary and secondary contradictions are in fact that they are different. Wilmer Leon (05:28): You mentioned the United States and its Western European allies and what is even ironic now is many of those Western European allies are finding themselves being victimized by US imperialism. We're looking at over the last seven months to a year a dramatic decline in productivity in Germany as a result of the United States blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. Now Europe is having to pay exorbitant amounts of money for natural gas. We find that impacting Britain, we find that impacting France. We find that all over Europe and and now for example, for those who may have listened to the interview with Russian president Putin and he's supposed to be the villain and Donald Trump mentions moving away from NATO and folks in the United States were screaming, how can Donald Trump talk about NATO like that in the United States attacked a NATO ally in act of war in blowing up Nord stream. So again, you mentioned the US and its allies and now American imperialism is even attacking its Western European allies. Ajamu Baraka (06:57): Exactly. I mean it's really amazing. I mean look, one of the objectives of the proxy war in Ukraine was in fact to ensure that there would be policies that would disarticulate the Russian economy from western Europe, specifically from the German economy. And the objective there was to weaken the German economy and also by extension various Western economies in order to make the further exploitation and in fact the intensification of the exploitation of the European market more favorable to US capital and the Europeans and the European ruling class fell right into that trap and to make sure that that plan was successful. As you indicated in your question, the US ensured that there would be no backsliding by blowing up Nord Stream two. They knew that once the German workers, once many European workers and even parts of the middle class woke up to the fact that they had got suckered into supporting this aggressive war in Ukraine and that they were being negatively impacted, that there'd be political pressure on these various states to reverse course and to reengage with the Russians. Whether us said, oh no, you're not going backwards. In fact we're going to make sure that by blowing up this pipeline and making sure that you remain now dependent on the importation of liquified natural gas coming from where from the us as Anthony said, the secretary of state of this is a marvelous opportunity. And so that was part of the objective of this war. It was a war to enhance the positionality of US capital in Europe. Wilmer Leon (09:08): In fact, going back to, I made reference to Vladimir Putin's interview with Tucker Carlson and Putin raised the question, he says, well, you blew up part of Nord stream because folks don't know there's Nord stream one and Nord stream two. He said, you blew up part of Nord stream, one of the pipes still works. Why don't you turn it up? He said, Europe can get natural gas from Russia through Ukraine. There are pipelines running through Ukraine that could carry natural gas to Europe. He says, turn it up. He says, there are pipelines that run from Russia through Poland. You can get natural gas through Poland. He says, why don't you turn those up? It all goes back to Western hegemony and imperialism. Ajamu Baraka (09:58): It goes back to the issue of the European ruling class that understanding that they have interest that are really counter those of the US and that irrational policy of allowing themselves to be suckered into this proxy war and not looking out for their own national interests is resulting in real political issues within their countries. Not only the issue of natural gas. You and I talked about on another one of your programs, this issue with using the Ukrainian war, the US capitol that's gone in and basically bought up some of the best land in Ukraine and are now exporting from Ukraine various agricultural products. They are using the war as a battery realm to avoid or to circumvent the requirements of the importation of agricultural products across Europe and imposing the products from Ukraine into various European markets as an act of solidarity. Well, the problem with that of course is it's undermining the positions of European farmers across Western Europe. (11:24) And so you find that farmers and places like France and other countries, I say, Hey, wait a minute, we are now losing money because of our markets now being flooded with wheat and other products coming in from Ukraine. What is this? We have to engage in production by very clear meticulous requirements, regulations, and now using this solidarity issue with the Ukrainian war, you are undermining our position. You're undermining our ability to make a living. And so that's causing real political issues in these various nations. So these policies being pursued by these European nations are really such that they are putting themselves in a position where they are creating issues for themselves politically that they're going to find it very difficult to reverse very soon, as a matter of fact in the next few months. Wilmer Leon (12:34): And in fact to that point talking about agriculture, there are farmers in Germany that have been protesting for weeks. They're dumping manure in the roads, they're doing a lot of activism, real on the ground, practical activism to show their resistance to the policies that you're mentioning. And also they're incredibly angry because a lot of the subsidies that the government was providing to them in order to offset the price differentials that they were experiencing as a result of flooding the market with Ukrainian products, those subsidies have been cut if not totally eliminated as the German government, as the French government, as other EU countries are sending more money to Ukraine, so many of them, many of these Western Europeans are experiencing a lot of the same issues there that many in the United States are suffering here. As our infrastructure is in decline as our schools are underfunded, as healthcare costs are going up and people are, as homelessness is on the rise, we can find 95 billion to send to Ukraine and to send to Israel and to send to Taiwan. All three of those fights are fights that would not be ongoing if the United States hadn't started them. But we can't seem to find the way to take care of Americans here in the United States. Ajamu Baraka (14:05): We can't find the way Dr. Leon because we can't have an honors and open and free national conversation because the same interests that are advancing themselves in Western Europe of the same interests that control the means of communication in the us. And so therefore a conversation with the people of the US around what really makes sense in terms of policy. Does it make sense to have 886 billion devoted toward defense? So-called defense or should we use some of those resources to in fact address issues of homelessness, invest in education, create the conditions where everybody can have access to healthcare pay for free education up to through the university level. US population is paying a price for supporting the policies that only are benefiting a small minority of the population, in fact about 1% of the population. So that kind of understanding that kind of discussion, it's not taking place, it's only taking place in spaces like this in alternative media spaces and as a consequence it makes it very difficult for us to turn the corner with advancing policies that make more sense, that address the real interest of the American people Wilmer Leon (15:49): And in this piece, anti imperialism in the US today, what it is and is not Stansfield Smith, he draws the distinction between progressives and anti-imperialist. He says that imperialism uses human rights and democracy issues in countries that it is targeting for regime change as a rationale for foreign interference and that many progressives swallow and even join in these disinformation campaigns to support these moves where in contrast, anti-imperialist, they focus on uncovering and bringing to light US disinformation and interference in national sovereignty. So can you elaborate a little bit on this issue? He talks about progressives versus anti-imperialist you use in many instances, use the term the left if you could because we hear these references, we hear these terms baned about all the time and many people mistakenly think that they're all the same, but in fact they're not. Ajamu Baraka (17:01): Well, they really aren't and I'm glad you raised that question. I think the way Stanfield is using that term and many others, when you talk about progressives, you're really talking about liberals and maybe social Democrats. That is those individuals who have politics and very similar to say for example Bernie Sanders who's a social democrat, who have a soft socialistic orientations Bernie Sanders, Cornell West, as opposed to elements of the left that are not only anti imperialists but of course politics that suggest that this global system of colonial capitalism has to be transcended and be replaced with a new kind of political economy, one that's organized around socialistic lines. And so that to me constitutes the left, the real left if you will. But even within that camp, if you'll, there's still some issues in terms of how one gets to socialism and that's where you have some of the confusion because even among the left, they will sometimes find themselves inadvertently often providing political cover to the US because they are in opposition to a particular nation's experiment, be it Nicaragua, Cuba or Venezuela, Peru or Bolivia, that if the politics aren't developing in ways in which these western leftists believe they should be developing, if they don't correspond to some kind of imagined model, then they will, they begin to criticize those experiments at the same time, did those experiments find themselves in the crossheads of US subversion? (19:08) That's backward. It's backward and it's contradictory. So that is the issue that Smith is alluding to in that very important article. Dr. Leon? Yes, there's another element to this, okay, (19:25) Even the way in which the bourgeoisie, meaning the bourgeoisie, meaning the ruling class has used and weaponized democracy and human rights in order to obscure real interest in undermining these various nations as a consequence of gods. They're not going to be able to use those weapons like they did in the past because they have now been exposed. It's quite clear to so many people around the world and even people within the US the hypocrisy of those positions. What happened to the responsibility to protect a component of humanitarian intervention in order to protect the human rights of certain collectives? It doesn't exist when it comes to the Palestinians. So they have undermined in their own short-term greed and their own short-term pursuits to undermine a very important and powerful weapon that used to use to be able to obscure their reactionary politics Wilmer Leon (20:39): To that. It is really amazing when you look at how long the been exposed to the genocide, how long that struggle has been ongoing and how quickly things turn post October 6th. One of the ways that I have described it is I tell people that Israel has bombed the world into reality that now that this horror, now that this genocide is playing itself out on your telephone screens, not to mention your computers and your home screens, the atrocities, the reality of these atrocities have just decimated the myths Ajamu Baraka (21:39): Exactly, and they're never going to be able to return back to the ideological status quo. They have exposed themselves, we are seen behind the curtain and we understand now the reality of the naked power that they are exercising to try to maintain their global control. We now see the nature of the settler colonial project in Israel, and by extension we are getting a better understanding of the settler colonial project in the territory called the United States of America. At the core of these projects is the reality of naked violence to establish those regimes and to maintain them. So that understanding of the nature of colonialism coupled with a deeper understanding of the nature of capitalism disconnected is radicalizing millions of people across the globe and millions of people within the US So the politics going forward are going to be fundamentally different, but it's going to be different but even more dangerous. (22:53) Dr. Leon, why without the ideological weapon that they were able to use to impose conformity and support for their policies, now they're going to be more and more dependent on the use of naked force. That's why you find the naked use of force in various local environments. That's why you see in Atlanta, for example, the use of RICO laws to criminalize the opposition to cop city. These are examples of the hysterical reaction from the rulers to this change in consciousness. That's why the O rule three is facing federal prosecution because of their to the policies in Ukraine. So the repressive apparatus and the repressive network of the state is being strengthened and being utilized against this growing consciousness that's being manifested within the United States of America. Wilmer Leon (24:06): And another place where I believe that we're going to see this manifest itself is in the Middle East itself. Hassan Nala, the head of Hezbollah in Lebanon recently gave a speech where he said, and I'll paraphrase, he said, basically for as horrific as all of this is, he said, this is really going beyond the Palestinians and that this is an issue for the entire region. And there have been a number of interpretations of that statement. What that says to me is he is not only speaking to the Palestinians that he and speaking to Anah in Yemen and others, he's letting the United States know he's letting the west know that you all are about to start a global conflict that he's saying everybody in the pool and because they see themselves as facing a common oppressor, they see themselves facing a common enemy and he's saying, you all are about to ignite a fuse, the likes of which you will not be able to exterminate or put out, and it's going to be all adults in the pool, and the result isn't going to be very positive, Ajamu Baraka (25:34): Dr. Leon, and what's going to really like that is if there is in fact a ground assault in Rafa, the Egyptians have already said that that can very easily result in the cancellation of Camp David, the Saudis have said that there's going to be dire circumstances. This is going to see what has happened is that these policies have forced these monarchs and all of these Arab and Muslim right-wing elements to have to respond to the pressure that they're feeling from their own populations. So horrific what is happening in Gaza, they can no longer collaborate under the table with the us. They are being now forced to take more forthright positions in opposition to what is happening in Palestine that you couple, what is happening on the Israeli Lebanon border was Hezbollah. You look at what is happening with the Hutu that have basically shut down shipping as it relates to ships going into and supporting Israel, and you see that these unwise policies are creating a situation that can very easily span out of control and even elements within the US believe that this has gone too far. (27:16) And that's why you find some fleeting commentary from genocide, Joe talking about that the Israelis have gone over the top because now they understand the real possibility of this igniting a regional conflict that they're not going to be able to control. If it does in fact lead to that, and they know that you have leadership in Israel, you have a lunatic that's in power. You have a right wing racist settler regime that is engaged in murder, not only supporting the murder in Gaza, but they are actively murdering Palestinians on the West Bank. Over 400 Palestinians have been murdered by settlers since October the seventh. So this is creating a situation that's untenable, and so there has to be a pullback. Yesterday the Moody credit agency downgraded Israeli stocks and downgraded the economy. So there is a real economic consequence now developing. So it's a very dangerous situation that the wiser elements of the international ruling class is saying, we've got to get a hold of this Wilmer Leon (28:47): And talk about how this hypocrisy of the United States has been exposed, is being exposed and the international reaction, what I mean by that is as we sit and look at the genocide that is taking place in Gaza and the United States is paying for it, the United States is arming it. And on one hand you hear Tony Blinken saying, I'm traversing the region, I'm talking to the leaders. I'm asking them to be very careful. Basically what he's saying is he's asking for a kinder, gentler genocide and Joe Biden is saying that we are concerned about the Palestinians and while in fact he's not telling Netanyahu, I'll just pull the plug on your money and we'll put a stop to this thing in about two or three days, days. What's your take your sense as you travel the world and speak to those around the world, how is that hypocrisy resonating around the world? Ajamu Baraka (29:54): The result of this is that the US has lost prestige, will never regained, that the world understands that the US and Europe is basically finished and that nations are deciding that they're going to put their eggs is a different basket, and that basket is called bricks. This emerging group of nations that now control something like 36% of global GDP as opposed to the G seven that's controlling about 30%, the shift has already taken place materially. Now the shift is taking place ideologically and politically. So it is a shift in momentum is a recognition that for all intents and purposes, the decline of the west is irreversible, but it's also a recognition of the danger that all of this poses for all of us because it becomes quite clear when you see the support that all of the western nations have given to the Israeli fascists that the west is prepared to blow up the world before they voluntarily surrender power. Wilmer Leon (31:19): Now wait a minute. Wait a minute. Elaborate on that because a lot of people will hear you say, blow up the world. Oh, that's hyperbole. Oh, he's just being over the top. Oh, that Aja mu Baraka. He's so dramatic. But no, that's real talk. Ajamu Baraka (31:36): Yeah, it really is because they're still flirty with the possibility of nuclear confrontation in Ukraine. There's still the possibility of some kind of wild and reckless attack by the Israelis on Iran and even the use of a nuclear weapon. There is the situation we haven't touched on yet, that is the unwise policies of the part of the US in providing support to and propping up and encouragement to the government on the island of Taiwan, the provocative moves being made in the South China Sea, the whole pivot toward Asia. There is always the possibility of these situations escalating to a nuclear confrontation. And it seems like that there are elements within the foreign policy community that believe that they in fact can not only escalate, but they can engage in a first strike and win. There are people openly talking like Dr. Strange love and talking about the possibility of winning a nuclear confrontation. (32:55) That's what makes it so incredibly dangerous because when you have missiles in western Europe, for example, in and Poland and Romania and other places that are theoretically defensive according to the us, but the Russians know that they can be recalculated if you'll or refitted in a matter of minutes and to become offensive, which means that you have the ability to strike from say, Poland to Moscow in six minutes. Now you have the Russians who are on a head trigger alert, they have to launch on warning because you can't allow your nuclear arsenal to be caught in the silos. So when you had situations in the past where there were computer glitches where one side thought that the other side had launched, launched, we had 30 minutes to correct it, we have documented situations where that in fact happened at least on two or three occasions. How do you do that when you are on a trigger hair launch or warning in six minutes? So it's very, very dangerous. So that's what we are referring to. This is not hyperbole. People talk about in five years I'm going to be doing so and so and so I'm like, are you sure you're going to be here in five years? Yeah, I'm being dramatic because I'm being for real. We can see the possibilities of these maniacs escalating a situation to the point of a nuclear confrontation because the amateurs, Dr. Leon, (34:36) The gap between the leadership in places like Russia and China and the US and in western Europe, it's never been bigger before. They don't know what they are doing and that's what makes us so incredibly dangerous for all of us. Wilmer Leon (34:54): You just mentioned the mistake being made, and that is not theoretical. I want to say it was 1983, a Russian, I don't even know what his title is, but he's in a silo in a Russian silo. His name is Stanislav Petrov, and he is a missile technician, I'll call him, sitting in a Russian silo looking at his screen and he sees a blip on his screen. And the protocol is when you see this blip, you push a button and when you push that button, silos open, missiles come up, we're ready to launch. But he thinks that there's something wrong with the blip on his screen. And thank God he did because by his taking just a couple of minutes to be rational and to think, what he found out was it wasn't an incoming missile. It was a mistake in a software program that miscalculated or misinterpreted something that was transpiring. (36:05) So that was 1983. Folks can look this up. Stanislav Petrov is his name, and if it hadn't been for him, we would've been in a nuclear conflict. What you just talked about in terms of missiles in Poland and Yugoslavia and other places, that's one of the big reasons why Russian president Putin is so hell bent on Ukraine not becoming a part of nato because he says, and he's right, if Ukraine becomes a part of nato, NATO will put missiles in Ukraine. You've now cut my response time from seven or eight minutes to three minutes, which means Stanislav petrov, God bless his soul, that doesn't work anymore. Launch on notice. And the other point is Putin has made this point a number of times saying, look, you guys got to understand something. I got missiles too. I got missiles like you got missiles. And in the west that gets spun as Vladimir Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons. No, what he's telling you is if you think you can come in here and punch me in the face, understand I can punch back. I have what you have. And now what we're seeing from a technological perspective is what they got is a little better then what we're used to seeing. So this is not hyperbole, this is not fantasy. This is real talk. Ajamu Baraka (37:59): Yeah, no, they have demonstrated with supersonic weapons that they have Wilmer Leon (38:04): Hypersonic Ajamu Baraka (38:05): Hypersonic weapons. They have a technological advantage of us and not been able to catch up with yet. It's very dangerous Wilmer Leon (38:14): Minute. Wait a minute. To that point, when President Biden, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I want people to understand this isn't theoretical high hyperbole. When Joe Biden sent the USS Gerald Ford into the Mediterranean Sea as a show of force to Hezbollah and to the Houthis, Vladimir Putin said, Joe, why are you doing this? You're not scaring anybody, you're not scar. He said, these people don't scare, and oh, by the way, we can sink your aircraft carrier from the Black Sea with our armed missiles, the Ken Jaw missiles, he said, and they're hypersonic. You won't even know they're coming until your aircraft carrier is sinking. That's real talk. Ajamu Baraka (39:19): And what's also kind of funny but tragic at the same time is that while they are engaged in provocative activity in the Endo Pacific region outside of Taiwan and in the Taiwan straits, the Pentagon has war games, a confrontation between the US and China, and I think we talked about it before, and they were lost every time, Wilmer Leon (39:48): 25 out of 25. Ajamu Baraka (39:50): So it's like, what are these people doing? What are you doing? The whole concept that was coming out of the project for a new American century in which they argued that the US had the capacity to fight two theater wars simultaneously that should have been put to rest when they lost both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, basically global solve nations. But now they are actually a few months ago you thought they were really going insane because they are fighting in Ukraine and they are fighting in Ukraine. Make a mistake about that is the Ukrainians are dying, but this is a Western and US ward, while at the same time they were needling the Chinese. So it's like what? You all are going to fight the Russians and the Chinese at the same time? It wasn't making and they Wilmer Leon (40:48): Are allies. Ajamu Baraka (40:51): Yeah, well, part of the conflict, Wilmer Leon (40:54): You got to throw North Korea in there too. Ajamu Baraka (40:56): Well, part of the conflict water of the element that we didn't talk about, when you talk about what's happening in Ukraine in terms of the secondary objectives of this proxy war, it was to weaken the Russians to the point where they would not be a very effective ally to the Chinese. The target was not just Russia, it was Germany as we talked about, and the Chinese. So they were creating a situation where they were going to win regardless of what happened in their own imagination. Wilmer Leon (41:27): There are some neocons that thought you could go at China directly. There were some neocons that believed that you could go at Russia directly, and then there were others who believed the way you get to China, you've got to go through Russia. Ajamu Baraka (41:42): Yes, exactly. All Wilmer Leon (41:44): Are wrong. All are wrong. Ajamu Baraka (41:47): They were proven wrong. I mean the Russian economy was supposed to be destroyed, be destroyed as a consequence of this conflict. And as Putin indicated in that interview that the Russian economy is stronger than there's ever been. Every time they have imposed series of sanctions against the Russians. Even Putin said this a couple of years ago, it allowed him to impose economic reforms that he couldn't have done without the sanctions. He made the oligarchy disengage from the European economy and reinvest and the Russian economy. So they have become more economically independent as a consequence of these sanctions. So it's always been counterproductive and you have some realists in the US foreign policy community that predicted that. But the realists have had to take a second, have had to stand back and allow these neocons who have been driving policy in both parties for the last 20 years basically or more. And the result is the US is weaker than it's ever been since the end of the second imperialist war that we call World War ii. Wilmer Leon (43:14): Another example, and I think a more practical example, and what I mean by practical is it doesn't involve the oligarchs. It involves the everyday Russian person. One of the things when President Biden told us that as a result of this Ukraine conflict that he was going to turn the ruble into rubble, and by imposing sanctions on the Russian economy, one of the things that they were projecting was or predicting was that the Russian citizens would run to the Russian banks and take their money out of the banks and put their money other places. And what Putin did was he raised the interest rates. One of the things that he did was he raised the interest rates that the banks would pay on deposits. So the Russian citizens found, oh, I'll make more money if I leave my money in the bank. And what a lot of people don't know about him, dude has a PhD in economics. Not only is he an attorney, he has a PhD in economics. So he has a little bit of understanding. He has a better understanding of econ than Joe Biden. Ajamu Baraka (44:41): I mean Joe Biden's a moron. I mean most of the US leadership are morons. One thing we can say about Barack Obama, though he was not in that same category. He was just a slickster. And same thing with Bill Clinton. But the quality of the leadership in the US state has been a mean, been dangerously. Frighteningly are incompetent. And that's the thing that scares me the most, that we are going to trip up into a situation that the US is not going to be able to reverse and all of us will suffer as a consequence. Look, when you hear no matter what your opinion may be a Putin or a President Xi when they speak and even the way they comport themselves, these are adults, these are statesmen. If you'll, and you compare that to these idiots in the US started with genocide jokes and these idiots who are making policy both in the Democrat and Republican parties, there's no gravitas, there's no worldly sophistication. They're just like country bumpkins. They are so incredibly unsophisticated and adolescent. That's the term that I use to describe US culture. It's an adolescent dangerous culture. And because it has so much power, that's what makes it so incredibly dangerous to all of us that people need. If you haven't seen this check out that interview, you can have your views about Putin and the cartoon characters that's been drawn up for you by your bosses, but you cannot conclude that this is not a states person with a sophisticated understanding of the world. Wilmer Leon (46:46): If you look at a couple of examples of what you're talking about, particularly as it relates to the Chinese, I'm not even going to get into Secretary Lavrov because that dude is oh, just brilliant. But Wang Ye, the foreign secretary of China early in the Biden administration, Tony Blinken was supposed to meet with the Chinese delegation in Anchorage, Alaska. And so they all convene in Anchorage and Blinken starts lecturing the Chinese and they look at him and they say, whatcha doing? You have no idea who you are talking to. We didn't come here to be lectured by you. We're China, we hold your debt. You don't hold out out. Ajamu Baraka (47:52): What was so incredible about that was this was the clumsy attempt on the part of the Biden administration to assert their white maleness. They're going show it was whiteness. We going to show we running the show with these Chinese. I mean it was incredible. And like you said, the Chinese Wilmer Leon (48:17): Said the sick men of criticize, Ajamu Baraka (48:19): You're not competent enough to criticize us, Wilmer Leon (48:21): Right? Our culture is thousands of years old. And then you've got the whole spy balloon. What a lot of people don't understand is Tony Blinken said, I'm going to China to meet with President Xi. He was not invited. He said, I'm going to China. And G said, no, but he said, I'm coming to China. So usually diplomats are welcomed in Beijing. President Xi said, okay, well if you're coming, I can't remember the name of the city, but there's another city where they send lesser caliber diplomats and folks that they really don't want to deal with. He said, I'm going to send you here. I'm not going to meet you in Beijing and I'm not even come see you there. And Blinken got embarrassed and that's when the balloon comes in the jet stream, the weather balloon comes in the jet stream as weather balloons will do. (49:30) And they used that calling it a spy balloon as the basis of, oh, you're sending a spy balloon, therefore I can't come see you. No, it was, Xi didn't want to totally embarrass Blinken by saying, I'm not going to let you in my country. What he said was, I'm going to send you off to the hinterlands and you can go on a tour if you want to. And Tony Blinken said, well, no, I ain't doing that. I mean, those are just examples and they don't get explained as such by Western media, but that's what really happened. Ajamu Baraka (50:10): Look, Dr. Leon, I was in China a couple of months ago. Wilmer Leon (50:14): There we Ajamu Baraka (50:14): Go. Wilmer Leon (50:16): Am I right? Ajamu Baraka (50:18): You are absolutely right. I'm going to tell you they can't can't be defeated. This what they are building there is absolutely incredible. I'm sitting on this bullet train going from Beijing to Shanghai, and I had a cup of water and I was doing something and I put it down and I realized, oh, the water's on the floor cause fly when you do Amtrak. You know how that on Amtrak, (50:52) They have this tick or take thing on the end of the car that tells you how fast the train's going. We sitting there going 325 miles an hour. It's like you're not even moving. You're going across the countryside is flat plains. And then you look up and then there's a city with skyscrapers, and I don't want to go into it too much, but what I saw in just those few days I was there was incredible. And so they're not keeping allowing people to understand what's happening in China. They have an urban development policy that when they create these cities and these communities, every social service in that community has to be within a 15 minute walk. The hospitals, the schools, the elder care, 15 minute walk is fully integrated everything that you need. So you compare this and what I saw in terms of infrastructure, it made the US look like, unfortunately, like a developing country and see the bourgeois there, they know this, but they're not telling the US population how far behind the US has fallen. Wilmer Leon (52:18): Well, and a perfect example of that is 5G technology. The Chinese approach, the United States, I'll say now, 15 years ago about working with the Chinese on developing 5G, and the United States said, no, we don't need to work with you on that. And so China went ahead and developed 5G. And with that we're talking about the internet of things and the ability of your refrigerator to talk to your cell phone to talk to your car, all of that kind of stuff. And so now when you turn on your phone, it says 5G, but the United States does not. All we really have is faster 4G. It's not truly the 5G technology that Huawei and other Chinese companies have developed. And they're now, they're on their way to six and seven G. We just don't get it. Ajamu Baraka (53:26): And the funny thing about it too, the US thought that they were going to undermine the Chinese by undermining the ability to have access to advanced Chips, chips. But they are rapidly developing their own capacity for that. And see, people don't understand as part of the struggle with Taiwan, also the home of one of the largest semiconductor chip factory in the world. Wilmer Leon (53:55): Psc, is that what? It's Ajamu Baraka (53:56): Something like that, yeah. Right. And that reincorporation of Taiwan into China would be a nonviolent and relatively seamless if it wasn't for the agitation on the part of the us. This notion that Chinese want to invade Taiwan militarily is all complete and utter nonsense. There is a political process there. There was developing in favor of the Chinese until the last few years when the US really began to ramp up is meddling within the Taiwanese political system. So that's part of the issue that basically the technological advances that the US has, and they still have some, that gap is being progressively narrowed down. Wilmer Leon (54:50): And as we move on to our final segment, there have been studies and reports put out by various elements within the government that if China were to invade Taiwan, and that's not on anybody's drawing board, I always challenge folks that want to have this conversation with me, show me one time where President Xi Jinping has said that they're planning to invade China. You can't find it because they're not going to do it. But the United States says if that were to happen, the United States would blow up the TSC, I think it's TSC chip manufacturing facilities so that they would not fall into the hands of China. And now China has designed its own chips, it's on its way. Necessity is the mother of invention, and China is on its way. I want to tie something else into coming back to the northern hemisphere, and that is this immigrant conversation. (56:01) All of this conversation about the Republicans in the house are trying to hold up this defense bill because they say there's not enough money for the immigration bill. But in all of this bipartisan discussion about immigration, nobody talks about the American foreign policy in the region as in Central America and South America that is basically forcing these people to leave their homes and come here. The analogy I use is if you're sitting in your basement watching a game and water starts coming down your stairway, you want to close the basement door instead of going upstairs and figuring out, oh, either your tub is overflowing or your sink, your kitchen sink is overflowing. They just want to close the, they don't want to turn off the spigot. And the way you turn off the spigot is by changing your policy. That is decimating the economies of Nicaragua decimating the economies of all of these other countries in central and South America. They never talk about the US foreign policy policy that creates the motivation or motivates these folks to want to come here. They just talk about building a wall to keep 'em in Mexico. Ajamu Baraka (57:31): No, they don't talk about that. And what's interesting too is that you remember at one point the Democrats pretended to be the party of progressive immigration policy, but who talks about that now? Now they are the party that has embraced the same kind of policies of Donald Trump border security expanding a wall. So there is consensus now among both wings of the ruling class represented by the Republicans and the Democrats on this issue of so-called border control. And they're never going to talk about the kinds of imperialist policies that are decimating the economies of Central America and parts of South America driving immigration. That's not part of their analytical framework. And so an understanding of these forces, again, has to come from sources like your show and other alternative sources that help people to understand the complexities of the world and sometimes how simple some things are. Like you destroy an economy and people have to find a way to survive, and they are a few hundred miles away from the most powerful and richest country on the planet. We need to go there. It's quite simple. So this is what has to be dealt with a better understanding on the part of people in the US to these issues and understand that you have more in common with understand. Understand that basically if we're able to put a break on these imperialist policies, these exploitative policies in Latin America, in South America and in the us, then we have the material basis for all of us to live a little better. So that's really where we need to be going. That's the level of understanding we have to arrive at. Wilmer Leon (59:47): And you talked about, I'll use these words, the misinformation and the disinformation in western media. I want to hit on one more thing, but before you go, if you can just give me two or three more minutes, and that's Haiti, and that could be three hours on its own, but this is from the Washington Post this week, rebel leader who ousted risid set sights on Haiti's current leader. The crisis here keep compounding armed. Gangs have forced more than 300,000 from their homes. The police are outgunned and overmatched. Half the people don't have enough to eat. This Caribbean nation of 11 million has no dramatic democratically elected officials. The National Assembly is empty, the presidency is vacant. That's left Arial Ri, the unelected and deeply reviled prime minister in charge appointed by president jovial Moise days before. Moise is still unsolved assassination in 2021 on re was due to leave office on Wednesday, but is so far successfully stymied a political transition. They're talking about GI Philippe coming back into Haiti. And this is written as though the United States has had absolutely no involvement in the decimation of Haiti. And so people read this from the Washington Post and they go, oh, these poor, ignorant, silly Haitians, they just can't seem to do anything for themselves. We must intervene and save them from theirselves. Doesn't talk about GI Philippe. And he was an American operative and how much time he spent in American prisons and how, by the way, does he get back into Haiti after none of that ajamu Baraka? Ajamu Baraka (01:01:37): You're absolutely right. And the situation in Haiti has become almost untenable. And that's how they wanted, he was reinserted into Haiti to intensify the chaos, to make the situation even more ripe for outside intervention. They don't trust him. He doesn't trust them. But there is a convergence of interest, short-term interest that is Wilmer Leon (01:02:05): Financial interest, Ajamu Baraka (01:02:07): Financial interest, political interest, right? Is it terrible situation in that country and one that we have to continue to monitor because the result of this situation is the possibility of more violence inside the country as the consequence of those issues. Wilmer Leon (01:02:23): And this is another example of the United States through what it created called the Global Fragilities Act. It is creating the fragility and then claiming we now have to use the US military to go in and resolve the chaos that we created in the first place. Ajamu Baraka (01:02:41): Exactly. That is the objective. That could be the end result if we don't stop it. Wilmer Leon (01:02:50): Brother Ajamu Baraka, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. Ajamu Baraka (01:02:54): My pleasure. Thank you so much Dr. Leon. Wilmer Leon (01:02:57): I want to thank you all for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Please stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share the show, follow me on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'm going to see you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Have a great one. And remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history, converge talk without analysis is just chatter and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Peace and blessings. I'm out

It is important to ask for great things from God, seeking by faith to perceive what God wills to do and by prayers to be involved in his work. - SERMON TRANSCRIPT - Turn in your Bibles to Mark 11. We resume a series now in the Gospel of Mark, and the focus, as you heard in my prayer today, is Mountain-Moving Prayer. On Wednesday, May 30th, 1792, at Friar Lane Baptist Chapel in Nottingham, England, a simple cobbler named William Carey preached one of the greatest sermons in church history. It was later called the Deathless Sermon. It was a call for Christians to make every effort to take the gospel to unreached peoples to the ends of the earth and to the end of time. Up to that point in history, missionaries had usually been Roman Catholic, often Jesuits who are taking Roman power to distant lands, but not the pure gospel. Christians who had rediscovered the gospel through the reformation led by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others had, up to that point, not really gotten that involved in foreign missions. William Carey would be a pivotal leader in the history of Protestant missions and would himself be part of the solution when he boarded a ship and went to Kolkata, India. William Carey's deathless sermon was broken into two main headings. Number one, expect great things from God, and number two, attempt great things for God. Since that time, at the close of the 18th century, the true gospel has spread to every political nation on earth and the number of genuine Christians all over the world has exploded beyond all boundaries. We don't know how can we know how many are truly born again, but the number may be 500 million, 700 million, a billion, 1.5 billion. We don't know, but it's astonishing. Compared to that, the moving of a physical mountain into the depths of the sea is as nothing. I'm going to take liberties with our brother, William Carey. I don't think he'll mind me adding a third heading to the sermon. I'm not trying to improve on a deathless sermon. How could I? Certainly, we should expect great things from God, but before we can attempt great things for God, I think, based on the text I'm going to preach today, we should ask great things of God. That links the two. Expecting great things, asking great things, attempting great things. I don't think William Carey would mine. Mountain-moving prayer links our expectations, great expectations with great actions. Look at the text, “'Have faith in God.’ Jesus answered. ‘I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he has said will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.’” The passage is stunning. Jesus uses lavish language to charge his people to ask God to do mighty things and answer to prayer. So let's set the context. I. From a Withered Fig Tree to a Fruitful Church We're moving from a withered fig tree to a fruitful church. It is the last week of Jesus's life. Lots of dramatic moments are happening, beginning with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. “Hosanna! Hallelujah to the son of David. Blessed it is the coming kingdom of our father, David,” all of that. He goes to the temple, scouts it out. But because it's so late, He goes out of the city to Bethany. The next morning, He goes back in to cleanse the temple, to purify the temple of all that wickedness. En route, He sees this fig tree. Look at verses 12 -14. "The next day, as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry, seeing in the distance of fig tree and leaf. He went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again,’ and his disciples heard him say it.” Now, Jesus' hunger was both physical and prophetical. Jesus represented his father, and this fig tree symbolized Israel. God wanted fruit from Israel from centuries of him pouring out blessings on that nation. But the tree had only leaves, just as Israel had only an appearance of spiritual vitality, but without any genuine fruit in the sight of God. It represented essentially a spiritually dead Israel. So Jesus cursed the tree in a massively significant prophetical action. Prophets did this kind of thing, these kind of symbolic actions. The cursed fig tree died instantly, but not apparently so, not in appearance. Moments after Jesus cursed it, it looked the same. Just like the nation of Israel had leaves and would continue seemingly apparently alive for decades before God finally brought the hammer blow down through the Romans in A.D. 70, destroying the temple. So, immediately after the cursing, it looks fine, but the next morning radically different. The moment Jesus cursed it, it died. But the next morning, it became apparent that that's what had happened. The following morning, Peter noticed and remembered, look at verse 20-21, "In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, look the fig tree, you cursed is withered.’" There's nothing miraculous about a fig tree withering, but there is something miraculous about that happening after powerful words spoken by the son of God, and hours later it looks like it's been dead for years. Now that's a miracle, and the disciples wanted to understand it. In Matthew's Gospel, they asked the question, how did the fig tree wither so quickly? That's the issue. So Jesus at that moment pivots to teach about faith-filled prayer. On the surface, this may seem a bit strange. How did the fig tree wither so quickly? Have faith in God and ask great things in prayer. What's the connection? How do we understand why that lesson at that moment? I think the connection, the link, is fruit. The reason that the fig tree was cursed was fruitlessness. The reason that God would judge Israel was the same fruitlessness. He's about to tell a parable of a vineyard that He's going to give this same lesson on the issue of fruit. In that parable, Jesus speaks of a vineyard planted by an owner. The owner works the soil thoroughly, plants the vines, puts a wall around it, digs out a wine press, and builds a watchtower. Then he rents out the vineyard to some tenant farmers and leaves. But when he sends messengers to collect his share of the fruit, they beat one, kill another, stone a third. Last of all, he sends a son, and they kill him too. In Matthew's telling of that parable, Jesus sums it all up. Matthew 21:43, "Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you." He says to his enemies, "And given to a people who will produce its fruit." Friends, that's us. That's our job. It's given to the church, both Jews and Gentiles, believers in Christ. It's given to us to produce the fruit of the kingdom, and that fruit will only come about by the power of Almighty God, and that expressed in prayer as we pray. I want you to take a minute, put your finger here in Mark, and go over to John 15, and we're going to look at verses 5-8. This is a phenomenal cross-reference. Usually, cross-references are okay, give them a B+ for connection. But this is a top to bottom cross-reference connection here. The lesson of the withered fig tree and the issue of fruitfulness is overtly and clearly taught in John 15:5-8. Look what it says. Jesus said, "I am the vine. You are the branches. If anyone remains in me, and I in him, he'll bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he's like a branch that is thrown away and what withers. Such branches are picked up and thrown into the fire, and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, then ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you. This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." Surely you must see the points of connection here. It's an agricultural image, that's true, not a fig tree in this case, but a vine with branches. But this goal is the same. It's fruit. A fruitless branch is severed from the vine, thrown to the ground. It withers, and it's thrown to the fire and burned, judgment. Branches that remain in Jesus, people like you and me that stay close to Jesus are intimately connected with him through repentance and faith and are alive in him and stay connected with him. We abide in him. We can pray. If we have God's word saturating our minds, we will know what to pray for. We're not guessing here. God will tell us in his word, what we should pray for, and as we are saturating God's Word, if we remain in him and his words dwell, or abide, or remain in us, then we will ask according to his will, we'll ask whatever we wish, and it will be done for us. In this way, we'll bear the fruit of the kingdom that He talked about. Go back to Mark now, and you see those same lessons. This is a new lesson for his apostles, they were not prayer warriors up to this point. They were not men of prayer. He says in John 16:24, "Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you'll receive, and your joy will be complete." You've not learned this lesson to pray. They're about to be commissioned to go into all the world and be fishers of men, and build the kingdom of God to the ends of the earth. They've got to be men of prayer. So He says in John 14:12-14, "I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the Father, and I will do whatever you ask in my name so that the son may bring glory to the Father." You may ask me for anything in my name, and I'll do it. It's prayer. It's prayer. Again and again, it's prayer. There are lots of mountains to be moved from Jerusalem through Judea, and Samaria to the ends of the earth. Lots of mountains had to be moved. People's hearts would have to be changed. The heart of stone removed, the heart of flesh given. People would have to cross over from death to life, and there'd be practical aspects of the spread of the gospel, obstacles that would have to be overcome or moved out of the way. Lots of mountains would have to be moved, and only the Holy Spirit could move them, and He would do it in answer to faith-filled prayer, Mountain-Moving Prayer. That's why Jesus went from the dead fig tree to a lesson on prayer. II. Walking Through Jesus’ Words So let's walk through it now. Let's look at the words. Let's just go step by step through what He says. I'll read them again, beginning at verse 22. "Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he has said will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” Just walk through it, it begins with the statement, “have faith in God.” Jesus points his disciples to Almighty God as the focus of their lives and especially the focus of their prayer. Focus on God. Faith is the eyesight of the soul, by which you see the invisible God on his throne. Focus on that. Have faith in him. Everything comes from God. For him and through him and to him are all things in his hand is every blessing you want. He opens his hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing. Have faith in the God who can give you what you want, what you need. Have faith in God. Then He says, "Truly, I say to you." Jesus says this from time to time. Everything Jesus said was true, but when he says, “truly, I say to you” or something like that, He's saying, pay attention. Take notice. This is a very important thing I'm about to say to you. Unusually significant, a solemn assertion. Then Jesus says, "If anyone says..." The doctrine He's about to give about prayer is universal; it's for all his followers, not just for the apostles, or for the super spiritual ones, or for the real super leaders, the great William Carey. It's for anyone and everyone. “If anyone says,” basically, in these words, He's going to give three universals. “If anyone says”... so it's any person and then, anything. Whatever you ask in prayer, you'll receive it. Amazing. And then, any unforgiven sin. If you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, these are universals. Sweeping statements “If anyone says.. .” Jesus is expanding our conception of prayer. God is able to immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. "God is able to immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. " Then He says, "If anyone says to this mountain, go throw yourself into the sea." Now this should not be taken literally. Some of you have literalistic minds, right? It's like, well, that's it. We believe in errancy, pastor. I do believe in errancy, but I also believe in figures of speech. This is a figure of speech. Jesus did this. He said to the Pharisees, “you strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.” I'm going to stop you right there, you literalist. That never happened. It's a metaphor. You're focused on tiny details, and you're missing the big picture. The mountain represents some massive obstacle to the plan of God. That's what the mountain represents. This mountain, was almost certainly the Mount of Olives, and just so you know from Zechariah 14, God has plans for the Mount of Olives, He doesn't want it moved and thrown into the sea. It's going to be the very place where Jesus will return at the second coming, so let's just leave that mountain right there. In any case, it's a metaphor, and it represents massive obstacles to the plan of God. Then He says, "and does not doubt." Now we get to the issue of doubt. The enemy of faith is doubt. The essence of doubt is questioning God, questioning his existence. Is God even with us? Questioning his nature, questioning his word, did God really say this or that? Questioning his truthfulness to his promises, questioning his faithfulness, questioning his power, his goodness, his love, quavering, wavering on it, going back and forth. It's an essential instability, a rootless instability. James gives us this picture in James chapter 1:5, “But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind, that man should not think he'll receive anything from the Lord. He's a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." That's the picture of doubt, isn't it? It's instability. It's like, I don't know, Will he? Won't he? Will it happen? I don't know. That's doubt. Paul, the apostle, cites Abraham, our father in faith, as a powerful example of faith despite all obstacles. Romans 4:19-21, talking about how he was going to have a son in his old age and his wife, his barren wife, would have a son in her old age, and he's dealing with that promise, the promise from God. Paul writes this about Abraham, "Without weakening in his faith, Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead. Since he was about a hundred years old and that Sarah's womb was also dead." That's scoping the mountain. Well, it's a big mountain. He's looking at it. He's facing the fact that's going to be, it's impossible actually if God doesn't work. "Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God." That's Romans 4:20. That's a clear description of doubt, wavering through unbelief like a flickering light bulb, "But was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised." That's the essence of faith-filled prayer. God has power to do what He has promised He will do. So Jesus says, If anyone has faith and does not doubt but believes that what he has said will happen, that he has said in prayer, you going to speak prayer, and it's going to happen. Instead of doubting, this prayer warrior really believes a mountain's going to be lifted up and thrown into the sea. God has the power to do anything. And he reasons, which is harder for God to make the mountain out of nothing or to move it from one place to the other? You think about that, if God can make a mountain out of nothing, He can move it from one place to the other, and every mountain that exists on planet Earth, God made out of nothing. The prayer warrior believes that God has told him to pray for this. This mountain must move, and God has laid this burden on my heart. It is essential for this mountain to move for the kingdom of God to advance in this specific way that mountain's going to move. That's what faith and prayer is, is being a human channel of God's awesome power to do amazing things. The nature of faith therefore is perceiving and then receiving, perceiving then receiving. Perceiving the will of God as He has revealed it in scripture and in providence, and then receiving the will of God as He delivers it by his power and Jesus says, "It will be done for him." Prayer accomplishes amazing things, mighty things, but it doesn't in and of itself accomplish anything. It's always God that does things through prayer. It's God that moves the mountain. Your prayer didn't move anything. John Piper speaks of prayer in this way. "Prayer is the splicing of our limp wire to the lightning bolt of heaven." Isn't that a great image? Splicing your limp wires. Is your wire limp? Mine feels limp a lot. Splice that thing to the lightning of heaven and see what God will do. There's nothing mighty in prayer in and of itself. It's that God is mighty, and He answers prayer. Then Jesus gives a universal application in verse 24, "Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." It's awesome. Then He goes to another topic, it seems, look at verse 25, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” When I was memorizing the Gospel of Mark, this one verse stuck out to me more than any other of the 876 verses, or 676 verses, in this Gospel, this one verse. Let me be honest, just like any sinner, I can easily hold things against people. It's easy to be bitter. It's easy to remember the hurts that people have done in your life. Any of you like that? Any of you specifically know right now that this person, that person or the other person has hurt you and you're holding something against them? It's really very remarkable here. Jesus is here, giving you effectively emancipation proclamation of your own slavery to bitterness. He's telling you, let it go. Just like the parable of the 10,000 talents, you've been forgiven much. You must forgive. And look at how sweeping it is, "Whenever you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him." In other words, every time you pray, it's an opportunity to do that. “Search me, oh, God, and know my heart. Show me if I'm bitter against somebody. Show me if I'm upset at my mom or dad or my son or daughter or my brother, my sister, a fellow church member, a pastor, a spouse, a husband, a wife, a neighbor, a roommate, a person from my past.” You know the person. You know the group of people. Maybe you have a lot of them. Anytime you pray, it's an opportunity to obey this verse and be set free. Set free. Stop drinking the poison. You're just set free from bitterness. Now you may wonder, what does it have to do with mountain moving, faith-filled prayer? It seems like an odd thing to go from verse 24 to 25, but not so much. Just keep in mind what is happening. The faith-filled, mountain-moving prayer is all about the building of the kingdom of God. How important would you say the forgiveness of sins will be in the kingdom of God? And is not that forgiveness going to be both vertical and horizontal? Are we not going to spend eternity in heaven with other sinners, some of whom we knew in life, and we'll be free, and there'll be no bitterness, there'll be nothing but sweet fellowship? So that's the kingdom Jesus is building, and He wants us to be set free and not harbor sin. An image on this came to me, I love Hebrews 4:16, it’s a great verse. It says, "Let us draw near to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Isn't that a great verse? The curtain and the temple, torn in two from top to bottom, is open. We have access to the throne of God. We're invited in this text to draw near to the throne of God, but before you enter the throne room of God, you got to give up your weapons. I watch the “Lord of the Rings” movies, some of you have as well. And in movie number two, a bunch of warriors are trying to get into the Hall of the King, Théoden, but they can't go in with their weapons. They have to leave their weapons at the door. That's the image I have here. You can't bring bitterness and unforgiveness to the throne of grace and expect to get anything from God. You got to let your weapons go. Now let me extend the image. I find it may be one of the hardest things there is to do in life. It's easy to hold onto bitterness. Have you ever heard of the expression nursing a grudge? What a weird thing to do to a grudge. I would kill the grudge, but instead we nurse it. Why? Because it puts us in a position of power. We can hold it over that person and be bitter toward them, and they can maybe walk on eggshells toward us and all that. Let it go. What's so beautiful is the one seated on the throne of grace, if we're having a problem, will come out to the doorway where we're having trouble giving up our weapons and say, “what's the problem here?" “Well, I want to come in, but they won't let me. I can see why they won’t.” “Can I help you with that? Can I help you get rid of that bitterness? Can I remind you that I forgave you all of that sin because you begged me to? Let it go. Let it go.” So that's walking through. III. Elements of Mountain-Moving Prayer Now, let's draw out elements of mountain-moving prayer. First of all, faith in God. Have faith in God. That has to do with history and theology. First of all, remember what God has done. Remember how Peter looked back and remembered that Jesus had cursed the fig tree? That's an issue of remembrance. Remember what God has done. Psalm 77:11-12, "I'll remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I'll remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds.” Think of God, the God of the Bible. Is there anything He cannot do? Think of the Red Sea crossing. Before that, think of creation. "In the beginning, God created heaven and earth." God can do anything. Look at his track record again and again and not just in the Bible, but look at his track record with you. How many of your prayers has He answered? George Mueller kept a record, a record book, 50,000 answers to prayer in connection with his care for 10,000 orphans over his life, 50,000 answers to prayer. He wrote them down, and that built and built and built his confidence in prayer, the specificity of it. So have faith in God, remember his mighty deeds, and think who God is. What should you consider when you have faith in God? I would say these elements, first of all, God's glory. Pray in reference to God's glory. God does everything for his glory. Whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. What is that? The manifestation of the perfections of God. Pray that in this moving of this mountain that God may be displayed as a great, loving, kind, powerful God. That God may be put on display, the glory of God. Secondly, God's omniscience. Keep in mind, God has already thoroughly studied the problem. He has all wisdom and knows exactly what to do. “Your father knows what you need before you ask him." [Matthew 6:8], or this Romans 11:33-34, "Oh, the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" I'm going to say something in a minute about this, but let me tell you something. In prayer, you're not God's counselor. You do know that, don't you? It's not like, “God, let me tell you what I think you should do here.” We'll get to all that. Next, God's sovereignty. God is sovereign and has meticulously crafted a plan that goes down to the tiniest detail of every day of redemptive history. He's already sovereignly, decreed his will. Ephesians 1:11 says, "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will." That's everything. God is sovereign. God's omnipotence. There is nothing that God cannot do. Is anything too hard for God? Isaiah 40:26:"Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing." The power of God. And then think of the goodness of God. God wants to do good things for his people. He wants that more than you do. Matthew 7:9-11 "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" God wants to give good gifts to us, and again, Romans 8:28, "We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose." I've struggled my whole Christian life to understand the effectiveness of prayer. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective, I'm told in James. I'm an engineer. I know what power and effect is. It means that I am a change agent. I'm a catalyst. I'm an earth mover, I guess, if I'm effective. That's not what effective prayer is. Prayer is not us, number one, teaching God a solution He hadn't thought of, or number two, persuading him to do something He didn't want to do before He talked to you. I know that that logically seems like effective prayer. It's like, it made a difference because I told God something He didn't know or I persuaded him to do something He wasn't going to do. That is not what powerful, effective prayer is all about. Rather, effective prayer is discerning what God has already determined to do and asking him to do it for His glory by his power. That's what effective prayer is. So putting it all together, whatever we pray, we do so mindful of God's glory and that is our top priority. God's omniscience in that God's already figured out what's best to do. God's plan, He's already decreed based on his wise plan. God's power, there's nothing He cannot do and God's goodness is in his desire to bless his people. We pray like that. He will give us anything we ask for. "Effective prayer is discerning what God has already determined to do and asking him to do it for His glory by his power." Now, what is the mountain that needs to be moved? Seeing the mountain that needs to be moved. “If you say to this mountain, go throw yourself in the sea, it will be done for you.” I said it's a specific obstacle to the spread of the gospel, a specific obstacle to the growth of the kingdom of God. That's what it is. So you could see that there's a specific government official somewhere withholding a visa, and he won't let some critical workers into a country because he is withholding a visa. It's a mountain that needs to be moved. Some prayer warrior praises until that individual, for some strange reason, changes his mind. That kind of stuff's happened again and again and again. Or a pastor being held at a restrictive nation, and the people of God pray, and he's released. That happened in the Bible with Peter. They prayed, the people of God, were praying even after James had been executed. They kept praying for Peter, and he was released, an answer to prayer. Or with George Muller's specific physical needs for hundreds and hundreds of orphans. They need to eat today, give them this day their daily bread, and then stuff happens. Amazing. You don't want to be driving a bread truck by the orphanage when there's a need. Your truck's going to break down, and you'll have nowhere else to go with that bread except the orphanage, and God answers those prayers. Now, what does it mean for us? What is our field? We are in the Raleigh/ Durham/ Chapel Hill area. We are positioned here by the wise plan of God. We're positioned here for the kingdom of God. We're positioned right here in Durham, this triangle area with the RTP and all that is attractive to people. People are moving in here in large numbers. Last night I went walking around all the restaurant areas. I walked all the way down to the Insomnia coffee or cookie place, I walked in there. There was no one there. I said, what time do you close? "3:00 AM.” Anyway, but there was no one working. That was interesting. Then I walked back, and as I was walking, I was thinking and praying. I was like, I wonder how many of these people are lost? They're pouring in here. They're living in all those condos and houses and all that that are being built, and the overwhelming majority of them are unchurched. They're lost. Our mountain to be moved is within their hearts, their hatred for Christ, their opposition to God. They're thinking they don't need any of this. That's our field, that's our mountain. That we would see baptisms in numbers like we have never seen before, that people would be brought from death to life because we boldly attempted great things for God after the first two things happen, expected great things, and ask great things. That's our mountain to be moved. We ask God to do it. We keep on asking and it will be given to us. We keep on seeking, and we'll find. We keep on knocking, and the door will be opened. As Jesus said, He told the parable of the persistent widow that they should always pray and never give up. I'm not a big fan of church sign ministry. Some of them are just cheesy. You know what I'm talking about. I mean, really bad, but I saw one that stuck with me. I really like it, “Pray until something happens." I love that. Doesn't it line up with this text? Pray until something happens. Keep praying until you see that mountain move. We expect God to answer. Mark 11:24, "I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Charles Spurgeon was talking to a young preacher about his lack of fruit and street evangelism. He preached again and again without seeing any converts at all. Spurgeon asked him, "Do you expect people to be converted every time you preach?" "No, sir." He said, "Well, that's the reason you don't succeed because you do not expect to do so. According to your faith, it will be done to you." Wow, Spurgeon's tough. Imagine him as your mentor. But what's our level of expectation? Do we expect to see people converted because of the witness of us? Expect it, and then be humble about sin. The next time you go to pray, ask the Lord to show you. Are you holding anything against anyone? Are you bitter toward anyone? Ask the Lord to help you forgive and to release. IV. Warnings Against Misunderstandings I have a section of my sermon here on warnings against misunderstandings about the “name it and claim it” thing and all that. I'm not going to say any of it. You want to know, come and ask, and I'll tell you about Creflo Dollar and all those guys, but I just don't think that's our problem. I don't think we're “name it and claim it” people. We're under-utilizers of the promises in this text. That's the problem. We're erring on the side of not asking enough. So let's ask and see what God can do. V. Lessons Applied to Us So applications, first of all, to any that are here that are lost, you're on the outside looking in. You don't know this, not like you should, but your sins are like a mountain that has to be moved. Your sins are like a mountain between you and friendship with God, adoption into God's family. That mountain has to be moved, and if it's not moved, you cannot come into sweet fellowship with God. In Micah chapter 7, He has promised that He will take our sins and throw them into the depths of the sea, and you'll see them no more. All you have to do is call in the name of the Lord Jesus, know that He shed his blood to provide that ocean of grace, and trust in him. Call on the name of the Lord, and He'll move that mountain of your sins and throw it in the depths of the sea, and you'll see it no more. For us as Christians, there's two applications: pray that we would pray. Let's start there. Pray that we'll become a praying church. That the obstacles to us praying like this would be removed, and that we pray as we have never prayed before, and that we would pray to fulfill the mission for which we have been positioned here in the Raleigh/ Durham/ Chapel Hill area, and that is the winning of lost people. Pray for that, and pray that we would be a sweet, gracious, and forgiving church. That whatever grievances we may have against each other, against anyone that we would readily, quickly forgive. We're going to go now to a time of the Lord's Supper, so I'm going to close the sermon in prayer. Father, thank you for the things we've learned in Mark's Gospel about mountain-moving, faith-filled prayer. We thank you for that, and we pray now that as we experience the Lord's Supper, that you would be mighty in this place, giving us an encounter with God, the living God, through the Ordinance of the Lord's Supper. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Three years ago, the world watched as Lake Street in Minneapolis sustained significant damage during the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd. Some business owners lost everything. But with the help of their neighbors, many of those businesses cleaned up, came back and insisted that justice be both a part and a goal of the process. In Focus BIPOC businesses' inclusion in Minnesota's economy Hear an In Focus conversation hosted by MPR News host Angela Davis, recorded live on June 6 in front of a live audience at the Hook and Ladder Theater and Lounge in Minneapolis, where business owners and community leaders talked about what Lake Street's rebirth can teach us about making sure recovery is equitable and accessible to all. Guests: Manny Gonzalez, co-owner of Manny's Tortas. Gonzalez, a Mexican immigrant who opened the first Mexican market in south Minneapolis in 1999, explained how 2020 was one of the most difficult years for his three businesses on Lake Street due to the pandemic and the protests. His resilience and service to the community, even when his businesses were closed, helped him succeed today. Elias Usso, owner of Seward Pharmacy. Usso talked about moving his family from Sacramento, Calif. to Minneapolis, how they lost almost everything due to the 2020 protests and how his neighbors on Lake Street kept him going. Andy Hestness, executive director of Redesign, a nonprofit community development corporation that took part in the restoration of the Coliseum building, a beacon for local businesses and BIPOC entrepreneurs along East Lake Street. Hestness detailed the damage the Coliseum suffered during the unrest and how Redesign found an opportunity to save it after the property owners wanted to tear it down. Yusra Mohamud, business advisor at Lake Street Council. Mohamud told the story of how Lake Street started off, how the “We Love Lake Street” initiative raised $12 million for the community and what equitable efforts were made to make sure the recovery would happen. Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS. What drove you as a business owner to rebuild and reopen? Usso: We lost almost everything … everything that we built. … It's Minneapolis, you know, we'll be back. This is the city I believe in. This is Lake Street, where immigrants come and thrive, where you feel welcomed, where you feel [at] home. And and even if you lose everything, there are people in Minneapolis that keep you up. The silver lining … our neighbors that came to bring us up and uplift us to where we are right now. And they keep on supporting us. So it was the most difficult time for all of us, you know? … The City of Minneapolis, the people, the force in Minneapolis, are the most amazing people. And that's what keeps us going … where you feel welcome as an immigrant, where you feel home. Am I going to come back and reopen this business, and then go through this again? And I said, “if I don't do it, who will come back and do it?” Because it's incumbent on us, all of us, to just come back and reopen and keep this going as a society. That is what I believe. And Lake Street is very, very important … as an immigrant, as a minority, and as the most vibrant street that you can find in Minneapolis. The world is watching us. Gonzalez: I live in Eagan. And people around there, you know, I tell them when my businesses and they say, “oh, Lake Street?” And I say “come on, you know, it is the best avenue in Minneapolis.” A lot of people don't feel safe to come to south Minneapolis, but I think it's the misconception about the area. I'll tell you, I've been here for so many years and I think it's it's a beautiful avenue, a lot of diversity. And that's the beauty about it. That you can see all kinds of people from all over the world. I was talking when we opened up Midtown Global Market, I said we have to make this avenue a tourist destination. And I think is getting there because I got a lot of customers and they come visit and I say “where do you come from?” And it's Colorado, Los Angeles … they come to Lake Street because it's so diverse and all kinds of opportunities. The food is unbelievable. There's a lot of misconception about Lake Street. Stories behind the storefront Baarla's Boutique is a women's fashion shop that offers modern Islamic clothing. “I like Lake Street. Honestly, as long as we get more safe I think it's the best place to be.” Video: Baarla's Boutique Mostafa, owner of Dar Medina in Midtown Global Market, sells handcrafted Moroccan rugs, cloth and jewelry. “For me, the big support I need is for customers to come. Lake Street, it's a very wonderful neighborhood. Everywhere in the world there is places good and not sometimes … people, they are trying to make it nicer. And I don't know why people get scared down here.” Video: Dar Medina Tedi Grey Owl, academic intern specialist for MIGIZI a Native American non-profit organization, and Hope Flanagan, community outreach and culture teacher for Dream of Wild Health, an intertribal nonprofit that serves the Minneapolis-St. Paul Native American community are partnering to reach their goal of helping Native American students be successful. Video: Migizi

Three years ago, the world watched as Lake Street in Minneapolis sustained significant damage during the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd. Some business owners lost everything.But with the help of their neighbors, many of those businesses cleaned up, came back and insisted that justice be both a part and a goal of the process. In Focus BIPOC businesses' inclusion in Minnesota's economy Hear an In Focus conversation hosted by MPR News host Angela Davis, recorded live on June 6 in front of a live audience at the Hook and Ladder Theater and Lounge in Minneapolis, where business owners and community leaders talked about what Lake Street's rebirth can teach us about making sure recovery is equitable and accessible to all.Guests: Manny Gonzalez, co-owner of Manny's Tortas. Gonzalez, a Mexican immigrant who opened the first Mexican market in south Minneapolis in 1999, explained how 2020 was one of the most difficult years for his three businesses on Lake Street due to the pandemic and the protests. His resilience and service to the community, even when his businesses were closed, helped him succeed today.Elias Usso, owner of Seward Pharmacy. Usso talked about moving his family from Sacramento, Calif. to Minneapolis, how they lost almost everything due to the 2020 protests and how his neighbors on Lake Street kept him going.Andy Hestness, executive director of Redesign, a nonprofit community development corporation that took part in the restoration of the Coliseum building, a beacon for local businesses and BIPOC entrepreneurs along East Lake Street. Hestness detailed the damage the Coliseum suffered during the unrest and how Redesign found an opportunity to save it after the property owners wanted to tear it down.Yusra Mohamud, business advisor at Lake Street Council. Mohamud told the story of how Lake Street started off, how the “We Love Lake Street” initiative raised $12 million for the community and what equitable efforts were made to make sure the recovery would happen.Subscribe to the MPR News with Angela Davis podcast on: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or RSS.What drove you as a business owner to rebuild and reopen?Usso: We lost almost everything … everything that we built. … It's Minneapolis, you know, we'll be back. This is the city I believe in. This is Lake Street, where immigrants come and thrive, where you feel welcomed, where you feel [at] home. And and even if you lose everything, there are people in Minneapolis that keep you up. The silver lining … our neighbors that came to bring us up and uplift us to where we are right now. And they keep on supporting us. So it was the most difficult time for all of us, you know? … The City of Minneapolis, the people, the force in Minneapolis, are the most amazing people. And that's what keeps us going … where you feel welcome as an immigrant, where you feel home.Am I going to come back and reopen this business, and then go through this again? And I said, “if I don't do it, who will come back and do it?” Because it's incumbent on us, all of us, to just come back and reopen and keep this going as a society. That is what I believe. And Lake Street is very, very important … as an immigrant, as a minority, and as the most vibrant street that you can find in Minneapolis. The world is watching us. Gonzalez: I live in Eagan. And people around there, you know, I tell them when my businesses and they say, “oh, Lake Street?” And I say “come on, you know, it is the best avenue in Minneapolis.”A lot of people don't feel safe to come to south Minneapolis, but I think it's the misconception about the area. I'll tell you, I've been here for so many years and I think it's it's a beautiful avenue, a lot of diversity. And that's the beauty about it. That you can see all kinds of people from all over the world. I was talking when we opened up Midtown Global Market, I said we have to make this avenue a tourist destination. And I think is getting there because I got a lot of customers and they come visit and I say “where do you come from?” And it's Colorado, Los Angeles … they come to Lake Street because it's so diverse and all kinds of opportunities. The food is unbelievable. There's a lot of misconception about Lake Street.Stories behind the storefrontBaarla's Boutique is a women's fashion shop that offers modern Islamic clothing. “I like Lake Street. Honestly, as long as we get more safe I think it's the best place to be.” Video: Baarla's Boutique Mostafa, owner of Dar Medina in Midtown Global Market, sells handcrafted Moroccan rugs, cloth and jewelry.“For me, the big support I need is for customers to come. Lake Street, it's a very wonderful neighborhood. Everywhere in the world there is places good and not sometimes … people, they are trying to make it nicer. And I don't know why people get scared down here.” Video: Dar Medina Tedi Grey Owl, academic intern specialist for MIGIZI a Native American non-profit organization, and Hope Flanagan, community outreach and culture teacher for Dream of Wild Health, an intertribal nonprofit that serves the Minneapolis-St. Paul Native American community are partnering to reach their goal of helping Native American students be successful. Video: Migizi

Welcome to a special episode of our podcast as we join the world in celebrating National Creativity Day! and today we are diving deep into the boundless power of imagination and honouring the remarkable capacity for creativity within all of us.In this short but impactful episode, we will explore the wonders of creativity and its profound impact on our lives. From art to music, writing to design, and everything in between, creativity encompasses a vast spectrum of expressions that enrich our world.Let us remind ourselves that we are all creative beings, and our unique ideas have the power to shape the world around usSo, take a moment to pause, sit back, and listen to this special episode dedicated to National Creativity Day. Enjoy! LINKS: Paul Fairweather - Co-host https://www.paulfairweather.com Chris Meredith - Co-host https://www.chrismeredith.com.au Two Common Creatives https://www.twocommoncreatives.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Ninety Nine - No Mercy 1999 USSo after reviewing the first No Mercy in 1999 from the UK, our 99th episdoe see's us review the second No Mercy from 1999. This one from the United States and featuring a bumper card full of deep storylines! Steve Austin facing Triple H for the WWF Title he lost at Summerslam, and the last Double J Jeff Jarrett match in the WWF as he bids farewell with a pocket full of Vince McMahon's cash, in the first...and last...good house keepings match! Which of these two ppvs will be better though? Well you had better call creative and find out!

Introducing ⁠⁠ITSTEAMIMPACT ⁠⁠ Born in ATLANTA, Powered by ⁠⁠THEIMPACTPLAY⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Learn More: ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https//www.itsteamimpact.com/⁠⁠ --- This episode of THEIMPACTPLAY is sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Audible:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sign up for your free 30-day trial and immediately get access to 1 credit. That is good for any premium title. Simply go to: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠audibletrial.com/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- This is THEIMPACTPLAY'S REVIEW CAST EPISODE 294: Where We Are Reviewing the Season Finale of the Last of Us – So, Stay Tuned and Enjoy! Review us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠IMDb:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23985770/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** Your Support Keeps the Lights Running and Keeps the Content Rolling. Learn more by joining us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://discord.com/channels/403710401990098946/role-subscriptions⁠ You can get access to some exclusive content, including an ad free version of the show, a whole lot of content before everyone else, and more... We are Epic Partners So, for every purchase you make within The Epic Store when you use our Creator Code: THEIMPACTPLAY - We do get a commission that will help support and further elevate the show and even take us to new heights at no added cost! --- --- Show Host(s) : ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ITSYAGOOH⁠⁠:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/itsyagooh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** ⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠T⁠⁠witch:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://anchor.fm/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Discord:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ h⁠ttps://discord.com/channels/403710401990098946/role-subscriptions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/theimpactplay?ref_id=11948⁠⁠⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/support

Introducing ⁠⁠ITSTEAMIMPACT ⁠⁠ Born in ATLANTA, Powered by ⁠⁠THEIMPACTPLAY⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Learn More: ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https//www.itsteamimpact.com/⁠⁠ --- This episode of THEIMPACTPLAY is sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Audible:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sign up for your free 30-day trial and immediately get access to 1 credit. That is good for any premium title. Simply go to: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠audibletrial.com/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- This is THEIMPACTPLAY'S REVIEW CAST EPISODE 292: Where We Are Reviewing Episode 7 of the Last of Us – So, Stay Tuned and Enjoy!  Review us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠IMDb:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23985770/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** Your Support Keeps the Lights Running and Keeps the Content Rolling. Learn more by joining us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://discord.com/channels/403710401990098946/role-subscriptions⁠ You can get access to some exclusive content, including an ad free version of the show, a whole lot of content before everyone else, and more... We are Epic Partners So, for every purchase you make within The Epic Store when you use our Creator Code: THEIMPACTPLAY - We do get a commission that will help support and further elevate the show and even take us to new heights at no added cost! --- --- Show Host(s) : ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ITSYAGOOH⁠⁠:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/itsyagooh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** ⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠T⁠⁠witch:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://anchor.fm/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Discord:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ h⁠ttps://discord.com/channels/403710401990098946/role-subscriptions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/theimpactplay?ref_id=11948⁠⁠⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/support

Introducing ⁠⁠ITSTEAMIMPACT ⁠⁠ Born in ATLANTA, Powered by ⁠⁠THEIMPACTPLAY⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Learn More: ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https//www.itsteamimpact.com/⁠⁠ --- This episode of THEIMPACTPLAY is sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Audible:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sign up for your free 30-day trial and immediately get access to 1 credit. That is good for any premium title. Simply go to: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠audibletrial.com/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- This is THEIMPACTPLAY'S REVIEW CAST EPISODE 293: Where We Are Reviewing Episode 8 of the Last of Us – So, Stay Tuned and Enjoy!  Review us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠IMDb:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23985770/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** Your Support Keeps the Lights Running and Keeps the Content Rolling. Learn more by joining us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://discord.com/channels/403710401990098946/role-subscriptions⁠ You can get access to some exclusive content, including an ad free version of the show, a whole lot of content before everyone else, and more... We are Epic Partners So, for every purchase you make within The Epic Store when you use our Creator Code: THEIMPACTPLAY - We do get a commission that will help support and further elevate the show and even take us to new heights at no added cost! --- --- Show Host(s) : ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ITSYAGOOH⁠⁠:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/itsyagooh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** ⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠T⁠⁠witch:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://anchor.fm/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Discord:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ h⁠ttps://discord.com/channels/403710401990098946/role-subscriptions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/theimpactplay?ref_id=11948⁠⁠⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/support

Introducing ⁠⁠ITSTEAMIMPACT ⁠⁠ Born in ATLANTA, Powered by ⁠⁠THEIMPACTPLAY⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Learn More: ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.itsteamimpact.com/⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ITSTEAMIMPACT.COM⁠⁠ --- This episode of THEIMPACTPLAY is sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Audible:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sign up for your free 30-day trial and immediately get access to 1 credit. That is good for any premium title. Simply go to: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠audibletrial.com/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- This is THEIMPACTPLAY'S REVIEW CAST EPISODE 291: Where We Are Reviewing Episode 6 of the Last of Us – So, Stay Tuned and Enjoy! Review us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠IMDb:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23985770/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** Your Support Keeps the Lights Running and Keeps the Content Rolling. Learn more by joining us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Discord:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://discord.com/channels/403710401990098946/role-subscriptions⁠ You can get access to some exclusive content, including an ad free version of the show, a whole lot of content before everyone else, and more... We are Epic Partners So, for every purchase you make within The Epic Store when you use our Creator Code: THEIMPACTPLAY - We do get a commission that will help support and further elevate the show and even take us to new heights at no added cost! --- --- Show Host(s) : ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ITSYAGOOH⁠⁠:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/itsyagooh⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ *** ⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠T⁠⁠witch:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://anchor.fm/theimpactplay⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Discord:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ h⁠ttps://discord.com/channels/403710401990098946/role-subscriptions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/theimpactplay?ref_id=11948⁠⁠⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/support

--- This episode of THEIMPACTPLAY is sponsored by ⁠⁠Audible:⁠⁠ Sign up for your free 30-day trial and immediately get access to 1 credit. That is good for any premium title. Simply go to: ⁠⁠audibletrial.com/theimpactplay⁠⁠ --- This is THEIMPACTPLAY'S REVIEW CAST EPISODE 284: Where We Are Reviewing the 5th Episode of The Last of Us – So, Stay Tuned and Enjoy! Review us on ⁠⁠IMDb:⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23985770/⁠⁠ *** Your Support Keeps the Lights Running and Keeps the Content Rolling. Learn more by joining us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/SHA6vun⁠ You can get access to some exclusive content, including an ad free version of the show, a whole lot of content before everyone else, and more... We are Epic Partners So, for every purchase you make within The Epic Store when you use our Creator Code: THEIMPACTPLAY - We do get a commission that will help support and further elevate the show and even take us to new heights at no added cost! --- --- Show Host(s) : ⁠⁠ITSYAGOOH⁠⁠ : ⁠⁠https://twitter.com/itsyagooh⁠⁠ *** ⁠⁠Twitch⁠⁠: ⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/theimpactplay⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Listen:⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://anchor.fm/THEIMPACTPLAY⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Support:⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ANCHOR.FM/THEIMPACTPLAY/SUPPORT⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Merch:⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.teepublic.com/stores/theimpactplay?ref_id=11948⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theimpactplay/support

--- This episode of THEIMPACTPLAY is sponsored by Audible: Sign up for your free 30 day trial and immediately get access to 1 credit, that is good for any premium title. Simply go to: audibletrial.com/theimpactplay --- This is THEIMPACTPLAY'S REVIEW CAST EPISODE 280: Where We Are Reviewing Episode 4 of The Last of Us – So, Stay Tuned and Enjoy! Review us on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23985770/ *** Your Support Keeps the Lights Running and Keeps the Content Rolling, You Can Support Us Over on Anchor: ANCHOR.FM/THEIMPACTPLAY/SUPPORT WHERE TIER II SUPORTERS & ABOVE: Have Access to Exclusive Content, Including the Post Show, Getting the Show Ad Free, and more... We are now an #EpicPartner So, for every purchase you make within The Epic Ecosystem when you use our Creator Code THEIMPACTPLAY - We do get a commission that will help support and further elevate the show and even take us to new heights at no extra cost! --- --- Show Host(s) : ITSYAGOOH : https://twitter.com/itsyagooh *** Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/theimpactplay Listen: https://anchor.fm/THEIMPACTPLAY Support: ANCHOR.FM/THEIMPACTPLAY/SUPPORT Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/theimpactplay?ref_id=11948 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theimpactplay/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theimpactplay/support

--- This episode of THEIMPACTPLAY is sponsored by Audible: Sign up for your free 30 day trial and immediately get access to 1 credit, that is good for any premium title. Simply go to: audibletrial.com/theimpactplay --- This is THEIMPACTPLAY'S REVIEW CAST EPISODE 277: Where We Are Reviewing Episode 3 of The Last of Us – So, Stay Tuned and Enjoy! Review us on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23985770/ *** Your Support Keeps the Lights Running and Keeps the Content Rolling, You Can Support Us Over on Anchor: ANCHOR.FM/THEIMPACTPLAY/SUPPORT WHERE TIER II SUPORTERS & ABOVE: Have Access to Exclusive Content, Including the Post Show, Getting the Show Ad Free, and more... We are now an #EpicPartner So, for every purchase you make within The Epic Ecosystem when you use our Creator Code THEIMPACTPLAY - We do get a commission that will help support and further elevate the show and even take us to new heights at no extra cost! --- --- Show Host(s) : ITSYAGOOH : https://twitter.com/itsyagooh *** Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/theimpactplay Listen: https://anchor.fm/THEIMPACTPLAY Support: ANCHOR.FM/THEIMPACTPLAY/SUPPORT Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/theimpactplay?ref_id=11948 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/theimpactplay/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theimpactplay/support

What if you were able to approach every person, place, or idea with a blank slate? What if you could see a culture, a person, or even your own potential without a preconceived opinion?Today I want to introduce you to Jerome, Jerome is one who as chosen to use his own culturally diverse upbringing to allow him to see those around him for who they are, he is one that does this with a genuine desire to learn and expand his knowledge and experience both of that individual and of the world around himJerome is one that it takes little time to see the openness and heart present in him, and in my experience as a result, takes little time to remind those around him how much good is truly present in this worldWe talk about why his recent trip to Afghanistan has been the most unique experience of his life so far, why factors out of his control and the unknown of that experience impacted him, and why he wishes we all would experience a culture fully before making a judgment on itHe shares what growing up playing football was like, how sports taught him resilience, to work though hardships, to never give up, and to work with others. He shares why he believes hard work is something we can all press into no matter our upbringing or circumstances, and how we all experiences ups and downs but if we put in the work, it will pay offHe shares why he is proud of reaching his childhood goals within his career, why it matters to him to bring value into the world, and the importance of being able to take a step back and expand our vision of what and who is in front of usSo tune in today and meet Jerome, one that values with his actions the opportunity to connect and learn from humanity, someone who chooses to see the good in what an often be perceived as struggle, and one who reminds us all the impact we can have when we choose to move forward hand in hand with humanity regardless of our culture, experience, or appearanceAnd to you Jerome, thank you, thank you for your heart to connect and see others with a blank slate, for the way you are choosing to make a difference in this world by how you learn and share the stories life brings to you, for your time in sharing this conversation with me, for your trust in allowing me to share a part of your story with others. Thank you for being a strong voice and kind soul proving that there are truly more good people in this world than not, you are a conscious space of acceptance and I am grateful to know you @jerometraveller

Hey everyone - the Inside Influence team and I are taking an eight week sabbatical this winter (or summer if you're in the Northern Hemisphere) to generally reset, recalibrate and refill our creative tanks.For many of us, myself included, that means traveling across the world to see family members where it's been far too long between hugs.To keep you fueled while we're gone, we've traveled back through the archives and pulled out four of our favorite Inside Influence episodes of all time. I can also hand on heart say that each of these has, in some way, radically changed how I show up, lead and influence.If you're new to the Inside Influence crew, enjoy the ride. If you're a long-time listener, these are definitely conversations worth listening to twice.Stay safe and we'll see you back with a brand new season in August.Today's Guest In this episode I speak with Nancy Duarte – CEO and founder of Silicon Valley's largest and most successful communications firm, Duarte Inc. Nancy has spent the last 30 years immersed in the world of human storytelling and has been behind the scenes of some of the most compelling speeches – or as she calls them' impassioned pleas' – that we've ever seen. Including Al Gore's ‘An Inconvenient Truth'. She's worked with the thought leaders of global brands like Apple, Cisco, Facebook, GE, Google, HP, TED, Twitter, the World Bank – I'll stop now. She's also a renowned author of ‘Illuminate', ‘Resonate' and ‘Slide:ology'. Her TED talk ‘The Secret Structure of Great Talks' has also been watched over 3 million times.She's been the master of the crazy world of presenting since way before speaking was cool, back in the days of projectors and transparencies, where you had to draw your idea onto a sheet of plastic.You'll LearnThe one pattern all the world's greatest speeches have in commonThe power of using contrast when building frenzy behind your ideaHow to create action on the back of any presentations by ‘illuminating' a new pathWhy we sabotage our own ideas – and how to let the struggle transform usSo, think of this as an absolute masterclass in how to convey an idea in its most potent form. Whether that's across a boardroom table, a kitchen table, or a lectern to drive serious change.After this hour, you'll have the world's most powerful tools, so now there's no excuse.References and links mentionedmy new ebook The Influencer CodeSubscribe to and Review the Inside Influence PodcastThanks for tuning into this week's episode of the Inside Influence Podcast! If the information in my conversations and interviews have helped you in your business journey, please head over to iTunes, subscribe to the show, and leave an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more amazing people just like you!Also, don't forget to hop on my website juliemasters.com and download my new ebook The Influencer Code or become an insider by signing up to my newsletter. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week's episode is part of our Life After Z Gallerie series. Michelle worked closely with both Fabian & Melissa during her time at Z Gallerie.Fabian was born and raised in LA, is a self-taught creative leader and a bona fide retail nerd.  With more than 25 years of multi-unit management experience in the retail home furnishings industry, he still feels as if he is in the beginning stages of his career. Currently, he is a Gift Merchandiser & Buyer for A.C. Vroman's Inc., one of the oldest independent bookstores in the country, 128 years old.  A.C. Vroman's operates 2 bookstores in the Pasadena area and also owns Book Soup in West Hollywood, CA, another independent bookstore founded in 1975.  In addition to working at A.C. Vromans, he is also the Founder of Onederkam.com, which is a small eCommerce gift and home accessories store. His side hustle!! He has also worked at IKEA North America at the following markets - San Francisco, Connecticut, Philadelphia, and for IKEA A.B. in Malmö, Sweden as Communications & Interior Design Manager for 10.5 years.  Prior to IKEA, he has worked as District Visual Manager for Z Gallerie covering a variety of markets in the US - So. California, Midwest, East Coast, and Northwest Merchandiser of the Year while working there.Melissa Hesse is a Southern California native raised in the San Gabriel Valley, a mom to two amazing young men, and has been happily married to her husband of 25 years, Bill.She doesn't have a degree in art but somehow has made it her career. She started at Z Gallerie back in 1993 as a part time sales associate while going to college. She spent the next 14 years there, holding almost every position possible there but always found the art department my home. After 6 years in the stores, she moved into the corporate office and spent the next 8 years in the art department as the Merchandise Planner and Assistant Buyer. She would help select the artwork for, at that time 70+ stores. She went on buying trips, worked with publishers and wholesale framers on new merchandise for the stores. FUN was the best way she would describe it. She grew up at Z Gallerie, met lifelong friends (Michelle and Fabian included!), got married, had kids, bought their first house. After 14 years she made the leap to Third and Wall Art Group which was a vendor we purchased posters from. She has been with Third and Wall for almost 15 years and was recently promoted to Creative Director.Michelle, Fabian & Melissa recant their different roles, funny stories, challenges & growth within Z Gallerie and how that paved the way to their current careers. Check out the episode on YouTube and get a glimpse of Melissa's Chris Hemsworth photo blanket her kids gifted to her!Fabian NavejasWebsiteInstagramMelissa HesseWebsiteInstagramFacebookThis week's episode is brought to you by Fine Lines Company, a west coast wholesale rep agency with showrooms in LA, Las Vegas and Seattle. Fine Lines represents over 50 fabulous gift, fashion + home lines.

Bob and Alex from i80 Sports talk about the past week in MLS news while covering the latest in USMNT in the World Cup Qualifiers. Find the latest news around American Soccer right here at i80 Sports!i80 Sports is a podcast network and YouTube channel with an entertaining cast of characters covering breaking news, current events, fantasy, and Sports Book picks.  Like our namesake highway, i80 Sports is coast to coast American sports! Join us, grab a drink, and come talk sports. You can find all our audio and video platforms via our website- www.i80sports.comSupport the show (http://linktr.ee/i80sports)

So the question of purpose has popped back on the scene today courtesy of Mark Manson's newsletter which I receive. What is my purpose? Am I living a life of purpose?It's a timely question for me because I have been questioning my motivation. What is it exactly that I am trying to do and for what purpose? As Agent Smith says, without purpose we have nothing. Without purpose, we would not exist.It was purpose that created usPurpose that connects usPurpose that pulls usPurpose that guides usPurpose that drives usIt is purpose that defines usPurpose that binds usSo again, what is my purpose?

Throughout chapter 1 Paul has been building the point that the church is full of:·      A bunch of unqualified people are brought into God's family·      Given a new identity and more responsibility than they deserve·      Filled to overflowing with God's gifts and His Spirit·      Who still can't grasp why God planned to choose usSo he  prays that we would be enlightened by the Holy Spirit  to grasp:·      God's hope in calling us·      His value in choosing us, and ·      His power at work in usPaul pulls all of this together in this episode by illustrating what God's plan combined with His power can accomplish- in His Son and in His Church.

This is a special episode that includes guests from Amy's life over her 5 decades. While many more could have been chosen for this episode, you will enjoy these interviews with the seed planters, people who worked the harvest of a life decimated by trauma and loss. These are people who made decisions that turned out to be life altering, perhaps even life saving.Contact AmyFirst up is Sharon Reynolds. They planted the very first seed with a simple invitation to church, then to Sunday dinner and ultimately in the hearts of the entire Reynolds family. Sharon is on the show to talk about 10 year old Amy, and at the end of her interview surprises Watson with a piece of her own she wrote. There were tears!Second up, Gayle Dunning (Vandenberghe) is on the show. Gayle and her late husband, Ray, along with their 3 children provided literal shelter for 18 months keeping Amy out of the traditional foster care system. Gayle also is the first person to report to child protective services. After having not seen each other for 30 years, Amy and Gayle have a precious conversation and Gayle serving as another memory keeper.Third is Jackie McGowan, "Mom McGowan" to all who have been lucky enough to have her in their lives.Dr. Lindy McGowan and his wife, Jackie, founded the children's home where Watson spent eight years, often described as the best eight years of her life. In a rare interview appearance, she shares her memories of a teen aged Amy and pushing into the college years. Fourth is Dr. Kristen DeWitt. Kris was Amy's resident advisor at Clearwater Christian College and has remained a steadfast friend for over 30 years. DeWitt, a professor of psychology at Cedarville University, brings some perspective to mental health as well as a gift to Amy at the end of the interview.Finally, Crissy Loughridge (no stranger to the podcast) brings us home with a special message for listeners and for Amy.This is the Wednesdays With Watson podcast 50th episode just "happened" to fall on Watson's 50th birthday.Sir, we would see Jesus, always."Little Is Much" song referenced: Songwriters: Kreiger Conrad / Kreiger Donna / Suffield F W Mrs"I Am"By Nicole NordemanPencil marks on a wall, I wasn't always this tallYou scattered some monsters from beneath my bedYou watched my team winYou watched my team loseYou watched when my bicycle went down againAnd when I was weak, unable to speakStill I could call You by nameAnd I said, Elbow Healer, Super HeroCome if you canYou said, I AmOnly sixteen, life is so meanWhat kind of curfew is at 10 p.m.You saw my mistakes.And watched my heart breakHeard when I swore I' d never love againAnd when I was weak, unable to speakStill I could call You by nameAnd I said, Heartache Healer, Secret KeeperBe my best friendAnd you said, I AmYou saw me wear white by pale candlelightI said forever to what lies aheadTwo kids and a dream, with kids that can screamToo much it might seem when it is two a.m.And when I am weak, unable to speakStill I will call You by nameShepherd, Savior, Pasture MakerHold onto my handYou say, I AmThe winds of change and circumstance blow in and all around usSo we find a foothold that's familiarAnd bless the moments that we feel you nearerWhen life had begun, I was woven and spunYou let the angels dance around the throneAnd who can say when, but they'll dance againWhen I am free and finally headed homeI will be weak, unable to speakStill I will cal You by nameCreator, Maker, Life SustainerComforter, Healer, My RedeemerLord and King, Beginning and the EndI AmYes, I AmSongwriters: Pat Bunch / Shane TeetersI Am l

Show Notes The group Steven talked about is the Global Healing Collective. Feel free to check it out. Everyone is welcome!

Bob and Sir Alex are joined by special guest Bryan Weigel (from Cincy Soccer Talk) to discuss the year in review for the bottom teams from the MLS Eastern Conference.  We're talking about top contributors and other notes from each team in the LAST of a four-part series!Like out namesake highway, i80 Sports is a dedicated network focused on coast to coast American sports.  We release weekly content for each sport AND host a weekly Sunday morning livestream on YouTube, Facebook Live, and Periscope (Twitter).  We take questions, comments, and even phone calls!i80 Sports is a network with an entertaining cast of characters covering breaking news, current events, fantasy, and Sports Book picks.  Our current teams include NFL, MLS, College Football, and NHL. Join us, grab a drink, and come talk sports. You can find all our audio and video platforms via our website- www.i80sports.comSupport the show (http://linktr.ee/i80sports)

Bob and Sir Alex are joined by special guest Garry Redman to discuss the year in review for the top contenders from the MLS Eastern Conference.  We're talking about top contributors and other notes from each team in the third of a four-part series!Like out namesake highway, i80 Sports is a dedicated network focused on coast to coast American sports.  We release weekly content for each sport AND host a weekly Sunday morning livestream on YouTube, Facebook Live, and Periscope (Twitter).  We take questions, comments, and even phone calls!i80 Sports is a network with an entertaining cast of characters covering breaking news, current events, fantasy, and Sports Book picks.  Our current teams include NFL, MLS, College Football, and NHL. Join us, grab a drink, and come talk sports. You can find all our audio and video platforms via our website- www.i80sports.comSupport the show (http://linktr.ee/i80sports)

If you’ve ever wanted to build an extremely large business… One that could potentially do billions in revenue… There’s a pretty simple, proven way to do that, especially here in the US… So what’s the secret? You find an industry that already does billions in sales, and you start a business that offers a healthier version of those products.  Unfortunately, most people will look at an established industry and think the opportunity is gone, and that it would be nearly impossible to compete against the 500 pound gorillas in the space…  But that’s simply not the case…Look at Whole Foods as an example…They started up in the broring established grocery store business, and became one of the world’s biggest success stories by doing one thing… Stocking the shelves with healthy products instead of processed garbage.  Tesla is now the most valuable car company in the world because they took an unhealthy, dirty product, and created a healthier version.  We’ve previously had the Founder of Method on the show a few years ago. Method makes healthy, chemical-free detergents and soaps, and were able to carve out a massive piece of market share from the traditional incumbents.  Another guest was the Founder of Butcher Box… The meat industry is massive, with billions per year in revenue… Butcher Box has been growing like crazy because they decided to offer the highest quality, cleanest, and healthiest animal protein in the country.  Are you starting to see the pattern here? People will seek out, and pay a premium for access to clean and healthy products. Well our guest today is about to do the same thing in one of the most boring industries you can think of… Mattresses.  Mattresses aren’t new, and they’re not sexy, but guess what? You spend about a third of your life on one, and guess what? Your current mattress is literally killing you.  It contains dozens of extremely harmful chemicals and fire retardants that can give you cancer, and cause all kinds of health problems, and your face is pressed up against it for at least 8 hours per day.  When Shane Coker discovered this more than a decade ago, he started Austin Natural Mattress.  They create some of the only healthy, chemical free mattresses in the world, and now the world is starting to take notice.  Shane is about to turn this local company, into a national brand based on this one proven strategy…Walk into a massive, crowded industry, and offer a healthier product.  It’s going to be a fascinating success story to watch, and you aren’t going to believe what you’re going to learn about the mattress you just slept on last night, and the insane chemicals these companies use.  Resources: AustinNaturalMattress.com Music: Song: Raptures & Jeonghyeon - Into The Light [NCS Release] Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds Free Download/Stream: http://NCS.io/IntoTheLight Watch: http://youtu.be/loB4bRVTVbA

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Relax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Youtube :https://youtube.com/c/CreepyTalesTriozDisclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.comYOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platforms such as:Apple podcast : Creepy Tales's PodcastSpotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales's Podcast)Google podcast : https://www.google.com/podcasts?Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastDeezer : https://www.deezer.com/show/1440482Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creepy-taless-podcast-1320638Jiosaavn : https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/Creepy-Taless-podcast/1/CL8inzNd3K0_Tiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozhttps://www.patreon.com/CreepyTalesLive WhatsApp: Coming soonfeed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQ1MTg2OS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkIf you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Relax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Youtube :https://youtube.com/c/CreepyTalesTriozDisclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.comYOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platforms such as:Apple podcast : Creepy Tales's PodcastSpotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales's Podcast)Google podcast : https://www.google.com/podcasts?Spreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastDeezer : https://www.deezer.com/show/1440482Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creepy-taless-podcast-1320638Jiosaavn : https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/Creepy-Taless-podcast/1/CL8inzNd3K0_Tiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozhttps://www.patreon.com/CreepyTalesLive WhatsApp: Coming soonfeed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQ1MTg2OS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkIf you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

God has given us his Holy Spirit to guide us. If we are listening, he will alert us when we get out of our lane. When our lives move outside the boundaries of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit is faithful to let us know. I've heard people say, “I have Jesus.  Why do I need the Holy Spirit?  What does the Holy Spirit do in a believer's life anyway?”  The Holy Spirit convicts the world of sinHe guides us into all truthHe reveals Christ to usHe sanctifies usHe empowers usHe fills usHe teaches us to prayHe produces in us the fruit or evidence of his work and presenceHe gives us spiritual giftsHe anoints us for ministryHe brings unity to the body of ChristHe reveals the deep things of GodHe teaches usHe brings things to our remembranceHe comforts usSo, Who is the Holy Spirit?  The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. He is co-equal with the Father and the Son. He is not a mist, a cloud, or a strange feeling. He is the Spirit of God.  In John 16, Jesus was preparing his disciples for his departure. He wanted them to know they would not be alone, he would give them the Holy Spirit to be with them and to live in them.“I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.” (John 16:7 NKJV)So what is the Holy Spirit doing in our lives today?The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin.The Holy Spirit shows us who we really are rather than what we pretend to be.  This happens before we come to Christ and after we come to Christ.  It's not until the Holy Spirit speaks to our heart and makes us aware of our sin and our need for Christ that any change happen.“And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8 NKJV)The Holy Spirit brings us freedom.“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”  2 Corinthians 3:17 NIV)It is through the power of the Holy Spirit we gain freedom in our lives.  It's through His strength we are able to resist temptation.  It is through his power we are able to live Godly and Holy lives.The Holy Spirit teaches us what we need to know and reminds us of what we need to remember.“But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”  (John 14:26 NIV)Has this ever happened to you?  You are talking with a friend when just the right verse of Scripture pops into your head.  How did this happen?  At just the right moment?  It is the Holy Spirit.The Holy Spirit empowers us to witness for Jesus.“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  (Acts 1:8 NIV)Today's Challenge: Ask God to fill your life with His Holy Spirit. Begin to seek God and ask him to lead and guide your life by His Spirit. Listen for his voice. Cooperate with his leadership. Ask the Lord to help you to walk daily in the power of the Holy Spirit.Visit the website: 5MinuteDiscipleship.comFollow on social:Facebook.com/5minutediscipleshipInstagram.com/5minutediscipleshipClick here to learn how you can start your own podcast.

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Remember to click on the subscribe button to follow up on the progress of this channelRelax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Disclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.com.Please Subscribe and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.YOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platforms such as:Apple podcast : Creepy Tales's PodcastTiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozSpreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastLive WhatsApp: Coming soonspotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales's Podcast)Google podcast : https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQ1MTg2OS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkDeezer podcast : https://www.deezer.com/show/1440482Podchaser : https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creepy-taless-podcast-1320638Jiosaavn : https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/Creepy-Taless-podcast/1/CL8inzNd3K0_If you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Remember to click on the subscribe button to follow up on the progress of this channelRelax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Disclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.com.Please Subscribe and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.YOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platforms such as:Apple podcast : Creepy Tales's PodcastTiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozSpreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastLive WhatsApp: Coming soonspotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales's Podcast)Google podcast : https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQ1MTg2OS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkDeezer podcast : https://www.deezer.com/show/1440482Podchaser : https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creepy-taless-podcast-1320638Jiosaavn : https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/Creepy-Taless-podcast/1/CL8inzNd3K0_If you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

A huge thanks to Joseph McDade for his generous permission to use his music: https://josephmcdade.com/ Thanks to Palmtoptiger17 for the beautiful logo: https://www.instagram.com/palmtoptiger17/ Discord Discussion Board: https://disboard.org/server/474580298630430751  The Historic Faith Courses: https://thehistoricfaith.com/ The Case Against Abortion: https://thefourthway.transistor.fm/episodes/43-the-case-against-abortion-the-foundational-question   Dear Scott,  What is this quelled inside me? I cannot really say.It's certainly not dread, Scott. That came on another day.It feels more like fuzzy warmth. A rashly rationed rationalityStanding partially on reason's leg, to support desire's partialityBut of desire, why condemn it so? This, nature's guide to truth.For survival, reason validates these means and ends that we intuitYet at moments my intuitions falter, as I see my fallible humanityUntil I'm brought back to reason's side, guided by infallible HumityI'm reminded that man has no plan except that which does play out.Each's goal, oneself. Nothing else. Even altruism, a selfish route So what is this quelled inside me? I still can't really say. But damn it, I don't care to know. I'll say what I want anyway.And if you care not to agree, I'll take care not to care.For the winner won't win on empathy's plea, but by exerting more force than other can bear.So what do I want for society? Or should I say, what do I want for me? I want no restraints that impede my class. I want the power to be beyond freeI want to restrict those who are far removed from me. I want to remove their ability to impede.And as the Humian that I truly am, I'll strip away their humanityIf those in my way are no longer like me,  then there's no person to consider – Like all obstacles that come before me, I discard them as rubbish, refuse, litter.But to throw things away seems so absurd. Nothing but cavalier waste.For it's not only meat that gives utility, but also bone, sinew, hair, carapace. So what of this class that's so unlike me? Those without presence, no cries? While too burdensome it is to provide their support, surely them we can still utilizeWe need not mandate that others preserve these lives, if the voiceless become hindrance, In order to punish some for taking same life, though really punishing for inconvenienceWe also need not apply personhood to this group, these dejected who are so like usTo subjectively choose some objective ground to define humanity so it includes usSo if I have right to take this life, then this life is mine to own.But since this my life can't speak on its own, why not give its owners their vote?I propose that we count all voiceless at hand as three fifths woman and man,To keep them inhuman, yet still useful to me, as I further my narcicized plan. So what is this quelled inside me? I finally think that I can say.It's certainly not dread, Scott. But it's just as inhumane.                                 Sincerely,                              NatashaYuri   The title is a reference to the Missouri Compromise. Basically, it was a compromise whereby the United States allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, despite relatively strong objections, and a notion in some that it just wasn't right. Throughout this poem I will be making many slavery references, in hopes that I can parallel it to the abortion issue. Speaking to the abortion issue, the first line of the poem alludes to the major question that must be asked in the abortion debate: “what is inside the mother?” This is the second reference to slavery, in the case of Dred Scott. Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom on the grounds that he should be considered a citizen, or at least a free man. This was not only due to his “inalienable” rights as a human being, but the government's own laws. At one time, Scott's owner traveled with Scott through free territory, where by law, Scott was a human being with rights. So even on the government's own grounds, they were hypocrites. In regard to abortion, we end up asking a similar question of humanity. What is inside the mother? Here, she admits that she does not know. I liked the play on words at the end here, but I also think it describes well the stupidity and gutlessness of the lack of a stand for morality against slavery. People thought through things very rashly. Instead of thinking about the big picture for the nation, they did what was going to get them through the moment. And while compromises were made, people rationalized their reasoning in an attempt to justify themselves. Playing off number four, it seems as though people leaned on the voice of reason as their pillar of foundation, as their desires were shortsighted. They want their generation to be at peace in the land, even if it means war within morally. Slavery was not affecting the majority group – the group in power. There wasn't much of an incentive to take slavery away, as it was very lucrative and not hurting those who mattered (WASPs who owned land). Desire won out over moral reason and long-term thinking. Desire, however, is often partial, leaving out those whose desires don't align, or those who impede the success of the majority's desires. Moral reasoning is intended to uphold inalienable rights, but when used only in part, it is often crafted to prop up desires.  While most would agree that slavery was a bad thing, as it was shortsighted, how can we say it was wrong? Desire is what nature has given us, and what has evolved to guide us towards survival. If it weren't for the desire to eat, I'd starve. If it weren't for the desire to have sex, our species would die out. Desires are the life force of humanity's survival. It is impossible for desires to be remain faulty, as if they were faulty, they wouldn't survive and get passed on to future generations. The only way a desire can be faulty is if it is no longer useful. However, its existence for any significant period of time implies that it at one point was indeed useful, and therefore not wrong by naturalistic standards based around survival. So how can we condemn slavery other than from our limited frame of reference? Slavery bolstered an economy, created rich traditions, etc. Likewise, how could we condemn abortion if we are upholding someone's choice, preventing a poor quality of life, or lowering the crime rate? [ http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/ ] Who can judge? When one thinks about desires, they can seem so wrong. How can one really endorse the atrocities that occur as a result of slavery? It causes one to question morality, knowing how imperfect human minds and actions are. But then we turn to David Hume and the reason he brings to the table. He shows that a naturalistic worldview truly does uphold desires, whatever they may be. These two lines are loaded. First, as alluded to in footnote 5, whatever happens, happens. If it survives any length of time, and especially if it abounds, it was “good,” or at least truly good for survival at some point in time. Nature cannot produce anything unnatural from a naturalistic standpoint. So whatever happens is natural, and what is natural cannot be described as “good” or “bad.” Those are prescriptive terms, and we can only be descriptive about nature. Any prescription is our own imposition. I go on to mention, however, that man does play a plan in a Humian world. Man is a being that perpetuates himself out of selfish motives. That is what is natural and what drives man. We do what we do only if it benefits us. This is true even in altruism. I help my fellow man because I want them to help me if I ever need help. I vote for laws against robbery and murder not because I wouldn't do it if it benefitted me and I could get away with it, but because I don't want someone to be able to do it to me. EVERYTHING we do is done only if we perceive it as being beneficial to us. Those that don't seek their own good most likely don't reproduce, and their DNA dies out. There is a great clip of Christopher Hitchens saying this in a debate with his brother. It is extremely calloused, but a very honest admission of the outworking of his worldview [1:13:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngjQs_QjSwc&feature=youtu.be ]. In the end, it is survival of the fittest. Whatever ideas correspond the most with reality's notion of survival, will survive and flourish. If bad ideas survive, the species dies out. So in this naturalistic world, it's not really a grounded morality that exists and says slavery is wrong or right. The only reason slavery is wrong at the moment is because the majority disagrees with it, at least in most of the Western world. Why? Because we don't have a monochromatic ruling class anymore. Romans made slaves of their enemies, as did many other groups. But who is an American or a German? The racial and ethnic barriers are so convoluted now, we can't distinguish enough to discriminate. This familiarity and lack of precise identity prevents us from subjugating others, as we ourselves can identify more with them and don't want to be subjugated ourselves by a deteriorated notion of human rights. Race can no longer be rationalized as a different class due to globalization and familiarity, as well as science, DNA, etc.  So whatever the majority believes at the time and at least prop up with some semblance of logic - this is what is right or wrong. This means we can't judge those in the past or be judged by those in the future. Numbers and perspectives win. We're all selfish. Here we go back to the selfishness. I want what is best for me. So in fighting for freedoms, I am going to fight for freedom so far as it upholds my class – or those who are like me and to whom I can relate. If those in my class are hurt, that means I could be next. I will fight for anyone who is similar to me, as that is upholding my rights. And anyone who attempts to get in my class's way, I will fight tooth and claw to prevent that impediment. I want to be more than free to do as I please on my own, I want to be free to do as I please, period. This is true, even if it means I impede what others want – and often especially if I impede what others want. My goal is not to uphold humanity, but to uphold any group that is similar to me, so I don't risk threatening my own goals. The more similar to me, the more threatening it is directly to me when they are impeded. However, if a group is not similar to me, I want to be able to subjugate them and use them to my advantage. Throughout history, people have enacted the above idea in a very common way. We see the same thing in slavery that we saw in the Holocaust. If we can diminish the status of a human to being lesser of a human, or non-human, we can treat them as objects to use for whatever means we please. Stripping away humanity – or that which would make a group similar to us – is the first step to great atrocities. As stated previously, if a being is no longer a person, or less of one, I can use them as I please. But if I'm truly a Humian, naturalist, narcissist, surely I've learned my lesson from history. While it's great to subjugate people for my causes, just destroying them is a waste. I need to milk every ounce of worth out of this chattel, just as the Native Americans used every part of an animal carcass. The subjugated group has no voice. That's what the majority power is. But even though we don't want to provide a soapbox for the oppressed to speak from, we can still utilize them. Since these slaves are property, I can do with them as I please – provided they are my property. The death of a slave is of no consequence, even if I murdered him/her/it. However, that's what I do with my own property – the good Humian I am. It's mine to decide, and I don't want anyone else deciding for me. For this reason, it is not hypocrisy when another pays with their life or wallet for killing one of my slaves. How can someone be punished with death for killing my slaves, if I can kill a slave with no consequence? While many would say it seems a “life for a life,” the slave murderer is really being punished for inconveniencing another of his own class. He is impinging on the slave owner's inalienable rights. He is taking away their freedom to use their property as they see fit. In this naturalistic world, we cannot allow those who feel they can impose their decisions on others within their class. This action is essentially an assertion by them that they are above our class, which is a significant threat that must be obliterated immediately. While it does seem like slaves are so human, they're not. They look similar, understand language, etc. But what is it to be human other than a term that the majority group defines to benefit them? So while the majority can make up objective grounds for defining humanity (i.e. two eyes, white, male, etc), they make up these terms subjectively. They do it without grounds to do so, other than the fact that they can. To utilize this property even more, why not make me the mouthpiece of the slaves? Certainly since I own them, whatever I choose to do with them is the best, so I best know what they should say. By standing up for my rights and my voice, I'm ensuring that they live in a system where I can be free to provide for them in the best way I see fit. This is the final reference to slave law. It is a reference to the 3/5 Compromise, where Congress allowed slaves to be counted as 3/5 of a person for voting purposes (this was actually better for slaves than counting them as 5/5 a person, as it gave slave states less of a vote). However, we're basically putting a fraction of personhood on slaves to keep them in a class that is dissimilar to ours, yet counting them as person enough to warrant “their” voice being heard. This keeps them subjugated, while at the same time, giving me more power. I don't know if I should keep the ending as is, or end it with [just as inhumane] or [it is inhumane]. These final two lines highlight the whole analogy I'm trying to make here. While I'm blatantly talking about slavery, if you read through the poem again in the mindset of abortion parallels, I think you'll see similar rationales there in many ways. I'll list a few of them here. 1) The aborted are unarguably human beings, yet the majority places a subjectively objective rationale onto when personhood begins. They usually do this with a utilitarian argument, which is subjectively employed.  It's very simple to show that this statement is true, using any biology book. Life begets life and like begets like. We see zygotes are alive, and that life came from sexual reproduction of two human beings. Therefore, we have a human life in the zygote. To deny this is either to deny that the zygote is alive, which is preposterous, since it fulfills all the requirements for life (energy, reproduction of cells, response to environment, etc). The only other way to deny the life's importance is to say it's not human, but that's just as preposterous. What is the life then – bear, pelican, or some other animal?   2) The freeing of slaves hurt their masters financially, just as a child may cause difficulty for its mother if brought to term. However, inalienable rights don't depend on the feeling of any human being, but are rather intrinsically tied to all human beings. Just as the feelings of a slave owner have nothing to do with the question of a slave's inalienable rights, so the feelings of a mother have nothing to do with her child's inalienable rights. If rights are tied to humanity – a static thing – then rights follow humanity regardless of anyone's feelings or difficulty.  So if a fetus is a living human being with inherent human rights, the feelings of the mother should have nothing to do with the conferring of those rights.  3) Hypocrisy exists in the legal system, where the aborted aren't human beings, yet causing a mother to lose a child is considered a murder.  4) A child born prematurely is considered a living human being, and could not be dispatched legally. Yet some abortions occur up into the second trimester, and partial birth abortions were at one point legal as well. This seems to be a huge double standard.  5) The aborted are voiceless, which makes their demise very easy to overlook for most. They are a class redefined like slaves and like Jews during the Holocaust.  There are a ton of other parallels you can find, but those are some of the basics that are easy to explain here. Perhaps when I have more time I'll go through and expound on more.Finally, if you look through the beginning of each stanza of the poem, you'll notice that each begins by asking about what is inside Miss Yuri, or questions what the class is. The four responses the speaker gives are essentially 1) I don't know, 2) I don't care, 3) Let's take advantage of them, 4) I have thrown off my humanity, and any stable grounding for it.  In the end, Miss Yuri's compromise was that to get what she wants most – good for herself – she had to throw off that which gave her a grounded identity. She threw off her God-given humanity, and denied the image she was intended to bear. And when she did, she lost all grounds for meaningful morality, love, altruism, empathy, anything else objective, and anything other than narcissistic, descriptive actions. Ironically, selfishness destroys the image humanity is intended to bear, and prevents humanity from being what it was truly intended to be. It's counterproductive, yet so seductive. So Miss Yuri's attempt to take away the humanity of the class she wanted subjugated did nothing but chip away at her own humanity and her society. Preying on man's innate selfishness and calling upon one's fellow man to indulge himself at the cost of other humans in the class is the absolute opposite of fighting for anyone's rights - women's or otherwise. It's the denial and suppression of human rights, and the deterioration of one's own image-bearing soul and humanity. ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

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What can AI do to help small businesses with so many business failures taking place with COVID-19? There are plenty of stats around that quantify the number of businesses dropping. Understanding these stats is useful, but, it leaves us to ask: Therefore What? Therefore, what can AI do to help the business owner mount a massive plan to rebuild, and pursue the business vision that was once your?? Hey, welcome everybody. This is Grant thank you for joining another episode of ClickAI Radio. All right, so been thinking again, still this is really part two of AI combating COVID when you when you think about all of the all of the carnage, if you will, in terms of the impact of businesses, definitely the impact to human life has been horrific. But also the impact to the businesses as well. And all the people's lives affected by that. You start asking the question least I have, I've been thinking, what can I do to help small businesses with so many business failures taking place? due to COVID-19? Oh, here we are in the first of September, and we've got lots of credit, potential downstream problems coming to us. There are plenty of stats around we're going to take a look at some of those that quantify the number of businesses that have been dropping that have been falling by the wayside. Understanding the stats, I believe is useful. But it also leaves me to ask therefore what they're For what can I do? What can I do? What can I do with AI, as a business owner to mount a massive plan, to rebuild and to pursue the business vision that was once yours? What are the things that we could do? So I don't want to just focus on here's all of the negative things happening. It's important for us to understand what's happening. But we also want to pivot forward and look to the future and say, therefore, what can I do to regrow and regroup from this. So first part, let's take a look at some of the stats going on. First one comes from Bloomberg, this is a report that came out is around the end of July, so it's about a month old. It indicated they actually were referencing Yelp. And with Yelp, they had shown that that there was more than 80,000 companies that had permanently shut down now that was during the period of March 1 to July 25. Have those 60,000 more local businesses, meaning they have fewer than five locations, about 800 of the small businesses filed for Chapter 11. Interestingly, there's a fair number that did not file for chapter 11. That's that's another another conversation. In any event, that that amount right there is up about 30% or more from last year during the same period of time. So that's a big number. That's a big shift. Let's look at another stat here. It says, you know, while the businesses you know, these small businesses are having these challenges, the firm's with fewer than 500 employees, and up accounting for about 45% of the US economic activity. That's quite a bit when you think about it. Almost half of all American workers come through these small to medium businesses. And here's another stat also from Bloomberg. It said hey, in June of 2020, there is a survey that showed that 31% of owners reported lower sales in the past three months, while 7% reported higher sales a year earlier. All right, you kind of expected that. All right. In the same survey, though only 13% of business owners said it was a good time to expand. Right? That's a dip from 24% a year earlier. Alright, so fewer thinking, Hey, I'm thinking bullish about business right now. So that's not that's not too surprising. There's some interesting stats in terms of the businesses that have had impact, you know, largest impact, no surprise here, the restaurant sector took the biggest hit right there. Retail and shopping was the next largest beauty and then automotive and then down into event planning and that order in terms of order of of impact or level of impact, I should say. All right, that was from Bloomberg case. So that's one view of the impact of the small businesses end Jump over here. There's another report from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And they just quickly they pointed out about 50% of small businesses have one to two months of cash available. There were some other stats to it came down to it was around 15% or so had three to six months of cash available. So cash is king, and boy if there's no cash coming in, and that's all we've got in terms of our runway, that creates, obviously a massive problem. So that's another issue. Of course, the question that leads me to think is, is there cash in the business that we're not getting access to? And I actually believe there is I believe that AI from my experience, we can use it to help us discover cash that's available. I'll talk about that in a bit. here's, here's the third area, a third report from CNBC. That came out in the end of June. Talking about the amount of help that small business owners had gained the the payment protection pro met or excuse me the paycheck Protection Program and the economic injury disaster loan program. All right, those aren't easy to say, not easy to roll out anyway, they, they gave out nearly $630 billion in funding. And about one fourth of the small businesses that receive that funding are already considered or considering closing their doors. And of course, the question that comes up is, gee, how do I pay back? Right? And what's the implications? Right, will there be forgiveness if I do close my doors? That's a whole other topic as well want to shift the thinking? So that's a dark picture, right? But I believe that there's a bright future ahead of us as a people. And with that, I want to talk about some techniques where we see AI being used To combat COVID itself, and then we'll shift another segment as well. But just briefly in this segment, ai combatting COVID this particularly comes from a report focusing on Asia, right? And so what are different countries in Asia doing so there's Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, in this report. In this report, it pointed out the following places where they are gathering data, and that data is being used then for AI purposes. So I'll break this into piece first, where are they collecting the information or the data? Alright, so between those different countries, they're collecting it from places such as transportation systems, Immigration and Customs databases, obviously the COVID-19 databases so healthcare data, so multiple countries are using that data, mobile data, mobile technologies Right social media, credit card transactions, closed circuit television. So you know, security cameras, GPS on the car, and then wearable tracking devices. All right, so those that there was like eight or nine different locations, and you start thinking, Wait, what's the connection between that data and COVID and and something to help me address COVID related scenarios. So I'll just call out a couple of the so one of them is an AI based tool that facilitates targeting lockdown and reopening, right so in other words, it monitors where a person should be right of course, there's different cultures and and government policies. I'm not here to comment on those, but in any event, so using some of those trackable device data or mobile data, etc. If you're classified as a you know, you've got COVID then you are asked to stay within certain location. And there's some AI helping to monitor that. There's other AI based tools in these countries being used to enable quick diagnosis and classification of patients, right. And we've seen some things. Yeah, here in the US. Some organizations doing some things like that. I'll mention one here in just a moment. And so that's a critical way and unnecessary way to use AI. All in all, there's some strict home quarantines for those that have COVID in those countries. And as a result, use of this data across all these different data sources that I had mentioned, are being applied. All right. So that's AI combating COVID nasia capturing a two part sort of a social cultural use of AI Hey, stay where you should. And then there's there's the approach that says, hey, we're gonna actually gonna try to diagnose, diagnose you better with that. All right. Talk about here in the US So, and I h launched a medical imaging technology using AI to fight code. This came out in the health analytics.com report. So the NIH rolled this out not too long ago, here comes a big acronym am idrc. So that's medical imaging and data Resource Center, what they're doing is they're utilizing AI, medical imaging, to course look for those assessment opportunities. And earlier that they can assess it, then then the better. Of course, they have the opportunity to help the patient with that. So they're gathering large repositories of COVID-19 chest images, and the idea there are courses. It allows the researchers to ask critical questions, and then ultimately to develop what the appropriate next steps are for the people. So that's a cool way to use AI, obviously to help people's lives. So the question is Therefore what? Right? So if you're a small to medium business owner, if you're an entrepreneur, you try to make it through this tenuous time where there's lots of companies that have been dramatically impacted negatively in lots of people's lives who have gotten sick with this. Therefore, what does this mean to your business? So as a business owner, we need to at times, think as a researcher, right? We need to look for ways to evaluate your business data. How will you evaluate your business data? So just as those COVID researchers are certainly evaluating tissue data and asking critical questions? What business data will you evaluate? What questions do you have about your business now what this means to your business is that you should run some AI predictive analysis on your business information. In other words, turn your data upside down, inside out, look for the successful patterns that built your business. Many of them you know cognitively or empirically In other cases, you won't know them, right. And we want AI to be able to highlight those and make you aware of those. And just as it's important to understand what the positive patterns have been, also look for patterns that created negative growth, right? And the sooner you can discover them, stop doing them. Right. And so AI, there are some that you already know you don't need AI to tell you. But there are others where there are times where AI points out interesting patterns or behaviors, and you need to be apprised of those and stop bleeding cash in that happens. So if you want to learn how to do this, subscribe to the channel. Reach out to me, we'll have a conversation and we can help you get started with this. Don't forget the purpose, the mission and the vision for why you started your business. Hey, thanks for joining looking forward to speaking with you again. Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your FREE eBook visit ClickAIRadio.com now.  

What can AI do to help small businesses with so many business failures taking place with COVID-19? There are plenty of stats around that quantify the number of businesses dropping. Understanding these stats is useful, but, it leaves us to ask: Therefore What? Therefore, what can AI do to help the business owner mount a massive plan to rebuild, and pursue the business vision that was once your?? Hey, welcome everybody. This is Grant thank you for joining another episode of ClickAI Radio. All right, so been thinking again, still this is really part two of AI combating COVID when you when you think about all of the all of the carnage, if you will, in terms of the impact of businesses, definitely the impact to human life has been horrific. But also the impact to the businesses as well. And all the people's lives affected by that. You start asking the question least I have, I've been thinking, what can I do to help small businesses with so many business failures taking place? due to COVID-19? Oh, here we are in the first of September, and we've got lots of credit, potential downstream problems coming to us. There are plenty of stats around we're going to take a look at some of those that quantify the number of businesses that have been dropping that have been falling by the wayside. Understanding the stats, I believe is useful. But it also leaves me to ask therefore what they're For what can I do? What can I do? What can I do with AI, as a business owner to mount a massive plan, to rebuild and to pursue the business vision that was once yours? What are the things that we could do? So I don't want to just focus on here's all of the negative things happening. It's important for us to understand what's happening. But we also want to pivot forward and look to the future and say, therefore, what can I do to regrow and regroup from this. So first part, let's take a look at some of the stats going on. First one comes from Bloomberg, this is a report that came out is around the end of July, so it's about a month old. It indicated they actually were referencing Yelp. And with Yelp, they had shown that that there was more than 80,000 companies that had permanently shut down now that was during the period of March 1 to July 25. Have those 60,000 more local businesses, meaning they have fewer than five locations, about 800 of the small businesses filed for Chapter 11. Interestingly, there's a fair number that did not file for chapter 11. That's that's another another conversation. In any event, that that amount right there is up about 30% or more from last year during the same period of time. So that's a big number. That's a big shift. Let's look at another stat here. It says, you know, while the businesses you know, these small businesses are having these challenges, the firm's with fewer than 500 employees, and up accounting for about 45% of the US economic activity. That's quite a bit when you think about it. Almost half of all American workers come through these small to medium businesses. And here's another stat also from Bloomberg. It said hey, in June of 2020, there is a survey that showed that 31% of owners reported lower sales in the past three months, while 7% reported higher sales a year earlier. All right, you kind of expected that. All right. In the same survey, though only 13% of business owners said it was a good time to expand. Right? That's a dip from 24% a year earlier. Alright, so fewer thinking, Hey, I'm thinking bullish about business right now. So that's not that's not too surprising. There's some interesting stats in terms of the businesses that have had impact, you know, largest impact, no surprise here, the restaurant sector took the biggest hit right there. Retail and shopping was the next largest beauty and then automotive and then down into event planning and that order in terms of order of of impact or level of impact, I should say. All right, that was from Bloomberg case. So that's one view of the impact of the small businesses end Jump over here. There's another report from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And they just quickly they pointed out about 50% of small businesses have one to two months of cash available. There were some other stats to it came down to it was around 15% or so had three to six months of cash available. So cash is king, and boy if there's no cash coming in, and that's all we've got in terms of our runway, that creates, obviously a massive problem. So that's another issue. Of course, the question that leads me to think is, is there cash in the business that we're not getting access to? And I actually believe there is I believe that AI from my experience, we can use it to help us discover cash that's available. I'll talk about that in a bit. here's, here's the third area, a third report from CNBC. That came out in the end of June. Talking about the amount of help that small business owners had gained the the payment protection pro met or excuse me the paycheck Protection Program and the economic injury disaster loan program. All right, those aren't easy to say, not easy to roll out anyway, they, they gave out nearly $630 billion in funding. And about one fourth of the small businesses that receive that funding are already considered or considering closing their doors. And of course, the question that comes up is, gee, how do I pay back? Right? And what's the implications? Right, will there be forgiveness if I do close my doors? That's a whole other topic as well want to shift the thinking? So that's a dark picture, right? But I believe that there's a bright future ahead of us as a people. And with that, I want to talk about some techniques where we see AI being used To combat COVID itself, and then we'll shift another segment as well. But just briefly in this segment, ai combatting COVID this particularly comes from a report focusing on Asia, right? And so what are different countries in Asia doing so there's Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, in this report. In this report, it pointed out the following places where they are gathering data, and that data is being used then for AI purposes. So I'll break this into piece first, where are they collecting the information or the data? Alright, so between those different countries, they're collecting it from places such as transportation systems, Immigration and Customs databases, obviously the COVID-19 databases so healthcare data, so multiple countries are using that data, mobile data, mobile technologies Right social media, credit card transactions, closed circuit television. So you know, security cameras, GPS on the car, and then wearable tracking devices. All right, so those that there was like eight or nine different locations, and you start thinking, Wait, what's the connection between that data and COVID and and something to help me address COVID related scenarios. So I'll just call out a couple of the so one of them is an AI based tool that facilitates targeting lockdown and reopening, right so in other words, it monitors where a person should be right of course, there's different cultures and and government policies. I'm not here to comment on those, but in any event, so using some of those trackable device data or mobile data, etc. If you're classified as a you know, you've got COVID then you are asked to stay within certain location. And there's some AI helping to monitor that. There's other AI based tools in these countries being used to enable quick diagnosis and classification of patients, right. And we've seen some things. Yeah, here in the US. Some organizations doing some things like that. I'll mention one here in just a moment. And so that's a critical way and unnecessary way to use AI. All in all, there's some strict home quarantines for those that have COVID in those countries. And as a result, use of this data across all these different data sources that I had mentioned, are being applied. All right. So that's AI combating COVID nasia capturing a two part sort of a social cultural use of AI Hey, stay where you should. And then there's there's the approach that says, hey, we're gonna actually gonna try to diagnose, diagnose you better with that. All right. Talk about here in the US So, and I h launched a medical imaging technology using AI to fight code. This came out in the health analytics.com report. So the NIH rolled this out not too long ago, here comes a big acronym am idrc. So that's medical imaging and data Resource Center, what they're doing is they're utilizing AI, medical imaging, to course look for those assessment opportunities. And earlier that they can assess it, then then the better. Of course, they have the opportunity to help the patient with that. So they're gathering large repositories of COVID-19 chest images, and the idea there are courses. It allows the researchers to ask critical questions, and then ultimately to develop what the appropriate next steps are for the people. So that's a cool way to use AI, obviously to help people's lives. So the question is Therefore what? Right? So if you're a small to medium business owner, if you're an entrepreneur, you try to make it through this tenuous time where there's lots of companies that have been dramatically impacted negatively in lots of people's lives who have gotten sick with this. Therefore, what does this mean to your business? So as a business owner, we need to at times, think as a researcher, right? We need to look for ways to evaluate your business data. How will you evaluate your business data? So just as those COVID researchers are certainly evaluating tissue data and asking critical questions? What business data will you evaluate? What questions do you have about your business now what this means to your business is that you should run some AI predictive analysis on your business information. In other words, turn your data upside down, inside out, look for the successful patterns that built your business. Many of them you know cognitively or empirically In other cases, you won't know them, right. And we want AI to be able to highlight those and make you aware of those. And just as it's important to understand what the positive patterns have been, also look for patterns that created negative growth, right? And the sooner you can discover them, stop doing them. Right. And so AI, there are some that you already know you don't need AI to tell you. But there are others where there are times where AI points out interesting patterns or behaviors, and you need to be apprised of those and stop bleeding cash in that happens. So if you want to learn how to do this, subscribe to the channel. Reach out to me, we'll have a conversation and we can help you get started with this. Don't forget the purpose, the mission and the vision for why you started your business. Hey, thanks for joining looking forward to speaking with you again. Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your FREE eBook visit ClickAIRadio.com now.  

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Remember to click on the subscribe button to follow up on the progress of this channelRelax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Disclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.com.Please Subscribe and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.YOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platforms such as:Apple podcast : Creepy Tales's Podcast Tiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozSpreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastLive WhatsApp: Coming soonspotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales's Podcast)Google podcast : https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQ1MTg2OS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkDeezer podcast : https://www.deezer.com/show/1440482Podchaser : https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creepy-taless-podcast-1320638Jiosaavn : https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/Creepy-Taless-podcast/1/CL8inzNd3K0_If you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Remember to click on the subscribe button to follow up on the progress of this channelRelax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Disclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.com.Please Subscribe and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.YOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platforms such as:Apple podcast : Creepy Tales's PodcastTiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozSpreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastLive WhatsApp: Coming soonspotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales's Podcast)Google podcast : https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQ1MTg2OS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkDeezer podcast : https://www.deezer.com/show/1440482Podchaser : https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creepy-taless-podcast-1320638Jiosaavn : https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/Creepy-Taless-podcast/1/CL8inzNd3K0_If you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Remember to click on the subscribe button to follow up on the progress of this channelRelax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Disclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.com.Please Subscribe and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.YOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platforms such as:Tiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozSpreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastLive WhatsApp: Coming soonspotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales)Google podcast : https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQ1MTg2OS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkDeezer podcast : https://www.deezer.com/show/1440482Podchaser : https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creepy-taless-podcast-1320638Jiosaavn : https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/Creepy-Taless-podcast/1/CL8inzNd3K0_If you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Remember to click on the subscribe button to follow up on the progress of this channelRelax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Disclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.com.Please Subscribe and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.YOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platforms such as:Tiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozSpreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastLive WhatsApp: Coming soonspotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales)Google podcast : https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQ1MTg2OS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkDeezer podcast : https://www.deezer.com/show/1440482Podchaser : https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creepy-taless-podcast-1320638Jiosaavn : https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/Creepy-Taless-podcast/1/CL8inzNd3K0_If you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

Phil spoke from 2 Peter 1:3 about how God's grace is everything that we need.Is life a struggle?Sometimes is temptation too much?Dave encouraged us last week to receive the fathers love againThis week I want to encourage us to receive fresh graceHis divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,2 Peter 1:3 ESVhttps://bible.com/bible/59/2pe.1.3.ESV2 Peter 1:3 NLThttps://bible.com/bible/116/2pe.1.3.NLT2 Peter 1:3 AMPhttps://bible.com/bible/1588/2pe.1.3.AMP1. It all starts with God himself a. It’s by Gods power that we have all we need for life God been the divine one all-powerful magnificent loving heavenly father. b. We in ourselves are not sufficient to live the life God intended for usOnce you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.Ephesians 2:1-3 NLThttps://bible.com/bible/116/eph.2.1-3.NLT2. It’s all about grace a. You have been saved by grace But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus. God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.Ephesians 2:4-8 NLThttps://bible.com/bible/116/eph.2.4-8.NLTWe can’t work up or develop an immunity to sinWe can’t of ourselves stand against the our enemies of the world the flesh or the devilBut God is sufficient for us,Grace is sufficient for usThe power of the cross is sufficient for us The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is sufficient for usSo how do we get this Grace sufficient?3. How? By the knowledge of God How do you see God?Distant?Uncaring?Uninterested in you and your life?Unloving?Our responsibility is to know God, to discover who he is, how great he is, how loving and kind he is, how gracious and compassionate he is, the list goes on Spend time with him, learn about from the bible,Discover his tenderness and nearness in worshipping himLearn to hear and know his voice in prayer with him. 4. Why?a. You have been called and chosen to know Godb. If you have already received Jesus as Lord a saviour all of this is already yoursc. If you don't know Jesus yet, he is waiting for you to respond to him and receive his divine power to live life who God intended life to be.d. Or if you have lost your way and have turned you back on God, he's here with arms wide open waiting for you to return. ConclusionYou can’t try and you don't have to do life by yourself and your own efforts God has already supplied all you need for life and Godliness you just have to choose to accept it, receive it and live in the good of it. QuestionsWhat do think of when you read this statement 'His divine power'? How do we experience this at work in our lives? How are you getting to know him? How have experienced his glory and goodness?

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Remember to click on the subscribe button to follow up on the progress of this channelRelax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Disclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.com.Please Subscribe and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.YOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platforms such as:Tiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozSpreaker: https://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastLive WhatsApp: Coming soonspotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales)Google podcast : https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc3ByZWFrZXIuY29tL3Nob3cvNDQ1MTg2OS9lcGlzb2Rlcy9mZWVkDeezer podcast : https://www.deezer.com/show/1440482Podchaser : https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/creepy-taless-podcast-1320638Jiosaavn : https://www.jiosaavn.com/shows/Creepy-Taless-podcast/1/CL8inzNd3K0_If you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Thanks for watching our video and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Remember to click on the subscribe button to follow up on the progress of this channelRelax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - to do not be obsessed with what your hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be benficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Disclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.com.Please Subscribe and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever we upload new videos in the future.YOu can also follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media paltforms such as:Tiktok : https://vt.tiktok.com/UAoe8T/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@malamseram.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozhttps://www.spreaker.com/show/creepy-taless-podcastLive WhatsApp: Coming soonspotify:show:3ywASp2mfrZrhj9toqjLTZ (Creepy Tales)Google podcastDeezer podcastIf you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

This is an entertainment casting of experiences and strange,horror or scary encounters that people would want to share with but has never had a chance too. Here - Creepy Tales shall take your encounters and share it to the world for them to hear..& fear......Hi all and thanks for stopping by Creepy Tales Youtube channel. Remember to click on the subscribe button to follow on the progress of this channel.If you need a place to guarantee your service or product this is the place.To find out more info and sales packages please email creepytalestrioz@gmail.comThanks for watching my video.The channel features readings of horror stories from emails shared by subscribers. If you love to hear horror stories with SOUND EFFECT this is the place to be.Relax,enjoy the tales and follow us CreepyTales on social media.Remember everyone - do not be obsessed with what you hear or see.Stories that we gather here are only for entertainment purposes and if anything that can be learned which may or may not be beneficial to usSo listen if you dare - contribute if you care...Disclaimer - video content is just for illustration purposes(Work is on the way to create new content videos for viewing)And like,share and subscribe if you like us and want us to continue our work.Do share your stories to us at creepytalestrioz@gmail.com.You may also find us in Spreaker, Spotify and Apple Podcasts for other media platforms.Please Subscribe and turn on the bell icon for fast notification whenever I uploaded new videos.Follow Creepy Tales on other Social Media platformsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/creepytalestrioz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/CreepyTales3iozFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/creepytales.triozWebsite: Coming SoonEmail: creepytalestrioz@gmail.com

My guest today is Matt Nish-Lapidus. Matt is an artist, musician, researcher, designer, and educator based in Toronto. Besides creating art and music, and doing design work, Matt also teaches at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. In this conversation, we discuss the role of art in our evolving technological and cultural environments. Listen to the full conversation   Show notes Matt Nish-Lapidus (emenel.com) Matt on Instagram Matt on Twitter University of Toronto New media art SFMoMA MoMA (New York) Tate Modern Nam June Paik Theodore Adorno The Anthropocene New Materialism Jane Bennett The Walt Disney Company Marvel Impressionism CARFAC David Rokeby Pietà by Michelangelo Buonarroti Jenny Holzer New Tendencies Soft Thoughts må Some show notes may include Amazon affiliate links. I get a small commission for purchases made through these links. Read the full transcript Jorge: So, Matt, welcome to the show. Matt: Thanks. Happy to be here.  Jorge: For folks who might not know you, can you please tell us about yourself? Matt: Yeah. I sometimes these days refer to myself as a recovering designer. My original background, educationally, was in fine arts and specifically in new media art. And then, over the arc of my career, I found myself working in interaction design and very interested in the intersection between humanity and various types of complex technology, as in networks and computational technology. And I did that for about 15 years. And towards the end of that period, I found myself more interested in the types of questions that felt like they were better answered through my art practice than they were through my design practice, and the kinds of questions that also didn't seem to be that interesting to other designers or to our clients or to potential employers or partners. So about five years ago now, I left my job and decided to focus more on my artistic practice, which includes music and sound art as well as technology-based arts of different types. And in September of last year, I actually started my MFA, which is a Master of Fine Arts, in Studio Practice at the University of Toronto, which I'm currently pursuing on top of other things that I continue to do, like playing music and work with other organizations. Media Art Jorge: Folks listening to the show might not be familiar with the term “media art.” How do you define that? Matt: So the most basic way to understand it – in the highest level, probably – is that unlike painting or traditional photography or other types of sculpture – you know, other types of traditional arts – media art and new media art were emergent practices that specifically dealt with new types of mass media originally. So, it was artists working with televisions, with video, with different kinds of sound and broadcast technologies. And then over the course of the last couple of decades, became artists that work with the internet or with computation, and different kinds of network technologies, and think about them from an artistic perspective, which is usually a critical perspective or thinking about the impact that they have on people or the way that people relate to them and the new types of relationships and new types of affects that they create. Jorge: So, it's art that uses technologies, especially like communications technologies, as its medium? Is that the idea? Matt: Yeah, as its medium and often as its topic. So, we make art about the technology is sometimes using the same ones. And the practice goes back to the late fifties, but really in some ways is now the dominant practice in contemporary art. Jorge: Can you name some examples of how you would experience new media art? Matt: Yeah. I mean, if you've ever been to a contemporary art gallery or museum of modern art, whether it's the SF MoMA or the MoMA in New York, or the Tate Modern in London, a lot of what you're seeing would be in this category. Artists who work with light, who work with sound, work with video projections, interaction in different ways… You know, a famous example from the early days of media artist Nam June Paik, who worked a lot with televisions and his work was both about television as a cultural object, but also as a medium and as a material. The Role of Art Jorge: We're recording this in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020. And I have to mention that the context that we're, that we're speaking in, because we are accelerating our move to interacting through technology. And you and I are talking right now through Zoom and I can see you. So we're having a conversation, and it's perhaps too soon to know, but I'm wondering what role does art play – especially, you know, this new media art that you're talking about – in a world in which we're increasingly interacting through technology. Perhaps the question is more broadly, it's like, what is the role of art? Matt: Yeah. So, it's an interesting question and it's one that's been asked by artists and philosophers for many, many years. And I've been thinking about this lately. In the fifties – it might have even been in the sixties, don't quote me on the date – a German philosopher and media theoretician, Theodore Adorno, wrote an essay in which he asked, how do you make art after Auschwitz? Like, what is the role of art in a world where something as horrible as the Holocaust could happen? And how do you as an artist deal with that, and still see beauty and joy and the sublime and all these different things, when our understanding of what's possible in the world is so fundamentally changed and so terrifying. And I think there are a number of similar questions that we can be asking ourselves right now. Before this outbreak, the big question on a lot of people's minds was a similar one, which is how do you make art in the Anthropocene? If we're witnessing a period of, like massive global scale change and devastation this like slow train wreck, what is the role of art and how do you continue to make art in the face of such a massive and often depressing and serious thing. And I think like the pandemic that we're currently trying to figure out raises a similar kind of question again, just like what is the point of art and how do you make it and what do you make it about when our understanding of what's possible in the world has fundamentally changed. When there's a new thing, a new object that exists that didn't really exist before. There's a school of philosophy called New Materialism and a kind of well-known New Materialist, Jane Bennett, talks about these things as what she calls assemblages. And an assemblage is like a network of heterogeneous actors that all have different kinds of agency. And, looking at the pandemic through the lens of Bennett's idea of an assemblage, you can start to see the agency of the virus as a political actor, as an economic actor, as a social and cultural actor. And for me anyway, that's where as an artist, my interest in it lies, and where I think I can kind of grapple with our current situation is not saying, “okay, well what do we do when we're all locked in our homes,” but saying, “what are the fundamental changes in the world that we can observe? What are the things we want to try to say or express about them or understand through making things?” And then, “what kinds of things can I make that help with that understanding or are cathartic or express an affect or give people something that I think they want or need given the kind of drastic changes that this is affecting on all of our systems?” High Art and Popular Art Jorge: When you say that, do you make a distinction between… I don't know if the appropriate terms are like “high art” and “popular art”? Matt: Like in terms of, like a museum and gallery art versus like television shows and movies and things like that? Jorge: Yes. Matt: Yeah. I mean, I don't see a huge distinction in a formal way. I think good media, like a really well-made television show, for instance, that deals with these topics in a critical and thoughtful way, that's based on research and, you know, does things like… explores the ideas through the medium that they're working with. I don't see that as being massively different than, you know, a piece of art that you might see in a art gallery, or in a museum.  Jorge: I would also expect that the reach would be different as well, right? Matt: Yeah. Probably considerably different… Jorge: Yeah, it'd have a greater influence on the culture if it's a movie put out by the Walt Disney Company, as opposed to something exhibited in an art gallery, no? Matt: Yeah. I mean, the reach would be massively different. I think though even in those media that, for the reach to be at the scale of like a Disney or, you know, Marvel kind of thing, you're having to make stories that connect with people in a certain way, which, I feel like often precludes you from doing the deep and difficult work of truly critically reflecting on a situation and expressing something about it. And when you see TV shows or movies that do that, they often don't have those kinds of audiences. Jorge: Yeah. The intent is different, right? Like one is a purely or mostly commercial product, whereas the other, like you're saying, is more of an exploration of a way of being, an ideal? Matt: A way of being, a way of thinking, a way of seeing and understanding things. I think when art is really amazing, for me anyway, it's when something changes, like a piece of art can change the way that I see the world. It can change the way that I understand myself and see myself. It can reflect back to me a feeling or an idea that I've had but couldn't express or didn't have words for. And I think great art from every era, especially the modern era – which is, you know, loosely from like Impressionism on up – a lot of it is really about creating that kind of critical and reflective mirror and reflecting not just to the individual viewer, but reflecting on culture and on society and on the place and time where it comes from and reacting to things that are happening in the world. So, like, I'm excited actually to see how artists react to what's happening now because in a way, that's what art does. The Market for Art Jorge: One thing that I was wondering about is how does the market value art? I mean, we were talking about Disney, and we know what that market looks like, but I was just wondering someone who makes art for a living, how do you make a living? Matt: It's different in different countries, which is interesting. I mean, there's a combination of things depending on the kind of work that you make. Some artists make work that you can sell, that people can buy and there's an open market and you make a name for yourself, and the work goes up and down and value based on how collectible your work is or what museums want to acquire it or, or other things like that and that works for, I guess more and more kinds of media these days. Like it used to be that if you made installation or you made sound art or video, it was hard to sell that on like the art market. That's becoming more of a thing. People will buy that stuff. In a lot of countries, other than the US… So, in Canada and the UK and a lot of Europe, there's a big public funding infrastructure for arts. So, in Canada we have arts councils at the municipal, provincial, and national level that provide funding for artists and artists' projects in different ways. There's also regionally determined fee structures for exhibitions. So, if you get a piece of work into an exhibition and the gallery has funding, they will usually pay based on the agreed-upon fee schedule. It's kind of like the actors' unions? It's not an official union in Canada, it's called CARFAC. It's the Canadian Artists…. some, I don't remember what it stands for. But they set a kind of standardized fee schedule. And so often when you submit a piece of work to a gallery or to an exhibition or to a curator, it'll say on the submission, like we pay, you know, CARFAC's scheduled fees, which are basically based on like how much experience you have and they have standardized fee structures. Those are the main ways. The other one is commissions. So, a museum or a festival or a curator may really love your work and want you to make something new for their exhibition, in which case they'll have a production budget and they will offer you some sort of project budget to make the work. And then at the end of that, either they own it, or you own it, depending on the stipulations of the contract. Time and Place  Jorge: One of the interesting aspects of what's happening right now is that time feels greatly accelerated. I saw a tweet just yesterday that said something like, “the last couple of weeks have been a really long year,” or… Matt: Yeah. Jorge: It feels like time has greatly accelerated right now and, conversely, it feels like place has become blurred. You are… I believe you're in Toronto right now, right? Matt: Yup. Jorge: And, like I said, we're talking over Zoom and, earlier this morning I was in a meeting with colleagues who are here in the Bay Area, but I experienced the interaction in exactly the same plane that I'm interacting with you now. So, you could be here for all I know, right? So, place has become erased somehow. And I'm wondering about time and place and new media and how new media, I mean, it has it in the name, right? “New” Media? Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because when that term originally was coined, it was in -response to existing media. So, it was trying to say, we're not print newspapers, photography, like we're not talking about those things. We're talking about these new media, which are video and television. Originally it was those things, and then, computation. And I think time and place and the kind of collapsing of time in place has been a big part of the work of new media and media artists since probably the mid- eighties. You know, there's a piece I remember seeing by David Rokeby who's a new media artist that's been working since the early eighties with computer vision and computational space in different ways, where he set up a room with quadraphonic sound – so four big speakers – and then had a gallery – this was in Toronto – and had a gallery in Amsterdam, set up the same thing in their room. And then using very rudimentary digital video cameras from – this was probably in the late eighties, early nineties – movement in one space was translated to low frequency sound and the other space basically creating like airwaves. So, if two people were moving simultaneously in both spaces, they would actually feel the impact of the other person's body as air pressure through sound? So already in those kinds of early pieces, they were thinking a lot about like, what does it mean to collapse space? How do we be physically present in different spaces? I feel like we take a lot of this for granted these days. And it's interesting because like this phenomenon we're experiencing right now is really unique in a number of ways. But one of the most interesting to me is that it is global, like actually global. Everyone around the world is impacted by this in some way, and very similar ways in terms of like, isolation or lockdown or social distancing or these, you know, words that we didn't even have in our vocabulary a week ago. And now, like, literally every human being on earth is impacted by this. And I can't think of another phenomenon that crosses those boundaries in the same way. But in my own practice and then thinking about, you know, art and the things that I'd be excited to see is in a time where the world feels like it's been collapsed in on itself, and we're experiencing this unifying, like, single event as a species, it would be really interesting to think about what the local differences actually are. Like, what does it mean to be in isolation in different parts of the world or in different cultures, or you know, in Italy, people were singing to each other from their balconies? I can't imagine that happening in London. So, even though we're experiencing this unifying effect, there's still going to be those like local cultural differences and uniquenesses that I think are so important to thinking about artwork and the way that art reflects culture, and is often so specific and so unique to certain places in certain times in the way that it responds aesthetically to localized events. Experiencing Art Online Jorge: You reminded me of something that I've noticed over the past few weeks, which is cultural institutions like museums announcing to the world that, “Hey, you know, that you can view our collection online!” Now, especially with so many people at home, who are looking for new things to do with themselves while there, they only have this little window on their computer to the world, right? Matt: Yeah. Yeah! It's an interesting thing to see since so many museums are so woefully behind in terms of digitizing collections and thinking about alternative ways of exhibiting work. Our experience of art and the way that we think about art, especially at the institutional level is so grounded in this physical experience of like, being in a place with a thing, or in a place for a performance or these very spatio-temporal experiences. So, yeah, it's fascinating to see what some museums are doing. In some ways it reminds me of the mid-nineties, late nineties, again when there was an explosion of like “net art” and artists working specifically with the internet as their medium. And so, like those works existed natively online and museums and galleries at the time were struggling to figure out how to present them in physical space. Like, how do we take a work by a net artist and put it in an exhibition at the MoMA? We didn't know how, and they still don't really know how. And now we're faced with the exact opposite problem, where they're like, how do we get all of our paintings and sculptures and objects available to people somehow through the internet or through virtual tours or whatever it is that they're doing? Jorge: And these new technologies change our understanding of the work itself, right? When you said experiencing the work in a physical space, I remember the experience of seeing in person the statue Pietà, by Michelangelo. And that's an artifact that when you're standing in front of it, it has a certain volume because of the materials it's made from, you know that it has a certain weight and you can touch it. But you can feel that, being in this space with it, and it's very different to see it in photographs, which I had seen many photographs before I saw the real thing, but it's a different experience. And I don't know too much about new media art, but I remember in university looking at the work of Jenny Holzer. Matt: Yep. Jorge: And, for folks who are listening who might not know Jenny Holzer, she worked a lot with words, right? Like she had these slogans that she presented in various ways. And after Twitter, I have never been able to look at her work the same way. Matt: Yeah. It's so interesting. Being Relevant vs. Remaining Relevant Jorge: You know? And I'm wondering, with technologies that are changing so fast, as someone who is working with art, how do you balance expressing the needs and perhaps if we can use this phrase, the “spirit of the time” with making the work stand up over time and have some kind of longevity? Matt: Yeah, that is a very hard question. And it often comes down to the work having some sort of value beyond its technology. So, like with Jenny Holzer for instance, the words are an important part of her work, obviously, but so is the way that it's presented. So, you know, she made these big LED signs with scrolling text in different directions and sculptures out of them. She did a series of giant texts that was projected on buildings. So, like the context of presentation and the way that the words were made into an object really changes the work. But then the words themselves, you know, for some of the pieces are maybe good enough words that they stand up on their own. And so like, would Jenny Holzer's words work as a series of tweets, would they have the same impact? Maybe, maybe some of them would, maybe some of them wouldn't. And the ones that wouldn't, probably wouldn't because they rely on the context and materiality of the way that she presented them to create the meaning, of the overall piece. You know, one of the things that I love about, being an artist and, and working on artworks, especially like contemporary artwork, it's rarely a single thing. What we often are working with, especially what I'm working with is these like assemblages of things. And it's in the relationships between the things that the meaning emerges, rather than in the individual components themselves. So, I also work a lot with texts, and I've been working a lot with texts over the last year or so, and the texts themselves, most of them I don't think would hold up just as text or as poetry or as whatever. I think they need the rest of the things that go around them – the other objects or the aesthetic treatments or the context of presentation – in order to become meaningful. And one of the things that's interesting about this move to online that we're being forced through due to the closure of institutions and isolation, is that, well, the museums struggled to figure out how to present work online that was never meant to be seen that way, and to change its context, which changes its meaning. I think there's massive opportunity in starting to think about how to make work targeted at this new context like that exists natively in this kind of distributed way, which is not a new thing. People have been doing that. There's, like I said before, net artists and, lots of people who make art that's targeted at the internet or targeted at different media platforms. But this feels like an opportunity for more people or more of us to start thinking in that way and start to really like push at the boundaries and kind of assumptions baked into the networks that we exist within. So that's actually something that I find kind of exciting, and I'm starting to think about and work on. Closing Jorge: Well, that's a fantastic place to wrap up our conversation, because my next question to you is, “and where can folks follow up with you to find out what you're up to and is your art online in ways that folks could experience it?” Matt: A little bit of it is. You know, having learned how to make websites in the mid-nineties at the birth of the internet, I've never actually had a website of my own, because I've never happy with them and I never finished them, or like I'll finish part of it and then not put any content up. So, I am working actively right now and taking advantage of this time to make a website for myself. So, you can find my nascent website with very little content, but I'm going to be adding more every day at emenel.ca. Emenel, which are my initials spelled out phonetically, is also where you can find me on just about everything. I'm probably most active on Instagram these days, and I do post pictures of my work and work in progress on Instagram. And yeah, emenel.ca is my, it will be my website. It's there now, but there's not a lot of new content on it yet. I'm working on documenting some work and writing some stuff to put up there. Jorge: And I want to make a plug for your music as well. Matt: Oh yeah. Thanks! On my website there are links to my music projects. But I have, I have kind of three active projects right now. One is called New Tendencies, which is actually named after an Eastern European art movement from the sixties to the late seventies that was one of the first kind of computational art groups. So yeah, New Tendencies is kind of my more experimental music. I have a group called Soft Thoughts, which is kind of an ambient, soundscape kind of thing with two other musicians. And then I just started doing something I haven't done in a long time, but I started making, kind of like old school, minimal techno again, under the name Ma, M-A, and that's also on Bandcamp. But there's links to all these things on my website, or you can find them on Bandcamp, some of it's on Spotify, et cetera, but a lot of it's not. A lot of it's just on Bandcamp. Jorge: Well. Fantastic. I will include all of those in the show notes. It was such a pleasure having you on, Matt. Matt: Oh, I always love our conversations and I'm happy to talk anytime.

Teddy Hart busted for drugs, Jeff Cobb was not the Inner Circle's first choice, The Miz nd Morrison troll the USSO's over their legal troubles nd soooooooo much more!!! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lee-bentz2/message

@ShawnMcGill discusses NIPSEY HUSSLE, Talks about the movie "US" & So much more!!! CHECK IT OUT NOW!!! FOLLOW ME @SHAWNMCGILL --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Greetings everyone, my name is Julie Masters and welcome to another episode of Inside Influence. In which I delve into the minds of some of the world’s most fascinating influencers – or experts in influence - to get to the bottom of what it really takes to own your voice - and then amplify it to drive an industry, a conversation, a movement or a nation.And when you think about that, about moments where someone has used their influence to drive a nation, a few iconic moments will come to mind for all of us.Moments where, one person stood up, and through their own human story, united a tribe of people behind an audacious idea: I’m of course thinking of speeches likeMartin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’Winston Chrchill’s ‘we shall fight them on the beaches’And our own Julia Gillard’s ‘I will not be lectured on Misogyny by this man’These are all just words, impassioned cries for action and change from one person’s heart to another, but from these words, a tide of change was created.And that’s what we are diving into with today’s guest, the power that words, stories and presentations have in taking an idea and giving it life and gravity.My next guest is the CEO and founder of Silicon Valley’s largest and most successful communications firm, Duarte Inc – Nancy Duarte.Nancy has spent the last 30 years immersed in the world of human story telling and has been behind the scenes of some of the most compelling, as she calls them’ impassioned pleas we’ve ever seen including the Al Gore’s ‘an inconvenient truth’ and countless TED talks. She’s worked with the thought leaders of global brands like Apple, Cisco, Facebook, GE, Google, HP, TED, Twitter, and the World Bank.She’s also a renowned author and has books that have shaped the way many of my own clients now communicate including illuminate, resonate and the communications bible ‘slide:ology’She’s been the master of the crazy world of presenting since way before speaking was cool, back in the days of projectors and transparencies, where you had to draw your idea onto a sheet of plastic.In this conversation we cover some serious ground so I suggest you grab your notebook, your iPad or an envelope, whatever you can lay your hands on as we explore:1. The one pattern all the world’s greatest speeches have in common2. The power of using contrast when building frenzy behind your idea3. How to create action on the back of any presentations by ‘illuminating’ a new path4. Why we sabotage our own ideas – and how to let the struggle transform usSo, think of this as an absolute masterclass in how to convey an idea in its most potent form. Whether that’s across a board room table, a kitchen table, or a lectern to drive serious change.After this hour, you’ll have the world’s most powerful tools, so now there’s no excuse.So this is me and Nancy Duarte – geeking out over the power of presenting - enjoy See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

No f***ing way?! Dude? For real?! Because people want to know how to say some very important and often colorful things, I bring you a little more informal lesson. Usso means lie, but when used in spoken Japanese, it carries a lot more meaning.

No f***ing way?! Dude? For real?! Because people want to know how to say some very important and often colorful things, I bring you a little more informal lesson. Usso means lie, but when used in spoken Japanese, it carries a lot more meaning.

Lauren Deckert has lived on five continents working as an international model. Her work as a model has been featured in Harpers Bazaar China, Vogue Italia, Brides, Women’s Health, and Muscle & Fitness, hers. She has been a vegetarian since childhood, thriving on mainly a Plant Based diet. While graduating with a BA in Art History from Fordham University, She decided to study under Joshua Rosenthal at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She also has an AS from The Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale in Art & Fashion Marketing. All of her experiences and studies have prepared her to not only take exceptional care of herself and her growing family, but also to effectively mentor and coach aspiring models, women and Mama’s. She is a drugless practitioner and certified Health & Nutrition coach. After living out of a suitcase for many years, she opened a private practice in summer of 2016 while she was pregnant with her son. Her practice focuses on working with other models, Model Mama’s, actresses, athletes, and women of all walks of life. She believes that most modern ailments can be healed by a life rich in whole foods, exercise, faith, and love. After sponsoring a child in Ecuador for years, She created her own non-profit. Models Doing More provides volunteer opportunities for Model Ambassadors wishing to offer assistance to underprivileged school children and orphaned elephants in Sri Lanka. She has a dance background and is a Certified white belt in NIA Dance and is studying Pilates. She is married to her best friend and they are parents to a healthy active toddler. The Model Mentor mission is to empower, develop, and consult aspiring models, women, and Model Mamas and to act as a guide for those who wish to make positive changes in their lives. SHOWNOTES Define happiness for you: Happiness is my son. When I look at him experiencing something for the first time. He’s in this state of pure joy. And he’s in the moment and there’s nothing that can distract him. It’s Joy energy- we need to always keep it with us. Morning Routine: I get up at 6:30am, before my son. First thing I do is have my hot water with lemon. Then blue light therapy for 10 minutes (time to pray, meditate, be one with your thoughts). 20 minutes of a mix of stretching, yoga, pilates, etc. Then I’ll have a green drink or fruit on an empty stomach. Or I’ll just wait to eat with my son. Evening Routine: Really about getting my son ready for bed, so I can have time with my husband. 7pm is bath and bedtime. He’s usually asleep by 7:30pm. Then I cook dinner for my husband. And I make a fresh dinner every night. What drew you to essential oils: I was blessed to have family members who used them and introduced me to them. What’s important is that there are oils that you can ingest and those that you can’t. I Use Young Living https://www.youngliving.com/en_US So be careful because there are some oils that you can’t ingest. Make sure it is a therapeutic grade and that you can actually put in your cooking or on your tongue. Favorite Books: Many Lives, Many Masters By Brian Weiss Only Love is real By Brian Weiss With pre- and post natal body care, What do your clients and friends struggle with the most? And what’s your best advice for them? My niche market is models, athletes, and actresses. Their whole life they’ve basically have to keep their body at a sample size 4. And I help them embrace the process of pregnancy and their body change. I help with transforming their thinking and to change these mindsets to have a positive mindset and lifestyle. And then with post pregnancy: Slowing down what they do. It takes time to get your body back. Embrace the process. When do you feel most empowered: When I’m serving others that actually can’t do anything for me (like children and animals). 3 Things you’re most recently grateful for: Clean water My faith Laughter

In this episode of the Maven Money Personal Finance Podcast… Andy Hart dives into the huge topic of the stock market. Andy guides you through what you need to know, and what you don't, with supporting resources for you to check out yourself. Quick Preview of the Podcast: Extracting the crucial elements of the stock market Should you listen to market commentary? Identifying the difference between the short, medium, and long term. Build a foundation of understanding on the stock market and why it matters Links:   https://www.mavenadviser.com/lifetimereturns/   https://www.mavenadviser.com/investing/   https://am.jpmorgan.com/blob-gim/1383407651970/83456/MI-GTM_3Q17_Linked_2.pdf?segment=AMERICAS_US_ADV&locale=en_US So sit back and enjoy unrivalled words of wisdom from Andy Hart - host of the UK’s premier personal finance show. Is there a topic you’d like Andy to cover? We’d love to hear from you! Contact Andy Hart directly with any comments / feedback on team@mavenadviser.com. Alternatively you can reach out on Twitter @MavenAdviser. 

Waiting to be Made Perfect Well, this morning, I am in awe. I continue to be in awe of the sovereign plan of God, God's ways are deep and rich and full beyond our tracing out as Paul celebrated in Romans Chapter 11. "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom of the knowledge of God, how unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God, that God should repay Him? For from him, and through him, and to him are all things, to him be glory forever and ever, amen." And so, we stand at the end of Hebrews 11, finishing the Chapter today. What a journey it's been as we have looked back in the past, back to the Old Testament saints, brothers and sisters who served Christ before we were born, and who ran their race. And the very next passage that we're going to look at, not today, but I'm going to quote from it a little bit. Verse 1 of Chapter 12, it says that "we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses," and because we are surrounded, "let us run with perseverance [endurance] the race marked out before us." And so, we are in a very mysterious and powerful way surrounded now by unseen witnesses, by people who have run their race before us and who are now waiting for us to finish. But this text that we're looking at today now, not Hebrews 12:1, but Hebrews 11:39-40 says something amazing about them. In a very amazing way, the more you meditate on this, the more amazing it is. They're not really finished being saved yet. They're not perfect yet, though they are perfect. And it's a mystery. You look at it and say, "How could it be that they're not yet perfect, and yet they're perfect?" But I believe that they are not fully saved yet, because they are not yet in their resurrection bodies. There, I just lay out my cards on the table. I think that... I think this is what the text is saying, that all of these Old Testament saints were commended for their faith, every one of them. We're going to talk about that briefly. But they're all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what was promised. Verse 40, they're really... The key to understanding that. "God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect." That's the text that's in front of us. And so, we have in mind this great cloud of witnesses that the next verse refers to. And if this text speaks to our hearts, we understand its mysteries, it's saying that they are not yet perfect, and they're waiting for us in order that they may be perfect. So we have to understand what this perfection is, understand what the author means by perfect, to try to dig into this. But it's a marvelous thing. And so, in effect then, our brothers and sisters are up there waiting for us to finish, and it's not a disinterested waiting. They're waiting with great passion for us, for all of us to finish our race. Because then at last they can come into their full inheritance, namely the resurrection of the body, and of the perfect world to come. That city with foundations, already mentioned earlier in this Chapter that they died waiting for. That country of their own that they had not yet come into and they ran their whole Christian race, they ran their whole life race by faith, and they finished their earthly life not having received the promises. And it goes beyond that, saying that only together with us would they be made perfect, teaching that they're waiting still. So we're going to understand all of that, God willing, today. They're up there waiting for us. The idea of waiting saints in heaven is Biblical. In Revelation Chapter 6, we're told that when He opened the fifth seal, "I saw under the altar the souls of those who have been slain, because of the Word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, 'How long, sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the Earth and avenge our blood?' Then each of them was given a white robe and they were told to wait a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and brothers, who were to be killed, as they had been was completed." So there you have a clear indication of saints up in heaven waiting for something on Earth to finish. This Verse just goes beyond that and it says that all of the Old Testament saints are waiting for all of the elect of God to finish their race. And only then will they be made perfect. So also, in Romans Chapter 8, we're told that the creation is waiting for this too. The universe as a whole is waiting for us. Romans 8:19-21, "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed." Now for me, I'm reading revealed to be revealed in glory, then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father. The creation's waiting for us to be unleashed as glorious. That's the resurrection is what that is. The creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the sons of God. So dear friends, we the elect, the people of God, we are the center of attention. Now, that may make you a little uncomfortable to have a cloud of witnesses around you all the time, watching what you're doing, observing how you're running your race, but don't let that cloud of witnesses disturb you, because the real deal is, the one with eyes of flaming fire is watching everything you do, and he's what really matters, amen. And there are no secrets before him, everything's uncovered and laid bare. But they're watching and waiting for us to finish our race, so they can be perfected in the end, and receive the gifts. I. Heroes’ Faith Commended, Not Consummated So we come to Verse 39, it says of these Old Testament saints, that they were all commended for their faith. And so, there's a kind of a bracketing in this Chapter 11 of the idea of commendation. Hebrews 11:1-2 says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." This is what the ancients were commended for. So we have in verse 2, and then in Verse 39, the topic of commendation. To be commended means to be praised. And the idea here clearly is to be praised by Almighty God. If that doesn't take your breath away, think again on it. Think again, that Almighty God, the perfect God would actually praise you that He would commend you. But the Scripture teaches it again and again, that we can be, we will be commended by Almighty God. "Well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master’s happiness." So, that commendation, it comes by faith, it comes by faith alone. And so, this drama, this marvelous Chapter Hebrews 11 unfolding in three main sections Act 1, pre-flood, you have all the way back to Abel mentioned, Enoch and Noah, all of these pre-flood saints, all of them commended for their faith, yet they didn't receive what was promised. And then Act 2, you have the patriarchs listed. Abraham with his wife Sarah and Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. All of these were commended for their faith, yet none of them received what was promised. And then Act 3, Exodus, the time of the Exodus and beyond Moses and Rahab, and the judges, and David and the Prophets, all of those mentioned in quick fashion. All of them also commended for their faith. Yet, none of them also received what was promised. Now true commendation comes from God himself. 1 Corinthians 4:5 says, "At that time, each will receive his praise from God," praise from God. Jesus criticized his enemies because they sought the praise of men, and not the praise that comes from the only God. There's nothing wrong with yearning for praise for yourself, I mean. As long as you're yearning for it from God Almighty, from God himself, that God would be pleased with you, that God would commend you, that God would say well done to you. There's nothing wrong, and everything right with living for that. Verse 6 of this Chapter says that we must believe that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. And so, part of that reward is his expression of pleasure, and there might even be tokens of that, symbols of His pleasure on how you lived. And so these were all commended for their faith. Commendation of simply being allowed into heaven, Amen. Just to have the Master say, "Enter," just to have the Master say, "Enter into the joy of heaven." What commendation is that? You have gained what there was to gain in this world. You have gained your souls and you have gained heaven. And so, to be commended by a rich welcome as it says, 2 Peter 1:11, a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom." So just to be warmly richly welcomed by God, how sweet is that? So all of these were separated from their bodies, they were absent from the body and present with the Lord commended for faith and yet it says, none of them received what had been promised. Now, some lesser promises had been received, there were some lesser issues that had been promised and those things had in fact been given. Remember how Abraham and Sarah were waiting for a son, an heir. God made them a promise that from their own bodies, from Abraham's own body and from Sarah's own body, they would have an heir, not Eliezer of Damascus, this man wouldn't be your heir, but a son coming from your own body. And he clarified even after the whole Ishmael, the birth of Ishmael, he clarified. No, no, from Sarah, your wife, from her body will come your heir. So it says in Hebrews 6:15. And so, after waiting patiently Abraham received what was promised. Now friends, don't bring that back and tell me there's a contradiction in the Bible. Clearly, there are lesser promises that we can receive and do receive in this life and greater promises, maybe the great promise that we don't receive in this life. And the lesser promises give us faith to trust for the final great promise, and the final great promise is salvation in every respect, from everything that sin has done to us. Complete total perfection, salvation, that's the promise. And they didn't receive that. None of them. So, when Abraham died, he was looking ahead to an unfulfilled promise, a city with foundations it says, whose architect and builder is God, hadn't received it yet, died in faith believing. These were all longing, it says in Verse 16, for a better country, a heavenly one. Longing for it, dying in that longing, dying by faith, still looking ahead, even at their death looking ahead and doesn't that just scream resurrection to you? When you are dying and you're still looking ahead, I'm looking forward, that just screams out resurrection. It screams out faith. Frankly, that's exactly why the author wrote this Chapter. So that we who came along and would read it, that we would die in faith believing too, and know that our best things were yet to come. They're all still in the future, and we will die in hope. Because death has been conquered. Christ died and him who held the power of death has been crushed by Jesus' death. And so, we don't need to be afraid of death, we're looking forward to it, we're looking beyond it to things yet to be given to us, that have been promised to us. And so, these Old Testament saints were faith-filled and faithful, they were justified by their faith, I believe fully. Talk more about that in a moment. But they had received full forgiveness of their sins, they had received this justifying righteousness, but they had not received the whole promise and they died in faith. II. God’s Eternal Plan: Something Better for Us So it says in Verse 40, "God had planned [or provided would be a better translation] something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect." And so, we come to the plan of God, the provision of God. God is looking ahead, that's what the Greek word means here, it's God seeing ahead of time. And so, I think at this point, almost like an artistic or creative vision, God had a vision ahead of time of something better. But God's visions, they are realized, you understand that? That God has a plan and He is going to realize it. And so, there is this overarching eternal unchangeable plan and everything's going according to schedule, everything is right on schedule. Everything that God had planned is happening, it's all being unfolded. Isaiah 14:26-27 says, "This is the plan determined for the whole world. This is the hand stretched out over all nations for the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart Him? His hand is stretched out and who is able to turn it back?" There is a plan. And the Scripture tells us, that that plan was crafted before the foundation of the world, before time began, 2 Timothy 1, before time began. Ephesians 1 says we were also chosen, " having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything after the counsel of His will." So there is this incredible plan, and so, God has planned something. And it says in Verse 40, He planned something better. God planned something better for us, He is able to weigh things out and say, I have looked at all the possibilities, of all the potential universes there could be, and all the potential outcomes there could be, and I have planned something better than you can possibly ask or imagine. And so we, throughout this book have been bumping into this idea of something better, something superior, something better is coming along. We, in the New Covenant, we have been given a better hope, Hebrews 7:19, a better covenant, Hebrew 7:22, founded on better promises, Hebrews 8:6, Christ himself a better sacrifice than those Old Testament sacrifices. We've been bumping into this again and again, something better. Now, here's where it gets tricky. It really has to do with the word "us." Trying to figure out the word "us." Now you may think, you just think too much Pastor, just read the verse and be happy. Talks about good things, better things, just read the Verse and be happy. Hey look, I've got to think these thoughts, got to try to work it out. Let me just lay it on the table, what the two exegetical options are here, okay? The something better is the New Covenant for us New Testament believers. Or the something better is for us who have not yet died, and it ultimately refers to all of us together. He's planned a better plan for the whole family of God, then... Okay, so in each case you have a different then. If it's God planned something better, the something better is the New Covenant and it's better than the Old Covenant. Friends, we already knew that, and that is true. But there's a problem with it, because in effect it says, the reason that they didn't receive what was promised is that God had planned something better and so, they died not having received it, and they died imperfect in that sense. If you understand it that way, waiting for us to come into the New Covenant. Now in one sense, I totally agree that the New Covenant's better. I hope you do too. And we've had something like 7,500 sermons in the Book of Hebrews, and most of them have even been about this theme, Christ is better. Christ is better than the Old Covenant, he's better in every way, superior to the Old Testament prophets, superior to the angels, superior to Joshua and to Moses, and Melchizedek, superior in every way. And I would readily assent to the fact that we New Covenant believers have a superior experience with Christ than the Old Testament believers did. They saw and welcomed it at a distance without the clarity that we have, because we Christians are historical people. It matters whether something's happened in space and time. We study history, a lot of the Bible is about history. And so, it matters to me that Jesus actually was born of a virgin now. He lived the life that's traced out for us in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we can read about it in four different Gospels, he actually has been nailed to the cross. It's done, it's finished once for all, and on the third day, He has been raised from the dead, the tomb was in fact empty. It's a matter of history and more than that, the day of Pentecost has come and gone, the Holy Spirit has been poured out on the church and He will never leave us or forsake us, and we have a superior experience based on better promises, more clear teaching, with the Book of Romans and the other Epistles that explain the significance of Christ. It's better, it's just better. It's a better experience of God through Christ, now that we're in the New Covenant era. I agree. But that's not what the author is talking about here, in Verse 39-40. No, because it says that only together with us would they be made perfect, and this... The something better being the New Covenant thing doesn't work. The more you try it, it doesn't fit here. It's that all together, we will be made perfect, that's the idea. All together, we are going to be made perfect. So, it's a perfection yet to come. And the more you just step back from Hebrews 11 and just look at the big picture, you start to realize how obvious this is. The penalty for sin in the Garden of Eden was what friends? It was death. Abel died at the hands of his brother. Death is the enemy here. Death has not yet been defeated, finally. And so, the something better is when death is clearly trounced forever, and that must be the resurrection. Do you see that? And so, these all died not having been made perfect yet. God had planned something better for all of us, so that only together with us, us being the elect in the second half of the sentence at least, only together, that all of the elect together will get it at the same time. We all get perfected at the same time. III. The Perfection That We All Wait For Now, what is the perfection that we're all waiting for? I've told you seven times already. I was trying to keep it a secret, but I just kept... It keeps bleeding out. It's the resurrection of the body, that's the perfection we're all waiting for, and I would add the resurrection of the universe too. Because the world especially was cursed and we're waiting for a new heavens and a new earth, the home of righteousness. And so, when we are raised and it is raised in that sense, then we have reached at last, the finish line of the Gospel. Everything Jesus came to do will have been achieved, it will have been perfected. Now, what do we mean by perfect? Now, this is where we have to really try to understand the word. It says earlier in the same book, somewhat mysteriously, if you don't understand the word perfect or perfected here properly, you'll misstep. But it says that Jesus was made perfect by what He suffered. See? And so, I think the best way to understand it here is the plan of God sets out parameters for what he is doing, and when all of those parameters have been fulfilled, the thing is made perfect, it's complete, it's finished, it's done, everything's done. Do you see? And so, if Jesus hadn't suffered, he would not have perfected the plan of God. He had to shed his blood, does that make sense? And so, by shedding His blood, He didn't go from moral imperfection, like moral defilement to being cleaned up, and now he's been made perfect. He certainly didn't improve or get better, it wasn't that thing, it's that there was a plan of God with certain boxes that had to be checked and certain things that had to be done and until all of them were checked and done, it was not perfect yet. Does that make sense? And so in that way and not in the other way, are the Old Testament saying, still not yet perfect, because there's still a big box that hasn't been checked yet. They are disembodied spirits, they are absent from the body, and they are present with the Lord, and that's not perfect yet, in the sense of this Verse. We are to be made perfect, that means conformed to Christ, conformed to the image of his Son, so that we might be made like Him in every way. Romans 8:29, "Those whom God foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the first born among many brothers." And so, perfect means completely conformed to Christ like him in every way. Friends, that has to include the resurrection of the body. Do you not see it? He is in a resurrected body now, and so for us to be perfected, we have to be in resurrection bodies too. Now, the Old Testament saints and our own condition, once we have come to faith in Christ, we have been justified. We are at that moment positionally perfect, complete, no boxes left to check, friends. We are seen to be flawless, blameless in God's sight, perfectly obedient to His law. By the imputation of Christ's righteousness we have been made perfect, by faith, not by works. That's justification. And yet, you know you're not perfect, in the normal way that we use that expression, right? No one's perfect, I'm not perfect. Do you expect perfection? That kind of thing. Well, yes. God has spoken to us in Matthew 5:48, "you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." And He wants you perfect and yet, for all of that, Romans 7:18-21 speaks for you every day. Paul wrote there, deeply from the heart he said, "I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. Nor, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it's no longer I who'd do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me." And so, at the end of that Chapter in Verse 24, he says, "What a wretched man I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Okay, so justification perfects you in your position before God, nothing more to be done. Perfectly righteous in God's sight by the imputation of Christ's righteousness, He declares you not guilty, he imputes Christ's righteousness, cannot be improved upon, but you're still not perfect. Meanwhile, you have this ongoing battle with the flesh every day. You're in this body of sin or this body of death and so, you're not perfect. Now, the Old Testament saints, they're not having that problem anymore, they died. They were separated, they were delivered from this body of death, they were delivered. Romans 6:7, "because anyone who has died has been freed from sin." Hallelujah! Glorification stage number one, separated from the body, not yet resurrected. They are righteous already by faith in Christ, but now made perfect by death. Does that make sense? Their spirits, so look over in Hebrews 12. Just go over maybe on that same page, with Hebrews 12:22-23 says, "you have not come to a mountain that can be touched…" Mount Sinai and all that. No, you've come to a spiritual mountain, you've come to a spiritual thing now, something you can't see. We walk by faith, not by sight. I know you're looking for this, I'm just saying other Verses as you're looking for the place. But it's Hebrews 12:22-23, "You have come to Mount Zion to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God." You've come there by faith. "You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all men. To the spirits of righteous men made perfect. There's that word perfect again. But what's perfect? What's made perfect? Their spirits. See that? Their spirits. So that's glorification number one, stage one, their spirits are made perfect. Is that big? Oh, that's big. Oh, that's huge. Romans 7, isn't true of them anymore, they don't wrestle, they don't struggle, they don't have sin living in them anymore, they're not divided in their minds. The flesh isn't battling against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, they are free from all that, free forever, and so are all our brothers and sisters who have gone before us, who've died. They're free. The instant they died, they're done with that struggle. And they're just made perfect spiritually, you see, glorified. Partially glorified. They perfectly love God, they perfectly desire his glory, they perfectly worship God, they perfectly hate sin and all evil. They perfectly obey God, whatever He would ask of them. They perfectly love one another with perfect humility and other centeredness. They have perfect fellowship with each other and with God. They're perfect, but they're just spirits. You see that? They're waiting for the glorification, which Romans 8 says is the redemption of the body. That hasn't happened yet. To prove the resurrection of the body, Jesus... And this is a hard argument to follow, and I don't pretend to fully understand it. But remember the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, came and they said there's no resurrection. There's no resurrection of the body. You're separated from the body, that's it, you're done. He said, but about the resurrection of the body, haven't you read in the passage about the burning bush what God says to you? I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, you are greatly mistaken. Alright, how does that prove resurrection? That's a real tough question. But here's how it goes. God loves Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and has a relationship with them. Not had a relationship, he has a relationship with them. And he gave them a body to begin with and he's not finished yet, he's going to give them another one. And so, the relationship and the love that he has for them points to the certainty of a future of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They haven't been annihilated when they die, they're just waiting for the body. Now, you keep working on how that burning bush passage proves resurrection. But that's the best I can do with it. But it's all about love relationship and commitment and the fact that God had an original intention, an original intention. And that intention was that we be in bodies, that we be physical. That we have hands and feet and eyes, that we be in bodies. Created us originally that way, he created his only begotten Son as a human that way. He resurrected his son in a body, and so, we will be in bodies. Now, it says none of them received what had been promised. When Did God Promise His People a Resurrection Body? So if what I'm arguing here is that we're talking about the Resurrection, was the resurrection promised? I would say yes, increasingly so. Again, you have to go back to Genesis 2 to find that the curse was all about death anyway. Death is the separation of the body, for the soul from the body. If in Chapter 3, it's the serpent that brings about that, for him to be crushed means that it must be reversed. It's by implication. So also Enoch being taken up implies it. But then as time goes on, he starts to say it plainly, no doubt about it, such as Isaiah 26:19, "But your dead will live their bodies will rise." How is that? Is that good enough? That sounds pretty plain to me. "You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning, the earth will give birth to her dead." That's pretty strong, isn't it? Isaiah 26:19. Job 19:26 says, after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. Ezekiel 37 gives a very plain example of it, that's the valley of dry bones, very dry. And he's asked, can these bones live? And he says, "You know." That's a good answer by the way, when you don't know, say you must know, since you're the one asking the question. Yes, they can live. And what's so beautiful is that that's a picture of the implication of the Verse we're studying now, Verse 40. They all lived together instantaneously at the same time, they received their resurrection, so that non-preceded the other. This body is an astonishing gift of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, astonishing things about what you can do. I have all these facts, I'm not going to share them. If you want to know them, come afterwards (see the notes). All kinds of incredible facts about the human body. Let me just set all this biology aside, wonderful and amazing though it is, and just let's go with the Scripture that says, "I praise you, Lord, because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made." God intended to give you a resurrection body, and that it do wonders and amazing things. Sin leading to death is eating at it every moment of your lives. It's chewing at it, it's chewing at it down to the genetic level, so that you don't replicate your cells exactly like they were. And so, you age and you lose capabilities and it's just not the same. God would not have it so. He intended that you humans live in bodies forever. And so, absent from the body is imperfect in the sense I mean here. We're just not done yet. We're not done. God intends to make us done. And so, He raised Jesus from the dead, the first fruits of those who sleep. What does first fruit imply? Doesn't it imply we will all be raised, likewise, conformed to Him, in His glorious resurrection body, this incredible thing? And why did he not let the Old Testament saints go on ahead into their resurrection bodies? It's all about unity. We are one, we are one family, we are one church, like the Father and the Son are one, and it's just bad manners to run on ahead and eat when no one else has been served yet. I mean, you teach your kids this, and next week, we're going to have a special service on the Lord's Supper, we're going to focus on the Lord's Supper and I'll preach on the Lord's Supper, and get away from Hebrews. And one of the interesting things that was going on in the church of Corinth, we'll mention it more next week, is that they were just going on ahead and eating the Lord's Supper, before everyone had arrived. First Corinthians you know, it says, wait for each other. You know, when you come, wait for each other. Don't go on ahead. He said, "Don't you have homes to eat in? That's not what it's for. We're supposed to be doing this together." So, for the sake of unity, He has not let us go on ahead, because he wants the universe to be united under one head, God, and so, he would not let Abraham get His resurrection body yet until you do. Does that not elevate us all on an equal plane? We all get it at the same time. Some have done great things for God, far greater than any of us will do, but they get their resurrection body when you do and not before. It's for the sake of unity. That's why he did it. Final Perfection And the final perfection, all of the elect together, not one of them missing. John 6:39-40, "this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but I will raise them up on the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him will have eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day." So that's the time of when this happens, at the last day. All of the elect will be raised, not one will be missing. Everyone there. And all of the elect will be in resurrection bodies. That's what raised means, they will come into their resurrection bodies, and they will celebrate in those resurrection bodies. And it's described in 1 Corinthians 15, the body that is sown is perishable, be raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it's raised in glory, it's sown in weakness, it's raised in power, it's sown a natural body, it's raised a spiritual body. So you take all the positive aspects. The resurrection body then is a powerful, incorruptible, eternal glorious thing that you're going to get, and we all get it at the same time. Isn't that awesome? So that only together with us would they be made perfect. V. Application Well, what applications can we take from this? Well, you can't get any of this apart from faith in Christ. I don't know your spiritual state, I don't know all of you. Some of you may be here for the first time. A friend may have invited you. You can't have this resurrection of the body, this glorious resurrection without faith in Christ. You must trust in him. Your sins will sink you to eternity apart from God. It's a horrifying thing to contemplate hell and Jesus came to deliver you from it by suffering it on the cross. He stood in your place, just trust in him, turn away from your works, there's nothing, you just look to Him and you will be made perfect immediately, positionally. And then you'll be working out your salvation the rest of your life, and so the rest of your life, dear friends, you'll need the faith that Hebrews 11 talks about. We're leaving the Chapter now, but you'll need this faith the rest of your life and that's why the author wrote. It's like, you'll need this, you'll need this right to the end of your race, keep running, keep believing right to your deathbed, you'll need it, because the best stuff is still in the future. So come to Christ and embrace your faith and feed it, feed it by faith, feed it by the word of God. Prepare your hearts also brothers and sisters for the Lord's Supper, prepare your hearts. I just think we tend not so much FBC Durham, but the church tends to underestimate the impact of the Lord's Supper. I suggest to you that if you set yourselves apart to the Lord's Supper by faith this week, you'll be powerfully blessed next Sunday. Set yourself apart for it. Be holy, because He is holy, set yourself apart, and God will bless in a very powerful way. And because unity is so obviously important that he won't let any of the... Even the great figures of the Old Testament get the resurrection bodies apart from us, do you realize how important our unity is, that we should make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace? And we should readily forgive one another, and bear whatever grievances. We should love one another, whether in your family or in the church. Embrace it. Isn't God good? Isn't this awesome? Aren't God's plans wonderful? Isn't it good that no one has a resurrection body now, except Jesus and he has that because he might be preeminent in everything and have it alone for thousands of years, but then in the end we made like Him. Let's praise God.

Since I'm a black person and that will never change, I have no choice but to be OK with it. (although some are not OK with it!) We have our moments of greatness like any other group of people. But sometimes the bad in A FEW of my people can be downright embarrassing. Have you ever had a moment where you wished you wasn't black? (or insert your race here) Make no mistake I am proud to be black 99% of the time, but man you know the saying "ni**as & flies.." Have you ever watched a news story that made you think "damn why they had to be black?" I have already defined what prejudice means: "a pre-conceived notion or assumption without knowing all the facts." Well I have a whole bunch of those when it come to my people, what about you? Do you have some pre-conceived assumptions about your own race/ social group that are negative? What about relationship and living conditions? Do you think all black men are dogs and all black women are gold digging drama queens? Do you think living around too many black people is a bad thing? I hear black people all the time say "I don't want to live around too many of US" So what does that mean? What was the last thing you saw or heard that made you just shake ya damn head at ya own people? What are some social prejudices that other people associated with your race/group that you find hard to argue against? Are blacks mostly lazy and have criminal records? Are blacks materialistic? Do all blacks just have kids out of wedlock and make property values plummit when too many move in a neighborhood? Are we notorious crabs in a bucket? These questions and more plus its MASH A MUTHAF***A MONDAYS..the vent day for you to get the BS you've endured lately off ya chest!