My name is Tom Darby. I'm an elder here at Radiant Church. Karen and I, my wife's right up here in front, have been attending Radiant for over 20 years. Back before this was even here, we were just down on the other end. We own four businesses in the Plainwall area and have been passionate about the marketplace as a mission field for the past 30 years or so. We have four children. They all work with us inside of our companies, ages 32 to 25, yep. The oldest, oldest is our daughter and then three sons and then we have a daughter-in-law as well. I was first exposed to the marketplace as a mission field my senior year in college. So I grew up in this area, went to Gullake High School, left to go to college down in Indiana to get an engineering degree. And I grew up in a Christian home. We went to the Catholic Church, had wonderful parents, good godly parents, but I had made a decision early in my life that I was gonna wait to surrender my life to Jesus until I was old, like I was 30. I thought that was old at that time. Yeah, that's right, it's not anymore. But so I went through high school just kind of living my life for myself, knowing who he was, knowing what he had done for me, but believing to lie from the enemy that the world had better things to offer than what he did. And I did the same thing through college. In my senior year in college, my roommate graduated prior to me and went to work at a company up here in Kalamazoo. It was called National Waterlift. And he met a marketplace missionary who led him to Christ. And he sent me a letter, back then it was letters, we didn't have email, we didn't have texting, we didn't have any of that. It was in the mid-80s. And I opened the letter and he had told me about his decision to become a Jesus follower and how excited he was about it. And I'll be honest, I saw it and I was kind of disappointed because I wasn't ready yet and he was my best friend and I wanted to spend time with him and I kind of thought, well, this is gonna mess that up. So he sent me a couple more letters trying to witness to me and I still wasn't open to it. And as I was getting ready to graduate, I had three different job offers. I had a job offer in Findlay, Ohio, one in Indianapolis and then one in Kalamazoo at the company that he worked at. And as God would have it, that was the one that had by far the highest wage. And at that point, I was more concerned with money than I was anything else. And so I took that job, but God put me there for a reason. So I went there and immediately he started working on me. I went back to church and I kept telling him, you know, I'm going to church and he had a friend who I think was a Christian from the time he was born who worked there as well and worked in the same area. And I bought a house and so he hooked him up to becoming my roommate, unbeknownst to me. I didn't know where he stood and then he was a solid believer like that. So they both started working on me at that point. So now I'm really in trouble. My mom's praying for me and these two guys are working on me. I keep telling them we're going to church, but they know better.  And there was a concert that was coming, a Christian concert that they were asking me to go to. And I kept putting them off. I don't want to go to that. And finally they were bothering me so much that I just, they broke me down. I said, I'll go. So I went, it was at Miller Auditorium in 1987. It was in the fall. It was a Steve Camp concert. And I went and he gave an altar call and I was just overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. So it up went down and was immediately changed and transformed. I mean, I went home that night. Bill was the gentleman's name who lived with me and we just all night long talked about Jesus and what he had meant to him in his life and talked about the Bible. So I got to work on Monday and Joe, my friend said, the guy that was the marketplace missionary there that worked in engineering that had witnessed Joe wanted to see me at break time. So I went up to his office and he said, you know, we run Bible studies here. I would like to invite you to some of the Bible studies that we're having. And he also said that he said, I would like to meet with a small group of you guys. There was five of us that were about the, in the same age group and meet in the evenings at your houses and we would rotate through houses and what he did. And I said, yes, I don't know why at that point I was gonna say yes to anything that had to do with God. I was just so excited. And there was four of us, three of us were new believers. Bill who had been a believer since birth and then a gentleman who hadn't accepted Christ yet. And so he after the first meeting gave his life to the Lord and for the next year this man, Mike, who was a marketplace missionary, discipled us. I mean, he taught us about Christian ease, I call it. You know, what does justification mean? What does it mean to be redeemed? What does it mean to be saved? We went through all of that so that we would understand what we were reading better. How to apply it to relationships. You know, different things about dating or anything that applied to life. Basically we spent the next year and he discipled us. So we were five young men, didn't go to the same church but did life together at work and did Bible studies together at work and then began to witness to other people at work. Now, so as we got to the end of that time, the end of the year with him, he started to say instead of teaching us he started to tell us, hey, and these are my words, not his, if all you do is use this to better yourself and you don't go out and apply this and try to help other people as well, this year's been a waste. So I started to pray and say, okay, Lord, what is it that you wanna do with this and how do you wanna use me? And he brought a verse to mind at that time and it's out of Ephesians. And it said, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works. And this is the part that got me that he created in advance for us to do. And I started to pray at that time early on, okay, God, I know you have things for me to do. I know you created me for a purpose. I know I'm created in your image. What is it that you want me to do? And I started to think things, you know, I'm in my mid-20s, I started to think things like, am I supposed to go to China to be a missionary or where are you gonna send me or what are you gonna do with me? How do you wanna use me? And I felt him say, in no uncertain terms, I have you right where I want you. And what I want you to do is go tell people about me right where you're at. So a lot of times, you know, we'll think, you know, as the mission field as being somewhere else. And if you look at it as it's defined in Webster's, it's gonna say, you know, a missionary is somebody who goes to a foreign land to share their faith and to try and have an impact on people. But really, if you think about it from a spiritual standpoint, once we make a decision, God tells us that our citizenship has changed. Now we're citizens of his kingdom. And he tells us we're foreigners in this land. So we're all missionaries. Really, if you look at it from that standpoint, and if he was just gonna take people and have them, you know, he's gonna put them in a certain area and then move everybody around.  That wouldn't even make much sense. He has most of us, not everybody. That's a calling and it's an amazing calling. I don't wanna belittle that. We sat this morning next to somebody who is a missionary here from Guatemala and had a chance to talk to him. What a calling that is. But we're all called to go and share our faith. And I believe we're all called to go and be missionaries right where we're at. Now different people are going to approach it differently. I'm gonna talk about some different things over the past 30 years, some things that have worked for me and some different foundational things that I think there are as far as taking your faith into the marketplace. But as soon as we start to take God out of the equation and say we're gonna do X, Y, and Z and it's gonna work every time, it's not. And then our need for him isn't the same. So I don't want to, as we go through this, say, hey, this is how you do things and this is how it works and because that takes him out of the picture. If we really wanna be successful with it, then we have to be praying and listening and understanding how it is that he wants us to go about doing that. So is the marketplace a mission field? You kinda have to start there. Do you really think it's a mission field? Pastor Lee talked this morning about the two tracks and he talked about the church and then he talked about society in general and for a long time they kinda ran parallel and church was good. When I grew up in the 70s, almost all of my friends went to church. I'm not saying, and that was right here in Richmond, I'm not saying everybody was sold out. I don't know that there was any more people who were passionate, really sold out for Jesus back then than there were now, but it's just what you did. You went to church and most people went to church. So at that point, at least they're getting an opportunity to hear while they're there and learn about the Bible and hear about Jesus and what he did for them. Today, decades later, and he alluded to this, it's not that way. Inside of the marketplace, when we're talking with people and when we're trying to have an influence on them, I'm amazed, especially with some of the young people who have absolutely zero idea of what the Bible has to say, what Bible stories are and what the church is all about. All they know is what society is telling them. So if people are coming to church less and less, then we have to figure out, and I believe God's moving this way and I'll talk about that a little bit, but we have to figure out how do we go to them, the Great Commission? Jesus talks about the end of Matthew.  So that's what we're called to do. So the Barna Group did a study of employed Christians. So this was back in 2018. And what they did was they went out and they did a survey. I had a chance to talk to one of the people who did the survey and they went out and they talked to people who they said they considered to be solid Christians, which would be that they went to church at least two times a month and that they believed that the Bible was God's written word. So that is who was surveyed and they asked them some questions. And one of the questions they asked them was, do they feel that they should act ethically in the workplace? And 82% said they did. Not sure what the other 18% were thinking or how that happened. That's kind of, that was a little odd when I read that, but, and then they asked them if they felt they should make friends. This is just make friends with non-Christians and it went down to 66%. And then they asked them, should they be sharing the gospel in the workplace? And is that part of a Christian's responsibility? And 24% felt that that's what they should do. And I'm not knocking, I mean, I'm not saying that, that, you know, they don't love the Lord and that they're not passionate about Jesus, but our society and the way we've grown up has kind of told us seeker friendly church, let's do it at church. It doesn't belong in the workplace. It shouldn't be there. I've been told that over the past 30 years that I've been doing this more than once, many times, and not so in certain terms, by people who are passionate followers of Jesus, but they've told me it doesn't belong in the workplace. We shouldn't be doing what we're doing. That, you know, you're there to work and to provide a service. We'll talk about that a little bit. And we are, but that you shouldn't be sharing your faith there. And I think this study, this Barna group study, kind of shows that to a point. It shows us that we need a divine reversal in the way that we look at the marketplace. And we need it soon because not as many people are coming to the church. Now, obviously as an elder of the church and, you know, I'm passionate about radiant, we want to invite people. We want them to be here. We want them to come here. But sometimes you got to show them Jesus in the workplace first and you've got to love on them and you've got to build a relationship with them before they're going to be interested to come and hear what it is that we have to say here. So, you know, there is, you know, 100, what is it, 155 million people in the workplace just in the United States.  So if there's 155 million, and they say when you read the different surveys that have been done approximately 30% of that maybe would be Christians. That means that there's a mission field just in the United States, not even across the globe of 110 million people with Christians intermixed with them that we can do a mission, that is a mission field. If we send missionaries like the gentleman I talked to this morning from Guatemala to other countries, how do we normally send them? Do we just send them as missionaries or do they go as nurses? Do they go as contractors? Do they go as people that help in agriculture? Do they go as teachers? When we send missionaries to most other countries, a majority of them won't even let them come in unless they're doing some kind of work. It's the same thing for us here. It's just someplace else. We just have to rethink and make a decision to be intentional about integrating our faith into the marketplace. So a couple of the things that I have found over the past 30 years to be foundational, number one would be prayer. Prayer is foundational and it has to start with that. If you wanna go into the marketplace and have an impact and you don't start with prayer, you're on shaky ground. So it has to start with prayer. At our companies, we do prayer daily. So again, it can work differently wherever you're at but we have a group that meets every day at our first break and they read the proverb of the day. So if it's the first day of the month, they read Proverbs one, if it's the 30th, they read Proverbs three and then they pray. So that happens daily. And then on Wednesdays, I meet with our leadership group and we have a Bible study and we pray. And then during the week on other days at noon, we have different Bible studies. I'm running one right now with some new believers on Thursdays. So inside of our group, and we've been praying for decades, we've been praying almost since we started the business. We've been praying since we started the businesses but we've been praying inside of the business almost since day one, collectively as a group. We have on the Wednesday prayer that I do in time, we have four generations from my family up until just recently my grandma passed but we have four generations praying together on that Wednesday. So we had my grandma, my mom comes in, Karen and myself and then my kids and then outside of that, I've got some of the leadership group who has been doing marketplace ministry with me for decades and they're part of that group as well. But we don't just pray for the businesses in general which we do but we pray for the people more so than anything else. So up on our monitors that everybody sees in the shop, we have something that talks about we have prayer on Wednesdays and if they have something that they would like us to pray for to come and let us know and not many Wednesdays go by that somebody doesn't filter up by where we're meeting in a conference room prior to us praying and say, hey, could you pray for this? So it's impactful, it's powerful, it's part of the outreach and it sets the foundation. And we've seen healings, we've seen all different types of things. I'll tell a quick story about my daughter but there's many other stories along the same line. My daughter when she was in high school had headaches, terrible headaches as she got to her senior year and we took her to the doctor and they did some MRIs and they did some stuff and he called me at work. The doctors did and said, you need to bring Adrienne in right away, not the phone call you wanna get. So we took her in, they did a CT scan and they found a spot on her brain, a dark spot. So she went through a bunch of tests here in Kalamazoo, couldn't find it. So we took her to Cleveland Clinic, right? So we took her to the Cleveland Clinic and immediately they diagnosed it as a cavernous angioma is what they called it. So it's all the small blood vessels instead of a large one but they were malformed and the bleeding is what was causing all the problem but there was nothing that they could do. So we prayed and we prayed at church and we prayed at home and prayed consistently for healing. Seven years went by and she continued to have headaches, went through college. So I had a gentleman come in to teach my leadership group at work about hearing from the Holy Spirit at work and he was there doing that meeting and he got part way through and he said, he was using an example, he said, it would be as if somebody had headaches all the time and I heard the Holy Spirit say to me, stop them and tell them about Adrian.  So he had started the healing rooms up in Grand Rapids and he said, can I pray for her? And we said, of course, nervous, I think 12 to 15 of us in there and we all outstretched our arms and he put his hand on Adrian's head. I'm right there in the conference room and began to pray for her and they both, he felt a pounding in her head and she felt the pounding going on and her headaches immediately were relieved after seven years. She told us a couple of days later, she said, I didn't remember what it was like not to have a headache, you know. So that happened and we prayed for her again at church and there's been all kinds of healings here at church but that happened in the marketplace, right into business. It can happen in homes, it can happen in businesses, people's lives can be changed, people can be healed but we have to make ourselves available. We have to be willing to get out of our comfort zone, get out of that box that says, hey, church or the church building is where we do all of this and we need more and more people to get on board with taking it out into the marketplace and into the world. We have to be spiritually attractive and available and this one is not always an easy one.  I didn't know what to say. I just looked at him as an under performer but they looked at him as a Christian under performer and what it did was it had an impact on his ministry. Part of being attractive in the marketplace is trying to excel at what we do. We've got an advantage, we've got the Holy Spirit. In baseball, they've got steroids and the marketplace, we've got the Holy Spirit. So with the Holy Spirit, you can get just amazing ideas and excel in the marketplace as God, for me, I know over the past 30 years and when I was there, I excelled through that company really quick before I left to start my own companies and a lot of that I attribute not to anything to do with myself but God and because I was trying to take care of his business there, he was taking care of mine and he was in planning ideas in my head and give me solutions to things that happened quickly and so we should expect that. We should expect that when we're in the marketplace that we should be the top performers not the bottom performers and people are gonna be drawn to that as you go to have an impact on people and try to influence them if you're showing up for work late every day if you're grumbling like everybody else and if you don't look any different then why do they wanna come to you? You know, we should look different and part of that is excelling while we're there. There is a couple of scriptures along those lines, one from Proverbs, I still laugh about the first time I read it, I thought, I can't believe that's in the Bible. Said, one who is slacking his work is brother to the one who destroys and that's Proverbs 18, nine. So, I mean, it is a big deal, it talks about throughout the Bible being a sluggard and being in Proverbs, it talks about being slack in your work, that is not a good thing. I mean, being brother to the one who destroys I think just says it all. And then in Colossians 3.23, it says, "'Whatever you do, work hardily as for the Lord, "'not for men.' "'Sometimes we look at it and we think, "'I don't like my boss or I don't like the company "'or they're not a Christian company "'or you don't understand where I'm working "'or what's going on, "'but if we approach it and we say, "'Hey, we're working for God "'and the impact that we can have for him, "'then we take man and we put him to the side "'cause we fail each other. "'None of us are perfect and no workplace is perfect. "'We have a couple hundred employees in our workplace, "'I can guarantee you is not perfect.' "'No matter all the prayer that goes on, "'everything that goes on inside of our workplace "'don't want anybody to think that everything is perfect "'cause it's not even close. "'So don't expect it to be, "'but we need to look different. "'We need to make sure that we're spiritually attractive "'and that we look different than what everybody else does. "'Loving our neighbor, another one that can be tough. "'It's easy to love the people at work "'or in the marketplace that are similar to us, "'that we like, that we get along with, "'but when we're working with people, "'there's gonna be a lot of people "'that we may not like that much, "'but we're called to love them. "'And love is patient, love is kind, "'it does not envy, it does not boast, "'it is not rude, it is not proud, it is not self-seeking. "'You continue to go, those aren't feelings. "'Those are decisions. "'So we have to make a decision when we're there "'if we wanna have an impact for him "'that we're not just gonna love the people that we like, "'but we're gonna love everybody "'that we come into contact with. "'We may not spend a lot of time with some of the people. "'We may not have a lot in common with them, "'but we have to learn to love them." And I think Jesus talks about that in the parable of the Good Samaritan. I'll read that real quick. And this is when the lawyer comes up, so the expert in the law comes up and they talk about what are the greatest commandments and love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, and mind and then also love your neighbor as yourself. And he says, who is my neighbor? So, but he desiring to be just or to justify himself said to Jesus and who is my neighbor? Jesus replied, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now, by chance, a priest was going down the road and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his animal and brought him to the inn and took care of him. And the next day, he took out two Daeneri and gave them to the innkeeper saying, take care of him and whatever you or whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back. So the two passing by, and I ask myself this frequently inside of the workplace and looking at it like the road to Damascus, how many times do I walk by somebody and they're hurting and I don't even know it. I'm not paying attention, maybe not purposely just walking by him. But inside of the marketplace, we have all the issues that the rest of the world has. We have divorce, we have people dealing with money issues, we have addiction issues, we have people who are hurting in so many different ways. Now, if I walk by and knowingly walk by, that's not a good thing, like the Levite and the Price did. But what I want to be is in tuned with God so that as I see somebody like that, I can help. And our first inkling, sometimes because we're so busy at work, I mean, I had four kids in sports, multiple businesses, we had a lot going on and was extremely busy. But what I found was that if I took care of God's business, like I said earlier, he would take care of mine. So when those times arose to take a second and to spend time with people, it was time well spent. And it was not that in the end, I didn't have enough time to get done what I needed to get done. So if we look at the Samaritan, he didn't just walk up to the person when he saw what was going on and say, I'll pray for you, which is good, we should. And I'm not saying that shouldn't go on, but he had the means to help that person. So he used those means and went ahead and did the physical things that he could do. He bandaged his wounds, he took them, set them on his donkey, took them to the inn, paid for them, stayed with them for a day. And then the next day paid for what was going on. So inside of the marketplace, we have all kinds of opportunities to love on people, not just through prayer, but we hear about things that are going on in their lives, and we can physically pour into their lives as well. Recently, I had an individual who, the Lord was laying on my heart, he said, I want, and this has never happened, before he said, I want you to buy this person a computer. I'm like, well, that's odd. Why would I buy this individual a computer? I'm not an IT guy, I don't even know what kind of computer to buy him. But I started to pray about it, went ahead, and did what I was called to do, and bought the computer, brought the individual in on a Friday, and said, I felt as though God was telling me to buy you this computer. So this is from God, not from me, I'm just being obedient to what he told me to do. And he broke down, he couldn't even talk. And he said, I can't talk right now. He grabbed the computer and thanked me and he left. So I didn't know what was going on. He came back the Monday morning, and he knocked on my door and he came in, he said, can I talk to you? And I said, yeah, he said, he said, you didn't know this, he said, but I've been working on for a year, a video game, I think it was, or something that he's developing. And he said, I got to the point where I couldn't do anything else, because my computer didn't have enough power. And he said, the one that you gave me, gave me that opportunity to do that. But he said, above and beyond that, he said, I've been witnessing to my brother for, I don't remember what he said, I'll say 10 years, and his brother's far from the Lord. And he said, when I told my brother, because I've been telling my brother about this video game, and that I can't get it finished. And he said, when I told my brother that you had given me the computer, and that you didn't know that I needed it, and that God told you to give it to me, he said it gave me a chance to witness to him. And he said, I made more inroads over that weekend after that gift than he had in the previous 10 years.  Another time, and I could tell stories like this for two hours, but another time, I was walking through the shop and God told me to stop and talk to this individual, and that happens periodically, but I was busy, ignored him, like I can sometimes on my knucklehead and do, and continued to walk down, do my work and did my work, and I was walking back by, and he reminded me again, and I thought, oh, I need to do this, I need to stop. So I stopped, I had no idea what to say, and I walked over to him, and I said, I just wanna let you know that, and I had a relationship with this individual, it's important to have some sort of relationship if you're gonna be bold with things that you say most of the time anyways, unless God's really, the Holy Spirit's really thick upon you and telling you to do something, but so I went up and I said, I just want you to know that God wanted me to stop and talk to you and tell you that he loves you, and I walked away. Again, had no idea what was going on in his life at that point, he hadn't shared with me, so he came the next morning, knocked on my door, and said, can I talk to you for a second? I said, sure, he came in, now he had had an addiction problem, and we knew that, he had came out of prison and we had been working with him, he was a follower of Jesus, and he said, you know, when you came up to me, he said, I was having problems at home, it was near the end of his shift, and he said, I was getting ready to call the dealer, whatever you call it, the person that he had gotten drugs from before, and he says, when you told me that God loved me, he said, it just put him back on track and where he needed to be and he didn't make that phone call. So again, if we're willing to be used, we can be used, but the relationships that we build at work are also foundational for that, so relationships start most of the time with casual relationships. We spend more time at work, our awake hours, more time at work than we do with anything else for the most part, if we're in the workforce and working 40 or 50 hours a week. So as we're building these relationships, the relationships start off as casual, at least that's how they have for me most of the time. Sometimes you'll work through something, somebody's planted seeds and it gets dropped in your lap and things move really quickly, but most of the time they're casual relationships, you're just getting to know people, you're talking to them, you're pouring into their lives, you're learning about them, you're listening. And then they go from casual many times to meaningful, becomes more of that friendship and you start to maybe do some things with them or spend some more time with them or have lunch with them and start to have an impact. And then it becomes, in many cases, or can become spiritual, it moves through that process. A lot of times, if we're not careful, we wanna jump right to the spiritual. We think, okay, here we go, I'm gonna get into sharing my faith, which is a good thing, and we jump right to that and it's almost a little bit like a bowl in a china closet and we run over people. We don't meet them where they're at. Jesus met people where they were at. We need to, and he met us where we were at, all of us, in regard to, none of us were perfect. And so we need to meet them where they're at, try to love on them and do the best that we can to work through that progression and get to the point of where we, I don't wanna say earn the right, but we form the relationship to a part to where we can start to share. You know, they're watching us at work. I have a Bible that sits on my desk. That's a conversation starter. We have piles of Bibles in our conference room for the Bible studies that we do. Those are, you know, conversation starters. So if they don't know where you stand, then you may wanna take another look and say, wow, maybe I need to be sharing a little bit more than what I am. But if they know where you stand, they're watching you and they're waiting to see, how do you deal with the difficult situation? How do you deal with the difficult thing that's going on at work? How do you deal with the difficult thing that comes up in your family or when somebody mistreats you? You know, how do you deal with COVID and everything that's going on with that? What kind of hope do you have? If you don't have hope and you don't have joy and you're not showing the fruit of the spirit inside of the workplace, then you know, why do I want what you have? You know, it talks about the fruit of the spirit being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  How did I do today? How did I do on those? Not so good on that one, pretty good on that one, but just trying to keep in the forefront of my mind how it is I should be interacting with people and how I can have the biggest impact possible for him. So becoming a marketplace missionary to me and I'll leave some time for questions is it's about making yourself available. We don't have to make it more difficult, I think than that sometimes. And sometimes we scare people. We try to make it sound like it's this huge difficult thing to do. God does the heavy lifting. We don't have to do the heavy lifting. He does it for us. We just have to say and make ourselves available. We have to tell him that we're available. We have to say, God, I'm available. If you set up for me some divine appointments, I'm willing to do the best I can with your help to pour into people's lives and to help them see you and be drawn to you so that they can have the same eternal security and the same hope that we have. Charles Spurgeon, who was a famous preacher, they called him the Prince of Preachers, if you look him up, said that Matthew 937 and 38 weighed on his heart more than any other Bible verse. And that verse says, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. And then it says, ask the Lord or pray to the Lord of the harvest to send workers into the harvest field. So are we praying inside of our workplace that he would send more and are we willing to be sent and have an impact for him? I think that's what my prayer has been for the past 30 years. I pray that prayer and I pray that he'll continue to send people that we might have revival in the land, that we might see our companies change, that we'll see our cities change and that we'll see our world change. But it starts with all of us. All right, we've got a few minutes. If anybody has any questions, I think they can type them in online too, is that correct? If they have any or want to? I mean, or no, uh-uh, okay. So it's just you guys, if you guys have any questions, yeah. Yep. How do you realm that? You do it, we've run into that frequently with people that I've talked to. I'll say frequently. It's not, it's more often you can do it at work than not, but you can do it outside of work. There is nothing legally that says you can't do it outside of work. So you can meet, we've got people that meet for breakfasts before work and have Bible studies you can do like we did, the gentleman did with us when I was young and do it after work and meet. You know, it, you know, as far as talking to buddy, talking to anybody inside of the work, I haven't seen a place where if somebody's asking you a question and you're answering and they can't stop you from, I mean, at the end of where it talks about the fruit of the spirit, it says against these things, there is no law. So spiritually, we can be attractive irregardless of maybe not being able to do a Bible study at work. I will say too, if you're gonna do something at work, we don't do it in the dark, we bring it to the light. So don't try to do it sneaking around. You should go to your HR department. So that's what I, when I'm mentoring people and talking to them about taking their faith into the marketplace, that's one of the first things I tell them, go to your HR department and let them know what you're doing and ask them if you can use a conference room. Most of them say yes. Most people think they won't, but most of them say yes. Sometimes they'll say no and then you have to figure something out. There's different ways to do it outside of just that. Real quickly, there was a gentleman who came from another company. I came in, he saw all the Bibles, he was doing training, he pulled me aside where the Bibles were, I told him about the Bible study. He said, I'd like to do something like that at my work. So after we were done, we sat down and we talked and I told him that very thing that you need to go talk to your HR department. So he went back down, he was from a company in Georgia and he called me a couple weeks later and he said, I did what you told me to do, I went and talked to the HR department. We had 10 people that wanted to gather and pray before work. And he said they told me that they would have to ask the general manager who was responsible for the entire company. And he said the general manager called me on the phone and told me he wanted me to come up and talk to him. He said, uh-oh. So he was thinking he was in trouble. He said, I got up there and he said the general manager said, you've got a group of people that wanna pray for our company and pray for the people here. And he said, yeah. He said, well, you can use my conference room. So he got to use the executive conference room to meet every morning. So there are extremes. There's that extreme. And then you have the times where the company says, hey, you just can't do it here. So you have to figure out ways to do it offsite. Most of the time, most people that do it offsite actually do it before work and do it at breakfast or something like that. But that's a good question. Any other questions? Comments? We have books for free as a free gift. If you would like a copy of the book, Marketplace Missionaries that I wrote about two, two and a half years ago, I felt the Lord telling me that he wanted me to write a book. Never had, ever thought about writing a book. A mechanical engineer, not my strength. Karen loves to read. I love to read, but writing not my strength. Math and science, I'm good, but writing not so much. So for six months, I kept getting this feeling. I want you to write this book. And I kept, it can't be me. I've never had a desire to write a book. Don't want to write a book. Finally, it got to the point where I thought, I need to bring this up to Karen. Karen's the protector of my time. So she normally helps me with not over committing myself.  So that's gonna be my out. So I went to Karen and I said, I think God's telling me to write a book. And she said, I think you're supposed to write it. I said, I think you need to pray about it longer. So because she said, yes, I asked Pastor Lee. I said, I was hoping he would tell me no because he's written some books. So I said, can I meet with him? And I went and met with him. And he told me as we sat down, he said, I knew you were gonna ask me about this. The Lord told me that you're supposed to do it. So I did it. So I did it out of obedience and for no other reason than that. And it was a lot of work. But if you would like a copy, we have copies up here and you're more than welcome to one. Thank you all. God bless.


Do you experience loneliness? Maybe when you feel lonely, you get very sad like this. Or maybe your loneliness looks like this. Or maybe your loneliness looks like this. My point is, is that not all lonely people look sad. Sometimes some of the loneliest people are the ones that look the happiest on the outside. Hi guys, this is Linda. In this video, I'm gonna be talking about why are we so lonely? Isn't it ironic that we are more connected now to each other than ever with smartphones, internet, social media, and yet we are seeing the highest numbers of loneliness that we've ever seen. The age group that's said to have the highest levels of loneliness is 16 to 24. Our young adults, our youth, our adolescents are facing loneliness more now than ever. 40%, almost half of the entire world's population of 16 to 24 year olds are experiencing some degree of loneliness. Why is that? Most people would think that it's the older age group who experiences more loneliness after they retire. But actually the age group 75 and above only reported 25% loneliness. So why is this? How could this be? Loneliness doesn't discriminate how much money you have. Loneliness is not for a certain age group. Loneliness is not for a certain gender, certain type of people. Loneliness does not discriminate and has equal opportunity to hit every single one of us. Do you experience loneliness? Or do you know someone with loneliness? Or have you had an episode of where you really felt lonely in the past? Let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear your stories. When I was between this age group 16 to 24, I totally remember how lonely I felt. I had a lot of friends, maybe you guys too. Maybe you have a lot of friends, a lot of people around you. You live in a big city. There's no outward reason to be lonely, but something inside of me and maybe inside of you, something inside of me felt so, so empty. It was like a hole that I couldn't fill up with no matter what I did. So it made me ask myself and wonder this question as I now am older than that age group. It makes me wonder, what was it about that time in my life that made me feel so, so lonely? Now this is not to say that if you're not in the age group that you don't feel loneliness because no matter how old you are, anyone is susceptible to loneliness. It's not something that is only for young people or only for old people. In spiritual practice and also in brain education, we say that one experience is loneliness if you don't know who you are and what you want. Think about it. On a deep, deep human level, what is it that you want and who are you beyond your name, beyond your religion, beyond your nationality, beyond your gender? I can say many things about myself from that checklist. My name is Linda. I'm 30 years old. I'm from Los Angeles. I have a bachelor's degree in theater arts from UC San Diego. I'm a YouTuber. I have all these different labels, but beyond these labels, who am I? Who am I as a human being? If my name weren't Linda, if my name were Jessica, would I be a different person? So from my own experience, what I've seen and the people around me who have reported being lonely, loneliness comes from a disconnection with yourself.  Whether that be some kind of physical pain or tension, we don't really recognize that physical pain and tension until it becomes so bad that it really hurts or it becomes so bad that we become bedridden and sick or it becomes so bad that some kind of outside symptoms like rash or some kind of sign comes up where it really slaps us in the face. And people who are disconnected, we don't know what we want. We don't know what kind of emotions we carry. It might seem like everything is good, fine and dandy, but a lot of us carry anger and sadness inside particularly sadness that we don't even realize that we have. And a lot of people don't know exactly what it is they want. They have some clues and ideas of what they think they want, but nothing really clicks. Nothing feels like it's the right thing. I remember I used to feel like that. I would try so many different things but nothing really felt right.  And when I was in that stage of really not knowing who I was, disconnected from my body, disconnected from my brain, disconnected from my emotions, that was when I experienced extreme emptiness and loneliness.  I hate to say disease, but it's a mental disorder that is prevalent in our society and yet no one wants to talk about it. It's still a bit taboo for anyone to come out and say, I am lonely.  It's still taboo and kind of socially unaccepted to say you're lonely or even talk about loneliness and talk about your past experiences or current struggle with loneliness. Let's break that cycle. Loneliness is nothing to be ashamed of. Loneliness is something that a lot more people are experiencing than you think. It's not something that only you are dealing with or someone you know is dealing with. Let's break the taboo and start the conversation of loneliness. It's a real problem and we need real solutions. We need people to come out and really talk about it. And more so now with the rise of social media and the internet, we don't really have a reason as much as we did before of really connecting with each other face to face. I really think there's huge value in connecting with people face to face, connecting with them on a human level. But because we have the internet, because we have social media, we don't really need to socialize like that. People feel satisfied talking to each other on Twitter or talking to each other on Reddit, just having internet relationships. And in some cases, I even see nowadays which really breaks my heart, people friends who are out at a restaurant, they're sitting down together, they're with people in person and yet they're not talking to each other and they're just on their phones like this. We've forgotten how to connect. We've forgotten the value of connecting with each other, connecting with ourselves. And because the phone is so attractive, because social media is so attractive, we get absorbed in that and we don't understand the repercussions of continuously being addicted to your device like this and giving all of your attention and focus to your devices. There are a lot of young people, especially that loneliness age group 16 to 24, who have total and utter anxiety when their phones are even five minutes away from them. If they don't have their phone in their hands, they feel anxious. But have you thought about being five minutes disconnected from your thoughts, disconnected from your emotions and disconnected to your body? Why doesn't that give us anxiety? So in our modern age, we're gonna have more technology, more artificial intelligence, more ways to disconnect with ourselves than even now. Who knows what will happen? Maybe 10 years, 20 years from now, if we keep going at this rate, if our young people don't know how to connect with their thoughts, emotions and their body, what if 20 years from now, the 16 to 24 age group, instead of being 40% lonely, what if 60% or 80% or even 100% report signs of loneliness? And it's so tragic that with those rising statistics of loneliness, we also see rising statistics of youth suicide. We cannot keep going like this. This is not sustainable. This is not how we want to live our lives. And it's so heartbreaking that a lot of people who are facing loneliness don't know how to come out of it. And they don't know how to come out of it because they don't know the root cause of loneliness in the first place. The root cause of loneliness is disconnection. Disconnection with my body, disconnection with my emotions, disconnection with my thoughts and therefore disconnection with other people. So how can you get connected to yourself? The easiest, fastest and my most favorite way is put down your phone. Even if it's for an hour, even if it's for 10 minutes, wherever you are, put down your phone.


Well today we did a static line airborne operation and we did it out here at North Auxiliary Airfield in North South Carolina. We do it the same way every single time but it's muscle memory. Once the paratrooper leaves the door the jump master has no control over what that parachute does so we make sure that we practice it to standard every single time every single jump.  This is our capability to get to the fight so the ability for our paratroopers to get used to doing that and having it be second nature so they can really focus on what their mission is going to be once they get on the ground.  The commander and I were the jump masters on the first pass it was the end of my tenure and it was her baseline as a jump master. He's been my my right-hand man for the last year since I took command and then on top of that just to be under his mentorship as a master rated jump master with a significant amount of experience he's mentored me as a as a brand new jump master and so to sort of finally get set as he is on his way out the door has been an honor. With the brigade I've been here three years what goes through my mind is just the things I needed to do for the operation. How to clear the door how to put the jumpers in the door exit them safely and then do a good exit myself and land for that fall unless it was only when I got on the ground that I thought about it okay that was my last one and so I think that's a that's how we should be thinking right my mind wasn't on other things my mind was on the on how to how to execute the task to standard the way I'd been instructed the way I've learned for 31 years.


My name is Taylor Bach, I'm a resident artist at the Hero Arts Center and I've been interviewing harp artists for HowlRound. If you don't know what harp is, I'll give you the spiel again. Harp is a program at the Hero Arts Center, a Hero Arts Resident Artist or something like that. It stands for who knows. I've only known about it for 25 years and been in it and have no idea what it stands for, our artist resident program. And what it does is it's they give artists multiple years to work on a piece and there's more to it than that. Sometimes they will produce your work, sometimes they'll co-produce, sometimes you produce. It's always artists run, so it's what you want to do with your work and what your process, what you need for it. It tends to be kind of hybrid work. Sometimes there's technology but not always. And I wouldn't necessarily describe the work as commercial, although some commercial things have popped out of it. It's really kind of artists going after what they want outside of any kind of profit system. And I'm here with two of my favorite artists in New York City, and I wanted to ask you to introduce yourself and introduce your project and then let's talk about it. Sure. Hi Taylor. Thank you. Thank you all for tuning in today and thank you to here and all around for this platform and this open space. So I'm Jimena Garnica and I work with my partner. And Shige Moria. And we are both interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary artists, choreographers, directors. We just, we made things and we are curious about a lot of the labor and the imagining of spaces and things and relationships. And we are based in Brooklyn, in our studio. It's a converted garage called Cave. And we also have a company called the Lame Ensemble. It's a group of national and international dancers and performers and work together throughout the year with us creating works but also cultivating practice and physical conditionings of bodies to sort of like give a space to this idea of the in between or the in between a space which is something that we try to embrace in our practice often. And when I met you in, when I met you in 2008 I think, was Lame part of, had you created it yet? Was it, has it always been this from the beginning of your collaboration, the two of you? Kind of a starting point around the time that the ensemble was the starting point. Lame has like, it means different things depending. One of the things that it means is our structure, our legal structure, right, like being a nonprofit and trying to create a structure to, or resources to sustain our work. And then the name of the ensemble. And then sometimes she and me, we call ourselves Lame. So it's, it's, it's a little bit of an identity crisis all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And is it fair to say that it's sprung out the work sprung out of buttoe or is that not, is that not quite right? It's, it's a Japanese word, Lame, it's a Japanese means, the meaning, the moment between the light coming out of the darkness, the moment of dawn, that's Lame, that moment of dawn, but also it means the change between one era to another era. So it's that moment of change. So I think when she gets to think about Budo or work, that liminal, that moment of in between is embedded in the word Lame. Yeah. And the interest in that lightness as a darkness, because I know you guys, and we'll talk about your upcoming piece in a bit, but first, I know you guys, you treat your lighting almost like, like it's part of the music composition, or it's a scene partner, or it's a lighting is a major, major aspect of what you do, not just architecturally. And could you talk about that a little bit? Because it's very rare for companies to treat lighting as a partner more as something that they have to, they have to hire a designer for, you know what I mean? And it's such an intricate part of what you guys do. I'm sure Chiga has a specific thing to talk about it. What I want to say is that we're looking at how we make a sandwich of different materials, elements, materialities. So the body is a material and an entity. So it's elements. So sometimes in our pieces, we have water, or we have haze, or we have strings, or we have light. So light is also a material in itself. And the space is another material, you know, anything that we're trying to make an assemble with. And you want to say more? I mean, as she said, it's, it's one of our elements that definitely lightens shadow. And we, you know, we don't specifically say, I'm choreographer or I'm designer or I'm, you know, sculpture. Any elements we have, we dig into and then create something. So light, we, I don't know how can I say about that. We like to, it's one of the elements we like to work with within ourselves. Well, it's, it's, we're always thinking about light and shadow, not just about the, the, the instruments of light and shadow, but also that relationality with the body. And, you know, when the body is in shadow, when the body is in the light, and that in betweenness that creates in the space.  So it's a very available, it's available material to us. We are not working things that are available to us. That's always true. Okay. So talk to me about the meal. Is that new piece, has it changed? Are you still working on the meal with the, in the program, in our program? We are still working in the meal. We did a little detour because of COVID. And we can talk about that. But we, we did, I mean, I saw a video of the piece, your detour, which is like one of the more extraordinary things I've seen on the streets of New York. I mean, it's, well, why don't we just talk about that one right now and then we can get to the meal, get to the hearty meal. So you describe it, it's better for you to describe it than me. Well, the piece that you're talking about calls correspondences. With the boxes, and yeah, yeah. It's an installation performance, a public installation performance that has these different sculptural chambers that are placed in the urban space. They're filled with sun and then there is bodies inside the chambers. And then there is a mechanical system that is creating fluidization of the sun, which what it means is like a quick sun effect. And these bodies are constantly rising to standing, but they're constantly losing their food and then getting buried under the sun. And these sort of action continue and loops throughout again, to give the sense of infinity. And it was a piece that actually was created before COVID and we had it here and we wanted to share it for so long, but it was hard. It was not an easy piece to produce and also questions of being and coexistence and interconnectivity weren't so much involved, let's say. Like now these questions are in our face because we're asking every day about like what's the meaning of this life? What it means to be connected? What it means to be in isolation? What is our relationship with the environment and with nature? And how COVID has really heightened all these questions that many people have been dealing and working for so long. So the piece was there and we really wanted, there was there's a lot of, there has been and we know there's so much death and also there is no space to grieve and to celebrate what's happening to, you know, these bodies also leaving and coming back. And there is also a lot of birds. There's a lot of babies. We have friends who have babies last year as well. And it was kind of like the pieces here, you know, and here, as always, Kristin Martin always curious and always there for the artist, say, who has something? Does anybody has a piece I wanted to make? And we're like, we have this, but it's huge. And we really want to make it. And she just jumped and said, okay, let's make it happen. And we made it happen in the middle of the pandemic and that's her place. And it was, it was for those who didn't see it or don't know it. There's lone figures in these boxes in the public square. And so there's this element of isolation, but also they're wearing these gas masks so that it can breathe with all the or some kind of breathing filtration thing on their faces, so they can breathe with all the sand. So it's really, it brings up everything that we've been feeling. I'll speak for myself that I've been feeling during COVID times, this isolation, this weight and, and this desire in this desire to breathe and this desire to connect and being in public, but being separated and it's haunting and, and it's also quite beautiful at the same time. And there's different boxes in, within the square with these, you know, of course, gorgeous dancers that are inside that are going through this experience. So that's visually kind of what it looks like. So you can let your staff, the what you say, like this, that once you pass that, that first part, then there is the, the beauty and the poetry. And then, and then there is something else that then appears hopefully where, where there is not a human against nature sense only, but where maybe some things resolve in the, in the capacity of the body to achieve and to allow the space for the other matter, whether it's the light, the sun to actually have agency. And in that negotiation, not even negotiation in that let go of the individual agency, then a new relationality up here. And if people are patient enough to stay with the work, maybe that will also start resonating. And because all I saw was a video that from a piece, I didn't actually go and see it in person, because I wasn't in the city at the time that how, how was that, how was that navigated in terms of staying with the piece and people walking by in the street. And was everyone, were all the individuals dancers going through their own arc of that? Or were they all doing it all together? Could you watch one dancer and experience it, and then watch another dancer and experience it again? Or, or was it all one piece? It is one piece. So it is, it is one piece and it is connected. The scoring of each dancer is connected. Even though we are aware that the observer might not see the whole landscape that he must just like make close up, but the connection, the way it's built is as a connection already there. And it also has potential to shift, you know, the, it's a, it's a live space. But also the work is also seeing the people, seeing the work is also another layer of the work that gets a little in the video, but that was also fascinating. Oh, I'm sure I'm so jealous.  We are looking forward to do it in other boroughs that our, our, our, our intention is to bring it to each borough in the city. So. Oh, good. Oh yeah. Well, hopefully somebody, somebody out there, you know, it's so good. I mean, when people just, when they see the, when they see the sample, they're going to want to do it. So, and my, my, my kind of question, my slightly obnoxious question is this is after I don't know your entire history, but I know most of it has been indoors. And so when you do a piece like this where you're in the public square and it, and it's so effective, does it just make you want to make work in the public square now from now on and not go back into theaters?  It's fun. But, you know, it's the stage works also fun. We have been doing, I mean, we have a lot of history of work that has been parallel to our stage work, which is in community gardens. And I've done work in community gardens and also even in a cemetery as well. So the outdoor has always been a part of it. We did something at Times Square, more of like a collaboration, but we did a staging for Room Full of Teeth and Carl and Sean. But so I've been always fascinated by the outdoors. It's a different space. It's a space that you can know it's very hard to work with light in the space of outdoors. And the indoors has has allowed us the conditions for the for controlling the light and the gaze of this theater here. You cannot control the gaze. You lose that control and that's wonderful. So I just I want to keep doing both. I love both spaces just for different celebrations and ceremonies and moments. Yeah. And so okay. So and speaking of which, the meal, why don't you talk to me about the meal?  Especially coming out of COVID time. Would you want to show the work sample? I think that I should just show you five minutes of our our our work so far. And then we talk then there is a little context for for the talk. She sounds great. That's great. Yeah. I'm going to show you. Okay, one second. Every single one. I mean, we're theater artists. Okay. Okay. Are we sharing now? What is your first memory of? Standing you guys. It's so wonderful. I just yeah. Who are you going to say about it? No, that is just to give context that there was a co a compilation of things that we've been doing since three years, three different working progress or so those weren't all the same performance. No, there were different different years. But was it shown linearly or just is just a sample of things, ideas that you're working on? It was linear. So the first one that was this sort of parade in the light that at the end ambles a round table. That was that was the first thing we did that there was no food. It was just this idea of how we create the place in which the table. Yeah. That's a great example of how the heart program works is you could just say, okay, we just want to figure out how to make the table and we're going to have a whole workshop just on how we make the table. You know, it's beautiful. But okay, it was of course, it was like it was a 40 minutes of how we make the table, but it was a 40 minutes prelude to the table. And then for the we don't show there for what happened was that it was a pot log and the audience brought food and then they put it on the table. And then we just ate and drink and talk at the end in the theater inside the theater. And that was like the first one. And then when you were with those, it was a little hard to hear. Did you give them prompts of things to talk about? Or were you saying things while they were speaking or is there audio that was playing that was asking those questions of do you know where your food comes from or things like that. So that's the second one. That's not the table one. Okay. That one belongs to another one we did here, our home studio at cave. And that one was totally different. There was no these spaces of fantastic fantasy or enchantment in a way. I mean, it was a different kind of enchantment, but it was more of a Cotodian. Let's just call it the Cotodian energy. There was more of a Cotodian space. And that time was the focus on how we can, one, create a conversation so that when you're so they're talking in a room, we gave five questions and they were sitting with strangers and they will talk, they will ask like, have you ever been hungry? You know where you are foods coming from? What are your ethics around food? For fast memory of food. Your first memory of food. And then people will have like, I don't know, it was like almost like 30 minutes, just this conversation. And then we made this really act of cutting this papaya together. She and me and then they were brought to another space where they were in silence for a full hour cooking together. And they were cooking arepas because I'm Colombian. And that is something that it's not just actually it's pre-Colombian arepas. It's something that you know we, it has this history of South American land, different countries have different kind of arepas. And she had mochi. Rice cake. It's also special for us. And so you gave that and you gave the audience instructions on how to make it or they were just helping the people whoever was actually cooking. They were making it the instructions for giving by gesture. Basically they were following the groups and dancers will sort of like make the motions and like pass it to them and hopefully they will understand. And they did it. It was beautiful for an hour. They were great. Nobody talked. They understood it was about silence that moment. And it was like they were dancing. They were the cooking was the dance. Yeah. The cooking. And then you take that and I'm assuming you did another workshop where you were like so the movement of pounding the actual food then becomes, gets taken away from the food and put again on the here arts center stage I think. Is that right? Well then then we're thinking about a little more theatrical what I call theatrical. And he's there's a little bit of more the creation of some mythological characters and archetypes you know. I was just oh it's the mushroom that you just ate.  Yeah it could be like really taking all that out taking the stories the also the tensions that that are present in the in this you know post-industrial relationship with food that that we have especially in the urban spaces. So we were trying to figure out yeah to create these monsters you know what like Peter Schumann from a better prophet called the gods these gods you know these beans. And the last workshop that we did at here was like a week before the theaters closed like well it was in March 2020 and we were able to have that intimate space downstairs and everybody was like this and they will look from one place and then suddenly something else was happening in another place and it was this search for these these these beans and and that's that's where we are at this point. Right and so kind of the obvious question is um with COVID coming in how is it changing your ideas about sitting down and having a meal with a lot of other people? Is it is it a patience game until until it's safe or is it completely changing the the understanding of what the how the work responds to the world? I think we need to figure out ways in which we still can come together I mean we still have to eat. We still have to cultivate spaces for togetherness and for sharing time. And especially soon I mean we're going to need healing rituals. I mean we need them right now but we're going to need them when we can all gather again. I think we are committed to figure out ways in which we can continue to make this um a live experience and it will require trust and care lots of care of the way we will just like we did at Astor Place you know we were quarantining for four weeks a whole company living together testing making sure that we were safe so that we can minimize risk I mean the risk is always going to be there until we all vaccinated right and even though we don't even know yet because we don't know whether the vaccine will fully work or not. So I think we have to find ways of togetherness uh understanding that that it's going to leave some people um out because there is issues with access immunocompromised people people that has less um you know possibility to take a risk than others. But are you planning on doing this um before people are vaccinated or is that I mean I mean we wanted before there's you know you want to do another workshop yeah that is still a workshop the premiere won't happen this year but this year we wanted to still do in the summer uh something uh that involves food a beginning how yeah people are going to restaurants every single day you know they sit in their bubbles so you know you guys can figure it certainly artists can figure it out. But I think for now for us the the the so the way that we work um probably now you're seeing it too and you're being um witness and other works it's uh there's a lot of work that um our research is experiential that's why it fits so well with the here model of giving artists all this time to play and yeah this is already being the piece right like the piece is not that product that we're going to arrive to the piece is this journey that we are engaging with yeah and if you have been a personal one like Shige um stopped eating meat for example a year a month ago yeah um we started for when the pandemic started um Mr. Ector who is the father of one of our team members was kind of was kind of trapped here because he couldn't go back to Mexico and he knew about hydroponics so we start growing hydroponics and learning how to make you know how to have a garden at cave oh wow and he ended up performing and he ended up performing in the piece he's the one with the two coconuts you know like that setting was real it was like his pandemic corner at cave was the hydroponics the little ceilings coming out of his daily life so it's been like a journey and now we are in the journey of understanding more um the issues with food in our city so we're we're um um we are um trying to um learn from community groups um from people who have a long history of uh growing food of um looking at issues of food justice and food sustainability uh learning about amazing farm places that exist in the city community gardens that have amazing history of um building community through food and and and the education of of how to share the food and also the tensions that are present in the urban garden and the urban agriculture scene because um there is a lot of any of it ever be organic in a city like how could you right when the chickens might be eating lead but like how can you have organic eggs you know in the city but at the same time how do you not want to push the city in that direction you know not give up on actually you can have organic things because they're their mechanism that is still to make the soil better for certain things I think they will get access to those organic things and we all know that who get access it's it's the privilege um so um how when we make a work like this you know we can make it all about the beauty of the food and all about um the how we together and that's where we come together and and there is no difference of class or privilege here but it is there is so we're also trying to figure out how we address uh that or how we cannot address it but at least how the work is conditioned and and if there is a space there to amplify work that is happening on the ground that it's the work of the farmers and the community organizers yeah how can we and also the social workers too because um you know y'all would go to the farmers market in berkeley and one of my favorite things and everyone was there paying the food stamps it was amazing that you could pay with food stamps at the farmers market I mean of course you should be able to but it's not always true in every place so uh so it's social workers in the in the city that are making stuff happen as well you know the activists yeah there is a lot of policy that needs to change for for that to to you know like there is a lot of all rules there are sort of like becoming roadblocks for people there is something about designation of mutual land trust and some of these places they are not able to sell the product because they don't have some destinations or this whole rule about the restaurants not being able to give away food and it's better to throw it to the garbage because it's actually there's a load that doesn't let you yeah so yeah so how are you how are you having to um navigate the legal system of new york city in order to serve food the eddish performance no i mean we this is we're just starting to grasp that part you know the complication yeah the complications we we entered in the way we could be uh like we know what we know right like we entered from where we know our materials are plain and now it's like okay this we have no idea and now we're into this and let's let's learn and you never know you're just like I've got this idea oh yeah it's gonna be so wonderful you're like oh no I have to learn about every all five million rules yep but that's part of the that's you gotta you gotta accept that it's fun or get out I mean that's part of the work right like if I mean I always feel when you're making um art or a piece of work that that is all these layers and the more you um you can listen to that multi-dimensionality of of of the materials of the subjects of the people that you're working with the spaces um the more enriched you are at the end of the day the more you feel alive because you learn something new and maybe you were able to transform a point of view that you had before or the or the or one that you didn't have you maybe get a point of view because maybe you didn't even have a point of view about something yeah yeah yeah I mean that that is you said it but it is the it's the beautiful thing about having time to make something is that is that the art can be the process and the art and that has always been the case for the two of you is that the art is just as much of the process as that performance right I mean I mean the process is the art as much as the performance and I and I um well I don't want this to go too long because they tell us that they people don't watch longer than 30 minutes but uh but I want to ask you um what do you need from the community is there something that that community can offer up to you um to help collaborate in making this work uh money time um butts and seats uh garden walks what do you need in order to do you need uh donated chairs do you need what what tell us what you need wow I mean of course there is always the one is like participation you know when when when we have this work in progress with when the piece premiere please come please please show up you know please engage because it's it's it's it's preparing something an experience for for for the people we don't know for our friends but also for the people we don't know and those ones just have to like trust and show off uh so that's that's that's one thing but of course there is the question of resources and and funding and um even though we have here as as as the place where the producer presenter is it is really a co-producer and we still have to raise um funds for that but also if there are people in the in outside of the arts that um are working with these issues of food justice food sustainability um figure out how the arts can be an alley how how the arts can can work cross sectors too and and what the work like these could amplify how a work like this can can also elevate and uplift each other I think it's important so if if if people have ideas like oh my I I'm a farmer or like I know this or we are going to be looking for people who wants to um who are not they don't have to be necessarily professional chefs but we want more collaborators like like people who maybe be like hey I I want to help I love food and I'm up for being in this piece because this piece is going to be I think it's going to be huge yeah yeah how do you make a piece I mean you could you could make a piece where there's five people and they're sitting down at dinner and you know you could make that piece and in fact most of the American theater has but but that's not what this is you are you are people you want to be you want an event like it has to be like a carnival a ceremony a celebration where there is a poetic beauty to it and and craft yes there is going to be these places of beauty and craft but there also should be these places of of the the coutolian that becomes imaginary because something else happened so I'm not sure what the format it's kind of unraveling right now um but there's something quite remarkable about um uh the release of performance and engagement with with the people that are sitting around you and then and then again um the tension of engaging in performance and then the release and then engaging there's something quite wonderful about that that dynamic um and you we don't see it enough in in performance so yay I mean there's something beautiful right because it's like we are always um we we are conditioned to experience time and space in certain energetic uh frequencies and then suddenly we have the high this other one the performative one and now I'm on audience and I'm supposed to be sitting and observer um yeah and and then maybe sometimes in certain moments in life like a wedding or a birthday celebration or a children playing or a tragedy I mean right we we definitely have it in in life and in rituals yeah in in weddings and um even going to church you know has it yeah but so how we make it all part of this life so that maybe maybe we're imbued our life what else can we make our coutodian life more imbued with magic and yeah and play I think as how can we make that part of our coutodian life means we have to like practice and experiment and then see if that happens yeah I mean people are I mean alone I I can't deal with people eating just you know like eating alone is a huge yeah I wanted to ask you that what has um moving to America changed your understanding of people eating is that is it culturally different in your uh in the countries that you were raised in or is it is it I mean is it just totally yeah talk about that a little bit about how that's affected this piece you can also I can I can always talk more you get you know that um is always the more quiet introspective one um you know yeah I mean one thing you know the funny thing uh Taylor when we presented this piece at here when we apply we couldn't agree which project we apply with so we send projects and we say I'm so sorry we're just sending two projects we don't tell you which one is the one behind what but the two projects and it actually was Chiggy's project you know that it was the food project mine was a different one um and I think our relationship we're also a couple if it's not obvious already um and um and a lot of our relationship is basing two things in making our work together and in eating together and um and food has been part of our um our making uh roots and our making um um it's life somehow yeah because the food is you know you have to eat every day somehow so it's it's a basic basic things for you uh means important but in Japan it's very important like he comes from a family where it's important to eat together and the father cooks whenever they visit they cooks and my family you know we have these things where you have to eat together like what you could be all busy but there is a time when you come and then and you come and you share the space together and you eat and and we do that here with the company you know like we're in work session and Chiggy say okay everybody food is ready and everybody comes to the table or when we go when we make works we go in retreats at least four times a year where we spend time sleeping and eating and cooking together that's part of our our how like it's how you build bonds yeah and cooking you know we always make the joke that sometimes we're invited to our friends dinner parties here but there was no dinner it was just dips like that's totally me i'm like i'm bringing the hummus and i even bought it from the store i was reading this book recently about the someone who was in the military you know and she she was eating every single day you know with the company all at the same time and then she comes back to the US for being overseas and she she's just like everyone's eating all the time they never stopped eating and it was a little fat phobia you know but it was also she was like i saw a woman waiting in line at a fast food restaurant in the drive through and she was eating before she got to the order the food because you don't have time right you don't have time but also it's just America makes me so sad sometimes the way that we eat and i and i wonder if covid is gonna change that i mean i definitely know my husband and i we when we're in the city we would always go out to eat and now we make every single meal you know together so i think it's changed our habit a little bit we'll see but there's something in that i absolutely yeah yeah yeah i'd like i like the ritual i i love rituals i i i think we don't have enough rituals and i um yeah yeah i love the ritual uh i like having it one day where i take the time to really make a nice meal one day a week you know and the other the other times are just like okay yeah i i want to do other things i'm talking too much you talk no no no it's true no no no because i think what you're saying it's like especially for us like i ask i'm making an assumption here like but we are pretty much city people i am a city i am a city girl and and but there is something about that tension of reclaiming the things um there there is a certain we we have been our rhythm of the relationship with the land has been broken that's just not just it this is real like it has been broken we also oh i want a tomato i want a really nice tomato and he's in the middle of uh snow storming February i still can get my tomato because i'm in the city right this is something you know this this is oh it's yeah it is something off or like in my case i come from a country with no seasons uh you know wearing the equatorial line so for me actually to arrive to that realization of scarcity of seasons uh or and then you see i'm calling an escargety but it's not scarces it's just changing changing the the the the the product of the land changing what the land is giving you and being attuned to that change we have lost that and i think cooking bring like bring us back to understand the material like then you're like oh okay if i put the oil olive oil hotter and then i put my garlic is better that or is worse that if i put the garlic and the olive oil at the same time you know like what is which one works better and you start learning that these things have agency and that you have to situate yourself not as the dictator of that but you also you kind of have to like open a space for for that to tell you what they need what they want and cooking does that you know making yeah that yeah there's something beautiful and it and it and it's so much about the pace of your of your your pacing is different from most uh art that i see you know like um and including mine even though mine's duration often uh there's kind of like a okay we're doing it we're gonna do it hey hey hey and you guys you guys have a uh you i've been in kitchens i've been a waiter you know and i've been in kitchens where everyone's like and then i've been in kitchens too where they're just like yes and now we will put the garlic in when the when the uh oil is hot enough and now we will do this and now you know like and so it is about pace so much right but our kitchen he goes crazy too i think i think there's just no one white tailor i think there's just like there we don't just it calls itself i was trying to make a really important connection between your art and cooking um but i i think covet i mean one of the things we're gonna do soon uh we hope people participate is um story recipe a storytelling circle that would happen online um and um we're gonna be looking at different groups of food like food to go like snacks or like food for recovery when you are sick or food for home sick when you're like i miss my mom or my house or my dear one um or celebration and then we're gonna ask people to share the recipe and a story that goes along to the recipe and maybe uh uh attention you know there are people who have issues with um um with food in a in a in a no good way we have very positive relationship with foods but there is issues of you know around hungriness but also around trauma and and and for some people that work food it's actually a no no no so we want to like open spaces to address and listen to those things and then see what those things sparks um in the other side of of the poetry and the magic that sounds beautiful and i'm gonna ask you one more question and then we're gonna go um uh and it's about intention um i was talking to gelsie bell who is also a heart artist with you guys and i said i said do you do you make the work for um the audience and i guess what i was really trying to ask was is your um do you have an intention to care for your audience in any way or do you just expect them to come and find find their way to what you're doing and i'm just i've kind of been asking that of all the heart part is because i think it's a interesting question to wonder about um outside the the realm of commercial theater um and it seems like you you are doing a balancing act of that where you you you have an intention to care and to try to make the world better and also an intention to um uh uh make what interests you but that's like quite what i want to say but can you address that at all in any way okay first of all yes we do the things that interest us there's no point of doing them otherwise yeah like yeah like it and sometimes what interests in chige is different than me but then why and then somehow you know there has to be a mutual interest otherwise it just don't work then then if i do that then i want to then i then i do for hire and you know just you know but i think all the hard work that comes to do hard work you gotta do it because you're interested in what you're doing yeah yeah yeah absolutely but i guess the real question is i think i know what you mean yeah i think it's about the like how much i um um you know i call this like candy i call i have the word candy in the vocabulary with with my dances like or with chige oh this feels like we're giving candy like we are like telling the audience like almost like uh chaperone them babysit them uh for something and and i am not so interested in that you know yeah i think we are we're creating a community when we make the work we are um it's struggling with each with even issues of of uh accessing what is what what we're trying to uncover uh dynamics power dynamics among each other when we work there is already all the things that we are working on and then and then this then there is this celebration this sort of we're celebrating and we are becoming some sort of it's not like emisores we are more of like an antenna and then we are just like um um we are the medium in which hopefully something is resonated and and hopefully you're catching the frequency too um but but we're not going to work for you to catch the frequency we already worked so hard to actually make the mechanism in which maybe the antenna is catching this thing so i don't know if i'm clear i was trying to clarify this yesterday at another talk because no i mean i feel you i'm like part of me just is like i i'm really envious of artists that just are like this is what i'm interested in if the audience comes along they come along and if they don't find you know like i and i've never i've never been that queen i'm always like i want the audience to i want to i want to invite them i'm always like trying to invite everybody to the party you know and and there's a um uh i think that there's a balance to be had in that and um i just recognize that you guys walk that balance really well that's i guess really all i'm trying to say but i was curious about how and why yeah it's like it's there are in a way it's like you're creating you're you're hosting something right you you're you're hosting a party you're hosting and there's something you want the you want the party with people i mean i don't want to make all these arrangements and then have nobody shows up eating the food nobody shows up so yes you you want to create the the the space for care and for welcoming but you also um you're you're also maybe like like like oh my god are you gonna move that slow for 40 minutes they're gonna be bored that kind of thing i'm like well then yeah but see if people think they're gonna be bored but then they watch it for 20 minutes and then they have a breakthrough they might be bored but i mean that's what happens sometimes for 20 minutes people are like oh my god and then you're like wait a minute i'm always get afraid of that first 20 minutes but i think you know the older i get the more i let it go you have to stick with it you have to stick with it you know this is what i mean there is a level of craftsmanship that we have worked for you know i mean this is a labor we we have created craft we are creating craft beyond magic and all these la la la it's a craft job and and um you gotta trust it you and then you also a job okay here i i i could i i could have done this all right i try another one yeah yeah but i mean if people want to you know eat their mcdonalds while in line to eat their mcdonalds there's plenty of things on netflix that they can watch like they come they come to you guys so that they don't have to eat before they eat so they can wait for 20 minutes there is something about the unknown that that we always talk about chic about these all these kind of different words and some looks very theatrical and some are really minimalistic and some are more visual arts and what is the core what what is it and then what we come to talk a lot was this these um um commitment to what we to create spaces in which the unknown appears and right and that unknown might create certain um uh it might create it might be jarring it might create senses of uncertainty and and i don't understand because you are dealing with creating intervening the hierarchy of the senses uh so that people are used to understand to want processing from the logic and and when that logic and that understanding is not being met there is uncertainty like right now like what the fuck is going on it's not meeting our logic at the beginning is that mask no mask air no air the logic wasn't meant so there is uncertainty and and in our work we really want to create the the protagonist has to be the possibility of this uncertainty and then we can deal how we deal with uncertainty and when we don't know something then we can imagine yeah yeah it's almost like giving the giving the catharsis in the beginning as opposed to you know i hate to put it in a recital in terms but it's almost like being like okay we're just gonna we're gonna make you uncomfortable the catharsis part in the beginning so that you can learn how to see differently right right as opposed to spending the whole time giving everybody what they know and then suddenly at the end at the 11 o'clock number you change it up on them you know like that's how most um uh kind of iris the jillion theater works is you're you're hanging out you're getting what you know you're getting what you're go it's kind of melodrama you you got it you got it you got it and then there's like a moment where everything happens and something changes and it can't ever be the same and that moment is usually the only experimental moment right and and i think it's a different kind of art that uh is saying no no we're gonna we're gonna put you in a new environment show you a different pace from what you're used to show you a different imagery um have you think about things and feel things in ways that are outside of your routine um and so that so that you can be embraced in some ways by the end not to say that that's what all the work is about but i but i it's interesting to me that the the reversal of that yeah yeah i could talk to you guys forever and when covid is all over i want to come over and have a meal and do it absolutely i will bring more than hummus i promise promise all right uh thank you very much uh do you want to say anything else this yeah thank you thank you so much taylor and here and everybody who is uh listening and and watching today have a good one bye