we are here because of love we are here because of love and we just got back from mt rainier national park now i know that most of you have all been there i just want to see can you raise your hand if you've been to this gorgeous urban national park so i think i'm the last one i had no idea i mean yes the mountain you know and burke had climbed it before we met it always looms large when one is here but i just didn't realize what a dynamic park that is receding glaciers  floods now that are more common just the immense debris fields with the logs in the boulders and the gravel i just wasn't prepared for the scale and then you in the pacific northwest with your gorgeous forests and i love john here when he says the clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness and coming from the desert i do believe that's true and we had that gorgeous experience of of walking the trail of shadows you know normally it takes what half an hour twenty minutes i think it took brook and i four hours we were just stunned by the diffused light  this council of being it was just so beautiful i didn't realize there were hot springs that now appear as altars varied thrushes it was just a hol experience and to think that this is so close to you i loved meeting the superintendent randy king and he said something that really mattered to me he said it took so much work to establish our national parks it is going to take more arduous work to keep  and then i think of the other national parks in the state of iowa washington a limb pick national park i think one of the most powerful experiences broken i've ever had in our marriage was on third beach with ocean before you and forest behind  d the north cascades is really a mystery to us it's a true wilderness park as you well know and i'm so excited in the last third of our life if our legs still hold up this is where we really want to explore so i just honor the the public lands the national parks that are here a love that is wild a love of the wild wilderness wildness with or without us i've been thinking a lot about community and for the next forty five minutes or so i just want to share some ideas that i've been thinking about particularly in writing this book the hour of land when i read as i think i was in high school on the banks of the green river in dinosaur national monument i think i was seventeen it was the first time i read all the leopold's same candy almanac and in his land i think you'll remember he talks about how community must be must include all life forms plants animals rocks rivers and human beings and never have we needed that kind of thinking more as harvey lott says that we are one species among many that we are not the only species who lives and breathes and dreams on this planet i love that president obama is going to be in yosemite this weekend for father's day with his daughters and i didn't realize that it the last time a president of the united states was in yosemite was in one thousand nine hundred sixty two john f kennedy which i think is really interesting nor did i realize and tell this book you know when we think of our conservation presidents we think of jimmy carter in the work he all of the new national monuments and parks in alaska or certainly theodore roosevelt t r as our conservation president but history will will show barack obama as setting aside and i think it's deeply significant that he is choosing to go to yosemite to really talk about the centennial celebration because as you know in eight hundred sixty four it was abraham lincoln following the worst year of the civil war which was getting this burg with a nation divided that he listened to those who had been to a place calle understood the wisdom held in the mirror post of of the giant sequoias and the redwoods and it was there that we first were able to sign into being in public lands for all people for all time with the yosemite land act so i think it's deeply significant that obama is going to the yosemite valley to speak of these things and i can only imagine how it will touch him when we're in the midst of discussing such violence in this country i believe that our national parks are breathing spaces in a country that is increasingly holding its breath i'm struck by how it is the stories that keep not only our histories alive both shadowed and numinous but also our histories as a people our histories natural cultural and wild i was  by bill brockman and his wife mary jane bachman maybe some of you know them mr brockman is about to turn ninety he was at the paradise in the other night with his wife he was born there and his father frank brockman was the first naturalist in one nine hundred twenty seven to really speak about the natural histories there and he did some of the taxidermy in the rainier museum and having worked in the museum for so many years i love museums that are museums of museums and there is this martin with this wonderful smile that i just love the taxidermy you know artists just kind of if you get a chance to see it it's so wonderful and then mr brugmann went on to be the first naturalist in yosemite so these are the histories that are there and bill brought men met his wife mary jane hiking the mountain hiking mount rainier in nineteen forty seven it was a few years after he had returned from world war two these are the stories and she talked about what that was like to get up early to be circled by people's flashlights and go dalene all the way up until she met her former her  future husband my stories are rooted in the american west particularly in utah growing up zion bryce capital reef arches and canyonlands where our backyard we have a five hour radius south we were in a row tional landscapes where kenyan walls rise up weird like praying hands arid dry sandy hot five hours north we were in grand teton national park part of the greater yellowstone farther north still yellowstone itself go even further glacier this is our heritage but i think it was no this cave national monument that really set me on a spiritual path that i didn't even recognize until i started thinking about our national parks when i grew up mormon when you're eight years old you're baptized and where i grew up there was a tradition that before you're baptized you could you hike up to temp in august cave we were all raised with a story that is within you culture and what we were told is that this mountain was actually a sleepy maiden and that if you were lucky enough to go into the mountain you would find her heart beating and if you could see that beating heart then you would be afforded eternal life so we hiked up this very steep path paved a mile and a half there were these big metal doors we were me by a park ranger the doors opened we entered in the temperature dropped it was more iced the still lag tight still lag lights registered his teeth we were up on a riser we moved through the valley of sleep we turned  there's father times tool box and i just kept thinking where is the heart toward the end we turned the corner the lights were eliminated and here was this immense heart of timpani this red yellow orange dripping and i just kept imagining if i were to touch this heart would it registers cold or hot and i swear i thought i saw  what i didn't realize is that my obsession with this heart kept me from being with the other children and the next thing i knew the lights went out the door slammed and i was alone it was a darkness so dense that i remember going like this and seeing nothing i didn't know if my eyes were open or closed all i could imagine was that this hard this great heart of the mountain of the maid was beating as my heart was beating i don't know how long i was there and i can't tell you fear was transformed into law but in those dark quiet moments i felt the depth of the earth and i was inside the doors open the lights flashed on my teacher screamed and said i'm so glad you're saved and when i wanted to tell her is i had never felt more alive than i had in those moments of solitude i think that was the beginning of my own spiritual path of wildness i love these parks and in year of our beloved public lands national parks in particular there is much to celebrate and to protect in the political climate of today but i devote one of my favorite writers in  fifty bren had this to say you had better watch this now and from now on the land grabbers are on the loose again and they can be stopped only as they were before by the effective marshalling of public opinion nine hundred fifty one today is twenty sixteen what's changed i would argue only that the stakes are higher now and then  mentor to all of us i love when in this same era when the bureau of reclamation was planning a hydroelectric dam that would put a turnip on the damp and green rivers in echo park part of dinosaur national monument stegner wrote this one nine hundred fifty five it is a better world with some buffalo left in it a richer world with some gorgeous canyons and marred by signboards hot dog stands superhighways are high tension lines and drowned by power or irrigation reservoirs if we preserve does parks only those places that have no economic possibilities we would have no parks and in the decades to come it will not be only the buffalo and the trumpeter swan who need sanctuaries our own species is going to need them to it needs them now the dam was never built six decades later dinosaur national monument remains an oasis of calm home to the fremont people who once inhabited these desert lands and home to you people who still live there adjacent to an oil and boom currently underway in the un to basin here's what shocked me in writing this book forty of our fifty eight national parks are threatened by oil and gas development twelve of our national parks already have oil and gas development inside them with another thirty my question is as we mark the centennial of the national park service in the united states of america what is the relevance of these lens in the twenty first century and how might these public comments bring back home to a united states of humility where's our restraint when i can tell you as i thought i was going to write a joyous book finally that wasn't hard i was so excited i said this is going to be so easy it's about love and beauty and our and wonder and yes it was that but it was also about the shadow side of our histories the displacement of native people from our national parks our need to diversify visitation to open up our parks to more urban  populations people of color i wasn't prepared for that i think when stegner said that our national parks were our best idea how are our best idea i would argue that our national parks are an evolving idea and here's why when you think about nine hundred sixteen was steven teen mother he was a mandaean man a millionaire he was concerned about how he was going to build this constituency and how to pay for these parks and so he had these millionaire dinners in parks like the great smoky s and in a park like yosemite he wanted mrs astor to see the valley but he was concerned would she be comfortable and therefore he built the  the irony is that it was named after the very people displaced that as we were establishing national parks we were also creating reservations and it's still an evolving story fast forward one hundred years the hotel with all that rich history is now called the majestic hotel because of a lawsuit over trademark me corporate control what i also love is that when you think about an evolving idea you have a proposal in the state of utah called bears areas national monument set before the president of the united states now signed by twenty five tribes in the colorado plateau led by navajo hopi zuni and the two ute nations saying mr president please protect these two million acres of sacred lands the lands where our bones of our ancestors are buried the lands where our ceremonies occur the lands where our medicines are found a healing between tribal people the united states government and the national park service i can't think of a more worthy honoring to celebrate the centennial than this our governor and rubbish tip our congressman said if this is to happen there will be violence this is the kind of split nation that we have and when i visited gettysburg national battlefield i think this was where i just was confounded i was also faced with my own ignorance as a westerner i thought gettysburg the civil war this is a southern war this is a northern war this is the union against the confederacy what i didn't realize is that war was fought for us in the west to see whether or not slavery would continue i was shocked to find out that you can go to the gettysburg national battlefield and never hear the word slavery attard until just recently when the national park historian said this is not just about generals and strategies and munitions this is about injustices but what also shocked me was that when we were where pickett's charge took place there were some reenact errors with their munitions cannonballs and in all sincerity i asked one of them what was the cause of the civil war what causes what in your perspective brought this about and he said if you think i'm going to talk about slavery forget it this is about states rights this is about our own sovereignty against the united states government this is about guns munitions and then he said slaves guns different items same issue and you realize the war has never ended these are the kinds of stories that i came across even a place like effigy a man's national monument on the edge of the mississippi river in iowa where most of the fields have been plowed under on this particular bluff there are twenty marching bears that lead you to a two hundred foot falcon effigy mound made by the people and when you walk the edges of these effigies be it a bear a wharf a snake or a bird you feel the sacredness of these lands i had no idea i want to share with you a story from grand teton national park because i think that it exemplifies how i think if we went around this room each of us has a park that we think is ours that is a memory palace with our families and  on my father's eightieth birthday we saw a bear a grizzly standing upright we had just hike to grand view point in grand teton national park where emma matilda lake and two ocean lake appear below and if you turn around the glory of the teton range looms behind you we were a party of four generations the youngest just one year old and we were resting at the base of the trail when the grizzly appeared instead of being afraid we stood as the bear did trying to get a better look at the elusive beast the bear bolted into the woods gone many smiled and looked to her grandfather happy birthday john not long ago my father and i were hiking to taggart lake a short lovely walk to the base of the tetons as we walked up the trail we heard a horn blow repeatedly around the bend a man in a harvard sweat shirt have crazed with fear was holding bear horn out in front of him pressing the button every fifteen minutes or so a large canister of bear spray hung love from his belt and numerous bare bells dangled from his bare hat he looked like a one man marching band the expression on his face when he met us head on was one of sheer terror good god man my father said you look like you belong to the circus not in the i've been hiking this trail for seventy years and never seen a bear on it yet cut the horn i forget what the hiker said in response but i do recall my father's parting words if i were you i wouldn't advertise where you went to school this was the kind of impatience and candor that i was raised with alongside the grace of my mother and grandmothers as you know the rockefeller's had a lot to do with  and others the red words acadia on and on and on and when horace albright the first director superintendent of yellowstone thought about what was going on in the tetons he realized the tetons needed more protection than just rock and ice there was a valley there was a man drene river called the snake and there were some of the largest angular and carnivores in north america bears wolves pronghorn elk moose so he wrote a letter to mr rockefeller john d rockefeller jr to come out and visit they went to a particular overlook and mr rockefeller understood immediately these lines must be protected but how slee mr rockefeller and his son lawrence with horse albright quietly bought up pieces of land and ranches when word got out that an easterner named rockefeller was buying up the teton valley you can imagine the outrage our parks are wrought with controversy it's still that way but mr rockefeller finally said to president roosevelt f d r you take this gift now or i'm going to turn it over to the developers and with the one thousand know six antiquities act it became a national monument later to be absorbed into the park but somewhere along the line i think a valve was made between lawrence rockefeller and his father lawrence was the eldest of the sons he was the one that went to his father and said it's great you're giving this to the american people but couldn't we just keep the most beautiful ranch for us his father wasn't keen on it but he said if you promise me one thing that before you die you will deed that back to the american people and when lawrence rockefeller was ninety three he did exactly that against the will of his children against the advice and desire of the park service learns rockefeller  rewilding the eastern shore of phelps like taking thirty of the family cabins the large that had seen every president diplomats people unimaginable it was it was history and moved it outside of the park for another era for another generation the scales of nature will always seek equilibrium even a further contempt the balance the learn rockefeller preserve was dedicated on june twenty first two thousand and eight mr rockefeller's daughter lucy rockefeller beletski said my father recognized mind body spirit as one word my own father was among the first visitors in grand teton national park to see the eastern shore of phelps lake when it was finally opened to the public as a man who has walked most of the trails in the tetons he walked the newly marked trail  never imagining that this path would one day be opened to to him the lawrence rockefeller preserve has become his favorite place in the tetons we've walked it together well over a dozen times and each time we have gleaned something new patch of columbine's a don't win her fonz and imagined unexpected heads down among the pines the number of people who walk at the same time is limited and as a result the forest pa phelps lake remains a place of meditation quiet still and solitary this was lawrence rockefeller's intention the rockefeller shared their wealth our public lands whether a national park or monument wildlife refuge forest or prairie make each one of us land rich it is our inheritance as citizens of a country called america in the summer and fourteen lawrence's youngest brother david the last living child of john d rockefeller jr returned to the restored shores of phelps like gone where the horse stables his family cabins the great large wild gardens of paintbrush extended down to the lake shore there was no sign or clue of any human habitation sitting in a wheelchair one year shy of one hundred david rockefeller looked out across phelps lake toward death canyon with tears streaming down his cheeks are my mother park now to hear of my life has passed without them not one i am of this place family is a place and my family is located here those who are living and those who have passed i am settled in the scent of sage after we had been gifted by the sight of the grizzly on my father's birthday john tempest picked up his great grandson wyatt and held him did you see that big bear little man later that day why it would take his first awkward steps toward the extended hands of his great grandfather on his eightieth birthday he would not know it then but one day he be told that the day he learned to walk was the day he saw a grizzly standing upright in the presence of family for generations that will be followed by fo more and four more beyond that this is what we can promise the future a legacy of care that we will be good stewards and not take too much or give back to little that we will recognize wild nature for what it is in all its magnificent and complex history and unfathomable wealth that should be consciously saved not ruthlessly spent privilege is what we inherent by our status as homo sapiens living on this planet this is the privilege of imagination what we choose to do with our privilege as a species is up to each of us humility is born in wildness we are not protecting grizzlies from extinction they are protecting us from the extinction of experience as we engage with the world beyond ourselves the very presence of a grizzly returns us to an ecology of our we tremble at what appears to be a dream that stands before us i want to share two stories with you and then we'll open it up for questions what i've come to appreciate is that each time i international park i meet the miraculous last year brooke i celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary which in and of itself is miraculous and as we were sitting down at the breakfast table we thought where do we want to go in immediately we both said yellowstone the lamar valley wolves which is exactly what we did we went north into yellowstone into the lamar valley many of you have been there it's really one of the most wild beautiful places i know and this is where the walls were reintroduced into yellowstone in one thousand nine hundred five we got up at five thirty in the morning first light the mist was settled over the the river and as it lifted we noticed a curious m binoculars lifted we saw that it appeared to be a bison scaffolding of bones there too coyote's were pulling the meat of the ribs carrion there were two bald eagles scavengers and there were also several ravens picking up the pieces a ranger came told us what had happened yesterday the day before the mother bison was in the process of giving birth the calf was stillborn she was struggling the calf was already dead the wolfpack saw the mother bison in trouble and took her down quickly a rib cage a scaffolding of glistening bones the hackles on the coyote's raised the eagles flew the ravens vanished the cody's scattered and out from the lodge forest emerged a glorious white wolf alpha male entered that cavern of bones and from our perspective we could just see his haunches we watched that belly swell over an hour and then he pulled out wearing a red beard of blood and disappeared the same way he had come we left we came back at dusk wondering if the wolf would also return and there was that glimmering shimmering scaffolding of bones with a buffalo robe draped over it one coyote no ravens no eagles the coyote left darkness descended and then we noticed there was a herd of three hundred bison grazing and one line of seven bison evenly spaced walk toward the mother bison and circled her circled her again and then tightened their circle nudged her body part her sniffed her lowered their heads circled one more time and left as they came a single line evenly spaced save one lone ball who stayed with her we are not the only animals who live and breathe and dream on this planet these words have been removed from the new version of the oxford junior dictionary acorn adder omened apricot ash beaver b bloom bluebell bramble broke butter cup carnation cat kim chestnut cowslip crocus cheetah signet and doe drake ferret heron herring kingfisher lark leopard fungus hazel nut lavender melon minnow meant monarch nectarine pansy poppy primrose sycamore tulip turnip vine violet  willow these are the words that have been added blog broadband m p three player voice mail attachment database export chat room bullet point cut and paste analog celebrity with a capital c vandalism negotiate creeper citizenship common sense debate you boisterous cautionary tale bungee jumping committee compulsory cope democratic allergic emotion dyslexic donate euro apparatus square number colloquial idiom curriculum classify chronological block graph when the editor was asked why she said because these words no longer have relevancy in our children's lives if we can remove words from a dictionary that are so alive with meaning and withhold them from our children removing what is alive in the world becomes easy the wild is no longer part of our vocabulary i hear the great poet w s merwin when he says through all of youth i was looking for you without knowing what i was looking for nature becomes a forgotten language these are difficult times transformative times times of extreme actions especially within our national parks extreme drought extreme fires extreme development with extreme policy shifts needed in the name of climate change the world is changing we know this ecologically as well as politically but i believe our greatest transformation as a species will be spiritual the word we must include all species i want to close with one story and it begins with this idea that cesar chavez said after thirty years of organizing poor people of organizing poor people i have become convinced that the two greatest aspirations of humankind are equality and participation if we can learn to listen to the land we can learn to listen to each other and here's the last story i want to leave you wit it is time to weep and sing wrote w h auden at a low ebb of hope i asked my friend doug peacock how he staves off despair this is the man who kept a map of yellowstone in the back pocket of his fatigues throughout the war and what unfolded at night to keep insanity at bay insulate yourself with friends and seek out wild places he said which is exactly what i was doing seeking out my friend on the other side of yellowstone on the day we learned that the u s fish and wildlife service had denied wolverine protection under the endangered species act while driving from jackson hole wyoming to livingston montana i was listening to vall these four seasons re composed by the musician max richter i love this piece of music and i love the story behind it victor's favorite piece of music was the valds four seasons he played it as a musician hundreds of times and i've heard it many more times than he had ever performed it but the strangest things started to occur the four seasons had become so commercialized so trivialized played in elevators and as the soundtrack for cheap commercials that he could no longer hear its beauty it had become lost to him demoted to musical wallpaper max richter did the said i was able to take a new path through a well known landscape so i was listening to the four seasons we composed as i was in route to doug my mind was moving toward reverie with the music it was exactly what i needed to be composed myself as i was driving to yellowstone to montana it was inspiring me to reimagine everything including our national parks our institutions and agencies are no longer working for us be it government religious or educational it is time to reimagine them even the wilderness movement as a movement of direct action time to reimagine our public lands as sanctuaries refuges and sacred lands time to rethink what is acceptable and what is not i was lost in thought with the music and then as i was driving through the hayden valley the cars in front of me came to an abrupt halt bison jam hundreds of bison not only crossing the road but walking alongside us i was now at a crawl barely going five mph i rolled down my window still this name to the four seasons with the volume much louder than i realized the bison started moving closer to my car i started getting nervous and i thought about rolling out my window but then i began noticing the bison turning their heads toward the music walking even closer to the car i am madge and they were enjoying valby as i was and i relaxed as they seemed to relax as we listened to the music together for close to a mile all of us slowly moving down the road i was late to doug's house he was waiting i brought him a nice french bordeaux we took the bottle and two glasses outside with a view of paradise valley doug had written a plea on the wolverines behalf week before it was published on line in the daily beast he had received a note from his editor chris dickey the son of the poet james dickey i'm sorry chris said perhaps this poem from my father will help under a thunderous sky with bolts of lightning adding punctuation doug and i read the last wolverine out loud to each other between sips of wine alternating between stanzas with tears streaming down our cheeks the last lines and did us alone with maybe some dim racial notion of being the last but none of how much your unnoticed going will mean how much the timid poem needs the mindless explosion of your rage the gluttons internal fire the elk's heart in the belly sprouting wings the pact of the blind swallowing thing with himself to eat the world and not be driven off it until it is gone even if it takes forever i take you as you are and make of you what i will skunk bear carcajou i bloodthirsty non survivor lo let me die but not die  know raised our glasses to the mountains with black cloud billing all around us as a swath of red clouds turned pink to wolverine doug said and then peacock turned to me with tears in his eyes this is the hour of land me each of us find the park that is our mother park our public lands and protect them each  man named kevin i've been an activist for the last ten years i met my partner at occupy wall street i've been involved in the bernie sanders camp a and and i just recently got arrested for the first time on the steps of capit hill with the democracy spring direct action and mentioned direct action briefly and to me i feel very strongly compelled to participate in direct actions so much of the degree that i'm shaping my life around my ability to get arrested however that's not very accessible to most people and at the same time we're often sabotaged in the media and the message is very difficult to get out and it doesn't feel effective all the time even though i know that it's so necessary so i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about maybe what you think the most effective forms of direct action that you've seen have been as far as taking action for the planet and people thank you for what you're doing at the parliament of world religions that was held in salt lake city in october karen armstrong the writer and  religious scholar said something that really cut deep in me she said compassion is an act not an emotion but if it were to be an emotion it would be mostly most closely aligned with discomfort or disturbance and i had never thought about compassion being aligned with those two words and started i started thinking about you know what would it be like if each of us in our own sphere of influence whether we're teachers whether we're writers whether we're elected officials were there were parents business the full gamut park service what if we took our compassion for the planet and created a disturbance or disruption each in our own way each in our own time with the gifts that are ours so i can say what the most effective action will be for you i can only speak from my own heart and i know that for brook and i living in utah where we have committed our lives to protecting the public lands in our state i just turned sixty this year i went to paris i marched in that demonstration manifestation of the red line i watched a mile long banner that said keep it in the ground and we walked from the arc de triomphe to the eiffel tower and as we turned the corner and were walking toward there i felt our i just i had the strongest feeling this is not enough i'm not going to march anymore i've walked and marched around the white house i was in new york we were demonstrating in d c and i sat down on the lawn and i realized i need to go home for me utah is ground zero and i need to figure out what action will matter to me and i really think that it was working with our students working with dave littlefield seen in a place like vern on the edge of dinosaur national monument that in mortality rate skyrocketing because of fracking that when we went to the b l m oil and gas auction you know i didn't have an intention of bidding for those lands but when the door open walked through it and when i was asked what i was doing there and did i realize if we bid on these we could go to prison and as they were trying to intimidate i realized i can be here because i'm an american citizen and no you can't define energy for us that the energy will you choose to develop is the energy to fuel a movement and that when we were able to buy those leases on public lands fourteen miles from arches national park for a dollar fifty an acre for me that was an act of compassion that was a disruption that was a discomfort and there are costs and i can tell you as my community because i feel that with you in this sacred space i lost my job and i was forced to resign and the thing that mattered most to me or my but what i have come to peace with is yes there's a cost for disrupting the status quo but what is the cost if we you thank you for being here i wrote down what i wanted to say i spent the first years of my life living at the base of mount taco bell or mt rainier as white people call it my parents worked there i grew up in nature i now live in tacoma and although we got rid of the methanol refinery because of community action i was the photographer for redlined tacoma and we killed that deal are now currently fighting a liquefied natural gas facility there's only one being constructed and alabama i believe the energy company and the port of tacoma are now suing the residents because they filed an initiative so we could protect our water i know that we're we have to ask you a question so i just want to share that i think this is an example a great point that in answer to the question  is when you are fighting for an environmental justice how do you keep the faith in human beings when we are fighting for environmental justice social justice how do we keep the fa i think we do it together and i think it's about listening and keeping our hands close to the to the earth itself and feeling that heartbeat even in the density of the darkness and our last question hi jerry thank you for being here and being so present with us with so much heart the b l m is in town next week to take public comment on public leasing of lands for  drilling so i would encourage everybody to go and get a number and speak and do you have any ideas or wisdom or words that you you may know that that would be helpful to say in our short two minute th can get right to it and save our public lands for many more of this you know i think again i don't know the issues here but you do and i would would come with questions i think the question that we all share with the bureau of land management is how can we keep our fossil fuels in the ground and i do not believe that there should be leasing of oil and gas on our public lands any longer given where we are with climate change and i think they're feeling the heat what i should tell you is we have not been given our leases yet and that's a conundrum for them because it's been a secret society with the oil companies and if they give us the leases the then it creates a precedent and if they don't give us the leases there's going to be a disruption  and this is happening in every community in every state all across the country all across the world and i think that's what we go forward with realizing we have never been here before and with our open hearts and a love that is wild we can do this and we can do it together in the name of holy discomfort thank you