Good evening everyone. I just wanted to let you know we're going to start the meeting in just a few minutes. We're going to allow a few more minutes for folks to join the meeting. And we're going to get started in just a couple minutes. So good evening everyone just want to get go ahead and get started. We saw the few people joining the meeting but we'll go ahead and and move forward. Thank you all very much for attending tonight. I know you all have very busy schedules and really appreciate you being with here with us tonight. Tonight the meeting is to take scoping comments or what I call preliminary comments from the community regarding the notice to prepare an environmental impact report for Rosalind Creek Community Park. I'm Jen Santos and the Deputy Director for the City of Santa Rosa Parks. And tonight we also have two staff members providing our virtual hosting for us tonight, Alisa and Shelley. They will explain how to provide your comment later in the presentation and of course the assistant facilitate with this meeting tonight. Next slide please. We also have interpreter services tonight for today's in Spanish for today's meeting provided by Charles and Pablo. So at this time can our zoom host explain how the interpreter services will work. Yes, thank you Jen. Live interpretation can be heard on the Spanish channel. You can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon and zoom in the zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Interpretation in vivo se puede escuchar en el canal de español puede unirse al canal de español haciendo click en el icono de interpretación en la barra de herramientas de zoom que ahora parece como un globo. At the time question questions and answers and public comment the interpreter on the panel will be prepared to assist anyone needing interpretation. It is recommended that you shut off the main audio so you can clearly hear the Spanish interpretation additional instruction will be given at that time. Jen back to you for additional housekeeping for today's meeting. Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. So later this evening you'll have the opportunity to provide your feedback. Thank you for your time Jen. The floor is yours, comes up to my table. Thank you.  I'm sorry. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Great thank you, so much. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. So later this evening you'll have the opportunity to provide your comments regarding the notice of preparation for an environmental impact report. And at that time, you can raise your hand in zoom if you're participating in zoom. And our zoom host will move, move you one by one down the list of attendee attendees with their hands raised. Once you have shared your input, your comment, the zoom host will then lower your hand. You will have three minutes for your comment and a timer will appear on the screen. If you have additional comments as time allows and other comments have been heard. We'll definitely do our best to allow additional three minutes at the end allow for everyone to have their time to speak. If you're calling in from a telephone, either a smartphone or a landline for privacy concerns, the host will be renaming you to your viewable phone number to citizen and only last four digits of your phone number will show for privacy. Additionally, the city of Santa Rosa is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment free firm disruption and will not tolerate hateful speech or actions. Everyone is expected to participate respectfully, or if necessary, the me will end immediately. Next slide please. So the meeting tonight is again like I said a scoping meeting whereby we're listening to you tonight and collecting your preliminary comments regarding the notice to prepare any IR. I'd like to introduce our two other folks with us tonight. From our environmental consultant team will burns from David J. Powers and associate and also Connor is on the line to all that will introduce him. Thank you for our environmental consultants for this project and I'm going to turn this slide over to will and he'll describe the meeting and the purpose of our EIR a little bit, a lot more information about it. Great, thank you, Jen. Good evening. My name is will burns and I'm a principal project manager with David J powers and associates. So our firm is assisting the city of Santa Rosa with the preparation of the environmental impact report or EIR for short. The Roseland Creek Community Park master plan project. As Jen mentioned the purpose of today's meeting is to accept comments from the public regarding the scope of the environmental impact report that will be prepared for the proposed project to construct a new community park to serve the Roseland neighborhood. The purpose of an EIR is to inform the public and decision makers about potential environmental impacts of the project and also identify mitigation measures and alternatives to reduce or avoid those impacts. Your feedback today will be used to guide how the environmental impact report will be prepared. And the EIR will analyze the direct and indirect physical environmental effects of the project on the 20 resource areas identified in the California environmental quality act guidelines. So some of the primary environmental issues anticipated for the project include the potential for biological resources, cultural resources, hazardous materials, and construction impacts to air quality and noise to result from the project. So this meeting is not intended to approve or deny the project. We're simply here to collect comments from the community on the scope of the environmental impact report. And there's additional opportunity to comment if you if you don't comment this evening. So this is a preparation of the environmental impact report that was published on August 8, and the city will be accepting written public comments on the NOP through September 9. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Jen. Thanks, Will. And as will mention, this is not the only time to participate. So, if anything, we do have a lot of information at the end on how to get in touch with us and how to communicate outside of this meeting with us about your comments. So this recreation and parks website is always really helpful. We will get you what you need to provide your comment. If you know somebody that can attend tonight and like to provide a comment. So this is our aerial map of the city of Santa Rosa showing the southwest side of Santa Rosa. The park Rosa Creek Community Park, the project site is highlighted in orange yellow color there. It is south of highway 12 and west of highway 101. Next slide please. And so this is an enlarged zoomed in look at the project site for Rose Creek Community Park. It's surrounded on two sides on the north and the east side. The residential family homes and on the south by rural residential parcels. You'll see across the creek on Burbank Avenue is Rose Creek Elementary School. Rose Creek does run through the property and the property is outlined here in yellow of course. We've already shared this property in phases with assistance from the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space Districts matching grant program. And the park is just under 20 acres in size. And you can see there that we have a lot of oak trees and grasslands. There are also several structures towards the top right corner of the map, as well as in the middle those were existing houses. We also have some concrete driveways gravel driveways, etc as far as structural on the existing site. The last two years that above ground structures for these homes were removed. And what remains is that concrete foundations or the foundation for the home as we move forward. Next slide please. And this this is a little bit different than the slide you just saw it just tilts it to the right so I can fit it on this page that this is the current proposed master plan project site developed for many years with community input and also it does meet the development restriction placed on the site by the ag and open space as part of that matching grant program I mentioned earlier. There are some restrictions for limiting types of paving and impermeable surfaces and similar restrictions. And the master plan proposes a nature center, which is that white square kind of in the center left of the of the project site, along with this is it's associated parking lot, and that little branch page areas of the project site are trails and pathways throughout the site. We also have moving down to the south, a We have a restroom building play area based on a nature theme, a parking lot down there on top of an existing gravel driveway for access to this side of the park, because the creek does bisect the park. We also have irrigated long space for for play. Not organized play but just play and picnicking etc. We also have a variety of picnic areas in the middle of the site as well as in the southern portion. These are usually just single tables by themselves. As well as we have interpreted or educational signage planned for alongside the trails on the southern part and middle part of the actually all around the park relates those orange dots all around and again this is a plan. It's an idea it's not, it's not a construction plan. This was, these are things we heard from the community. So we planned to put those interpretive signages into the community requested three languages to be used for that so we're excited to do that. There are to pedestrian bridges crossing the creek there. And I call this line it's yellow and beige looks like a snake. It is. It's a purpose trail. It's really bicycles and pedestrians on there. We also have a sport court as part of the parking lot, as well as a outdoor classroom or community garden kind of in the middle to the right. Whatever ends up being developed there. There's a lot of information there of the master plan overall is designed to preserve and enhance the habitat values of the existing grassland equipment repair and purple needle grass habitat, which would be left of course intact and interpreted about its importance, and would also contain the park would contain the trails and educational signage. The little green squares on the plan are fitness trails a lot I mean fitness stations, next to the trails so you can get a little bit higher activity level. And that only on that southern part of the park. And the park is also of course intended to be developed for all access. So that would still limit the amount of paving and keep and interpret the natural aspect of the park. Next slide please. So as we as will and I mentioned earlier this, this meeting tonight is to take any comments you have. As we are going into the producing the EIR in the future, we want to hear from you we're getting trying to get out ahead of that year to hear from you tonight to see if before we start moving into that too far. What sort of comments would you have for us early on. And so I am going to turn it back over to our host to explain how to participate in the public comment portion of the meeting. Thank you. Thank you Jen. Accountant timer will appear for the convenience of the speaker and viewers. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute yourself when you are invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the end of the countdown, or at the conclusion of your comment. If you're participating in the meeting from the Spanish Channel in zoom, you have an interpreter on standby in the English Channel to assist during your public comment. If you wish to ask a question, or provide input, please be sure to pause throughout your comments to allow for interpretation. Those using interpreter support will be afforded additional time for your comments for Spanish speakers at the time you hear your name called turn off the Spanish Channel to make your public comment. This icon may now look like a circle with an ES in the middle and the word Spanish underneath. We have three minutes for your comment and a timer will appear on the screen. If you have additional comments as time allows, and all other comments have been heard, we will do our best to allow an additional three minute comment. I do not currently have any hands raised. All right, thank you. Thank you. Oh, we do have one and before we, before we take that I just wanted to skip a tiny bit ahead just to let you know kind of will have the fuller scope of the entire process coming up after these comments. So we'll go over that and I'll have contact information for you as well for for following this but I'll turn it back to our host for continue on with our comment. Thank you. Gregory, we're going to ask you to go ahead and talk. Please unmute yourself. Thank you. My name is Gregory Farron and I think you just answered my question which is. I publicly comment on lots of things but I usually wait for someone to suggest something I should comment on to give me a chance to be able to, you know, to provide you some feedback and so far everything's been so temporary.  So I think I'll just wait until that time and comment then. I appreciate that and I understand it's not a lot of information but we like to. Not necessarily a requirement but we like to get out ahead of producing so we, if by chance there is something we should be aware of or any comment whatsoever we'll happily take that in and go from there. So I think we have one more person I'll turn it back to our host. Thank you, Wendy. We're going to ask you to unmute. My name is Wendy I have a quick question on the impact of traffic. When construction or work gets started will it be coming from her and Avenue. And if it does that concerns me, because there is a huge amount of traffic with all the construction that's going on in this area that I'm seeing way more trucks on her and working it more difficult as school starts there's times that it's hard to pull out onto her and and I'm hoping requesting that a lot of the trucks or traffic that's needed for the park to be done from Burbank. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Wendy. Yeah, thank you when they appreciate it and certainly we're not looking at, you know, possible construction until late next year at the earliest. But it's a really good point that we can take into consideration as we get closer to that and I don't know well if you had anything else or we're good. Okay, so got a couple more. Hunter, we're going to ask you to unmute. Hey yeah. I would just like to make sure that there's a plan at some point I mean I'm sure the construction trucks driving down that and the additional traffic coming to the park is just going to make that worse. So I want to make sure that there's a plan at some point to repave that street given how much impact this is going to have on that. And I have no idea if this belongs in this forum. But there's a lot of kids that that and this is probably already been said, because I'm just joining this project now but there's a lot of kids that that ride their bikes or walk their bikes across the field currently from the school on the other side. And so the current design doesn't look like it's, I mean I see that there's a multi use trail. But you may want to consider if the funding allows for it paving an additional trail to cross the park I get that we're trying to save nature here but they're going to use it regardless and so we want to make sure that that trail isn't destroyed by bikes and just plan for that ahead of time. And specifically a trail out of the, the parking lot that's on the left doesn't look like that one's a multi use trail and you might want to consider making that such. Thanks. Thank you hunter. Thank you. And just to I heard you about with men will definitely circle back with our public works, folks to see what their plans are for that street, and there is going to be a trail connecting the men to Burbank and then across Burbank. I think I probably forgot to mention that part, we're going through that, and it'll be a flashing light, and it's proposed to be a paved permeable paved some sort of paid service to kind of help with all access to the park so I appreciate your comments. Thank you, Chanel, go ahead and unmute. Hi. Hi, I'm Jenelle and I live just around the corner from this park. I'm very excited about the design of the park. I have a young son and he's already taught, he's watching the meeting and he's very excited about all the things that he sees in the park. I think the thing that I do a lot of homeless people that are living there, either in RVs along McVin or kind of in the woods. So, I think the environmental impact report usually analyzes the impact of do the development, but there's an impact and not doing the development as well because the, you know, allowing the homeless people to continue. And the other question I have is, how are we, how are you planning to make sure that the park stays nice, once it's there. That's the issue right now.  So, that's all. Thanks. Thanks to now I appreciate it and I'll just, I have a website I'm going to say it, but it's also something you can look up on the city's website. It's called homeless at srcity.org. And that's one way you can help report if there's an issue at the park we definitely want to know about it and we don't want to document what's happening there and appreciate that. Even folks parked along the park would be good to have that information to the folks that need to see it there's a multidisciplinary crew that's looking at those comments that come through. So I would regard to the ER, I don't know, will if you want to add anything there but otherwise, you know, thank you. Yeah, I would just add that the that Janelle's correct that we're looking at the direct physical impacts of development of the park. So, I think we did note previously and in the master plan that the park gates are going to be locked in the evening, you know, first standard city practice. Thank you, john. We're gonna ask you to unmute. Okay, there we go. I'm john's wife. My husband and I live on Hughes Avenue, and we have been with this committee for probably 30 years now trying to keep this acreage behind us as a nature park. We had it all decided there were many, many meetings, and now all of a sudden it's totally changed. I'm kind of wondering where those plans went to, to keep this a nature park to prevent people from having a bathroom here where that will only draw more homeless, and not have a parking lot for the homeless because you're basically inviting them in. We have a lot of traffic we have a lot of homeless, there's been fires all sorts of stuff. And I am pretty concerned about this type of development in my backyard. That's it. So thank you appreciate that comments and we'll include that and you know also we had some additional contact information if you want I'm not exactly sure. So that plan you might be talking about we've had definitely about 11 years worth of changes to the plan and what was going to happen there so we can always, you know, happy to talk with you a little bit further and and get that information out to you and then will I didn't know if you had anything else or are we good there. All right, thank you, Judy, we're going to ask you to unmute yourself. Hi I just, we have property south of the proposed park. And I also live in Roseland and frequently go through the Southwest Community Park on her. And I'm curious, if you don't enforce the rules at that park how are you going to enforce the rules at this park. There's an area that I feel very uncomfortable and I walk through in the morning, because there's people who have actually like permanent furniture there, and they're there every day. The rules aren't enforced. I mean, yes, supposedly close at night but there's people there. And I don't know how you're going to enforce the rules at this park if you don't enforce the rules at the other park. Thank you, Jody appreciate that. And I totally understand it's it's a problem all across the city for us as we are doing our best with many departments. As well as police for enforcement and maintenance for keeping up as best as we can. We have about 1517 maintenance folks plus we had a contract for mowing services, but everything else is provided by the city's team right now so we're doing the best we can to keep up with everything we certainly can. You know the Rose and Creek as will mentioned earlier is proposed to have gates locks so that's helpful for us and other parks where we do that is really helpful to control that kind of activity, whereas Southwest it's a little different. And Southwest it's not you know that's a park also that was developed many, many years ago and is due for a bit of an update itself as well so we can definitely talk a little bit more as we go through and if you'd like to talk further with me. I do have time and contact information as well. But thank you for that. We have no hands raised at this time. Well, Wendy. We're going to go and ask you to unmute and allow you three more minutes. Thank you. I meant to ask you mentioned that it's all access that you're going to be providing on those trails. I have a disability sometimes needing to use cane sometimes I've had to use a walker and I'm wondering if by all access. This is what it's is meant that I could use those and how much of the trails will be have that ability, and thank you. Thank you, Wendy. Yes, that I, you know, thanks for that question for me to clarify that yes, all access means persons with disabilities can access those trails so we're looking at hard paved surfaces of some sort so that it's a stable surface for those needing it for all of our primary trails, we might have some secondary trails that are more natural and in to what's there now made by folks so we can meet those as is, but all of our primary trails throughout and looping throughout the park so that we'll have all access and all areas so that it'll be equal access for, for those who need it throughout the park that there may be a few little tiny spur trails here and there that are left as is so hopefully that helps. All right, Barbara, we're going to ask you on you. I was curious as to what the time frame is how long the environmental impact report will take, and then how an idea of how many decades it would take to actually start doing the work. And also a second question is there. Many years ago there were in the plan there was a Native American display, and I know the EIR talked about the cultural impacts and I wondered what happened to that and if anything's further will be developed about that. Thank you. I appreciate that. And so that I'll circle back with will about the exact more, you know closely with the timeline but we're looking at January to January to move through this environmental process. And then from there we've got quite a bit of additional work to do with getting the project ready, and the construction will be later next year at the earliest. So we have a requirement from the Ag and the Sonoma County Ag and open space district to build that northern trail from McMinn to from yeah McMinn to Burbank over to the school and we really want to do that so that we can provide that safe travels, you know, route to school for students and anybody else accessing that. And we were very eager to do that project. And so that'll be the first thing we do and from there we'll look at what sort of funding we have to go from there. And let's see. I think I might have as a well turned back to will for maybe if there's anything to correct in my timeline. No, I think that timeline is accurate. Yeah, drop the IR towards the end of the year, January time frame. Okay. And Barbara I think I might have missed your other. Yes, if I answered your question and if not circle back or will do you remember. Yeah, there was a question about a potential Native American display. Okay. I believe there was some consultation done with tribes and developing right. You are correct and things for that that I wrote down but I couldn't read my own writing so yes we did contact to tribal nations who provided us really good feedback on what they requested. And originally about eight years ago there was an idea of a of a tribal area. And so we asked our tribal nations what they would like to see there and they express that they would not like to see that, but they instead would like to see access for elders they would like the trees along the creek to be identified as species, the species type. They also were requesting water.  So we'd look to provide interpretive services. If our tribal nations would be open to that we would love to work with them to provide any sort of historical documentation of their tribal lands their former tribal lands at anything we would like to definitely work with our tribal nations but that's what we've received so far, we may receive more feedback from our tribal nations as we move forward but we are open to working with our nations out there and look forward to. Any further comments I have no hands raised at this time. Great Jen, we'll turn this back over to you. Alrighty thank you so much. Let's go ahead and go on to slide eight or the next slide. And so I again I just want to thank you all. I know it's very, very preliminary but it's really important for us to hear from you early on, and you'll have many other opportunities to provide your comments as you think about the project and hear about it. As we go forward, as will mentioned, we are looking at September 9 as the date where we're collecting all of our comments from all of you tonight as well as folks who are writing and calling in the comments. The next step of course is wills team will be preparing the environment draft environmental impact report. It will be that report then will be available for comments for 45 days. And the also part of the final ER that's prepared will or the draft final pre EIR will provide comments back in part as part of that draft EIR responses to comments that we receive during the entire timeline for that. We do anticipate city council review of the IR. In January, if not sooner, if we can get through all of our steps in time. There's a lot to do with this with this project. There is a website. It's srcity.org forward slash Roseland Creek Community Park. That website will contain all of our updated information and what's going on with the project at all times, of course you can always call us as well. Will did you have anything else to add here about our next steps processes. I think you've, you've addressed it the draft EIR really is following the NOP comment period that end September 9 that's the next opportunity for the community to provide the city comments on the EIR and then those those will be addressed as part of the final EIR will respond any comments on the content of the draft EIR. It's accurate. Thank you. Well, I appreciate it. All right, let's roll to our next slide please. And so this is the contact information. I was mentioning earlier on, certainly we definitely want to hear from you. My email is jsa and TOS as Jay Santos at srcity.org. And of course my phone number and the city's website I mentioned earlier are available or you can always just call recreation and parks and they'll we'll get you what you need a comment form and or just take down your comment for you from there. And for your participation tonight I know it was a really quick one, which is collecting information but certainly were available if you would like to communicate further and it was a couple of you that mentioned a few more detailed information and maybe those are worth a longer conversation and I'm available for those as well. So, with that I will thank you all very much for your attendance tonight and have a nice evening. Thank you.


Well, my dear students, the course is Labour Policy Pakistan and the topic is Section 3 that relates with trade unions and freedom of association. Section 3 of the Industrial Relations Act 2012 states trade unions and freedom of association is heading for trade unions and freedom of association, Section 3 is heading. Section 3 says, subject to the provisions of this act. What is this phrase saying? That you have to be consistent with trade unions, only with the provisions of this law. And not withstanding any other law for the time being in force. And it is being said that whatever is written in any other law, it should not be considered as a means for trade unions or freedom of association. This section 3 of the Industrial Relations Act 2012 and the law should not be considered as a means for trade unions. Section 3 of the Industrial Relations Act 2012 says, workers without distinction whatsoever. So every type of worker shall have the right to establish the trade unions and have the right to follow the rules of the organisation. And they can join all international associations which are their choice and they can do this without any authorisation. There is no need to take any previous authorisation from anyone. But at the same time, a proviso is being set up, a proviso starts with provided. Provided means are related to a term which is called proviso. What proviso does is that the law that has been mentioned in the previous section has a condition, an addition or an exception. So what has been mentioned above is that trade unions can be involved in this and these international organisations or associations which are related to trade unions can join them. And they do not need any previous authorisation to join them. But the condition is that they have added an addition or an exception. Provided that in the establishment where women are also employed, the trade union shall include the women in the executive of the trade union with the same proportion in which they are employed in the establishment. So what is being done is that the women workers are also given the same proportion in the trade union in which they are employed in the organisation in which they are employed. Provided further, then proviso is being set up that no worker shall be entitled to be a member of more than one trade union. This is being set up by proviso. Proviso is given an addition, an addition or an exception. So what is being set up? The condition is that only one worker shall be a member of one trade union. If he takes a membership of two trade unions, then the first trade union will end up being a member of that trade union. Next, the provision is that employers without distinction whatsoever, i.e. every employer has the right to establish and establish with the organisation's rules any association that is of the employer and they can join international associations of their choice without previous authorisation. Next, the provision of this section tells that every trade union and employer's association shall frame its own constitution and rules to elect its representative in full freedom to organise its administration and activities and to formulate its programmes. That every trade union can frame its own constitution and rules to elect its representatives so that its administration, management and activities and programmes can be formulated. Next, the provision of this section tells that the unions and associations of workers and employers can join the federations and confederations. They can also affiliate themselves with international organisations and confederations of workers. Now let's move on to discuss what freedom of association is. If freedom of association exists, then trade union can be established and employer's association can be established. So freedom of association is that workers or employers can join the association or trade union or leave it with their own association and do the right exercise of collective bargaining so that the new ideas that they have can be exerted and done in dialogue and negotiations. My dear students, the human right describes that the right of collective bargaining is a very fundamental right and it is to promote, to pursue and to defend common interests.


Oh man, this is going to be a good one today. So although it's only been like two years since we've really focused on YouTube and put a lot of effort into it, we have been making videos on the channel off and on from the very beginning, so all the way back to 2013. And I thought it'd be fun to go back and kind of take a look at the very first video we ever made and to view it from today's lens. Interestingly, the first video on the channel was not what you would consider like a typical YouTube video compared to what we're doing now and how we do videos now. It was actually a part of a project that a friend of mine was doing. He's a video guy and in 2013, he challenged himself to make one video every month. He knew about He Spoke Style. He thought there was a story to tell there. So he asked me if I'd be open to doing kind of like a little short film with him. We shot this in one day, multiple locations. It was a very long day. It was very fun to do. And the idea of it was just to basically tell the story of what He Spoke Style was and why I decided to start it. So it's been a very long time since I've watched this video. And what I'm interested in is to hear what I had to say back then and then to see how well and if at all it still tracks with what I'd say today, what my vision for He Spoke Style is today versus what I was saying then. It really just kind of wondering how embarrassing this is going to feel. Hopefully not too embarrassing, but we shall see. So I've got the video queued up here and I think we should just dive right into it now. So without further ado, let's take a look at He Spoke Style, the video. Yeah, style, good style is timeless. Style is transcendent. So one thing I want to point out actually before we go any further is that the soundtrack to this was actually done by another really talented friend of mine, so total collaboration from the video to the music here. My name is Brian Sakawa and I'm Founder and Creative Director of He Spoke Style. One of the things that really speaks to me about doing the website is that I'm a professional musician and music is all about communication and the website. Got to stop here. So the suit I'm wearing is a Brooks Brothers suit. Don't have that suit anymore. The shirt is by Banana Republic. Don't have that anymore. There's my watch, the Time X for J Crew, circa 2010 that I wore all the time. And then I have to point out what one of my big mistakes here, which is wearing this these cuff links. They're by Paul Smith and they've got like a skull on them. I thought it was cool. But looking at it now, it's like trying just like a little too hard with that. To me is a form of communication and style, in fact, is a form of communication. Deciding what you're going to wear or what you're not going to wear says something about you. And whether you are into fashion or style or not or don't claim to be, what you wear or what you choose not to wear says a lot about you. It says how you want to be perceived by people and what group you belong to or want to belong to. That sounds so familiar. It's like I could say that today. So I'm feeling pretty good about this. This scene here, we shot in like a local wine shop. And just so you know, this was not how Rob and I would typically work, but it worked for the video. Rob doesn't even drink. Everyone has their style. He put this photo up here because he knew it was one that I really hated. Influences and style icons and a lot of people point to Cary Grant as a big influence and I'm definitely no different. What I love about Cary Grant's style is he never looked bad in a suit and it was because his suits fit so well. The other part of that too, he was a nice guy. He was humble in addition to being very, very stylish and that's really important to me. I think we really had a good groove for this one. Yeah, you do. Good location, good light. No doubt. No doubt. Oh my God, I think I included this look in one of my least favorite looks ever. I like this one where you look like a drunk. I do look like a drunk. Having style is all about having confidence. If you wear something with confidence, it will look good. If you're uncomfortable wearing something, it won't look good. Confidence goes hand in hand with style. I wasn't really waving at anyone there. If you're inspired by something you see on the website, that's great and I feel great about that because that's what the website is all about. Everything looks better in slow motion. Firing people. If people don't find any inspiration on it, that's fine too. He spoke style is just one voice in the conversation. I started He spoke style after wearing the same outfit for an entire year. Oh man, those Alan Edmond strands look really nice back then. It was a bit of an extreme experiment but it taught me a lot about versatility. So after the year of wearing one thing, I thought what are the essential things that a guy needs to have in his wardrobe? And that project turned into He spoke style. The thing I really love about style is that it's extremely personal. There's no one style that's correct or right. Style is really something that a person makes their own. I'm just remembering looking at this right now. We shot this in like, I don't know, like Jared did. He got this pizza shop as his place that we were shooting this interview and it was very hot that day and I could see that I'm really sweaty and you could also hear a lot of the background noise but hey, you work with what you got, right? And sure, we all have our influences who we draw inspiration from but at the end of the day, you know, your style is what you make of it. Yes! So that was interesting to re-watch. I think what's interesting to me most is that and what I feel most, what's the right word I'm looking for here, what makes me feel good about seeing that now is that everything I say in that video is pretty much exactly what I say now, like why I started it, what I hope to achieve with it, what it meant to me. I think I've done over the years, you know, this was like, I think we filmed this in maybe May of 2013 so I had just started in February and nowadays it's very much easier for me to kind of say what it's all about and I say it in pretty much every video and we refined it over the years but looking back on it, I really had a very clear idea and sense of what it was that I was after and it makes me feel good that what I was saying at least really holds up to what we do today. I'm really interested to hear what you guys think about this video and hey, you know, four people that gave it a thumbs down. I mean, what's the deal? Why you got to do that?  But anyway, this was kind of fun to do. I'm really curious to hear your guys' reactions if you are new to the channel and have just saw this for the first time. Let me know what you think but I just thought it would be fun to kind of go back and look at the very first video, see where we've come from, see how it stacks up to today and then, yeah, it was cool. So thanks for watching everyone.


Welcome to problem solving session on lines and angles guys. So in this question It's given that m is parallel to n and angle 1 is given to be equal to 65 degrees So this is 65 degrees. You have to find angle 6 and angle 7. Okay, so Let's start. So what is it if you see angle 1 you have to find out angle 6 and 7, right? So hence 7 is equal to 5, you know, right vertically opposite angle. So hence we say angle 1 is equal to angle 5 and these are corresponding angles corresponding angles Corresponding angles that means angle 5 is also equal to 65 degrees Because angle 1 was 65 degrees Now angle 5 is equal to angle 7 is equal to 65 degrees. Why is this? They are vertically Opposite angles Okay, and then Angle 6 plus angle 7 is 180 degrees. Why? Because these are forming a linear pair That means Angle 6 is 180 degrees minus angle 7 Which is equal to 180 degrees minus 65 degrees, which is equal to 1 1 5 Degrees. Okay. So these kind of questions are easy guys So what you need to do is keep these things in your mind these things which we learned what all so first of all Angles related to a transversal these will be important. So you must know corresponding angles Corresponding Angles are equal then alternate Interior angles are equal then alternate exterior angles are also equal then adjacent angle adjacent angles are Supplementary Supplementary is you must know right What else then you must know linear pair and Vertically opposite angles Right, they are equal. So all this if you know this you will be able to solve such problems So hence it was pretty simple problem in this case. Let's take up some more


American, Japanese, and Indian naval officers discussed their plans to improve their joint capabilities and international partnerships during Exercise Malabar 2014. If we can exercise together in a meaningful way, that's a serious statement that we'll be able to respond quickly to help out other nations or help out each other in time of crisis. Sailors from all of the ships participating had the chance to meet face to face and share their ideas on how to better operate while underway. These three navies are at the high end of professional navies on the planet. Body officer Sarah Villegas, Fleet Activity, Saasibo, Japan.


I literally have never come across anything that really did not have a clear, coherent response or answer or at least a way to approach a question. I've had the experience of having to, as an academic, consider those questions and then search for answers. And there are a number of ways you could approach this that make good sense. The problem, of course, is a lot of that discussion, a lot of that research never filters down to the church, to the average person. They get caricatures of the question or they get caricatures of the answer or they get no response at all. And they're misled into thinking. It's all strawman stuff. They get misled into thinking that, oh wow, my buddy over here from work has found the key to undermining the Bible and it's like that just couldn't be further from the reality. People are cut off from really, really good information or we live in the information age. The good stuff is so crowded out by the noise. You lose the signal for the noise because there's just so much that's thrown at you like in a Google search or something. And people don't realize that there's a whole world of information, academic information, that transcends Google. It's the academics that get that stuff and it's not publicly accessible. You don't run into it unless you talk to an academic or you sit in somebody's class and they force you to use something like journals. So it's a little bit frustrating for me to consider how people are misled either intentionally or unintentionally and they're cut off from information, but in my own experience there really is nothing new under the sun. There's nobody's going to come up with something that hasn't received really deep consideration, really thoughtful consideration from all perspectives. A lot of these things that trip people up or propel them away from truth or away from the faith, really a lot of it's about how the question is framed and whether you incorporate all the data or not, the data bias and that sort of thing. I feel quite good, I'll use the word satisfied even though there's a lot of questions I have about a lot of things, but I haven't come across anything that would shake me from core ideas like theism and Christianity and Christology and whatnot. I don't want to be too unkind to him. Now, Jordan Maxwell is not his real name. I know people who know who Jordan Maxwell really is. They don't think a whole lot of him is a person, but I'm going to stick to the research here.  I don't really know, but they'll confuse correlation for causation. That's a fundamental problem in all I guess what we'll just make a sweeping generalization here and call it alternative research. These two things look the same, so one caused the other. Really? How would we know that? In a lot of these cause and effect arguments that are made by Maxwell and others, there are no data to establish a cause and effect relationship. The analogies are only as good as the contrarian data points that they weed out.  If you take away all the places where the analogy breaks down, oh, they look wonderful. They look compelling. And they know that you're not a content expert. Their audience is not a content expert. And so how many people are really going to check? How many people are really going to call them on the carpet? Well, the answer is very few. And even the people who could, they don't waste their time on Jordan Maxwell. They're looking for people who do peer reviewed research. If Jordan Maxwell is not submitting his work to peer review, that tells you either he has something to hide or he's afraid it'll get destroyed. That's what peer review is about. You submit your work to field experts to see if you've missed something or if you've handled the data well and correctly. And guys like Maxwell never do this. They want to portray themselves as the misunderstood genius. Oh, I would do that, but the reviewers will just, they won't appreciate my brilliance. Or they're part of a big conspiracy. They won't accept what I say because they disagree. Look, I got news from Mr. Maxwell. Journals regularly publish stuff that their reviewers disagree with the view that's presented. The issue isn't agreement. There are hundreds of journals. Let's say you run into one where the reviewer says, I don't like this guy. We're not doing it. Great, submit it somewhere else because you're going to have dozens and dozens of opportunities to put your work before a panel of peer review experts. And if it's good research, someone's going to publish it. And they often publish things they don't agree with. Sometimes so much that the lead editor of a journal will append a note saying, hey, we thought this was good research. Nobody really agreed with the conclusion. But there are the data that's up for you to decide. They do stuff like that all the time. So people who won't submit their research to the review of experts, like I said, either have something to hide or they sense that it's going to be destroyed. And honestly, why should they do that?  And that's what Maxwell's doing. They all confuse correlation with causation. They all use data selectively. And in Maxwell's case, when he tries to make linguistic arguments, he's just hopelessly incompetent. People can go to drmsh.com and put his name and put Maxwell. I have a little response to his ISIS raw L argument. Anyone who knows the languages knows in a few sentences that Maxwell has no idea what he's doing. He is a language amateur and even that's kind of generous. I don't think he spent even more than a couple of days even looking at languages. He probably doesn't even know the alphabet for half of the stuff that he's doing. So, you know, and this is what they do. They will quote each other. They'll build a little cadre of people who mutually agree with the direction of this or that point of research. And they mutually reinforce each other. And they sort of build their own little quote unquote academic community. But none of these people ever submit their experts to field experts. Although quote to field experts when they need to, when they want to bring in an expert into the discussion to make it appear that the expert is on their side. Or if the expert were in the room with me, he'd say, yes, Jordan, you have a point here. That's what they do. Okay, it is sophistry. It is selective use of data. It's incompetence in some respects. And it's a fear of analysis. And personally, I would say the same thing if he were in the room right here with me. You know, I challenge the quality of his work because it's not difficult to challenge. Zechariah is such a, he's deceased now, he's passed away. I mean, it's real simple with such a, give me one line of one Kenea form tablet that tells me that the Anunnaki are associated with Nibiru. Or that Nibiru cycles through our solar system every 3,600 years. Give me one line of one tablet. How easy would it be for to make Mike go away if that were true? I only put it that way because I know it's not true. And I try to get people, you know, I made a video on my, mystitchiniswrong.com website showing people how to, to tap into the Sumerian stuff. Again, you don't have to be a specialist. It exists in databases. I told people how to type in the search for Anunnaki. It's going to search all of the, all the, all the tablets where Anunnaki show up. There are a number of, of epics and, you know, little smaller fragments here and there. Try to remember what the, what the total, I think it's like 187 hits or something like that. You can, you can look at them all up in English. There is literally not a line in any tablet that makes the fundamental claims that Stitchin makes. But it's not about me disagreeing with his translations. You can't translate what doesn't exist. When, when Maxwell dips into the research of somebody like Stitchin. And, you know, Maxwell, let me, let's just be honest, he's not going to look. He's not going to do research to see if Stitchin is correct. He already buys into the, the, the Stitchin worldview and he finds certain points of what Stitchin says convenient to some other thing he wants to say. So he's just going to go with it.  I mean, it literally doesn't exist. Then you've got a real problem. But again, who's going to do that? You know, they, they, these people understand that they can say certain things and make a pretty good living, you know, at, at what they're saying and become important. You'll be, be big fish in a very small pond and that's, it's better than a day job. You know, that, that, that's just what they're going to do. They know people aren't going to check them. They're not going to have the skills to check them. And if anybody ever does, then you become part of the conspiracy. You know, well, I'm sorry, but I didn't take the tablets out of the database for the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. I didn't remove anything.  It, these databases exist. You can tap into them. I don't like when primary sources are abused and I don't like when people are, are, are deceived. I get these conversations from time to time, but I just think, look, it's just, it's just easier than this. That there's no accountability. They're going to say what they want. They're going to, they're going to make money. They're going to become popular. You know, they're going to want, have people ask for their autographs. It really doesn't have to be much more complicated than that. It sure beats selling insurance. They're interested in what they talk about. I don't know that any of them are really like twisted people who want to deceive as many people as possible. I guess that's possible too. I tend to gravitate toward the, the simplest explanation that nobody's going to call me to, to, on the carpet here. And I've got a safe answer if they do. You're just part of the conspiracy. You, you misunderstand my brilliance too. You know, I'll use myself as an example here. So, you know, I'm nowadays, you know, what's getting attention that what I do is the book Unseen Realm. Well, I talk about it in the introduction. Unseen Realm used to exist as a draft that was free on the Internet, you know, called The Myth That Is True. And it's really the result of 15 years of work. It was a putter project. I didn't, frankly, I thought a lot of evangelical publishers or Christian publishers wouldn't have the courage to publish it because it, it was uncomfortable, you know, and I was a little naive there, there would have been certainly some that would have, I mean, lexum winds up publishing it. And that, that's all well and good. But the point is it took 15 years to do that in the midst of those 15 years. Here's why I'm bringing it up. I was submitting articles on the core ideas of the book to Peer Review. So people can go to drmsh.com and click on about and get my CV. I have my full CV there. I try to keep it up to date. And there's a whole section of it, Peer Reviewed Articles. You know, I've got a number of articles on Peer Review because I knew that's the first thing people are going to say when they disagree.  It's just, you know, it's just hyzer. He has these weird idiosyncratic ideas. It's him alone against the world. No, it actually isn't. What I've actually done is I've submitted my work to Peer Review and it's past muster. Other scholars recognize the quality of this.  You can't hide behind this argument. That it's just hyzer and nobody else thinks this way. I use only Peer Reviewed Sources and I submit my work to Peer Review for that reason. I want scholars to catch me on it like, did I miss something? Am I just messing up this point? Because honestly, even as a scholar, you can't be an expert in everything. It's very hard to keep up with anything in your field. There are thousands of pages in journals produced really every quarter of the year. You've got to land somewhere. You've got to drill down. You've got to develop some expertise.  You know, this is the way the process works. You'll get your manuscript back from a reviewer. And I've had things turned down that I had to resubmit. You know, it's like, well, you missed this or this article just came out and it's not in your footnotes. You need to go back and read that and interact with it. That's a good process.  It helps you to do the best job that you can.  That's what peer review is about. It's actually designed, yeah, it'll weed, you know, nonsense out, but at this level, when you're submitting work to a peer review journal, there are very few nutbags, you know, that are just doing this or people just going out and being lone wolves. So they don't have to do a whole lot of that. But it's really designed to help you do the best job you can and then not be sort of caught on the other end like you missed something. So it's a very positive process, even though it sort of looked at like a winnowing agent. I mean, it does do that. But on the other side, it's very helpful because you just can't be an expert in everything.


Welcome everyone as we're still having others gather here I as I put in the chat, please feel free to say hello in the chat. I see a couple people from have already done so from here in Elkhart, Indiana. Wadsworth, Ohio, Spokane, Washington, Seattle and other places so welcome to you all, and welcome to this the second episode in a new webinar series, Anabaptist Witness Dialogues, which is a series by Anabaptist Witness Journal. I'm your host, Jamie Pitts, I'm here in Elkhart, Indiana along the St. Joseph River, which is also Potawatomi land, part of the Pocagan Band of Potawatomi territory. In today's webinar we'll be talking with Randy Halouza-Delay and Randy Woodley. We've been talking before we got on here about how we're going to distinguish among the Randy's I think I'll try to just maybe say their full names but we've got the two Randy's here. Randy or Randolph Halouza-Delay is a social scientist who was a faculty member at two Canadian universities for 20 years he was tenured in sociology. His scholarship is focused on environmental justice and religious responses to the ecological crisis in the contemporary world. And his article What Does Shalom Mean, Comparing Anabaptist and Indigenous Perspectives appeared in our most recent issue which you can find on our website and get in print. Randy Woodley was raised near Detroit, Michigan and is a recognized Cherokee descendant by the United Ketua Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. Randy and his wife Edith co-sustained a lahay Indigenous Center for Earth Justice. A lahay farm and seeds in Yamhill, Oregon.  Randy and his wife Edith host a regenerative learning center farm and community that invests in people's lives teaching them to love and care for the earth from a holistic Indigenous worldview. Randy is the director of intercultural Indigenous Studies and the distinguished professor of faith and culture at George Fox Evangelical Seminary. He's the author of several books including Shalom and the Community of Creation and Indigenous Vision. And most recently I believe decolonizing evangelicalism and 1159 p.m. conversation, which he co-wrote with Beau Sanders, as well as living in color embracing God's passion for ethnic diversity. While you're on the Antibaptist Witness website looking at Randy Hallouza Delays article, you can also look up an older article from 2016 in which Antibaptist Witness book review editor Steve Heinrichs, who I see is here today, is in conversation with Randy Woodley. So I'm going to ask the two Randy's here a couple questions and allow them to expand. We'll spend probably around half an hour in this mode of interview. And then we're hoping to hear from you what has stimulated your thoughts what questions you have for Randy and Randy. And the way you can ask those questions is by using the little Q&A box. To the right of the chat. And if you have a question at any time in the in the next 30 to 45 minutes, please type it in there I will go through those questions and when the interview portion is done I will ask Randy and Randy those questions. So let's get started then with the interview. The next question is for Randy Woodley. Randy you've written extensively on the theology of Shalom from an indigenous perspective, and I wonder if kind of in broad strokes you can share your vision for Shalom theology and how it relates to indigenous communities and land. Thank you. So good to be here with you. Hello to everyone attending thanks for tuning in. If you can say that there is a central theme of scripture I think it's Shalom. As I understand it, it's, you know, from the beginning of Genesis and that that fine balance of everything and then the first 11 chapters then as the stories go as the Shalom is broken. There's a lot of harmony way that that I think are the sort of original instructions by creator to all humanity to live by. And then you have the laws that Shalom is very much connected to Sabbath and to Jubilee, of course, and you have the setting aside of a seventh of your land and why so that the poor or the needy the wild animals etc can eat in the edges of your field.  You know there's the safety nets that are in place and then you have the prophets calling people back to a way of justice and right living. And this comes on the scene, his kingdom, which, you know, I know it's a controversial word and not the word that he used, but his kingdom, if you want to use that word is very much a Shalom kingdom, and then the whole New Testament testifies to this way of living in which Jesus sort of reanimates the whole construct of Shalom. And so, for me, this is all about everything that Jesus had to say. This is the way that people from other religions, some things that they can agree on and some people who are just indigenous peoples all over the world can agree on so to me it's the most sort of universal construct of a right way of living that we've been given as human beings and so to miss that is to miss everything about what scripture has to say. Thanks, so it's a really expansive vision that deeply rooted not just in one or two references in scripture, but you would see it as pervasive throughout the entire Old and New Testaments. And this is something that in a Baptist theologians have also talked about of course, and Randy who's a delay, you've written some about the relationship between the kind of vision that Randy Woodley has just shared to midnight theologies I wonder if you could talk a bit about that what do you see is the connections there. So taking the, when I consider the Anabaptist Charism or gift to the world or World Christianity, among those things we usually say is our peacemaking focus. And so I originally wanted to reconceptualize what does it mean to make peace with all creation, which actually comes out of Colossians one, that great Christological him right there. And it's, you know, the idea of making peace with all creation with all the creatures of creations is mentioned twice in there was done by Jesus, you know, by his death and his resurrection. What does it mean to make peace with all creation so that was kind of the genesis of my thinking about, you know, what is this and then I should say that I'm not a cradle man and I, in fact, I came to participate in Anabaptist fellowships because as I came to faith as a university students on like three decades four decades ago now, and I made a decision to follow Jesus. I saw the gospel message in a way consistent with a radical discipleship, a radical faithful ship and central to my understanding in those early years was to take Jesus seriously when he said such things as, you know, love your enemy. And that can't be done in the abstract. It has to be done in the practical. So, how do we do that and that was an American born there and moved to Canada around 30 years ago. And that was deeply troubling to love our enemies in the United States and even in Canada, it contests the way we think about things. And so that whole notion of contesting the most prevalent features of our society and our culture, I think is deeply part of Jesus's message and Christian discipleship. For over. Well, for quite a long time I worked in environmental education I worked for MCC and a voluntary stint and I worked in an indigenous community with MCC. And I'm not writing about Shalom is is probably often we talk about peace, but as Perry Yoder tried to explain in his book which I compared to Randy Woodley's book on Shalom in the community of creation for Yoder Shalom has multiple things. And in his book he really has a strong socio political assessment. So Shalom means like that personal piece that we seek and fellowship with the creator, but it also means that relationship with other, other humans other people, the social structures and Shalom also means to be an integrity. So again that good relationship with God to be a person of God, and I'm a Christian because the Bible has so many stories of failed relationships with God, you know, the and so forth who are like, how can you think about these people as men after God's own heart. And yet that gives hope I think so Shalom includes that integrity but also includes that socio political assessment. And what Randy did was he added two things in his book. Shalom is for the community of all creation, not just the human part of that. And actually to refer to something he just said in his book he says he thinks the word community is a way better word than the word kingdom, which I would completely agree with. What he does is he says that among the structures of our world is colonialism. Unless we make things explicit, we won't address the problem so these two inclusions I think that Shalom is for the community of all creation. And among the structure of our world is colonialism and therefore we need to decolonize those structures, and Randy goes further and says we need to decolonize our minds, because our society and our culture is founded on colonial roots, which have epistemic, social, political and ontological impacts on us so it goes right to the core of our being. Canada is a settler colonial country. And so all of us who are not indigenous have to come to terms with the fact that colonization has given us privileges and advantages as settlers, even if we didn't directly participate in it or don't come from those European roots. So, you know, Latin Americans have begun to think a lot more about some of these things that have come up with some ideas around how do we bring a decolonizing and environmental justice perspective together. And those insights try to understand how the persistence of colonialism colonial values and so forth, sustains the injustices, violence and oppression that we see. And that means recognizing, again, how deeply rooted those values are. And I would say to try to get beyond a Eurocentric notion of Christian faith and practice, and again Randy points that out in that book that I've been mentioning. And I've used that book in classes, both at a university level and in adult Sunday schools. And, you know, it's challenging to people because Randy's asking people not just to learn something new to acquire new knowledge, which is the way we tend to think about knowing in a Western way, but to to acquire new understandings of God to rethink our own theologies and our own discipleship. And so these are these are great challenges that some will rise to, but others will struggle with, but it's a really important thing that we all need to think through, especially as an abaptist who who try to try to claim that we're we're radically following Jesus, we're doing our best to do so. So, Randy Woodley, when you hear this account of an abaptist trying to learn from your theology of Shalom and put these theologies Shalom into conversation and this last comment that many men and women nights and churches, many Christian students find your work challenging. I wonder what kind of counsel you'd have for an abaptist as we try to do this work of thinking about Shalom that includes the whole community of creation, as well as includes a real critical examination and practice around the colonization. Yeah. So, yeah, well, not only does Randy get my name right, but I think he gets it pretty well right in the article so I think that's a really good article for people to read and really examine and understand. The only problem I have with it is, you know, Dr. Yoder wrote that quite a while ago and I don't know if that would be his end all statement of where he ends up I think he's probably moved. I'm not that far apart and you say that in the article I think so. Yeah, so, you know, I'm not. Not only not a cradle men and nights, a term that I forgotten that you folks use, but I'm not even occasional men and I so, but I do like to hang with the men and nights because they've been pretty good to me and a lot of them like talk about farming which I like to talk about so. Yeah, I think, given the right circumstances, most people. And I like to have times of dialogue. That's, that's what I really do to challenge our worldview so I'm not, you know, I'm not saying you know you people are bad people because this happened what I'm saying is, you know this happened for a particular reason it happened because of a particular worldview and it's very easy, I think to prove that that worldview is unsustainable. And that world. So, so we like to think that our theologies create our worldview but it really is just the opposite. Our worldviews create our theologies and and how we go about understanding that and so the reason I think men and nights understand a bit more about shalom just besides of the peacekeeping is because of the connection to the land. The land is the great teacher, it's the, you know, God has gifted us with creation to be our most continuous and probably best teacher. There is there with herself so you know when you have that connection you start to learn stuff right. And so what I would say it's like you're almost there. Not that I have all the answers or even any indigenous peoples have all the answers but there are some things you learn and live in a particular place for you know 13 to 28,000 years or longer someone say well we were here forever but forever it is it's a whole lot longer than settler colonialism. And so the land. We're not saying we're experts because we're indigenous we're saying we're experts on this particular land, because our people have lived with it so long and learn from it. It's the wisdom that I think that the indigenous people offer the men and nights and anyone else. And in sort of what I do is I just break down those worldviews and try to compare an indigenous worldview with a Western worldview and show how destructive the Western worldview is and how it will not sustain us in the future on this land. You know maybe it will somewhere else I don't know, but it's not going to sustain us in the Americas here. And so we really don't have a choice but the, the choice is that I can choose to look at the biblical record and the stories in scripture and see how they align with this with the indigenous ideas. I'm really intrigued by this idea that we learn from the land. We learn about the land. But the way you just phrase it and that's come up in various writings of yours, Randy Woodley and I'm. I'd be interested here both of you reflect someone what it means for Christians to learn not only again about the land but from it how does land really shape our sense of our calling in mission and let's. Let's go to you Randy who the delay of first and then over to Randy Woodley. I want to share that a lot of times we think of knowledge as something that you acquire. With the idea then in an enlightenment sort of way that new knowledge automatically leads to it being used and you know, it solves the problems if you learn things about whatever the problem is. There's so much research that shows that that's not the way it happens that people that new knowledge doesn't impact people I mean just look at all the evidence for for vaccines or for climate change or for you know, certain presidents being you know okay we won't go there. So worldviews shape. How we think worldview shape how we interpret scripture and how we practice our faith and how we live with others. My definition for sustainability is actually living well together in the land. And I like the flexibility of that because it forces us to try to unpack a whole bunch of different stuff in there. What does it mean to live well. Who is the way that is together to be living well. And I said in the land. I didn't say on the land said in the land. So I read the Bible with a sense of deep relationality and I think it's present there and one of my early influences in terms of Christian eco theology. I remember Michelson in the 1980s wrote a book called a worldly spirituality, where at one point he does a comparison between Hebrew Testament and the term Native American worldviews and looking at the relationality that's present in the, in the Old Testament and I still find in the New Testament as well. So, both sociology and ecology point out that relationality that we are in this life altogether. We humans are in it with all the rest of creation, not on our own and so we live well together we have to live it with all the rest of creation as well and again the evidence is clear that we're not doing such a good job at that. But again it's not just all humans. It's particular humans who have the power who have created industrial cultures who separated humans from the rest of creation and our thinking and so forth like that so learning to live from the land means trying to to figure out what does it mean to live well together. Now what is the good, the flourishing that Shalom represents that would be a flourishing of all the created order, you know more in line with what what God seems to desire. And that Bible has has passages where the mountains in the trees praise their creator and where the rocks cry out when the creator in whom all things hold together went to his death. So again that that relationality is present right there. And I think humans I think learning from peoples around the world. Global Christianity is very diverse it has, you know, in the seventh century about 25% of the world's Christians lived in Europe, the rest were scattered across Asia the Middle East, North Africa. Well Christianity then collapsed down into Europe. So we're back to a situation at the beginning of the 21st century we're only about 25% of the world's Christians are in Europe and Africa is the most Christian continent. Right now, according to a recent article in the Guardian that I just read, or the economist actually I might have it wrong but so learning, learning we Westerners we North Americans learning from the rest of global Christianity and the ways that they see things as Africans with the concept of the mood to Maori peoples and those aren't just Christians those are all cultures because if we believe in a one God creator of all. That means that God has gifted all peoples and all beings with with something to share with us that we can learn from. And so that's, let's cut out what I mean by learning from the land, all the beings in the land in the land not on the land. So I mean something similar, and I talk about living with the land and be married to the land right Bula is this Hebrew scripture to talk about. And, and of course, no one in the scriptures wrote from a post enlightenment perspective. There might have been some Greek influence here and there but basically, these are people who were largely agrarian and in during the New Testament switching to a sort of urban centered existence but there's this resistance from that and so Jesus. There's a whole lot of stuff about buildings and chariots and crossbows and those kinds of things he he talks about plain stuff that we see every day seeds and birds and, you know, apparently he knows this, the habits of foxes and maybe a particular donkey that he had his eye on and, and fish and you know how to catch them and, you know, all these kinds of things that that clearly show that he's a person of the land right so we how many sermons do you hear about that. There's so much that people miss but I want to just draw attention I'm just, you know, as you ask that question, like what can you learn from the land like what can you not learn from the land the podcast people won't be able to see the, the virtual background before me but it's my backyard two days ago, and it's a sunset. You know as I'm just looking at that sunset there's so much I can learn just by watching that you know my wife and I sort of have this ritual of watching the sunsets and each one is different. Every night when we can see them, the clouds are different, you know, and clouds are this great fractal thing and there's a whole lot of discussion we can have about fractals and how human beings are really in some ways have a fractal type nature. I see an oak forest which was the original you know this was an oak savannah, and what happens is that the Doug fir trees come in and try to take over and eventually they do. But we got this property right when the oak trees which I would say are akin to the traditions right, the people who've been on the land all this time. The firs come in and they let a few in, but when they start to take over they kill them off right. All this happens underground with mycelium and connections and all these, you know, trillions and trillions of micro microbes underneath there and, and we don't really understand all that but what's happened but eventually if they just keep coming and no one does anything about it then the firs take over and there's no more oaks, the oaks die out. You know there's a lot I can learn from all of this I look at that sunset and it looks different and because the earth turns, it sets in just a little bit different place. You notice it after a couple days how it's changing and the sun rises in a different place and, and sometimes I asked my wife what she sees and we see something different, looking at the same sunset. And that tells me something about, you know, unity and diversity and, and how every human being and every people have something to contribute that's different than the others and just how big God is and, you know, like I said what can't you learn from the land. Thank you. That's a question that I'm going to carry with me for a while. I want to turn to a question from our one of our listeners and I just remind you that if you have a question for either or both of the Randy's here please go ahead and put that in the q amp a box. This first question comes from Sarah Gurley, who's a student at ABS here in Elkhart. She says, thank you both for your insights and reflections as a young theologian who cares deeply about creation. I'm grateful to learn from a great many elders. My question is this. What are some, maybe. My question is this, what are some ways that a young person can share this rich wisdom with elders who align with a more conservative perspective understanding conservative can mean different things but here in the US. Next, there's some general understanding, someone who would be pretty resistant likely this is my elaboration on the question someone is likely to be pretty resistant and elder who might reject out of hand some of these insights that you're bringing what would, what would the two of you say to to encourage a young person who really appreciates what you're saying but wants to know how to communicate it with resistant elders. So I think my answer be real short I'll go ahead and then Randy look forward to hearing what you have to say. You know, take a cue from Jesus. Jesus also talked to his elders but what he did mostly is he asked him good questions. He understood where he was coming from he understood it well you have to understand it well enough to ask good questions that end up leading people to some answers they might be uncomfortable with. And so I would say, you know, rather than just challenge them you sort of subtly challenge them with the questions that you ask. Yeah, I make similar kind of comments. I did a lot of workshops on climate change and faith based communities. And I just moved out of Alberta with, which most people know it's a very oil and gas dependent province. So doubling down on on its dependence even further despite you know, both the evidence for climate change but also the evidence that gas companies are seeing a certain writing on the wall and and trying to make their own shifts. So in those climate workshops, I often had people who were questioning resistant or even outright hostile. There's also some change over the, you know, say last four years or so and doing those workshops as people were getting less and less resistant to certain forms, kind of the evidence and so forth but I didn't rely only on presenting the evidence. The science doesn't convince people what what works better is to try to connect our values, you know, what do they value that I also value and things like that. And, and sometimes that means asking that question is what do you value or what kind of world do you want for your children, or even, you know, in a couple of decades, you know, where do you think Alberta's economy is going, and how can we, we go there with the changes that are happening around the world. You know, stuff like that. So what that does is says hey we have some common ground. And that's so important. Again, that's a shalom approach. That's a conciliatory or a conciliation sort of approach. Back to topics of indigenous peoples. And we talk a lot in Canada about reconciliation. But we haven't done very much other than talk we haven't done a lot of practical work on reconciliation because reconciliation means writing whatever wrongs are there. So we also need to, whenever we disagree with other people try to figure out what kind of wrongs need to be righted and how are we all participating in the wrongs the systems the structures, because you know I'm still doing all of the things that add to changing climate. So I'm relying on the colonial appropriation of indigenous lands for my, my income and stuff like that. So we're all part of this we're not so none of us are completely separate from that and therefore, if we if we work to try to figure out what kind of common values we have, you know, people want to be respected by others people want nobody very few people want to do to do you have to continue injustices. So in those all become ways of saying okay well, how can we have more justice for everybody how can we help shalom flourish in ways that God desire. Thanks for those responses and we'll take other questions as they come up but I have a question for you kind of coming out of Randy he was at a lay you just say that you just said that the language about reconciliation or even shalom maybe and so forth. There's a problem when it remains just at the level of of talking about it. And there are efforts within the course, not only the anabaptist circles but including anabaptist circles. The efforts are led by native men and nights and others allies to try to get the church to face some of these questions to really examine the doctrine of discovery. The church's historic participation in that the benefits, you know, short term benefits that has reaped from participating in that. And of course the incredible violence that it has participated and, and even for, you know, community like the anabaptist community, even as we talk about and preach peace so again that disjunction between word and deed. And so, for those, for those folks who are really are trying to engage and are trying to to move from just talking about it. Do you have any words of encouragement or counsel that you could give to them. And here, we'll start with Randy Woodley if you have something you'd like to share. Yeah, a couple things come to mind. In chapter five of my book Shalom in the Community of Creation I talk about that difference between belief system and actually doing stuff and and why European peoples are able to understand that what they believe is actually what they do. So I don't want to go into all that now but it's very much a endemic to the Western mind that if you have the right knowledge, then that means you know it as opposed to actually doing it. It's a little different thing and Jesus taught the latter he didn't teach knowing cognitively, but cognitively knowing means that you have to embody it. And, and that's why so much of our theology is disembodied, you know, it's a Western problem. But besides that, you know, I'm, I just tell me the crust of the question got lost in my explanation. Sorry, just if there's words of encouragement for people who are really trying to engage this work. Yeah. So, so we met last year last July, no, a year ago July, because it last summer was COVID. Oh, my gosh, where's the year gone. I met with a group of national reconcilers in the United States, very famous people who everybody knows. There were 20 of us. And, and we were able to talk about some things and we, we made a commitment to one another that we would no longer. It was at my wife's and I junk encouragement, I would say that they would no longer talk about reconciliation without reparations. Because not because like native people need something, but white folks need that healing that it takes to get rid of this stuff and admit it. And then, and so my little I have a little chart that I use and, and it goes through sort of four areas and it's a circle and it starts with awareness. And it talks about being made aware by cultural guides. And then it talks about lament, which is both a very public and speaking truth to power about what's been done. And then the idea of reparations and before relationship because what happens with often with settler colonial folks is they build a relationship with indigenous people and then they never feel like they need to do reparations right. And so, and so this reparations is extremely important part this is the, the how Zacchaeus received salvation right. This is the healing that has to come to white folks as they begin to actually manifest what's happened. And then I talk about memorialization codifying the markers, recreating physical representations of what is actually happened and the healing that happened so that generations down the line can know hey this was the problem. And this is how our people came together and solved it. And so, I think what we have to do is just be sure to take this out of the abstract realm and make it real. That's my main encouragement is if you're a young activist and you're a person who talks about reconciliation that you no longer talk about it in an abstract way, but you think like if I'm going to talk about it what are we going to do about it. And Randy in his in that book, and that chapter actually is pretty much about the place where the university students they taught if they're going to have a problem they started to really voice it that because it was what Randy is doing in that book is challenging people to change. And at that point they're not thinking about what they can do to act but change is an action itself. So, to rethink the ways we have always thought things especially about our faith about our, our religion which is the more churchy sociological form of our faith. And this is our faith, you know those, those are big actions to begin to take. But Randy there talks about, he makes a comment that about placelessness. So this goes back to the learning from the land he says that if we are placeless, we will have a hard time embodying Shalom. Shalom can't be lived in the abstract it has to be lived out in practices things that we do and things that we make a shared regularized things that's what a practice means. So it goes beyond just being in action but it's something that becomes regular so Randy I really like that idea of not talking about reconciliation, unless we talk about reparation as well. I really think that the giving up of things, you know the giving up of privilege you know we talk a lot about the underprivileged or the disadvantage well that automatically means somebody else's got more advantages and more privileges. And so it really behooves me to ask, how do I give up some of that advantage how to give up some of that privilege. And that's really fundamental to the salvation process in our everyday lives not ultimate salvation that's kind of a different thing but you're really being faithful to the Jesus way is to share our privileges or advantages or gifts and all that kind of stuff. I guess I don't know if that answers the question. Go ahead Randy. Let me respond real quick there's a that that idea of change is there's a biblical word that this actually describes that but people don't understand it anymore. It's called repentance. Yeah. So, and repentance is what it's to turn the opposite direction to say that everything I've entangled myself in and all the systems and structures going this way which were wrong. I need to turn around and go the opposite in entangle myself in those systems that that move towards Shalom and move towards good. And in those ways as reparations and the scriptures very clear about it. There is no doubt scriptually that reparations as part of our lifestyle as Christian people as people who follow Jesus. Yeah, to write the wrongs can't just think the writing you have to do the writing. We've got a couple more minutes and we've got a couple questions up so I'm going to get into these here. I don't have time for all the questions but I do invite people to keep asking. So the first is from Justin Isinga, who identifies himself as a graduate student in theology at Canadian Mennonite University researching and he notes that Randy who's a delay you talked about giving land back as a practice that institutions can take as they learn to live in Shalom. And I, and Justin here asks do either of you have any practical steps that any institutions can take in this regard or their examples of how land can be returned with reciprocity and strong relationship at the center. Wow. How long do we have. We just have a couple minutes so if there's any kind of at least even just directing Justin and other listeners to some resources, but any any thoughts that you would want to share at this point. Randy. Yeah, well, there's there's in especially some of the mainline churches you got churches closing all over the place and people selling their buildings and, and to me the first thing that they should think of as justice to the people who's stolen land that they are on right, but in the minute I maybe not so many churches like that there's a lot of there's, there's really many, many a myriad of ways that people can create land returns and land uses and access to sacred land and places for homes and you know all kinds of things. But those there's no one prescription, I don't think that says ABCD, you have to work those things out on the journey toward reparations and reconciliation so that's the main thing is to find cultural guides that can help you walk through the process. So the final question, there's two questions where they point in the same direction from Darren Dirksen and James Crable they note the urban character of many, many nights and other anabaptists today and as James says, the vast majority of global anabaptists today live outside of your North American context and many if not most are in urban settings so how do you articulate the good news of Shalom. The people in Jakarta or Kinshasa or I'll say here in Elkhart, Indiana, we're cut off from the land and as James puts it cannot remember the last time they saw a beautiful sunset on the horizon. Okay, but the people aren't cut off from the land because they always live somewhere. So you always live in a place we don't again we don't live in the abstract we live somewhere so figuring out what's going on there what's what's the deal with the ecologies of Jakarta, both the social ecologies and the natural ecologies and the way those all interact I mean Jakarta. If I remember right is is is either sinking or the sea is rising or maybe there's a combination of both as the water percolates into the underlying ground so it's a capital of Indonesian it's about to move because the city is sinking into the ocean. So that's just an example. I actually wrote an article years and years ago but it's still online called remystifying the city to find wonder in the city and to recognize that, you know, the natural world that our fellow beings still exist in the city maybe not in the same ways but they still are there. I mean, a great, great sunsets when there's polluted air. There's so many things to do with urban based environmental education and and again if we take this combined socially ecological approach, then there's so much to do even in urban environment so yeah I just reacted really strongly I guess to that question. So, I think, again, there's a lot of creativity that can go into this and there's a lot of people models that are actually occurring, but I have to say I was in Elkhart, you know, a couple years ago for the rooted conference and I have a hard time comparing it with Jakarta and Shasa but but anyway you know to each their own but in Elkhart you have the Mary Lee Center out there if you need to get out there and connect you know that that's one way to do it you have cities only take up so much space. We build we need to rebuild our cities differently. This is something that's one of the most important things that we can begin to do and I always talked to young people about you know getting on your city council be a city planner being a city attorney.  One of the examples of course that people always use is down in Brazil. Oh the name of the place I'm. It's slipping my mind right now but but there are models all over the place. There are people who do what they call gorilla gardening in cities. And of course all the cooperatives and rooftop stuff and so you have to get creative and there has to be work and you have to use empty city lots but you can build community and you can build healthy. And kind of get rid of food deserts and and build healthy living situations and start to move towards more shalom in cities although it does seem more difficult at first but people in cities tend to be tend to be really creative anyway so there are ways to do it. Since you both answer that question passionately. Nicely I'm going to ask this last question from Laura Rhodes. And she's saying, and thinking about learning to live with the land and sustainable and rooted ways that a body shalom do you have any thoughts for those of us who have a strong desire even seem to feel the spirit calling to leave our homeland and participate in a culture and far from our own, and thinking especially about the ecological ramifications of such travel, like with visits back to see home family as well as the colonialism privilege that seems to be inevitably embedded in white folks taking opportunities to go live in majority world countries so this is a question about mission and shalom cross cultural or intercultural mission and shalom. What would you have to say to that question. You can learn from other cultures and it's probably a good thing. You can also learn from the experiences of other people who have traveled or lived elsewhere, or people who have traveled to us we often see their immigrants. So, I mean, a big thing to do is to see that there are many ways of being human, and many ways of sharing many different forms of economics or politics or living with the land and so forth so these can be good things. But also may not be that necessary because you can do that all that kind of work where you live. So that might be mission also, and maybe even more important mission since the global north really uses the vast majority of the world's resources even though we're much smaller part of the population. Yeah, I would say, you know, if you have a virus, stay home. And if that virus is the Western world view and you're still working your way through decolonizing and all of that it's better not to spread that virus to other people. But there comes a point when you probably with enough humility can get out and begin to actually do some good. If you're ready to learn from others as much as you are to teach others and serve as much as you are to sort of take the pleasures of. And then I don't know if we're talking about short term mission or long term mission but you know there's there, there are things that need to be done and there's empowerment that needs to be made. But it, we really need to stop doing it from this sort of Western hegemonic worldview. It's a really rich conversation. And I agree with Steve, Steve Heinrich, who puts in the chat. If the two Randi's ever coach each of course I'm signing up. This has been super helpful. I agree I've been taking notes. There's just a lot that you have offered that I think we could talk about for hours and I'm really grateful for the two of you so thank you so much for joining us here. Yeah, I've enjoyed it very much. Thank you. Thank you, Randy for your wisdom and insight. Well, thank you for giving me excellent material to work with students with. So that is all the time we have for today, we will be posting the recording of this interview. So you'll be able to watch it later share with your friends, you can find that on our anabaptist witness social media accounts as well as on the events tab of our website. So please do share it. If you're interested in an about this witness again check out our social media we've got Facebook Twitter and Instagram accounts. And our website www.AnabaptistWitness.org. And that's where you'll find Randy Halooza delays article and the earlier interview with Randy Woodley that I mentioned before. So the Anabaptist witness is a project of an about this midnight biblical seminary midnight Central Committee midnight Church Canada and midnight Mission Network. And so thanks to those supporting institutions and a special thanks to my assistant Marcos at Costa, without whom we would not be able to do this he's the one who's handling the publicity, all the social media and all the technical aspects of pulling this webinar. And in fact, if you're interested in learning more about Marcos which I hope you are. You can hear him in conversation in our next webinar on March 11 with his father Louisa Costa, and they'll be actually talking with Linda Shelley from midnight Mission Network about work that Louisa Costa Linda Shelley and others were a part of in the Argentine Chaco, accompanying an indigenous local V community in land buyback. So this will be of interest to to many here it's interview will be in Spanish. So if you speak Spanish or want to test your Spanish abilities this will be a great chance to join in and participate in in our webinar series. So this is our final webinar series, webinar for this initial series in April on April the eighth, I believe, with the guest editors of our worship issue. Katie Graber and Annalie Leptison and so that'll be in English. So if you are looking for another English language opportunity to connect, please do so then. Thanks to Randy and Randy and to all of you for being here. We'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks everybody.