Hey, thanks Lauren and thanks to the 168 of you who are joining today So today I want to follow up on Trey's discussion and kind of dive deeper and give you all They have an experience of how user experience has been applied in my research And then I will also apply the concept of user experience to the design of wayfinding elements And in particular, we're going to see how the Dutch have innovated in their wayfinding design And how wayfinding can then be applied in the North American context So let's start with a bit of a background, right? So Lauren has distributed this earlier. There's one video here and two papers That I've authored and this kind of will serve as a background for my talk So go ahead take a look at those papers and if you're if you're not really following along in this talk You can always go back and just rewatch the YouTube video Especially those of you who are joining us on the recording of this webinar. Okay So it's really good to have you here and today I'm going to extend on what Trey has already introduced to you about the hierarchy of needs and This hierarchy of needs kind of illustrates what What we are looking for as bicycle Infrastructure designers and I would argue also as urban planners, right? At the top you see awe and enjoyment and reliability and the bottom you see the basic requirements of safety and security So what I will argue in this talk is that as we move towards the top of the hierarchy as we get towards awe and a Good experience and something very pleasant and enjoyable. We have to move towards more qualitative methods We go from a science of design which provides basic functionality and security to an art of design and that's perhaps something that urban designers are very comfortable with and UX designers of as Trey has mentioned is also quite comfortable with but maybe something that could hinder the technical more technically minded of You you on this webinar today So let's let's see how these two connect and then how art and engineering can kind of work together With both research and practice to make bicycle infrastructure better so Here's the proposition that I want to make in transport planning. We have a severe problem of a to B ism Right and what does a to B is a mean? It means that we assume that the origin and destination matter more than the journey itself We assume that the journey has negative utility But that is kind of odd. Isn't it that the journey has negative utility? What if it is awe and enjoyment on the journey doesn't that mean the journey has positive utility? How does that get reflected in our transport models? Doesn't that kind of throw a wrench into what we've been discussing or the model of which we think transport works? So I want to discuss that a bit further about this idea in both research and practice and the first Item I want to bring to it. Your attention is the idea of preferences and motivation Okay, so you see highlighted in orange your preferences and motivation. What's different about these two concepts? I would argue that the difference is that preferences can be obtained from The actions of people for example, if you pick bike route a over bike route B You're revealing a preference, but motivation is not so easy to study We may know precisely what cyclists prefer in general by doing a large sample GPS study for example But why they do what they do is going to forever remain a black box And that is the human conundrum if we will we cannot mind read how other cyclists feel or how people pick their roots We just know the results, but how do we design for this? How do we design for motivation? And what can we use? Motivation and the idea of a black box to increase our understanding of bicycle infrastructure So Let me take a stab from a research perspective, right right now cycling research is Currently divided between revealed and stated preference, right reveal stated preference Revealed preference is something like a GPS study so a GPS study for example would take Your cell phone which is what everyone carries these days and and use an app on your cell phone to take like a thousand roots for example, and we see that out of these thousand 600 take root B 200 take root C and maybe a hundred takes root B, okay, so that doesn't quite add up to a thousand, but this is this is the left part of this chart, right? What about stated preferences up here on the right side? What what what is it here about stated preferences that makes it so difficult? So if you see at the top with the AB test we can ask people about the scenarios, right? so what they would do if they could which they aren't at the moment because they're answering a question on a piece of paper and and we're trying to figure out what is revealed preference good for and what kind of Things that stated preferences are good for and my review is that reveal preferences really Kind of reveals people's choices and preferences But as we move towards stated preference the real value in doing stated preference research Is actually in getting at people's motivation So in going beyond whether it's a to b because that's been covered by our GPS studies already and going more into Scenarios and asking people why they prefer what they prefer, right? If GPS study enroaches on the territory of revealed preference, then we should be actually taking stated preference to Answer our deep layer and more fundamental questions about why people cycle right and what makes for a good cycling experience So what do we already know from GPS studies? We can already kind of have a hunch and I'm going to use the researchers of Joseph brooch, then for Dale and the John Glebe here in their paper To kind of show you what GPS studies have already shown us and this was already done, you know before the widespread adoptions of Smartphones of December 2012, right? and and they state right Using a hundred and forty four one thousand four hundred forty nine non-exercise utilitarian trips. They've estimated a Root choice model, right and the findings suggest that cyclists are sensitive to the effects of distance turning frequency slope Right intersection control and traffic volumes in addition cyclists appear to place relatively high value on off-street Bike paths enhance neighborhood bikeway of the traffic common features and bridge facilities I would say that none of you on this call are very surprised at the results of these GPS studies And if you're a cyclist, they probably won't surprise you either, right? So if you have the experience of cycling and you know What bad infrastructure is it's not difficult to infer what good infrastructure is it's But perhaps what's more interesting to me as a field of research is the motivation, right? Is the motivation of why people prefer what they prefer and that's something that we'll get into in a moment So let's go back to our slides here. Okay So GPS I would argue that we're looking to innovate in the field of outside in Sorry inside out methodologies, right? So we can observe people in their natural environment on the move But we can also look inside out ask people what they prefer Um, and and how do we extract that information in a meaningful way, right? So people may say I like trees along my route. Okay. How do we transfer late? I like trees and greenery into the design of bicycle infrastructure after all, there's a variety of ways to arrange bikes Trees and and and flowers and and the bike path. So this is where we get into a bit more of a design challenge Right, it's not so easy to ask exactly the elements that people prefer Okay, so this is where it the idea bicycle highways got me interested right the european cycling Federation says that bicycle highways should be at least three miles long, uh, 10 feet of one Directional 13 feet of bi-directional Uh separated from you know motorized traffic and everything else listed here But these are really just necessary but not sufficient conditions for a great cycling experience It doesn't tell you how to odd people how to make cycling a great experience. It just tells you what the basics are So here's the basics again in in a diagram form, right? Basics I want to focus us though to the more Going beyond the basics the more qualitative and you know Ewing and handy Who does urban design research? They kind of call this like what what are the Undefinable features, right? What's what's the remainder? After we do the basics and I think The the answer to this I think the answer to this question comes in the users Right by studying people going from inside out. What is important for people who use bikes and as tray have said well, this is On the bottom right In terms of what are the user preferences of different groups, right? Okay, so how do we design bicycle highways? This is what I found interesting This is from European practitioners, but it might as well be in north america too. I mean I Uh, I I grew up in canada and I've made numerous visits to the u.s. Right, so We're probably a highway society. So we know how to build highways really well um But uh, what kind of logic are we employing is the logic that we use to build highways the same logic that we use to design an urban street And if that is so then we have to kind of figure out and decide In which logic do we want to build bicycle infrastructure? Do you want to build it according to social logic or traffic logic? Do we want to move from people from a to b? Or do we want to design for a good experience? Right, and it makes a key difference in how we conceptualize this Is it an art or is it mechanics? Right, is it a laminar flow applied to clover leafs or is it something else? So it's bicycle infrastructure like this But scaled down Right, we can build 50 60 feet highways. So is this scaled down or is it more like urban design? so And if you were to ask an architect, right, right? This is kind of the the sneak q and a is that might be coming up. It is what what does it take to build a beautiful building? um, I would argue that You know, if you look in the design literature, it's someone has said it's a tension between, you know, uniformity and And variation, right? That's something that's what creates great architecture, right? These These windows here are uniform, but they also have their variations on the theme You know and and that's very different from what this is, right? This is this is uniformity with no Not much attention paid to aesthetics Unless you look back into the 1930s into the the parkways movement, right when bicycles Sorry when highways were being built for recreational purposes So what is it more like now as I advance to the next slide for those of you who watch the youtube video already You'll know this next slide is as I ask you this what is of the of the previous two slides What is this more like? right and it's literally a bicycle highway, which um, if this is the utopia that we're designing for then I would argue this is a bit problematic because I personally Would not want to cycle here, right? And if we're designing bicycle highways like this would definitely use the a to b logic and this is thanks to the uh, bicycle highway that they are they were building in 2014 I believe it's now finished in the ryan region in, uh, germany. So they're by the ryan river so Let's look a bit into what I've just said applied Right, let's talk about wayfinding. So this is I want to kind of give you a practical Example of what I'm trying to talk about and yes, that's me Yeah So, uh, we went we did some studies, uh, a piece of research over the summer of 2014 with this question in mind Right, what makes users identify a cycle highway and what world is wayfinding play in e-bikes user? the user e-bike users cycle highway experience because as we know that this from the sales data that in fact users are now sorry e-bikes constitute the More sales than conventional bicycles. I believe that is in terms of dollars Not units, but still that's that means the bulk of new revenue is coming from the sale e-bikes So we should probably kind of figure out how these can These new vehicles can be integrated into our existing infrastructure, right? So this is the question and we set out to, uh, answer this question using qualitative methods, right? We'll come back to the findings in a bit But I want to give you, you know, give it away before before I have to sit through all this So here are the the main findings before I get started. We'll come back to them Okay, what did we do? Uh, we we we took a 11 mile Bicycle highway connecting these two cities in the Netherlands They're about 11 miles apart. We thought it was great because that's about The the maximum distance that people kind of are willing to travel by bike If you're a commuter, that's equal to about one hour on a e-bike And this was a bicycle highway that was being developed. So some parts of it are Up to standard and then as of the current day, I think the whole thing has now been signed. So and completed infrastructure wise We we did a qualitative interview. So on the go we did We interviewed people as they were riding 12 e-bike users, you know impairs And we also looked at the social aspects. So if they were cycling together How how they interact with each other were they were they able to talk along the way? For example, they talk into each other then distract them from, you know Wayfinding elements, etc, etc. So those were all kind of the things that we were curious about Right, uh, if you're curious about dutch bicycle Infrastructure wayfinding. This is the current standards The whole kind of the part the purpose of this research was also to develop new standards for You know, basically cyclists who are going faster So these these will be typical of what you'll see in the Netherlands And we took two case studies. So so one was uh, this thing at the top here, which is Some are this shapely kind of sign and then the second one is this You know more square kind of things we took half the route Uh was one concept and then the other half was the other concept We kind of we're also trying to figure out not only do you prefer the older the new one But also in between the two new ones, which one do you prefer? right and This kind of also forms its own branding strategy in a way, right so um, so One set is on the left another set is on the right and these would be used together right as as a whole And uh, basically we found that people overwhelmingly prefer the new signage. Um, we'll take a brief tour in a in just a second But in addition, they also preferred this one, you know the the one on the right the concept Now so the concept plus was more alike The old one and the concepts now was more like uh, it was more innovative. So I think people preferred the one on the right and you know So let's before we take you to the conclusions Um, I want to give you like a brief tour of kind of what we're talking about since You know, we're all stuck inside. We'd rather be outside. So let's see if we I can bring you along on a brief tour right here If you look on the right here, you see these little arrows that's on the bottom So these are like the three warning signs. Um before you make a left. So so Forward there's going to be a left turn And then these these three signs kind of warn you before it's going to happen And then as you move a bit more then you get to this warning sign, which if I play the video There it is on the right, right? You see that then that tells you which way to go So you have a series of preparations kind of like, uh, what you would see on on on a highway, right? You get some warning before you actually go to your exit Pause again up there All right, that's how small it was and how how much higher up it was So it's very not at eye level if you're cyclist Um, and it's not very easy to see so I find with the old sign that you really have to kind of stop to Really squint and see what's there, right?  And this is a low traffic Traffic calm street, right in the countryside and then, you know, here's some paving forest And then you get into more of the urban areas Right with trees and stuff and you can see very few cars. There's no cars at all right in in this whole um This whole journey yet um, and then you transition back to Uh, dedicated bicycle infrastructure, so it's very seamless Along the journey, but it's it's typically the way finding and the transitions that make the whole thing kind of work Right and now you're on a colored edge lane road Um, and then you know as we get close to the city the end of this journey and then I'll wrap this up So a green line and then we get kind of to a bridge and then this is much more urban you can see um So, uh, what are some takeaways from this and then I'll hand it back to lauren for q and a Some some takeaways, you know design matters, right design matters Signs alone as you can see the infrastructure kind of it is there, but it's not coherent I would argue signs alone go a long way uh, education is key, right and Clear cycling infrastructure, you know improved cyclists level of relaxation So that's something interesting, right not something revealed in gps But it's something that you can get quite accurately if you ask people along the way how they feel at each point So, uh, let's wrap this up by returning to this pyramid, right? So we have the maslow hierarchy of needs, uh, Right, uh, where we started with and then alfonso adapted this to walking needs. Um, kind of conceptualize this as limits, right on the bottom versus uh versus urban form on the top, right? And then I kind of was playing with this idea that you get from like quantitative limits to qualitative Enablers, right? So you kind of if if something is You know 50 kilometers away. It's hard to make the argument that you'll cycle there Um, if if the bike path is like 50% longer than you know the similar driving route It's hard to convince people to ride there if it's not safe, right then, uh, it's only the The fearless will go And as you move up the pyramid, it becomes harder to deal with right like for example, what if we're trying to design something pleasurable How how do we calculate for that? Right, and then here is overlaid onto, uh, the bicycle user experience scheme Going from I think almost the kind of the same idea right from basic needs over to to qualitative indicators and qualitative ways of talking about bicycle experience So, uh going back to your original question, right, which was the original statement was asking about How you feel about cycling I wanted to bring back up the mentee which is uh, what you answered in the beginning And as you can see right you answered safety comfort connectivity all ages separation You'll access Some of these actually the the big points that you've mentioned, you know safety is a funny one We try and quantify it, but really In terms of human psychology, it's really much more about uh, how safe people feel right like airplanes are relatively safe But it's it's the stuff of nightmares, right? So and I think you know cycling can be definitely made Quantitatively safer, but it's you know much more difficult to measure that the near misses that cause people to to fear the the environment that they're in So I'll uh, I'll wrap up and leave you something to think about while we go to q&a with Lauren Thanks for your time and talk to you in a bit


Hello, my name is Martin Egenover, I am the inventor of Summit and today I want to give you an introduction into Summit. So let's start with the agenda. What is Summit? Summit is a help desk and support platform for satisfied customer service. Summit is open and fast like your service should be. Summit is based on many years of experience with ticketing systems. As side note, I'm also the inventor of OTRS and the meaning of Summit comes from the Bavarian dialect together via stronger. So it means together with the customer we find a solution. Some numbers. The initial release of Summit was in 2016. Today we count over 540 downloads via trending open source project in category Ruby on GitHub. The first contribution of the initial release was just five hours after initial release. We count 249 pull requests and the last number where we proud of the first award we received just four weeks after the initial release and the second award we got 16 weeks after initial release. The key features Summit is a native web app. It feels almost like a desktop app because it's a native web application and the application itself runs in the browser and we use modern JavaScript in HTML5. We have a super fast full text search which also includes attachments. So you can easily find tickets by searching content of attachments. Every resource can be reached via REST API by design. This reason is easy because it's a native web application which is just using the REST API and web sockets but for you it means you easily can create integrations with other services because the REST API is available by design. And last but not least Summit is open source. The core features in the ticketing area we support autosave for tickets. We have an easy data historization. We have we support escalations and SLAs. We have collision detection. This means no answering tickets with two agents at the same time on different answers. We support custom overviews based on ticket attributes. We support individual fields for tickets, customers and users. We have a nice customer chat widget. We have custom text templates which can be used via shortcuts. And we have integration to social media networks like Twitter and Facebook. How about the installation? The installation is a quite easy process. We provide OS packages for CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Debian, Ubuntu and SLAS. Databases we support Postgres, MySQL and MariaDB and as search engines we support Elastic Search. By the way, this is the reason why the Summit search is so unbelievable fast. The installation itself are four commands and you see it's no big hack. You do not need to install additional libraries or something else. So it can be done within five or six minutes. If you want to run Elastic Search, which we really recommend, you have to use to execute another seven commands. And after this seven commands, you have a full integration of Elastic Search into Summit. So it's also done quite easy. After the installation is done, Summit will say hello with a welcome screen and in this welcome screen, you can decide if you want to set up a new system or if you want to migrate from another system like OTRS or Xendesk. Yeah, so let's get further, working with the app. So the structure of Summit is on the left side, on the left top, you have a global search. Besides on the right side of this box, you have the Summit notifications. So important here is you get the notifications in Summit itself. So you have the possibility to still receive it via email, but you also can remove it. So no more bombing of notifications via email below. We have the dashboard and the overviews. Overviews are some kind of to-do lists for agents. So they have lists of tickets where they can work on it. And next to overviews, we have the Summit Tubs. I will go into this Tubs a little bit deeper right after this screen. And on the right side, we have a typical ticket view, a typical content view. In this case, it's a ticket in detail view. In the middle, we have the articles and write the ticket attributes. But let's have a look deeper to the Summit Tubs. So to support the agent to have the life easier for him, we support multiple Tubs at the same time so the agent can switch between tickets and can start answering the first ticket. And in the meantime, he needs to respond to something else or somebody else has a question. So the agent can switch between multiple objects and at the same time. The agent can reorder these Tubs like the agent want. Unsafe changes are saved on the server side. So no more losing data when a browser is crashed or it's also possible to change the whole device. For example, you can look in from home and you can continue working where you stopped at work and nothing was losing. If somebody else is changing an object, we get pulsing icons on changes. So the agent is seeing if somebody else has changed the ticket and he did not see the ticket in the meantime. Changes are pushed immediately to the client. So we have some let's call real time functionality. So no page reload or something else is needed. If somebody else is changing something, the other clients will see it immediately. And last but not least, we introduced drink traffic lights to support the agent. We found out it's a good way to show him the initial or the current state of a ticket by using colors. And let's go through this colors to give you a short impression. So we have the orange color. This means the ticket is new or open and somebody needs to work on it. So somebody needs to see what is the next step and need to set the next steps for this ticket. We have the gray, dark gray color. This means the ticket is pending reminder or pending close, but this time is not reached till now. So no further actions for the agent. It's important. No further actions or attention is needed right now. We have the red color, which means the ticket is escalated. This is some kind of warning. Somebody need to work immediately on this ticket to cancel this escalation. And the last color is green. Green means the ticket is closed. No for the agent. It means no further action is needed and he can go read this ticket or go through whatever, but the case is already closed. Here is the ticket details. Here it is important in the content area in the middle part we see the different articles which are representing the communication. On the right side we see three tabs and the first tab we see the ticket attributes and the next one you would see the customer information and on the last one the organization information of the customer. A typical customer detail view looks like this. So you have the ticket, the customer attributes and below you have the tickets of this customer. Here we distinguish between open and closed tickets and as you already know now this customer is quite relaxing because only closed tickets are available for this user and you see this by the color green so the agent is relaxing by watching this screen. The next one is the organization in detail. So several customers you can combine to an organization or department. Here is similar, you see the attributes of the organization, send the members of the organization and below you see the tickets of this organization. How about the full tech search which I was mentioning? So when we published or when we released Summit version 1 we did a short research. How about to get an impression about this good full tech search of Summit. So we installed several systems, several competitors and we created tickets in it and then we measured the time and you see if the installation is a small installation with 50,000 tickets it's similar, you see Summit is fast but other competitors also fast but if the system is growing and you have a bigger system like with 500,000 tickets and the database then is about 54 gigabytes then you see the usual average helpdesk system will take about 40 seconds and Summit is still delivering search results within 4 seconds. A short overview about the key features in the UI here for the agents. Here you see the overviews in detail. As I already mentioned overviews are some kind of to-do lists where the agent will find tickets where the agent need to work on it. These overviews can be created individually and also the attributes and the ordering and so on. The naming you can define by yourself. Another nice feature is the permanent markup so it's like a text marker. You can select text within an article and you can mark it so the use case is that another agent will find important information of one ticket or one article easier. Here a really powerful feature it's called text modules so when you reply to a customer you can insert text modules by using double point double point and then the search phrase so you will see a selection of text modules which are matching your search phrase and if you by enter or using click on this text module you can take over this text module to the response. So for power agents you see 10 seconds just keep what clicking and then a nice formatted answer is created and sent out to the customer. By the way this is also a nice way for technical people which are not so usually not so familiar with writing nice text but with this text modules also technical people can consume and write nice reading nice readable texts to customers. Also we also support macros so a short use case if you connected a mailbox to summit you will get spam emails someday and spam emails usually get closed the owner is assigned to me and I take it for a spam. So with this macros you can execute several sequences action sequences sequences on this ticket by executing this macros so it will save time for agents and if you execute this macros the state is set automatically the owner is set automatically and the tech is assigned to this ticket automatically. So it's time-saving functionalities so to give the agent the time to work on the real tickets and not on on this spam tickets for example. Yeah here screenshot of the individual fields so as I already mentioned in the admin interface you can manage or create individual fields for tickets users organizations and groups typical individual field is a category of a ticket to see what kind of tickets you have and if you do a reporting later you can improve your services or your time which you spend or for example you find out your documentation is bad. So it's a good tool ticket category to find out how to improve your services. As next I want to show you setting up channels. I want to show you the integration of an email channel. So here it is important we do auto-discovery and we support IMAP, POP3 and SMTP. So if you go to the admin interface to the channels area and to the email area you can you just need to enter your email address and your password and usually Summit will detect automatically detect the server settings and usually it works on 95% but some times it will not work because it's not possible to detect the server settings automatically then you need to enter your settings by yourself, your server settings but usually you can connect your mailbox within two or three minutes and your email box and you can start using this email box really fast. The next channel which and the last one which I want to show you today is the chat channel and here we found out that we need to take care on four different topics which we want to improve and the first one is integration. So we decided to have an easy integration so we have done it via a JavaScript snippet. You will see it later. The next one we got feedback from users that it's a bad UX for showing a chat widget but if you click on the chat widget you get the message oh sorry nobody's available for chatting please leave a message. So we decided to not show the chat widget when no agent is available for chatting. The next one was the users complained about long waiting times so with Summit chat your customers will not have long waiting times because we have each agent can say if the agent is available for chatting and if an agent is not responding Summit will set this agent automatically to not available so he will not receive further chats which means that you can reduce the waiting times just by misleading information because the agent is not available until he's gone to lunch or whatever and nobody knows about that but Summit will recognize this and will remove the availability of the agent for chats. And last but not least many customers complained about the chat widget feels like a fortune body in the web application so for this we designed or implemented the auto design mode so Summit is creating a nice looking design by automatically and how it works you can see here if you want to integrate the chat widget on your website you go to the Summit admin interface to the channels and then to the chat you immediately see a preview this preview is done by using the domain of the current user of the email address domain and Summit is grabbing the web page of this domain and is using the auto design mode and shows you how the chat widget would look like so usually Summit is doing a really good job here but if for some reason the colors are not the colors which you want you can for example select other colors of your web page here and also the kind how the design is and so on is detected by Summit automatically but how to get this auto designed chat widget now on your website this is also quite easy on the second part of this admin area you see what you have to do you just need this JavaScript snippet and you need to copy it to your web page source content and then the chat is available and for this auto design mode we are a little bit proud so in the implementation phase we did it with important 100 web pages on the world and here a short little impression how it looks like and all of this chat which is are designed or created by auto design mode so you usually you can take it just one to one and paste it to your website and it will look like a native element of your website yeah now as you may already heard there is also a next cloud integration of Summit I want to give you a short overview here so if you install the next cloud integration on your next cloud environment you have the possibility to have your summit notifications in your next cloud dashboard and also in the normal classic notifications so if you work in this next cloud UA and you see and summit you get a summit notification you also can see it here and can react to your tickets easier or faster and also important it's also possible to search for tickets by using the next cloud UA so if there is a search provider implemented and if you search for searching content not only the next cloud documents are used also the summit backend is used and you see probably what tickets are related to your search stuff yeah now I want to say thank you I wish you a nice day and yeah hopefully see you soon and say and hopefully I see you soon as summit user so have a nice day


I was praying last night and then again just as we were praying right here, what we're doing here I think, I know that I need, I know that we need, I would suggest that the church needs. That as I look around and I still get to travel quite a bit, I meet with a lot of people, a lot of priests, more than anything, we just need to know that the Lord is, you know, that he's in relationship with us, that he empowers us. My concern is sometimes I think we get caught up in, I don't know, the debates and the arguments, we're actually going to talk a little bit about this. The intellectual part of our faith, which is important, we're going to send here to university, it's obviously important and essential, but it's also something we can hide behind because it's safer. I was struck by the hymn that we were singing at the beginning here that we run to the Father that we're not going to hide. And in a danger I think oftentimes as we who are in ministry of the church, we are deacons and priests, we hide behind things and we can hide behind our ministry, we combine behind who we are as priests or hide behind a particular doctrine or in, and I think the Lord wants us to be able to move away through that and come to that. So I'm very grateful for that. Amen. Okay, St. Francis of Assisi says, if I should happen, I'm going to go ahead and do this. Stop laughing. Literally, all right, I'm much older than 40, but the morning I turned 40, all right. Mid-morning, I was kind of out of headache. I said, I think I'm going to take some aspirin. I looked at the bottle, I couldn't see how many aspirins. I said, like I had one good morning and then after 40 it really is downhill, all right. So if I should happen at the same time to come upon any, any saint coming from heaven and some little poor priest, I would first show honor to the priest and hurry more quickly to kiss his hands. For I would say to the saint, hey, St. Lawrence, wait, his hands may handle the word of life and possess the Eucharist, which is more such as the love of St. Francis for the Eucharist. The Christ who emptied himself and gave himself for us, I alluded on Monday night that for, for Francis the greatest feast is Christmas. He just couldn't imagine a God who would take flesh, you know. So there's a beautiful image in Gretcio. If you've not been to Gretcio, it's where Francis began the nativity scene. This image, an individual in the congregation, had that Jesus was asleep. Francis believed that if we could actually see what the Lord had done, that it would impact us. So he does the nativity. And this evening they were praying and this person had this image of Jesus asleep and everybody was trying to wake him and Francis would go and he would take the Christ child and the Christ child would awaken when Francis took him. His ministry used to awaken, right to awaken in the hearts of believers who Jesus is. Francis would be in a cave up north in Nisezi and he would be there and he'd be quiet and he would be wrestling with his brokenness and his sinfulness. Francis would say, and it wasn't just hyper verbally, he would say that he was the greatest of sinners. And what he couldn't imagine is that this God would love him in the midst of his brokenness and in the midst of his sinfulness. The God would eventually come and to take on flesh, enter into the messiness of his world, the messiness that was the human existence and the human condition and that God would enter that. So for Francis, though he was in the form of God, Jesus didn't deem equality with God, something regressed, rather he emptied himself. He empties himself and takes on flesh and Francis just couldn't imagine this.   Father Contra LeMace of the Papal Preacher would say that one of the greatest gifts that the Franciscan theologian has given to the church is the image of God being humble, the humility of God. It's not something we talk about.  He empties himself and takes the form of a slave being born in the likeness of men, likeness of us. Francis just had a really hard time reconciling that, that God would be so humble. If that wasn't enough that that same God would, again, pour himself out, offer himself on the cross. So Francis would celebrate multiple lengths every year, as if one isn't quite enough, right? Again, this invitation for him to focus and to reflect and to pray and discern on the cross. Francis would be walking along and he would see two sticks on the road that were in the shape of a cross and Francis would stop and worship. He would use the Tau Cross as the image for the early friars. He would sign his name with the edge of the Tau Cross. Again, it's the humility of God. He just, you couldn't imagine, first off, a God that would take flesh. That was, that was pretty remarkable, but that same God would take upon himself the sins of us all and this Almighty, all-holy, all-powerful God would allow himself to be humble, to literally be humiliated, to be stripped naked, right? To be placed on the cross for everybody, for just people walking by to gawk, into mock, into make fun of. I mean, that in itself reveals something to us about who God is. I've said multiple times, if I was God, if you have nothing to be grateful for, be grateful that I'm not, amen?  Well, actually, from my perspective, I would love it. Nobody else would love it. My patience, not so much. Like, I mean, I'd be probably fairly precious, sometimes 70, but that's it, right? You just couldn't imagine a God who would go to the cross. Again, who would humble himself in that manner, who would allow himself to be humiliated. I'm sure last night as we were praying this, this image of Hebrews that the author of Hebrews presents about Jesus who's able to identify with us because of his weakness, right? It's not an image that we reflect on. We largely see weakness as something to be overcome, but what I think Jesus reveals to us is weakness should be embraced. We equate weakness with sinfulness, and those two things are profoundly different. The part of the human condition is being weak. It just is. And Jesus takes on weakness. He becomes limited. He becomes humiliated. And again, for Francis, this was just unimaginable. And maybe finally, the icing on the cake for Francis is that the same God who pours himself out and takes on flesh and allows himself to even further be poured out and goes to the cross and is crucified for us, that that same God will once again pour himself out to us in the Eucharist. And this was the final straw for Francis. I mean, talk about humility, that God would humble himself and take what appears to be, looks like bread, and he manifests himself in that most holy Eucharist. This is why Francis said, even if it's the worst sinner in the village, we honor the priest because the priest, the Lord uses through the Holy Spirit, the priest, to transform bread and wine into his body, newest blood, such as the humility of God. And we've all been in experiences, I'm sure, that we've been with individuals, parishioners, people that just don't quite get it. I remember I was doing a retreat. I was on net, so I wasn't not ordained. I was a kid. This teenager comes in to receive the Eucharist and he was walking back to his pew and he was acting like it was a quarter and he was flipping it in his hand. It was not my finest moment. Francis would say, a wonderful loftiness and stupendous dignity. Oh, sublime humility. Oh, humble sublimity. The Lord of the universe, God, Son of God, so humbles himself for our salvation. He hides himself under an ordinary piece of bread. Brothers, look at the humility of God and pour out your heart before him. Brothers, look at the humility of God and pour out your heart before him. If the Lord pours out his heart for us, how can we not pour out our heart for him? And this is what we celebrate in the Mass, and this is the church is inviting us to take a look at over these next many years, the Eucharist and Jesus' presence in the Eucharist and in the mass and the celebration of the mass and adoration. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God becomes present to us in the community gathered and the priests and the Word, of course, and all of that, but in the Eucharist in a preeminent way. My concern is that we live in a church right now that the Eucharist is becoming the battleground, literally. Which side are you on? What kind of music do you like? What are you going to wear? What language are you going to speak? What way are you going to face? It becomes this, it's a huge, I think it's actually fairly significant and impactful and devious attack of the evil one. That place that we're supposed to be most divided, brothers, we are oftentimes becoming most, and we're supposed to be most united, becoming most divided. Louis de Montfort says the corruption of that which is best is worst. So if we can corrupt the way we see the unity and the beauty of Christ and we forget what's taking place there, we begin to fight over these things. And I've had a couple of experiences to be able to be in places where the Eucharist isn't celebrated very often and there's something really profound about that. I shared with the group at the Power and Purpose Conference and experience in Africa and being able to give communion in Africa, but I've also had a number of times been able to go to China and work with the Underground Church. And it'd be with a group of men and women who don't get to celebrate the Eucharist very often. I remember one time we had a Eucharistic adoration which is very commonplace for us. It is not commonplace for them. And I had a procession of the Blessed Sacrament which we do all the time on campus at the Holy Hours and at our conferences. Again, this is something that we are very, very familiar and common to me. They'd never had an experience like this before. And I would say that again, from our Western perspective and from what took place was, I don't know, I was going to use the word scandalous. That maybe is too strong of a word, but it was chaos. I mean, people were gathering around and they were starting to pull on my vestments and wanting to touch the monstrance and to touch the Eucharist. And I'm sure that there were liturgists that are here. It's like, what are you doing? You can't do that. You can't. And just kind of going crazy because it just looks so chaotic. And I will say that it was kind of, it wasn't frightening. It was just overwhelming because there was so many people and they were just kind of gathering around. I felt like I was a halfback trying to make it through the goal line, right? And there's all these people. And finally, and it's, you know, whether in China or the United States, this nun comes up and says, step back.  But there was something really, really beautiful and powerful. Again, to our sensibilities, it was like, you can't touch that. You can't touch the monster. You shouldn't be doing that. And it's, and my concern oftentimes is right that at times we fall into that what, rather than seeing the profound beauty that was taking place at this, we get lost on some other ancillary argument. Is it appropriate that people are gathering around and grabbing the clothes of the priests? Probably not. Was it gorgeous and beautiful and moving and powerful and convert? Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, Chris said last night, this, this oasis. I mean, for this population in the middle of rural China, who had never experienced anything like that, I mean, just the world needs the Eucharist. The world needs the mass. This, this continual opportunity that we have to be able to enter into this sacrifice, to this celebration of the Eucharist and the mass. There, there's never been a time that the world hasn't needed, but I want to suggest maybe now more than ever, the healing power of the mass. So maybe just to take a look at a couple of ways and just reflection and prayer, where I think the Eucharist and the mass and the Lord pouring himself out is, is needed today. These are self evident. I always, I'm always kind of, when I'm preaching and talking to you guys, it's like, it just happens to be my turn, any one of you, right? But number one, every time we go to mass, celebrate mass, the Eucharist, we're reminded that there's something greater than ourselves. And that's profoundly important in the world today. In a world that believes that, that the human person is the center of everything. In the families that are putting children in the center of everything, that the Eucharist reminds us that we are not the center of the universe. The Eucharist reminds us that we are not the most important thing in the world. I mean, even the fact that we gather, let's say on Sunday morning, what we're saying is that on Sunday morning, there's something more important than soccer or football or whatever, that something is more important than time. I was reading an article recently, it was called the heresy of the weekend. What it was talking about is the lack, roughly 24% of Catholics go to mass every Sunday, right? This sense that there's something more important in the weekend than going to mass. It's heretical. I was on a flight recently up to Toronto, Canada. And it's always, it's always interesting flying. So when I fly, I generally wear my clerics, sometimes wear my habit. Most of the times I wear my clerics for lots of reasons, but one of the reasons is I actually want to be identified as a priest, right? I want people to be able to see them a priest. It's also interesting sitting on a plane watching people come down and you know, they're looking at the seats wondering where they're going to see it sit, right? And they're looking and they're counting and when they realize that they're going to be sitting next to the priest, right? Some people are, there's two different reactions, there's a person that's like, oh crap, this is going to be the longest flight ever, right? And they don't realize how tired I am. Like I'm literally going to be asleep in five minutes, so don't worry, all right? Or the person, I'm not sure which is worse, the person who gets to sit back next to me and say, it's a sign, you know, so for the next hour and a half, it's like, oh my gosh. And it's interesting, actually twice on this trip in Toronto, two people said, I was in my habit in Toronto, a lady comes up to me and she says, are you a real one? I'm not sure what to make about that.  So we begin to talk and use Catholic and he says, but you know something, I just, I'm not able to go to mass, I'm just so busy. I mean, what does that say? What does that say? He says the weekends, he said, I work hard all week and the weekends are just so busy. The fact that you go to mass, the fact that we take time, stop and celebrate mass, says that there's something more important than us. And I would say those of us who are priests, and I would hope that everybody celebrates mass every day. And the deacons that you participate in mass, I would love every day. It's somewhat some of you, it may not be possible. Like my team knows that I'm going to celebrate mass every day when we're traveling with human development, whoever it is, they know that mass is going to be a part of my day. Doesn't matter. I mean, we always hear this, we always make time for priorities. So if you don't have time, particularly I'll speak to priests at the moment, if you don't have time to pray mass every day, it's not a priority for you. And I want to suggest that it ought to be. I mean, how can we hear the words of St. Francis? Again, he hides himself under ordinary bread. Brothers look at the humility of God, who's poured his heart out before him. How can we not do that for him? So this ability to be able to celebrate mass every day and for the deacons to consider the possibility of going to mass every day. Just that very act says that it's the most important thing. I remember one time I was praying and this is just kind of gives you an insight into my mind. I was praying and I was Tarzan, which is just a great image for you to reflect on, if you have nothing else to reflect on. I was wearing the little leather thing that Tarzan was wearing. I'm sorry that I put that in your mind. Yeah. Let's just, let's just Lord, just Romans 12 says that the Lord renews our mind. So Lord, you just renew the mind, right? But this image I had was of Tarzan going from vine to vine. So he's holding on one and he goes and he grabs the next one and just as soon as he grabs that, he lets go of this one and then he turns and that's the Eucharist for me. It's that thing that I'm going to hold on to until I can get the next one until I can get the next one until it's, it's, I can't imagine it not being a part of my day. Right. It's been interesting. My mother, who has gone to mass every day for decades, decades until she's not able to anymore. And she shares that one of the most difficult thing for her is that have you met people who mourn not being able to go to mass and not being able to receive the Lord in the Eucharist? How can we not? And again, particularly in our world that says it's so busy and so crazy that to be able to take a time and just stop and enter into this Eucharist, enter into this offering to the Lord, that we make that the center of our lives. And then in this, and I thought it was just so beautiful actually, John Paul, what you shared about you and your daughter and just one of the blessings of having kids is you've got a story the rest of your life, you know, so kids just make great stories. But this Eucharist is a reminder. It's the offering, the perfect offering to the Father. And more than ever, we need, I believe, to restore fatherhood, the role of fatherhood and who the Father is and who the Heavenly Father is. The new series that I'm working on right now, we did Well-Goose, Met Noia, and the new series that we're doing is we're calling it My Father's Father. My father passed away last year, I talked about that. But the last thing my dad said to me in one of the conversations we had was, we're talking about Jesus and being in heaven. And my dad said, and he's going to present me to the Father, right? I mean, this is what the Eucharist is. It's this entering into the eternal offering to the Father. That's why I chose the Prayer of Reconciliation, the Canon today. I love it when it says, saints among saints in the halls of heaven. I mean, that's just a beautiful image, saints among saints in the halls of heaven. That all of our life's brothers, the people that we're ministering to is to lead them to a place that one day they're going to be presented by Jesus to the Father. And that this is ultimately what we're doing in the Eucharist. Is that this offering, and that when we do this, we come to understand more fully who we are. That every time we come to the Eucharist, we're reminded that at the heart of the Eucharist, it's a presentation, it's an offering, it's a pouring out of Jesus to his Father. And that's ultimately where we identify ourselves. We've already talked a little bit about our sense of identity. Now, part of this series, we're able to interview Father Jacques Philippe. I don't know if you've read anything from Father Jacques Philippe. He's a French. Appreciate. Fantastic. Yeah. One of the things that he says when we were talking about the struggle that we have in an identity in the United States, you know, basically we live in a world now that says whatever you want to identify as you can identify that, right? Whatever that is, little furries and animals, it just, it's just nuts. Okay. There was a little kid, 11 year old kid in Massachusetts who wore a shirt to school that said there are two genders. And he's been suspended.  Right. But what the mask reminds us of, brothers, is this fundamental relationship, the relationship between a father and his children. And first, John, it says, yet that is what we are children, yet that is what we are children of God. This is what identity, who we are. And Father Jacques Philippe says is that, is that our identity is received. It's not figured out. It's, it's received that, that the father gives to us our identity so that I am first and foremost, I am a son that that that is what identifies me. That is what identifies me. We had a kid who applied to university as a freshman last year. And she was talking, sharing with me some of the applications that she did at other colleges. And they were asking, you know, are you male, female with this whole list of choices of what you could identify as. And she scratched them all out and she wrote, I'm a daughter of God. Right. That's what identifies her, right. What identifies her. That this idea of this offering that the son again offers himself, pours himself out to the father as son. This is who I am. And the reality, brothers, is, is that the reflection about God as father is profoundly vulnerable. And in some, in some circumstances, very difficult because their father has not been present in their life for one reason or another. And this is where the spirit of God in the Eucharist helps us come to understand what does it mean to be father? And what does it mean to be son or daughter? And just as much as we need the transformation of our image of father, we need a transformation of our images sons. And my suspicion is that those of you here confession could say the same thing. I've had a number of people over the years talk about how bad their father was. Anyone ever hear anything like that? Amen. Right. Rarely do I hear people say, I wasn't a very good son. Right. The Jesus wants to reveal to us, what does it look like to be son, to be obedient, to be loving, to be kind, to be generous, to be compassionate. All of this, this, this mystery that we call the Eucharist is, is the revelation of these realities. Amen. What else takes place in the Eucharist that would be good for the world to hear? That we have sinned. When I was talking with Deacon Ralph, and I'm still not sure why he keeps on raising his hands about the confederate this morning, I said, I want to make sure that we pray the confederate. We live in a world that doesn't believe in sin. That, that's antiquated. And we begin the mass with the understanding, the recognition of our sinfulness. The world needs to know this. And yet my concern is, you know, to ask those of you who are able to preach, if you ever just preached on the confederate. I mean, listen to, a danger we go is we just say the prayers because it's what we do. But listen to what we're saying. I confess to Almighty God. That's how we start. And to you, my brothers and sisters, right, that we literally stand up, but we just go through the motions. Are we really doing it? That's why sometimes it bugs me when they say, okay, let's take a moment for our sins. I confess. Let's give ourselves a minute to let the spirit of God show us our sin. And really recognize and preach from this. I confess to Almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts, my words, and what I've done and what I haven't done through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore, I ask the blessed Mary, ever virgin and all the angels and saints and to you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God. One time at the end of the computer, I said, did you do that? They said, do we do what you just said, pray for me to the Lord our God. That we live in a world in an age that is totally disregarded any sense of sin and brokenness and accountability or anything like that. And we begin every liturgy with them, with the recognition that we have sinned and that ultimately that God is, may Almighty God, have mercy on you, forgive you of your sins. I think I had a student one time walked out of the mass and he asked me, we just had mass and I said, he'd asked me, can I go to confession? So we talked for a minute, I said, do you understand that every time you come to the Eucharist, there's the possibility, as long as you're not mortal sin, that your sins are forgiven, that the nature of the liturgy is the forgiveness of any sin. It's a part of the right, it's part of what we believe. And yet most, that's not fair, a certain percentage of the individuals who are coming to mass, it's never honestly even thought about. If they're honest, it's not thought about. And I think that we need to be able to take an opportunity first off in our own lives, that when I go to the, it's just not them who's making this prayer, it's me. And that we as a priest get to stand up before them and say, I've sinned. And on one level, that's something that's very liberating. And it's also something that's very frightening. But I would say that one of the blessings, if you will, danger to use the word of the scandal in the church is that in one way, it's humiliated us, right?   And there's nothing that can ever change that. So, so that we as priests stand up and the people know more now than they ever know that they are earthen vessels, that they are not totally unlike me. I remember one time I was at a conference and in this, this guy was saying to me, he was, you know, you know, Father, you're wonderful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, no, I'm not that different than you. And it was interesting, he said, Father, I want to believe that you are. Right? So this is something that we have to wrestle with it, that yes, the Lord has called us to be priests. Yes, he's called us to be deacons. He's called us to minister the gospel, which is wonderful and beautiful. And the people of God expect and desire and a hope that there's something different about us. But we also know that we're broken and we're weak. And we need to be able to take the opportunity within the context of Eucharist, first off, that we experience the forgiveness and the mercy of God. But we also express that to the people because we live in a world that doesn't recognize brokenness or sinfulness who wants to do anything they can do to not think about it or reflect on it or be convicted by it. And every time we celebrate the Mass, it reminds us about our sinfulness, but deeper still the mercy of God and the forgiveness. And then it's not just that this forgiveness and this mercy, but it's the community gathered. There's something beautiful about the community gathering.  We just go through the words. There's something beautiful about the sign of peace that we offer to each other. It's not just a good morning. It's not just looking around saying good morning, good morning. The sign of peace, there's something about the body coming together and reconciling and offering each other peace. And one of the trips that I took to China, a woman who was with me was from an Eastern Bloc country. And she shared a story with me that in her small village when communism was at its height, many of the people that were in the Communist Party that were actually causing such suffering for the people in this village were Catholic.  In the fall of communism years later, they always knew, she said, we always knew this man was a Communist and we could never forget what he had done to my father. She shared a story that one particular day they were in mass and this Communist official was in the back of mass and he was attending mass because he was a Catholic. It was a sign of the peace and she said at this time my mother was quite elderly and she kind of shimmies her way out of the pew and walks down the aisle and confronts this individual and offers him peace and forgives every time we celebrate the Eucharist. There's the possibility of forgiveness and mercy and reconciliation, the nature, it's ordered towards that. I think the world needs that. Amen? The fourth is the liturgy is inviting us to a greater prophetic stance. I read one time it said the prophetic is the conscience of a community. How does the liturgy, how does the mass peak our conscience? Well, one is that it's a celebration in the midst of trial. It's a celebration. I remember one time I was talking about the celebration of the Eucharist and somebody came up to me and they were frustrated that I was using the word celebration. They said, don't you know that it's a solemn? I said, yes, I know. Again, it doesn't matter what we say there's, and this is fundamental to you, it doesn't matter what we say about the Eucharist, the world people will say you shouldn't say that. Our member at seminary, they taught us that when you're talking about mystery, it doesn't mean that you can't say anything. It just means you can't say everything. But I think out of fear of, as was mentioned this morning by Ralph, or maybe it wasn't Ralph, I don't know where it was, the fear of man rather than fear of God. We're afraid to say anything. But I just think about the celebration of the mass that in the midst of just stress and anxiety that we can come to mass and we can celebrate a God who loves us, a celebrated God who's risen from the dead, and all things celebrate. Last couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to go to a couple of funerals. It's funny, one of them was, I was on vacation and it was like, ah, this is really how I want to spend a day of my vacation, right? So I was very blessed to be able to go to the funeral. And Father Joe, who I was traveling with, on the way back, he said, his experience and true, you never regret going to a funeral. It's never like, ah, crap, I shouldn't have done that, right? There's something about the solemnity and the celebration of life and the celebration of the Lord's love and the familiarity of the Eucharist in the midst of our struggle and our trial that's beautiful, that the mass is Thanksgiving. It's that we live in a world that is, I think there's something prophetic about us saying thank you, you know, this eternal Thanksgiving. That's one of the things I love about the Eucharist, just to reflect on that, that each one of us would be in the situation where we want to say thank you to the Lord, but it's not just enough. So this eternal thank you that we enter into the thank you, the Son to the Father. Remember one time I was in Baltimore and we're in little Italy, I was with my niece and my nephew, my brother and his wife, and the two nephews that were doing coffee at the end. I mean, two nieces were just tired of sitting around at the restaurant. So they said, can we go for a walk? So I went for a walk and there was this, about a block away, this huge limousine.  But they were looking at this big limousine. It's like, ooh, and ah, and how cool it is and this and the other. Well, the driver comes and he says to the two little girls, do you guys want to go for a ride?  And he goes, no, no, no, I was going to take the three of you for a ride. He said that the guy who rented this is just went in for dinner. It's going to be a long time. So my little nieces are like, I said, yeah, it's fine with me, right? So this guy was so sweet. He said, I started to open the door. He said, no, no, no, let me take care of it. So he opens the door, these two little girls, like one was three and one was five. And she opens up the door and they get to go in and they're just, gee, he just takes care of them, drives around a block a couple of times and finding my little brother calls. He goes, where are you? Like, I'm outside the hotel. I said, you're not going to believe where we are, right? So we pull up to this in this, I mean, it's this massive limousine and we pull up to the restaurant where my brother was and the door opens up and these two little girls pop out and everyone's like, like, who are they? Some movie stars are right. But the driver, the driver was, he was Greek. And he said to the, my nieces were very sweet and they were saying, thank you, thank you, thank you. And he said to her, I said, do you know how to say thank you in Greek? And they said, no. And he said, Eucharist. And he says, Eucharist. She was Uncle Dave. Smart girl. Uncle Dave, that sounds like mass. It does sound like mass, doesn't it? This thank you. It's been said that a saint is the one who says thank you and they know who it is they need to thank. If you go to the Washington Monument in Washington or the Jefferson Monument in D.C., go to the monument and your folks is looking at the statue. You look off kind of to your left and in the back. It says, I fear for our country at the thought of a God who is just and cannot withhold his justice forever. We live in a world that doesn't even know who they need to thank for the sunrise.  It's like, who do you thank? The Eucharist reminds us who it is that we thank. The Eucharist reminds us that there are some things that are objectively true. Not because not because I believe it, but because it's true. And this demands a response.  I was talking with some, what's it going to be like 25 years from now? I mean, what, and it's the whole question is humanism. What does it mean to be human, right? That the Eucharist reminds us that some things are objectively true. And it demands a response that we can't go to the Eucharist and not respond in some capacity. And I want to suggest that this response that the Lord invites us to is love, that the sacrificial nature of the mass that, yes, it's a celebration. Yes, it's a Thanksgiving. And yes, it's a sacrifice that we enter into. A sacrifice of love that a God who pours himself out fully for us. So the Eucharist reminds us in a world that's so profoundly confused about the nature of love, especially in this month. I mean, you're seeing everywhere love is love. All love is equal. Love is the same. It's fundamentally not true. I hope it's not true. I hope it's right. I hope that God loves me differently than I love you, right? I hope that it can't be true that all love cannot be equal. It all can't be the same. And the Eucharist reminds us what is love. No greater love than this is than lay down one's life or one's friend. The Eucharist helps us to find and understand prophetically the nature of love that is sacrificial, that is always for the other, that pours itself out, that surrenders himself, that is obedient even to the point of death. Every time we come to the Eucharist, we are reminded of this type of love and the world needs to hear about this type of love. But it's not just that. I mean, again, we live in a world in a culture that says love is love and love is the most important thing. And it's funny, sometimes I feel nervous about preaching about love, right? I mean, I've had people say to me, yeah, you just talk all about that love, right? The book that I did on freedom, a kid comes up to me and says, the end of it, I talk about God's love. And they said, that's it. And I said, what do you mean? Well, your whole book is leading up to God loves us. I said, that's all I got, right? Again, Kantil Amesa would say that if you were to spoil all the scriptures to three words, it would be God's love. But we have a segment of the culture that is really that God is love, God is love, God is absolutely. And he also says, and if you love me, you'll keep my commandments, right? If you love me. And then he goes on to say in my commandments are not burdensome. The mass prophetically speaks to this, the relationship between love and commandments. It demands a response that we brothers live in a manner of which we were called in a world that is no longer just immoral, it's amoral. The mass, the scriptures, the Eucharist reminds us that there are fundamental realities that are true. And finally, the mass brings us into the divine life of God and calls us to bring this to others. The Eucharist cannot be just another thing that Catholics do. We have food shelters, pantries, bingo, Eucharist and fish fries. That's pretty much what we do, right? It can't just be another it is the thing that we do. It is ultimately the most beautiful and profound work of the Holy Spirit. That by the power of the work of the Holy Spirit, the words of the priests, the prayers of the church, this bread and wine is transformed and we brothers are transformed. Saint Augustine reminds us if we receive the Eucharist worthily, we become what we receive. Pope Benedict was giving a homily on the Feast of Corpus Christi in 2011. He says, everything goes through the logic of the humble grain of wheat that is broken to form the logic of faith that moves mountains from the gentle power of God. For this reason, the sacrifice of the Eucharist is given to the world. It's not just given to me as a priest. Even when I'm celebrating it by myself, it is given for the world and the world needs this Eucharist. The Eucharist is given to the world to give every person the possibility of salvation. For God wants to continue to renew humanity through history and the cosmos, through the chain of transformation of which the Eucharist is the sacrament. To better explain the effects of the Eucharist, Pope Benedict is going on, he says, I quote from Saint Augustine. He says, I am the food of the strong, grow and you shall feed on me, but you will not convert me into yourself, the bodily food, but you will be changed into me. Brothers, we need to remember that in the Eucharist, in God's saving grace, in the work and operations of Jesus, in the movement to the Holy Spirit, we are being divinized. We are. Jesus didn't come just to fix things and make things better, just to bring life. He came to make us like him and that every time we come to the Eucharist, we are supposed to, it's not just the bread and wine that's being changed. Brothers, you are supposed to be changed and this should be seen. It should be recognized. People should be able to say, if you're going to mass consistently, that there's something about you that's changing, you're becoming more patient, more calm, more joyful, more loving, more forgiving. The whole reason that Jesus humbles himself in the Eucharist is to bring about the transformation that takes place in us and the life of the church when we receive it. We are supposed to become holy as he is holy. One cannot receive the Eucharist without being changed by it. St. Francis would say, humble yourselves that you may be exalted by him. Hold back nothing for yourselves that he who gives totally for you may receive you totally. I think this is the challenge and the gift that we have in the Eucharist is to receive him, to be transformed by him, to be changed by him and go out into a world that desperately needs to see and experience that. This last fall, I received a letter from Pope Benedict the 16th. That's what the kids like to call a flex if you didn't pick that up. We were doing a conference on Benedict and on the Second Vatican Council and he would say, Vatican II, he would write in the letter, Vatican II would be helpful in the struggle for a right understanding of the church in the world in our time. He would say, the need to reformulate the questions and the nature of the mission of the church has gradually become apparent. In this way, the positive power of the Second Vatican Council is emerging. He would go on to say that in reality the new Council proved not only to be meaningful but necessary. He would say, I sincerely hope that the University that the symposium at Francis University of Stoomville will be helpful in the struggle for a right understanding of the church in the world in our time. When we take a look at what's going on in our world, in our church, in the struggles, the answer is always Jesus and the answer is always found in the Eucharist. That the Lord is going to use the Eucharist to save us, to save me, to save the world, to save the church and we brothers need to surrender ourselves to that, to humble ourselves before that as he has humbled himself before us. Amen?  And what is the Lord saying to you? Come Lord Jesus. Jesus, you poured out yourself for us.  Jesus, it's not just the bread and wine that's transformed and changed, but you want to change my heart. You want to heal me, restore me, reveal your father to me, reveal my sonship, you want to reconcile, transform us, your ministers, make us holy by the grace of the Eucharist and the sacrament. Bring about the effects and the changes that you desire so that we might lead others to you, so that we might build your kingdom, Lord, so that you would sanctify the world that desperately hungers and thirsts for you.  Come Lord Jesus. And always we ask the intercession of our Blessed Mother as we pray together.  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.


Hello and welcome to the session in which we would look at a depreciation problem that deals with the four most depreciation method, which are straight line, the activity method, double declining method and the sums of year digit. This type of exercise could appear in your intermediate accounting course or on the CPA exam in a form of a CPA multiple choice or even a CPA exam simulation. Let's go ahead and get started at a corporation purchase a new equipment for its assembly process on September 1st 20 X one. So it's very important to look at the date September 1st. The cost of the machine was 107. Okay, I would say cost 107 cost 107. The company estimated that the company that the equipment would have a salvage value of 7000 salvage value. Immediately you would need to meet me making notes of those. The life of this equipment is five years and the working hours are estimated at 20,000 hours and the year end is December 31st. So why is the date important? Why is the date important? The date is extremely important in this exercise because because the the equipment was not purchased on January 1st and usually that's not the case. So on the exam day you have to be very careful of when the equipment was purchased and when does when is year end? Well, if the equipment was purchased September 1st and the year end is December 31st. It means for the first year you only can take a partial depreciation. Why is that important? Because you might know, you might know the answer for a full year depreciation, but if that's not the question, then your answer will be incorrect. So the first thing what's interesting or what's unique about this problem is the year end. The year end is December 31st. The company purchased September 1st. So if the year end was September 30th, let's assume the year end for this company is September 30th, then that's a totally different computation. So it will be computing the depreciation for one month. The first thing you want to compute is what is the depreciable amount? What is the depreciable amount? Is the maximum amount you can depreciate for this asset? Well, how do we compute the depreciable amount? Second ago I had cost and salvage. Well, you will take the cost minus the salvage. So we have the cost of 107 minus the salvage of a 7 will give us depreciable cost of 100,000. So you might be asked what is the depreciable cost or you may not be asked. That's pretty very simple concept. But the point is you need to know how to come up with the depreciable cost, which is the cost of the asset minus the salvage. What's the salvage? How much you can get for this asset once it's been used after five years? Once the service life has ended five years. Well, you cannot depreciate this amount. Why? Because you're going to, the assumption is you are going to get this salvage value. You're going to get this $7000. So this is the depreciable cost. You cannot depreciate the asset yet. Let's start by computing the straight line depreciation for 20x1. Before we compute the year one straight line depreciation, welcome. You are most likely here as a student or a CPA candidate looking for some help for some additional clarification. You have arrived. Please visit my website, farhatlectures.com for additional resources, whether you are taking a CPA exam course or a regular accounting course. My resources for your accounting courses are broken down by chapter. So it's very easy to follow your actual course and each chapter is broken down by topics, giving you multiple choice resources such as lectures, through faults and exercises. My CPA material is aligned with your backer, Roger, Gleam, Wiley, Miles and major CPA review courses. I give you access to 1500 previously released AI CPA released questions with the original format. Connect with me on Insta LinkedIn. If you have not check out my LinkedIn recommendation. Like this recording on YouTube, subscribe. Connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and join me on my group me account CPA exam support group. So let's compute the straight line. What's the formula? The formula is cost, cost minus salvage value. Cost minus salvage value gives us 100,000, which is the depreciable amount and we'll divide this amount by five. And that's going to give us $20,000. Is this the answer for year one? No. Why not? Because for year one, we purchase the asset in September. Therefore, we have to prorate the September, October, November and December month only take only those four months. Therefore, we multiply the full year by 412. Therefore, for year one, for the straight line depreciation, we take $666.67 for year one depreciation. Now, don't forget the entry is debit depreciation expense for the amount and credit accumulated depreciation for that same amount. Remember, depreciation expense is a non-cash expense. And this is relevant when you are preparing the incomes, the cash flow statement where you will need to add back non-cash expenses. Let's take a look at the activity method. Assuming the machine usage was 1000 hour. Well, what's the machine usage 1000 hours? Remember, the total machine usage was $20,000. So what we have to do is we have to find our depreciation per hour now using the activity. We're not using time. Now we're assuming we are depreciating this machine, this equipment through its activity. The more activities it has, the more is the depreciation. So what's the depreciation per one hour? Well, we take cost minus salvage value, which is 100,000, which is the depreciable cost, the depreciable base, and we'll divide this by 20,000 hours. Notice we are using hours in the denominator. Why? Because we are assuming the activity is driving the depreciation, which make more sense. If you use the asset more, you're supposed to depreciate it more. Therefore, we get to this answer, which is $5 per hour. It means for every hour we use this asset for any particular year, we should depreciate this asset for five hours. For X1, we used 1000 hour. $5 times 1000 will give us 5000 of depreciation. And this is the depreciation for year one under the activity method. Now again, the entry is the same. The entry is the same for depreciation regardless of the method, hopefully you notice. Now let's compute depreciation using the sums of year's digit and the double declining balance, which are considered accelerated method. What is the sums of year's digit?  And that's going to be your denominator, which is equal to 15 sums of the year's digit for five years. It's 15. And in the numerator, you will always have the remaining life of the assets. You will take the remaining life of the asset divided by 15 multiplied by the depreciable cost. So for year one, the depreciable cost is 100,000 starting September 1st. The remaining life is five years, five divided by 15 will give us 33,333.33 rounded. Now, for year one, remember, we purchase the asset when we purchase the asset September 1st. Therefore, we have to take this amount multiplied by 412. And that's going to give us 11,110 rounding, which is 109.999, 11,110 rounding. So you have to prorate it. Now, for year two, how much is left in year two? Well, what's left for the life of the asset is four years plus 412. Sorry, four years and 812 of a year because the first four month already been used, depreciated. Therefore, in the next year, in the year two, X2, the numerator will be 4.66 divided by 15. Why 4.66? Because in the numerator is the remaining life. The remaining life for this asset starting year X2 is four years and 812 of a month. So that's why it's that ratio. In year three, it's going to be 3.66 all the way until the last, last year, which is point will be 0.66, which is 812 of a month. Now, this is the sums of year's digit. The double declining balance is a little bit different. In the double declining balance, the first thing you do is you find what's called the double declining rate, which is taken one divided by life, one divided by five, multiply by two. Remember, one divided by five is the straight line, straight line rate, which is 20%. 20% times two is 40%. We call this the double declining rate, and this does not change. This does not change. Now, how do we use this double declining rate? We'll take the book value of the asset. Remember, now we are using a different number, not the depreciable cost. For the double declining balance, you will take the book value multiplied by the rate. The book value for year one, what's 107, the cost of the asset minus accumulated depreciation, accumulated depreciation starting in year one is zero. Therefore, the cost of 107 minus accumulated depreciation of zero equal to 107. So this is my book value for year one. And this is the book value at the beginning of the year, by the way, not at the end at the beginning of the year times the rate will give us 42,800. Is this the answer? No. Multiply the answer by 412, which will give us $14,266.66. Let's compute year two. Year two is the cost of the asset minus accumulated depreciation, which is so far we took 14,266 times 40%. So the book value is 92,733 times 40%, which will give us accumulated depreciation of 37,093. Now for year three, it's going to be 107 minus 14,266.66 minus 37,093.33. This is going to be the book value and we'll multiply this by 40%. Hopefully you notice that under the sums of year's digit and the double declining balance, the amount of depreciation for year one was much larger than the depreciation that we took for the straight line, which is the straight line was 6,000, right? The straight line was 6,000 and the activity method was 5,000, way larger. And that's what it's called accelerated method. Now bear in mind, if you computed the depreciation for the full five years, remember, you don't depreciate the salvage value in any of the method. So you will have a remaining salvage value always of 7,000. Now, although in the double declining balance, you think you are going to because you are using 107, but you don't. You don't depreciate the salvage value. This is only the formula. What should you do now? Work MCQs through faults. Look at additional lectures and resources. Accounting CPA is an important aspect of your professional life. Don't shortchange yourself. Don't invest in yourself. It's going to pay you dividend down the road. It's worth it. Good luck. Study hard. And of course, stay safe.


Do you ever feel shy and nervous to speak English? Are you afraid of making errors when you speak? This problem is especially dangerous. If you feel nervous, then you don't practice speaking. If you don't practice speaking, you won't develop confidence. And no confidence means you feel even more nervous. The result is that you can read, write and listen to English, but you can't speak. What's the solution? Practice speaking frequently in low-pressure situations. What's a low-pressure situation? It's an opportunity to practice your English in a relaxed way, where you can make mistakes and get them corrected without any negative consequences. Examples of high-pressure situations are oral exams, job interviews and telephone calls, and official meetings and presentations. Examples of low-pressure situations that are perfect for practicing include talking to yourself – it seems ridiculous, but it works – and talking with an English-speaking friend. What if you don't have any English-speaking friends? Well, you can find an English conversation partner online if you join a conversation exchange. On these websites, you can find an English speaker who is studying your native language.  You can help each other and correct any errors. Visit the conversation exchange websites under this video to find an English-speaking partner. When you do more speaking practice in low-pressure situations, you increase your confidence. When you increase your confidence, you feel less nervous. And this makes you want to practice speaking even more. The result is that you're confident to speak English in any situation. Now let's talk about how to avoid common English errors. Although your conversation partner can help correct your mistakes, one of the fastest ways to increase your confidence and improve your speaking is to learn the most common errors in English. The e-book 100 Common Errors in English gives examples and explanations of the most common mistakes that English learners make when speaking and writing. These errors are made by students from beginners to advanced learners, so you are sure to benefit from this book no matter what your level. If you know how to avoid the most common errors in English, you can speak more confidently without being afraid of making a mistake. Your action item for today is to download a free sample of the book 100 Common Errors in English and read it. If you like the sample, you can buy the complete e-book for $15.


Performance in certain areas. It does increase face learning for those on the motor list, increase navigation performance, and can increase other things like decision-making and performing, stress, things like shooting. Don't shoot decisions right.


Who gives the spiritual gifts? The Holy Spirit, who lives in you? The Holy Spirit. So if the one who has that gift is already in me, then the gift of tongues is already in me. This is one of the greatest breakthroughs that you can have coming to this understanding. You in fact do have the gift within you. It's not about you receiving the gift of tongues. It's about you activating and releasing.