The Jack Benny program presented by Lucky Strike.  Some smokes are flat and some too strong and some are even dry, but not those perfect Lucky Strikes, just try one and see why. You'll agree, Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. I came upon a man who looked as if he'd seen the thing. I offered him a Lucky Strike and he began to sing. Be happy, go lucky, be happy. Friends, think about this a second. A recent survey made in 38 cities shows that millions of smokers aren't happy with the brand they're smoking. Why? Maybe one reason is some cigarettes are mighty tasteless and others too strong.  You'll always enjoy the perfect mildness and rich, true tobacco taste that only fine tobacco can give you. And L-S-M-F-T, Lucky Strike, means fine tobacco. That's why Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. So for the happy blending of perfect mildness and rich taste that Lucky Strike and only Lucky Strike can give you. Be happy, go lucky. Make your next carton Lucky Strike. Be happy, go lucky. Go Lucky Strike today. Remember, Lucky's taste better than any other cigarette. Palm Springs, California, the Lucky Strike program, starring Jack Benny with Mary Livingston, Phil Harris, Rochester, Dennis Day, the Sports Group 410 and yours truly, Don Wood. Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you the star of our program.  Thank you, thank you. Hello again, this is Jack Benny talking, and Don, you're right about one thing. I have got a beautiful tan. And why not? Every day I lay out beside the pool at the beautiful Palm Springs-Biltmore Hotel. It's the most exclusive... Now, wait a minute, Jack. I don't like to correct your grammar, but it isn't lay by the pool, it's lie. Well, Don, in this case, we're both right. You see, I don't live at the Biltmore. So in order to lay by the pool, I have to lie to the lifeguard. I really, I really got him fooled, too. Oh, you have? Yes, I borrowed a bathing suit from Mary, and he thinks I'm Esther Williams. Imagine. Jack, you mean to say that you wore Mary's two-piece bathing suit? Uh-huh. I'm gonna have a hard time explaining my tan to the boys in the steam room. Change the subject, Don. Did you get, Don, did you get the invitation I sent you to my birthday party next Wednesday? Oh, yes, Jack, and there's something in it I don't quite understand. What's that? Well, it says, you are cordially invited to attend my birthday party on Wednesday, February 14th. Then, Don, in the corner, it says, 15-9-34. What do those numbers mean? They're the sizes of my shirt, slippers, and underwear. You see, I used to put RSVP, and I got nothing. So I'm not taking any... Oh, hello, Mary. Hello, Jack. Hi, everybody. Mary, let me look at you. I've never seen you looking so good.  Well, Jack, I should be. I'm out in the sun from morning till night, and I walk all the time. Gee, I didn't know you were so energetic. Who's energetic? I can't find a room. It is awfully crowded down here, isn't it? You're not kidding.  Oh, yes, I know that gum machine. It's called the Juicy Fruit Hacienda. They're booked up until April, you know. Oh, Mary, if you wish, I'll try to get you room at the Park Lane Hotel where I'm living. And if you can't get into the Park Lane, Mary, why don't you try the place where I'm staying? Oh, you're at the Bon Air, aren't you? Well, I, uh... I couldn't get in there, so I'm staying at the El Tonto Trailer Camp. Uh, El Tonto Trailer Camp? Well, Jack, you haven't got a trailer. Mary, they rent you the space.  You see, at night, we all sit around the campfire and sing Western songs. Hey, but no cow hand from the Rio Grande. What are you laughing at, Mary?  Mary, when you're in Palm Springs, you're supposed to dress like a tough Westerner. Some tough Westerner. Your spurs still had dough on them from cutting out cookies. Well, I made them for my party. So you're going to come, aren't you, Mary? Uh, yes, Jack, but there's something on your invitation I don't understand. It's that you are cordially invited to attend my birthday party on Wednesday, February the 14th. And down in the corner it said, C-U-C-L. What does that mean? Could use cuff links. Well, I hate to use such subtle methods, Mary, but it's the only way I can get anything out. Oh, hello, Dennis. Hello, Mr. Benny. Well, here I am. Oh, so I see you. How are you doing, Dennis? Can I have some dialogue first? I got friends in the audience. Of course you can, Dennis. I'm terribly sorry, but tell me, kid, have you been having fun while we've been here in Palm Springs? Oh, boy, have I. Well, good. I will now sing Good Night Irene. Dennis, you said you wanted some dialogue, didn't you? My friends just left. Oh, well, go ahead and sing, then. Okay, Mr. Benny, before I do, do you mind if I ask you something? I know, no, kid. What is it? It's an invitation, and it said you are cordially invited to attend my birthday party on Wednesday, February 14th. Uh-huh. And down in the corner, it said G-T-B-T-K-W-I-N. What does that mean? Go to Bullocks. They know what I need. Oh, shivers through my fingertip while you're gone. He sung by Dennis Day. Dennis, you said you were going to sing Good Night Irene. Oh, you got to watch me. I'm K.G. You're cute, too. Well, anyway, it was very good. I wonder if the orchestra wasn't out of tune. All right, Jackson, hold it. Just hold it. Just grab on.  They had a meeting, and they don't want you to make any more remarks about them. Remarks? That's right. Especially when they're away from home, they demand respect. Oh, they do. They want respect. That's right. Well, just look at they over there. Take Sammy, your drummer, over there. His head reminds me of my baby picture. And the way Bagby plays a piano, he looks like he's typing a letter to his parol board. Finally, with great delight, we come to Remley. And what, pray tell me, is wrong with Remley? What's wrong with him? Take a look at the coat he's wearing on the back. It says, no parking. How do you like that? They must have painted the curbs last night.  Yeah, I'm going to sit down. I'm going to sit down. But wait a minute. Look, there's something I want to ask you about that invitation you sent me and my orchestra boys. Well, what about it? Well, it says you and your boys are cordially invited to attend my birthday party on Wednesday, February the 14th. And then down in the corner, it says W-T-F. What does that mean? Wash their faces. Oh, second thought, don't wash Bagby's face. I hate to think what might be underneath. Believe me, Phil, I wish there were some way you could get your musicians to join Life Boy Anonymous. I really do. Oh, I'd live another one, Jackson. I love the way it makes your eyes sparkle. Thank you. It's about time you appreciate it. Excuse me. Come in. Pardon the intrusion, Mr. Benny. Well, Mr. Kitzel. Mr. Kitzel, I'm certainly surprised to see you here in Palm Springs. You surprised? What do you mean? This morning, my wife and me started from Los Angeles to visit my relations in Santa Barbara. In the opposite direction. How'd you wind up here? My wife is giving directions. What? Yeah, yeah. Turn to the left. Turn to the right. Turn to the left. Go straight ahead. Back up. Make a U-turn. Oh, my goodness. Oh, that's terrible. Terrible?  We're on a bus. Anyway, Mr. Kitzel, it's nice to be here in Palm Springs. Where are you living? I'm in Piste la Sal de Lopez. How'd you happen to pick that place? Lopez is my brother-in-law. Oh, is your brother lost Spanish? Benny, she asks me... Not only was he born in Barcelona, but his family tree goes all the way back to Hernandez II. Hernandez II? Who was the first? Shapiro. Well, you got to excuse me, Mr. Benny. I got to run along now. All right, Mr. Kitzel. I'm glad you'd drop in. Hasta la vista. Ask your brother. He'll drop in. Oh, all right. Thank you. Mary, I think I'll invite Mr. Kitzel to my birthday party. Oh, that'd be nice. I hope you invite Esther Williams, too. Esther Williams? Yeah, I heard she was staying at the Biltmore. Dennis. I went over to look at her. You know, I went over to look at her and she was sitting by the pool. Dennis. She got the lifeguard to buy her lunch. Now, kids, let's get on with this. Oh, there's someone at the door. Let's get it, Esther. Never mind. Come in. Yes? Say, are you the guy who drew that birthday invitation in my car while it was parked in front of the drugstore? Yes. Yes. Well, there's something I want to ask you. That part that says you are cordially invited to my birthday party on Wednesday, February the 14th. Yeah, but down at the bottom, there were some initials. K-C-M-J. Hey, what does that mean? That's the local station. I promised them a plug. Yeah. Oh, well, do you still want me to come to your party? Not now. Goodbye. Goodbye. Now, kids, let's get on with the program. Get on with the program because tonight we have a very important scam. Oh, Jack, are we going to do another murder at the racket club? No, no, Mary, not this time. See, I received a letter from the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce and they requested that I do a dramatic play on the historical discovery of Palm Springs. So tonight we're going to turn back the pages of time and show you that the Palm Springs, the jewel of the desert, was founded. Set the scene down. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, although for centuries without number the area around Palm Springs was known and loved by the Indians, it was not discovered by the white man till 1774. It was in this year that the Spaniards pushed through the desert to California. But the Spaniards hungry for gold saw no value in this area and pushed onward toward the coast. For nearly another century, Palm Springs remained sleeping in the sun, a veritable paradise for the Indians of the Awa Kaliente tribe. This isn't funny, folks, but it gives Don a chance to prove that he's the best announcer in radio. Continue, continue, champ. Then in the year 1853, two intrepid explorers headed west from Texas into the blistering, burning desert. Well, the sun sure is hot today, Tex. Yep, sand is burning my feet, Tex. I think it's even hotter than it was yesterday, Tex. I think you're right, Tex. One of us should have come from Colorado. I'll tell you what, from now on I'll call you Curly. Oh, I love that. You know, Curly, something tells me we're lost. We'll never get out of this desert. I know, Tex, and we never should have. Hey, wait a minute. Look, there's a man coming for us. Oh, yes. Hello there. What's up, mister? Now, look, amigo, we're lost. We've been wandering through this desert heat for days without water or food. Our skins are burned to a crisp and our feet worn raw. Maybe you can help us. What does that mean? Next time, take the train and relax.  They ain't a train within a thousand miles from here. No. Hey, let me ask you something. You live around here? Oh, no, mister. Then what are you doing out here in the desert anyway? I'm looking for my sister, mister. The sister's lost, eh? When did she disappear? Last night was when I first missed her. Your sister? Yes, mister.  Yes, and on my foot, I have a blister. Well, that's too... Mister. Or is this your beautiful? Oh, yes. You could not resist her. Well, maybe you could... Mister.  Let's go, Curly. Okay. Hey, wait a minute. You better draw your gun. Heck, here comes four guys on horseback. Yeah.  They are my brothers. Your brothers, eh? What do they do? Oh, they are singers, I think. Good. It gives us a chance to get in our commercial. Take it, boys. These horses, ain't they, Curly? They sure are. Arabian horses, but that one there is Mexican. Hey, he's nice looking.  I think. Well, come on, Curly. If we're going to discover Palm Springs, we better get going. So long, amigo. So long. And if I do not see you till then, happy Easter. Thanks. Mister. Come on, Curly. Hey, Curly. Looks like we'll never get out of this desert. I lost track of the time. How long ago was it? Hey, wait a minute, Tex. Look at them bones laying there. That's the skeleton of a man. Yeah, look, Curly. There's a tomahawk buried in this gull. And arrows sticking through the bones. Yeah. Even had a call won't help them now. Come on, let's push on. No, no, Tex. You better go on without them. I can't make it. I'm too tired. I'm too thirsty. My throat is parched and... Curly, what are you staring at? Look up ahead. There's a pool of clear, cold water. And a beautiful girl standing beside it. Let's go. You can have the water. Hello, beautiful. Hi, handsome. Curly, come back. It's a mirage. How about a kiss, sweetie? Okay, cutie, come here. We'll lay one on there. Kissing a mirage. Are you sure? Certainly, add your arms around a cactus plant. Find yourself. Here, take these last few drops of water out of my canteen. I don't think we have too far to go. We made it, Curly. We made it. Tom Spring. Yeah, but she don't look like much. Just one small building sitting out there in the desert. Yeah, how do we get in? Well, wait a minute. This looks like the front entrance. There's a sign on the gate. What does it say? Racket Club members only. There couldn't be a racket club here in 1853. Anyone for tennis? Wait a minute. Who are you? Charlie Farrell, owner of the club. Now look, Farrell, this is 1853. How do you happen to be here now? I'm doing retakes on 7th Heaven. I ran into you, Captain O'Bennie. There's been a murder at the racket club. We're not doing that now. I'm sick of it. Well, so am I. Goodbye. Wait a minute, Farrell. What are all those red stains all over your trousers? Well, I'm the mayor, and last night I had to paint the curbs. Oh, yes, I heard about that. Well, goodbye. Goodbye. Anyone for tennis? Behind the club, there's a saloon. Let's go and have a drink. Double shot it to kill. Bartender, who's the gal coming toward us? Tess? Hi, fellas. Hey, Tess, didn't I see you in a mirage before? No, that was my sister, Babe. She's a cactus plant. Hey, Curly, I told you.   Sure would. What do you got here? Blackjack, poker, dice, and roulette. I'd like to play a little roulette. Is it on the level? Are you kidding? That wheel is so crooked, we have to have the brakes relined twice a week. No.   What?  What about pooper? Is the deck marked? We don't have to mark it. What? We did you five blank cards, and a man leans over your shoulder and paints what he wants you to have.  Come on, let's go in. Pick your number, and watch the wheel go round. I'll put $5 on 28. That's always been my lucky number. Okay, $5 on 28. 28's always been my lucky number. Another $5 on 28. Once more. $5 on 28. It's our sketch. What happened? The two sound effects man shot each other. Lucky's tastes better than any other cigarette. If you're not happy with your brand dry LSMT, there's richer taste and mildest two in just the right degree. It's a fact. Lucky's tastes better than any other cigarette. Be happy. Friends, are you being shortchanged on smoking enjoyment? You see, a recent 38 city survey shows that millions of smokers are not happy with the brand they're smoking. Maybe one reason is some cigarettes are tasteless, and others too strong. Now you can get complete smoking enjoyment by switching to Lucky Strike. You'll really enjoy the perfect mildness and rich taste that only fine tobacco can give you. And LSMFT, Lucky Strike, means fine tobacco. That's why Lucky's tastes better than any other cigarette. So be happy. Go Lucky. Make your next carton Lucky Strike. Be happy. Go Lucky. Go Lucky Strike today. Remember, Lucky's tastes better than any other cigarette. Good night, everybody.


The purpose of writing a good cover letter is to make your application stand out and improve your chance of being invited to interview. Few job applicants write a cover letter or they waste the opportunity with a generic or poor cover letter. In this video, we take you through how to structure a letter, what to include and what not to and we provide examples for each section of your letter. My name is Jess Coles and I've sat in over a thousand interviews and I've seen plenty of covering letters, good and bad. And if you're new to this channel, Enhance.training provides online business courses to help professionals, managers and business owners improve their performance. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe or share it with friends. A good cover letter makes your application stand out. Typically over 80% of applicants do not get past the CV stage. Most candidates don't take the time to write a cover letter. Therefore write a good cover letter and you will get ahead of your competition in the early stages of the recruitment process. Most recruiters and hiring managers do read covering letters, so use this opportunity to sell your skills. Also remember that a poor cover letter can harm your application too. To write a good cover letter, you must do your research on the role and on the company before starting to write. The job advert or what you've been told by the recruiter is a good starting point. Places to look for additional information include the company website, LinkedIn, Google and industry publications. Aim to understand, firstly, what the company does, the products and or services that it provides. Secondly, understand their competitors and their market position. Thirdly, the company culture and for what the key responsibilities and challenges of the role are and what the key problems hiring this role will solve for the employer. And fifth, the key skills, experience and achievements that you have which are going to solve the key employer problems. Use the research to tailor your letter to the specific role and company that you're applying to. This will make it relevant, demonstrate your interest and suitability for the role and company in question. Do not copy and paste sections from a generic covering letter. We've seen this too many times. A poor cover letter hurts your application, it doesn't help it. And also, don't copy sections from your CV word for word. If you do, you're wasting your opportunity to add additional information and make this information more relevant to the employer. Your cover letter should be no longer than one page of A4. There is always a lot you could write, so it's important to choose the key information that will be of interest to the reader. Highlights how you are a solution to the hiring company's problems with what you write. Ideally, your cover letter should have four paragraphs of information. Make sure the font is simple and easy to read. Times New Roman, Calibri or Aero are all good choices. Keep your letter simple in design and use a 12 point font size to ensure the text is large enough to read easily. And don't use large blocks of text as these can be really quite hard to read quickly. Make use of bullet points where appropriate. Address your letter to the person dealing with the application. In most cases, this will be the hiring manager or internal recruiter or an HR person. The job adverts may say who this is. If not, don't be afraid to call and ask for the name of the person you should send your letter to. This gives you another opportunity to show your keenness and professionalism. If you're applying through a recruiter, then ask for the name of the hiring manager and make sure you get the spelling right. If you're not able to find the right person to address the letter to, then use Dear Sir or Madam. Your cover letter should be structured as a formal business letter would be. Include your name and all your contact details, including your phone number, your email and your full postal address at the top of the letter. And make sure your email address is a professional looking one. You know, using something like Wicked900 at gmail.com doesn't really come across very well. Below this section include the contact name, the company name and their postal address. It should look something like this. The opening paragraph should be short, concise and explain why you're applying to the company. Here's an example. In the second paragraph, explain why you are suitable for the job and explain what makes you an applicant they should be interested in speaking to. What you put in this paragraph depends on your research and what the hiring company is looking for. Tick off as many of the key criteria as possible without creating a bland list. Here's an example. Do not copy sections of your CV into the cover letter. In paragraph three, use examples or achievements to highlight what you have delivered and what you can potentially deliver for this company. Here's an example. Use your best examples here to grab the reader's attention and leave them wanting more. Your CV should have more detail, so don't worry about trying to add everything in here. Use this section to highlight the important points of your CV while making sure it is relevant to the job requirements for this specific company. In the fourth paragraph, show or explain why you are interested in this company and remind the reader of your top two or three points as to why you can solve their key problems. And finally, ask to meet the reader or the hiring manager at interview as the last point in your letter. Here's an example. And finally, make sure you sign off the letter using your sincerely, followed by your signature. Make sure you sign the letter by hand rather than using an electronic signature, even if you subsequently scan your letter into PDF format. It is also sensible to have your name printed below your signature. And in summary, make sure, firstly, you do your research before starting to write. Secondly, you tailor your letter to the role and the company. Thirdly, keep your cover letter short, concise and relevant. Fourth, highlights how you can solve the problems the hiring company has. And fifth, proofread everything you've written carefully. And if you visit us at enhance.training, we've got some more examples for you. I've put a link in the comments below. Good luck with your job applications. And if you like this video, please hit the thumbs up button below and subscribe and hit the bell to get notified of our weekly video releases. This really helps us produce more videos to help you. Thanks very much for watching and look forward to seeing you again soon.


You guys ready? I said, just kidding, let's pray. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Why is our youth minister heart of hearing? He keeps saying, I said, I can't hear you. OK, you've got to love youth ministry. Heavenly Father, we bless and praise your holy and sacred name. We thank you for the gift of all these young men and women who are gathered here. And some shockingly old, young Lord Jesus. Bless them, hallow them. Keep them ever close to your heart, Lord Jesus, that they might know that you are the true God, that you have been sent to their world to bring about reconciliation of their heart to your fathers.  Jesus, we trust in you. Jesus, we trust in you. Jesus, we trust in you. And in your name, we pray, amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. A little bit about me. My name is Michael Gormley. I am, in fact, this handsome. Thank you all for being here. So very happy. I think it goes without saying that the more you drink, the handsomer I get. So please, there's a 12 drink minimum, right, Martin? It's all free. Ooh. You know, it was really funny when I was a freshman here. I had all these friends who were like tall, dark, and handsome. And I was like the cave troll that only came out at night, you know? And I remember one of my buddies, he was so handsome. He was so handsome. Every time we would pick him up at the airport when he would like fly home, we'd be like, did you get to see where this is number? And he would, every time. And then one time, he was so used to getting their numbers, he forgot that she wrote it on a cocktail napkin and snuck it to him. And he goes, oh, yeah, I totally forgot.  And you forget. Ha. I hate so many people. So we are here today to talk about our Lord. How many of y'all are, this is gross, 20 and younger, 20 and younger. Let me see the hands. 20 years old and younger. All right, and younger. You see how I said that in younger? I didn't say 20 to 18. Yeah. How many y'all are 21 and up? 21 and up. All right. How many y'all are actually in your 30s but you lied in order to get here? Yeah. You're 30, you're 30. How old are you? Yeah, so you're on the Southwest Companion Pass. That's what we call that. Nice. My wife is substantially older than me and gosh, she's so old. And we met, we met here at Franciscan. I was an undergrad. I was an RA, I was an undergrad. I was in Colby Clare Dorms back when they were, yeah, I was the legend. And she was a grad student. She was returning grad school and she was in charge of Upper Floor, Tommy Moore and stuff. And I met her when all of the RA's came out like a week before the students came out and we were doing all this like leadership and all this stuff. And I just remember being like, hi. And it was funny because she was a grad school student. She was older, mature. And I was so young and naive about the ways of the world and she just, she took advantage of it and she swept me off my feet. She swept me off my feet and I never looked back. I never looked back. Actually, at one point she did sweep me physically off my feet when we were dancing and she tried to carry me. We fell, it's fine. It was, it's what weddings are for. So I do wanna thank you all for being here. It's important that we gather young adults here. It's always great because I don't know how you feel but I do a podcast called Catching Foxes heard by dozens. And in that, we have a big young adult audience and the most common response we get, especially people who go from maybe high school or college out into the world is, I just don't know enough to vouch Catholics where I live, right? Is that your, do you guys experience that? Raise your hand if you experienced that a little bit.   And it's like, yeah, we sort of are except I recorded that a week ago at 11 o'clock at night and I don't know who you are. So if you're a fan of Catching Foxes or every niche I'll bow, let's, we gotta take photos. We gotta take photos. How many of y'all saw me on the pints with Aquinas four and a half hour long episode? Handful, okay.  I drank an entire bottle of whiskey from four and a half hours for you, okay? Now I know how our Lord feels. Okay, so this is the worst talk. You should not be recording this, but you imagine some poor parent that buys this for their younger, Sally, you need to watch this video and they're just like, I don't know what he was talking about, what it was in Jesus. We will get there. So what we do want to talk about is this understanding of, right, the talk, modern mentalities. I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious, right? Have you heard people ever say that? Yeah, I mean, you're probably on Twitter, right? If you're on Twitter or whatever Twitter variant that exists now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the things, all the Macedon or whatever it's called. So the understanding of this, we're gonna get into, but before I do, I have my public service announcement. So I don't know most of you. I know you, but I don't know most of you and thank God. But the idea is, I don't know where you are in your faith, but I have something that I think will help. And it's actually a thing that I think is the remedy to all of the problems in the Catholic Church today.  And that's it. Do you read the four gospels? That's what I want you to do. For the rest of your life, I teach people to do this. You start with Mark. Mark is the shortest of the four gospels.  So Mark skips over the infancy narratives. He starts with John the Baptist preaching, goes right into the words of Jesus, and then you're off. 16 chapters later, you got the resurrection, you got the sending of the apostles. So here's my recommendation. If you don't have a consistent prayer life, okay, raise your hand if you have a consistent prayer, just kidding. Who wants to share your mortal sin? No, but if you don't have a consistent prayer life, this is what I tell Catholics to do all the time. Some people will give advice, and I actually had someone interrupt me when I was in the middle of doing this, it was somewhat funny, but he gave the exact opposite advice that I give. Sometimes people will say, if you don't pray, maybe start off with like five minutes. Five minutes, if you can give God five minutes a day, then you're gonna, I don't tell people to do that at all. A commercial break is fine, but it's not long enough, right? If you love someone, imagine if they only gave you five minutes a day, you would probably stop loving them. So the goal is you wanna carve out enough time. It has to shape, it has to change your calendar. Father Mike Schmitz, he's a friend of mine, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, he's so dang handsome, but we text each other, it's fine, don't worry about it, but he was saying, he has this great line where he says, don't say you love me, show it in your calendar, right? You have to show it in your calendar. Your life has to be different if you actually are bringing me into your life, right? It has to change the way you see things, right? So for me and my wife, this is how I show my love for her. Okay, first I play some Michael Bolton, just kidding. No, so I wake up at about 5.45, I go downstairs. Have you guys ever had froth the milk in your coffee? Okay, I never have.  So I wake up early, I make her favorite type of froth cream and then I make two cups of coffee, then I go and I sit down, I open up the Bible and I read the Bible for like about a half an hour to an hour and all I'm doing is just observing what's going on in the Gospels. See, sometimes people wanna rush, they wanna get to the Bible and we're like, I want Jesus to tell me a secret, like there's trying to accomplish so much and all I wanna do is see who Jesus is, right? So I read the Gospels just to see who Jesus is. You know people say this all the time, I hear this all the time, like I just don't think Jesus would do that, like I just don't believe in my heart that Jesus would say or do that. You're like, okay, your heart, great, fine. I think maybe Jesus looks too much like your heart, then your heart looks like Jesus's because Jesus says, if you love me, keep my commandments. Right, he says things, he makes demands on us. He's not just some hippie that's just like, yeah, you're okay, I'm okay, I don't even care, right?  That's what it means to be a Christian, another Christian, right, another Christ, an altar Christus, another Christ, that's what we want.   Why is a Christian self-righteous? They're self-righteous because at some point in their lives, right? At some point in their lives, they've been a Christian for so long that they believe that they save themselves. Now they'll never say that, but that's like implicitly in the back of their head, that's what's really going on. I'm a good person, I pulled myself up on my own bootstraps, I gave up cocaine, like whatever it is, they feel like, don't laugh, that's my story, but no, it's not, but they say things like that implicitly in their minds, like if I did it, you can do it, you haven't done it, therefore, judgment. But in reality, Jesus Christ is the judge and Jesus Christ is the one who liberates because Jesus Christ alone is the savior, he's the one who justifies. But we want to, that pride in the center of our hearts, we keep wanting to stoke by these projects of self-justification. So I believe that Christians, the most important thing that we can do is to constantly return to the stories of the Gospels so that his life can become our life, right? You might hear some amazing talks by Scott Hahn and Jeff Cavens and Deacon Harold, like these amazing talks, oh my gosh, that was amazing. Mediocre ones by me, but amazing by them. But here's the problem, it's almost like you're reading another couple's love letters, right? You need to get your own image of Christ. You need to get your own impression, all right, you have friends, right?  Like when you think of a person, you think of like, oh, this person always does this, never does that, usually does this, doesn't do that. But someone else might have a totally different experience or impression of them. You don't just want my impression of Jesus, my understanding of who Jesus is, and I don't mean subjectively, I mean like as I've encountered him in the Gospels in my life, it's very important to me and the way I share it is very important to me. But you need your own, right? You can't just let, that's the thing of like reading other people's love letters, like Christ is writing you one and you need to write him one, but you need to spend time in the Gospels, okay? That's what you need to do. So I tell people, you know, chapter a day, just mark, it'll take you 16 days to get through the Gospel and mark. When you finish, if you've never read a Gospel from beginning to end, when you finish mark, go back and start mark again. Because then as you reread it for the second time, you'll be like, oh, I didn't notice that, I didn't notice that, I didn't notice that. Oh, hey, where did that come from? I don't remember reading that at all, right? All of these things all of a sudden come out to you and you're like, wow, that's amazing. And then when you finish it, go on to Luke, go on to John, start over at Matthew, go to Mark, Luke, John, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and keep doing that until you're dead, okay? Because the idea is you don't need a bunch of words about God. How much greater is God's own words, okay? So I want you to have that, okay? So that's the thing. Number two, let's talk about the topic today. So I hear this all the time. I do youth and young adult ministry all the time. I used to be at a church that, it was funny. I was in charge of young adult ministry. I'm not a young adult. I was in charge of youth ministry, definitely not a youth. And I was also in charge of Spanish ministry. I don't speak Spanish except for no, right? So that's it. That's it. But the reason why they put me in charge of all those things, one, incredibly intelligent, two, I'm a fan of those categories and the people they're in. And I advocate for them and I fight for them and I want to do ministry with them and for them. And so one of the things I realized when I started going across the country and talking with young adults is this tendency that there's a hesitation to give oneself completely over to Christ or to completely over to the church because then it means you become one of those weirdos, right? There's a hesitancy. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that girl, right? So what I want to tell you is number one, you're probably very prideful, but number two, Christ doesn't want you to be that guy or that girl.  The grammar is terrible, but you get the point. He wants you to be, he didn't make you to be like a Xerox machine where he just wants carbon copies. Holy you, uniquely you, unique and unrepeatably you, that's what he wants. But you, on fire with the love of Christ Jesus, that's what he wants. And so you can look through the example of other people and be like, a little bit of that, but not of that. Okay, but I understand that, but there's so much fear that people have. And so the idea is I don't, if your fear is I don't want to get caught up in this or that or whatever, it's, no, no, no. Christ Jesus knows you and he loves you, right? So let me give you an example. I was at a concert with some middle school friends of mine and it was at a Taylor Swift concert and it was so fun. Cost me six grand and I had front row seats, it was beautiful, this was crazy. And at the end of the concert, we get up to leave, right?   She's so tired. And she says to all my fans, I love you. Now, I don't know about you, but I mean, clearly, I didn't choose Chastity, Chastity chose me. I'm like a, right, this cave troll homeschooler, right? And to have one of the most beautiful talented women in the world tell me that she's in love with me. Like, I didn't know what to do, I called my wife. I was like, honey, I've never been in a love triangle before. I don't know what to do, do we get a lawyer? Like, what's the thing? And the difficulty with this, right, she loves me, she loves me. No, okay, I know that Taylor Swift doesn't love me, right? I know she doesn't love me, because she doesn't know me. You can only love someone if you know them. What she thinks of me, she thinks of my ticket price, which is like 11 more minutes on a super yacht in the Mediterranean, right? That's all, or cake by the ocean, what have you? And that's all she thinks of when she thinks of me. She doesn't know me, right? So it's absurd for me to be like, girl, honey, I'm in a love triangle, right? And she's like, you're not even in a love plane. Or line, I get, Ray, I don't know, I don't know math. The idea is this, right? You can be known, you can be loved. Many of us, right, the Taylor Swift thing is to be loved but not known, right? To be loved but not known. If you are loved but not known, that is superficial. That's weak, you can't build a life on being loved but not known, right? We all know this. But what about the opposite? All right, you ever think about the opposite? What if someone says to you, I know you? No, no, no, no, I know the real you. No one could ever love you. That is our greatest nightmare. To have a parent say that, to have a love interest say that, a crush say that, a spouse say that, that's terrible. No one could ever love you. So what do we do? We're so terrified of that nightmare becoming a reality. We let the pendulum switch the other way and we become comfortable with being loved but not really known. And so we act fake. We put on airs, we posture, right? We use every filter in the book. There's like three filters on me right now, right? So we do this because we're so, enough with the self-deprecating humor. We do this because we're afraid of the alternative but this is the deal. Jesus Christ knows you. He knows the real you. He knows the real you that even you are trying to hide from. He knows what you did last summer. He knows what you did on spring break. Jesus knows the real you and he loves you all the way to the stars. In fact, this is what the whole point of the, not the whole point, but the main point of the woman from Samaria, right?  I don't have a husband. And he says, you're right in saying you don't have a husband. You have five husbands and the one you're with now is not your husband.  And if he finds out the truth about my sexual past or whatever it might be, if he finds out the truth about me, he's then gonna treat me like everyone else. That's why I'm in the middle of the desert getting water from a well at noon, right? That's the whole idea.  It's so disjointed. It comes out of nowhere when he says it. And it's because that's the point of the story. The point of the story is for Jesus to reveal to this woman, I've known you the whole time.  He knows this truth. But wait, if he's known this whole time and he's treated me with this respect, maybe there's something different about him. And then the argument, the conversation goes a completely different turn. And then when she goes to the town, so the very people that she was avoiding, you know what she says?  Could this be the Messiah? Could this be the prophet? And it's fascinating because this is what Jesus reveals.  I am closer to you than you are to yourself, right? How many of y'all are in sales, right? Do you ever work in sales, handful every three, four, five, six?  You ever do that? It's funny, when I talked to like 40 and 50 year olds are like, I bought a boat. I never should have bought a boat. I convinced myself I needed a boat. And you're like, there you go. The suburban, what do you call it? Buyers or remorse, right there, right? So in this context, right? We tell ourselves stories that even we know aren't true and we believe them.  This is the heart of the Catholic Christian faith. Jesus has arranged everything that we can shed the lies of a false and half-lived life so that we can encounter him in his saving truth. So when someone says, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious, there are wonderful ways that we can approach this. Number one, and whenever I do my work of evangelization, the last thing I do is say what Daniel Tosh, the comedian, but he's so funny. I mean, no, I don't endorse his humor. What he said in one of his first comedy albums, he said, I had a woman come up to me the other day and she's like, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual. And he said, really? Well, I don't tell the truth and you're interesting. So you don't want to lead with offending people because that's the impulse of people who think they have it all made, right? People think, I got the truth and I'm up here in some mountain top and I'm coming down to you peasants and I'm gonna correct your way of thinking with some good theology, right? That's not how we interact with real human beings. When someone says, well, I'm not really religious, but I'm spiritual, I'm spiritual. He's like, okay, great, how are you spiritual? Right, the beautiful thing that human beings want is to be known and yet when people like us filled with self-righteousness because we're the savior, come to encounter people who differ from us. What do we do? We don't lead with questions. We lead with statements that are already based upon conclusions. We slap labels instead of hearing a story. And so brothers and sisters, I don't know your backgrounds in theology and all that stuff, but I'm telling you, if you want to make someone happy, if you wanna grow in your own faith, you gotta learn how to give it away. JP2 said, the faith only grows in the measure that it's given. And so going out to people who say, I'm spiritual, but not religious, engage in empathy. Why would someone say that? Well, I don't know. Have you watched the news about religion lately? Not a good track record. Not a good track record lately, right? Like we'll turn now to half-hearted Roman Catholics who deny every single thing they believe and believe that the church, only 30% believe the church teaches the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. And it's like, okay, well, let's go to a place where 100% of the people do.  We're gonna have wars between conservatives and trads and liberals and social justice people and it's war all the time. So it's like, all right, we're gonna leave this religious enclave here. Like when you look at religion today in all of its stripes, we are disintegrating. My confirmation sponsor just pled guilty to horrible crimes, horrible. Like when I tell people what happened and then I say, this is the type of stuff he had on his laptop. It's one of those things that's so revolting. There's no, and he pled guilty. And so when I hear it, there's so much brokenness in the life of the church. Can we not be a little empathetic when people are like, yeah, that's not for me? So that's one thing. That is definitely an approach to build sympathy. The other thing is to realize, they also say, but I am spiritual. Now, when people say, but I am spiritual, that can have a whole, it can have a boatload of connotations. It might mean that they're Christ haunted, right? There's a famous line from a guy who said, I don't believe in God, but I miss him, right? The former Christian artists, you know, these are the lines that they say when they deconstruct their discipleship. I don't believe in God anymore, but I miss him.  So we can work with that. When people say I'm spiritual, they're saying, you know what? All of the beautiful things in this material universe, I don't think a scientific materialistic understanding of the world as it is is enough for the human heart or is enough for the human mind. There has to be something other than just whirling bits of atoms colliding into one another, right? There has to be something more. I'm not religious. I don't know if I'm ready to yoke myself to a system or to an institution, but you know what? There's gotta be something more than just this, than just survival of the fittest.  Silliness, especially at an apologetics conference where the whole thing of apologetics is first beat of chapter three, verse 16, do so with gentleness and reverence. How are we reverencing the other person? How are we respecting the other person when we dismiss the very words that come out of their mouth, right? See, this talk started off all funny, and now I'm guilt-tripping the heck out of you. Okay, let's drink. It takes the pain away. So then how do we approach this thing? Well, we approach it in the independent reality of every human being that we encounter who says the words. There's no one-size-fits-all approach. When people say I'm not spiritual, but I'm spiritual, but I'm religious, sometimes that might mean that they practice goat yoga on the weekends. Have you ever heard of goat yoga? Yes, you've done goat yoga. There's so much judgment going through my head right now. I'm just gonna suppress it. My really close friend, his sister, does goat yoga, and I was like, come here, come here, come here. Just explain goat yoga to me. It's like, well, you do yoga outside. It's very beautiful weather.  It's really cute. They're very fluffy.  So, okay. When we talk about this stuff, some people mean I'm spiritual, just means I'm not willing to define myself by just the things I do during the day, like the nine to five, the jobby job, whatever. But for other people, it might mean something darker. So this is a part of my ministry that I don't like. But I have found that when I work in these areas, the conversion experiences are a lot more powerful. When people are involved in a cult witchcraft and satanic activity, there's a lot more people than you think that are heavily involved in this stuff. So I go to a maximum security men's unit prison in Texas. And when I first, it was actually a really funny story. I tried to back out of it and I didn't wanna go, so I tried to do that millennial thing where I'm like, I mean, I got food poisoning, I can't go, right? Like, no, I don't feel good, right? And he's like, no, don't worry, brother, you'll love it. So I end up going. And I roll up at, we're supposed to get to the gate at 5.30, we go inside at six. And I roll up at 5.35, because fashion will be late. And I walk in and the guys there, and all the men are there, we're all dressed up in our matching t-shirts so we don't get shot. And so we're all there and we're gathering, he holds me a card, he hands me a card. The card is a deliverance prayer. And it was like, you know, to buying the powers of Satan and the forces of darkness.  And because I went to France, I was gonna hang out in charismatic circles and plenty of that stuff. And I go, and I look at him and I go, what's this for? And he goes, oh, the Satanists found out that we're coming and they've been cursing us for the last week or so. And all I remember, this is the first thought that ran through my head. I just went, oh my, do not tell my wife. Do not, she will never let me come here again. And so we sit there and I'm praying this thing and you go into the thing, and it's really funny because it was six o'clock in the morning, we're finally walking in. And I look at this red sign, I've been staring at this red sign for 15 minutes. And the sign said, warning, no hostages will be permitted past this point. Thank you, Texas Department of Criminal Justice. And I remember staring at the sign being like, why would someone take a hostage from outside and bring him inside? That doesn't make any sense. And as soon as I pass under it, I realize, oh, wait a minute. They mean that because I'm freely deciding to enter into the general population of the prison, if, oh, I don't know, there's a riot and they look for a human shield, why not the fluffy homeschooler? They're gonna get ya. And he's like, yeah, yeah, you're gonna be a hostage. And they're gonna try to trade you for seven pizzas and a helicopter. And they're just gonna say, no, they've been warned. It was on a sign that they walked under when they walked in. And I'm walking through that, and I just thought, oh, I hope my wife does not find out about that one. So we go in, we go down General Pop, go down the hallway, get into the chapel. And it was the most incredible experience of my life, the most incredible experience.  You got your rituals, we got our rituals. You got your high power, I got my high power. And I'm like, we speak in sort of vague terms. I'm like, what's your high power? Like what are you, what, what rituals? And he's like, well, I'm a Wiccan. And I know you guys think we're so evil, but we're not, we just do our little ceremonies, it's fine. And so we start having a conversation. I started leaning into the guy, right? Like, come on, like, we're talking about blah, blah, blah. And we start going, oh, you Catholics, you're always attacking all of us Wiccans just because we're pagan. I'm a neo-pagan, I love how you would always say that. You had the funniest accent. We're neo-pagan. And God, he's such a good dude. I miss him so much. So we started, and I realized, I'm getting nowhere with this guy. We're just arguing, right? And he had perked up at one point when I had mentioned, I said, Nintendo reset button. He goes, what are you doing? Is Preacher Man here, play video games? I was like, yeah, I owned a Nintendo and a Sega Genesis growing up. And I got an Xbox and stuff.  I haven't played video games since I got in here. What video game system? Last thing I owned was a Sega Saturn. And so we started talking about video games. I'm like, nope, I'm not talking about Wiccanism or Catholicism. We're talking about video games. We talked about video games for 45 minutes. You know what that did? I got to know him as a human person. And he had slapped a label on me. Incredibly handsome, that might mean. Preacher Man, that's all I was. I was a preacher man. See, some people say like, oh, that's easy for you to say, you work for the church, you do this stuff. No, no, no, you don't understand. No one on the street corner wants to hear a talk. No one wants to hear from church guy. They want to hear from you as a co-worker, as a friend, as a whatever. No one wants to hear from preacher man, right? So I got to earn all of this credibility, right? Now I might have opportunities more than anyone else, but no one wants to hear from me. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, let's just talk about video games. We talked about video games forever. We talked about Super Mario Brothers for like an obscenely long time. A raccoon hat, tail, you're flying, it's beautiful. And we go through all this stuff, right? The next day he comes up and he's like, hey, hey, hey, did you get to go home and play video games with your kids? I was like, actually, yeah, I did. I was thinking about our conversation. I went home and I played some video games. I played some Halo with my son.  And so we were talking about this stuff and he was like, that was it. And he goes, yeah, you know, I miss my kids so much. He's like, I got two kids, am I either with my mother and I never get to do anything, you know, never get to, I rarely get to talk to them because when I call, you know, they're usually at school or busy. And then you get the sad stories and then you get the heart. And then he's listening the whole time to the retreat that we're on and the Catholic things that we're doing. He would pull me inside and he was like, all right, all right, all right. What is wrong with Wiccanism? Right, so at this moment, he lived this life where yes, he had a religion, but Wiccanism is a religion in the most like stretched sense of the term. It's a spirituality, but it's a spirituality that is unfolded in on itself. It's a darkness, right? It's usually, the main reason why you become Wiccan usually revolves around sex and stuff like that. And so, and that was it. That was the gateway drug for him. It was drugs and sex and cobbin and all this stuff. And it owned his life. And so as we begin talking, he begins to realize that he can have a different life. See, that's the problem for a lot of people is they think that they're losing life in following Christ because most of us live a very boring life when we start to follow Christ. We just don't do mortal sin anymore. Jesus Christ in John 10, 10 said, I come that you might have life and have it to the full or have it abundantly. But we still live these tiny little suburban dreams that's carefully measured nothings. Like I was giving this talk to these men.  You can do anything in my heart. As long as I just in this box, like I want to keep my six-figure salary. I want to live in my fancy big house in the suburbs. It's like to have your way, Lord, have your way. But really just only in this six-by-six inch diameter, like, come on. I was like, you want the Holy Spirit to move.  And not to hurt you, but to give you life and to show you what life is actually meant to be for. But because we give God measured doses of our own heart, we don't give him room enough to move in there, right? So this is what I see when I go to prison. I see men where the world has stripped almost everything away. And they've given themselves over to the dark powers. They really have. Whether it's cynicism, anxiety, depression, you know, I met plenty of guys who were like, I entered here at 17 years old and I will leave at 50. My life is over. And so I have to remind them that Jesus Christ can liberate captives even when they still remain behind bars. That their life is not over. It's not on pause. It hasn't ended. That their life has taken on a new missionary territory. To turn the walls of the Ferguson unit into a monastery. They always laugh at that. They think that's the most preposterous thing ever. I'm like, yeah, but just get 10 of you to pray together and see what happens.  I had gone to the bathroom, like a boss, and I'm coming out of the bathroom, which is in the back of the place. And I'm walking in, there's this big dude right next to me, right, sitting at the tables and people are doing group sharing. This guy stands up. Now this guy is one of the most hardcore dudes in prison, okay? Head to toe tattoos, ultra violent, and he's the high priest of his pagan, there's all these different branches of paganism in the prison. And he has a nickname. Now in prison, you get a prison nickname. The guards call you inmate, the judge might call you by your name, last name first, first name last, but the prisoners, the fellow inmates, they call you by your nickname for the most part. And he had a nickname that he did not want to be taken away from him. And I can't say his name because this is being recorded.   He would lose these fights. He's ultra violent, do whatever, take a gouch people's eyes out, all this stuff. But he's like, you never call me by another name other than this. And he had said, since he was like seven years old, he's gone by this other name, right?  And he would get up and he'd be like, you know, I got my gods, you got your gods, like we all love, you know, I love this, you love that. And he would always be like careful and he would say nice, affirming things about the speaker, but he constantly was asserting his polytheistic view. And then I'm standing there, I just come out of the bathroom, sit next to this guy. And it was as if this guy was speaking to the Holy Spirit right into this man's heart. And I watched an instantaneous conversion, instantaneous. Like some of us are like, I don't know if Jesus exists, I don't know if this Catholic thing is real, I don't know if the Eucharist is really Jesus. This guy went from the high priest of a pagan religion where he did horrible things. He was an Aryan brother, right? The Aryan brotherhood, violent white supremacist gang, all of that stuff to an instantaneous conversion to Christianity, to Catholicism, because Catholic confirmed all that stuff. He sits there, this is how it happened.  And then he stopped and he goes, oh, that's funny. I said God instead of God's. Oh my gosh, this is real. And he, right then, right in a single moment, his whole life changed. And the guy next to me goes, yeah, you praise his name. And this dude, so in a room bigger than this, you're at two corners of the room. That guy didn't hear that.  It's like, yeah, it was about 70 guys in the room. And you can't, he can't hear. There's all the murmur and all the talking and stuff. And he goes, oh my gosh, this is real. This is real. And he goes, yeah, you praise his name. And he goes, the Lord Jesus Christ is real. He is the Savior. He's the eternal Son of God. Oh my goodness, this is real. This is real. I mean, the guy, he's like, yeah, yeah, keep going, keep going. Right? And this guy keeps going. And he's like that. And then he goes, tell him your name. Tell him your name. And the guy stops and he goes, my name is not, and he says his nickname. And then he says his full name, first, middle, and last. My name is, and he gets a little scared. And then he says it. And he goes, haven't said that name in 20 years. My name is, and he says it again. And the whole place stands up cheering for him. And we all start chanting his name. And he stands up on a chair. And he's like, Jesus Christ is Lord. God is real. God the Father is, and he starts preaching. And we're all crying. This guy's like, yeah, yeah. Right? We're all in it. It was the most incredible moment of my life to see the Holy Spirit work simultaneously. But it was because we were willing to invest in a person and not a project. We were there, we were gonna feed him. We were gonna talk to him. We were gonna treat him like a human being regardless of whether or not he converted. Because the problem that we do is we accept labels in the place of a story. We slap him on person so it's easy to dismiss. And what Jesus Christ wants to do in our hearts and in our lives is he wants to work beyond that. So when someone tells you, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, they're navigating the complicated world of what they truly believe and who they truly are, what their identity is in the cosmos with labels. Sometimes it's an easy way out. As the guy that plays Dwight Trute from the office, he posted on Twitter one time, people who say I'm spiritual but not religious are just lazy, so that was funny. But some people are. Some people don't wanna go through the habit of investing, but they also don't wanna say that they don't believe in anything. They're not saying I'm a stone cold atheist. Some people like Sam Harris, who's a notorious atheist who wrote a book on how to be spiritual without God or without religion. He wrote a whole book on that. They're trying to discover the depths of the human heart, the depths that literature and philosophy and theology and poetry reach, but that the sciences can't. And in a culture that deifies science, all of a sudden there's a whole group of people who are like, eh, this isn't enough to describe my love for my spouse.  That's not enough. Yeah, you might talk about oxytocin, I'm gonna say oxytocin, oxytocin all day long. You can talk about it if you want afterwards. But no, you can talk about this all day long, but it doesn't do enough to describe how I would give my life for my child. And so they are searching, but the other problem is, this is where it becomes deeply problematic, is when it's rooted in our pride, we just don't wanna be told what to do. And the conformity to a religion means I'm saying there's something outside of myself that perhaps could be a judge of myself. And I don't want to be judged, I don't want to live in the shadow between the ideal and the real. And so I'm gonna dismiss the ideal from really existing and I'm gonna invent from the ground up my own spirituality, my own view of the cosmos and the world. Rather than received or discovered purpose, we invent. And the crazy thing is we know this to be true, that discovered meaning gives you an identity that is so solid that not even suffering can take it away. But invented meaning is so vapid that once suffering, not if, but when suffering comes and visits you, it robs you of even your sense of purpose and meaning in life. And when you have no purpose or meaning in life, you're prone to despair. Okay, so when I talk with people who say I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious, I ask them 10,000 questions because they might have the most beautiful answers I've ever heard. But the reality is Christianity is a religion. Catholicism is a religion. What is a religion? The word in Latin means literally to bind together. It means you're not in this alone. We are bound together. Religion is supposed to not be a private affair, me and Jesus, I'm doing this spiritual thing on my own. I got my crystals and my horoscopes and that's all I need, right? That's it, I'm just this me and I'm just like, wow, here, cancer, I can't date you. I'm sorry, right? We have this ridiculous mentality, right? But this is the thing is people want something more, but they also don't want, obviously, because of the headlines, but they also don't want some external authority being imposed or constraining them. And so what we need to do is understand that religion before it is ever an institution is primarily a virtue. Did you know that? It's the virtue whereby I give to God what is his do, namely honor, worship, and homage. So if religion is not primarily an institution, then for those people, that becomes the bridge to faith and Christ Jesus because it starts with a relationship. Okay, it's one thing to say, I'm spiritual, it's another thing to say, I have a relationship with the God of the universe who knows me and loves me and desires me to know and love him. And that's what we want for God's people for his children, no matter how far off or near they are to the church. We wanna bring them by baby steps ever closer. You might not be the person who brings them into the church, but you might be the person who got them looking towards it. Let that be enough, amen? Also, you get to love them. Have you met people? People are terribly wonderful, right? Have you, like the people in this room, you get to know a whole other world by meeting people. I just, I just, I constantly sit in front of the majesty of the Amago Dei, the image of God and other people, and I'm like, what? Why aren't more people extroverts, right? There's gold in these faces here, right? It's so wonderful that we get to be able to share this life together. JP2 has this great line in his jeweler shop, which is a play about marriage, where he says, he was talking about his love for the woman who became his wife, and he says, one thinks of those times of the alter ego of another self, but people are whole worlds under themselves, separated by space, like other planets. And he says, but there's something about love that makes one think of throwing a bridge to that other world. And that's why Christ didn't ask you to feel like you love your neighbor. He commanded it. Let's pray.   Jesus, you rose and died for us, even when we do this to you. So be with us now, Lord God, as we seek to be your missionary disciples. Jesus, I trust in you, and in your name we pray. Amen.


nd finally this point on how much data, I'm really struck by how much data exists out there and have we really figured out the best ways to maximize that for real-time decision-making. And I feel like we're in the right room to grapple with that question. So I will leave it there for lunch. I'll encourage you to applaud our panel here that has been really amazing. Thank you. I'll invite up Gene Sperling, who's a senior advisor to the president. Anne-Marie Slaughter, who's the CEO of New America, New America. And Mira Patel, a senior advisor at the Department of Commerce to help close us out this morning. Great, welcome everybody. Thank you so much. The last panel discussion was incredibly rich and we're very excited to stay in between you and lunch. We have Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dr. Slaughter, who's the CEO of New America, and Gene Sperling, senior advisor to the president and leader of all the American Rescue Plan efforts. We wanted to have an open conversation today because both of these people have been leading lights around concepts of equity, well-being and dignity for decades. I've had the great privilege of working for both of them and seeing that leadership in action. And you have represented here over a dozen federal agency officials, academics and leading experts. And I think what I hope at the end of this is to really come to a shared understanding of what we mean when we talk about well-being, how we lift up the need to build more connections between different perspectives and visions around well-being from economic to community, educational and health. And really be able to highlight, I think the path forward, the federal government can take in partnership with academia, with civil society, with state and local officials who are trying to do this hard work every day on the ground as historic investments are going out from the president of the United States, from the White House, that are gonna transform this country for generations to come, hopefully. You know, I think as you heard resilience and we've talked about resilience among households and communities, requires much more than I think we can fairly say we track right now and that we invest in right now. The goal of the Opportunity Project Sprint and Elizabeth, thank you so much for your leadership at New America, Austin at Affordable Growth and Tony from Harvard has been critical at helping the federal government really be rigorous and honest with ourselves about how we leverage the enormous wealth of data. But most importantly, what is the point of that data if we're not getting it out to you all to use to improve people's lives every day. And I think that one area that we've particularly thought about is where the US has fallen behind to the rest of the world. In certain ways around indicators that matter for people's lives, equity, the ability to access healthcare, education, good jobs, clean communities. And it seems like as we talk about unemployment rates, GDP, the more traditional measures of economic growth and they're important to note, we also have to think about what matters most in people's lives. And Jean and Marie, you both have talked about this as said for many years in different ways and we're excited to get into this concept because I think the lack of national level federal government indicators within this space is something that is all part of the vision that you both laid out for a long time across different administrations, across agencies in the White House. And I think we have an opportunity as we look ahead to the next two years of this administration and beyond to set a new paradigm for our country's economic opportunity and dignity in communities. So I wanted to start and lay that framework in particular because we think about the US as a global leader on so many things and I think President Biden's vision for how we invest through industrial policy in our talent, in our communities directly matters. But a number of countries have pursued this well-being approach. So how can we think about a concept of well-being that is broad and holistic, that's anchored in dignity and equity? How do we give teeth to that? Those sort of really inspiring visions and statements from the president. And how do we ensure it's not conflated with wellness? And Marie, I want to turn to you first as somebody who served as a senior level diplomat, representing the United States around the world and also bringing in the concept of what US leadership looks like when we talk about well-being, equity and dignity and putting it into action. Thanks, Mir. And it's wonderful to have all of you physically here in our house, the new America house. So, and I've been looking forward to this convening for a long time. When I was the director of policy planning from 2009 to 2011 under Secretary Clinton, her goal was to elevate development to the same level of prestige and power and funding in our dreams as defense and diplomacy. And of course, defense is the 800,000 pound gorilla and then you have state and then you have USA. And she wanted to lift up development issues. So the Biden administration has just issued a national security strategy that historically says that global problems, and they start with climate and then infectious disease and then food shortages and energy shortages, the kinds of things we do think about as components of well-being, those issues, those threats are just as important as our rivalries with China and Russia and others. That's historic. We are not remotely geared to actually deliver on that, but it's a start. So what would it mean if we took that as seriously as the national security strategy does and says, all right, US leadership then has to be leadership on development because these are domestic issues. These are those issues that cannot be cordoned off into international and domestic. And this is where I think we could truly be leaders. Generally, Europe is the development leader in terms of their overall commitments and how much they give both individually and the EU but also the way they think about security. And of course, China, that's part of its great claim to fame. It has indeed lifted 400 million people out of poverty. More people than the entire United States. But imagine if the United States said, yeah, but our view of development includes equity and well-being. Equity for sure, something that honestly, when I tweeted about it, I think a year ago, people asked if I thought, if I was crazy, the idea that race, racial equity as well as other kinds of racial equity would be part of foreign policy. But just imagine if we, obviously, when we stand for that abroad, people will hold it to us at home. And that is as it should be. But also saying, look, China and many other countries measure a country's development entirely in terms of traditional economic measures. What's your GDP? Are you a lower income country or a middle income country? What if we added the layer of relationships that has to go with the economic growth, the distribution that has to go with that economic growth and said, we're doing this at home. We haven't gotten there, but we're trying to get there. We expect this globally as well. It would mean leading in a radically different way, not the world's greatest military power, but the world's leading power, yes, on hard security, but also on those issues that you need to build strength and resilience at home and in countries around the world. So I'll stop there. Wonderful, Gene. So I'm going to burden you with my overall frame on this a little, administration after being the Clinton administration as well. I really was, I really had become very focused on this issue of what is our ultimate goal for economic policy and how much particular metrics played a disproportionate role. Now, the economist Richard Taylor, others have said, Murage has said it, of course, we should focus on what matters most, not what is necessarily measurable. You all have probably heard the joke before, but it's an important concept of the inebriated man who's looking under a streetlight over and over again, good citizen comes by and says, can I help you? And he said, well, I'm looking for my keys. And he said, oh, you think you lost your keys here? He said, no, I'm sure I didn't lose them here, but this is the only place the light is shining. And that I think is profound in terms of economics. We focus more on what can be measured as opposed to what's most important. Now, maybe somebody here brilliant is going to figure out the economic measurement of having a loving life partner, but do you really need to know that's important? Do you really need like an economic metric to know that's the case? It's hard to measure, but it doesn't make it less real that that's one of the most important things in your life. Same as we're thinking on your economic life. So I stepped back and said, I think the ultimate goal should be economic dignity. And I spent a long time, really, a couple of years thinking about what the exact definition of that would be. So I had a three-part definition of economic dignity. One, can you care for family and be there in life's most precious moments? Two, can you pursue in your economic life a sense of purpose and potential? And three, can you work with respect as opposed to domination and humiliation? Those seem to me to be the most important things in people's lives. To me, that defined what people would think on their deathbed as what mattered most in their economic life. So I started with shouldn't we start with that? Now, I also realized, and in fact, it kept me from not being sure I could even write a book on this, with the fact that while it is easy to mock GDP as the ultimate goal and it's easy to show that a rising tide does not necessarily lift all boats, there is the other side. I call it the Jacob Ellis versus Ohio case. That's the case in 1964 where Potter Stewart defines pornography as you know it when you see it. So here's the tension. You focus, if you focus on metrics, you might focus on what you can measure as opposed to what's most important. If you ignore metrics, then you might have a whole world where everything is just you know it when you see it. So to me, I think our goal, our larger goal is to use metrics better when we can to reflect what matters most in people's economic lives. Which is to me this concept of, this three-part concept of economic dignity. But I refuse to go along with the idea that if you can't measure it, it's not an economic issue. Here's the economic profession for you. Ah-ha, we have, I guess the ah-ha really had emphasis. But this does define the economic profession when it comes to women's participation in the workforce. We looked at sexual harassment and paid leave and childcare.  It seems to affect women's labor force participation. I guess it's an economic issue. I mean, this really is what happened. When people could lodge it in a known economic metric, it became an economic issue. Is not the general well-being at work, and this is economic. You work, support your family economically. If people are miserable and feel dominated and humiliated and mistreated at work, does that only become an economic issue when somebody finds a way to link it with a specific economic metric? And let me tell you how I think, I'll just give you one example. I actually called this chapter, and by the way, Murat, thank you. You were one of the researchers on this book. I called this chapter Invisibility and Metrics. And the example I gave a little is what I called the pre-gig workers. So guess what? Before Uber was created, before you know who Aijin Poo was, there were lots of gig-like workers who had no rights, no healthcare, no childcare. Now in the late 90s, really wouldn't have come up a lot, because guess what? They were working. So lots of people in the labor force, check. Lots of hours, check. Wages were going up, check. Not an economic problem. And yet, another secret, taxicab drivers didn't have good benefits either. People, domestic workers didn't. So that entire array of issues about rights at work, prevention of sexual harassment, domination, leave so that you can be there when your child is born or your parent dies, all of those things were there. And they were invisible because we focused on the economic metrics. So what I wanna say is, the things we do like the supplemental poverty rate, doing U6 and UI, doing things that do broader, we could do more measurement on basic rights at work, we should do all those things. But before we get all the metrics, we shouldn't assume it's a non-economic issue, that it doesn't matter just because there's not a metric light shining on it at that moment. I mean, so I'm gonna present a different paradigm. One that is, I probably, it's more radical and it's further in the future than I hope Jean's paradigm is. In other words, I love the framework. I love the sort of the being there, being able to care for those you love, being there for life's important moments, purpose and meaning and non-domination. I really love that. But that is still a deeply individual focused view of the economy. And I wanna suggest a relationship view of the economy. So I'm a network theorist and I've studied networks since 1994. And when you think of a network, you think of nodes and the formal term is edges, the links between the nodes. If you need to, you can just look at what's etched into the glass at New America when you come in. Those are networks. There are those nodes and the edges. We think about the nodes because all of us are nodes. And in the United States in particular, we are the most individualist society probably the world has ever known. So we think almost entirely about individual achievement and what it takes for individuals to accomplish things. And your framework is based on individuals. And again, realistically, politically, that's probably where we have to start. But actually the edges, the links, the relationships are every bit as important as the individuals. And indeed, and I am no quantum physicist, but I've been reading enough quantum physics to make this point, quantum physics says it's the relationships that define the nodes, not the nodes that get to choose the relationships. What would that look like in an economy? Well, it would mean that we assigned value to the quality of relationships. We would look at those domestic workers, particularly where they are health, health aides, care workers of every description. Care is not a bundle of services. Care is the quality of a relationship. A robot can bathe my child, but that is not care. That's right. And a robot can bathe an elder and in Japan already is. But care is when I bathe that child, yeah, I put water all over them and soap, but what I really do is I talk to them and I ask questions and we look at the water and we engage. That is, it should be valued. We have no way in economics for valuing the quality of the relationship. So that's care and we can think about care very broadly, but now think about very fast-growing categories of jobs. Coaches, I don't know if you've noticed, but five to 10 years ago, a coach meant somebody who was on a field yelling at athletes. Not anymore, health and well-being coaches across the country make an average of $62,000 a year. I just looked it up. And of course, health and well-being coaches, executive coaches, life coaches, work coaches, every program I know of trying to get people into better jobs has an employer coach.  Those are all relationships that enable others to succeed. So I would say if we really want to get to equity and well-being, we have to find a way to measure the value of connections between people, healthy, strong connections between people, which would then put families at the center of much of our economy, in addition to individuals. This is not gonna replace individuals any more than links replace hubs, but it is a far more radical way of thinking about what is valuable in the world. And I have a question about that. So Jean, I think rightly notes the individual experience I think especially post-pandemic, we all thought about quite a bit, right? What does it mean to just be rigorous about the things that matter most in life and the time we all got to spend, hopefully with loved ones in a very challenging moment? And the Kellogg Foundation, right, has numbers out that are, there could be $8 billion more in GDP a year if we just fully allowed people of color and women to participate in the economy equitably as white straights, et cetera, men are paid. But I'm particularly curious about how we bridge from what Jean said, which is the reality of people's lies and how a lot of people think about their experience with the economy and what you're saying and building salience around the concept of interconnection. And I'd like to bring in an equity question to you, which is how do you make people care? How do you bring in the fact that improving wellbeing for some has a positive benefit for all? Because I think we're at this tension point now two years following George Floyd after the pandemic where people are saying, well, does equity mean equity for me or does it mean it for other people who have been left behind that aren't me? Because I don't feel like I can care for my kids. I don't feel like I'm able to get adequate healthcare. And I do think there's a national conversation and tension point around this and I'm curious what you would say to people that don't, who think individualistically for the reasons they have, which are their families or the things that they're trying to care for and don't necessarily see the connection to community and how government supports that kind of community connectedness or could. You haven't ever, hello little Jean, go ahead and talk for a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I don't really agree with your description of what I described as individualistic. It is about really us as a country believing in a certain fabric, a certain universal moral value that every person should have. That we are a capitalist country and some people have nicer vacations and nicer cars, et cetera, but that there should be a basic level of economic dignity that we feel everybody in this community, I did not try to write internationally, should have. So I think it is extremely collective and it goes to the relationships. The notion that we judge your economic, not by whether what you produced or spent, but your ability to participate in kind of the things that matter most in life which are not necessarily having the most hours and the most income if you can't be there at the kitchen table or the bedside. And I wrote about the fact that when we that what happened over the pandemic was a lot of middle class people experience what lower income people experience all the time. They can't travel to not work and sit by their parent's side in their final days. They couldn't be there for life's most precious moments. And people said, oh my God, this is the pandemic. And it was like, no, this is what lots of poor people go through all the time. This was just affecting a broader group. So I think that it is a very collective view but I'm not going to deny that it is linked and what it is that makes us as people because that's what we are most precious, that matters most and what everybody could have. I can't create a society where everybody gets to be Steph Curry. I would love to be Steph Curry or Roger Federer but you can't do that but what I can say is that everybody could be in a economy where they worked and had purpose and didn't have humiliation that they could be there and care for their family. That they would be given second and third chances to pursue potential. So I think it is a collective view. The one thing I did want to say and this will be my moment taking it to the American Rescue Plan is that I am just, and also if anybody, I'm not trying to sell my book, but I talk quite a bit about the whole navigators and coach view and I think that this was a very tangible lesson for us because as much as we got, is it matter to have? Do all the things to make technology more accessible and what we did with Code for America to make sure that we had Spanish and mobile friendly, all those things. The thing we all learned together repeatedly was that for all of that, all I learn over and over again is don't want to sound like Barbara Streisand but people need other people. And I remember somebody telling us in the child tax credit, boy I thought it would be just more here's how you do the form and people were scared of the IRS. They were scared of the INS. They didn't know if they gave their data whether somehow that could mean their grandma who was illegally here could be there or they were shamed that they hadn't paid taxes or they thought because they'd been in the economy or somebody's brother-in-law had taken a credit for their child when they weren't eligible and they thought if they applied, their brother-in-law might go to jail. All of these things required a coach, a navigator in the emergency rental assistance. I mean, everybody kept saying, oh, you gotta advertise things better. Are you kidding me? There was a crush of things. There were 15 different programs. The thing that would have helped more than anything was real life people, trusted people in trusted places. And so we have to have a world I think where we focus on the best, most accessible, easy technology and not think that is the silver bullet. You need the coaches, the navigators. And actually, I think you look at college completion, well, who does well, community college, all those things are who goes to college and stuff. I think you can actually use data and metrics to show that that matters most, particularly for people who are not like myself, blessed with just coming up with a family where the expectation of going to college and the knowledge of how to do it and all those things were just, as ingrained as rooting for Michigan football. I grew up in Ann Arbor, so sorry. I mean, I wanna ask you a question though, because I didn't mean that you were individualists and I'm offering collectivists. I didn't mean that at all. What I meant was, how, so we agree that you want an economy where people are there for those they love.  Or even when you talk about the navigators and the advisors, how do we make those jobs really well paid because without those relationships we can't flourish? And so that's what I mean is that we have no way of valuing something that is not a service. It's a relationship. It's the quality of that relationship that determines how it is. Well, let me say how real this is right now and how current this is on the economic front. So it's funny, I agree completely. We have to as a government decide that there's more value there.  But we always knew that the market didn't always value them correctly. It didn't value it in terms of the things that matter most that might be difficult to measure but there are lots of cases and I don't wanna give up on measurement. I think like in healthcare and preventive healthcare we've been able to measure. You look at community health workers. The whole, there are lots of studies that show, guess what, if you go help make sure older people and their families know how they're not gonna trip and break their hip, you actually save money. And if you have more racial equity and reaching people earlier you save money. So part of is I think is figuring out how to value and do the accounting for that kind of longer term type of value. But the reason why this is so incredibly relevant right now is that we are, what's happening with the tight labor market. We all thought tight labor market was a good thing. I still think it's a good thing and we can do another session on why I do not think that is why there's global inflation. But the thing that we have seen though is that in a tight labor market the private sector wages go up higher than the double dignity job wages. So if you're me and you're working on all the American rescue plan you're hearing a familiar frame when you talk to a superintendent, a childcare provider or a care provider. I lost that person to Starbucks. I lost them to Amazon because they're pricing up and people are leaving down. And the example I used in the book was heartbreaking example but this is a per example where you could have actually measured value. You know, a woman's testifying about her adult brother who has pretty, who has autism and has a blanking on the exact phrase for the people who work with them but somebody who works with him. What's that? No, that's not the phrase. But anyways, the, no, but the person gets incredible meaning and for the kid and for her brother this was life saving in terms of him living independently. And he regretfully leaves to be an assistant manager at a fast food restaurant. And he's heartbroken. He doesn't think that's as much value. The young man with autism is heartbroken but what happens? The mother who is a professor has to quit her job and come back and take care and the sister herself has to work less. Now that is measurably bad for dignity and actually bad economically and that was before what we've seen now. So Starbucks goes up, Amazon goes up and you have to have an act of a state legislator or Congress for a care worker, a long-term care worker, a childcare worker or a teacher to go up. And so we're seeing that happen in real time right now. And there are shortages in these areas everywhere right now because the private sector adjust and we don't have a way of adjusting even though we all agree there's value and probably even documentable metric value in those jobs. Absolutely, well I think especially given the Senate just passed a marriage equality bill right, there's a clear example of certain kinds of family structures that have either been incentivized or not economically or been able to protect or give, we think about inheritance right. And if you think about structural inequity right, the ability to pass what you have earned and grown to your partner, to your children over generations has resulted in in the large inequity we've had in our lifetime. And so I guess we've one more minute left and you two are too smart so I don't think any of my, these questions are. I just thought too much, forgive it Dan, Marie. But I've learned so much from you and getting to work for both of you. And so I suppose I just wanted to ask you both, if you could charge people in this room to do one thing, to think about one thing or to challenge you individually on these kinds of visions that you're leading, what would it be? I think as we talk about equity and putting it into action, we have two more years of this administration, hopefully we'll have more. But this concept of well-being is one that has been so championed by Elizabeth and others, you all in this room around well-being. And I think we're getting very close to the idea of what does that mean in terms of putting it into action tangibly with trillions of dollars going to communities across the country. And the tools that were built through the sprint are helping communities put shape to those investments and hopefully being able to advocate for themselves, right? We'll have leaders across the country, governors in certain places, who may not have the same vision for equity that local communities are. And so by giving them tools where they can surface, these are actually the needs in our community. This is what matters most to us. We're helping to get closer to that.  So what should we do? What do you wanna do? What haven't you done yet? So I would just say, I think in all of our work and indeed in our work here in New American, Elizabeth and I are thinking very hard about this question. It is, what are the ways, and maybe they're proxies, maybe they're not direct measurement, maybe they're indirect measurement, but how do we measure the value of relationships? Gene started by saying, you know, it's obvious that a loving life partner is very important to your ability to live, work, participate in society. We have no way of valuing that and I don't wanna commodify everything. I started at the University of Chicago with law and economics and anti-commodification. So that's not the idea. The idea is to say, look, particularly in an age of automation, what is absolutely essential to our flourishing are strong, healthy relationships with other people. They could be family members, they could be mentors, advisors, managers, but focus on those connections and the quality of those connections. How do we measure those? I would say, I'll make three quick points. One, this is my third administration and boy, I think Bill Clinton and Barack Obama cared so deeply about equity and fighting poverty, but I will say that Biden put out an executive order on day one that said when you're implementing, think of equity from day one, you know, it mattered, it matters. It does matter to put something out. Now, can you put it exactly? Well, no, but just a tangible example, we're doing the childcare regs and somebody comes in and makes a very powerful case for only allowing people to get this emergency childcare if they've already registered with their state, if they already are a certain size. That is going to reduce fraud, it is. It's going to reduce improper payments.  So, now you can hope, you're supposed to think of equity and implementation from the start, it matters. So I think what you decide matters, even if it's, again, has maybe a slightly more qualitative side, will affect your mindset.  If, if we didn't have the ADA, if we didn't, and you like people with wheelchairs couldn't get into your building to get benefits, would you need an economic analysis to know that like maybe you should measure access or something? So one, you don't have to limit, but three, I do think as much as I've said all that, that we can do better. You know, the Atlantic, I mean, the Federal Reserve did, how many people have over $400 of extra savings at a given moment? That was a metric. That was a metric that opened people's eyes to economic insecurity. Again, the U6, the broader view of unemployment gives people a broader sense. The supplemental poverty index gives more of a sense of how the benefit programs affect poverty. So I do think in the metric area, we can do better and you can think in your own area what metric would matter.  It was also like a little bit like, oh, that's right. If kids aren't in a physical school, they couldn't get fed over the summer. This is my third administration. Like, I'm glad we did this, but don't remember it coming up in the last 20, 30 years. Maybe if there was a metric that had said summer food insufficiency. Maybe if there'd been a metric on that, this would have risen before you had a pandemic and kids couldn't go to school. So I do think it is worth, while you can't measure everything and it shouldn't limit everything, we can do better. And these are some metrics that I've seen that really have affected the public consciousness. So. Thank you both for your service to the country and for your vision. And we are so excited to partner together. Thank you. Thanks.


Welcome to Deaconess Student Accommodation. Situated close to the heart of the city center, Deaconess is an ideal location for those studying at the central campus. It consists of a common room and single standard en suite rooms for its residents. Each flat comprises of five single rooms that share a common kitchen. The three blocks arranged around a central courtyard gives you a spectacular view of Arthur's seat.


Why is supporting and advocating for LGBTI rights including hate crime prevention so important across the world? Well, you know I'll answer from the from the US government's perspective is that you know, we believe firmly that an ability to have Conversations to share our basic values our basic understanding of this is an issue of equality and dignity under the law in any state Is very very important?