inspiral blog

I’ve been intrigued with the Quaker Clearness Committee idea for a while now. I first came across it in Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak, and I’ve wanted to try it ever since.

Originally it was a method of discerning the will of God for a person when it isn’t altogether clear. Tonight, as we explored where we each were at and looked forward to the rest of the year, we used the techniques employed by the Quakers, it formed the basis for a remarkable experience.

The rules are quite simple: one person is the subject of the group’s enquiries. The group can only ask questions; they cannot give advice or make comments. This takes a bit of getting used to, but makes it much more difficult for people to hijack the process with their own agenda, and frees the person to make their own conclusions. It also means the person cannot rely on the group to direct them or give them conclusions. The person can refuse to answer any question, but obviously is encouraged to question within themselves why they would refuse to answer a given question. You can take as long as you like to answer, as silence is not discouraged, even in between questions. This technique relieves the pressure of the person having to come up with something to say about themself, which is often difficult, and gives them time to think themselves about their answers.

Unfortunately we were only able to devote 20 minutes (per person) to a process that would usually go over about three or four hours, and we soon saw why. Twenty minutes only scratched the surface of what could potentially go very deep. Even still, it was possible to in some sense plumb the depths, even if we could not explore them fully.

The key to the whole thing working is the permission-giving dynamic – by subjecting themselves to the group’s questions, the person is giving an enormous amount of permission to the rest of the group. Thus it is an incredibly confronting and in many ways, invasive, method of sharing one’s thoughts and feelings. But at the same time, it is incredibly liberating – nothing is off-limits, and you can very quickly go to a depth of introspection that one would otherwise probably never go to, even with oneself. In fact, you quickly find that people aren’t afraid to ask you the difficult questions you would be too afraid to ask yourself, and that is actually a profound gift to receive.

I am constantly surprised and delighted at the degree of openness this group has fostered. It’s so counter-cultural to admit openly your struggles and fears, your weaknesses and darkness. But it creates relationships deeper than any I’ve experienced, and that in itself is an amazing thing. I want to make sure we continue to plumb those depths.

Nonetheless, it is not an easy experience to go through – while I was determined to be up to the challenge, it did feel deeply confronting. It was useful though, and dredged up some things I didn’t know existed in me – even in that short amount of time. It’s a technique to use advisedly I think, but a fantastic one when it works well.

Last Tuesday Simon and I had dinner at the Asylum Seeker Welcome Centre (ASWC) in Brunswick.

It was my first visit as I had been apprehensive about going there in the past. My main concerns related to how I would fit in there. It’s hard enough thrusting yourself into a new community of people from your own culture, let alone mixing with people from foreign backgrounds. But, after listening to various sermons, mainly from James, and reading some of the gospel, I thought attending ASWC would be a good way to start being a doer of the word.

It says in the bible we should give to the poor, but what does this mean? I’ve always been a bit cynical about giving financially as I’ve worked hard to be in a sound financial position. But I have warmed to the concept of being generous without necessarily giving a hand-out. Going to ASWC would allow me to rub shoulders with new people … and more importantly, people who could use the company of a friendly face (that being Simon’s, of course).

When entering this new environment, I kept some words from Peter (minister from St Hillary’s church in Kew) in the back of my mind: just be myself. There’s no need to go bounding in there showering them in pity and generosity. They’ll see right through it. Their bullshit detectors are some of the best I’ve seen.

On the night, there was a student from Slovenia (Marshia), a man from Turkey (Ihan) and a Nigerian man (Wali).

Perhaps the character who stood out to me was Wali.

He was this guy with a zest for life – a real extrovert. He thrived on our company, and as he described, was in the process of getting his groove back.

I likened this to Austin Powers’ mojo.

It was an analogy for Wali that helped describe his plight to run the gauntlet that is gaining employment in Australia.

After waiting for more than two years to get Australian citizenship, this refugee from Nigeria has been washing dishes in Crown at ungodly hours when his skills suggest he is capable of more worldly pursuits.

But, with each knock-back, he’s one step closer to getting the thumbs up – such is the optimism of this bubbly character.

His spirit was infectious, so positive, but you couldn’t help but feel for the guy and wonder whether there’s a breaking point, whether he goes home and weeps himself to sleep.

Wali’s is just one story of many are out there in the community. We have a choice. We can meet these people and educate ourselves about their plight. Or we can continue on in our own comfortable world oblivious to it all. I know I’m richer for choosing the former last week. It wasn’t easy but I’ll definitely seek out opportunities to engage with these people again.

Besides, I want to see if Wali finds his groove.

Our OI fundraising problems are solved. When I told my 3 year old niece what we were doing (“we’re trying to get some money for people who don’t have very much”) she said, “I know how to get some money!”

“Ooh, tell me!” says I.

“You get in the car and go to the shops, and there’s a machine at the shops that you put your card in and money comes out.”

Now why didn’t I think of that earlier?

Last Friday we focused on coming up with some fundraising ideas for OI! We started with hearing about Moses & how he gave everything to God. We threw around a few ideas about why the bible is so stuck on giving to the poor, i.e a lady giving her last 2 coins away. Should we be using this as a literal example? Should we be giving more to the poor? Should we give 10% of our finances to God (as suggested in the old testament)? So many questions! We agreed that God doesn’t give a specific amount or percentage that he wants us to give to the poor. He just wants us to give with open hearts, and this doesn’t just mean financially. Poor can also mean emotionally. We need to be responding to what a poor person’s needs are. This could be giving a big mac to someone, or it could mean giving them a hug. We made a commitment to respond to Opportunity International’s needs, and their need is financially. We decided on two ways to work towards reaching our target of $10,000.

1. Personal contributions

Each month we are going to give at least $10 each. We are going base our giving on Opportunity International’s principle of doing this as a group. So if someone forgets or can’t contribute their $10 one month, then as a group we will give an extra few dollars each to cover this. We are going to do a creative activity each month to focus on what we are giving to.

Along with this we will each have a little money jar at home that we put our shrapnel in. Any coins that are hanging around – 5c, 10c, $1, anything – we will save up! We will bring our jars along and feel very pleased with ourselves indeed. I wanna see the following from my fellow Inspiral-ers

* diving on that 5c coin that is lying on the footpath

* checking every single phone box & ticket machine for any loose coins

2. Entrepreneur competition

This is the activity we spoke about previously – running a comp between the colleges to see who can be the best entrepreneur!

We decided to just focus our time and energy on this one fundraising event as we could really make a lot of doh if we do this well. Simon was meeting with Thom’s teacher this week who ran a similar thing in Adelaide to get some more info. We will spend one Friday discussing this further to work out how to run this most efficiently.

Let me begin with an apology to any of my inspiral friends who will read this and try to make sense of what is essentially a prattish and terminology-loaded discussion of church stuff. I don’t normally go in for these types of discussions, because they’re not only exclusive in their execution, but probably in their application as well, but it does seem to be where a lot of my colleagues are at, and may go some way towards clarifying things in my head that will eventually translate back into the real world. So at the risk of not only sounding like, but being a complete prat…

There was a lot of information presented at this conference; a lot of different points of view, of vested interests, and competing values. So I’m certainly not going to waste my time summarising what actually went on, but what I will do (which I think will be far more useful) is reflect on a few aspects that I found useful, or that moved me or changed my mind on things.

1. Terminology: The term ‘emerging church’ is probably the most oft-used phrase to describe the perceived movement away from traditional or inherited forms of church. (That’s the other thing: churches other than so-called ‘emerging churches’ were variously described as ‘inherited’, ‘established’, ‘traditional’, ‘normal’, ‘mainstream’, or ‘existing’ churches. Yikes. Do we even agree on what they all mean?) But it was pretty well agreed that ‘emerging’ is not an accurate or useful term to describe what is happening (for obvious reasons. Emerging from what? Into what? Besides, you can only be emerging for so long before you’ve emerged). And when you can’t agree on a term to denote what you’re discussing, it makes it very difficult to discuss anything. So most people fell back on ‘emerging church’, or used ‘missional’ church instead.

But the term ‘missional’ as a distinguishing term, though, is fraught with danger, because it naturally presupposes that what it distinguishes from is not missional. And this, I have a problem with.

Mike Frost (among others, but I mention him here because he spoke at the conference) defines the movement as ‘missional’ church, and thinks that basically it is defined by a desire for mission to be primary in the expression of church. That’s not to say that he believes all traditional or inherited church is not missional, but that most are not primarily motivated by mission.

But for me that’s exactly the problem. I think there are enough existing/traditional/inherited churches that are driven by mission for that not to be a sufficient distinction. Or at the very least, I’m not prepared to say that I know for sure that enough aren’t driven by mission (to a greater or lesser degree) to be excluded from being “missional” churches. That’s the short version, anyway.

The best term I could come up with was ‘contextual church’. If there’s any distinction to be made here (and I’m not convinced there is) it’s that most of these new ventures are focussed primarily on one particular context, whereas other more established church groups have their own (usually separate) culture. But even that term falls down for several reasons. One, many of these new groups are (quite rightly) very counter-cultural in some respects. I would say inspiral is very counter-cultural in a lot of ways. In fact, anyone seeking to follow Jesus will be counter-cultural (love your enemies?!). Not that context and culture are indistinguishable, but there’s usually a high degree of crossover. Two, like the term ‘missional church’, it assumes the others are not contextual, a distinction which cannot be applied in a blanket way (although I think it applies more often than the missional distinction, hence my preference for ‘contextual’ over ‘missional’).

2. The nature of inspiral: Aah, something useful. In some respects, the discussions clarified what we are or could become as a group, and in some ways it made things less clear, but usefully so in both cases. For example, are we a church? Well, on one level, we’re a group of people who are exploring discipleship of Jesus, praying together, taking communion, studying the bible, so yes. On the other, I’m not sure we could honestly say that even 50% of those who come are 100% committed to a lifelong journey of submission to Christ, so we could hardly be called a Christian community. Are we missional? Well, on one level yes, because most people have been quite happy to plug inspiral to others, and talk about its implications for their life. But on the other hand, can people be missional about something the intention behind which they don’t subscribe to fully? I guess the answers lie somewhere in between.

But then, does nailing down any of these really matter? On one level, yes, but then on the other…

There are also significant differences between the way we operate and many of those who consider themselves part of the new movement. These new communities are primarily started by groups of Christians eager to convert people to Christianity in a more culturally relevant way. I think our imprimatur is wider and less defined, and the way things have worked out is that we are not dominated (at least numbers-wise) by Christians. Not that I wouldn’t like it to be narrower and more defined than that sometimes – but in my better moments I’m content and even proud of the way we hold diversity lovingly in tension, while perhaps more gently moving people towards Christ. That sounds like I’m some kind of wishy-washy relativist – but not so, in fact I am very intentionally going about this gently, while trying to become more comfortable with that. Even if we’re not a church movement, I would still confidently and proudly say we are a faith community, and a darn good one at that.

Ooh, does this make us para-church? That thought never occurred to me before now. Hmm.

I would say we act as a net to catch a group of people who would not go near a traditional church (or at least not feel at home there) but who nonetheless are prepared to explore Christianity, if not pursue it in a lifelong commitment, and who would otherwise not have the opportunity to. To me that’s a hugely justifiable reason for existing.

One of my issues with the conference was that we too often succumbed to that very human tendency to need to control, or to define, or to understand every little thing. I don’t think it occurred to anyone that the ‘outcome’ of the conference might be merely increased understanding of each other, rather than needing some kind of action plan for how the states or BUA could have a hand in making things happen. I’m well aware that there need to be processes, there needs to be accountability, and there needs to be understanding, but I’m pretty happy with a high degree of independence and freedom for new initiatives (maybe it’s my high MBTI preference for N and P talking). I think without the freedom and space and time, most of these new initiatives won’t get off the ground, because they won’t be born organically or authentically. Admittedly, most of the wanting to help was born of genuinely good intentions, but I think in some ways it was similar to the reaction of people who encounter a friend or relative in grief or difficulty – their first instinct is to need to do something, rather than simply admitting that there is nothing they can do to make this person feel better. Liberation from this need to act by admitting one’s powerlessness is actually a profoundly positive thing; just ask anyone who has had someone sit with them in grief and say nothing. Simple presence, without action, is a profoundly powerful act in itself.

3. There was still a temptation to polarise the debate between inherited/established church and emerging/missional church. Given my above comments on what I perceive to be a lack of a sufficient distinction between the two, it’s not hard to work out where I fit in that debate. Both/and for me, please. Both suck at some level, and both rock at others. And not all in the same areas. To me, this is the whole thing; there is little or nothing to genuinely, on all levels, distinguish the two except perhaps for the amount of time they’ve been operating. Therefore, to me, most of the polarising debate is not only unhelpful, it’s also inaccurate.

Not that I don’t get exasperated sometimes by the actions of some of the older churches I have experienced, but who am I to expect them to be perfect when I’m far from it? We have so much to learn from each other, good and bad, and I’d much rather hold the differences openly and lovingly together than create some false schism that impoverishes us all.

4. Yay for the Baptist Union of Victoria: Maybe it’s my parochialism talking, but from what I saw, the Baptist Union of Victoria has been the most effective state in supporting new initiatives. I think the degree of intentionality that has been shown early (they were very intentional about spawning and supporting new initiatives several years ago as part of a 5 year plan) and, to be frank, the preparedness to put up funding as seed grants, has helped enormously. On top of that, the structures in place for support and accountability (in the form of monthly meetings of practitioners) were completely absent in other states. A lot of that credit has to go to people like Alan Marr and Anne Wilkinson-Hayes who had the foresight to put them in place very early. While the only thing that’s clear is that we’re all still groping in the dark for direction (and necessarily so), Victoria is best placed to support and nurture these things. I feel grateful that in pursuing inspiral, I did so with these support mechanisms available to me in Victoria.

Finally, and probably most helpfully, we did conclude in many cases it is simply too early to tell on most of these issues. We were prepared to sit with the fact that it will probably be at least another couple of years before a clearer picture emerges. That’s something we can all agree on.

I spent the last couple of days in Adelaide at a conference organised by Crossover Australia for the Baptist Unions from each state to discuss ‘emerging church’. There were 24 of us (5 from Victoria) that converged on Adelaide for the event.

Now I know it’s not ‘cool’ with these business trip things to get all excited about going on an aeroplane, but I’m afraid that’s just too bad in this case. I was happy enough just to get the plane ride, even apart from the whole conference thingy. It still amazes me that it’s possible to be eleven kilometres above the earth’s surface, above the clouds. The only person maybe more excited than me was Chelsea, who got to go to the airport twice in two days to see Daddy’s “red plane”.

Once we were there, it was the usual meet and greet and people mixed well. I was really surprised at how quickly people got to know each other actually, and found myself organising people in my head into states or roles so I knew where each was coming from in the subsequent conversations.

As an extreme introvert, I found the whole thing utterly exhausting. Not that I didn’t also enjoy it – I really loved meeting this bunch of people from around the country, who were genuinely interested in what we are doing – it just tires me out. By the end of that first night I was completely spent (not helped by a 6am start). The cricket final was on the tv in the restaurant though, and that kept me awake.

I must say how impressed I am with Crossover Australia for organising this. It’s not only timely, but it was extremely well organised, and well facilitated by Scott Pilgrim. There was never a pressure to push the sessions longer than they needed to go, and I think the ground was covered as well as it could be under the circumstances.

I also appreciated the balance of agendas and roles there. Having practitioners, State Union representatives and College representatives kept the discussion balanced between the practicalities, idealism and bureaucratic necessities. I confess to being disappointed at the lack of a gender balance (3 women out of 24 people would have skewed the conversation considerably), but I suppose that is reflective of our denomination.

I’ll do more of a reflective post on the thoughts that have come out of it as a whole other piece, but the experience of it was fun.

If you haven’t seen Simon Holt’s church signs archive, do yourself a favour and check them out. Hilarious.

Two weeks ago, Simon invited me to be a guest blogger on this blog. It is the first time anyone has ever invited me to do such a thing… and i must say i am very encouraged by his confidence that I might be able to write something interesting. That is friendship! I also feel honoured to follow in the footsteps of such magnificant past guest bloggers as Jane.

OK.. to the blogging! The tax department asked Inspiral, who is seeking tax deductable status, to list the purposes of the group very clearly. Last week, that is what we did. Straight away, i will tell you what we concluded:

Purposes:

1. Advancement of religion

2. Justice

3. Building community

Looking around, and thinking about our discussions, I noticed that our website contains an interesting statement:

“Inspiral is a community of young people who are interested in exploring the radical way of life demonstrated by Jesus Christ. We aim to inspire people to engage with Jesus, include everyone in the radical way Jesus did, and involve ourselves in seeking justice and compassion for the needy in our world.”

I find that the phrase “radical way of life” delights me in that description. It makes me wonder.. and the question was posed by Jane…. what does that look like? What does it look like? I am really intrigued by that question. I think I saw one example tonight, and I will write about it for discussion.

I was standing at Flinders Street, serving coffee to homeless people. A Japanese girl came up to me, well dressed, who must have been around the same age as me.

She said to me “What are you doing?”

I said “We are serving coffees… do you want a something?.. you can have a coffee, or a tea,..or a cordial”

“What is Cordial?” she asked

I laughed… “I will give you a cordial if you have never tasted it… you must taste a cordial.”

We talked for a while.. she said she was studying English here in Melbourne, but that she is also very good at piano.

“I can play anything, classical… jazz… pop. I am quite good, not very very good, but more than medium.” she said.

Later, I was talking with a friend from the street, Henry, an old italian, sometimes rambling, sometimes difficult to talk to, sometimes lovely.

“Do you know Taka, Henry”, I asked. Henry can speak a little of many languages. He immediately began to try to speak to her in Japanese.

“Koninshiwa.. sayonara… tikitaka” he said. We all laughed. Then we kept talking and talking.. we had great fun. After we had been talking for a while, though, this girl shocked me a little.

She said “Do you have anything to eat. I am hungry.” We don’t have food… we don’t serve food, just coffee and tea and cordial. But was she really hungry? Was she broke, or just a little hungry? I wondered.

While I wondered, Henry acted. He reached into his old bag, filled with his collection of world newspapers, and quite marvellously pulled out a pie he had been given by St Vincent De Paul. A very proper gentleman, he offered it to her. Those pies are not wonderful, they are old and reheated. Taka took no notice of that fact… she was delighted.

It really touched me that moment…radical, lovely and full of life.

After a conversation with Erica the other day about the scourge of busyness, I was reminded of this prayer of Leunig, and particularly of the sentiment that ‘nothing can be loved at speed’. We are obsessed as a culture with being busy – just ask anyone how their week was, and if the reply doesn’t include the word ‘busy’, it’s usually the exception rather than the rule. In fact, imagine answering ‘no’ to someone who asked if you’d been busy lately. Seriously, try it. Makes you feel like you’re lazy, or unproductive, or have no life. Nonetheless, I strive incessantly for an unhurried existence – intentionally leaving space (in the form of time) between appointments, and not cramming too much into my life. In this way I am free to respond to needs as they arise, and am (hopefully) able to cultivate a prayerful peace in my being that is infectious.

Anyway, I was reminded of this idea again last night during a CS Lewis documentary, as it brought to mind a passage in his partial autobiography ‘Surprised by Joy’. His passion for deliberately walking the countryside never waned.

I number it among my blessings that my father had no car, while yet most of my friends had, and sometimes took me for a drive. This meant that all these distant objects could be visited just enough to clothe them with memories and not impossible desires, while yet they remained ordinarily as inaccessible as the Moon. The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not yet been given me. I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the standard of the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return, I possessed “infinite riches” in what would have been to motorists “a little room.” The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it “annihilates space.” It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation that lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimmage and adventure than his grandfather got from travelling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there.

This is one of the pleasures of living in the inner city for me – most things are within walking or riding distance, and public transport takes you places in a reasonable amount of time, so there is little need for a car. Nonetheless, these things require a degree of patience, because you don’t get there as fast or perhaps as “conveniently”. I read in the newspaper the other day that 25% of all car trips are less than 2km, so a lot of people are opting for speed and so-called ‘convenience’ over walking, cycling or public transport. That says a lot about our busyness in itself.

I’m reminded of this every time we drive out to my family’s houses in the Eastern Suburbs (more like 35 km), and I sit impatiently in traffic on the freeway. I often wish for some kind of portal that would cut out the distance between point a and point b, because to me it is useless space in terms of achieving my objective. This is the way we are taught to think. So CS Lewis’ thoughts gives me pause for thought. It’s a horrible cliche, but in that context, the idea of life being “about the journey, not the destination” may actually be an important distinction for our wellbeing. What happens to us when we lose the sense of distance between things? In what ways does it warp our view of the world?

I recall a statistic I heard once that walking speed is the fastest a human can go whilst still genuinely taking in their surrounds. Anything faster, and the eyes and brain cannot fully cope.

Anyway, I try to maintain a reasonable degree of unhurriedness to my life. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don’t. And so I continue to appreciate the prayer of Leunig:

Dear God, we pray for another way of being: another way of knowing.

Across the difficult terrain of our existence we have attempted to build a highway and in so doing have lost our footpath. God lead us to our footpath: Lead us there where in simplicity we may move at the speed of natural creatures and feel the earth’s love beneath our feet. Lead us there where step-by-step we may feel the movement of creation in our hearts. And lead us there where side-by-side we may feel the embrace of the common soul. Nothing can be loved at speed.

God lead us to the slow path; to the joyous insights of the pilgrim; another way of knowing; another way of being.

AMEN

One of the things I mentioned in passing last week in our discussion of Mark 10:17-27 (What Clive Stebbins used to refer to as “the story of the Poor Old Pencil…no wait, the Rich Young Ruler”) was the way we often miss humour in the Bible. In this story, the man asks what he must do to inherit eternal life; Jesus points him to the Torah (the law), which the young man says he has followed to a letter. He is then told he lacks one thing: to go, sell all his possessions and give the money to the poor, and then follow Jesus. This is not the funny part, though. Famously, he refuses, and Jesus finishes by saying not once, not twice, but three times how difficult it is for a rich person to inherit the Kingdom of God.

One of the phrases Jesus uses to make his point here, though, is one that we gloss over, or try to make some logical sense of, but which was probably just meant to be humourous. Thus we (somehow) pronounce with an air of sophistication and deadly seriousness, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to inherit the Kingdom of God!” Wait, back up a minute. A camel through the eye of a needle? And then, instead of smiling at this absurd image, we try desperately to make sense of it.

Of course, much has been made of the famed “Eye of the Needle”, supposedly a hole in the Jerusalem wall which meant one had to bend to enter through, thus rendering this supposedly a point about entering with humility. That interpretation always seemed a stretch to me (no pun intended). Maybe, just maybe, we’re overcomplicating it, trying to make sense of something that wasn’t meant to make sense.

Jesus point here (again, made a staggering THREE TIMES in a row!) is that it’s really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, truly-rooly, dinki-di, rootin’-tootin’ hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. And to reinforce the point, he uses this little piece of absurdist humour. It might not be laugh-out-loud-funny. His listeners may not have been doubled over holding their sides. But it’s not that kind of joke. It is, however, a ridiculous, impossible image for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. He might as well have said “It’s easier to fit an elephant in a telephone booth” or “a rhino in a Barina”, or “it’s easier for a politician to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God”.

Why on earth we perpetuate this melancholy, po-faced Jesus I’ll never know. You rarely, if ever, see a portrayal of Jesus smiling, except maybe in that weak, patronising way. he’s always on the very serious business of saving souls. Sure, he’s also your friend, but only in an I’m-here-if-you-need-me kind of way.

This is the image of Jesus I grew up with: Warner Sallman’s ever-so-serious ‘Jesus’.

Yet this was a guy people wanted to be around. He must’ve been fun. He was invited to all the parties, from the rich and powerful on down. He was accused of partying too much.

Some people would say it’s disrespectful to portray Jesus as a joker; as if humour is somehow immoral, or at least undesirable. But which is more disrespectful to Jesus – to portray him as a humourless drone or a fun guy (not to be confused with a funghi…ha. ha.) who liked to make jokes?

So this looks more like the Jesus I imagine. Admittedly probably a little less plastic looking, and probably not with the huge heart stuck on his chest, but hey…at least he’s smiling.