Reflections on being curious and asking questions … the experience of the holy season of Lent.
In the holy season of Lent, we are called to the spiritual discipline of preparation. Some part of this is the practice of curiosity and questioning. Entering Lent is wandering into the metaphorical ‘wilderness’ … where everything is primal and makes a difference and you’re likely to be at risk and to get lost … it’s about life and death, about getting down to core values. From that deep place arises the deep questions, the underlying ‘why’ that shapes how we live. So Lent is about living close to the wellspring of creativity and tension, beyond the context that usually makes us comfortable, safe, and secure. Paying attention to Lent becomes an invitation to go into an emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual place where we have permission to wonder and doubt and explore and grow. — Rev Gail (with credit to Rev Sean Dunker-Bendigo of Madison Church for the inspiration to approach Lent as a series of questions)
Music Video Link: Question by the Moody Blues
Be present.
Make love. Make tea.
Avoid small talk. Embrace conversation.
Buy a plant, water it.
Make your bed. Make someone else’s bed.
Have a smart mouth and a quick wit.
Run. Make art. Create.
Swim in the ocean. Swim in the rain.
Take chances. Ask questions.
Make mistakes. Learn.
Know your worth.
Love fiercely. Forgive quickly.
Let go of what doesn’t make your happy.
Grow.
— Paulo Coelho
On Asking Questions: Being Curious
Always the beautiful answer / who asks a more beautiful question. —e.e. Cummings
Be curious. — Stephen Hawking
Don’t be afraid to look again at everything you’ve ever believed … I believe the more we search, the more we delve into the human teachings about the nature and God of life, which are in fact are the teachings of all the great religions traditions, the closer we come to a mature understanding of the Godself … In other words, doubt, questions, drive us to look at how we ourselves need to grow in wisdom, age and grace. The courage to face questions is the first step in that process. — Joan Chittister
Instead of anxiety about chasing a passion that you’re not even feeling, do something a lot simpler: Just follow your curiosity. — Elizabeth Gilbert
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. — John Anthony Ciardi
Curiosity isn’t the icing on the cake. It’s the cake itself. — Susan Engel
We live in the world our questions create. — David Cooperrider
The role of the artist is to ask questions, not to answer them. — Anton Chekhov
I was looking for myself and asking everyone but myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. — Ralph Ellison
Ever since I was a little girl and could barely talk, the word ‘why’ has lived and grown along with me… When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can’t or shouldn’t ask in public, or questions which you can’t put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word ‘why’ not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good. — Anne Frank
Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers. — Voltaire
How do I create something out of nothing? How do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning. — Amy Tan
My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, “So? Did you learn anything today?” But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?” That difference—asking good questions—made me become a scientist. — Isidor Isaac Rabi
On Lent: Surrendering Ourselves
The reality is that I cannot free myself from the bondage of self. I
cannot keep from being turned in on self. I cannot by my own
understanding or effort disentangle myself from my self interest and
when I think that I can …I am trying to do what is only God’s to do. To
me, there is actually great hope in admitting my mortality and
brokenness because then I finally lay aside my sin management program
and allow God to be God for me. Which is all any of us really need when
it comes down to it … — Nadia Bolz-Weber
… another Lenten season, a time of lengthening days…not just in hours
but in slowness, in taking time to linger over our spiritual lives, over
our identity as a people of faith, over the texts that form us and the
quiet places in which God speaks to us, still. — Kathryn M. Matthews
The big rub is that to surrender my “singularity” (John 12:24) and fall
into this “altogether new creation” will always feel like dying. How
could it not? It is a dying of the self that we thought we were, but it
is the only self that we knew until then. It will indeed be a
“revolution of the mind” (Ephesians 4:23). Heart and body will soon
follow. This is the real “try harder” that applies to Lent, and its
ultimate irony is that it is not a trying at all, but an ultimate
surrendering, dying, and foundational letting go. You will not do it
yourself, but it will be done unto you (Luke 1:38) by the events of your
life. Such deep allowing is the most humiliating, sacrificial, and
daily kind of trying! Pep talks seldom get you there, but the suffering
of life and love itself will always get you there. Lent is just
magnified and intensified life. — Richard Rohr
I think it is good news–because even if no one ever wants to go there,
and even if those of us who end up there want out again as soon as
possible, the wilderness is still one of the most reality-based,
spirit-filled, life-changing places a person can be … What did that
long, famishing stretch in the wilderness do to him? It freed him–from
all devilish attempts to distract him from his true purpose, from
hungry craving for things with no power to give him life, from any
illusion he might have had that God would make his choices for him. …
But it would be a mistake for me to try to describe your wilderness
exam. Only you can do that, because only you know what devils have your
number, and what kinds of bribes they use to get you to pick up. All I
know for sure is that a voluntary trip to the desert this Lent is a
great way to practice getting free of those devils for life–not only
because it is where you lose your appetite for things that cannot save
you, but also because it is where you learn to trust the Spirit that led
you there to lead you out again, ready to worship the Lord your God and
serve no other all the days of your life. — Barbara Brown Taylor
But the historic practices of Lent are Christian. There are three of
them: praying, fasting, almsgiving. These are three things that
Christians should consider doing all the time, but the 46 days of Lent
provide us with an explicit invitation to do them more intentionally. I
say an invitation, because we don’t have to do them, not during Lent,
not ever. … I am going to make an unabashed case for Lent, myself. …
Lent is a chance to uncork the bottle, to unclog our spirits from what
is stifling them, to sample the mystery. It is a chance to own that we
do not wholly own ourselves, but acknowledge that God has a claim over
us. We work so hard for radical equality in our lives—for equal
marriage, equal pay for equal work, an end to bigotry of all
varieties—and we sometimes delude ourselves, as religious people, that
radical equality extends to our relationship with God … Taking on a
Lenten discipline means surrendering to a higher power, it means placing
ourselves under God’s authority and protection. But here’s the rub: to
place ourselves under God’s authority is a reminder that we are under no
other authority, or at least that all those other authorities are less
than God’s. The church, the state, our remote fathers, our overbearing
mothers, our inept boss who gets paid more than we do, our snarky
coworkers, the popular crowd, the opposing football team, the opposing
political party, Al Qaeda, alcohol, fried foods, chocolate, caffeine,
porn, late-night cable. Whatever our addictions, whatever our
self-medication devices, whatever our overlords of fear and control,
none can match the power of God our Father and Mother, if we choose God
as our God. To claim that we are in a direct relationship with our
Creator, to join with that Creator and Sustainer in an act of
self-disciplining, is an act of resistance. It’s a boycott of all that
is body-wounding and soul-killing. It is a radical re-ordering of our
priorities, and a reclamation of our God-given will and strength … …
What might you do, this Lent, to rend your heart, to give God an
opening? What might you do to make God-shaped space within your heart, a
space that will invite you to call on the name of God more frequently,
to share the experience of your brother Jesus in the wilderness, to
uncork the Spirit and let it flow freely, to release yourself from rage
or addiction or the tyranny of lesser gods? What can you give up, or
take on, as an act of resistance against the authorities that don’t
deserve any claim over you? — Molly Phinney Baskette
Reflections on Advent 4: Love (plus longest night, resistance songs, Blue Christmas)
This
week, Mary’s song, one of four found in the Gospel of Luke, is a song
of praise and resistance, an expectation for justice and change. In
times when we wonder whether to expect transformation, we are reminded
to work for change, and to recall that we are lights in the darkness.
How will you shine in this season and into the coming year?
Les Miserables – Great Crescendo (excerpt)
Do you hear the people sing? Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people, Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart, Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start, When tomorrow comes!
Do you hear the people sing, Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people, Who are climbing to the light
For the wretched of the earth, There is a flame that never dies
Even the darkest night will end, And the sun will rise.
For those Living with Grief & Loss
I hear
the love of those
who have loved me
echo in me.
All the notes of my song
sing over theirs,
the only kind of beauty.
The song does not die.
May I live
with love and mercy
for it will echo
long after.
— Steve Garnaas-Holmes
AGAPE as LOVE
The essence of agape love is goodwill, benevolence, and willful delight in the object of love. — Got Questions
True transformation is when we unleash the power of agape. We create an environment for positive change. There is still a world of possibility, even when the worst thing happens that could possibly happen. Forgiveness gives me the capacity to contribute something of value—to create a positive outcome to a terrible tragedy. —Desmond Tutu
Our hearts are like diamonds because they have the capacity to express divine light, which is agape; we not only are portals for this agape, but are made of it. — Anne Lamott
I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world. ― Mother Teresa
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. — Thomas Merton
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. — Leo Tolstoy
Agape is a sobering love to receive, for it says, ‘If I cannot love you for who you are, then I will do so despite who you are.’ It is unique in that it is able to love those whom it cannot like. ― James Castleton, Mending of a Broken Heart
The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform. — Thich Nhat Hahn
LONGEST NIGHT: Of Moons & Stars – Light in Darkness –
We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff. — Carl Sagan
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings. — Wendell Berry
You must have shadow and light source both. Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe. — Rumi
We go into the darkness, we seek initiation, in order to know directly how the roots of all beings are tied together: how we are related to all things, how this relationship expresses itself in terms of interdependence. — Joan Halifax
Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass. — Dogen
Is the sweetness of the cane sweeter,
Than the One who made the canefield?
Behind the beauty of the moon is the MoonMaker.
There is Intelligence inside the ocean’s intelligence
Feeding our love like an invisible waterwheel … ― Rumi
The pine tree of Shiogoshi / Trickles all night long / Shiny drops of moonlight. — Basho
… [Sagan’s] statement sums up the fact that the carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms in our bodies, as well as atoms of all other heavy elements, were created in previous generations of stars over 4.5 billion years ago. Because humans and every other animal as well as most of the matter on Earth contain these elements, we are literally made of star stuff, said Chris Impey, professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona. “All organic matter containing carbon was produced originally in stars. The universe was originally hydrogen and helium, the carbon was made subsequently, over billions of years.” … In 2002, music artist Moby released “We Are All Made of Stars,” explaining during a press interview that his lyrics were inspired by quantum physics. “On a basic quantum level, all the matter in the universe is essentially made up of stardust,” he said. — Remy Melina, Are We Really All Made of Stars? Live Science (excerpt)
SONGS of RESISTANCE: Commentary
Why,
one might wonder, all these songs? Because singing is an act of
resistance. That’s not to say that all singing is, of course. Sometimes
it’s an act of joy and sometimes of camaraderie, but it’s also an act of
resistance. The slaves knew this. When they sang their spirituals they
were both praising God and protesting the masters who locked them out of
worship but couldn’t keep them out of the promise of deliverance of the
Bible. And the civil rights leaders knew this, too, singing songs like
“We Shall Overcome,” when so many in the society didn’t give them a
chance to advance their cause of justice, let alone triumph. — David Lose, Singing as an Act of Resistance (excerpt)
I wonder whether we would dare to sing the Magnificat today. What would it mean? — Richard Ascough
It’s easy to sing the song, but to pray the lyrics from deep within … that’s worship! — Gangai Victor
Who can resist … the story of Mary’s elegantly exuberant prayer, the
Magnificat? Her spontaneous outburst in song echoes Hannah’s praise for
God’s marvelous deeds in the lives of all who are marginalized or
downtrodden (1 Samuel 2). Like Hannah, Mary sings out of her own
experience, her own hope, but out of the experience and hope of her
people as well. The Magnificat is a lovely expression of joy at God’s
promises kept, a celebration of the tables being turned, or overturned:
the lowly are lifted up, the proud are brought down, and the hungry are
fed. God remembers the people of Israel, and the promises God has made
to them. What a powerful text for every heart hungry … Kathryn Matthews (excerpt, UCC Sermon Seeds Dec 23 Reflection)
One thing we do know: music in the United States has led directly to
environmental action, the equality of our citizens, a movement against
war and violence, and it has raised the voices of the working American
… Powerful songs have always been the engine behind the greatest
social movements — it is the marching soundtrack that unites the people
and gives them focus and resolve, and it’s not limited to the U.S. In
1970s Nigeria, Fela Kuti invented Afro Beat music as a way to protest
the oil company regime of Nigeria. His song “Zombie” became a global hit
that railed against Nigeria’s military dictators. In South Africa, the
indigenous Mbatanga music helped bring about the end of apartheid and it
spread a message of peace and reconciliation in that nation. In Chile,
Victor Jara wrote songs about his country’s struggles, sparking the
Nueva Cancion (New Songs) movement that caused South Americans to rise
up against their military dictatorships and replace them with
democracies. In Brazil, the Tropicalia movement was created by
songwriters like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Rita Lee as a form of
protest against the Brazilian military junta, which eventually fell
from its own corruption and incompetence. In Australia and New Zealand,
popular songs written by indigenous and non-ingenious songwriters
sparked an indigenous land reclamation movement that is still active
today. — Barrett Martin, Huffington Post (excerpt)
Throughout the ages, God’s people have faced oppression. And in the face of that oppression, God’s people have sung God’s songs of resistance. But God’s people have also been oppressors. We have enslaved others — and each other. We have stolen from, oppressed, and slain others — and each other. And when we have done so, the oppressed, the enslaved, the persecuted have sung God’s songs of resistance against us. — Rolf Jacobson
Reflections on tenacious love plus relationship as vine & branches – themes from 1 John 4 and John 15.
Active love establishes a tenacious & enduring relationship; find its allegory in the vine and branches in 1 John 4 and John 15. If the incarnation of holy love is the vine and we are the branches, what fruit do we bear? What or whom does the fruit nourish? What is essential and what must be pruned away? In what soil are the vine and the branches rooted, to be nurtured, to grow, to flourish? We are here to sustain each other through relationships that are sacred.Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.
swinging and chirping over my head,
Calling my name from flower-beds, vines, tangled underbrush,
Lighting on every moment of my life,
Bussing my body with soft balsamic busses,
Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine …
Of Vine and Branches
We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond. — Gwendolyn Brooks
We are leaves of one branch, the drops of one sea, the flowers of one garden. — Jean Baptiste Lacordaire
Maybe you are searching among branches for what only appears in the roots. — Rumi
How can you bear fruit? How can you imagine being beyond yourself? How can you realize your potential if you have no grounding, no sense of origin, no affirmation of possibility outside yourself? The bearing of fruit depends on dependence. It depends on connection. It depends on origin. It depends on belonging. As soon as you think you can produce anything from the basis of your own sovereignty, from your own efforts, from your own sense of independence, think about it. What kind of fruit will that be? Because bearing fruit has everything to do with who you are in relationship. — Karoline Lewis
… our sole responsibility to the rest of the branches is love. — Meda Stamper
Looking closely, we see the many entwined branches, winding their way around one another in intricate patterns of tight curls that make it impossible to tell where one branch starts or another one ends. This is not just intricate; it’s intimate, and the vine shares with its branches the nutrients that sustain it, the life force of the whole plant … this vine is one with the branches … we find the best grapes close in to the vine, “where the nutrients are the most concentrated.” … This kind of abiding … showers us with “shalom, which speaks of wholeness, completeness, and health.” Here, close to the vine, immersed in shalom, we find not only nourishment but also hope and joy. — Kathryn Matthews
Performed by The Lumineers
link to video
Songwriters: Jeremy Fraites / Wesley Schultz
The opposite of love’s indifference
So pay attention now
I’m standing on your porch screaming out
And I won’t leave until you come downstairsSo keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, keep your love
Tolerance must give way to tenacious love that overwhelms the forces of indifference, intolerance and hate. Only then can we live into Dr. King’s vision of the beloved community and the common good … — Paul Louis Metzger
I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, [God] will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’; rather God will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?’ — Mother Teresa
I think, therefore I am? Nonsense! I love, therefore I am. — William Sloane Coffin
The community that Jesus calls forth is one that embodies an African proverb: Because we are, I am. — Barbara Essex
Where there is love there is life. — Mahatma Gandhi
Reflections on inner demons, hungry ghosts. Calling on saints, angels & bodhisattvas. Themes from Mark 1.
Your body is woven from the light of heaven. Are you aware that its purity and swiftness is the envy of angels and its courage keeps even devils away. — attributed to Rumi
Lord, the demons still are thriving in the gray cells of the mind:
tyrant voices, shrill and driving, twisted thoughts that grip and bind,
doubts that stir the heart to panic, fears distorting reason’s sight,
guilt that makes our loving frantic, dreams that cloud the soul with fright.
… Clear our thought and calm our feeling; still the fractured, warring soul.
By the power of your healing make us faithful, true, and whole.
— Thomas Troeger (excerpt from hymn ‘Silence, frenzied, unclean spirit’)
We consider mindful, spiritual and positive psychology approaches to issues with which we wrestle. These issues may be known in Biblical texts as ‘unclean spirits’ and also referred to in our culture as as inner demons or in Buddhist canon as hungry ghosts. We offer below some resources to reinforce the practice of calling on God, love, compassion, acceptance … maybe through simple exercises and spiritual practices, or with the belief in God, Christ, Spirit, angels, saints, and bodhisattvas as well as self and other people in community.
- OptionB.org, Lee Daniel Kravetz: Guide to Grounded Hope
- Lama Tsultrim Allione, How to Feed your Demons
- Thich Nhat Hahn, 5 Practices for Nurturing Happiness and Dharma Talk on ‘Transforming Negative Habit Energies’
- Plum Village (Thich Nhat Hahn’s community), Being Mindful in Daily Life
- Center for Action and Contemplation, Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations (must sign up for these)
- Steve Goodheart, Skillful Ways to Deal with your Demons
- Good Therapy, Core Mindfulness: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy
- Positive Psychology Program: 12 Positive Psychology Interventions and 3 Ways to Find the One You Need11
- Positive Psychology Program: 22 Mindfulness Exercises, Techniques and Activities
- Psychology Today, Inner selves: Calming the Demons
- Psychology Today: What Is Positive Psychology and What Is It Not?
- Ignatian Spirituality, The Daily Examen
Reflections from Psalm 139 & MLK Weekend: Being Human
Pink Moon — the Pond (excerpt) — Mary Oliver
… You walk down to the shore.
Your coming stills them,
but little by little the silence lifts
until song is everywhere
and your soul rises from your bones
and strides out over the water.
It is a crazy thing to do —
for no one can live like that,
floating around in the darkness
over the gauzy water.
Left on the shore your bones
keep shouting come back!
But your soul won’t listen;
in the distance it is unfolding
like a pair of wings, it is sparking
like hot wires. So,
like a good friend,
you decide to follow.
You step off the shore
and plummet to your knees …
and now you are caught …
And that’s when it happens —
you see everything
through their eyes,
their joy, their necessity;
… And that’s when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.
It’s no more mysterious than that.
So you relax, you don’t fight it anymore,
… in the moonlight, as it says
yes.
On Being Human
I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing Light of your own Being. — Hafiz
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of being human. — Victor Frankl
Our existence was for the white man’s comfort and well-being; we had to accept being deprived of just being human. — Rosa Parks
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest, O [God], I am thine. — Deitrich Bonhoeffer
We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. … Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. ― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Living
You’ve got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you’ve got. ― Toni Morrison
Well, there is good news, and that is why they call it the gospel. The news is not that we are worse than we think, it is that we are better than we think, and better than we deserve to be. Why? Because at the very bottom of the whole enterprise is the indisputable fact that we are created, made, formed, invented, patented in the image of goodness itself … People … cannot take away from you the fact that you are a child of God and bear the impression of God in your very soul. — Peter Gomes
More than one writer calls Psalm 139 a creation psalm, but not one about the vast mysteries of the heavens and earth or even the marvelous workings of nature around us. This creation is God’s own ongoing work in bringing the human person to fullness of life, unwrapping the mystery of us and loving us all the while. — Kathryn Matthews
Just Imagine
Imagination opens up possibility, but sometimes we do not dare to imagine something as beautiful as God. — Nanette Sawyer, (in The Hyphenateds)
We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them. — Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
What a stunning vocation for the church, to stand free and hope-filled in a world gone fearful – and to think, imagine, dream, vision a future that God will yet enact. — Walter Brueggemann
From wonder into wonder existence opens. — Lao Tzu
From every mountainside, let freedom ring. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ — Martin Luther King Jr., ‘I Have a Dream’ speech
On this day we commemorate Dr. King’s great dream of a vibrant, multiracial nation united in justice, peace and reconciliation; a nation that has a place at the table for children of every race and room at the inn for every needy child. We are called on this holiday, not merely to honor, but to celebrate the values of equality, tolerance and interracial sister and brotherhood he so compellingly expressed in his great dream for America. — Coretta Scott King
Commentary about the significance of this holiday from New York Times contributor Chris Lebron: What, To the Black American, Is Martin Luther King Jr. Day?
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only skyImagine all the people living for today
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one