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“Shoveling Snow with Buddha”

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

 

Former Poet-Laureate, Billy Collins, is sometimes called a “people’s poet,” because he can write poetically about every day items like weighing your dog on the bathroom scale, a great osso bucco dinner, and a surreptitious review of the latest Victoria’s Secret catalog, which landed in the mailbox with his wife’s name on it. (No, I’m not kidding, and even that poem made me smile with its sardonic wit and self-awareness.)

I was hoping to find a Buddhist poem to share with all of you, and that may still happen, but I ran across this poem by Collins and couldn’t resist it. To me, it is the perfect integration of lofty spiritual ideas and the drudgery of every day life. If one must shovel snow, what could be more sublime, or transcendent than shoveling snow with Buddha?  Clearly it transported Collins for several hours one morning while he completed what I can only assume is a truly onerous task.

The acronym, “WWJD?” (What Would Jesus Do?) has graced bracelets and posters for a decade or more, but I never understood the appeal of that eponymous Christian question. When faced with a difficult dilemma, it makes far more sense to me to just ask him directly: “Jesus, what would you do?” Go directly to the source, so to speak.

I think Collins would share my impulse. If one has an unpleasant task, why not do it in the company of your hero? Why not draw near the master to watch and learn from a place of proximity and intimacy, instead of through the lens of distance, history and third-party interpretations?

Shoveling snow with Buddha taught Collins about patience, equanimity, silence, the satisfaction of a job well done and the simple pleasures of community, cards and chocolate. Obviously, that’s not all the Buddha has to teach him, but it’s certainly a place to start.

Who would you shovel snow with? Who would you like to spend a few hours with, engaged in a difficult, physical task? What might they teach you and how would you reward yourself afterwards?  It is the start of a weekend, so perhaps you’ll get the chance. 

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“On the Death of the Beloved”

Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

 

John O’Donohue, poet, philosopher and former Catholic priest.

This was not the poem I had in mind for today; something brighter was drafted, but will have to wait for tomorrow. Today is a day for remembering and grieving a man who meant so much to so many: Fr. Christian Mondor. He passed away last night, just days before his 93rd birthday. From all accounts, he was present and at peace in mind, body and spirit until the end, which doesn’t surprise me. He died as he lived: present and at peace.

Fr. Christian was a Franciscan priest who had lived and worked at my childhood parish, Sts. Simon and Jude. For decades, he attended La Casa de Maria Family Retreat, which has been such a pivotal part of our family’s life and faith. He was an avid surfer, traveler and banjo player, but most of all, he was a pastor. Though never holding the official position, Fr. Christian was a “pastor” in the truest sense of the word, watching over and caring for his “flock,” which was simply every one he met.

I was no exception. I liked Fr. Christian growing up, though I didn’t know him well, but as I got older and began reading the mystics, and theology, Fr. Christian came along side me at some critical moments, always with an encouraging word. We saw things in much the same way, and discussed some of our favorites, like Teilhard de Chardin and his beloved St. Francis.

One of my favorite moments came after I had spoken on to an audience about the difficulty I had relating to Jesus. I had not been well-educated on how interpret Jesus’ interactions with women and I found them distant and off-putting at times. After my talk, Fr. Christian sat down across the table from me and said, “You know, Jesus was a feminist. In fact, I believe he was a feminine spirit in a masculine body, the exact image and likeness of God, who must encompass both genders if we all come from that Source.” I could have wept at his kindness, at his articulation of this healing truth, which has stayed with me to this day, and always calls me back when I find myself distancing myself from the Son of Man.

Strangely (but perfectly) enough, Fr. Richard Rohr wrote a meditation today on what he called “Franciscan Feminism.”  As I read these lines, I thought of Fr. Christian and how I ought to send him a note today expressing my gratitude for how he has embodied this Franciscan spirituality. I didn’t know I wouldn’t get that chance, but just an hour later, I heard the news.

Happy and healthy Franciscans seem to present a combination of lightness of heart and firmness of foot at the same time. By this I mean that they do not take themselves so seriously, as upward-bound men often do; they often serve with quiet conviction and personal freedom as many mature women do… I believe the lightness of heart comes from contact with deep feminine intuition and with consciousness itself; the firmness of foot emerges when that feminine principle integrates with the mature masculine soul and moves forward with confidence into the outer world.

O’Donohue’s poem is the perfect goodbye blessing to this gentle man, who was a blessing to all who knew him. Though his days here were not brief, his legacy will last even longer. I’ve listened to the banjo play today; our family is heading out to beach in few moments to catch some waves in his honor; I’ll rest in the love of the Divine tonight, confident that if Fr. Christian called me friend and wanted my company, then the historical Jesus would as well.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

 

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“Missing the Boat”

It is not so much that the boat passed
and you failed to notice it.
It is more like the boat stopping
directly outside your bedroom window,
the captain blowing the signal-horn,
the band playing a rousing march.

The boat shouted, waving bright flags,
its silver hull blinding in the sunlight.

But you had this idea you were going by train.

You kept checking the time-table,
digging for tracks.

And the boat got tired of you,
so tired it pulled up the anchor
and raised the ramp.

The boat bobbed into the distance,
shrinking like a toy—
at which point you probably realized
you had always loved the sea.

 

Naomi Shihab Nye is a modern American poet, born of a Palestinian father and American mother (of Northern European stock) and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Her most famous poem is “Kindness,” which I encourage you to check out, but it is longer and, frankly a little more work. I thought I’d keep it simple here. This is from her first collection, Different Ways to Pray, published in 1980 when she was 28.

This poem is simple, accessible and true, but deceptively so. On the surface, Nye takes the common metaphor, “missing the boat” at face value, but then she pushes our understanding of it. How often have we “missed the boat” with little consequence? Dozens of times. We get distracted, or ambivalent, stall out and “miss the boat.” Concert tickets, a school dance, dinner with friends. No big deal.

But what about slightly bigger stakes? A house just outside our financial comfort zone that doubled in value? A big job opportunity that would have launched our career, if only we’d been brave enough to apply for it? A semester abroad that might have cured our fear of travel and foreign places? Those boats are “missed” a bit more, because we can point to them as turning points in our lives. Like Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” (a classic of American high school education), those boats are harder to forget (and to forgive ourselves for).

But the boat that Nye is talking about here is something else entirely.  Nye’s boat is our life, docked before us and calling us to embark. In Christian circles, this boat is your “vocation;” in Japan, your ikigai, in French, your raison d’ etre. Call it your soul’s work, your true self, your dharma. Call it what you will, but call it something and call it to you, but when it comes calling, don’t be afraid to get on board!

I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of her final lines, but also feel a twinge of sadness. We all know people (or might be people) who feel like they “missed the boat,” who go to hated jobs on a daily basis, who were blind to the fact that a boat even existed, because everything in their life conspired to keep them on the train, instead of adventuring at sea. I, for one, am encouraging the kids in my life, to look by air, land, and sea to find the means of transportation that’s going to take them where they want to go.

 

 

 

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“Mindful”

Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

 

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

 

in the haystack

of  light.

It is what I was born for –

to look, to listen,

 

to lose myself

inside this soft world –

to instruct myself

over and over

 

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

 

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant –

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

 

the daily presentations.

Oh good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

 

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these –

the untrimmable light

 

of the world,

the ocean’s shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

 

Mary Oliver, “Moliver,” from Blue Iris, 2014.

This is the third in a series of poems about meditation and mindfulness by Moliver that I wanted to share this month, which included “Drifting” and “On Meditating, Sort of.” In some ways, I think it is the simplest of the three. The direction is right in the title: “Mindful.” Moliver seems to be saying, “This is what it’s like to actually see the world. When we rush on by, we miss it all. But when we are ‘mindful,’ the beauty of the world will kill us with delight.”

I shared this poem a while ago with someone I love dearly. I read it and instantly thought of them, because I knew they would get it. Like Mary Oliver, they were born “to look, to listen,/ to lose” themselves in the natural world and they teach me by example to see the extraordinary in “the ordinary,/ the common, the very drab.” That’s the true gift I think, the one most of us leave unopened, when we prefer big and beautiful things and dismiss the “daily presentations” of grass and water and light. But it’s those little things that can save us every hour. I love how Moliver inverts our educational paradigm – claiming for herself the title of “good scholar” – who grows wise through her observance of nature, not simply through classes and books.

This beloved of mine, the one with whom I shared this poem, is going through a rough patch these days, struggling to be mindful, lost instead in a sea of sea-doubt and fear. I don’t blame them; what they are going through is hard. I can listen, offer my love, a little practical advice, but mostly, I want to whisper in their ear: “Be mindful! Go find something to kill you with delight!” It won’t make their problems go away, but for that moment, it might make them smile and help them remember the gift they bring to the world – their ability to see and capture the magic so many of us pass by.

So, to my beloved friend and to all of you,

Be a good scholar today. Go be delighted by something – in the sky or on the ground, in a bird’s call, or a baby’s laughter. Slow down enough to see it, hear it, fall in love with it, even if for just one moment. It won’t change anything, but it might change everything – eventually.

Nature has wisdom for us all: the cycles of light and dark, new and old, death and rebirth, silence and noise, diversity is health; change is growth; imperfection is inherent, but so too is beauty and abundance. Watch and wait. It will come.

P.S. For some of my readers, my use of the third person plural (they/their) for an individual, instead of the 3rd person singular (he/she/his/hers) may be bothersome. Sorry about that!

 

 

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“A Portrait of a Dog as an Old Guy”

When his owner died in 2000 and a new family

moved into their Moscow apartment,

he went to live with mongrels in the park.

In summer there was plenty of food, kids

often left behind sandwiches, hotdogs and other stuff.

He didn’t have a big appetite,

still missing his old guy.

He too was old, the ladies no longer excited him,

and he didn’t burn calories chasing them around.

Then winter came and the little folk abandoned the park.

The idea of eating from the trash occurred to him

but the minute he started rummaging in the

overturned garbage container, a voice

in his head said: “No, Rex!”

The remnants of a good upbringing lower

our natural survival skills.

 

I met him again in the early spring of 2001.

He looked terrific. Turning gray became him.

His dark shepherd eyes were perfectly bright,

like those of a puppy.

I asked him how he sustained himself

in this new free-market situation

when even the human species suffered from malnutrition.

In response he told me his story;

how at first he thought that life without his man

wasn’t worth it, how those

who petted him when he was a pet

then turned away from him, and how one night

he had a revelation.

 

His man came to him in his sleep,

tapped him on his skinny neck and said:

“Let’s go shopping!” So the next morning he took the subway

and went to the street market

where they used to go together every Sunday and where

vendors recognized him and fed him

to his heart’s content.

“Perhaps you should move closer to that area?”

I ventured.—“No, I’ll stay here,” he sighed,

“oldies shouldn’t change their topography. That’s

what my man said.”

Indeed, he sounded like one himself.

 

Katia Kapovich is a modern Russian poet, who immigrated to the U.S. in the early ’90s.

I wasn’t familiar with Kapovich’s work until I went looking for a “dog poem” and found this one, which immediately charmed me. Sometimes, that’s enough for a poem. Poetry shouldn’t be asked to bear the burden of significance all the time. Sometimes, a poem should be enjoyed, just for the pleasure of it.

For me, one of the highlights of this poem is the personification and cultural relevance that get applied to the life of the dog. He finds himself in a “free-market” economy; he’s too old to chase the ladies, or run around burning calories. His “good upbringing” keeps him from surviving like the rest of his comrades in the park. But all is not lost; he goes “shopping,” finds a sustainable food source, but won’t move any closer, since “oldies shouldn’t change their topography.”  The sweet absurdity of it all made me grin. Kapovich was describing the life of a particular dog, but it could have been my 88-year-old grandfather, or perhaps even her own, with all his peculiar, but dignified ways of doing things in the last years of his life.

Since I have never had the pleasure of growing old with a dog, or the pain of having a dog grow old with me (or perhaps it’s the reverse), my first instinct as a reader is to stick with a surface reading of the poem, the creativity and humor. But if I were a dog-owner and a dog loved me the way this dog loved “his man,” I have no doubt this poem would mean much more.  I can see the tenderness and loyalty of their bond, the cruelty of the new apartment owners who threw  him out, and the kindness of the street vendors who sustained his life, but if I were a dog owner, I would feel it, deeply, on an empathetic level. That’s why I always try to read a poem more than once.  I may, or may not be pleased on a first go-’round, but there is probably something to be learned regardless, an insight into something I know nothing about.

So, thank you, Katia Kapovich for helping me learn something new about a man and his best friend.

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“The Love Religion”

The inner space inside

that we call the heart

has become many different

living scenes and stories.

 

A pasture for sleek gazelles,

a monastery for Christian monks,

a temple with Shiva dancing,

a kaaba for pilgrimage.

 

The tablets of Moses are there,

the Qur’an, the Vedas,

the sutras, and the gospels.

 

Love is the religion in me.

Whichever way love’s camel goes,

that way becomes my faith,

the source of beauty and a light

of sacredness over everything.

 

Ibn Arabi, a 12th century great Sufi master and saint

When we encounter one of the “great ones,” we tend to believe they are completely original in their thoughts, radically different in their teachings, from everyone who came before them.  But when you dig deeper into their history, you often find they are following in the footsteps of another. We are all standing on the shoulders of the ones who came before us. In the case of Rumi, Arabi came first.

I appreciate this poem’s definition of the “heart,” not just as an internal organ, but as that sacred space where we find ourselves most at home, most alive to our inner life, soul and consciousness. The heart is a place, a teaching, a community. Most of us find our “heart” in one place, one tribe, or one text, but Arabi knows no such limitation. His heart’s home is anywhere permeated by the scent, beauty and sacred light of Love.

Though born, raised and worshipping in Catholic Christian communities, I found early on that my heart, like Arabi’s, tended to follow “love’s camel.”

 

 

 

 

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“Change”

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame

where everything shines as it disappears.

The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much

as the curve of the body as it turns away.

 

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.

Is is safer to be gray and numb?

What turns hard becomes rigid

and is easily shattered.

 

Pour yourself out like a fountain.

Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking

finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

 

Every happiness is a child of a separation

it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, become a laurel,

dares you to become wind.

 

Rilke, from Songs to Orpheus II

I realize I’m on a bit of a Rilke jag this week and hope you don’t mind.  I wanted to post this poem in conjunction with Rumi’s poem, “Two Kinds of Intelligence.” They both tap into that same idea that there is a deep wisdom in staying flexible, and allowing things to flow through us and that for some reason, we always need that reminder. Most of us have settled into our comfort zone, and aren’t looking for change. Evolution and growth might be nice in theory, but in practice, we often resist them with all our might. I think we might even over-idealize concepts like “tradition,” “commitment,” and “the way things used to be,” as a way to avoid making healthy, necessary, albeit painful changes.

But nothing in the universe is static! So why would we think that our lives, beliefs, nations, or faith traditions should be?

The key to adopting this wisdom can be found in the final stanza.

Every happiness is a child of a separation

it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, become a laurel,

dares you to become wind.

Nothing good can ever come again if we do not expand and grow, personally, professionally, relationally. It is the resurrection mystery at the heart of the universe. Separation, loss, death – things we do not think we can survive – these are the roots of our future happiness. Even Daphne, who lost her idyllic life and became a stationary laurel tree, invites you to become like the never-still wind. It is always blowing somewhere, changing something. The rustle of her leaves is the only movement she will ever experience. Would you be willing to trade places with her?

 

 

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“Two Kinds of Intelligence”

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

 

Rumi, 13th century Persian Sufi mystic, poet and teacher

Obviously we all know and love the first kind of knowledge. We have been “educated” in that way our whole lives: the knowing, the discerning, the judging and ranking. According to Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr, it’s what the false self thrives on; it’s a meritocracy, a game of tit-for-tat and it’s the only game in town.

But what if it’s not? What if what we look like and how well we do and where we rank is just ONE way to look at the world and not even the most interesting way,?

That’s the type of intelligence Rumi offers as an alternative in the third stanza.  This is the wisdom of the True Self, our soul, humanity, authenticity, integrity, creativity, generativity, connectivity, etc.  This never dies. This is the Divine Intelligence from which we came and to which we will return and it is our life’s work and pleasure to live out of that intelligence all the days of our lives. The second intelligence, which we mistakenly put first, is good as far as it goes, as my teacher would say, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. It takes the flexible, fluid movement of the Spirit within us to go all the way.

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“Remembering”

And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is—
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.

Rilke is one of the most widely celebrated poets of the 20th century. His life is fascinating and he kept up a wide correspondence with many women and men throughout his lifetime. His Letters to a Young Poet is classic wisdom text about living as an artist.

Last week, Molly asked me to french braid her hair before hockey practice.  It’s a little ritual we have; she shows up with her hair bands and a comb and sits between my legs and we chat about the day. But last week, instead of small talk, I handed her my copy of Rilke opened to this page and asked her to read it aloud. She did once, and then I asked her to read it again and tell me what she thought it was about.  I didn’t know if a fifteen-year-old would know, but she did.

It’s about wasting your life, waiting for your “real life,” your “better life” to begin. You think that what’s happening now is boring, or beneath you, so you’re “remembering.” You keep looking back at all the choices you didn’t make, and the ones that got away.  You’re afraid you might have missed your chance to be special, to have the life you want, but really, it’s like you just have to wake up to what’s going on right now in your life. Wherever you are, is exactly where you’re supposed to be.  You’re life can still be great; you just have to recognize it.

I won’t claim Molly said all those words, but that was the gist of it. Even at fifteen, she’s experienced the universal longing for things to be different than they are, for our lives to conform to the vision we set for them. I’m glad I tried the poetry experiment with her; maybe she heard Rilke’s message a little sooner than the rest of us. (As a bonus, she also asked to borrow my copy of A Year with Rilke. I don’t think she’ll stick with it, but I’m glad she’s curious!)

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“Now is the Time”

Now is the time to know

That all you do is sacred.

 

Now, why not consider

A lasting truce with yourself and God.

 

Now is the time to understand

That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just a child’s training wheels

To be laid aside

When you can finally live

With veracity

And love.

 

Hafiz is a divine envoy

Whom the Beloved

Has written a holy message upon.

 

My dear, please tell me,

Why do you still

Throw sticks at your heart

And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside

That incites you to fear?

 

Now is the time for the world to know

That every thought and action is sacred.

 

This is the time

For you to deeply compute the impossibility

That there us anything

But grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you do

Is sacred.

 

– Hafiz

Hafiz approaches his readers, as always, with tenderness and compassion and a deep desire for us to have compassion for ourselves. For those of us raised in one of the Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Islam, or Christianity, or in cultures shaped by those religions, what Hafiz suggests might sound like heresy. We live and die by our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral. How else will be know whether God loves us, or not? How else could we determine if we are on the plus-side of the Divine accounting system?  Would Hafiz really have us throw it out?

Actually, yes.

And he’s not alone.  Most of the mystics I’ve studied share one message. Most people with near death experience share one belief.

There is nothing “but grace” on the other side.

If we knew that, would it really make us run amok? If we stopped throwing sticks at our heart, would we really behave more badly than we do today? If we knew deep in our bones that we are sacred, our lives are sacred, this earth is sacred, wouldn’t we treat it as such? And wouldn’t that change everything?