and we are back. Hey everyone, so good to see you all. I'm really excited to be back again for part two of Humble of Heart. We had a really fantastic talk last week. I don't know about you guys, but I was deeply moved by it and we've got a lot of feedback from friends that just really enjoyed your talk. So we're here for part two today. Father, would you like to open us up in prayer? Sure, let's ask our boys and ladies to pray for us. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the hour of our death, amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Well, where we left off in our last talk is with St. Thomas Aquinas talking about what humility is and mentioned that he was kind of looking at that from a philosophical point of view and we need to see it even more from a theological point of view and that's the direction that we want to go today. So we have to begin by recognizing that in order to dominate pride, we have to begin by developing a habit of humility and the only way to do that is making acts of the will to fight everything that would oppose our pride. This requires repeated acts of humility as well as a multitude of generous acts that provide for the foundation and growth of this virtue on the natural levels. Remember, there's both a natural level of pride as well as a spiritual level that is there and so what we want is to make these acts of the will so we can begin developing the natural level of the pride so that the spiritual can grow upon it. These acts have to be both interior and exterior. The interior acts will include things like desires, resolutions, requests and acceptances. In other words, to desire humility, to make resolutions about how we might practice humility better in this situation or that situation, to ask for help from our Lord in prayer and accepting the humiliations that he sends and answer to our prayers. The exterior acts also don't have to be anything big but rather just little ways to remind ourselves of our resolution to strive for humility. Again, we have to be very careful because if we try to do anything too big, then we become proud of our humility and that kind of backfires and we become so proud of what it is that we just did that it isn't humble anymore at all. So we can see that pride then is a deviation of two useful sentiments which God implants within our nature. First of all, there is the self-esteem and the desire for the esteem of others. And so we talked a bit about the self-esteem last time that's so important to understand it properly, have a proper sense of self-esteem because especially as we go through the points of talking about the fact that we are nothing. Remember the St. Louis de Montfort when talking about our lady says compared to God, our lady's less than a speck of dust. Well, if our lady's less than a speck of dust, what's that make the rest of us? And as the Thomas of Kempis in his great book The Imitation of Christ says learn o dust to obey. So we have to recognize our nothingness at the same time, we have to recognize the immense dignity that God has given us. So that's where that proper sense of self-esteem comes in. The desire for esteem of others is one of the fundamentals of sociability. And so we need to have that in a proper sense, but it gets out of line when we're looking for some people to accept us and build us up in things. We'll talk about that. So what pride does is push to access and disorders the self-esteem and it exaggerates the sentiment of personal dignity. So pride leads us to take a moderate delight in our merits and qualities and it makes us look with excessive longing for the esteem of others. And pride is the name given to both of these two faults, but the object is the same. That is the exaltation of my own self. And that's where the problem comes in. The focus becomes on me rather than on God and therefore the pride just kicks right in. So humility then is the virtue that is going to regulate these two tendencies while at the same time supporting their legitimate vitality. So it protects them both against the deviations and the excesses which will develop into pride and follow from the pride. The object of humility is not to annihilate every sentiment of personal dignity or every desire for the esteem of others, but rather to regulate them. So the spiritual life is all about balance. It's always about balance. And so we need to be careful of going to either extreme and that's where humility, true humility is going to regulate these things. When humility frees us from these excesses, then they are both maintained in their proper strength in their beauty as well as in their useful roles. So that's what humility is aiming for. So having said this, before we can work on true humility, we need to look at the areas of brokenness in our lives. In America for whatever reason, most people do not have any real recognition of their dignity as human persons. At the same time, many people have experienced so much hurt and so much rejection that they are starving for love and for acceptance from others. So while it's certainly possible to pray for humility in these circumstances, these kinds of problems tend to get in the way of humility. And so what winds up happening is that we put up more of a facade. And in essence, what we're doing is hoping that people are gonna feel sorry for us, that they'll tell us positive things about ourselves, that they'll build us up, all these kinds of things. And so it looks like humility, but it's more of a poor me kind of thing. And we're really looking for attention. So although we're attempting to overcome the vices that flow from our brokenness, that the selfishness, the attention-seeking, the desire to be accepted, we find instead is that if we cover these problems rather than addressing them, they're going to manage to come out sideways. They're gonna manage to come out in a variety of ways that we would not expect that we didn't even realize were possible. Things that we're not even going to recognize. Pride is very subtle in the way that it can do things. So what I found is the best is to work on a person's sense of dignity first. We have to be able to see and accept the immense dignity God has given to us before we can develop the humility. Otherwise, trying to accept our nothingness without a balance is going to again lead right back into self-pity and in turn a sense of false humility. So if we have a firm grasp of our dignity, then we have basically a solid anchor that's going to keep us balanced and stable as we turn to work on that humility. The same is going to be true of our need to be loved and accepted. And so the point here is accepting rejections. But it is also something that we need to be careful of because it can lead to a rather subtle form of pride where again, we can actually hope to be rejected so that once again we can fall back into self-pity and isolation. If we get used to that, then we just kind of set ourselves up for it and say, see, I knew that was going to happen. Poor me and look at this and so on. And so again, that's just another form of our pride. And so unfortunately when that happens, we think that we don't have to address our inordinate desires for affection, but in fact, it's just the opposite. Our pride leads us to think grandiose things about ourselves while simultaneously leaving us feeling both sullen and self-focused. And so again, that's where the true humility is going to bring that balance that we absolutely need. So what do we have to do? Well, first we have to accept that we are lovable and we have to accept that we are loved before we can actually make any true progress on being able to accept the rejections with peace and with joy. Because otherwise, if we can't accept that lovability and to know that we're loved, we're loved by God, there are other people who love us. If Joe Shmo rejects me, I can be at peace because I know that this person is there, that this person loves me. That's the unshakable foundation for building humility. And so if we know that we are truly loved and we know that we are lovable, then we're not gonna be bothered by the fact that someone else doesn't treat us with charity or treat us with respect. St. Teresa said that, talking to her Carmelite nun, she said, to be a Carmelite isn't to give up your rights, it's simply not to demand them. And that's what we have to look at with humility. It's not about demanding that people treat us with respect. They're supposed to, they should. But if they don't, we just have to be at peace and accept that. And that's not easy to do. So in order to do this, we first have to come to an intellectual acceptance of the truth, that is that we have dignity, that we are lovable, that we are acceptable, and so on. None of these things we must recognize is our own doing. These are all gifts from God.  The challenge for us is to believe these things about our own self. We can see them in others as we start working through things. We'll recognize that other people have dignity. It's true for everybody else, but it's not for me. I'm too much of a loser, I'm too bad, I'm whatever. My sins are too big. Whatever it is we wanna try to come up with as an excuse that somehow these things don't apply to me personally. So as I always point out to people, you have two options in this matter. Either they're true for me, or they're just true for me, but not for everybody else if they are. And that means I'm not human. So I think that you really aren't going to be able to deny the fact that you're human. So either they're true for everyone, including you, or they're not true for anyone. And so that's what we have to really look at. And if you can just deal with that, that just saves you two years of prayer as you go through this because that's what it takes. And God will back you into a corner ultimately if you're not willing to face these things and accept them, he'll back you into the corner in prayer and force you to look at this. And again, either I have dignity because I'm a human person made in the image and likeness of God, or I'm not human. If I don't have dignity and everyone else does, then what I'm saying is I'm not human. And again, I don't think we're gonna go that far with things, and so we have to reject that. So assuming we can get to that point, we can accept that this is true, it starts out in the head, now we have to be able to get it from the head to the heart. Longest journey in the world. It's only about a foot long, but it's to get from the head to the heart. And so the wounds and the brokenness are in the heart. They're not in the head. And so that's the problem. We can accept the truth in our minds, but to be able to actually believe it in our hearts, that's where the problem is. And because we've been hurt so many times, we tend to put up walls around the heart to protect us from getting hurt. And that's why when somebody tries to love us, treat us well, compliment us, whatever, we tend to brush it aside and we come up with many excuses for why we don't accept whatever it is that's being said or done. And again, that can appear to be akin to humility, but really it's our pride. It's our fear kicking in in a skewed form of self-preservation. We've come to know ourselves and believe ourselves in this negative way, which is not true because it's a rejection of who we are as persons made in the image of light and so God. And so it's, you know, to believe these other things which are true, but to believe them means I now have to change my definition of self. I have to change who I'm looking at myself. And so this is the struggle for us. So it's why the experience of true charity and being accepted for who we are as persons, not for what we have or what we can do. This is what saves us from this kind of self-preservation by allowing us to be vulnerable without losing or even have the fear of losing whatever shred of self-esteem that we might have. So that's again what we have to be able to do is to accept the real charity. That's what we're made for. We're made to love and to be loved. And yet we struggle with that because in order to be loved, you have to be vulnerable. We do not like to be vulnerable. We're terrified of being vulnerable because we're afraid we're gonna get hurt. And so we have to let the guard down. We have to let the walls down. We have to let the charity of others in. And so we have to take a risk. It's the only way of being able to become who you're created to be because in order to love, there's a risk. There's a risk that you can be rejected. There's a risk that you can be loved, that you can be accepted. You can't be accepted and loved for who you are without taking that risk. And so it's hard for us to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. But again, in order to be lovable, in order to be acceptable, we have to do that. Otherwise, you have to again understand what this means. If I'm not lovable for others, I'm not lovable for God. God can't love me if I'm not willing to allow myself to be loved by others as well. And so if that's the case that we believe that not even God can love us and not even God can accept us, then what we're, what's going to happen is we are going to remain isolated in our selfishness, in our miserable little world that we have created, wishing that we were loved, wishing that we would be free from the slavery of to self, but actually at the same time, rejecting every means possible to be healed. So the means are right there. It's to be loved and to be accepted. And we're afraid of it, we reject it.   And every time that God sends somebody to help free us, we wind up rejecting it. So we have to realize that we cannot overcome the selfishness by more self-analyzing. That's all we're doing is we're navel gazing. We're focused on ourselves. That's the very thing we're trying to do to fix the problem is what is causing the problem in the first place. So pride cannot be overcome by prideful self-reliance. Pride and selfishness really are synonymous terms. So we have to get the focus off of ourselves. We have to put the focus on to the love of God and love of neighbor before we can be free from our self-imposed shackles, which hold ourselves bound. And we want to blame everybody else. These are things that we've done to ourselves. Yes, the hurts are caused by other people. Yes, the difficulties, struggles, fears are all there. I recognize all that. But the fact is we can't just put the blame on everybody else, these shackles are our own doing. This is the self-preservation. This is what Satan has been working with to be able to get us to close down our hearts, to focus on ourselves, because that's all he does.  It's just looking at yourself for the rest of eternity. That's why there is no charity.  Pure pride, pure selfishness, it's horrible. Having on the other hand is just the opposite. It's pure charity, it's pure humility. And so that's why we want to work on these things now to work on that humility so that we can have the charity. And but that means opening the heart. It means making ourselves vulnerable. That's where it has to start. So once that's done, once we've come to an acceptance of our dignity, the truth that we are actually loved unconditionally, that we are accepted for who we are, then we can finally begin to look at the particulars of pride and where pride gets in the way with moving forward on both the natural as well as the spiritual planes. We no longer have to hang on to the reams of evidence that we have amassed to prove our dignity and our acceptability. Well, and while at one time those may have been necessary just to be able to hang on to our own wellbeing, they're actually just more aspects of pride. You don't have to prove it, it's already there. God created you that way, that's what we need you accept. And if somebody on the natural plane actually accepts me and loves me, then why do I have to prove that I'm lovable? It's already there, somebody loves me, somebody accepts me. I don't have to approve of it anymore. And so once we can be at peace with ourselves and that's the real key, accept that love and acceptance of the other person, then we can be finally at peace with the truth of who we are. We can willingly and joyfully attribute the credit for something to where it properly belongs rather than drawing the attention to ourselves. And that's again where the problem comes with the pride, it's always about the self. So both St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Gregory the Great teach us that sin in several ways acts through pride. And therefore there are several ways that we can sin through acts of pride. First of all, they would say by maintaining that we have any good either temporal or spiritual of our own self by glorifying in it rather than glorifying God. Rather than having reference to God, we bring it all back to ourselves. So we need to see the good that's in us. We need to be able to recognize the gifts that God has given us, but we have to recognize that they come from God. And if they come from God, why are we taking any credit for it of ourselves as though this is something that we did? And so there's a simple principle that I employed years ago and it works so beautifully and perfectly. It's simply this, anything good, God gets the credit. Anything bad, I get the credit. And because the only thing I can actually take credit for myself is what causes me to go to confession. The things that I have to bring up in the confessional, God didn't do that, I did that. But everything else, all the good ultimately has to come from God. And so that's where we have to give the credit. Yes, maybe we cooperated to some degree, but even that, as we'll talk about again, even that requires the grace of God to be able to do. And so yeah, we can acknowledge that we cooperated with it to whatever degree we did, but the actual gift still comes from the Lord. Secondly, St. Thomas and St. Gregory say that we sin through pride when we know that we have received a particular gift from God, but we attribute it inwardly to our own merit and therefore we desire that other people will recognize it. So we sin in this way because we act as though somehow we deserved to be able to receive these gifts, as if we had done something on our own so that God gave it not as a gift, but rather as a matter of justice because we've earned it, because we were so good that of course, God gave me this gift, I deserve it, I earned it. And again, that's clearly not the case. Thirdly, the saints tell us that we can sin through pride by attributing to ourselves some spiritual or temporal good which we don't actually possess. So in other words, we fail not only to attribute something to God, but in this case we actually lie about something trying to make ourselves look better than what we actually are, trying to make other people think that we're better than what we are. And so again, it's simply not the truth. Fourthly, the saints would tell us that we can sin by pride by using any gift that we have received in order to appear distinguished or to think ourselves better than others and therefore to think that we should be honored and esteemed more than others. And so again, the gifts come from God. It's not anything that we've done. And so again, this is similar to the point of saying that we saw a minute ago that okay, we don't really possess the gift, but we're gonna try and make people think we do. This is similar except that we actually possess the gift, but now we're misusing it by trying to use it to draw attention to ourselves. Remember, the gifts that God has given us are given to glorify God and to love our neighbor, to serve others. They're not about ourselves. And again, they're not simply because we were so wonderful that this is why God gave this to us. Our father, Olea, in his book, Christian Life and Virtues, has laid out three degrees of humility and this is really good for all of us to be able to recognize that, at least if you're like me, that you don't have any to begin with. So the first degree is to rejoice in the knowledge of one's defects, nothingness, and vileness. That's the first degree only. To rejoice in our nothingness, to rejoice in our defects, to rejoice in our vileness. Note again here that this is not merely a matter of recognizing it, it's rejoicing in it. And so when we do not possess humility, this kind of knowledge of our nothingness and so on, that brings sadness because we really want to be better than what we are. We don't want to think of ourselves in these negative kinds of ways. But again, this doesn't mean to be able to say, this is how I am. This doesn't mean that we don't want to grow and improve, but rather what we have to be able to do is accept the truth of who we are at the present moment. This is where I am. This is my brokenness. This is my weakness. This is who I am. So humility allows us to see these weaknesses, not merely as the truth, but even to see them in a positive way. Saint Therese of the Suferings had said, how happy it makes me to see myself so imperfect and to have so great a need for God's mercy. And so again, she just turned it the other way. It's like this makes me more dependent on God rather than depending on myself. No, I see how weak I am. I need to be able to depend more on the mercy of God. According to Father Olea, the second degree of humility is that of wanting to be known as vile. So first of all, the first step is to rejoice in your own nothingness and vileness. Now it's actually wanting other people to think that of you. So this isn't salpity or false humility which seeks for others to build us up. Rather, it is seeing the truth of our own selves and wanting other people to see the truth about who we are. Too many of us seek to make excuses for our faults and we consider ourselves not nearly as imperfect as others. We see, we can excuse ourselves because of this or that or I'm just having a bad day-to-day, whatever it is, rather than admitting it, but it's really again the pride. I'm better than this person. Look at, yeah, I have this problem, but I'm still better than this one. And so our pride wants us to have others see us positively and to treat us in a way that is going to not really reflect what reality is. That is how small we really are. And so it's not only not wanting to be vile, but not wanting to be treated as such and therefore not accepting the scorn and even being desires of humiliations. And so when we see that, sorry, lost my place here in my notes. So when we begin to see little by little how humility will grow as we judge by these standards and therefore, which by the way that point that I just made was Father Olie's third degree, not only wanting to be known as being vile, but actually to be treated as such. And so again, you can see how many of us actually want to be treated that way by others. We would take umbrage at it most often. And so you can see, like I said at the beginning of this, you look at this and you realize how little humility we really have. And so, but if we begin to judge by these standards that Father Olie lays out for us, then we begin to recognize that we really don't have really any humility at all. And so humility is a virtue. Humility is positive and it bears great fruit. So again, we can't look at humility as a negative thing because it's not. Humility is a virtue. And so it is only after having passed through these three degrees of humility that we can attain true self-effacement. And when that happens, then God alone lives in us and reigns in us. That's why St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians talks about the fact that he has been crucified with Christ and it's no longer he who lives but Christ who lives in him. And so he went through all those humiliations. You read in 2 Corinthians that whole list of things that he talks about being whipped and beaten and stone and shipwrecked and all those kinds of things. And so he says, if he's going to rejoice, he's going to rejoice in his own weakness and he's gonna rejoice in Christ. And that's what we have to be able to do. So what we see here is there are only two options. It's God or itself. And let's be honest, if we're gonna choose the self, we're choosing against God, which means we're choosing ultimately the way Satan would want us to be. So we need to be able to reject that. Nothing, absolutely nothing good comes from focusing on ourselves.  Hell is going to be focusing on self and heaven is going to be focusing on God. So this life is about preparing for eternity. Which way do we wanna go? Pride says it's all about me. Humility says it's all about God. In order to be humble, St. Alphonsus of Liguria says that we have to do four things. First of all, he says we have to have a horror of pride. So that's why I have to learn about some of these aspects of what pride is. Secondly, we have to refuse glory in the good that we do. So if we cooperate with God, we need to give him the glory rather than looking for it for ourselves. Number three, we need to distrust ourselves. I oftentimes will point out in homilies, how when people let us down, we don't trust them anymore. But the one person who has let us down more than anyone else on the face of the earth is the one that we trust the most, me.  How can I trust the person who has let me down the most? If anyone else were to let me down as many times as I've let myself down, I would have no trust in them.  So we have to have distrust in our own selves. And number four, St. Alphonsus says we have to accept humiliations. Now all of that sounds easy, but they're not because they go against the grain of our self-love. And this means that this provides a means for us to attain humility. But as yet, we haven't even defined it from a spiritual point of view. We saw St. Thomas's definition, as I mentioned, was more philosophical. So what is it from a theological point of view? Oh, St. Bernard defines humility as that virtue whereby man through true knowledge of himself becomes despicable in his own eyes. Wow. So that virtue whereby man through a true knowledge of himself becomes despicable in his own eyes. Tankeray in his spiritual life expands on this and defines humility as a supernatural virtue which through the self-knowledge it imparts inclines us to recognize ourselves at our true worth and to seek self-effacement and contempt. So again, the supernatural virtue which through self-knowledge it imparts inclines us to recognize ourselves at our true worth and to seek self-effacement and contempt. So the difficulty with St. Bernard's definition is that it can be misapplied to nearly everyone. And everyone can suggest that I'm really humble because I don't have a column of conscience in what I'm doing. So again, you're looking back at it, it's okay. The virtue by which we become despicable in our own eyes it's like, well, I can see that in myself. Well, again, that can be misapplied in the wrong way. So when we consider what Tankeray said, we need to ask ourselves beyond finding ourselves despicable in our own eyes, do we seek that self-effacement and contempt? Not by going out and being rotten and hoping that people are going to reject us so that we can rejoice in that because of our pride. So again, you see how subtle this can be and how tricky this can be that the pride can work its way and even to our attempts at being humble and which is why as we'll see, there are some things that we can do to try to develop the humility but humility has to come ultimately through humiliation. It's a passive virtue that is it grows primarily through acceptance of the humiliations because otherwise we just become so proud of what we do to try to become humble that it backfires. So it's easy to think of ourselves as being miserable but what is our reaction when someone else suggests that about us? That's where Tankeray's idea comes in. So if we're still thinking ourselves to be humble, just go back to what we mentioned a little bit ago with follow early ACE three degrees of humility and therefore we can discern where we are truly in that progress of humility. St. Thomas says the true humility checks the soul against presumption and strengthens the soul against despair. So once again, you see where that balances it's always right in the middle. So this has to be our guide to ensure that we do not err in our exercise of humility. It should be evident from what we have seen that there is a very delicate balance that has to be maintained in this practice of humility. So again, just look around at what you're seeing today and with what we're seeing in ourselves we see all these extremes that are there. We've already looked in some depth at the first problem which follows from our own brokenness. So if we begin to fix our thoughts solely on our wretchedness then we're going to fall into despair. If we put our thoughts solely on the contemplation of the divine goodness this might lead us to presumption. And there are so many people today who because of their presumption think that they don't have to go to confession. Oh, well, God just loves me anyway. He doesn't care, it's okay. You know, and it's like, really God's just automatically going to forgive you because you're you? No. So again, the problem here is not about God. Yes, God loves you unconditionally. He loves you absolutely. The question is about my love for God.  Yes, I can trust that God loves me and that he will forgive me but I can't be presumptuous in that and say that I don't have to confess my sins. And so what tends to happen with these people is that they don't have a true concept of what sin is and they don't have a true concept of what real love is either. And so that's, again, where we need to bring all that to prayer. So as always, there has to be a balance to love, the love and the goodness and everything that we can talk about God and his goodness and how he's created us and so on, the dignity that he's given us then. We've got that on the one hand but then the sinfulness of the selfishness and the nothingness of our own self is what we have to have on the other. And both of these truths then balance one another out and true humility is going to be found right in the middle. As always, that's where the virtue is, the Latin said that phrase in Mediostat Virtus, in the middle stands virtue. So you look at the two extremes and you recognize that the truth is going to be right in the middle. Now, St. Benedict defined humility as an habitual attitude of the soul which regulates the entire range of a person's relations with God as a sinner and as an adopted child of God. So it's regulating everything that we do.  And so with this in mind, what he did is he formulated 11 different degrees of humility, six of these are interior acts, five of them are exterior acts. The six interior acts according to St. Benedict are number one, fear the Lord, then submission to the will of God, obedience to one's superiors out of love for God, the patient submission to humiliations from others, willingness to accept menial tasks and suffer privation and the conviction of our baseness and acknowledgement that we are really the lowest of all men. The five exterior acts of humility, which manifests the interior acts of humility are the avoidance of singularity, silence, moderation in laughter, reserve in speech and modesty in behavior. So what I wanna do now is just look at each one of these 11 points briefly to be able to put them in a context. So starting with the interior acts, the first one was the fear of God. This refers to a filial fear rather than a servile fear. So we have to keep that distinction very clear. Servile fear is being afraid of the punishments of God. Filial fear is a fear that we would offend God. We love him so much that we would fear to offend him. I always say it's just like a married couple. If a man loves his wife, he's not afraid to offend her because he might sleep on the couch. That's servile fear. But rather, I love my wife so much, I would hate to offend her. I would never want to do anything that would offend her. And that's the filial fear. So it's not quaking in fear of God, but rather the fear that I would hurt somebody that I would offend somebody that I love. So again, you look at this and you realize that servile fear is self-interested, whereas filial fear is interested in the good of others. In this case, the good of God. So our failure to love God and instead to act in pride has great consequences both in time and in eternity. As again, remember, this is our preparation for eternity. So we're giving into pride, it's gonna cause problems now. It's gonna cause beer problems for eternity. So pride is actually, if you think about it, pride is the cause of the creation of hell. That's why God had to create it because Satan's pride. But it is also the cause of all of the happiness of the unhappiness, the sorrow and the death that are found in the world today. It's all rooted in that. We all came into the world with original sin and even after baptism, the effects of sin are still there, the original sin is removed, but the effects are still there. It's the same as true with confession. So we all have to deal with those effects. Moreover, as a general principle, people are unwilling to recognize the sovereignty of God over the earth and everything contained within it. If God is not sovereign in our lives, then that leaves only me. I am the sovereign. I can be God. When I'm a sovereign, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, with and to whomever I want. It doesn't matter because I make the rules. I am the one in control. So selfishness then leads necessarily to sin.  We're saying that I have authority. I have sovereignty. God doesn't have sovereignty in my life. I can choose to disobey him. I can choose to kick him out of my life. I can choose to say I'm more important than you. And so the malice of pride really lies in the reality in the practical contempt that we show for God's will by disobeying it. When we're disobedient to the commandments of God, we're basically saying, his will is, I can hold that in contempt. I don't have to conform myself to his will. Obviously, if I am the sovereign, my will is the only thing that's important. No one else's, including God's. Sandy Gustin says that there is pride in every sin that we commit because we despise the commandments of God. So that gives us something to really think about. You know, we are so in love with our sins. Let's admit it. If we didn't love them, if we didn't like them, we wouldn't commit them. And yet at the same time, every time we do that, we're saying that this is more important to me than God. It's more important to me to give in to this than to be obedient to God. St. Bernard explains it this way. God wishes that his will be done, but the proud man wishes his own will to be done. So there we are.  Remember, God is pure love. There is zero selfishness in God. God's will is only for the best. God wants the very best for you. Never even second best. He wants only the best. So if we choose God's will, then we are actually acting in freedom. We're acting according to our dignity. But if we're going to be proud, we're going to say, I wanna do my will. I don't wanna do God's will. God wants only the best. There's nothing in it for him. He gets zero out of this. When we wanna do our own will, it's all about me. I think that I'm the one getting something from it, which in fact is just the opposite. Things are being taken from me when I do that. But anyway, that brings us right to the second point which is the submission to the will of God. And so what this means is seeing everything as coming from God and accepting it in the spirit of which St. Paul writes when he tells us that everything works together for good for those who believe. So even the things that we look at on the natural level as being so horrible, so negative and so on, God will actually use that. Only he can bring good out of evil and he will use it in that way to bring about good for us. So it's one thing to have humility and obedience to accept the known will of God. It's entirely another to conform ourselves to those things that God allows us to happen. So when we know, yes, okay, here are the commandments. I can conform myself to that. But then these bad things happen to me and I can get angry and I can reject them and I can flail and do whatever else. And so that's again, that submission to the will of God, he's allowing this to happen. Somehow this is going to be for my best even if I can't see it right now. And this conformity then consists of submitting ourselves to all providential events willed by God or permitted by God for our own good and for the growth of our holiness and salvation. St. Bernard made three distinctions in this conformity to the will of God. The beginner, he said, is moved by faith and therefore patiently bears the cross of Christ. The one who has already made some progress on the road to perfection, he said, inspired by hope carries the cross cheerfully. And the perfect soul, he said, consumed by love embraces it ardently. Now, again, look back at that and ask yourself, if moved by faith, I patiently bear the cross of Christ. Do we even have the first level of humility yet? Have we even gotten that far? That again is what we see in this. St. Teresa of Abilah said, the sole concern of him who has entered into the way of prayer must be described courageously to conform his will to the will of God. Herein lies the whole entire and highest perfection to which we can attain. The more perfect this accord is, the more do we receive from the Lord and the greater our progress. So that is the church's master of prayer. There is no one greater than St. Teresa of Abilah in teaching us about prayer and the way of prayer. She is the master and that is her saying that the number one thing, the soul thing to be concerned about is conforming ourselves to the will of God. And we also recognize that there are two kinds of humiliations, those that we seek with our own free will and those that proceed from the natural and temporal vicissitudes of life. So regarding those that we seek with our own will, as we've talked about, we must always be on guard because of the fact that pride and vanity are always lurking in the background very closely and it becomes a very subtle form of our own vainglory while at the same time what we're putting forth is an appearance of human contempt. So you need to be careful. However, if we accept the humiliations that come to us without our willing them, that is mortifying our thoughts, feelings, and passions with the prompt resignation of the will of God, that is a sign of true humility. So when the things happen to us and we can accept them, we can be at peace with them, we recognize somehow this is God's will, that's when we can actually see that there's some humility. That's because humiliations tend to mortify our love for self and to perfect the submission which we owe to God. So voluntary and self-sought humiliations may actually cause the soul to become hypocritical, but involuntary humiliations sent to us by the divine will and born by us with patience will sanctify the soul. So again, that's why as I said earlier, this primarily has to be a passive virtue. It has to happen to us rather than us doing it. Most of the virtues, we have to practice it, which we have to hear too, but not the same way as with the others. So when we're able to see things coming from the hand of God, obviously, it makes things much easier to accept and to embrace. And that leads us right to the third point, which is obedience to superiors out of love for God. In the quote here from the saints, obviously this applies most specifically to religious life, but it's really not a far stretch for us to be able to apply these counsels to our own self. We maybe haven't made a vow of obedience, but we still have a variety of people to whom we should be obedient. And this idea is something that certainly chafes against our pride rather severely. So when we consider being obedient to superiors out of love for God, we have to remember the words of Brother Giles, who is one of the first followers of St. Francis Assisi. He said, I would rather obey a superior out of love for God than obey God himself. For anyone who obeys the representative of Jesus Christ would all the more certainly obey Jesus Christ himself if he gave that command in person. So again, this wisdom seems a little backwards from what we would normally think, but we need to consider the practical importance of the virtue. Disobedience is frequently the result of pride, and pride is the thief of grace. St. Augustine said that 10,000 prayers said by a disobedient monk are not worth as much as one prayer said by a monk who obeys. And obviously this applies to us in our state of life as much as it does to a monk or a nun. So again, you see the importance of that obedience. It's denying the self and it's conforming ourselves to the will of another. So when we consider ourselves as we truly are before God, then we can rather easily and quickly admit that we are nothing in and of ourselves that by our sins we deserve to be rejected by others and therefore to be able to just accept all these troubles that are going to come. The theoretical aspect of this is easy enough for us to grasp, that's up in the head, but putting it into practice is very difficult. All we have to do is think about what happens to us again when someone treats us like we're nothing or treats us like we deserve to be scorned. We often react rather violently, we get angry, we become sullen, we get depressed. The saints tell us that we should be glad and grateful to those who humiliate us, but we're usually not. Scripture tells us in the second chapter of Sirach, gold is tested in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. So that's the way God is going to test us and put us into these situations and we have to be able to look at our own reaction as that's gonna tell us how much if any humility we really have. The fifth point Saint Benedict says is willingness to accept menial tasks and to accept privations. When it comes to accepting menial tasks and suffering privations, we recall that our Lord came into this world and he willed to work. In doing so, he gave honor to his father in heaven who undertook the great work of creation right down to the smallest and most humble things on earth, the dirt, the bugs, whatever else you wanna look at. In working well on earth, our Lord also accepted the general lot of the human being and that is that as part of the punishment for original sin, we would eat our bread by the sweat of our brow. Until he was 30, which would be the age at which he could become a rabbi, it couldn't until you were 30, our Lord worked as a carpenter. Not merely doing the artistic work itself but also the menial aspects of the profession like all the prep work and the cleanup and everything else. So he just did all of that and gives us the example to be willing to accept even the smallest things. Saint Dorotheus said that humiliation of the body produces humiliation of the spirit and humiliation of the spirit and genders the virtue of humility. And so accepting menial tasks then is one way that we can do this and this can come in any situation. Remember one parish I was assigned to, there was a group of ladies that would come in and clean the church. And obviously in the minds of these ladies just watching them and listening to them, there was kind of an unwritten hierarchy of jobs. They were washing and vacuuming and dusting and sweeping and mopping and all the different things that they were doing. But everyone seemed to want one particular kind of job and nobody wanted a different one. And so it was interesting to be able to watch as they would haggle for what position they could get. And in the fact is all of these things needed to be done. And if we're doing them out of love for God then who cares which one we're going to do? And in this case it wasn't even a matter that you get more money if you do that because it was all voluntary. And so it made no sense but our fallen human nature does not want us to be at the bottom of the packing order. And so we refight it. So the sixth point of St. Benedict is the conviction of our baseness and the acknowledgement that we are really the lowest of men. So this is a twofold basis of humility, the recognition of our own nothingness which implies that we would deserve oblivion and then there's the recognition that we are sinners and therefore we deserve any and all kinds of humiliations. And these provide half of the foundation for building solid and lasting virtues. The other half and it's critical again to find where the balance is as we have seen is the dignity that we have as children of God as persons made in this image and likeness. St. Augustine asked, do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds, first lay its foundations on humility. So the higher the building, the deeper its foundations must be laid. This is the case of both charity and humility. The height of our charity is equal to the depth of our humility. When we appraise our charity and humility we need to recognize that neither is anywhere near where the Lord would want it to be. When we read the saints we are struck with the constant theme in each of them. Each saint that I've ever read considers himself or herself to be the worst of sinners. This is because each one knows themselves in their weakness and their fallen human nature and thereby they innately recognize that any sin that any other person is capable of committing, they too are capable of committing the same sin. And they also recognize that if they do not commit a particular sin, it's only because of the grace of God, not their own strength, not their own holiness, not their own ability that's kept them from it but the grace of God that has kept them from it. When we consider the graces that God has given to us and the manner in which we have squandered them as well as the fact that if we had cooperated with his grace, we'd all probably be saints by now, then we begin to recognize that we really should be considered as rather lowly. When we see others in bad situations and we find ourselves thinking better, thinking ourselves better than they are, Saint Augustine's well-known quote is a very apropos for us then. If it not been for the grace of God, that would be me. So the other side of that is also true. If that person had been given the graces that I had been given, that person would probably be very holy right now and I am not. And therefore that person is actually greater than I am. So it looks on the surface like I'm greater but the reality is that I'm not. And so maybe we should just stop there because the other five here are the interior points and so we can start with that in our next talk. So the Lord be with you and may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit descend upon you and remain with you forever. Amen. Thanks everyone. God bless you and we'll see you next week.


From Carnegie Studios in Longmont, Colorado. It's Puppet News. Good evening. I'm Herman Hansen. Everybody stay calm and no one gets white. And I'm Aranda Laheehu. This is Puppet News. Buttless, tripping, horny, transsexual cicadas. That's not a typo. Some of the brewed ten cicadas expected to hatch this summer by the trillions carry a fungus with some unusual effects. For starters, it will make their butts fall off. Once the bug's butts fall off, they are replaced with a sack of spores, which entomologists have described as looking something like a pencil eraser. This spore sack provides the mechanism by which the fungus species distributes its progeny. As part of their mating behavior, the bugs shake their little insect booty. With their bug booty having been replaced with a spore sack, that booty shaking broadcasts the spores of the fungus. The fungus also contains psychedelic compounds that likely put the animals in an altered state, impacting, among other things, their reproductive drive, which becomes hyper-stimulated. The fungus only impacts the males of the species and will cause some to exhibit female behavior, including clicking their wings and patterns normally associated with females, thus expanding the potential number of mating pairs. This provides an evolutionary advantage to the fungus by increasing the number of opportunities to distribute its spores. And just in case you didn't catch it the first time, we are about to become infested with buttless, tripping, horny, tranny cicadas. All is indeed right with the world. There's a wild card in the push to return to pre-pandemic life many workers don't want to go back to the jobs they once had. Layoffs and lockdowns combined with enhanced unemployment benefits and stimulus checks gave many Americans the time in the financial cushion to rethink their careers. Their former employers are hiring again and some, like Uber and McDonald's, are offering higher pay but workers remain hesitant. In March, U.S. job openings rose 8% to a record 8.1 million, but overall hiring rose less than 4% according to government data. Higher pay for workers can push up inflation, which jumped in April as the economy struggled with widespread shortages and raw materials and parts amid faster-than-expected reopening. If companies are forced to raise prices to cover the cost of higher wages, that could slow the recovery and reduce Americans' purchasing power. For now, most economists see labor shortages as likely to be temporary. As more Americans are vaccinated, fewer will worry about getting sick at work. Schools should reopen in September, freeing more parents to return to work, and the extra $300 in unemployment aid is also set to expire in early September. Those steps should bring more people into the job market. At Dracula's Castle in picturesque Transylvania, Romanian doctors are offering a jab in the arm rather than a steak through the heart. A COVID-19 vaccination center has been set up on the periphery of Romania's Braun Castle, which is purported to be the inspiration behind Dracula's home in Brahms Stoker's 19th-century Gothic novel Dracula. Every weekend through May, vaccination marathons will be held just outside the storied 14th-century hilltop castle where no appointment is needed in an attempt to encourage people to protect themselves against COVID-19. If we want to show people a different way to get the needle, Alexandra Prishu, the marketing director of Braun Castle, told the Associated Press. Those brave enough to get a Pfizer vaccine shot receive a vaccination diploma, which is aptly illustrated with a fanged medical worker brandishing a syringe. Besides the diploma, people benefit with free entry to the torture rooms, which have 52 medieval torture instruments, Prishu noted. Since the light-hearted campaign was launched over the weekend when nearly 400 people were vaccinated, Prishu says he has received scores of requests from foreigners wishing to get vaccinated in the spooky setting. Bad news for them, only residents of Romania can officially receive a jab. The campaign runs alongside a series of government initiatives, as it pushes to speed up the inoculation campaign for the European Union nation of more than 19 million people. The government is hoping to vaccinate 5 million people by June 1 to herald and return to normality. On Saturday, all vaccination centers in the country became appointment free after 2 p.m. and round-the-clock vaccination marathon events have been launched in several cities throughout Romania. Since the pandemic started, Romania has recorded more than 1 million COVID-19 infections. A colony of monkeys has lived for about 70 years in urban South Florida, near jets taking off from a nearby airport and fuel storage tanks. No one was quite sure where they came from. Until now, researchers at Florida Atlantic University say they have traced the colony's origins to the Dania Chimpanzee Farm. The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported Wednesday that there was a monkey escape from the farm in 1948, with most of the monkeys recaptured. But not all of them. The rest disappeared into a mangrove swamp where their descendants live today. The FAU team said the colony currently numbers about 41. The FAU researchers traced the monkey's genetics and concluded they were brought to Florida from Africa. The monkeys were sold mainly for medical and military research. One thing is certain, residents of the Dania Beach area where the monkeys live are extremely protective of them. The community still loves them, said Deborah Missy Williams, lead author of the study who is in the FAU biological sciences department. They care for them. They want them protected. Williams has founded the Dania Beach Vervet Project to protect them and is trying to raise money to buy land to serve as a sanctuary. Brian Dominakis, the Colorado Snow Survey Supervisor, gets to work measuring how much snowpack is left from the winter to run off into streams, rivers and reservoirs this summer. These mountains truck snow in a natural reservoir as it melts becomes the primary source of water for Colorado and much of the West. Climate change is disrupting this delicate system in multiple ways. The overall trend shows less snowpack accumulation due to warmer temperatures. What does collect melts sooner and faster, which means less snow on the ground and a greater chance for wildfires. The snowpack at the South Platts headquarters is over 110% of normal levels for this time of year, but that's not the case for the rest of the state. In Southwest Colorado, it's less than 40% in areas that are already experiencing a historic drought. Year after year, unusually dry swills from warmer than normal temperatures and a lack of moisture are absorbing a lot of the water that melts from the snowpack. This means a lot of water isn't making it into rivers and streams, essentially limiting the efficiency of the melting snow. Australia's old steppermen has included eating chicken brains among his secrets to living more than 111 years. Retired kettle rancher Dexter Kruger on Monday marked 124 days since he turned 111, a day older than World War I veteran Jack Lockett was when he died in 2002. Kruger told Australian Broadcasting Corp in an interview at his nursing home in the rural Queensland state town of Roma days before the milestone that a weekly poultry delicacy had contributed to his longevity.  Kruger's 74-year-old son, Craig, credits his father's simple outback lifestyle for his long life. Nursing home manager Melanie Calvert said Kruger, who was writing his autobiography, was probably one of the sharpest residents here. His memory is amazing for a 111-year-old, Calvert said. John Taylor, a founder of the Australian Book of Records, confirmed that Kruger had become the oldest ever Australian man. The oldest ever verified Australian was Christina Cook, who died in 2002, aged 114 years and 148 days.  Brian Thayer, 34, told The Times-Pickyune the New Orleans Advocate that he finished a shift at the Meterie Bar he owns and stopped by another bar just before 5 a.m. on May 8. He and a friend bought a drink for a man later identified as Andrew Neerman, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office. The drink spilled on Neerman, but Thayer told the news outlet that he and his friend bought him another. He said the 32-year-old Neerman walked away but came back a few months later and threatened Thayer.  Authorities said Neerman ran from the bar and got into a vehicle. Thayer, bleeding profusely, got the attention of a nearby deputy. The deputy stopped Neerman who said, I was just accosted by him, so I bit him in the face, according to an incident report. Neerman was arrested on charges of second-degree battery and resisting arrest by refusing to provide identification. He was released from Jefferson Parish Correctional Center on a $25,500 bond the next day. Neerman declined to comment to the Times-Picky and the New Orleans Advocate.  Doctors reopened and stitched the wound Monday. He said he expects the injury will prevent him from working at his bar. He also told the news outlet that he had to explain the injury to his young daughter without scaring her. Her take on it is just that a bad man bit daddy, Thayer said. Colorado Public Health officials are reminding residents not to handle squirrels and other rodents after reporting a squirrel in El Paso County tested positive for plague last week. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment or CDPHG says it's not uncommon for plague to be present this time of year. The agency states the risk of transmission to humans is low if people follow simple precautions. Those include reframing from directly handling any wildlife and preventing pets from hunting prairie dogs and other rodents. Plague is most commonly spread to people by the bite of an infected flea but can also be transmitted by infected animal tissues, fluids and respiratory droplets. Symptoms include sudden fever, headache, chills, weakness and sometimes tender painful lymph nodes. The CDPHG says two human cases of plague were reported in Colorado last year and both patients survived. Police in Alabama have issued an arrest warrant for a man in connection with the bizarre theft of a Confederate monument that was taken from an Alabama cemetery and found in Louisiana. Some police charged Jason Warnick with theft in connection with the mysterious disappearance of the chair-shaped monument Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson said Monday. Warnick was already facing charges of possession of stolen property after police said the monument ended up in his New Orleans tattoo shop. An attorney for Warnick said he denied being involved with the theft, which sparked national news stories before the monument was recovered. This knowledge is very new but we are in contact with the Selma Police Department and will be making plans over the next few days, attorney Michael Kennedy wrote in an email. That being said, Mr. Warnick categorically denies any involvement with the theft of this memorial art installation and intends to defend himself and his reputation vigorously. Warnick and two other people were previously charged with possession of the chair after it went missing. The strange saga began March 20 when a representative of the United Daughters of the Confederacy reported to police that Jefferson Davis Memorial Chair is gone missing from Live Oak Cemetery, located in a riverside city known worldwide for its links to the civil rights movement. The chair has no direct connection to Davis, the president of the Confederacy, but it was a monument to him located near other rebel monuments in a private section of the city owned cemetery. Someone sent an email signed White Lies Matter to news outlets claiming responsibility and saying the chair would be returned only if the Dutters of the Confederacy agreed to display a banner at their Virginia headquarters bearing a quote from a Black Liberation Army activist. Later, an email included photos of someone wearing Union soldier garb posing on a chair that looked like the missing one but with a hole cut out of the seat. A final email said those photos were fake and that the real chair was being returned unscathed. The chair-shaped monument, which the United Daughters of the Confederacy valued at $500 million, was recovered in New Orleans. Beavers known for their work ethic, tenacity, and sometimes destructive instincts are making a comeback in the worlds of science and water as researchers look for natural ways to restore rivers and wetlands and improve the health of drought stress aquifers. This fall, Colorado Headwaters, a non-profit that advocates for protecting and restoring headwater regions in the state, is sponsoring a Beavers Summit, a conference designed to unveil some of the latest ecological research on creatures once valued only for their glossy fur. Beaver advocates would like to see more funding for research, new programs such as a Beavers Senses and a better integration of wetland restoration efforts in headwater areas. Before Beavers were nearly trapped out of existence in the mid-1800s, they inhabited high mountain wetlands and river basins across Colorado and the West. They played an important ecological role, according. Their dams trapped water, allowing it to flood wetlands and soak into underground aquifers. Those same dams also trap sediment, enhancing habitat for fish and other wildlife. And that's all we have time for. For Puppet News, I'm Quinta Central Iconthrope. And I'm Aranda Lehihoo. Good night.


Going forward the first item in our business is a statement by Derek Mackay on winter transport resilience. The minister will take questions at the end of the statement, there should there no interventions or interruptions. Minister Ten Minutes. Thank you Presiding Officer I am grateful to Parliament for the opportunity to make a statement on our winter transport resilience in Scotland. Although we know severe weather will cause disruption that the Government has taken a ymd rangef staffu i gynnwys glens wahanol i gynyddu'r cymhwr i syniadol ar gyfer gyfarchiadol i'r cynhyrchu'r sylwydd ASindustrie, ac i gael weithio gwiaith gyda'r norma sydd yn cael ei wneud. The management of the New Half of Scotland has done in partnership with a broad range of public private and third sector partners, including new investment, development and innovation, all learning the lessons from recent winters. Scotland will again, in the future, experience severe weather, whether that's snow, a deep freeze, heavy rain or disruptive storms such as those of last winter, and it's not just in winter. The summer flooding that has affected neighbourhoods across Scotland are fresh in everyone's memory, in fife and Persia, for example. We can't prevent the weather, but we can prepare for it. Our priority is to keep Scotland moving across all modes of transport. On roads, the winter service, provided across Scotland from the start of October through to mid-May, is a critical front-line service. Winter weather has and will cause disruption on our roads with the actions that we are taking and with the road users playing their part by planning ahead together we can get Scotland moving throughout this winter. New contract specifications, specialist plant trials and innovations, greater use of technology and getting information to people on the move, are just a few of the ways that we have strengthened the winter plan, treatments, decision making and communication with road users. The enhanced preparedness is also beneficial outside of winter as the procedures and practices in place such as the multi-agency response team marked improve our resilience for other severe weather episodes and major events such as the Commonwealth Games and the 2014 Ryder Cup. We will continue to invest in and trial more technology to improve decision making and responses by those managing the winter treatments such as new weather stations and mobile road condition sensors. Over the last five years, we have strengthened our well-developed winter service even further. High performance requirements ensure that our road maintenance contractors are patrolling the most strategically important routes from 1 November before and through the morning peak when temperatures are forecast to be low and there is a risk of ice forming. The strategic patrol gritters are also adding to our ploughing capability during snowstorms. We are continually investing in our winter service and we have more winter plant this year than ever before. This year's winter fleet will have 205 vehicles available for spreading salt and ploughing snow, averaging one gritter or plough per 17km of the trunk road network. That is a record high and a 3.5 per cent increase from the start of last season. All of the fleet will be available to provide support to the front line and patrol vehicles, as well as to cover breakdowns and essential maintenance. Since last year, 57 new state-of-the-art gritters have been brought in to replace some older vehicles. Now, of the total, 152 are for gritters that are less than three years old, operational across the country. That represents 74 per cent of the total winter fleet for trunk roads. As of 7 October, there is approximately 674,000 tonnes of salt in stock or in order, including strategic salt. That extends the total salt that was used across Scotland for last winter and during the severe winter of 2010-11. A range of new resources are in place to improve intelligence, monitor, patrol and act where necessary. Last year, our crews were out clearing the trunk roads of ice and snow approximately 14,000 times and winter service patrols were operational 6,700 times. We have increased stocks of alternative deisers to improve our resilience if very low temperatures are forecast. The purpose-built Traffic Scotland national control centre at South Queensbury has improved co-ordination and joint working. All motorways continue to be covered by winter patrols, giving a 30-minute response to incidents. Control rooms can monitor the temperature and key routes remotely through sensors and see the conditions live via network of cameras. Road users can keep up to date through a range of media, including internet, radio and smartphone updates on the move in addition to the more traditional methods. A record number of people are using our information services with now over 100,000 people now following Act Traffic Scotland, which followers will know has its own style of communication. There is a programme of communications using all channels in a proactive manner to raise awareness of the efforts that go into keeping the trunk roads moving during periods of bad weather such as rain, wind and snow. We are engaging directly with schools. This year, we have been engaging with schoolchildren to educate them on the winter service and our trunk roads and also having an interesting competition about naming our gritters. Partnership working is key to making sure that the communications process is as coordinated as possible and Transport Scotland communications will work alongside the trunk road operating companies, contract providers, Traffic Scotland and relevant partners in the Scottish Government to deliver a shared messaging across all channels. We will also liaise with Police Scotland and other transport providers where appropriate. That will enhance public confidence and make it clear to them that Transport Scotland is well prepared to deal with the conditions that winter may throw at us. This work also sets the scene for the wider Scottish Government ready for winter campaign, which will be launched in early November. On rail, we are working closely with the ScotRail Alliance to prepare for potential severe winter weather. We expect to see further improvements in operational response, customer services and travel advice offered when compared to the severe winters two or three years ago. The plans therefore for this year's feature continued improvements across all ScotRail fleets to improve their robustness to the issues caused by winter weather in previous years. ScotRail depots and maintenance facilities have additional winter maintenance equipment installed and have undertaken a winter resilience check at all depots and train fleets. Winter working preparation is on track for all stations, de-icing equipment and materials will be in place. Network Rail has provided additional hand-held snow clearance equipment to local teams and has undertaken a winter resilience audit. Network Rail has made available new mobile snow and ice clearance machines that can also thaw junctions quickly. Key routes for busiest passenger flows and business critical trains have been identified for enhanced resilience measures. A key route strategy has also been agreed with all train operators. A new weather forecasting and alert service has been procured, which will allow a more localised detail of effects. On aviation, substantial investment has been made by airports, new measures since 2010 and 2011 respectively, and collectively, the figure of spending is in excess of £4 million. Examples of investment are Glasgow airport has invested approximately £3 million in new snow clearing equipment, including two new runway sweepers, procuring additional resources and improving our general resilience. A birdine airport has invested further over £1 million in new snow clearing and de-icing equipment. Working towards winter 2015-16, our own airport group, Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd, HIAL, will benefit from advanced weather forecasting at all HIAL airports and new de-icing sprayers introduced at our smaller airports for resilience purposes. On ferries, the Scottish Government is committed to maintaining and improving lifeline ferry services that play a key role in supporting the economic, social and cultural development of island and remote communities. However, due to high winds and seasonal weather, disruptions and cancellations to ferry services across the Scottish ferry network are not uncommon during winter. Operators will continue to inform their customers of disruptions and cancellations as a matter of course via notifications on their websites, emails, text messages and direct contact. The decision to delay or cancel a sailing is never taken lightly. Ferry operators fully recognise the importance of the ferry service to island and rural communities that they serve. Ferry travel has its own distinct challenges, particularly high winds, and the ship's master has a duty to ensure the safety of passengers above other considerations. The merchant shipping, master's discretion regulations 1997, gives the ship's master so responsibility for deciding whether it is safe to travel. In conclusion, we will learn something new each time Scotland is beset by severe weather. This Government and the responder community are doing all that we can to build Scotland's resilience to severe weather for winter and indeed all year round. At a time of severe economic challenges and environmental change, we need to show that Scotland's infrastructure and services are ready to support our businesses and our people to be the Scotland that we all want to see. That concludes my statement on winter resilience. Thank you minister. The minister will now take questions on issues raised in the statements. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions after which we will move on to next business. It would be helpful if members wished to ask a question of the minister where to press request speak button now, and I call Dave Stewart. I thank the minister for the advance copy of his statement. I read a press headline yesterday, which said, coldest winter for 50 years to bring months of heavy snow to the United Kingdom, and the article went on to reference the 1962-63 winter that saw rivers freeze across Scotland. That might be overstating the prediction from the Met Office for the winter, but I think that there are very rare fears that Scotland faces a fuel and fuel shortages as road and transport networks grind to a halt. What emergency contingency plans are in place if the dire warnings that are predicted by the press come to fruition? What direct access does the minister have to emergency contingency funding to keep our trunk roads open, our railways functioning and our planes flying? The minister made reference to Highlands Islands airports owned by the Scottish Government. The minister will know that, through a previous winter, the Highlands Islands airport ran out of deisr because the supplier refused to issue more deisr because there was such huge demand across the whole of the United Kingdom. What contingency will be in place to stop that happening again? What particular and specific plans are in place to protect the young, the elderly and the vulnerable? Finally, the minister is not responsible for the weather, but Parliament will be looking to him to avoid Scotland sliding to halt on road and rail in 2010. What reassurances can the minister give that the Scottish Government has learned the lessons of 2010-11? On Mr Stewart's last point, it is fair to say that all of us have learned from the severe weather impacts that we particularly saw during 2010-11. A lot of lessons were learned and action plan was produced and we have seen through a range of measures, improved technology, gritters and response, and fundamentally better integration from the responder community. That is why the National Traffic Control Centre co-ordination efforts at South Queensbury have made a difference. A lot of lessons have been learned. There has been financial investment but better partnership working across the agencies. Having said all of that, we can prepare as best we can for the winter episodes, but we cannot accurately predict what will happen. It could be a range of weather incidents such as snow, wind, rain, flood or whatever it happens to be. The answer to the questions is that we prepare for the worst and hope for the best. That is why each organisation has its own resilience and contingency plans around what they will be required to do, which we oversee. In terms of our own levels of preparedness, the operating companies publish those. We put them on the Transport Scotland website. Salt supplies have made sure that they are at levels that I am satisfied with. We have now got alternatives such as the treatments around brine as well, because they will work at temperatures that may be traditional, grit and salt do not work. There is a range of measures to allow for our preparedness. In terms of wider Government resilience beyond just transport, through Mr Brown, Cabinet Secretary and Mr Swinney, Deputy First Minister, with overall responsibility for resilience, there are further contingency plans in place that go beyond just transport. When required, Scottish Government ministers are agencies and civil servants meet. That includes with UK Government if required. There are a range of plans in place for a range of eventualities, but focusing on transport today, I believe that we are very well prepared for the events that we face. There have been various reports on what weather to expect. We prepare for the worst, but it is very hard to predict the nature of weather that we will have other than we know that there will be rain, there will be snow, there will be winds, the extent of which they disrupt the travel system has yet to be fully understood, but we prepare for the worst and hope for the best. We put in enough mitigation to try to ensure that any disruption to our transport network is kept to a minimum. Finally, on the question of welfare issues, there are plans in place from health, social care, local authorities and others to support the most vulnerable in the event of any severe winter episode. I thank the minister for advance sight of his statement and I begin with a position that I have some sympathy for the minister, because the challenge of Scotland's transport minister versus Scotland's winter weather is one that assumes the proportions of commute, actually trying to order the tide back. Let's start from a position of understanding. The statement that has been issued is comprehensive and it indicates that the Government is aware of the problems with equipment and materials and that they have taken steps to ensure that we are not found to be short. However, there are two or three key points that I would like to ask the minister about. Firstly, some five years ago, when we had the last really serious winter, we had a number of serious disruptions, in fact total shutdowns, in our railway system. Those were blamed on frozen points and it was undertaken at the time that a programme was in place to ensure that points and the main lines were heated so that frozen points would not be an experience we had in the future. Can the minister tell me if that programme has been completed and if we are protected from the frozen point problem if we get another severe winter? However, looking at some of the experiences that we have had more recently, I am interested to see that the minister has talked about alternative deisers. The experience of five years ago when the M8 was closed completely with a large amount of traffic stuck on it was put down to the fact that salt was unable to melt the ice in the temperatures available. Those alternative deisers would be able to achieve the objectives that were not achieved that night, but do we have those alternatives and such quantities as we could tackle a job like deicing the whole of the M8? Two other points. Firstly, the issue of landslides has been a major problem, particularly in the Highlands, where the A83 is regularly closed as a result of winter landslides. Can the minister assure me that the Government is looking closely at ways in which that problem can be averted in future and whether any additional remedial action is planned? Finally, we end up every winter at the end of the winter with the problem of potholes. It is a side effect of cold winters, it is a side effect of wet winters, but invariably potholes become a problem. Is the Government looking at the issue of potholes, both on our trunk roads and on our local roads, to see if anything could be done to ensure that the pothole problem begins to become a thing of the past? Thanks for those comprehensive questions, Mr Johnson. First of all, on rail, yes, I believe that we have made progress on the actions around frozen points and junctions. I referenced it in my statement that there is new equipment for thawing frozen junctions. There is now an understanding of where there are repeat patterns of frozen junctions and points. Network rail and ScotRail have indeed worked on that and I believe that progress has been made. Mr Johnson asked me to make the statement, do I believe that everything is totally resolved and prepared for it? We can do our best, but I cannot guarantee that there will not be incidents, but yes, I believe that the actions have been undertaken. On the use of alternative chemicals, we are using liquid sodium chloride brine. It has been used in other parts of Europe and from the USA as well, and I think that that will give us alternatives to grit that only works at certain temperatures. That has been piloted successfully in Scotland, and we want to quite literally roll it out as and when required. Other measures include pre-treatment of the roads if it is anticipated. There will be particularly cold weather and there will be points on the topography of Scotland that will understand and require special treatment, as well as the other additional red responder commitments should address the pinch points. On the landslides, there are specific actions that have been undertaken, including geotechnical surveys, netting and ffensing, where that is required, on an assist to minimise the impact of landslides on the road network. There is a multimillion pound investment around the rest and be thankful for example, which has had critical issues in the past. That ffensing has captured much of the debris that has minimised disruption to the road network. I have also made a commitment around continuity of access to parts of the western Argyll, where there has been disruption because of landslides and better communication and use of available messaging signals. A range of actions on landslides is having an understanding. Finally, on potholes, I would not use the term that some people see potholes as inverted traffic calming measures. Obviously, it is not a view that I would share. There is an issue about the legacy of our road networks. The road network does the carriageways, and the footways suffer from difficult winters. I have to work and should work in partnership with local authorities who control and are responsible for 94 per cent of the road network, as well as the 6 per cent strategic roads that I am responsible for, to try and address the backlog of maintenance of the carriageways in Scotland. However, my priority is to see through this winter—as I recently had a meeting with the strategic action group, the co-ordination with local authorities around road investments and how we can collaborate and integrate to deliver even more for the road infrastructure of Scotland. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I welcome the minister's statement, but, as we would all agree, the most basic and frequent mode of transport is our feet. The gritting of pavements, although it is with local authorities, is often an afterthought. Can I ask the minister with his extensive powers if he can use those in some way to emphasise the importance of gritting pavements, which would undoubtedly reduce considerably the substantial increase in visits to A&E with wholly avoidable fractures, saving pain and, in fact, pounds to the health service purse? I am not sure that I understand the extensive powers that it has suggested that I have from Christine Grahame. Of course, I am not a centralising minister, and it is for local authorities to prioritise their local networks. However, I think that they have done so partly as the Scottish Government has done in response to incidents recognising that that preventative approach of treating the footways and the carriageways and the paths and the cycle paths will indeed reduce the number of incidents that then impacts on them, the health service and future claims as well. I do believe that local authorities are working hard to address those local concerns. We can do more to support communities through self-help kits, providing advice, community resilience and local contingency campaigns as well. There is a range of actions that can ensure that our footways are treated in a way that shows the priority that they deserve, as well as keeping the country's strategic roads and other transport networks moving during winter. Tavis Scott, followed by Stuart McMillan. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Can I thank the minister for an advanced Scotland view statement and assure him that if it does snow as much as David Stewart fears, I suddenly won't hold him personally responsible. He mentioned aviation and Highlands Islands airports in particular in his statement, and he will be aware that the Pilots Union have expressed real concern about the Loganair aircraft safety record as winter approaches. Is he aware that the CAA said today that Loganair must do meet European safety regulations, and would he therefore ensure that he meets Loganair and the CAA to ensure that the right safety standards and engineering support is in place as winter indeed approaches? Tavis Scott makes a very fair point and fair question. I have already met Loganair prior to the pilot's letter, and I had already sought assurances around engineering progress partly because of the complaints that had been made around the reliability of those operators' flights and performance to the islands of Scotland. I was reassured at that point that there would be engineering interventions that will improve reliability. I expect the highest standards in aviation in Scotland. Of course, that is a matter that the civil aviation authority and others have some responsibility over, but in terms of the Scottish Government, we expect the highest standards. I will revisit the issue, of course, in light of the concerns of pilots to ensure that what was committed to me by way of engineering and resilience improvement is delivered. Safety is paramount and will not be compromised, and all necessary regulations should be kept with. In previous years, people with community service orders have been called upon to assist with the efforts to keep our communities moving. Can the minister confirm that that will happen again if required to assist over the course of this winter period? It is for local authorities to decide the nature of unpaid work that can be carried out in communities by people, for example, using community payback orders. That can include snow clearing during the winter months. It is a matter for local authorities, but yes, of course, the Scottish Government is sympathetic to councils deploying people in this way. I would like to ask a question about another infrastructure issue, because, during the severe winter 2010-11, the most significant problem in Dumfries and Galloway was not snow, but, without the insulating level of a layer of snow, the water infrastructure froze—not just pipes and homes, but Tobi's underground supplies as well. Many of my constituents were without a water supply for several days over the new year, and subsequent water bursts and freezing can also significantly disrupt transport. Can the minister advise, either now or possibly in writing, that it is not his responsibility what contingency plans Scottish Water has in place should similar weather conditions prevail this year? Can he assure the chamber that Scottish Water is also involved in winter resilience planning, along with local authorities in Transport Scotland? Scottish Water, of course, is engaged with the wider resilience measures and contingency plans, and will have their own levels of preparedness. I could only do that question justice by writing to Elaine Murray with the full details of what Scottish Water has in place. My statement today is primarily about transport, but I am sure that you will be reassured with what Scottish Water has in place. I will now write to the member with that detail. Rob Gibson, followed by Mike McKenzie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I was tempted to find out what network rail meant by additional hand-held snow clearance equipment. However, a bellio, is it ready to ensure that any disruption to rail services, especially long-distance routes, is minimised and that rapid replacement transport is on hand to get travellers to their ticketed destinations without undue delay? Is network rail actually well-staffed to tackle problems on isolated rail routes? Of such definitions, I do not have the civil service Q&A here that covers that. I suspect that it is a shovel or something that comes in handy to politicians from time to time. On the more serious point, of course, the ScotRail Alliance is looking at getting people to their destination and where rail is disrupted. We are considering how customers are treated as part of that. That includes information being reasonable about alternatives. It is not just critical mass of number of people. Of course, those in the more peripheral or remote areas have that support provided. That is part of the strategic planning that has been undertaken by Network Rail and ScotRail. The minister has already touched on the subject, but he will know that landslides have been a particular problem in the past few years. I think that the rest will be thankful. I know that the Government has made significant investment in the past few years. I wonder if the minister could just touch on that and give a bit more detail about what investment has been taking place recently to stop landslides happening in the future, as far as possible, and also to give some reassurance, if we can, that resources are on hand to deal with the spoil from landslides and get it cleared on the road, opening properly and functioning properly again as quickly as possible. My first priority is to ensure that the area remains open for business. That is why I have put effort into ensuring that the diversion routes are maintained such as the old military road. That will help us and with ferry use as well to have continuity of access, albeit through a diversion and a detour if the main roads are impacted through landslides. In terms of trying to mitigate and minimise the risk from landslides, the netting has been put in place, which is capturing the debris in a very effective way. The incidents this year have been not as drastic as in previous years. There is, of course, forestry planting as well. There are geotechnical studies, which allow us to predict where incidents may occur, and there are specific physical measures going into place where there have been incidents in the past. That is a preventative approach to the commitment around continuity of access and multimillion-pound investment to try and support that area as well as sharing information to ensure that people know what is happening on the road network if there are any further incidents. There are expectations on the operating company to get things moving as quickly as possible and if diversion is required, it is operational within an hour. That is why I have had the pleasure of chairing the task force to ensure that we are taking all possible actions that we can to ensure that there is continuity of access even in the event of further landslides. I would also like to thank the minister of advanced sight of his statement as well. Yesterday, I launched the Equal Opportunities Committee report on age and social isolation, in which we documented the harmful effects of loneliness. What is the Government going to ensure that its advice gets to all corners of Scotland and, particularly to those who live alone, those who do not have access to internet, Twitter, etc, and do not have a network of family and friends to rely on at this time of year? Of course, we work with our partners to ensure that communication is shared across the traditional methods—that is through community councils, seniors forums and the range of advice that is there through voluntary organisations and third sector organisations. In addition to what was referenced around social media, TV, Twitter and the new media as well, and traditional websites, there is also the telephone advisory service. I think that there is a range of media that can be used to share the Government's message. When it comes to the most vulnerable in our society, the front line is to understand who those people are, be it energy customers, social work clients or the more vulnerable are identified so that, in the event of any sort of incident that we are targeting, those are most in need. I think that there is a range of measures in place that should give the member that reassurance, but we are not just relying on new media, but the beauty of new media is that we can get information out in real time now, which can advise people what to do as it is happening. That is a major transformation for the better over the last year or two. The Twitter feed reaching 100,000 people is sharing the live updates as they relate to the transport network. If there are any further suggestions as to how we can prove communication, I am all ears. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The Minister can pin back his ears, because I want to suggest that perhaps a 25-year-old technology message texting is one of the most effective ways of communicating with people. Of course, almost all fixed landlines can receive message texts, which are read to them. Will the minister follow the lead that the flood line system has that is very good at alerting people at flood risks in looking at the most effective use of texts and, indeed, using the data service that is part of FM radio? Traditional methods work, too. I suspect that Stuart Stevenson probably invented it, which is why he is promoting it to me. I am more than happy to look into that. Actually, the ferry service, Stuart, actually uses it already to communicate directly with customers so that they can update them, recognising that not everyone has the internet reception. Text messaging and traditional phones of course can be a useful form of communication. I am happy to explore for further updates. In light of past half-winter, particularly in 2010, when the M8, M9 and A80 came to a standstill, what assurances can the minister provide to my constituents across central Scotland that the road networks will remain open should there be a repeat of the unprecedented bad weather that we have seen in the past? Can the minister outline what contingency plans are in place for any disruptive ScotRail services during the winter period and whether passengers will be compensated for any cancel services? I would rather focus on trying to minimise disruption rather than compensation, but I understand the reason for that. Also, if there is major disruption to transport networks, get the country moving as quickly as possible. Last year's rail disruption was not down to the snow. It was a high winds because that caused trees and other debris and garages and so on. If you live close to a railway, be careful about the garden equipment, trampolines and everything else. We had to ensure that the railways were safe so that the trains could operate safely. That was the reason for last year's suspension. I tried to undertake oversight to ensure that the rail system was reopened as quickly as possible. Yes, there is a reassurance around that, but safety must always come first. How have we improved things since the incidents of 2010 into 11? There is better communication and better understanding of welfare needs by all our partnership organisations, more on-road response to incidents of provision and availability in our trunk roads response teams around welfare issues, such as food or blankets or connections, to ensure that the hard shoulders are maintained for emergency vehicles and other resilience vehicles. With all that, pre-treatment of the motorways in the trunk roads and treatment, whilst events are occurring, and identification, what were the hotspots or indeed the cold spots from last time and ensuring that they are addressed. There is a range of actions to try to minimise disruption. If there is disruption, address those welfare issues. Of course, the multi-million pound investment into the roads network is improving the quality of our infrastructure, but in terms of ensuring that communication is out there, we can also give good real-time information as to what is happening on the transport network. If people want to plan ahead and check congestion on the roads and see what incidents have happened, then I am sure that they can avoid disruption into the future. I hope that the members reassured with those range of actions on how we have learned the lessons from that incident in 2010-11. Thank you Minister. That concludes the statement and questions on winter transport resilience, and we now turn to the next item of business this afternoon, which is a debate on motion number 14614, in the name of Angela Constance, on the Education Scotland Bill. I would be grateful if those members who wish to participate in this debate could press the


Watching trees go up in flames is traumatic because forests are beautiful and valuable and it takes a long time to grow a new one. Certainly wildfire kills many trees and shrubs and burned areas may show the scars for many years. Some habitats are destroyed and animals have to move. However, many of our native plant and animal species have a remarkable ability to regenerate and the process begins almost immediately after a fire. Lodgepole pine, for example, ensures its continued existence by producing enormous amounts of seed. Seed from trees that are not killed quickly blow into the ash. If even a small percentage of these seeds germinate and live through the seedling stage, there will be thousands of new healthy lodgepole saplings within a few years. Some cones of lodgepole and other pine trees are very tightly packed and full of resin. If these are not burned, the heat of the fire actually helps them open and the seeds are released at just the right time and place. Another strategy employed by aspens willows and some other trees and shrubs is to re-sprout from root suckers. An aspen grove is usually just one tree with many genetically identical trunks that are connected underground. When the tree crowns burn, fire actually stimulates the aspen to produce new sprouts from the roots to renew the stand. Aspens reproduce by sprouting more commonly than by seed. Both lodgepole and aspen are increasingly susceptible to disease and insects as they grow older. If fire occurs in patches at 80 to 100 year intervals, it actually reduces disease and insect infestations, making a healthier forest. Many natural phenomena such as wildfire cause short-term damage to individuals, but have long-term benefits to living systems. I'm Gene Gade of the University of Wyoming Cooperative Extension Service.