Okay, we'll bring the music down, it's actually 9 o'clock and we don't want to miss a second of this opportunity with Carol, because Carol is a fount of wisdom and she's trying to get the music out of control. Just as an introduction, let me say that, as I said last night, I met Carol, Carol Howe in the, I think it was the early 1990s and she just graciously invited me into her home. And then more recently, Jason and I were down in Florida and we called up Carol and we arranged to meet at Starbucks and Jason was so touched as he mentioned last night, he was looking across and I affectionately, when we go around and meet people who have been in the courts for many years, I affectionately call it the Legends Tour. I take some of my friends, come on with me on the Legends Tour, we're going to go visit the Luckets in Honolulu, we're going to visit Carol Howe, and so he's got in his mind the Legends Twins, it's a Starbucks and then as we sat down and had the initial meetings, Jason's eyes are big because Carol's sitting right across from him and Carol reaches out and takes his hands in his arms and he says, I'm Jason, she says I know I've been following you on the internet for many years and his eyes were just like, it's like we're looking into Yoda's eyes and having Yoda say, I've been following you for many years. He's like, oh, but Carol is just an amazing teacher and so, so, so practical, you know, her work with people comes down to the practical application of this. So it's one thing to have a grasp of the teachings and the metaphysics, but we actually have a healing experience when we put it into practice and that's what Carol has been doing all these years and when I first met her, I was in her house, she just opened up and naturally started sharing these wonderful encounters that she had with Bill because I was quite curious. I had read a lot about Helen, but Bill was was kind of a mystery and not after I spent the time with Carol. Bill was no longer a mystery. He was the co-scribe and he was the co, he was the collaborator in every way and so that was very touching for me and very inspiring because we have to be inspired to follow our calling and I just want to thank you for your life, your dedication and your inspiration and this could be a morning chat like we had with Judy just to ask questions myself or anyone here and maybe we'll just open it so you can start by just sharing what's on your heart this morning. Well as we mentioned earlier, a few of us were talking at breakfast, it's like I love what I do so much that if somebody said you will never be paid another cent in your life for anything, it's like fine with me. It's like this is delicious. People say don't you ever get tired of saying the same thing over and over and over again. It's like no, it's fun to say because you're connecting with people and it's a new experience every time so even though the information is the same, the connection is unique and different and precious every time so I don't think there's anything in the world more exciting than watching people get it. You know watching peoples either I can hear it in their voice when I do over the phone counseling which I do a lot of or in person you know to watch a face relax you know watch the shoulders drop like I'm okay it's just the most wonderful thing in the world and Bill was wonderful at that. I would presume that a lot of you have many misconceptions about Bill if you have any conceptions at all because sometimes with literature that's out there you might think of well Bill was the helper typist person in the corner you know who helped out nothing could be further from the truth so may I presume that you would like to know a little bit of first hand experience about what Bill was like first of all we talked or Judy talked about commitment last night you know being absolutely essential in everything we do well Alan I became a student of a course 40 years ago in 1977 not long after it was initially published and gradually over that time collected enough people to be a little study group with a friend of mine and so on and so forth and then that summer of 19 the summer things continued to unfold the next spring of 1978 I get this humanistic psychology brochure saying that at a university in Denver where I lived at the time Judy scutch she was Judy scutch at the time and Bill Fetford were going to be presenting well I would have crawled across Denver on my hands and knees if necessary to meet these people because I was so enchanted with the course aside from raising my kids nothing was more important at that point than being intimately involved with this material so we go out my husband and I go out there and what the brochure failed to say was that they were going to set it up outside they had an outdoor stage set up and the brochure said Judy would speak she's a fabulous speaker as you no doubt gathered last night and that bill would be there although he wouldn't speak okay still anybody related to the course I definitely wanted to have some experience with and so this was nuts not to say in the brochure that it was going to be outside because Denver in the in may is cold outside at night so we didn't go prepared for anything outside so we sat through about an hour and a half of Judy's marvelous presentation and because I was unprepared for the cold I finally thought I'm freezing to death and I'm just going to have to get up and go find the first building I can find and open the door and go inside so I did and guess what I found I found standing over in a corner by himself not another soul in this big room is this tall handsome man and I thought that is Bill Fetford there weren't any pictures of it around at that point you know there's no internet there's no anyway that any that kind of information can be shared so I walked up to it sure enough it was and I had an experience the likes of which I had never had before and so there since it's a nonverbal experience I have no words but I will point to them which was the deepest sense of recognition and connection with any human being I had ever met I who am never speechless was almost speechless it's like hardly knew what to say well about 10 minutes later apparently everybody else was freezing as well the doors open and a stampede of people came in and so that was the end of the conversation and I just pondered over this very unusual experience now 40 years ago I'd had a whole lot less experience than I've had now so that was just really quite remarkable and so someone called me lay a few months later saying did you know that Bill Fetford and the scutches have moved to California to Tiburon and I thought I had I have no idea where Tiburon is but okay like so and file that away a couple months later my my teaching partner and very dear friend Jason said I'm going to Tiburon for advanced work and I thought well what a non coincidence is this that all of a sudden this focus is on Tiburon and so I thought well I'm going to write a letter to this person with whom I had a 10 minute encounter and as a letter of introduction to Jason now at that time I had no idea what an introvert Bill is how unlike it is for him to do any reaching out of any kind and wanting to see strange people or anything like that I mean he after all he's a 10 minute acquaintance and nothing is written about him nobody knows anything about him and I thought well I'll just send this letter to the foundation of interpiece and if it gets there it gets there because where else will I send this well on Halloween afternoon I'm getting my little kids ready to go out for the evening the phone rings long before caller ID it's Bill Fetford with his beautiful voice if you don't know Bill had a gorgeous voice it had a very beautiful healing quality to it was a bass voice and just hearing him talk was enough to just kind of captivate people so here's this beautiful voice on the phone he said yes I would be happy to meet your friend and are you going to come out too and it's like this is getting weirder and weirder all the time so at first I said because I was much more into being a polite southern girl at that time I've grown a lot of that way and asking for what I want and saying yes what I mean yes and know what I mean no and the net I said well no this was just a letter of introduction for Jason the next morning I thought what do I mean no I mean it was like an invitation like this and I so we made the arrangements and in November of 1978 I went out and and Jason found me a place to stay with a friend of his and get this it's like where Judy and Bob lived is here about a block away it's where Jerry Jampalski lived about a block and a half away is where Bill Fetford lived and this girl's house that I stay with is a few blocks away like and you know what the name of that street was Paradise Drive so all of these marvelous people are living on the water on Paradise Drive so we spent many many hours so Jason and Bill and I spent many hours together he introduced us to Jerry and I just had this continued amazing feeling of the family is coming back together that was the strongest sense of all and one evening Jason and I met only with Bob and Judy and as we were getting acquainted Judy in her very effervescent way as you were able to note last night said I know why you're here it's like by this time I'm sort of the whole thing is surreal as far as I'm concerned like I cannot believe I'm here with these people and and she said I'm going to bequeath you Bill Bill has worked so hard and she was kind of saw herself as his caretaker or something like that so she said Bill has worked so hard for these past 20 years or so and he needs to be socialized and so I'm giving you Bill I had never been bequeathed a person before especially a person of this stature so Bill and I continued to become very dear friends and he would come visit us in Denver with my husband and two little boys and I would go stay with him and sometimes with Jerry and sometimes with Bill and my husband was not alarmed because Bill is a gay man so he didn't have to be concerned about that and and my husband loved him as well as did my little kids so it was just an amazing opportunity to see him up close sort of with his hair down and only after I got to know him did I realize what an astounding stretch this was I mean I don't know if you've studied much about introvert and extrovert qualities but very private introvert people don't call up a strange woman and invite them to come out for a few days I mean that is about as out of character for somebody like Bill as you could possibly imagine so you can see that there was a divine hand and all this there was like a really big divine hand in this because the whole situation was so unlikely so we continue to stay in touch specifically those first two and a half years or so and on a few occasions Bill and Jerry and I and a fourth person did day-long workshops for the University of California in various locations and Jerry especially wanted me to come along because Bill would try to wiggle out of this he hated to speak in front of people but he said if you will come along then I can be assured that Bill will show up and we captured him in the car so he couldn't leave anyway but in any event the qualities about Bill were amazing first of all he was about the most unassuming person I've ever met I had no idea from what he had to say in those first two or actually the first two or three years that he was actually a very famous psychologist in his own right even if he'd never had a thing to do with of course miracles he was highly regarded in his field he was considered one of the very top experts in this personality assessment system that he had worked on for so many years and was called upon in difficult situations they they were just at the top of their game in the whole psychological world shall we say in the United States well who knew you know he's not going to talk about that he rarely ever talked about himself once or twice he really allowed himself to kind of unload and I had a chance to really find out some of the amazing things he had done and that he was known for the other thing that I absolutely would want anybody to know is that just like you have to have a man and a woman to produce a child you had to have Bill's energy and Helen's energy in order to unlock what was latent and what they both recognized that they had agreed to do didn't take them long once they got started to realize they made this commitment before they came whatever before they came means they were clear that it all costs this was a commitment that they intended to keep so as tumultuous as it was they kept their word they were people of incredible integrity so Bill being very humble it took me a few years to realize oh my gosh look who it is I'm I'm dealing with here and on one occasion after I'd started doing these six-week overview classes of the course in Denver Bill would come out and and some of these are classes around a Thursday night and we'd say well do you want to wait at home for us to finish or do you want to come to the class and you would say I want to come to the class but don't tell anybody who I am so and they were long classes they were like from 7 30 to 10 and we had a break in the middle and sometimes people who want to stay longer than that so I said okay I won't tell anybody who you are but I guarantee someone will find out I think Bill did not appreciate his presence and the fact that his presence was so felt it's so available and so healing and his voice was so healing well as one has one new stretching occasion after the other teaching a class with here all the rest of students and Bill Fetford in the middle of a course in miracles class was just too bizarre so sure enough people would yeah it was like you could see his you could feel his light shining so it's it really was very strange and so sure enough people would come up to him this happened more than once would come up to him in the middle of our break and start to ask him questions and I knew that if somebody asked him something outright he would not lie about it in other words nobody was going to say anything but if the questioning got to be specific you know and they and they drilled down on him so sure enough everyone knew before the class was over at finally it was like see I told you so it's like you can't hide your light and certainly he couldn't he was a very funny guy Tammy knows those of you who ever met him know what a funny guy he was and he also had a way if people came to town that between Judy Tammy's mother and Jerry Jampolsky there was a parade of people through Tiberon from all over the world who wanted to hang out with one of the other of them or both because Jerry had established his Center for Attitude and Healing and Judy of course was was shepherding forward of the foundation for inner peace and you know periodically they would hand people over to Bill that particularly needed something or if they just needed to have that person not be with them for a while so Bill had this kind of interesting role going on and and if somebody got to be a little too self-important you probably remember this Tammy or Bob he would have a way of he never put anybody down but he just had a way of lightening things up and it was impossible under some of these circumstances to look at him and keep a straight face because he'd sit there and he'd he could wiggle one ear you know he could sit there like this and one ear like so there were there were times I'm sure you remember that where there would be kind of like a little inside joke nobody else none of these other visiting dignitaries would have any idea of what was going on but you and everybody who knew him well had this experience you couldn't look at each other because you knew that you both start laughing in the most totally inappropriate way so he had this a certain kind of lightness and irreverence he just wouldn't let you take things seriously he prayed there used to say it's impossible to take the course seriously and be somber about it the way Bill would talk about it in the early days when he still went to New York somebody some new course student discovered where he lived in Manhattan and came to his door and knocked on the door Bill answered and said this man said I am a new student of the course of miracles and the Holy Spirit told me that I was supposed to find you and ask you for $10,000 and and without missing a beat Bill said the Holy Spirit spoke with me to let me know you would be coming and said I was not to give it to you it's like he could just come up with stuff right on the spot so he's truly this very holy amazing man some people were healed in his presence by nothing other than just being in his presence which embarrassed him no end and he didn't know quite what to do when this happened but nevertheless it happened so he was he was brilliant he was very funny he had this amazing healing quality about him and I would wish more than anything in the world that every course student could have experienced him which is one reason I had to write his book because nobody knew who he was what he was like the absolutely critical and essential part that he played without Bill this would not have happened and none of us would be here because this was not just that he held Helen's hand when she was trying to do her dictating which he did I'm sure you all know that she coughed and sputtered cried lost her voice and everything else because what she was saying to him was so distressing so not only was he compassionate with her plight not only was he greatly helpful but at that energetic level which is where things happen they made a promise and on that famous occasion that Judy mentioned last night which was they were sick and tired of the way their meetings were being conducted and they were going off to a meeting that they hated going to and that's when the little there's got to be a better way than this speech occurred and a little part that's not included in that is that he said you know we're going to have to do things differently other than kind of telling people what to do and making oh he said we're going to go into this meeting and we're not going to make anybody wrong and I thought well no wonder you hated your meetings if your goal was to go into a meeting and make everybody in there wrong I can see why this would not be a satisfactory situation so in any event they they learned and learned and learned and when I met him he was just moving to California for his last 10 years and people would come up to him I wish you could have seen this and they would say well Bill like I would have the first couple of times I was there he agreed that I could have a big reception and invite all the course people I knew to come meet him I only did that once because I knew meeting with a whole bunch of people was like his most unfavorite thing to do but he said yes he would do it so after that it was only meeting with one or two but I was with him on a number of occasions where people you know trying to make small talk or something would say well now that you're retired what are you doing now and he would say practicing forgiveness which was pretty much a conversation stopper for most people but a few would persevere like well like what are you really doing or what does that mean or something like that that wasn't a smart alec answer on his part this he recognized that letting go of his grievances was job one and as far as he was concerned really the only job everything else was kind of peripheral and around the edges and he succeeded he succeeded he succeeded he became lighter more joyful more amazingly wonderful and and brilliant in every way and as Judy mentioned last night by the time he left he was literally up on his tiptoes and wit our military guy who was not given to hyperbole agreed he said he had never ever seen bill like that and indeed he was up on his tiptoes he just literally almost could no longer be earthbound as he was kind of on his way out so to speak so anyway that's just like a really short version of this amazing man and so if you have any questions at all please do ask leave them a shot on your legs oh that's no problem or maybe tami's got things to add that she would like to have a question i'm sure tami's got knows things i don't know about bill since of course she knew him from the time she was a teenager very different things because i knew him as a teenager not as an adult to adult but i did want to say the story i'm sure you know when you were talking about how bill would bring levity when two people were really struggling over a park in the course and i don't remember what part but i'm sure my mother would be able to say and i came to bill and asked him what she thought and he took he opened the book he ripped out the page and said done he had that way yes i have a lot of other stories but i would love for people to ask questions but i just wanted to say how irreverent i loved that about bill yes irreverence um because he was the real deal yes and yes yeah he could bring humor underneath everything he would say things that if as a teenager i wasn't interested in what everyone was talking about in the course um but to hear his little side comments under his breath i would sit next to him just to listen which was very similar to bob skutch yes bobby the same yeah so i just wanted to add that that's great no people people could not bill would not get a solemn serious look on his face and strangely enough um of all the time we were together we hardly ever talked about the content of the course um he was interested in literally in being socialized when he would come to my house my little boys at that time were five and seven well he thought just watching little kids was fascinating he was never around little kids you know when he was young you may or may not know that his he came from um a middle class family minus so to speak and his father worked for the telephone company or something and his mom was a stay-at-home mom like everybody was in those days and the family belonged to the christian science church however the first child they had died in infancy and that left and then a daughter was born and then a couple years later bill was born and bill adored this older sister more than life itself and followed her around like a puppy dog and loved to play with her and her little girlfriends and whatever they did and when she was seven she or when he was seven and she was nine she got some little strep throat or something that is normally a non-issue for kids and she died and this was shocking to bill his dearest friend and playmate in the whole world was suddenly without warning taken out of his life and he confessed in many ways late obviously as an adult and when I knew him that he always thought his father loved that daughter more and he said you know kind of the way bill thought he was being looked at notice we all experience whatever we experience and not necessarily what the other person is or isn't doing but for years he labored under the horrible idea that his father somehow wished he had died rather than the little girl and and felt so guilty kind of the survivors guilt kind of thing that it was that so he had a very contentious relationship with his father for a very very long time which it's very hard for me to imagine I'm a parent that this had anything to do with bill was even on this man's mind at his daughter's funeral I mean he's busy grieving for his daughter not somehow wishing that some other arrangement had occurred I mean that's not what happens when you're grieving over a child so that was much of what bill had to deal with as he as he moved through his learning stages because bill helped to bring the course forward did not give him a free pass he just didn't get to hop up to the top of the line because what happened to him after about six months after this little girl died he felt so sick at heart over this that he made himself very sick with scarlet fever rheumatic fever and was in bed for two years can you imagine a little boy in bed two years no television no video no games no nothing he read books and laid in bed and when he finally was over all of that when he was nine years old because he read and read and read and read and was very brilliant anyway even as a little kid he didn't know what to do with him in school he was socially behind his age but academically he was way above his age and so they would kind of take him out of this grade and put him in this grade and it was a very tumultuous kind of imagine any of us you know with with a precious sister dying then being sick for two years and then having this odd growing up life because like where do I fit so to speak and then once he went off to college and he had had a kind of a he had a girlfriend of sorts and when he was in college he allowed himself to recognize that he was a gay man or as he said very late in life probably a bisexual man but all of his private life was with men and never women although he loved women including me but he his private life was with men so if one thinks that he just got to sail through life and got to a place of joy at the end of his life because it was a big silk road laid in front of him that would be a grave misconception so I think it's crucial and important that in many ways he didn't know what he was doing he felt like he kind of stumbled ahead one thing that I think is funny related to the fact that he was a gay man he worked for the CIA and the CIA at least at that time did not permit gay people to be in the CIA so people said how did he manage that well he had done so much with in in testing with galvanic skin response and so on that he knew how to make the lie detector test do what he wanted it to do so don't underestimate anybody's ability to accomplish their task and perhaps a little divine intervention there it was very clear that his path required that he be with the CIA so it's like whatever we have to do to get him in the CIA is what we're going to do that's it and wit too it wasn't wit a general or something yeah yes he was not he was right whatever is right under colonel right underneath the colonel so yes and in fact wit and bill wit was own was the only one of bill's friends who was intimately acquainted with this personality assessment system so you have to also look at the weirdness of this here he is at columbia he's doing all of the myriad jobs he did at columbia plus over here surreptitiously he and helen are getting together every morning and they're doing they're striving for years and years and then they're going through the editing and all the business related to that and over here he's doing research on this personality assessment system which is how the ego develops in the first place so is this schizophrenic or not so he's got his professional life is down to the last little intricate detail of how egos develop and on the other hand how all of that study of the ego is pointless and here's how you let it go i think some of you can relate to this everyone's nodding heads like yeah pointless absolutely pointless so after 20 years he gave up his research on the p as but on the day he died on the 4th of july 29 years ago he and wit they love to talk about this p as because at the time and space worldly level bill thought the p as still at that time remained the most outstanding instrument for assessing what a person's personality was like and what they would do under any kind of stressful situation which is what it was developed for in the first place you know what would people do under various circumstances so on the very day he died at this level he's saying this is a wonderful measurement for those who are still in the place where they need to have this measurement but as far as he was concerned he was over the whole thing when he was when the course was coming through he among other jobs that he had at one point was being the co-editor of the journal for abnormal psychology and he thought it was hilarious that sometimes they would have to reject articles on the grounds that they were not sufficiently scientific this is while they're doing their very unscientific you know close the door pull down the shades and do their course stuff so anyway just to let you know bill didn't get a pass but when he said I am practicing forgiveness and he also didn't even there were things about the course in the early days he didn't understand either what do you think about that and in case you think oh I don't really understand what this says he didn't either I remember in one of the early days when he was at my house I remember in the backyard and I said bill what is actually does this mean I was a brand new student myself what does this mean when it says forgiveness isn't real unless the it brings a healing to your brother yourself and he said I don't know well that turns out to be like a really very central important thing so it's important for everybody to know that even bill himself and I don't know about Helen but at least bill himself had to do the practicing before the understanding could come the course is very clear that says basically understanding joy and peace are a package deal and if you're not feeling joyful and if you're not at peace presume you understand nothing that at least levels the playing field so and and it's the reason why people feel so frustrated when they try to learn this course it is not a course to be learned it is a spiritual technology for rewiring your brain forgetting you're all of this unfortunate for this we're speaking of it now at the time and space level of course and this what happens is as you do the practice as you literally focus your attention on these more accurate ideas about yourself and our situation you literally are changing but you're you're growing new synapses in your brain again speaking of it from the time and space point of view and the more you do that and the clearer your mind becomes as you let go of the things you need to let go of then it's very easy to understand it's actually simple basically what it says if you stop attacking yourself you'll feel better really is that what it says we make it very complicated and that's because our minds are very fogged up they're very unclear in a very literal way it's like trying to look through a window that's all smeared up and it's foggy and it's got cobwebs on it and cracks through it so everything is distorted so the purpose of doing those lessons is that it slowly clears out your mind and you go this is kindergarten stuff this is very simple but if you try to read it and learn it and understand it from our current mindset with that fogged up mind you will just drive yourself crazy you will just think this is written in some foreign language and not one sentence makes any sense you know people will say by the time i got to end of this sentence i don't know what the beginning of the sentence said well don't worry about that practice it that's what bill did he practiced he dealt with the things that he needed to deal with and as you probably know one of his last biggest by no coincidence forgiveness issues was with ken does that come as a surprise of course not you know it's like we're all brought together and although bill and helen had some really very big difficulties getting along did you know that and in many ways although helen was i suppose happily married to louis comfortably married to louis she was in love with bill and this impossible situation of being so tied together over their joint child so to speak and yet being in a situation that could never come to any sort of resolution so to speak you can kind of see the cosmic setup for this and in any event that the thing that's interesting as judy said is that when they were dealing with the course they were compassionate they were kind they were very sweet with one another and then the minute they went over to their academic work it was back to bickering they didn't scream and yell and fuss or i mean they weren't like that but they just i talked to ken i said what in the world could they find to fight over so continuous he said he said i don't even know and he said and besides it was the same thing they would just recycle the same argument over and over and over and over and over and over again if you're going to argue that much you're pretty soon you run out of material you have to go back to the beginning bring up some old issues and deal with those so it was a difficult situation and when so despite that they were very close you know at that real fundamental level they were they were a hundred percent committed to one another and when ken dropped into the mix in 1973 at that point bill and helen had partially edited the work and they had stopped because they were sick and tired of it not because it was finished hear that not because it was finished but because they were both busy they were tired they needed to take a break and it was at that point that that ken's life um became intertwined with theirs and helen and ken established their own very close relationship which on the one hand was a big relief for bill you know it's like she's got something else to occupy a lot of her time so that he didn't have to be the object all the time but at the same time he felt very left out and very rejected by this situation and he used to say this was in his he long since got over this but in he was recounting what it was like for him in the early times he said well first of all as you may or may not know ken you know after all this is jesus's work and here is helen as his mom bringing this course forward so he spoke with her with that same kind of reverence shall we say accorded mary and i mean he didn't pretend like helen was mary but you could kind of see the situation there and helen would say to bill ken is i don't know any saint that's more beatific than ken well this fell on bill's ears with something less than you know he wasn't thrilled with any of this and so he would say somewhat sarcastically he asked i would have lunch every day with the virgin mary and the world's greatest saint yeah which was which was samar's got something new yeah if this happens again christin will just bring the mic to your blanket well just just to add to that in the the psycho dynamics of it and it was psycho i promised from a teenager perspective it was very psycho yes um it was it was helen's way of getting back at bill for not being in love with her yes absolutely and she did she did say at a time to my mother do you know i would have left louie and everything for bill if he wanted me yes and their arrangement was so intriguing for me as a teenager to watch all this because i could also see things clearly i was given a certain gift that way to see that bill had actually i mean here these two people were working together and it had to be what you could the word used around his karmic because bill actually had a room built for helen and louie at his fire island home and fire island is a very gay community and he included her in on everything in the deepest way that he could without partnering with her and my feeling about it with helen in a psycho way was that what kept her involved in listening was because she could have a special relationship with bill for those years privately intimately and that was their relationship so everything was orchestrated within the personality to do this so for bill and witt to be so interested in the pas the personality assessment system it was because the holy spirit used the personality in order to birth this and it's what made me as a kid who was in new york who also had healthy skepticism saying this is the real deal yeah so it wasn't a holier than now i watched helen like take her little dagger as in psycho to do this bill all the time as he sat there and under his breath whispered the underneath dagger and it was and then you know ken was just adoring and you know couldn't even speak because he stuttered and stammered that just served helen and the dynamics were pretty extraordinary and so and when we and that's perfect and when we get in our dynamics then as we all do you know in situations that we find ourselves unable to extricate ourselves from either at all or it at great cost then you think okay we're all in a situation where we are going to be if we're going to move forward we're going to be backed up against the wall with our own issues and we have to resolve them we have to let go of our own grievances so that we can continue to expand yes you're right it's like she totally i agree a hundred percent from what he said that she was definitely in love with him this kept them together in a way that needed to happen yes so she could experience that specialness and also get back at him for it with yes bob bob coming it's about time because bob was with bill as you'll hear from the very beginning of when he entered and bob was like bill's special protege yes yeah there were a couple of things that haven't been mentioned yet that if you really want to complete portrait of bill just have to be put in there but before i get to those i want to say if you haven't read carol's book it is amazing it is comprehensive never forget to let yes and it's a must read for other sports students so i want to thank you carol for for putting that together and assembling it had i known what it was going to take when i started i probably never would have just like everybody else who starts a project that's theirs to do isn't that the way the course works that's right talk about cia it brings us what we need on a need to know only basis so yeah i just wanted to correct bill didn't work for the cia he was a consultant and they would bring him in on occasion to evaluate an agent and the cia helped to fund the personality assessment system um work that was part of his uh work at uh at columbia presbyterian medical center but um bill was an inveterate punster i mean he was the most brilliant giver of puns that i've ever encountered a tradition that tam and i intend to keep going because we're we're pretty fond of it ourselves but when at the end of his life bill came to tiberon and said to judy and wit i am flexible this was a triple pun um because flexible is one of the polarities on the personality assessment scale that bill was not and obviously it's a break it up flexi dash bill so he's flexible and he's achieved what he couldn't have done you know he's incorporated this other end of the scale i think the other side of it is rigid um and so what he was saying is you know this is now what i have gotten to and i cannot emphasize enough i mean what carol was saying about bill being able to make sort of an aside with with his little ear wiggles that happened with helen and ken in the room too i mean i would sometimes be with him and just want you know he'd sort of look over and the ear would wiggle and you'd know okay this is all just one big cosmic joke but um but but but uh you know so the punning is essential he also uh worked his process to uncover all the residue of ego to transcend it more committedly and determinately than anyone i've ever known um and when he said i'm practicing forgiveness that was the real deal that was the real mccoy and i think as part of that what would also hadn't been mentioned yet is that he lived for a number of years with patricia hopkins a woman um they had a deeply close relationship and i know from you know talking with her she's a friend that yeah the sexual piece didn't work um he couldn't make it work and i think sometimes we go through things where we're trying to achieve a goal uh that may even seem to be a spiritual goal and may even be guided but only guided in the sense that it exposes some ego residue that we need to move through and accept about ourselves and i don't think it's a coincidence that when bill and pat hopkins finally decided that they would go their separate ways that bill then very rapidly a soon after that went down to lehoya where he could you know sit in the legged's garden and just be with the course and meditate and and transcend all day um but so so i i i do think of him as judy said as you know the first person to completely do the course and and how fitting is that absolutely how fitting is that so i just wanted to add those those couple that i'm glad you did and you know when he went down to lehoya he was in the company of jack and leo luckett who were a lot of fun they went out all the time so in a way bill had a chance to relive you might say his early teenage years like he didn't get to do it when he was a teenager you know they went out they went to plays they had fun and so on and so forth and another thing that that reminds me of is that bill was very psychic in his own way and he was especially amazing at getting tickets to things he never had he loved the opera he loved he he was a big classical music fan and if he never had subscriptions to anything but he would go i think we should go to this opera tonight and so we'll go down and get tickets when the thing is sold out it didn't matter every single time bill wanted tickets to anything he always got them one time he was in new york with pat with whom he actually lived a couple of years pat's a very good friend of mine and and he looked at his watch and he said it's two fifteen it's this was a sold out performance of something they were very excited about it's two fifteen i need to go down now is the time i can get tickets went down to the box office got the tickets came back they had this marvelous time it just happened all the time sometime when he was in loya they were going to the circus we know one of the big fancy circuses that had come to town and someone had given him three tickets and he invited a fourth person to come and who one of the other two said but you've only got three tickets and he said don't worry the fourth one will be there so they drive down park in the parking structure are walking across whatever way needed to be walked and some guy rides up on a bicycle out of nowhere and says here's a ticket for you i mean it was like what and the ticket turned out to be very close to where the other three tickets were it was like and i saw this in action myself with things as ridiculous as parking spaces we took him to the opera and santa fe one time and santa fe in the summer you can't park anywhere close to the square so as we're driving up and we're a few blocks away i thought well maybe here's where we should start to find a parking place he said no worry we'll get one right in front so it's like well how unheard of but we did anyway and sure enough we drive right i think they've ever been to santa fe you know kind of the old part of downtown we drive up and here is a parking place directly across the street from whatever restaurant we're going to it's as if that parking space was invisible to everybody else driving around here it was for us i'm sure you watched him do that a lot yeah i mean i think that was one of the little perks that he got for all of his hard work something had to be easy jesus perks but you know but he never lost his sense of humor and i mean just as an example of that in the midst of you know helen dying and insisting that that bill and judy and jerry call her uh you know they did a rotation each would call at a certain time on a day so she's talking to all three of them uh you know several times a day you know he would come up with things like yeah you know uh in describing helen and her attitude i am a body i am sick someone fetch a doctor quick it was a lovely lovely way of saying yes we're all here to learn um there's love but we never forget to laugh absolutely thank you carol you bet i i'll kind of close up and then you come up but he one of his favorite sayings was and he would say this you know with light in his eyes and he would say i know it's hopeless just not serious good morning and thank you for coming my name is michael cambell and i was the belligerent in the uh rip the page out of for those of you who don't know his story um go to the does anyone have a text here yeah okay open up to chapter 18 now we're getting to the good detail this is a good I got a whole bunch of good go back to your course groups so let me set this straight here I met the belligerent i'm going to read the lab it's the third paragraph because I just happen to know these trivia things I was with um my girlfriend who we were breaking up with and um Wayne and Patty Jermaine who were students of a person miracles friends of bill and I was at the Tuesday night meeting with my girlfriend and we were not doing well so that's the context so I want to read to you uh the last line the body is emphasized with special emphasis on certain parts and used for the standard for comparison of acceptance or rejection for an acting out of a specific form of fear and I said to Patty oh Patty by the way that's just one of the hundreds of references to sex and of course in miracles and Patty had a meltdown she just couldn't deal with it because she just bill had to be asexual she had to be asexual and then meeting ended and then the next day bill called me up and said oh Patty called saying she was really upset about my obsession with sex and a christian miracle he then said to her well you know whenever those issues around sex come up I just ripped those pages out and and so that was the whole story and I he said well maybe you should skip for a week or two so I skipped for a week or two and then I just kind of decided that if you didn't understand the role of sex in a christian miracles you probably shouldn't be leading a meeting and you should have at least some sense of humor around it like Kim Wobnick would say well you can either have a sexual starved body or you can have a normal body so I thought you would just like to know that I was one of the belligerents on that and then the second one is PSA the personality assessment system I was taking the Myers-Briggs and I was talking to Bill about that and then we were talking about the PSA the PSA was a test that looked at uh initially the Stanford Binet IQ test and then the WAS test and on about an hour what they could do is they could determine what you had learned okay what you had learned in your life and about math and science and social studies and things like that but they also learned some of the other questions and from that they developed this scale so I said to Bill well what's that really useful for and then he looked to me and he said snipers yeah and I said to myself he goes yeah I was really good at predicting snipers and like I said there's a little whitewashing of Bill that's gone on since his death but it was you know it was he really was one that would tell stories and he would just tell the absolute truth which is the way he felt about sex is he just wanted to rip out all of those pages so when you read the you know unauthorized versions you'll see all of that sex that's been taken out but it's really quite interesting he really didn't like pages that had references to sex okay so that's two of my stories thank you Michael thank you oh I just wanted to come up and just see yeah David if you had anything that you felt to share from what Carol's been sharing or if you had anything else that you wanted to ask Carol and then also just to mention that this afternoon Carol felt to possibly be available just there is this open space this afternoon for a two or three hours for siesta or joining and up here under the shade could be a nice space or possibly in the gathering room where there's AC and it's cooler so she felt to just be available if there was a small group if you just had some more intimate questions to really hear not just about bill about it not just about that yeah yeah yeah I think too the what Carl started talking about at the very beginning seems to strike me the most too is that that there's a bigger plan that it's very orchestrated by one who knows are good that from the human perspective you actually can't figure out or any understand anything from the horizontal plane and so the more trusting you can be at just waking up in the morning and saying here we go I'm your lord or here I am lord is what the prayer that Jesus gave to bill through Helen I really when you think about it even what Carol shared at the beginning here she is married raising three children in Denver and and she this whole thing with tibran and the signs and symbols that's been my experience too it's all orchestrated we we are only spinning our wheels in the mud when we try to say I think I know what's going on now in my life and I think I know what's coming next and I think I know because the relationships according to the ego all have boxes and categories and you're like a living witness and sharing of how this higher power is behind does its thing no matter what and you can try to judge against it or tell it to stop or whatever and it will have its way so I just appreciate that really that that really shines through because that's that's really the most important thing for all of us if you can just take one thing away from this this whole weekend that would be huge just to have that well and that you that everyone is so lovingly and specifically looked after you know it's like there's not anybody sort of sitting out there in the wings not being noticed you know we we tend because of the way brains work and because of the things we believe that are incorrect that all of us have a very small picture of ourselves comparatively speaking and so the course presents itself is remedial in other words we dug ourselves into a big hole and now we're trying to get up to you know our heads above water in some way and it just gets down in the hole with us and talks to us as if we were separate people living in a real world in other words if it doesn't talk to us in a way that that relates to where we think we are we would pay no attention to it there would be no way we could relate to it and hang on to our hands so to speak to keep allowing us to be more and more and more aware of what we really are but what you've said is so true everybody has got something that's fabulous that you love to do that allows you to be with whoever you want to be with that allows you to give your gifts in the very best possible way and no one is left out of that formula if you want to call it a formula nobody yeah nobody yeah and I think we can all bear witness to you know at the back in the the mania for teachers clarification of terms you know where Jesus says those who seek for controversy will find it but this is not a play of ideas this is a very practical course he's asked us to apply and practice the course and bill was certainly a good witness to that but to me once you start to get into stories about versions stories about what happened what was taken in what was taken out whose fault it was I think you've just bought into the ego's bait hook line and sinker and so hallelujah for bringing an end and going into that high state of mind where we say you know I don't think Jesus makes mistakes if he's orchestrating time in space and he's using all the symbols like like like like leaves blowing in the wind he just knows all the nuances he he doesn't miss a thing he doesn't make mistakes there were no errors or mistakes with the Course in Miracles I know that's a pretty radical idea but because Jesus is orchestrating everything and that we can actually come together now and be shining examples of of Christ on earth let our hands our lips everything we do be used for the glory of God and let's go with this controversy stuff because that's just really a dramatic distraction absolutely because it doesn't matter about the container you use to find out about this the point is I must let go of my grievances and it doesn't matter if words are rearranged in one way or the other we have to let go of the way we're hurting ourselves it's no one is doing it to us we are doing it to us so we're being taken by the hand and it and shown to us if we'll pay attention exactly how I'm hurting myself my relationships will show me in acute detail how I'm hurting myself how I get to change my mind end of story that's what all of these words are for and as long as that's your goal is it says you can take any one lesson and if you actually practice it you actually take it to heart she's speaking your words my god the Course is a transcendental catalytic converter to give us an experience if you can do one lesson one instant yes yes I did not expect to be up here again but just to illustrate the point of no mistakes and something greater orchestrating all of this I was going to sneak out to get ready for the next talk and I can't find my shoes and all through this there's somewhere over there but all through this I was wondering if I should share as a kind of finale about Bill's presence on earth what happened to me with him which I've never told anyone I mean just anyone publicly which was that morning July 4th I had to stop by my mother's because and I was very busy doing things to get ready for Bill's party later and I was in my own life in my own world very busy years earlier when I was 12 years old I was leaving my grandparents house saying goodbye to my great grandmother and I was going off to camp and I had I gave my grandmother a hug goodbye and then I was walking down the stairs and I heard go hug her one more time and I there was a part of me that was rebellious because I didn't want one more time to be one last time so I thought if I don't go it's fine and sure enough she passed that summer and when I was away and I had a dream of her I knew she was going and so I came to my mother's house to quickly stop and deliver something that she needed and I was going to come back later for the party for Bill and my mother said Bill's here come in and say hi to him and I said no no I'll see him later and she said no just come in and say hi to him and I said no I'll see him later and I took off and there was that funny feeling in me and then I got a call you know about two hours later that he had passed on the street in front of her house and there was a part that felt guilty in me I thought oh sorry Bill I didn't actually stand the president take that time I knew why but still I wasn't I didn't step in in that way and then the next thing I was asked I almost immediately got a call to be asked that during the memorial service for Bill I was supposed to be with his body someone had to be with his body and witness his cremation to know that it was him and what was I given during that witnessing and it was a very holy moment while everyone was gathering up above and I was there watching his body go into be incinerated I was given his shoes to hold and I was holding his shoes and so I'm thinking should I say this should I say this should I come up and say this how something you can call it Bill's energy of forgiveness holy spirit help however you want to see it orchestrated for me to actually have a final goodbye with him and then me not being able to find my shoes here keeping me here keeping me there are no mistakes it does work for your own forgiveness of your own self in every possible way and Bill just illustrated that over and over again and Bill could give give me my shoes so I can do you can you tolerate I mean everybody not just you can you tolerate about one more story about him I have no idea what time it is but that brings me to so many people including myself have had the sense of Bill being around he is a real busy body for all of his being an introvert when he was alive I've heard from so many people who have read never forget to laugh and people will say I so feel Bill's presence now a lot of these people most people have never met him after all I mean he died 29 years ago and and people will call and write and say I just cry because I miss him so much and and they never met him in the flesh but but the idea of Bill's being around don't take that as just some sort of a weird voodoo thing Bill's around Tammy I feel sure that the fact that you can't find your shoes is not an accident in other words shoes is a thing when I have to tell you just a couple of things when Bill had asked that he be cremated and that he wanted his ashes spread out all over the bay there in San Francisco and Pat Hopkins was the executive tricks of his estate and so she was the one handling all the details and so the ashes could not be spread immediately because the weather was pretty bad which meant the water was rough and those ashes are spread with a very low flying airplane and it's dangerous to the airplane under those circumstances so it had to wait until the conditions were right well on this particular day which turned out to be a Wednesday at about 8 30 in the morning Pat gets a call from the people who say today is the day that the ashes will be spread around noon or something so she said she's making a tuna fish sandwich for lunch about noon which was Bill's favorite lunch and she said as clear as anything she hears Bill's voice over here saying this is the punster in him it's Ash Wednesday Pat so she called Judy and they had another good cry over the whole thing it's Ash Wednesday Pat so like him kind of at the at the other end I know he was so helpful to so many people when I was debating about writing this book I I look back now and thought what was the debate but there was in the beginning like well maybe this is somebody else's job to do and not mine and so I had went up to see this late there's a town about 30 minutes from where I live called Casadaga which is filled with psychic people and spiritualist camp and so on it's kind of well known and so I knew a woman up there so I said okay so I'm going to go up and have this little psychic reading and somewhere I said I'm about to write a book about a friend of mine no more details than that I said if you just get anything about that let me know and she said for some reason I see this typewriter she said it's an old-fashioned kind of typewriter where you type and the carriage moves and then you have to return the carriage back it's like okay I got my message I'm done if there's anything that's associated with Bill it's the typewriter on which the course was typed in the first place then to the other end of of the spectrum where he was so helpful I'm positive 13 years ago my younger brother died of Parkinson's disease and another related disorder multiple systems atrophy so he died much faster than one normally does with Parkinson's and for about a year for the last couple years of his life I promised I would go through his dying process with it and so I would go up to where he lived he was a professor at a university and I traveled back and forth about every six weeks and we went through all the things in selling his house moving all the stuff that had to be done as he deteriorated and about the last year I would say do you want me to read you any spiritual material and he would say as best he could talk kind of like well if you want to and it's like this hasn't anything to do with I want to it's like but this be helpful would you like to do this and it would kind of always go nowhere so obviously the answer was no and so we fast forward I was up there what turned out to be my last visit and I had also made arrangements ahead of time so that when he was ready to call hospice I had all the arrangements made and I would say do you want me to call hospice no he was smart enough to know what calling hospice meant so he was pushing this off and so on this occasion he had been transferred from the assisted living to a nursing home and I looked at his clothes and this often happens in nursing homes if there aren't family members there all the time the clothes managed to slowly disappear actually maybe quickly disappear so I looked in his closet and I thought I need to go find more of your clothes and bring them here so I went to this place which we had rented pretending like he could still work for a big office but it actually turned out to be a giant storage unit for stuff from his house and his clothes and from his office at the university and so on a lot of people had helped some boxes were marked some weren't so it was like walking if you've ever gone skiing you know where you're down with moguls on both sides of it it was like just mountains of boxes so I thought well I don't know where I will start so I just wander through all these hundreds of boxes I choose a box open it up and you know what was inside that box books he had zillions of books and on the very top of that box was a book of Bill's favorite sayings from the course that he and his friend Jules published as one of the very first things he did when they moved out to Tiberon that was one of his little kind of get settled into California things and I had given it to my brother back in 1979 when it was published and I'm sure he never opened it but I always gave him all that anyway and so I picked up this book I thought this is so not an absent dear Bill is here Bill is helping with this dying process so I took it with me the next day another good friend of ours from our childhood I said if you want to see him he's going fast you need to come now so she had come down from Omaha so we went to the nursing home and I said I found this book of sayings from A Course in Miracles I said would you like for me to read you some of this and for the first time he said couldn't really talk what yes so we wheeled him out in a wheelchair into this lovely little kind of garden area and I said this was so touching and I said okay I'm going to just read you a few of these don't listen with your intellect listen like you were being held in your mother's arms who adored you more than anything and just listen from there so I read you know there were short little passages and then could kind of look and I could see he was still engaged so I quickly open it almost to any page and read another one and and he was paying attention after about 10 minutes that was kind of as much as he could tolerate and so we took him back in I flew home that night the next day his extra help that we had hired called and said he's ready for you to call hospice so I called hospice they came in on Friday she called me and said your brother's in really bad shape I said I know I was just up there and so I quickly called his boys in that came in over the weekend and were with him and his ex-wife who was a saint and the hospice people and they told people at the university he was kind of a living legend in his field and all of Monday and Tuesday was a parade of people in to say goodbye to him and he died early evening of Tuesday and no one will ever convince me that Bill was not right there holding hands with him taking him finally in the easiest possible way to let go he was holding on because his younger son was about to graduate from college and he was trying and trying to accomplish being present for that he couldn't of course go but the young son his younger son was able to be there over that weekend Bill and what Bill's presence which of course is all of us there aren't any boundaries but all of the help that we all need for anything we go through in our letting go process is here for us if we will ask if we will pay attention if we will take advantage of everything that's being handed to us on a silver platter it's ire's to accept and there were many other things I don't have time to tell you about but those are kind of three little things that make it very clear Bill's here so is everybody else thank you thank you


The avalanche of reversions to Islam continues. Today, we're gonna check out another celebrity that reverted to Islam. It is Chef Marco Pierre White's son who got jailed for multiple thefts and possession of drugs who finally reverted to Islam to stay of heroin. So this headline is a mouthful, of course, but nothing shocks me anymore. We just saw two prominent former Orthodox priests convert to Islam. Prominent figures like Andrew Tate converting to Islam. The rise of Islam is absolutely unstoppable. It's a shame that Islam is not on the stock market, man. It would bypass gold, silver, the dollar, and Bitcoin as well. It's absolutely mind-blowing what has been happening over the past few months.


Woman with no kids is confused when DNA tests show she has a daughter. Few years ago, everybody was taking DNA tests. It was a global phenomenon that spread out to the vast majority of people. As of today, 26 million people get tested per year. Everyone wants to find out more about themselves. But while it sounds like a fun activity to spare some time and money on, some people are never truly prepared to discover major secrets about their lives. That was the case with Molly Sinert, who decoded to take a DNA test, but got the most unexpected news she could ever have imagined. Many of us would take DNA tests for fun. Saying your 4% Greek was cool to stitch to your resume, right? While many took these tests for giggles, there were others concerned for their health. Genetic testing is an important tool to use in analyzing different conditions, and often these results can help with the diagnosis of a disease. Molly Sinert is the protagonist of our story. She is a 36-years-old woman who lives in Florida with her husband and her adoptive family. As every other DNA tester, she was interested in learning more about who she is. What she would eventually find out, however, changed her life forever. The adoptive parents had picked Molly up from the airport when she was just a baby. She was immediately amazed by her mother's blonde hair. Even as a baby, Molly knew something was different in her life. She was a baby from over the seas who'd arrived to an entirely new family, where she was loved and cherished. She didn't intend to search for her birth family, since she was already fulfilled by the one who raised her. Emily Bushnell lives in Pennsylvania with her daughter, Isabelle.  Much similar to Molly's situation, Emily would grow up in a different household than that in which she was born. She never had the chance to meet her birth parents, which she didn't mind. One day, her daughter Isabelle proposed she take a DNA test. It was an exciting thing for a child to do, especially when her mother is everything she has. Isabelle wished this be a chance to reconnect with her mother's side of the family. Maybe even learn more about who she is. She could have never anticipated what happened next. Miles away was Molly Sinert, who was living her life to the fullest. She had a beautiful childhood she frequently reminisces on, such as owning a cat named Whiskers and sporting fashionable hairstyles to the ball proms. She had little reason to ever desire something different, yet the decision to take a DNA test twisted the narrative far too much to return to that life. Everything in her life was pretty much perfect. She loves her adoptive parents and has rarely thought about her birth parents on the other side of the ocean. There wasn't much to remember, after all, and she would rather focus on the present rather than the past. She was still persuaded to take a DNA test, but it was for health reasons. Given she was adopted, Molly never knew what to expect from her health. And the trend for DNA testing was catching more and more attention. It was only natural to wish to partake. Does she have any hereditary diseases? Is she perceptive to a particular illness her birth parents might have possessed? How's her genealogical line looking in terms of lifespan? Well, she was about to find out. It was only natural to be questioning details about her heritage her adoptive parents might have not known about, or simply refused to tell her. After all, she was 36 and reaching the time where health may impose serious concerns for each individual. Miles away, the universe was plotting different as another family had the same idea to do a DNA test. Isabel Bushnell was a child with a mission to find more of her family. As someone with a single parent, she didn't have many people around her to begin with. She hoped for a happy ending. And she believed her mother was just as curious as she was to learn more about where they come from. Even if Emily was against the idea at first, her daughter had her ways to get what she wanted. The question remains, was this a truth they were better off not knowing? Isabel could not understand why her mother was against the idea. It was such a cool thing to do. Maybe she was just nervous. After all, she'd never met her real family and lived all her adult life in the dark about this subject. Well, not anymore. As the truth was about to be exposed. Emily Bushnell had a good life in Pennsylvania. But she decided it might do some good to learn about her family history. As a child, she loved her cat and had a unique sense of fashion that couldn't go unnoticed since early childhood. She thought she was pretty unique in that regard. However, that was soon to change. When the DNA tests came back, Molly was stunned. She was convinced the results were wrong, and there had to be a mistake somewhere down the line of testing. There was no way the DNA test was right about her. Were they all wrong? She couldn't believe doctors confirmed these results. Molly's DNA test stated she had a 49.96% matching DNA with someone else right in the United States. But how was that possible? As far as she knew, no family member of hers came to the states save for her. They had to be overseas. More than that, the person with the matching DNA was a little girl. She was young enough for Molly to be her mother, which the doctors assumed she was. The percentage was too high for Molly to be anything else, but the woman was completely in denial. Absolutely no way. It's impossible. Molly protested, reading her DNA results over and over again. How could she be a mother when she has never gotten pregnant? She needed a clear explanation as to why this little girl was showing as her genealogical daughter. So she'd contact the family. Isabel and her mother were just as shocked. No way a stranger had the potential to be her mother when her mother was standing right next to her. There had to be a reason why she shared such a high percentage of a matching DNA with this woman, and after contacting each other, they figured out exactly why. Molly Sinert and Emily Bushnell are related. Of course they are, or else this wouldn't have been possible. But more than coming from the same family, Molly and Emily are so closely related it has made it possible for Emily's daughter to come off as Molly's. How? They were twins. Molly and Emily were twins separated at birth. They figured so much out from noticing how their lives have been. Both were born on the 29th of March 1985 and were adopted from South Korea shortly after their birth. Molly quickly put the pieces together. Both had their respective cats and their matching hairstyles, going as far as aiming even for the same style in their senior profile picture. Nothing managed to keep them away from one another, they had the same spirit. It was incredible. Someone from miles away to prove to be so important after an innocent DNA test? Even Isabelle couldn't believe it, and she was the one who wanted to find out more about her family. To make the deal feel even more real, the twins agreed not to FaceTime or video call until meeting each other in person. They abstained for so long until they were finally able to close the distance and meet in real life. After having lived in each other's proximity for so long without knowing, it was a fair deal. They still couldn't believe what they were seeing. It's like looking into a mirror. Remarked Molly, overwhelmed with emotion right inside the airport station. After many embraces and tears of joy, the sisters accepted that everything they had learned was true. They were long lost siblings. It happens frequently with babies who are adopted in foreign countries, and the reality is most never end up meeting one another. But Molly and Emily were more than lucky to find out about one other's existence. The single difference in their appearance would prove to be their height. One twin was half an inch taller than the other, which they would tease each other about, commenting about how they could have been like that in the womb too. Their respective families are in shock as well. This is a one in a million chance to happen, and for the twins, the happiest outcome which could have ever come out from a DNA test. Neither was looking for this kind of connection, but both are extremely grateful for it. The sisters intend to make up for the time lost. They're looking forward to a fulfilling life together, in the presence of a loving family, and many more memories to unlock. Molly started this journey hoping to learn about her health, but ended up with the most important person from her life thanks to it.


As we keep the Lenten journey, we follow Jesus in the way of the cross, sustained by the Scriptures and moving towards Holy Week, as we follow through the purposes of God. Psalm 23. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths, for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.  My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long. Psalm 23 is perhaps one of the best known Psalms, one of the best known songs in the whole Jewish and Christian repertoire. And it's short, but it's clear, and it's profound, and at its heart it is Lenten. I haven't often thought of it that way, but here it is in the lectionary, and we're using it that way. Because at its heart, it's about going through the dark valley. And in preparation for going through the dark valley, in the older translations it sometimes said, the valley of the shadow of death. And it may be that that's really what the Hebrew text means. In preparation for that, we need to have those first two or three verses where the psalmist imagines himself as a sheep trusting the shepherd implicitly. Now, this is a good sheep in the psalm, because the shepherd says, let's go this way, and the sheep does it. But part of the point of having shepherds, and if you know anything about sheep, is that they're very good at wandering off, at going off through a hedge somewhere and getting themselves lost and needing to be rescued. And so the psalm begins with this sense that as we go through Lent, as we go through life, part of the point is to stick close by the shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd, and when it says I shall not want, it doesn't mean I won't want anything. It's want in the old-fashioned sense of I will not be lacking anything. I will, as we used to say, I will want for nothing. Everything I need will be provided. But it'll be provided if we stick with the shepherd. And that is part of the discipline of Lent to remind ourselves day by day, week by week, that we're sticking with Jesus. There's lots of distractions, lots of potential open gates and fields that the sheep might want to wander off into. But we must resist that because he leads me beside the still waters. If I'm thirsty, if I stick with him, he'll find me water. And he will find fresh pasture. And he will restore. The word for soul there really means my inner life, my sense of who I am, my sense of well-being. And he will lead me in right paths for his name's sake. So all that then prepares us for the times that come and they will come when we are called either for ourselves or with someone we love, or indeed when we look out at the world and see wars and rumors of wars and horrible things being done by wicked people to innocent people and so on. With all the complexities of life that we know only too much about as these days we can have wars and horrors and murders and sudden death beamed straight into our living rooms on our televisions. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil for you are with me. That's the great scriptural promise which comes back again and again, many times in the Old Testament and in the New, focused, of course, ultimately on Jesus himself, who is the Emmanuel, God with us, but again and again said by God, I am with you. And of course part of the need for that promise is that when we're going through the dark valley, it often feels as though God isn't with us. We don't have a strong sense of his presence, either because of physical illness or because of depression or because just circumstances are sweeping us off our feet and it's hard to stay focused on God. We need to cling on to this promise. You are with me and the sheep looks at the fact that the shepherds got his rod and his staff. They comfort him because he knows that any enemies that come to attack, the shepherd is going to deal with them. That's the knowledge that sustains us. And then it's as though the psalmist can't quite sustain the metaphor of the sheep all the way through because in verse 5, you prepare a table before me.  I'm not sure how a sheep would react to that and my cup overflows. Again, sheep do not normally drink from cups, I think. Maybe you could train one too, but still, you take the point. And so now we've broadened out away from the original metaphor into a place where the people of God are being royally entertained by God. And as we go through Lent looking ahead to Easter, he prepares a table before us and on the night Jesus was betrayed, the table was prepared and there he shared his supper with his friends and he spoke of his body and his blood. In the presence of my enemies says the psalmist, so yes, there are bad things happening, but God does this strange thing, this dramatic ritual in the middle of it all. And then comes the lesson as we've seen in other Lent themes as well. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. The point of Lent is not primarily that we sort ourselves out. It's that we learn to look again to the Lord who is our shepherd, whose goodness and mercy are not of somewhere else doing something else. They are following us, they're coming right behind to catch us if we fall, to nudge us when we're about to turn the wrong way and to lead us where we need to go. And so the psalm ends, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life. In other words, I'm going to be in the presence of God, that's my firm conviction. It's tough in Lent, but that's the promise to be with the Lord where he is, all our life and all that is to come. And so we pray, gracious Lord, thank you for this wonderful psalm which has sustained so many people in faith and hope over the many years. We pray that we may be faithful to your calling and even though you do sometimes take us through the dark valleys that we will be comforted by your presence, by your protection and by the hope which you set before us. In Jesus' name, Amen.


Hearing that flag was one of the proudest moments of my life. It's a miracle that it happened. When I was a 20 year old plumber's apprentice, the jackhammer I was using struck a buried 30,000 volt power line. They say my heart stopped three times and I nearly lost my legs.  What's the point of the story? The point is not about me, it's about you. Construction accidents involving power lines are devastating to workers, to their families, and to their employers. Only you can prevent them by learning all you can about how to work safe. Then by using those safe work practices every day on the job and by looking out for your fellow workers whenever there's a risk of power line contact. The video training program you're about to watch is a good place to start learning or to confirm your knowledge. Give it your best. What you learn may save a buddy's life someday or your own. Innocent enough, but there's enough energy in those power lines to melt steel.  If you survive the contact, your life will change forever. This video is about keeping you and your coworkers alive when working near power lines. So much in life wouldn't be possible if it weren't for electricity. Alarm clocks, coffee pots, TVs, power tools. In fact, it's hard to imagine life without electricity. But it can be as dangerous as it is useful. When electricity is underestimated or ignored, it can kill. Electrocutions are a leading cause of death in the construction industry. And among electrocutions, power line contacts are the number one killer. Over 90% of these power line contacts involve overhead lines. That day my buddy Joe and I were unloading rebar. A crane was swinging up onto the deck. The last load came in and Joe was the first one to touch it. And it was just this bright flash and smoke. They say, I know Joe's on the ground and there's nothing I could do. Over the years, we've come to believe that power lines don't carry enough power to kill. Or that they are well insulated. Both of these beliefs are dead wrong. I never paid much attention to power lines. They're just as much a part of the job as my tools. Overhead lines carry voltages ranging from 120 to over 700,000 volts. For a shock to occur, the current needs a path to ground. And unfortunately, the human body can be a conductor of electricity. If voltages are high enough, anything can conduct electricity, even air. It's also important to remember that any covering you see on a power line is there for weather protection, not insulation.  You know, I always thought that black stuff on the power lines was insulation. I thought they were safe. Statistics tell us that the equipment that most often touches overhead power lines are cranes. Cranes almost always hit the lines with their booms or load lines. But the results depend on what type of crane it is. In boom truck contacts, the operator who is usually in contact with the ground is generally the victim. With a mobile crane, the rigger or other ground worker will most likely be seriously injured or killed. The reason for the difference? Equipment design. For many boom trucks, the operator is in direct contact with the ground and the vehicle through the control tether. Because of this, some manufacturers now offer boom truck designs which electrically isolate the operator. For example, some boom trucks can only be operated from an elevated platform attached to the truck chassis. And others have fiber optic control tethers, which reduces the chance of electricity passing through the tether to the operator. Some manufacturers even make available radio control units which further isolate the operator. But as we will see later, current can flow through the ground affecting the operator or workers standing nearby. So even with these protective designs, the risk of a shock is still present. In a mobile crane, the operator is separated from the ground by the equipment. The rigger, however, can be in direct contact with the load and the ground. If the crane hits a power line, the current will flow through the rigger. But cranes aren't the only way to contact a line. Other high-reaching equipment such as drilling rigs, aerial buckets, back hose and concrete pumpers can be just as risky. OSHA requires that you stay at least 10 feet away from any overhead lines. If the line is greater than 50 kilovolts, then the distance, also known as the clearance distance, increases depending on what the voltage is. A good rule of thumb is this. Keep all parts of high-reaching equipment, including cranes, at least 10 feet away from overhead power lines that are 50 kilovolts or less, and 35 feet away from all others. Many of the power lines we have running in and around our neighborhoods and job sites are distribution lines of 50 kilovolts or less. The majority of the time, these are the lines that get hit, and these are the lines that you must stay at least 10 feet away from. If you're unsure whether the lines running through your job site are 50 kilovolts or less, ask your supervisor. It's also important to know that as power usage increases, the power lines can heat up, causing them to sag from expansion, so make sure you remain aware of the line location throughout the entire day. So, what can you do to avoid contacting overhead power lines? First, know where the overhead lines are on your job site. Then your supervisor can ask the utility to de-energize and visibly ground the lines. If this is done, employees can work closer than 10 feet to the lines. That's because by taking away the source of the electrocution, you're eliminating the hazard. It's important to know that even if you see a grounding cable, you always want to make sure that your supervisor has contacted the power company. The power company must meet with the contractor to verify that the lines are dead and to communicate any restrictions. Only in this way will your supervisor know that the lines you'll be working near are not energized. Another option that your supervisor might use is to have the utility move the lines. Or barrier protection could be installed by the utility company. The barrier will be made of a non-conductive material that is not attached to the high-reaching equipment. The most common type of barrier is the insulated sleeve. But even with sleeves, you can't work closer than the clearance distance to the power line. And remember, only trained utility personnel can install them. Another type of barrier protection are goal or rider posts used in traffic areas. They remind you of the overhead lines and physically require you to lower your equipment before passing under the lines. You might also use warning lines with flags. They can be used to mark the clearance distance from the power line. Another option is using an observer who will keep an eye on the distance between the line and the equipment. The operator can have a hard time maintaining the proper clearance distance from power lines. The observer gives the operator a better perspective on both vertical and horizontal line clearance distances. If the equipment comes too close to the line, the observer will warn the operator. OSHA requires an observer if the operators can't visually maintain the proper clearance distance. To offer greater protection, this option should be used with a warning line with flags or insulated sleeves. Also, it's important that the observer have a clear view of the overhead power lines and no other distracting responsibilities. The observer's view should be directly below the lines and to one side of the high-reaching equipment for the horizontal clearance distance. For vertical clearance, the observer should stand wherever there is a clear view of the lowest power line and the highest part of the high-reaching equipment. Some other options that can be used are protective technologies. These include insulated links and proximity devices. Insulated links are placed between the crane hook and the load and are designed to prevent electricity from passing to the load. But don't think that this assures safety. To work effectively, they must be properly maintained and frequently inspected. And proximity devices are designed to warn the operator when any part of the boom is too close to a line. Such devices are very useful. However, certain conditions can affect their accuracy, so know the limitations of the equipment. Don't forget that these protective technologies don't allow you to work any closer than the clearance distance. So, it's important to remember that if your supervisor can't de-energize the lines, then you must keep all parts of the crane or other equipment at least 10 feet away from power lines less than 50 kilovolts and 35 feet away from all other lines. Remember, if you aren't sure about the line you're working around, ask your supervisor. Even though high-reaching equipment is responsible for about half of power line fatalities, other equipment and activities can be just as deadly. Material handling is a pretty common activity on job sites. Only problem is, as the supplies or equipment go from point A to point B, not much thought is given to how it's done. It just has to be done. Too often, workers are injured or killed when they strike the power lines with a conductive material. In fact, material handling is the second largest cause of power line contacts. When storing materials on site, never use the area below a power line. Materials stored under power lines is an invitation for disaster. Some contractors barricade these areas off to prevent equipment and material from using this danger zone for storage. Another leading cause of contacts are ladders. The majority of these involve metal extension ladders. These contacts usually occur during extending, lowering, or moving the ladders. So when handling materials or using ladders, what can you do to avoid contacting overhead power lines? Just as we mentioned before, you can work with your supervisor to always know where the lines are, have the utility de-energize or move the lines. And if that's not possible, have the utility installed barrier protection or use non-conductive materials and tools. When working around power lines, you must use a wood or fiberglass ladder. You should also ask for help when handling the ladder. Work as little as possible around the line and don't carry the ladder while it's extended. The majority of power line fatalities involve overhead lines. However, underground contacts can also result in injury or death. When excavation work needs to be done, your supervisor should call the local one-call system before digging. In many areas, this call must be made at least two working days before the job begins. The one-call service will mark underground power lines. All workers should be trained to recognize these markings and the meanings of colors used. It's important to know that many utilities bury underground cables side by side. Never assume that if only one cable is marked by the utility, that only one cable is present. Therefore, you must always carefully hand dig in the areas near an underground cable. In work areas where the exact location of underground electric power lines is unknown, employees using jackhammers, bars or other hand tools which may contact a line must be provided with insulated protective gloves. In addition to using the one-call systems, some contractors use line locators. They cost a lot less than a repair to an underground line. Unfortunately, even with the best planning, a power line hit can still happen. And if it did, would you know what to do? If a mobile crane, dump truck or backhoe touches a line, the rigger or other workers standing near the equipment are usually injured or killed. Because of the equipment design, the operator that stays on the equipment is rarely affected. So, if you contact a line and are isolated on the equipment, stay on it until the line is de-energized by the utility. If you have to leave the equipment because of a fire, jump from the equipment, making sure you don't touch the equipment and the ground at the same time, then shuffle your feet close together with very small steps. Why? Because after an equipment contact, the current flows outward through the soil in a ripple pattern known as a power gradient. These are areas of high and low potential that circle the energized equipment like ripples in a pond after a stone hits the surface. So, if you just walk away, as you step from a stronger to a weaker power level, the current could flow through your legs. If you shuffle your feet, keeping them very close together, you won't bridge the areas of high and low potential. For the same reason, you must stay away if you witness an equipment contact or see a fellow worker directly touching a line. If you didn't and walked up to the equipment or worker, you would get shocked and probably die. The only thing you can do is to get help and wait until the utility company arrives and shuts down the power source. But before the work even begins, there are some things that your company can do to help reduce or eliminate contact risks. With blueprints in hand, your employer can check out the site and find all of the overhead and underground power lines. Activities or equipment near these lines that could put you at risk should be identified. Equipment and material storage areas must never be under power lines. Then, your job site can be made safer for you to work at. Your employer could have the power company de-energize or move the lines. Other options include moving the work activity or using shorter equipment and materials. And if the danger can't be eliminated, something must be done to reduce it, such as using an observer for crane lifts or requiring workers to use non-conductive ladders for elevated work. But always remember, this will not reduce the minimum clearance required from the power line. Electricity, properly contained and controlled, is the lifeblood of our world. But we must not forget that it can kill. So always be aware. Know where you, your equipment and the power lines are. And never forget the devastation a power line can cause. I just wish someone had told us that power lines are really dangerous and unloading the truck could kill somebody. If somebody had told us this, Joe might still be here today. Thanks for watching. What you have just learned may one day save your life. Never forget the work safe practices you've seen. Never allow yourself or others to take shortcuts when working around power lines. Watch out for your buddies. Watch out for yourself.