on surprising they've been led by Jamaica, 49 medals, 24 gold, 15 silver and 10 bronze. Bahamas, 25 medals, 7 gold, 9 silver, 9 bronze. Guyana, brilliant. 4 gold and a bronze medal, 5 for them. Guanteloupe, 2 gold and a bronze. Trinidad and Tobago, 1 gold coming in the 4x100 for on the 20 boys. 6 silver, 8 bronze, they have 15. Grenada, almost in double figures, they're doing brilliantly with the triple jump on the 17 gold. That was their first 9 medals for them, 4 silver and 4 bronze. Cayman Islands, 1 a piece. They have 3 medals. Antigua and Barbuda, 1 gold, 2 bronze medals. They too have 3. Belize, 1 gold, 1 bronze. U.S. Virgin Islands, 1 gold medal. That coming through Michelle Smith in the under 20 girls, 400 meter hurdles. 3 silver medals for them. 2 of them today. Canier in the 400 meter hurdles on the 17 boys. And also Jermaine Huggins in the Octathlon. Aruba with 2 silver medals coming from Bade Barbados, 1 silver and 2 bronze. Martinique, Turks and Caicos, Bermuda and Dominica all with a bronze medal. 17 teams on the medal table after day number 2 of the 51st Cariftagames here in St. George's, Grenada.


Good morning everybody. I'm pleased to welcome you to this IIEA webinar. My name is Loretta O'Sullivan and I'm going to be chairing the event today. I'm a board member of the IIEA and also the group chief economist at Bank of Ireland. For today's event, we're delighted to be joined by Frank Alderson, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank and also Vice-Chair of the ECB Supervisory Board, who's been very generous to take time out of his busy schedule to speak to us. So we're very pleased to have Frank with us, albeit virtually, and he's going to provide an address on the macroeconomic outlook for the euro area and its implications for the ECB's monetary policy. Frank will speak for just under 30 minutes and then we'll go to a Q&A with our audience. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once Frank has finished his presentation. Please do remember to include your name and your affiliation when submitting your question and you can also participate in the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. A reminder as well that today's presentation and Q&A are both on the record. So let me formally now introduce Frank Alderson and hand him over to you then. So Frank is a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank. He oversees the ECB Legal Services and is Vice Chair of the ECB Supervisory Board. Mr Alderson previously served as Executive Director at the Central Bank of the Netherlands, where he held several senior positions before joining its governing board in 2011. He co-chairs the task force and climate-related financial risks of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and from January 2018 to January 2022, he served as the first chair of the newly founded global network of central banks and supervisors for greening the financial system. So Frank over to you. Well thank you very much and thanks a lot for having me today. As no doubt all of you who are joining here today be here at the European Central Bank look with horror at the distressing reports from the Ukraine. The human suffering and destruction that we see in our part of the world remains difficult to fend for, but they are all too real alas. Our hearts and minds are with the people of the Ukraine, with those who are still in harm's way today and with those who have been forced to seek refuge elsewhere, mainly in the European Union. And these horror events are a stark reminder about what the European Union stands for, peace in Europe, being united in diversity, shared principles and the rule of law. The rule of law that also governs the EU's institutions, including the European Central Bank, that within their mandate serve European citizens. Today I want to outline to you how the ECB will continue to contribute to this greater purpose by delivering on the mandate bestowed upon us by the European treaties. The mandate to deliver price stability in the euro area. You may be aware that last summer the ECB announced a new monetary policy strategy after concluding what we have called a comprehensive review. A review in which we engaged with a wide range of stakeholders, including European citizens, to learn lessons and better understand the concerns of those we serve with respect to monetary policy and the broader economy. Understandably, one of the key elements of our new strategy, which received a lot of attention, was the new symmetric 2% inflation target over the medium term. This replaced our earlier medium term inflation aim of below, but close to 2%. Together with our new strategy, we also published a roadmap outlining actions to incorporate climate change considerations in our monetary policy. And I'm very happy that this roadmap is drawing an equal amount of interest and appreciation from among our stakeholders. Today, however, I will focus on another specific element of our new strategy that tightly binds together many of its constituent parts. A principal component that underpins the evidence-based foundations of our monetary policy strategy. It is the compass that guides our actions when I'm talking here about the role of proportionality in our monetary policy deliberations. So bear with me in what will be the next 20 minutes or so, and I will talk you through how we as monetary policy makers assess the proportionality of our policy actions illustrated with experiences of lawyers and you might be surprised construction workers and how we apply this framework in the current circumstances. As a trained lawyer, let me start by providing you with some legal background on proportionality. And to do so, I will take you back to 1882 when the Prussian Royal Administrative Court delivered the Kreuzberg accountants or the Kreuzberg judgment. And this was a groundbreaking period that for the first time explicitly established that the public authority, in this case the police, cannot pursue the public good in full discretion without any limitations to the sacrifice of individuals and their legal positions. The verdict annulled an ordinance issued by the police that banned owners of land around the Kreuzberg war memorial in Berlin from constructing buildings above a certain height to keep the view of the monument clear. And the court argued that with the ordinance, the police had exceeded their mandate. And to put it simply, the ruling made it clear that the police were only responsible for public security and not for safeguarding aesthetic interests. Now this verdict signified an important step in the development of modern societies. Acknowledging that their actions intrude on the lives of citizens, public sector authorities began limiting their actions to what is strictly necessary to achieve the established objectives. Since then, proportionality has evolved to become a fundamental principle in many legal systems. The proportionality principle is a cornerstone of the institutional structure also of the European Union laid down in article five of the treaty on the European Union. And all its institutions are bound by it in the pursuit of their respective mandates. It requires them to carefully assess the necessity and suitability of policy action to deliver on their mandate, while also considering whether this policy action is less intrusive compared with other options for achieving the same goal. Needless to say that this requirement also applies to the European Central Bank. Thus, systematically assessing the proportionality of our monetary policy actions is exactly what we set out to do and made even more explicit in our new monetary policy strategy when the ECB governing council meets to discuss monetary policy every six to seven weeks. And it is important to note that the scope of the proportionality assessment of policy decision making bodies like the governing council differs from the scope of the judicial review that a court would conduct when assessing the proportionality of public policy measures for the law. This was carefully explained by the European Court of Justice president, Kuhn Lenard, at the European Central Bank's recent annual legal conference. President Lenard outlined that when assessing proportionality, the court applies a judicial review limited to what they call manifest errors. And with this approach, the court acknowledges that institutions like the European Central Bank enjoy a margin of assessment within the limits of their competences to weigh technical considerations that go beyond the court's own competence and expertise. At the same time, the court does require that institutions have in place a due process that ensures that within their margin of assessment, all factors and circumstances of relevance at the time of a policy decisions are considered, including the impact of the action on other policies and on and the existence of less intrusive means to achieve the same set objective. Now, this is what the governing council's proportionality assessment needs to account for. And to achieve that, our monetary policy strategy includes an integrated assessment framework to support our deliberations on monetary policy options. And this framework builds on two interdependent analyses, the economic analysis and the monetary and financial analysis. The economic analysis focuses on real and nominal economic developments, which includes economic activity, employment, and price and wage developments. The monetary and financial analysis examines monetary and financial indicators, which includes lending by banks and non-banks, asset prices, and financial and financing conditions. The focus here is on monitoring how our monetary policy decisions transmit throughout the financial system into the wider economy and assess whether any impairments in that mechanism could be harmful to our price stability objective. Moreover, the monetary and financial analysis allows us to monitor the possible risks to medium term price stability from financial imbalances. And these two strands of analysis do not stand in isolation. Indeed, the important role of micro financial linkages in economic, monetary, and financial developments requires that the interdependencies across the two analyses are fully incorporated. Now, each monetary policy decision by the governing council, even if it reconfirms decisions taken in a previous meeting, builds on the evidence provided for by our integrated assessment framework. And this evidence informs our discussion on the monetary policy stance required to ensure that economic, financial, and monetary developments are consistent with maintaining price stability. And it also supports our decisions on the choice, the design, and the calibration of instruments that deliver the required monetary policy stance. In this sense, our analytical framework enables us to ensure that the blend of our policy instruments is proportionate to the circumstances and challenges that we face in the pursuit of price stability. Now let's make all this a little bit more concrete. Let me explain how this can be envisaged in practice with an analogy. An analogy in construction that may speak more to the minds of a general audience than concepts from the world of monetary theorists and lawyers. Very much like price stability, very much like price stability ensures a solid foundation to support a well functioning economy. In construction, concrete is the bedrock of any structure. Homes, office buildings, bridges, wind and solar power stations, and so on.  Seamans, gravel, sand, and water. Every ingredient plays its part. Seamans is the key bonding agent that holds the concrete together. It is the gravel and sand that give it its strength and structural integrity. And the water activates the bonding process and also makes the concrete malleable and allows for flexible application. Now the optimal concrete mix ratio, if you allow me, depends highly on where the concrete will be used. Generally, the amount of sand and gravel is important for strength and durability. Whereas cement and water adds to workability. As one might expect, dry environments call for a relatively higher proportion of water in the concrete mixture, while the opposite holds true for moist surroundings. Exposure to mechanical or chemical erosion also call for relatively less water to maintain durability. The environment subject to freezing and thawing benefit from concrete that contains some air pockets determined by the proportion between gravel and sand. And the builder mixing the concrete surely needs to establish, and this is the key message, what likely conditions the concrete needs to withstand before deciding on the optimal mix. Now I've come to learn that this concept is known among economists as state and shock dependence of the optimal policy response. And the optimal calibration of the monetary policy compound to maintain price stability is equally dependent on the external factors that have an impact on the economy. Our new strategy confirms that the key ECB interest rates play a primary role in this compound, but it also explicitly accounts for the use of other instruments as appropriate. In line with the central banks and other advanced economies, this includes communicating the expected future path of interest rates, also known as forward guidance, as well as asset purchases and the provision of longer term refinancing operations to banks. The governing council has made clear its commitment to deploying and withdrawing all these instruments to respond flexibly to challenges in a proportionate manner as we have demonstrated in the past. In our proportionality assessments, we are also mindful that monetary policy measures have an impact on the broader economy and economic policies. In fact, the treaty requires us to support subject to such support, not undermining our efforts to maintain price stability. The general economic policies in the European Union with a view to contributing to the achievement of the EU's objectives. These objectives include balanced economic growth, a highly competitive social market economy aimed at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. In this context, whenever we identify different sets of instruments that however are equally conducive to price stability, we will choose the configuration that best supports those general economic policies of the EU. Or to use the example of the concrete banks, when there are multiple plants that are equally conducive to preserving structural integrity, the one that is most supportive to environmental sustainability is clearly mandated from a proportionality perspective. Now, the framework that I have outlined provides the lens through which we assess the proportionate monetary policy response also to recent developments. We update our outlook for growth and our outlook for inflation by closely monitoring all relevant incoming data and analyzing them with our state-of-the-art modeling toolkit, building on the knowledge and expertise of both ECB and euro system staff. Now, even with all this analytical infrastructure in place, the current exceptional uncertainty means that we need to be humble. Humble about how accurately we can predict the future state of the economy. It is difficult. It is difficult to assess the exact quantitative impact of the tragic developments that began unfolding just as we were casting off the impact of two years of another unforeseeable event with dramatic consequences, the COVID-19 pandemic. That being said, the new ECB staff projections that were prepared for our monetary policy meeting two weeks ago and included two complementary scenarios to cater for the uncertainty paint a clear picture of what qualitative impact to expect. The analysis confirms that the present circumstances represent new headwinds to growth, emerging at a time when previous pandemic-induced headwinds were finally waning. In particular, there are two important channels through which the war weighs on the euro area economic outlook, negative confidence effects, which have an impact on both international trade and on financial markets, and high energy prices. And this is reflected in a downward adjustment of growth in the baseline of the latest line of the latest staff projections. At the same time, it should be noted that the outlook that prevailed before the Russian invasion was quite favorable, showing the euro area economy emerging from the pandemic on solid footing. And this implies that our updated baseline outlook, and also in more adverse and severe scenarios for the impact of the war, stagnation is not foreseen. While we are facing downward pressures on growth, inflation has continued to surprise on the upside. After having fallen sharply in the first months of the pandemic, it started rebounding around one year ago and has increased above our 2% target since last summer, reaching 5.9% last month. The strength and the persistence in the rebound of inflation has consistently surprised many analysts and professional forecasters, including us. Unexpectedly, high energy costs contributed most to these surprises. Yet we do also see that price rises have become more broad-based. Even if global oil prices do not increase any further and stabilize at high levels, we currently expect inflation to be above our 2% target well into 2023, before settling around our target in 2024. We are aware that the current spell of high inflation has a consequential impact on many citizens' personal livelihoods in a time in which both economic and broader sense of uncertainty have, again, taken hold. Let me reiterate, our commitment to medium-term price stability is unwavering. With inflation stubbornly above our target for so long, some concerns have been raised about the risk of second-round effects, which could make high inflation even more persistent. These effects describe the situation where high inflation feeds into higher wages, implying increased costs for businesses, which would then could lead to higher inflation still. Our current inflation projection accounts for some increasing wages, building on historical regularities of pass-through from inflation to wages and further spillback mechanisms. And at present, we are not yet observing stronger second-round effects than projected. At the same time, we are mindful that some ingredients for potential stronger effects are in place. Slowing growth and high inflation put pressure on households' real disposable income that they may seek to recover through higher wages in an economy in which labor market shortages and other supply-side bottlenecks are lingering. Thus, the interplay between inflation and wage growth with an important role for inflation expectations is something that we will carefully continue to monitor in the period ahead. Similarly, in their pursuit of our mandate, we diligently monitor whether the prevailing financing conditions remain consistent with inflation reaching our 2% objective in the medium term. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent financial sanctions have clearly caused substantial volatility in financial markets. However, these factors have so far not caused severe strains in money markets or liquidity shortages in the euro-area banking system. Shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ECB Banking Supervision published the results of the 2021 cycle of what we call the supervisory review and confiliation process, the shred process. The findings of that annual assessment indicate that significant banking institutions have maintained solid capital depositions, with most banks going beyond the levels dictated by capital requirements and guidance. Now, of course, the 2021 SREP cycle did not envisage the current war in Ukraine, nor the sanctions on Russian counterparts that followed. Yet, the SREP results do reflect the general resilience of Europe's banking sector, which should help avoid disruptions in financing conditions as the economy and financial system are adjusting to the evolving circumstances. As regards Russia, the European Central Bank continues to monitor direct and indirect channels of impact on European banks, but none have been disrupted so far. Now, let me turn to how this assessment of the euro-area economy outlook translates into the outlook for monetary policy. It is well established factors in monetary policy that in times of uncertainty, prudent policy calls for gradualism, as was also alluded to in a speech last week by the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Dacar. This holds particularly true when we approach potential turning points in the monetary policy cycle. In determining the appropriate degree of gradualism, the treaty gives us a compass, the principle that I referred to earlier, the principle of proportionality. A compass that points to price stability and, in line with our monetary policy strategy, has a needle moved by the evidence, by incoming data. Against this backdrop, already in December, we announced our intention to end the net asset purchases conducted under our pandemic emergency purchase program, the PEP, which in our recent meeting we confirmed that we will do at the end of this month. Moreover, in light of the revised inflation outlook, we have assessed that net asset purchases under our other purchase program can be discontinued in the third quarter if the incoming data confirmed that the medium-term inflation outlook will not weaken after net asset purchases. This strengthens our policy optionality by removing obstacles for potential policy rate normalization beyond the horizon of our asset purchases. Any adjustments to the key ECB interest rates will take place sometime after the end of our net asset purchases and will be gradual and based on incoming data. Both the timing and the base will be proportionate to the evolution of the inflation outlook in relation to our price stability objective. If the evolution of the inflation outlook supported by incoming data allows a further normalization of monetary policy, we stand ready to adjust our instruments accordingly. Meanwhile, we will continue to fully reinvest the maturing securities acquired in the context of our asset purchase programs past the date on which we start raising the key ECB interest rates. Whenever we face renewed pandemic-related threats of market fragmentation that are a risk to price stability, the reinvestments that we undertake under the PEP can be adjusted flexibly across time, asset classes and jurisdictions to counter those threats. Moreover, we can design and deploy new instruments to counter any threats to price stability that may emerge as we move along the path of policy normalization. Let me conclude before the chair reminds me of the clock. The Scottish philosopher David June once said that a wise person proportions their beliefs to the evidence. Likewise, I think the evidence should proportion a wise person's actions. This is as true for a wise monetary policymaker pursuing price stability as it is for a wise judge delivering a sound verdict or a wise construction worker securing structural integrity. In our case, it is our evidence-based monetary policy strategy that enables us to do exactly this. And by paving the way for gradual normalization with significant policy optionality to account for uncertainty, we are putting it into practice. We will proportion our actions to the evidence. And that way, our commitment to maintain medium-term price stability remains rock solid. Thank you.


Hi, everyone. I'm Eiji. In a previous video, we've looked at implementing authentication using Google sign name. In this video, I will walk you through implementing authorization and making requests to Google APIs from a client and from a server. Before moving forward, let's discuss the difference between authentication and authorization. Authentication means to identify who the user is. And authorization means getting permissions to access an API on behalf of the user. In many cases, these two steps occur together, where people sign in and grant permissions at the same time without knowing how these permissions will be used in the future. Our current recommendation is to let users authenticate first and defer asking permissions until you need to access an API. In order to use the Google APIs, you have to enable them from the developer console. Then, looking at this page, you can find the scope strings that correspond to the APIs you have enabled. Each one of these represents an API, so take note of the ones you need. Now you can make requests from the client or from the server. Let's look at the client first. There are two steps. You first need to get a permission from the user. Check if the user has already granted access to the API using has-granted scopes. Otherwise, request permission by calling grant. Use the scope strings you obtained in the previous step. Once the permissions is granted, you can make API calls on behalf of the user. To send requests to the Google APIs, you can use GAPI. For example, if you want to use a Google Drive API, add client module, then drive module with the API version. Using client libraries is simple. In this case, I'm grabbing the list of files and folders in the user's root directory. OK, let's see how we do the exact same thing on the server side. Getting the user's permission happens on the client side. Use grant offline access to get a permission. Offline means that you can access Google APIs even when the user is not using your application. Upon user's consent, your client will receive an object that contains auth code. And now, you can send the auth code over to the server using a secure HPS connection. On the server side, use the client library to exchange an auth code with the cliential object, which includes access token, refresh token, and ID token. The access token is a primary key to access the user data through Google APIs. The refresh token is a key to renew the access token. And ID token represents the authenticated user, as I mentioned in your previous video. Remember that the client libraries take care of refreshing the access token if it has expired. For this reason, you should store the credential object in your database after each request. This ensures you always have the latest credential object. Once you got the credentials, you can make API calls by using the specific API's client library. OK, so we have gone through the steps we recommend in order to use Google Sign In effectively. If you have any questions, ask them at Stack Overflow with a tag, Google Sign In, and we will do our best to answer them. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you will enjoy coding a smoother sign-in experience for your users with Google Sign In.


Okay, today's episode, Kirsten and I are the only ones that have seen it, I think, and we just really enjoyed it because it starts out with a sincerity of the heart to get married, but unlike our community where there's all this support and joining and opportunity to work through grievances and unhealed issues before they actually get to the altar, so to speak, this wedding ceremony is actually used to flush up kind of like in the early days of and we had friends about 10 years ago that just them getting married, the parents didn't like it, and others just flushed up all this stuff in here, all of their grievances come up because of their commitment, and they can't really make the full commitment until some of these deeper abandonment issues are faced, and it's really funny because those of you seen touched by an angel, there's angels, Monica, Tess, and Andrew, and Monica is still an angel in training, so she's got this pure heart and beautiful words, but instead of just wearing her role lightly, she takes her role very seriously every time, and so in this episode she's a wedding planner and actually becomes a wedding planner and forgets she's an angel here to shine the love of God, so she's getting prompted throughout the episode didn't you forget something? Didn't you forget something? And she's like, what did I forget? I've got the cake. So it gets revealed what what it is she forgets in the end, so I think you care about it. Yeah, it's just very clear as it goes through. It's like you can't say yeast to God you can't say yeast to love, so you can't really even get married to a person while there's this deep hurt and belief that you've been abandoned by love or betrayed by love underneath. It would be just over the top and so the bride, she actually can't even make herself go through with it, something in her nose that there is a deeper call for healing that she has and so the wedding day is like it just brings it all to a head of everything that needs to be seen and faced just gets pushed up to the surface and it's so beautiful to see that just like for us there's a whole team of angels there to support them to go into the deeper healing together. It's not about a wedding and then half the group there are like the family members saying let's get on with the ceremony we're here for a wedding and the ones who are aware that you know this is about awakening, this is about relationship with God saying it's not about a wedding. There's something much deeper going on so it's very clear it's a very clear purpose episode. And even the angels who are miracle workers they don't know everything just like you're only given what you need to know because it's for healing you can't just step ahead and orchestrate what you think is supposed to happen. They say things moment by moment because those that need the healing have to speak and go through it. Allow it. It's the thing the healing has to be allowed so even though it's a wedding and on the surface of things you would want everything to go according to plan God's plan is healing. God's plan is awakening. It's allowing the healing to come up and so it doesn't go according to plan always. It doesn't look tidy so it's I love that they just give full permission and allowance for what it's really for. Now that was a good little synopsis for all of life. You have an event which this world has lots of events but then suddenly throughout the event we heard the words you need to forgive so that was an important first step right there because there were grievances grievances starting to fly grievances coming up and then there was a sense of an unwillingness to forgive and there was a fear underneath that and part of the fear was not knowing how to forgive like like was daunting like an overwhelming wall so even though the words were coming in there from Monica you need to forgive and even saying sometimes it's for yourself it's not for another person so the incentive should be there but there still was this fear about how and it seems like as it went on more and more the wedding was stopped and all the emotions came up and all kinds of other things started to swirl. There was something that was forgotten that had to be included a forgotten letter a forgotten invitation to invite God in which is really the awareness that you can't personally do it you need help to forgive you need God or the Holy Spirit to forgive and then it seemed to just spin in a way where they was out of their control out of their hands as it must be always in a recognition that it's out of our hands and then finally a very strong commitment like it they were both spoken through like the Holy Spirit the presence of God was invited in and they spoke through the commitment that didn't have anything to do with time didn't have anything to do with who was diagnosed with leukemia gripping up of the letter but it's finally that commitment and it's it's interesting that it cannot be difficult to do the tasks that Christ would have you do because it is he who does it it's Christ it's the Lord it's the strength of the Lord that is the how there is no earthly how there is it's not a personal responsibility it's not something you have to figure out all you have to do is open your heart to it a very short prayer here I am Lord it's a prayer of openness and here I am I'm here to serve I'm here to help I'm here to heal that's my only purpose that's my only function and that's an that's an honest prayer there's no pride in that prayer when you say here I am Lord and you mean it you feel so peaceful used to suddenly are open in alignment with love you could see it on their faces at the end the the sincerity the devotion you know it kind of just burst through both of them simultaneously when they were in a place of here I am Lord it's it's amazing to think that all we have to do throughout the day is just to hold that prayer in our heart like to step aside from all the busy running around and in this case it was all the wedding planning and the flowers and the cake and the relatives and the parking and logistics just go on and on and on and on and this is a world of temptation and distractions if you want it to be which you can bring an end to those distractions and temptation with one prayer here I am Lord the power of one prayer makes all distractions go silent makes all temptations silent because what do we know about the Lord the Lord cannot be tempted the Lord has overcome temptation the Lord has showed the strength that's available to us in our lives in our hearts by his demonstration and now you know it's up to us to say yes to that demonstration to say yes to that prayer some of you remember the Lord's prayer lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil deliver us we have been delivered but we have to accept it for ourselves we have to have that prayer right on our heart here I am Lord to stay in that prayer that's how we truly live that's how we feel the joy and the love and the peace and the passion is through that prayer and it's been said that prayers are answered it's more a question of be careful what you pray for is really you know we have we were created by God so we are powerful beyond measure to be created by God so it's like be careful what you pray for because prayers are answered you pray the prayer here I am Lord you're just getting your full focus and attention to really what you're here for and that's why you receive the blessing of it immediately and you prayed that prayer and if you've noticed your mind it's got pulled off onto some meaningless idol some temporary nothing that she'll surely pass away it's here today and gone tomorrow you can say whoa wait a minute there's this there is a prayer that I want to offer here I am Lord right now and that brings the peace right back and it's great this is it's great we have a beautiful marriage ceremony and then we have this because you know I think that marriages and relationships are it's a very important topic it can get you right down to the core of things in a hurry just like when Christmas time rolls around you know it's a symbol of the birth of Jesus and you know there's so many suicides there's there's so much intensity there's so many counseling calls there's so many reports of stress in families maybe families that haven't even been together the grievances have been simmering then they come together over the holidays they even make movies of that they make millions of dollars all they do is they bring a family together over the holidays and they get some good actors and actresses we have a good script it doesn't matter it's going to be a hit because because even watching those movies triggers starts to bring up those those emotions there's so pretty intense emotions around relationships in this case a father that was distant and that she had no contact with but you know there's a lot of intensity there and I think we should be grateful for these opportunities when that intensity comes up because that's really our opportunity to heal you know we can kind of push it out of awareness but when it finally comes into awareness then that's what this whole episode was about it couldn't be pushed away so you couldn't they couldn't just go through the motions and you know let's get it over with and you know it's not about the event it truly showed us it wasn't about the event of a marriage they even said it's not it's not about that ceremony marriage ceremony it's about the marriage the staying with what's in your heart what's important that's what is the focus the focal point so we have a roving mic here I'm pretty sure yeah tech support right there James has got it ready and if you have if you watch this episode or or even had emotions during the ceremony earlier that you the things started to come up and this this is the day for for the healing this is the day for the healing of those intense emotions I didn't have intense emotions but I think when I had to I had to laugh that's an emotion when she when he explained to his parents that she when he did the files was as if he was reading a phone book yeah I say that but like yeah I've been like that too I just get numb and like but then not knowing I had this in his relationship with Dennis and then this was like it's like you don't you don't care I don't care why don't I feel anything now this movie shows me that yeah I didn't trust before me and goes deeper because I saw I was in a relationship with Dennis but oftentimes I just acted out as if he was my father like I was like how can I have a relationship like as if he's my father and just before coming here I had this conversation with Gina and yeah about yeah yeah and it came about about that was about my father as well and last night I dreamt that my father was really angry like he he had hit me a couple times when I was younger yeah and I think that I felt like a bad girl I'm a good girl but I don't love don't love myself and be okay I dreamt that I yeah that my father was really aggressive in my yeah in my dreams he was really aggressive and then it turns out that he I was looking at him and he looked so confused after a while I have this fear of aggression so I I press my I don't want to feel my anger as well and you talked about that the other day how you pushed down the anger yeah I'm afraid of it but in my dream yeah my father was really aggressive and then I looked at him as if he was confused and this morning I thought like okay I don't have to fix anything I'll just give it over to the Holy Spirit so yeah when I could feel here while you were talking and doing the movie I feel like oh yeah it's about trusting God like I don't trust I want to but I have this fear and this movie showed me again like my father did it maybe a couple of times but I didn't I don't trust him like I want to I love him but at the same time I don't trust men and I could see like oh yeah it's for me to trust yeah to trust God like I give myself to him I can really feel like yes I'm ready I'm like yeah I can like yeah made it bow to him oh that's beautiful oh it's precious you took your bow today too yes yeah thank you thank you it's interesting that we were talking in there exactly about fathers and my father was very physically abusive and I left home at 15 so um I never went back home so I was telling her that eventually that God moved on my heart to forgive him for who he is he said I want you to forgive your father for who he is you were placed in that home for a reason because of who you are becoming and um that was a weird kind of a weird thing for me to be able to do but when I was finally able to do that it showed me that um I don't have to be a part of his anger and things like that anymore I don't have to be ruled by that anymore and then in a lot a lot of women we as women we we want that male role in our in our lives so we end up marrying the same type sort of and then you know ends up when after the other sometimes and ends up in bad relationships and we really just wanting our father to love us and so then when we look at God and he's it's called he's called a hymn it's very hard for women who've been abused by their father to embrace God because we see him as hymn as well so um I just think it's precious that she is able to do that today and then all tied in together and with marriage as well yeah it's beautiful it it is that we have these concepts and memories in mind and and they're the past so we're trying to relate as we move through life we still have those memories from the past and and we're it takes a lot of devotion to open up to a spirit that's neither male nor female that's that's pure I am this that's our destiny that's our true will and and Jesus used when he prayed he would talk about Abba father but but now we know that that God isn't male or female or masculine or feminine it's just love and we have to rinse our mind of all these concepts and attractions where we seem to replay the thing like you mentioned partner after partner or groundhog day just reliving the same day over and over stepping in the same puddles you know falling for the same traps it can be frustrating when you're aware of it when you start to see the repetition of it and you don't know how to stop it but that's what this was really about too the power of prayer the power of staying open to that guidance moment by moment is quite an adventure and so I really think that the vows that were shared that Nicola and you just shared is not really different from the vow that you shared it's the same vow you all have the same smile on your faces like you've just made a very important vow one that will carry you in a new way in a brand new way and keep things brand new always ever fresh and innocent and new not rehashing the past because that's no life to rehash the past or to search for someone to fill a perceived lack and have the same disappointment come over and over that's very sad and frustrating and it's not really God's will for us to go that way for me a wedding has always symbolized the end of separation the return to heaven um symbolically speaking what was separate is now joining in one and I've always thought it was it was very you know very very beautiful and uh you know I when I think about the way so many marriages go today the statistics are not kind they're not kind and uh you know what I witnessed out there today just the the authentic you know genuineness that you you can't fake I mean just just the love and the joy that I witnessed it's I could say it's inspiring but that doesn't describe it I really can't put words to it and I just want to say that you know what I've seen I'm so happy to be a witness to and my my prayers that used to stay together forever that's I just want to wish you the best I'm going to talk about why I was so upset I don't really know why I was so upset but um it seemed so sad to me that the mother manipulated the letters like that and it was just crushing for me that she didn't get to be where the father wasn't in her life like that I'm not really sure why that tore me up so much it just seemed really sad like something was lost like there was I I think I believe in loss that um as we can talk about that it it would be sad and it would be hurtful if if manipulation had a had a reality to it in other words I think when I think of manipulation I think of control and really this whole episode was was a total let go of control you know the angels had to let go of control it it kept going that way even the angel of death who was doing the filming test was saying get out of my face you know she didn't like that there Monica was trying to do her job but then she said you're ruining my wedding when you invited the father because from the perception this was like a father that had not been there and now you're ruining who invited him I was just doing what I was said to do you know so it's the spirit is behind all the symbols of the world and brings in all the ingredients brings in everything we need just to find that forgiveness just to find that innocence and then the hurt can come in is when you start to look at it from like a time perspective like oh she was robbed of years and years and years robbed of a loving relationship with her father because someone else hid something or manipulated something or controlled something but if we actually go into that manipulation more and more you can see there's feelings of betrayal that come in there's rage under this belief in manipulation and control as if one could control another one could prevent love and God is really teaching us that we have to lift that up we have to get past this idea of victimization because there's always hurt and always pain with victimization and in the Bible it says you know all things work together for good for those who love the Lord we're back to here I am Lord as soon as they open up as soon as they open up to God they invite God in at the end as soon as they open up and start to feel that love activate in their hearts then then it clears and and so that's great that you can observe that that's what we want you to do when we show an episode just to watch you could feel it in yourself you know this hurt and and then as you go through that healing then it opens up your whole life a new gives you new opportunities to to love and to extend love to be an agent of God you know on earth extending it's which is really what you want that's what you're praying for yeah but I'm glad that you were able to get in touch with that because it would be sad if manipulation was was the fact of it we just have to really lift that up and then I wanted the father to get to walk down the aisle I had a huge attachment to that outcome but the mother get she like did that to her the whole life and that revenge or something I don't know well you know that's the fun part of watching a movie together or episodes because if you go around with the mic you know people say I wanted this to happen I wanted that to happen and really Christ is saying to us if you really look at your own mind it's pretty wacky because there's a lot of different outcomes that may you may even be thinking of the conflict with each other which you think I think well actually I kind of mind it no you know it's like we're not sure actually what outcome we actually want if we're honest we start to see that it's pretty wacky in there and then that's why we need the healing you know that's why we're here that's why we have relationships that's why we make commitments a relationship is a commitment a diet is a commitment the yoga practice is a commitment going to job to a job and working and showing up on time of whatever days or hours you're supposed to work is a commitment we're given these little mini assignments and commitments by God to strengthen our own integrity our own alignment with spirit and so it's important to not push those assignments away and that could be part of what Levy talked about like when you know when Dennis was there there was an assignment but at least you can notice that you were kind of afraid of something and numbed out and now you're getting tired maybe it had a lot to do with my relationship with my biological father which is still in memory it's not like he's physically even present but in thought in memory he was there and then that gets put on to Dennis and then there's a numb kind of feeling and then it can be reflected back like don't you care I love you so much don't you care you know it's it's that's how it goes and it gives us a great opportunity to heal the truly crack open and live and love so it's it's beautiful it's I just have such a gratitude for the opportunities we get so many so many opportunities thank you welcome is it on if I can use marriage as a symbol of a relationship that's what I got out of that movie for me the focus on finding forgiveness finding a relationship with God through a relationship with the other whether it's husband wife or my parents you know for being here for a week so far all these relationships are coming up and they're all becoming real mirrors for me personally and I think you mentioned it in the film touchdown at the end but it wasn't really the focus of the film but it was very important to see that the the the groom said to the wife to the yes to the bride this is about you this isn't about your mother or your father or siblings or whatever you had you felt like you needed to forgive them but it seems like it's on the planet it's becoming more and more a focus that I need to do forgiveness I need to forgive it's personal responsibility and it's becoming more clear in my life as a the focus on my in my spiritual life now is on becoming more conscious of my own decision to hold grievances or grudges or sins against the other and then finding and within myself and and this is really helping me to see that it's no more a focus on you know who did something to me but more about me and God and that's where I'm finding it so helpful the world is kind of disappearing and it's more about and then of course I'm feeling like I'm disappearing very really you know so and you're all helping me to stay focused on this can stay focused you know no it's not over there I think I see it over there it's like it's really coming around back it always comes back to me and I see that you have a lot of helpers here huh yeah everywhere and then I then I'll go back and get some clarity by talking to the person the last thing I want to do and and then I'll say what is this what you meant and come up all of a sudden find out that's not really what they meant that was my projection or perception um so this is so powerful I can't tell you I can't even figure out how I haven't figured this out in the last 15 years since I first met you David and others um but it took me to get away from my world back east to really and get away from my job family friends selling my house you know almost getting rid of everything to you know stuff things that I identified myself with to get back to my relationship with with God and then I can have fun rather than holding grudges with everyone I meet you know I don't know if I really have a question but that of course the question that part I was like what is that question and all I could think of was the answers in the question and uh inviting God in for everything this was a real burden for the first three days here was like because it kept on it seemed like it was like I don't and I remember doing this you know many years with this idea I was like I don't you know you called it metaphysical ghosting I think I heard it brought up and that really helped me because I've been doing that and staying focused on the relationship what's really going on and dealing with it not stuffing it down but really dealing with it and so many here have helped me to stay focused on it so that's it's a it's like a training it's a because it's easy to like just think you're doing it right and you can't you can't do this alone I am convinced I'm sold on that there's one experience I'm learning here is in a very few and I think you got somewhere with it I don't I don't know about your personal actual you somehow were able to throw yourself out there in a way that's been very learning for me but I don't think most humans are able to do that if that's what you did I don't know but maybe you had companions there that you just arranged your saint an angel so that's that was great I was like how an angel can make a mistake you know she's like what is it I'm supposed to be doing here she's like I'm just trying to make a wedding happening happening everyone's been keeping us all focused and it's it's such vigilance it takes to stay focused on we're not just here about putting these banners up and and the wedding cake I loved when I saw the wedding cake the focus obviously for them was not on the externals you know even the flowers I thought maybe you picked them out of the ground or something but it was still beautiful you know it's like don't get sidetracked by the by all the by the form the the wedding ceremony and all that and I've seen that so many times from my background and experiences yeah your mind goes with you wherever you go so you know you're able to hear from from the far east that sounds good but it came from hell part of in the far east and then the same you know exactly the relationships show up and then you talk about selling your house and letting go of your job but but Ken was a woodworker and there was wood all over I mean it's like it's like you it's all spirit the spirit's like here it's like giving you those old symbols and it's like saying let everything be made new let everything be made new just have a fresh moment a fresh start with everything there's a lightness to that that's what we want we don't want to be tied down to our past and finally feel like a new creation yeah that's great I can see it on your face you're smiling more than ever I got me interested in the wedding cake I gotta see it before it's all carved up see what Ken was talking about there it was from our usual very excellent supplier supplier our usual supplier the free store food bank the party that affected me in the movie was where she was trying to write her vows and she said that how can you write your vows when you have hate in your heart and that was so big for me because I keep thinking okay I'm giving my life to God whatever I'm giving I'm I'm gonna give it over whatever and then I think oh but is there still something there that I'm still hanging on to I'm still blaming somebody I'm still and then I think well that's maybe my block that I can't write my vows because I can't I have to do some more forgiveness or yeah release that so I that was a big thing for me in that movie I thought yeah that could be it you know I just have to start looking more and more at who I'm not forgiving and who I choose to keep hanging on to and who uh yeah who and uh I'm so pleased to be with you guys for this day and that's all I got to say yeah yeah I think it's so important because we talked about how like lovey talked about pushing the the hatred down like it's frightening because and I know so many people who tell me that like well I don't like repression and I don't like the now but I'm not letting that be stepped because I don't like it's not going to be pretty if it comes up but um really that's what the spirit is is telling us that that you you can't be free of it until you're willing to look at the full extent of your own self-hatred you will not be willing to let it go and that's an important idea until you're willing to look at the full extent of your own self-hatred you will not be willing to let it go so that can be a little scary but it's also helpful to be pointed in the right direction and uh I don't know if you remember that Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia did a movie years ago when a man loves a woman remember that's a when a man loves a woman it's a great movie because she seems to be the one that's got the addiction issue and so it seems like she's the one in the relationship with the problem but then when she goes through 12 steps and she opens up to her mighty companions and she starts to heal and she heals and she heals and she heals and she's got men friends that are part of the program that are like really helping her like her husband will say okay I have a little time and I really have to call so and so she's she's right in the healing process and she realized it's taking her in a beautiful direction but she has to let go of all that stuff of conventions how much time I'm spending whether to her friends or male or female all the typical things because she's she's been an addict and she wants to be free of that and then she heals and then suddenly the Andy Garcia character it starts to be like where he's hanging on all of his jealousies it was always her problem her problem her problem he was never looking inside he was never taking responsibility for his state of mind and that's part of why relationships can be so filled with heartache it's the codependent aspect it's the I want you to rescue me you know like John Wayne come riding in the man or the woman come riding in and save me and it's as if there's such a self-hatred that still had held on to within the personality self that it's like well if I could just find my other half that'll solve it but it doesn't work that way in fact there was a great great family therapist you might have heard of John Bradshaw he's an excellent family therapist and he said most people think that relationships are one half plus one half equals one and he says only problem is it's a multiplication sign there in the middle one half times one half equals one fourth you feel like the one fourth you you think you fall in love and you're going to go through this relationship with your other half to complete you and you don't realize it's a big scam it's a scheme that you can't actually achieve it that you will never find that one half times one half equals one because it's multiplication you'll feel like that fourth and you'll think you're so unworthy and so deficient and then you might start singing that Eric Carmen song never going to fall in love again I don't want to start with someone new because I'm a one fourth now and I don't want to be in one eighth or one sixteenth so you see if you know if you really are are down on yourself you're thinking oh I messed it up I done the one one half times one half I'm a one fourth then I do the one fourth times one fourth and I'm now a one sixteenth it's like okay I'm entering the convent and well I still have something left I still have a I still have a sliver left so maybe I give it back to God you know here I got a one sixty-fourth can I still come back to heaven but actually what John did he always like I told you Jesus comes through with the positive he said no it's actually this is the equation one times one equals one you have to come from your own wholeness you have to come from your own confidence in God you have to come from your own joy and that's what holy relationship is when you are coming from your wholeness your healing your completeness your confidence then you've got something to give you can take your one and multiply it with the one and you still have one and you've always been one because there's only one yes to whom God has joined together in creation man cannot put asunder that's what the teaching is that's the great marriage teaching whom God has joined man cannot put asunder you can't split up the one you were never a half you were never a fourth never a sixteenth it was all part of a belief in lack that somehow you were separate from God and if you have a belief that you're separate from God what else but prayer here I am Lord joining with God saying be with me come into my relationships come into my life come into everything just just come and and show me the way guide me lead me and we can't we can't hide our light so don't put your light under a bush or you can't you can't hide it some of us had grown up and we had a joy or a passion as a child to sing you were saying nine years old you were already singing country in bars in bars but you love to sing and then you marry the son of a preacher man and I did but I had several marriages before him you're the one at the well and you said that you were you were told though in that marriage that particular marriage that I don't want you singing country yeah he told me he took my identity away from me you know as a child really um that's what I was meant to to do I just picked the guitar up one day and it was just in there in me so when I married um when I married this son of the preacher man which I did write a song about by the way it's called married the preacher man I'm not want to watch it on youtube it's pretty funny but anyways I my thought process was um all right I have been married to the um I've been a childhood bride to get away from my dad you know I purposely when they found me you know as a runaway and put me back with my father I purposely said the first guy that takes a trash out I'm marrying him you know in a trailer park and seriously that's what I did and it was a horrible mistake he was a way worse abusive than my father but I had my daughter with him and you know of course that didn't last and so then anyway by the time I make a long story short by the time I got to the preacher man I thought now this has to work because he's so far from what I've always chosen right it has to work God's involved and the problem was he um I call it defrauded me because he didn't tell me that he was uh he was bipolar and he um had grown up you know with with bipolar and who should be on medication whatever and and his thought process which is correct in some aspects was I'm healed you know I'm totally healed and um I don't need to take that but there's a manifestation of healing I you know I mean if it's not manifested and you're abusing your wife and you're like this you know there's something wrong you know with that and so that damaged me 13 years of that damaged me uh me Christianity and churches you know we get out in the parking lot and we bet I just leave wonderful praise and worship service and we'd be at each other's throats in the parking lot and so that back and forth deal it damaged me in a lot of ways so I when I did leave him two years ago I ran as far from Tennessee as I could to Idaho where my family are and so for two years I've been going through a process of everything being stripped away from me everything which is um the best thing that can happen to me but yet it's the most hurtful and the most um humbling in the most emotionally stripping you know I've always been the strong one no matter what I've gone through I've always my sisters say oh my god she's so strong I've never seen anybody like her but I felt so weak yesterday it was so weak that I was ready to check myself into mental hospital before I contacted you and when I contacted him it's like I don't even know it was quick he called me and I was shocked because Christian leaders don't do that I mean they don't not in the church I can contact a Christian leader about my marriage and say please help me and I wouldn't get an answer for a week later so that it shocked me whenever he called me it's like almost immediately within what 30 or 45 minutes or something and then it all worked out whether they were able to come here yeah it's such a clearing too because because we you have gifts that that can be used in a far greater plan and and you know that inside and and everything that seemed to hurt us or damage us or be hold us back or however we look at it we have an opportunity to kind of empty our heart out empty ourselves out and say okay god I'm I want to be used by you for your glory for the good of everyone and then that's when things start to turn around that's when we we don't need so much to rely and lean on other people or even lean on relationships but we can let the spirit bring them as a blessing and then we can always give the glory to god so we so we don't have that dependency that's it's on the flesh it goes more and more to the spirit but it's great you took a lot of courage just to reach out and to write that email you know to search online and say okay here I am in you talk right up first one I'm like okay this looks interesting this is because I am like not I have a religious bone in my body you know so I'm so like more open to like you know I know there's more than just what I've been taught you know and I want to know I'm the type of person it's like a bulldog I want to know what it is I want to know why I'm here I want to accomplish what I'm supposed to accomplish and I want to be I want to to to do everything I'm supposed to do before I go and I pray that every day I have a lot of health issues and I pray every day God not going anywhere until I've accomplished what you've put me on the earth for and it's funny that you write you say here I am because I wrote a song called here I am or take me here I am take me wherever you want me to go and so that that witness to my spirit I really appreciate you mentioning that always but always we always had a resident singer and at four o'clock in the morning Ricky got up and was Sarah took her and put one on a plane one on a plane swooped down over to pick the next one up and brought her out here even have the same same guitar keys and like I just put this on a plane there is there is like that's about it you're like the monica the the irish angel going okay lord whatever you got oh drop one singer off and oh they got the same guitar case that's a nice little touch there but you know it starts from a higher perspective you see how wonderful it is because it's beautiful Ricky actually had been out here and had been helped preparing for this and then she was getting she was time for her to go back to our campus place because she's going touring for anywhere between a month and two months and she had to gear her mind up and get prepared for that tour and everything and so it was like one out and one in this music we love music we love live music we love music from the heart it's it sues our soul you know it's it's it's a big part and and I do see it that that's how it's like God just providing for all of us it's a blessing for all of us it's a blessing you could feel the blessing right away but that's how it works we just have to trust it we have to trust that without trying to control it or or figure it out it's just going to happen to us if if that's a prayer of our heart it's beautiful I do want to say this the song um it actually I was taught something today about selfishness because the song that I wrote I thought that was about me when I wrote it about this is about my forever love you know all this kind of stuff that one you know once even after she's been married many times and hasn't found it just being honest right so when I wrote it I thought it's so beautiful beautiful two weeks two weeks ago and it has to be about me more you know and so then when I when you guys were doing your vows I was like crying and I sing this song Lord told me you were selfish this song was not for you or them so you need to put aside your selfishness sing this song for who you wrote it for and like wow you know that is just how God works yeah I just I just had this occurrence when um your she and you were sharing how on the internet and David popped up first and it's been for a while now part of our task was you know engine searching doing this doing this am I are we like promoting something are you trying to sell something it feels like a company a business and I've joined with um a couple of people and they're doing this non-stop and they're just losing it and I'm like I don't know what anything's for like we really don't and yeah you showing up this is just a witness like there's a call for help and it's just spirits coming in through so fast yeah no delay hey yeah you just go wow I don't know what anything is for I think it's sitting on a computer transcribing something or we don't know like the calling is out there so strong now but yeah it's just coming in so the prayers are answered the internet the powerful tool so quick exactly it was so quick yeah it was being used by spirit it's like Ricky she actually when we just got this monster going I guess it's been going like seven years now the center and it wasn't it was probably going a couple two or three years and then we got this email from Ricky and she's like yeah what's going on I'm in Nashville and I've written all these songs and but my career's not taken off and and I don't know what it's for and this and this and this and she's a strong woman too she's very powerful voice very strong but she started to be like more taken down to her knees like like she's going to be a rock star and hit all these things her sister's like did you get that big break yet oh I'm with you and you get that big break but she found herself in a motel room with her guitar and her dog and this course of miracles book and that's it and she just was like okay is this where's this going to go then she told me she wrote I always used to get at least I could get a restaurant gig I could get always fall back if I couldn't get a singing gig I could always get a waitressing gig and then she would start writing likes what is up I seem like I'm just in this motel room and I'm it's like a real prayerful time but it's like things are being taken away like the doors are all closed there's nothing not even a waitressing gig she says is something up something's happening something's going on and then some months went by and she wrote another email and then I called her and I said I think you should come and so she said okay I'm in Nashville I got to sell some guitars and and I've got to find what to do with my dog and then I'm I'm going to visit my family because they're in Florida and Louisiana and so forth and I'm coming she got a little CRV Christ remembrance vehicle and she hopped in and she sold her guitars and she came out in her little CRV and she came here and then it was it was tough because she had done an album she actually had a CD but then she I said great I'd love to sing me something oh my you got a great voice well send me your CD so she sent me the CD and then the next time I talked to her she said before you listen to it I said well I already have she said oh god because there's one song I don't want you to hear because there's some lyrics that I just don't want them to go in your ears and I said oh you mean that song where you say saying I want to walk through walls and still get laid she goes I gave her the exact lyrics that she didn't want me to hear on the phone she's like oh my god that's the thing I didn't want you to hear and you're giving it right back to me so but anyway she came out and and that began like unloosening of emptying out letting go of pride and and she kept thinking I want to sing sing for the lord and right she's a songwriter write songs but there was so much purification they had to happen I don't know what was it like three three years it's about three years of purification and then I think she was out here at the monastery where she started to put down these lyrics and or make a song from something that Suzanne had written and it started her kind of ignited her of being used in a very very direct way my god now she travels around and she sings and she witnesses and she is transparent and shares her stories and sings her songs and it's all beautiful and and so it's beautiful that how it works and it is interesting because with all the different things we're doing with SEO and this and this and then for me to pop right up there in that answer that the spirit has to use the symbols so people can find their what's in their heart of course it's got so many symbols going to movies and music she's she's the queen of of symbols she's she's a track yeah she's a tracky she's pitch she's rolling them in send them in as fast as they'll come actually the first first day here I thought okay I'm gonna do what Nicholas said you should start writing them down so I go to bed and I think I got seven down from the first day and thought oh this is going to be way too burdensome and really there's been dead things day after day the movie the peaceful warrior I woke up at the spirit woke me up at 515 am you know six o'clock is early enough at 515 and word of the day is trash like are you kidding look up the word trash the theme for today is trash I said oh I better do that bathroom that's my duty to take my garbage out and then when we're watching the way of the peaceful warrior take out the trash you know I had a hint of thought that it might be something like that but I just wasn't watching for it and boom so I was glued to the movie trash in your mind right that was boom yeah it was whole different connotation that you thought I've had lots of votes here I just want to say something following on what Portia said I was in the casita in the Casa de Malagros with a group and I was just telling them or I guess we had just seen the movie there and that same line came well Tia we got to take the trash out of our minds that's the whole thing remove the obstacles to God's presence and then we hear this creature breaks right outside the the building and the guys call it basura which is trash in Spanish perfect timing coming at you every angle when you're ready it's coming at you to a theater near you your mind that's the closest theater it was today was very fan from the mic I don't know why but it started at 3 30 in the morning and took Ricky and you know there's been this real experience lately of any idea of knowing anyone our friendships or anything even though there's so much love here and all for the last six months or so it's been a real releasing of persons and the idea of persons and to Ricky and I had just a really joyful trip in it was very high and in purpose and we were just very joined in our function we realized that if if for one split second we thought there were two people who loved each other in the car we could end up in Reno by accident because you know the energy of that was that excitement energy which is not the same as the still deep you know and we both were having that same healing all summer so we were very willing to stay and get her on the right lift off but to come and pick you up because remember I've been driving it's dark and I've been looking front on hearing a voice beside me and that a national style voice like yours the same tempo as yours the same case the exact same thing and how this really strange feeling after I put Ricky on the curb and said goodbye I was like that's it I don't understand that like if this feels I remember I said something like say hello to the boys it was something like bizarre like like a person lying and I'm like strange and I got in the car and and then and I've had this experience with with you to this summer too where I had to say oh gosh you know I can't have a thought of how much I love you as a friend anymore can afford it because this experience that's coming in and she asked me to take the photos today and everyone in this community knows that I'm hard to get any photos because I've taken most of them so I couldn't do it anymore I said I really just want to sit and watch you get married I really just want to sit we just watched Walter Mithy and he didn't take the picture of the snow leopard when they tracked up to the top of somewhere in Afghanistan and they sat there and so this morning when I turned to him I just said I just I just don't want to watch the snow leopard and he said that's okay and it was so it was just so great because this willingness to release each other even from the helpfulness or something and and again with my mighty companion here like I surrendered my Monica being any kind of a wedding planner even though my heart leaps at those thoughts I couldn't do anything for you we had this talk it was all given for you to do the things that I generally would think I would love to do and it was my greatest pleasure to watch myself myself do everything with the exact love of just watch myself do everything and like I felt like I got to have the lesson of this touched by an angel sequence today already by setting back and then joyfully the camera arrived in my hand anyway and photos appeared but I didn't I still had my leopard moment so I don't know it's just everything was given and I just that's all I want I just want to surrender this idea of my myself more and more and I just really grateful for all the opportunities and the reflections and yeah that's all thank you sir this was the snow leopard day for all of us really beholding


Coming off back-to-back 21 seasons and three straight conference titles, Big Fork Girls basketball returns everyone from last year's section runner-up team. They're once again off to a good start this season, and this experience core is ready to make some noise. For Big Fork, it's been business as usual this season. Ranked number four in Class 1A and off to an 11 in one start. We've done a pretty good job most of the year. We've done the court hard, the girls play hard. They have a lot of fun together and they're really a good bunch to work with. And everyone returns from last year's 27-win team, including a core of four seniors that brings a lot of experience. We've been playing since fourth grade, so that helps because we play as a team and it's easier to play together and stuff. Our goal is always to beat every team and be undefeated in northern championships. And they're getting it done on both ends of the court with the stifling defense holding opponents to 37 points a game and an offense that can attack you in many different ways. It's good that we all can score because a team doesn't know who to guard and if someone's having an off night, there's someone that you know that's going to be on. So the other team can't really prepare who's going to be on that night or who to guard really tight. And they're motivated to get over the hump in their section, hoping to get another crack at defending 7-8 champs, Mountain Iron Bull. They're well-coached, they're fundamentally sound and that's where we're trying to get.  So with high expectations, this experience group is focused on taking it day by day, but still with their goals in mind. We want to get the conference chance again and hopefully be section finals to go to the state championship. It's kind of been our dream since we were little and stuff. Then last year we were like this close and just really wanted this year. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Okay, great. I just wanted to make sure before I started. Thank you for that introduction, Marie. I'd like to begin by thanking all of the organisers for hosting such a great event and for so easily accommodating me online. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Dr Cooper for his support and encouragement of myself and other early career researchers over the past few years. In fact, in honour of John's Tudor regime matches I have with me today or I would have done the first piece in my personal collection of random Tudor paraphernalia. I fell in love with this Mary Queen of Scots Christmas tree decoration at Edinburgh Castle and so she was gifted to me by a friend. But this tiny version of Mary encapsulates some of the representational themes that have dominated perceptions of the Queen of Scots since the 16th century. The strength of her Catholic faith and its perceived threat is represented by the wearing of not one but two crosses and the black dress embellished with gold, although probably exaggerated here for a Christmassy aesthetic. It could suggest an irreverent widow and the valuing of personal magnificence over feminine duty. These perceived problems with Mary's character were first popularised by humanist scholar and resistance theorist George Buchanan. However, in the early 1560s, while the Knox Elmer debate established what type of female rule that England could tolerate, Buchanan seemed relatively happy with his own, content to enter her service as she returned to Scotland in 1561. However, by 1567, a year of Mary's forced abdication from flight to England, Buchanan had deserted her for the sake of the cook and begun to pen some of the most vitriolic pieces of King's party propaganda against her. Three pieces stand out as forming the basis of Buchanan's depiction of Mary and his thoughts on queenship, though they are not necessarily as well known as his most famous work, De Uro Rhegnaet Upper Scots. The Detection of the Doings of Mary, Queen of Scots was published first in Latin and then in English, probably in pretend scots, by John Day in 1571. It provided a largely falsified if rhetorically compelling account of Mary's tyrannous reign in the same year and ammunition to the true lords, published by both Blackpervict and John Day, justified her removal from a more political and security conflict point of view. Buchanan's most extensive account of Mary's reign can be found in chapters 17 to 19 of his rare in Scottish arm historian. They're not published until 1582, but there are a number of reasons for a similar presentation of Mary. The need for friendly relations with England is roughly similar and Mary's status as murderous conspirator remains the same, though possibly with a slightly more religious edge. The quoting of passages from the Detection verbatim indicates expansion rather than revision, and for these reasons, and for the sake of the simplicity of the short paper, material from each of these works will be taken as equally indicative of Buchanan's overall ideas about queenship. I have one essential question for Buchanan's work and his perception of gender, which is, was there an irreconcilable disconnect between the traditionally masculine institution of monarchy and the feminine person of Mary, Queen of Scots? Were Mary's gendered failures presented as inevitable, or were her feminine vices deemed personal failures, and, or did Buchanan implicate Elizabeth II with arguments that made all female rule suspect? As his political theories would go on to become influential throughout Britain and Europe, it is essential that we understand how gender was built into his ideas. Some excellent studies of similar cases of similar texts in the case of Elizabeth have demonstrated the importance of looking for nuances in gendered political thought, as opposed to assuming that everyone was as sexist as the more famous John Mox. Carol Levin and Ian McClaren, among many others, have done excellent work in this field. On the other hand, in the Scottish case, in the Kirsten Post Walton's Catholic Queen Protestant Patriarchy, really spotlights the issue of gender in Mary's reign, but its scope is ultimately too broad for the kind of fine-grained analysis I hope to demonstrate today. This close reading will highlight not only that Buchanan's ideas were individually interesting, but that they also related more closely to Elizabethan politics than is usually acknowledged. By creating a narrative in which Mary fails to live up to the masculine standards of monarchy and gives in to her basis to feminine instincts, Buchanan actually gives Elizabeth the opportunity to do things differently. So for the first part of my analysis, I'll return to the original question that drew me to this field three years ago. When a woman is raised to the rank of queen regnant, does she does the definition of monarchy change as dramatically as we might think? What were the expected virtues of a good monarch and were they essentially masculine?  Though usually gendered male, Constance Jordan has highlighted that these virtues were already being employed by the likes of Thomas Elliott in women's defence. While unlikely, it would not be impossible for an exceptional woman to display what Elmer had termed the shining ornaments of the mind. Similarly, John Leslie argued that female rulers and specifically Mary lacked neither wit, policy, dexterity, prudence, liberality, justice nor mercy, neither any other thing meant for a prince. Buchanan, on the other hand, systematically denies Mary's display of any positive masculine characteristics. By way of contrast, he praises the honesty and wisdom of her half brother James Stewart. Though cunning, Mary is not wise. Her decision-making process is characterised in Buchanan's words, words by headlong haste and rashness. She is described as inconstant and changeable, her inability to make decisions compounded by inappropriate counsel. In response to the rise of Ritio, for example, he argues in ruling the kingdom she should consult the nobility rather than worthless tramps. Buchanan does in places acknowledge Mary's military capability and some level of courage, the second cardinal virtue, to back that capability up. His description of her action at Carbury Hill is mixed. She read with her army and talked with her men to ascertain their state of mind. Though she had a momentary lapse in control on seeing the famous banner depicting her dead husband, overall she remained resolute to fight. Buchanan's Mary, regardless of her faults, is anything but timid. Her inability to execute justice, our third virtue, is an obvious failure of good masculine monarchy. However, it's clear that it's not impossible for any woman to display this virtue. Buchanan describes Mary's mother and former Queen Regent Mary of Gies as a reasonable and able woman with a strong sense of justice. Despite her considerable unpopularity in Scotland. By contrast, her daughter does not want justice for her husband's murder. She in both world quote, abandoned the investigation of the king's death and with much more bitterness set about pursuing the authors of the libels, not sparing money, nor men, nor horses. While the failings already mentioned could have been attributed to mistake or misfortune, Buchanan's depiction of Mary's lack of temperance, the fourth cardinal virtue, is the clearest argument for her tyranny. He condemns the French inspired extravagance of a court stating that she spent her time, if not in princely magnificence, yet in more than princely or other unprinci licentiousness. This lack of restraint is amplified by the popular ballads of Robert Semple, closely linked to Buchanan. For example, in the lines, the royal house, refuge to honest men was made a bordello and a thieves den. Scott's at all level of society had to be convinced of Mary's status as the purest of tyrants. Buchanan's definition of which, according to Mason, are, monsters of effeminacy, weak men whose powers of self-control and denial have been overwhelmed by such base instinct as vanity, greed, anger and lust. Buchanan's descriptions of Mary have been seen as condemnation of female rulers for their weak-natured passion and inconstancy. However, the acknowledgement that men could display female gendered characteristics of tyranny and the contextual fact that Buchanan did remain in Mary's service for a number of years suggests that these were not permanent conceptions of gendered characteristics as fixed binaries. There was room for assessment of queenship on a case-by-case basis. And so, if Mary could not be successfully masculine as a monarch, hadn't she at least fulfilled positive feminine roles as a wife and mother? Apparently not. The enacting of these feminine duties quickly backfired on the Queen of Scots and became vulnerabilities both practically and representationally. Indeed, the overarching message of Buchanan's pieces seems to be that rather than trying to live up to feminine ideals, Mary would have done better not to bother as the risks were not paying off. In fact, Buchanan cites Elizabeth as a contrasting example of the benefits of staying single. And so, when it came to the expectations of a good wife, it is worth noting that in some situations, Mary had the capacity to do the right thing. Buchanan makes little to no mention of her first marriage to Francis II and her serious displays of mourning in the style pictured here indicate at least tacit approval of her behaviour. However, although she was clearly capable of living up to expectations of widows during her transition to power, dealing with a living husband and gauging the appropriate reaction to his death as a Queen in her own right would be an entirely different kettle of fish. Similarly, a key concern for political commentators at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign was that a King consort would not only have too much power over his wife, but that this power would be wielded on behalf of either an English faction or a foreign power, neither of which were appealing. By contrast, however, Buchanan's Mary at first represents the entirely the opposite problem, a Queen who excludes and emasculates her husband, an apparent reversal of male and female nature. The result is that her husband, Lord Henry Dunley, becomes untrustworthy to the nobility, but Buchanan is dating that men of such experience did not consider it safe to trust a young man who was wholly controlled by his wife. Mary is cast as the inverse of a good and obedient wife to her husband, even before any discussion of authority being fritted away. However, when it came to her third husband, James Hepburn, the Earl of Bowdwell, she is only too keen to bend to his will. In an imagined letter to her French counterparts, Buchanan quotes Mary as stating that the realm could not be kept in order unless our authority were assisted and furthered by a man capable of taking upon himself the execution of justice and the suppression of the rebellious. Mary is cast as either a disobedient wife or an overly obedient one, depending on the husband. Even when the darling match produces that holy grail for young rulers, a healthy male heir, there is no acknowledgement that this should be considered a success of Mary's. Once James VI and later I had been born, Buchanan made it clear that a simple fact of biological motherhood was of very little significance to contemporary politics. She is described as having no real maternal instinct and a tendency towards infanticide, with the claim that, quote, her mind would not shrink from such a task. In what appears to be a direct comparison with the biblical narrative of the murderous stepmother Athalia, not explicitly referred to by Buchanan, but definitely preempted by his opponent John Leslie. The Queen's brother, Marey, and his king's party are cast as James's protectors. One passage is particularly striking and therefore worth quoting in full. Now that she was rid of this honest popular man, i.e. her husband, the Queen tried to remove other obstacles to her tyranny. She hated those, especially who, seeing that her mind was not more favourable towards her son than it had been towards her husband, had banded together at Stirling, intending no treason, but determined to protect the child. In Buchanan's account, the King's party became stepmothers of a sort through this protective role, responsible for James's upbringing, correct religious views, and education, thus negating any credit Mary might have received for her own son. As James grew older, this stepmother role was increasingly assigned to Elizabeth, as suggested by Vanuut. James argues the following, How fond and inconstant I were if I should prefer my mother to the title, let all men judge. My religion ever moved me to hate her course, although my honour constrained me to insist for her life. So we see that Buchanan's passages on Mary's marriages and motherhood make it clear that to fulfil traditional feminine roles in a literal sense was not a Queen's ticket to acceptance in early modern politics, especially when family politics proves such a problematic distraction. Furthermore, any successes could easily be undermined with the right rhetoric. Buchanan makes it clear that her attempts to submit herself to feminine stereotypes were ultimately Mary's downfall, suggesting success as a female ruler lay elsewhere. And say this close reading of Buchanan's work is part of broader research into the connection between gendered representations of Mary Queen of Scots and of Elizabeth the First. The results so far suggest that although historians assume that an attack on one female ruler was an attack on them all, the gendered campaigns against Mary had the effect of constructing Elizabeth as her opposite. Whether or not this was a conscious process, there are a number of factors that suggest it had a positive effect on Elizabeth's representation. Explicit references within the text are the most obvious factor. Buchanan writes, as she keeps peace and justice among her own subjects in England, so unrequired she offered support to the same end in Scotland. The inference that Elizabeth is a wise ruler concerned with justice and having the courage to deploy English troops constructs her as fulfilling all of the masculine characteristics expected of a good ruler, which Mary failed to embody. Interestingly, he also makes a direct commentary on Elizabeth's unmarried virginal state, which had not yet been established as permanent. Appropriating the voice of Elizabeth herself, he states, I myself have delayed entering in marriage once when I publicly received the crown I was wedded to this realm. As far as I'm aware, Buchanan's commentary is not usually commented on in discussion of Elizabeth's marriage choices, yet here he is implementing tropes that are usually considered to originate in English representations of Elizabeth and slightly later in her reign, namely the idea that she was married to the realm and stepmother to James I. Buchanan's text also reflects a number of themes of the representation of queens that are present across the debate in both countries. One that I have picked up over a number of years is the willingness among commentators to reserve judgment in the case of female rulers until the woman in question has been tested. Even John Knox, who has gone down in history as Britain's chief historical misogynist, waited five years to publish his first blast. Using Mary's own motto, truth is the daughter of time against her as its epigraph. This proverb rops up on both sides of the female rule debate when John Leslie's defence of Mary and indeed in George Buchanan's account. Attack on female rulers are not always driven by outright misogyny, but often wait for some form of evidence or proof of wrongdoing or weakness. As Buchanan himself states, authority is gained by good actions and may be lost by bad, and majesty without virtue vanishes as a shadow. Of course, as we have seen in Buchanan's case, these examples could be strongly gendered and drawn feminine characteristics. But as other research that I've done has shown, accusations of negative feminine traits such as passion or licentiousness were fairly standardised in statements of political or religious opposition. And so regardless of the gender of the individual accused. Indeed, the example of John Knox's rejection in England says there's evidence that to apply any criticism to all women would be counterproductive politically. Finally, although not the subject of my personal personal research is worth noting the practical connections between British thinkers to get an idea of how influential Buchanan's ideas were in the representation of Elizabeth. For example, Buchanan's connection to the Sydney Circle has been highlighted as early as 1948 by James Phillips. Andrew Hadfield has more recently provided a more in-depth chapter on his relationship with Spencer specifically, suggesting Buchanan was one of the sources for the fairy queen and the representation of the villainous asset in particular. Buchanan's ideas about the opposition between Mary and Elizabeth are therefore represented in this poetic expression of the English political psyche. It is these connections in representation that I've been most keen to highlight and suggest need for the exploration. Although the historiography of Elizabeth's reign has come a long way in its inclusion of gender as a category for analysis, the implications of queenship cannot be fully understood when treated in isolation. Where this is the case, it might at first seem that an attack on one female ruler is an attack on the more. However, gendered virtues and biases were not entirely binary. Even Buchanan's most vicious language gives Elizabeth room to do better. Setting Mary up to absorb the representational risks of femininity meant that the more Mary was reviled, the more Elizabeth by doing the opposite could be revered. Buchanan plays an essential role in negotiating the balance of masculinity and femininity that female rules would be expected to display. And this makes a considerable contribution to the way monarchy would be gendered going forward. Thank you.