Hey, good afternoon everybody, Steve with 10 books coming at you again with father Paul Pearson Oratorian in Canada north at our border father welcome. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you very much. Good to be with you Thank you. Thank you. Before we start can you lead us off in a little prayer? Certainly an oratorian tradition is always to pray to the Holy Spirit St. Philip was one of the great saints of the Holy Spirit Yes, we always pray to come with Holy Spirit at the beginning of everything In the father and son the Holy Spirit Amen Come the Holy Spirit and fill the hearts by faithful and kindling them the fire of thy love Send forth thy spirit and they shall be created.  Oh God who has taught the hearts the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit Grant by the light of the same spirit that we may be truly wise and ever rejoicing as consolation through Christ our Lord Amen In the father son the Holy Spirit. Amen Since you brought up Philip neary followed me or follow a saint neary. Could you go over his joyfulness? Sure Well, I think partially this is personality, but also for him he thought that Really living the Christian life and understanding what the Christian life is about meant that Christians ought to be joyful and that That goes back to the New Testament as well Christians be Identifiable by their joyfulness and for him it wasn't sort of like heartedness There's something deeper than that. There's something that was life was fundamentally hopeful and we were being taken care of by God all the time And if we understand that we really shouldn't be burdened by things And so it isn't just a sort of frivolousness. In fact, he was pretty can be pretty tough on that But he was saying that we really ought to be light like children because we were being taken care of over time and That trust in providence was what made made the difference for him Hey, man now appreciate that. I was just thinking about that going, you know, you brought up Philip He was a jokester. He had a good time. He was serious when he needed to be but it's jokes are sometimes a little hard to take It's see people who are sort of puffed up and he poked them like a balloon So he was a bronze of the joke sometimes it wasn't so funny He was the one for really instilling humility in people Yeah, he really thought that not only do we need to laugh, but we need to be able to laugh at ourselves Because he thought that humility was really the foundation of all virtue and if we couldn't Allow ourselves to be corrected if we couldn't look at ourselves honestly if we couldn't laugh at ourselves Then we weren't gonna make much progress so I remember is Did he get up every morning and say it? Watch out for Philip today or he will abandon you or he'll betray you Yeah, they're there a bunch of different max that are really similar on that.  I'll make the wound in your side larger He was pretty convinced that you know he could get up to all sorts of mischief if God didn't look after him Well, that now this isn't the topic of this today show. Maybe maybe we'll do that Maybe we'll do a film everyone down the road. Yeah Dante. Yep. The inferno is quarantine.  Who is yeah? What Dante is such an important character in Italian history Italian literature Dante is sort of like the common the combination of influence is something like Chaucer and Shakespeare All in one because he was really one of the first to write in the Italian language He was there in Florence. He's writing around the early 1300s died in 1321 and He composed did many things. He was very involved in politics as well And in fact, he wrote his great work the divine comedy inferno purgatorio or a decent trilogy while he was in exile and never was allowed to go back to his native Florence again and In fact, he's buried in Ravenna and wouldn't even allow his body to go back after afterwards No, you wouldn't let me back when I'm alive. You're not getting any profit off of me when I'm dead The tomb they have in Florence is empty He's not there So he was somebody who was really immersed in the arts and philosophy and theology at this time And he puts it all together in this amazing work the divine comedy which is So rich that all sorts of people have tried to write about it It's interesting in terms of history in terms of the politics in terms of that's church-state relations Theology and so people come at it from all these very technical points of view But what I found to be sort of sad and all of that although he's gotten a lot of attention I think it's sort of distracted from the main point of what he was trying to get across Around this time around 1300. There was a new sort of spirituality which was focusing on everyday people play people That spirituality and holiness wasn't something intended just for people living in monasteries or people who ended up saying mass every day It was for everyday people. So you start having people writing about Pilgrims progress you'll have the Imitation of Christ coming out soon after this don't he's right the beginning of that and he's really writing as a sort of every man Trying to show how you have to How you have to live your life in order to make progress spiritually and that there's a real choice for each one of us And so he intends this work not just as a sort of Tour de force of literature or survey of history. It's more importantly a guide to the spiritual life And that aspect of it. I think has been well neglected Perhaps it's also because a lot of the books to get written get written to be read in secular universities And they know that if they emphasize the spiritual part of it as much as Dante does that it's not gonna sell Well, I think they sort of missed the point a little bit as a result Those works are all very very interesting and very helpful, but in the end they're only at Serving the main point and that's that Dante wants to help us get to heaven And he was about to lose that and he was about to lose it all He was really off track and had a sort of conversion experience that brought him back And he wanted everybody to share that conversion that he had So it was basically just almost a biography of his conversion Well in a sense, it's very autobiographical But in another sense he means himself as a sort of an example of everybody because he's gonna go through all the sins and hell and Inferno and he's gonna look at them very very honestly sort of see the corruption of them And you'll be able to tell some of those sins were sins that he had problems with and some of them work since it Work really problems for him So but as you go down through the circles of hell, it's almost like an examination of conscience You're reading some of these saints some of these sinners down there and you think wow. Yeah, that sounds familiar those excuses I've used those before and Sometimes it sounds really painfully personal and I think that it's a sort of examination of conscience as we go down through these different levels to see yeah, that could be me That could be me which it goes back to the humility of Philip You were mentioning the Dante has you have to have humility to actually do the examination of conscience Oh, yeah, and for Dante to do this in public It's very clear when he's has a fault and he just lays it out there for everybody to see There are parts in in purgatory right at the end when he's with Beatrice on at the top of the mountain of purgatory and she humiliates she just Reduces him to a blubbering mass And even the angels are saying oh you're being too hard on the guy come on be nice She says no, no, this is for a reason. She's doing it in order to make him be as sorry as possible for his sins And he lets us see all that and it is very humble The iron sharpens iron type deal. I mean we were kind of soft in the sense now somebody corrects us even a priest And we're about oh, how can they say that about me? We're good the point, but we don't like to take ownership of the situations It's a hard thing to take correction It's a hard thing to admit when we're wrong and I think that's something that that Dante was very familiar with He's a proud man and you see him really Growing in humility throughout the course of the divine comedy But also telling us that we need to do that too and I think in our generation in particular We've gotten so unaccustomed to being able to take Criticism or to admit we're wrong and that's a real problem Because if we're gonna grow we need to be able to take that criticism constructively I remember when I was in university. I was a musician. I played the cello and I was doing master's classes with a fairly famous cellist and He was very nice to a lot of the people and when it came to me he had quite a few corrections and When he came up on stage to talk to me he leaned over to me quietly says I have lots of corrections because you play well Oh You see there's something there that can be fixed and the more you see the more the potential is the more you want to push it and You know each human being has that potential But if we're too squeamish to push Then we're not gonna become what we can be We'll always end up being sort of undeveloped in our potential. Yeah Name you think it all walks of life. So you think of sports. I made coach a good coach is Gonna push you to become better. He's not gonna say hey I remember my JV coach once said never take them always use the word satisfied as a cuss word Never be satisfied of where you're at always try to improve Yeah Yeah, I think there there's I mean certainly as a teacher. I'm sure my students will tell stories about how demanding I can be at times In fact this this whole divine Comedy project started in the seminary. I was really surprised that a new generation of people Hadn't grown up reading in the way that I did Mm-hmm, and I mean I read thousands of books Literally thousands books and for many of them they hadn't read any works of great literature And they found literature to be sort of intimidating and that's not a very good thing If you have to read the Bible and interpret the Bible It's gonna be a problem if you have to preach. Yes. Well, I think the problem just in terms of our humanity It's not just for priests So I said if I'm gonna get them to read scripture well Which they need to do in order to do mental prayer and meditation and preaching then I need to show them how to read So we decided to have a seminar which would just read a book together And we and so I chose Dante's Inferno. I didn't tell him was a poem because that was scary And we read it out loud, and we just stopped every once in a while and talked about it and It's different when you hear things out loud And it's different when you have other people to talk with you about it and so we got to the end of this book and it was really sort of Life-changing for a lot of them and they want immediately wanted to do the next one And they pushed their other students like you got to take this you have to take this and so it became sort of a thing so here at the seminary and Several of the seminaries have been through two of the courses Only I've only done in purgatorio and and Inferno on a regular basis. Pereviso's only happened recently because I only had two years to teach them so I Let's go around It takes a while But really what I'm trying to do in the books is to give Everyday people a chance to sort of eavesdrop on those seminars to read Dante With us and to go line by line and just talk about what it means to figure out how it applies to our life right now in the century how it applies to our spiritual lives and so It's broken down into little bits that anybody can handle. I was like really not just about Dante It's also about learning how to how to how to read and not be afraid of great literature Yeah, I remember on my brother who now a priest when his first year in seminary told me hey I'm reading a book called how to read a book Yeah Yeah, actually read that book is you had to read the book how to read a book.  He's a brilliant psychologist I remember talking to a psychologist friend of mine who said Where did Dante get that stuff about suicide? I said, I don't know. She says because that's very modern This idea that somehow they can only communicate with others by some through their own suffering But they can't put it into words that only their suffering can make everybody understand Then you'll be sorry, then you'll know how much I've gone through. Yeah, and he had all that already in the 13th century 1300s and He's brilliant in figuring out what makes us tick.  Yeah, and he's able to figure out He's in in purgatory.  He's talking about the southern cross. Yeah, this is 1300 Even there's a moment at the end of inferno when he's climbing down on Satan's legs and There's a moment when they switch around and he feels as though instead of climbing up. He's climbing down He's climbing up. Well, what's happened is he's actually passed the center of the earth and What was down is now up and don't they figure that out and I thought who would have figured that out in 1300? Yeah, it's sometimes you're just at a loss to figure out how he knew so much about science about philosophy and theology and but the really important thing for me is how much he knows about the human nature and How revealing he is to what makes us actually do what we do Why we're so slow to turn around and repent. We hold on to things even when we know they're doing damage to us Now for the ones you're putting together for the course notes This might be a obvious one, but should you be reading the original book? Wow, like right beside the other one? Well, that's my preference, you know that I know that says on the back of the book That reading Dante's not required. Yeah, but it's really preferred Tended to be a sort of companion volume Will you read a few lines of Dante and then you read this book? Yeah, it's supposed to be a companion volume really that's that was my original intention now I've certainly included a lot more spiritual context to allow you to Get your sort of thoughts together spiritually without having to read Dante at the beginning But it's there to get your mind in the right space so that you can read Dante effect It's not really supposed to be a substitute The illustration of the illustration of Dante was it by Thor I got it over there Yeah, Gustav Doré. Yeah. Yeah, is that what would that rank? Would that be one of like you must have this one? Or is there like a definite edition of Dante's Inferno? Well, you know, there are many really really good translations I've He was mainly Anthony Esselin's very fine translation He was kind enough to do the forward to the Inferno volume And I think his is probably one of the great ones and certainly the one ones that's most Catholic But there are there are many really fine ones. I like Anthony Anthony Esselin's Alan Mandelbaum is also very fine Mark Musa is another one that I whose notes are particularly helpful so and But there are just so many that Hollander. I'm a fan of John Sinclair. That's the one the old Oxford University Press one That's what I grew up in We studied in University But it's hard to you know do without Dorothy Sayers Famous novelist who also did a translation or John Charity the American poet who did a translation I even have Henry Longfellow Get a translation of it. Not a very good translation. I don't think but But so there are many many different editions and you you can read any of them because they go line I go line by line by line number. So no matter what translation you have you'll be able to keep track in my commentary But if somebody wants a recommendation, I recommend Anthony Esselin. Why is this even important? Well, I think because for many of us We don't really think about our spiritual life except in so far as we try to avoid sin We don't really think about how we're doing inside And in fact, we live in a world in which people are less happy than I think they've ever been We live in a world that's burdened with so many things. That's anxious And you know, we're safer and we've ever been Our food chain is safe. We're not starving to death, you know, even now in the middle of this lockdown It's not so stressful, I mean, we're fairly safe These sort of things happened all the time in the 1300s in your dog days age No, you would have most children didn't live to be 10 years old We live in a safe time. Why are we so anxious? Well Dante's point is that sin actually does something very destructive to us It twists us up and we become sort of crippled human beings and part of that being crippled is that we end up suffering and so Out of mercy God wants us to rehab He wants us to straighten out that twistedness and it's only once we start rehab. It will get out of pain and so Dante wanted that for people of his day, but I think in our day. We're even more out of touch With the damaging effects of sin than the everyday person was in Dante's day So the message that he was getting Getting out to people that somehow the reason there's pain is because We're messed up and we're not going to start stop hurting until we start getting our act together It's not just about obeying the rules It's about being free No, yeah, I had I had some joint problems and I had to go to rehab rehab specialist told me right away She says you're gonna hate me at the end of the hour This first few times is gonna hurt a lot And I said, okay, that's fine. I said I I understand and I don't blame you She's but you have to remember the reason we're doing this is so that you can be pain-free And so that you can retain regain your freedom of motion And that's true in the spiritual life too. Our goal here is not to squeeze suffering out of you God doesn't need that He's only doing this because somehow things we go through whether that's the sufferings in this life or the sufferings in purgatory Are the sufferings of rehab? Not the sufferings of torture Remember things was about fun. It was a sermon I have on or a sermon I've heard before of a Father talks about the stone of my Michelangelo sees a stone He has to inflict pain on it to get this beauty out and if that stone was Jell-O and start squiggie around I don't want this. I don't know how would it look like? And that's us we we don't want this we'll try to squiggle out and get rid of that cross Let me take another one and that one's heavier or uglier Versus what God wants us Yeah, and I think that the whole idea of being formed whether that's being formed just as everyday people being formed into holiness Or seminarians being formed as priests or religious being formed It's not an entirely comfortable process Yeah, like you said with physical therapy. I was a trainer. I remember people yet a personal trainer people would tell me you must be destroyed But if you want your goal, you got to go through the you got to go through the fire Yeah, it's true and we have and Christ took himself told us that we have to be willing to die in order to live and St. Paul talks about it as an athlete preparing for the contest Many people in the spiritual History have talked about the spiritual combat minds will scoopily probably the most famous right but the idea that somehow We have to be willing to fight for this and that it's gonna hurt and you're gonna it's gonna take some courage You know, you're gonna have to be willing to take it And that sometimes it'll be hard Say there's somebody watching and they're hearing and they're agreeing with everything you're saying but they go I don't have the courage. What's some good out ways that build it. Well, I think what you way I always start with myself is to look at the Suffering that my sins are causing right now. I Really dislike conflict Disliked it from the beginning But you know avoiding things like that gets you in trouble And I look back and think oh, you know how much trouble I've got myself into you know, how awkward it's been Do you really want to go through that all over again?  Well, you can't walk anymore. Yeah, you go for it Exactly exactly and you know, I'd rather it not get to that level with people spiritually I don't want them to become that level of crippled before they're willing to accept rehab Yeah What are some Good books there's a prerequisite to get to Dante or she's just dive into Dante, you know I would I think it's there's no problem with coming into Dante fresh Okay, I've had English as a second language students straight from high school I've had scientists who've never read a book of literature Who've read Dante? If they can do it Anybody can Yeah, there's no movies on that day if there are they're weird video games and Yes, I don't read Dan Brown. That's that's new. Yeah, it's good for starting a fire. It's yeah That's true. I read the first few pages of it and as a medieval I'm trained as a medievalist It drives me crazy. Yeah, I bet I'm sure Yeah, I can't read stuff like that. So I think really he intends it as a all you need to bring is your own experience and if you just bring in an willingness to go through it with and a willingness to Bring your own experience to the discussion. There's no way you're not going to get something out of it and read him not like You would a regular book just Yeah, take your time with it solely, you know, he's each of the books is broken down into 33 Chapters what he calls canto songs and there's an introductory one So total the trilogy three of 33 plus an introductory hundred cantos So it's already broken down a lot and then I've broken down each of the cantos in three or four even five sections and Given a little introductory spiritual talk about that and then go through that section one of those sections is enough for you to read it one sitting and Really, I think that sometimes we try we read spiritual books too fast, right? We need to Chew on it and digest it St. Philip used to say that when you're doing spiritual reading you should only read until something grabs your attention Then you should stop And you should let yourself just think about yourself react to What difference does that make and don't go on? It's like not biting off more food until you finish chewing Yeah, so I think we read too quickly when we're reading spiritually How and again there might be a softball. How do you know when you're reading too fast? Well, I think when when you just you stop noticing you start really interacting with the material just sort of Observing it rather than interacting with it and To tell you the truth. I think that most people actually read not just too long. They actually read too quickly This is why in class I make my students read out loud I'm really trying to make them hear the words When I read literature, I tend to read it make sounds in my head I sometimes I actually read out loud, but I I want to hear it in my head The different characters have different voices, you know, I want you you need to slow things down And as I said just read until something strikes you and then allow yourself to Ponder on that for a bit That sounds like that does couple things one builds your imagination to your memory. Yeah Yeah, well, certainly, I think the imagination is something that we sort of lost track of Having things be visualized for us Is doesn't do nearly the same thing to our brain You know, you need to picture it for yourself Not just because your picturing it is gonna be better than Cecil B. DeMille's picturing of the Ten Commandments He's pretty good at it And sometimes it can be helpful to see other person's picturing of it, you know, it's you picturing It's not as real to you When I picture when I read a book I Picture the character He has a particular face as people are voiced when I see a movie or TV adaptation of the book Sometimes think yeah And that character is real to me because I've stored away all these images It's almost like my own history. I've started away as something I could picture I can hear and When your imagination works like that your emotions react to your imagination If your imagination doesn't work your emotions don't work very fully. And so you're not really Interacting as a full in a full personal way with the text So it's only when you when you're emotionally involved like that That I think that you're that you're willing to take it personally in a good sense. I remember we had a drastic part I don't know if it's still in her or not the Yay thick and I just opened it up one time and I read a couple chapters and went wow, I saw the movie But I got host The book is way better. Oh Yeah, oh, yeah, they always have to condense things to make a movie And that's that's sort of unfortunate and anyway The movie keeps going When you probably need to pause Yeah, something happens and you go and at that moment you need to stop It's not there for entertainment. We're here to try to learn to read in a spiritual way This is equally true of reading scripture when people tell me they read a chapter a day I say, oh, I could never do that Said you couldn't read a chapter today. Oh, come on. You're educated. No, no, you read a verse And there's like six things to think about You know and if you really think about it It's too much to be able to run ahead and do a whole chapter I feel as though I've just sort of like run through a store without ever stopping and looking at anything That I can I can I can't even fathom how the sanctuaries available to talk about reading or Meditating for an hour on the words our father Yeah Well, if you as you get used to it as you begin to Slow yourself down and read more carefully like this. You'll see that that happens. It's it's Because it's not all just talk talk talk talk talk in your head Remember it's about imagination and then an emotional reaction and you know, let's say that you read a text a text like When the the disciples are there with Peter after our words resurrection been reading about these things in Easter time and So Peter do you really love me and he asked him three times Three times matching up to the three denials that he made, right?  Not only is he Embarrassed that he was such a coward that he gave in not under torture, but under the questioning of a milkmaid in the dark That's heroic But now he's being corrected for in front of all the other apostles and he's supposed to be the boss Yeah, yeah think of the humiliation of that and I think when you stop and think about that you think, you know, how often have I not been willing To take correction in public How often about have I let embarrassment let me hide from the truth? And as you begin to react to that you think why am I reacting to the text that way? Well, that tells me something about me. Doesn't it? Your emotional reactions are going to be different from mine and that's because your history is different from mine and so that emotional reaction tells me that there's something there in you that Needs to come to the surface and Now I need to say to myself. Okay, if that's true, what do I need to do? How do I need to live my life in order to live the truth of this text? And that's why meditation takes time because it's not just about thinking It's about reacting and seeing what it's telling me about me and then resolving to do something about it No, that's great. No, that's perfect How long should somebody? Read that to say Dante Mm-hmm Should they try? Five minutes on just a couple verses one was one of the 33 or Go until the I would say that you know I've sort of I've tried to design it in in my commentary to be able to take one section And right the editors have done such a beautiful job of laying it out each section is starts with a box that's highlighted and It talks about just a spiritual point in general without making any reference to Dante just to get your head on the right channel and then it goes through a section of Dante and You'll get to another section of the box that give talks about another topic just read one of those topics So it's maybe like a fourth of a canta quarter of a can't it might just be less than a page and that usually is plenty and Don't rush ahead There's there's probably half a year's spiritual reading in my book That works. Yeah, I have I will self-dignize myself with ADD So I try to read one book a chapter and then go to another book and another book Instead of trying to devolve all one together try to get like a history in a bit x spiritual reading as well It's different if it there's a it's a murder mystery You're trying to yeah, no different if it's a murder mystery You're trying to follow the plot of something tracking on the killer That's that's a different thing But here you're really trying to to digest and that takes time There we go. Sorry the thing froze up on us. Okay Okay, uh, sorry about that folks. It's OBS send your hate mail to them. It does it all the time It's the purgatory I have to live in Yes, well accepting what happens is part of that exactly exactly so, um What would be step two for somebody that read Dante, what would they go from there? Oh, you know, I think that first of all, I've read Dante dozens of times Um, I go back and read it every year with my seminarians and it's always a fresh experience for me And because my my own life has gone in a slightly different direction. I noticed new aspects of it go Oh That's interesting I never picked that up before And um, so I think you you can certainly do that But I think but once you've been through the divine comedy trilogy First of all go through it a few times because it's it's rich enough to do that But then I think you're ready to go back and try to read other books that are like this spend time reading scripture, but read it in the same way only read the section of the gospel That's set aside for today for mass, for example And only read as far until something hits you and then make yourself stop So try to use that pattern of reading. It might be that you're going to read spiritual writings like the spiritual combat by scoopily or the imitation of christ Jones the campus It might be that you're reading something by john of the cross trees of avila Um There are a lot of books that I'm particularly fond of I really like um the spiritual letters of francis to sales I think they're just absolutely charming. Um, and when I need an uplift, I just read those Such a wonderfully warm and fatherly figure. Um, so A lot of that depends on the personality It's hard to recommend spiritual reading to somebody because it's uh, I don't know Some things that I find particularly moving up people might not Um, it's the wonderful thing about the divine comedy. I think is it's so diverse That it's going to get you in on one level or another Because even if Dante sins aren't your sins you have other ones That goes back to all the spirituality to caramelize spirituality dominican benedicton redemptorists Well, I think they all follow a similar pattern Trying to engage personally and that using of imagination happens in various ways some people can be more visual I tend to be slightly more psychological Other people put themselves back in time other people bring their christ up to the present time It's all fairly minor variances of one pattern I imagine things and I allow myself to react And then I use those reactions as a way of diagnosing what's going on in me and I make resolutions So you're probably probably saying tell people to take notes while they're reading it Well, you know, don't be afraid to I won't be offended if you scribble in my book Um, don't get your new book That's fine. Now not my personal book you buy your own and get it Yeah, I think you you will find that Making yourself stop and take notes make underlining things putting stars to go back to Um, those are all that's important things You're you're you're finding something that's nourishing And you might be able to go back and get nourishment from it over and over again Yeah, you don't just like find your favorite recipe and have it once Yeah, why don't you find that thing you make it over and over again? Or just read one book and just do it and that's it you put it down You never pick it up again. You sit in the corner of your room Well, yeah You know, there are some books that are like that But I think that a good spiritual book becomes almost like a spiritual friend And some and you go back over it and you see new things to it Um, I've reread the spiritual letters of frances to say oh, I don't know how many times Um, or the abandonment of divine providence. I don't peer to go sad. That's another one of my favorites Um Spiritual combat by scoopily There are some that just sort of catch me And I go back to them and because my life has changed me My reading of it changes over the years too And So, yeah, there's some one-time books. I tend to get those from the library and not own them But there are other books that I find myself going back to over and over again And those are the ones I wear out Well, that goes the question of wait, what's your top five books? You already named them Yeah, I I have a shelf in my office just over here that I leave for the seminarians. I say, you know, this is not Mandated for you, but I just leave them there so that you can sort of Come in and check them out and if you like them Get them for yourself. I guess I'm kind of on that besides the bible the imitation of christ What would be somebody's you must read this? Is there one, you know, I think a lot of it depends a lot on the personalities I mean when I was first a Catholic I'm a convert. Um, when I was first a Catholic, I remember going through the The Alphonse de la Guarie's book the passion death of christ my first length that was it. I was like, oh my goodness, it's both my mind Well, after doing that a couple times, it didn't really do the same thing for me And I needed to go on to something else. So I think it's it's quite personal And different things work at different times of our lives Um, one thing I do think that we don't do nearly enough of and that is a universal appeal our lives at the saints Yes, I think really good lives at the saints are a blessing Yeah, I love um Evelyn was by Edmund campion That's just a great book. He's also his book book Helena by the mother of Constantine. Yes very great I love the books of louis de wall Whole series of books written in the 40s and 50s um That I think are a really wonderful um Yeah, chesterton's life of uh, francis de seo's clients one of your old uh Priests told me about this book. I never heard of it till they did a thing a saint's first saint's first sinners by gudier Oh, yeah Yeah, it's a saint philip used to say we if you want to become holy you need to read books that begin with the letter s Yes, saint bonaventure saint philip. Hey thomas. Yeah, and I think that the lives of the saints Are holiness in a personal form And when you read it that way you sort of imagine it as being possible for us I think finding saints who have something similar to you Can be very moving Oh, yeah, very much. I remember when my dad when when he was alive. We were playing ball. He would always tell us to read I was a basketball player larry bear was my guy Small of me. I'd why I remember tim harway's cross. So I memorized how to do it Those were you know, watch the mvps to become better in what you're doing Same thing for religion. You the saints are the hall of famers Yeah, and I think two generations ago on my parents generation Um people would have studied those in school Reading time in catholic school would have been the lives of the saints But nowadays people don't really know those stories If I just bring up the life of a saint the hamling people saying oh, you should talk more about that I don't know anything about those things. So, yeah, that's They're there are history And They're the people that we're hoping to spend eternity with And we should start studying up on them because they're going to be our next-door neighbors god will Yeah Or if we want their help Yeah, well they're they're so inspiring And I think the the strange thing is that they're way more involved in my life Then I am in theirs. Yes, they're more interested in me than I am in them. Yes One of the great things about gante He's his life got way off track And he starts off the divine comedy in the inferno lost in a dark woods He doesn't even know how he got lost He's trying to get his way out of this dark woods and there were three beasts who stopped it His his pride is in anger. He is his lust and his greed And he realizes he can't do it All of a sudden this man appears It's the ancient poet Virgil and he's been sent by three ladies from heaven You see The blessed virgin Mary noticed that Dante was off track She's a good mom and she said, you know, hey, he's not figuring this out in his own and he's not getting out of this without help So the blessed virgin called Lucy who was one of Dante's special patrons. Thank Lucy. You need to do something about this Well, Lucy knew that there was this nice lady Beatrice who was one of Dante's And so the three of them got together made a plan They were going to do what we would now call an intervention and they were going to say we're putting you through hell This is the only way it's the only way we're taking you on a guided tour of the afterlife And all of that was actually arranged by heaven It was an intervention of the saints And to think that Without my noticing it The saints are and Got himself and the angels my guardian angel or intervening on my behalf all the time And I think I need it would be to notice that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, give me a little hat to very so often Go through like clueless Every once in a while you get a little glimpse of Wow, that was providence. Yes. I talk a lot about providence as we already discussed And I'll I have a class on which it's basically all about providence and afterwards my seminarians are coming to my office to say This just happens Isn't it providential and I'll go Yeah I go, oh, come on. You had to be more excited than that. I said, you know Everything that happens is problems. The only exciting thing is that finally You notice You can notice all the time it's all there. Yeah Dante wasn't taking his spiritual life seriously The blessed virgin mary was taking his spiritual life more seriously than he was They love us more than we love ourselves That's the mystery of it all.  I'm you know, so aware of that I think you know, why me instead of somebody else who was so much nicer and naturally more virtuous I mean you think of the conversion of alfons Raspard Yeah Okay For for the listeners who probably don't even know can you can you go ahead and talk about him just for a minute? well, I mean he It was somebody who was not a believer and in fact decidedly not a believer. He's really atheistic and was converted by experience of the blessed sacraments and The miraculous medal as well. Yeah miraculous medal and He had no intention of of becoming a Christian and he was told to wear this medal and he did and soon he just he Felt conspired against he was he was being picked on and that's really the experience of of conversion Is that you're being cornered?  No, it was a yeah Uh, he he hunts you down like like a bloodhound.  It's like the good shepherd. It goes in search of the one sheep. What's the sheep who pounds the shepherd? In that we just had good shepherd Sunday. Yes, you're doing it Um, I always think of the shepherd going in search of the sheep and then I grew up in farm country in Illinois And uh, can you go looking for a lost animal and you find it? It doesn't run into your arms It tries to escape from you You're trying to find it and you have to corner it. You have to capture it And I think there's something very similar in the spiritual life. God doesn't come looking for us and we go Thank you. I'm coming We try to escape. I think about my two-year-old sometimes about that. Yeah Yeah, you know, he's trying to help and you're trying to get away. Yeah Yeah Yeah, it takes the sleeper hold now and then Just let go before the tap comes Yeah, um What should they expect in the next two books coming out from you? Well inferno has been so much about Seeing the the destructive power of sin seeing how the all these different sins can drag you down How they could destroy your life Well, that's really a an argument for beginning the spiritual life for committing to something Purgatory is such a different atmosphere Purgatory is really for committed people People who are already on with the project but who need a push To get moving because what purgatory is about is as it's Dante says in the very beginning. I've come to find my freedom I've come to be free I want to be free. There are a lot of things that stop me from being as free and as happy as I could be All of us could be way happier than we are right now And the only thing standing in our way is our own habits If I became holier I would be happier And so it seems to be in my best interest to get down to business And that's what purgatory is about inspiring us to start in the process of becoming free and happier Nobody should have to twist our arm to do that But that's what it's really about and so he goes through this the seven deadly sins Which is the different terraces of the You might remember Thomas Merton seven story mountain That's Mount purgatory So he goes through each of the seven deadly sins And we begin to see how those sins Really cramp our style how they get in the way of of our our happiness here This is not about the damage we're doing to the world. It's not the damage you're doing to us Then finally in paradise we begin to look at heaven and to see the glory of the saints and the glory of god in a new way It's just always been a strange thing for me as a New Catholic Well, I'm new anymore, but when I was a new Catholic I always thought it was strange that Catholics didn't think more about heaven It's supposed to be our goal, but it seems as though we were just trying to escape hell But if you think about what heaven is you really ought to want it. Yes There's a great story that I sometimes tell about one of my parishioners when I was first decreased Actually, I was just before I was a priest. I was a deacon. I was sent to the hospital to take communion to this lovely deity and As I got there the doctor says I need you to Are you friendly with her? I said, oh, yeah, I know her quite well. It's just um, she has no family Okay, um She doesn't know this but she's dying And we need you to tell her I'm just starting couldn't you Ask somebody experienced but It turned out I needed to tell her I told her and she started crying a little bit And I tried to say something consoling as not as bad as you think or it won't be so bad, you know And she looks at me as though I just lost my mind She says I wanted to go to heaven ever since I made my first communion I thought I'd have to wait longer And I was so shocked by this reaction. I walked back to the hospital. It's about six blocks from here just stunned Thinking we can know Every christian ought to think that way. Yes You know if god sent us a message saying I'll beam you up right now. Would you like to come? You shouldn't say well, how about the day after tomorrow? You ought to be eager for for it now But I think there isn't for heaven But the third volume is called yours uh Yeah, the Sort of wet the app To make us want to be back Certainly That's what he said Can't wait to be back here Yeah, the I remember I think it's tre- and tress of avila again. She talked about how She couldn't wait. I mean she was she would cry because she couldn't go to heaven that day Yeah Yeah Do you the same sort of thing? um one of my favorites Antioch might I be with christ St. Paul does the same thing He's Gone for me life is This game was it was a pio that someone said I hope you live for a hundred more years and he turns around goes What did I do to you? Yeah Once we have that one once we have a little Didn't it how did you It becomes very different Don't hold on at all cost But this life has a new because entryway to heaven something temporary Oh, it's something that Importance not because it's Because it's the entrance exam. Yes Yeah Yeah, hey perspective change Yeah, it's the modern mindset. We want to be here. We want to be happy here. Why aren't we happy here? As you said you're not as happy Where are you going to find that true happiness? Is a place we don't want to go right now that's right uh For most people It's the sort of consolation pride. Yeah, if I have to die At least I gave it to go someplace nice But if I have to choose between Most people Yeah, what are some final thoughts for people? On this on the on Dante I'm heaven in general saints No, I think I think that it should be We have to go back and rethink our lives from A christian perspective the world is set the agenda too well We live in a world which is all about this world. We become worldly secular And I think As a result christianity Doesn't Bring us true to us as it did a couple generations ago So we need to go back to the basics We're christians because we hope in heaven We're christians who think about an eternal destiny This life is important because it's going to decide our eternal destiny. I put before you life and death choose life That's the important thing and I think we need to sort of readjust that perspective because otherwise we're going to gradually fade away We see it happening and amongst Catholics around the world They don't take the faith as seriously because they don't really see it in the light of eternity Dante wants us to look at our life in the light of eternity Certainly that was what our words preaching was about you know You're on the edge of eternity act like it Get your act to live this life as though it were the entrance exam for eternity Yeah, I think it was saint seppurian talked about those that uh Didn't believe there was an afterlife, but then acted and he called them basically lunatics no Yeah So we're sort of living half in half out And I think there's something very uncomfortable about that And I think dante is a wonderful way of re-addressing that balance Of rebalancing things and making us sort of see our our life in this eternal perspective and it makes our life so much more dignified So much more valuable every moment becomes filled with the promise of eternity And that brings back what we first started with joy, right? That does Yeah Oh father, appreciate it. Uh, can we get a blessing before you go? Certainly may the blessing of almighty god the father and the son and the holy spirit to send upon you and remain with you forever Amen. Thank you father. Appreciate it. You're welcome


Why do people have sexual fantasies? Well, according to a survey of over 4,000 Americans discussed in a Psychology Today article by psychologist Justin Lemiller, there are a few reasons. The most common reason given by survey participants was simply to experience sexual arousal. While 69.8% of Americans said it was because they were curious about different sensations and sexual experiences. Following that, participants reported having these fantasies to meet unfulfilled sexual needs, escape reality for a while, or express or fulfill a socially taboo sexual desire. See, lots of people have seemingly taboo sexual fantasies, which is why it's important to discuss this topic. According to an article from Insider, evidence suggests that those who have sexual fantasies experience less anxiety and a greater sense of self-esteem. So what are these seemingly taboo thoughts?  Like it rough. Apparently over 70% of you do. That's right.  Social psychologist Justin Lemiller surveyed 4,000 Americans and found that 93% of women and 81% of men had fantasized about being dominated, while 85% of men and 76% of women fantasized about being sexually dominant. This may make you think of BDSM, which stands for bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, and masochism. There's a psychological component that is often involved in BDSM. Many, for example, like psychological role play, where an exchange of power is often present. Cosplay and role play. Cosplay? Isn't that the thing people do at Comic-Cons? Well, hey, some may do it in the bedroom too. Role play and cosplay are different. According to an article from Insider, cosplay is the act of dressing up like someone or something else, often from a book, movie, or video game. It's not inherently sexual, but some people enjoy impersonating a character during sex. However, the term role play often has a sexual connotation as it has often been used to fulfill sexual kinks or desires. Remember that power exchange mentioned before, dressing up as certain characters or taking on different personas with your partner may just be a way to safely and consensually express that desire. Certified sex therapist, Sari Cooper, explains in an article for Psychology Today that the old saying that the brain is the biggest sex organ still holds true. How we become aroused in a sexual scenario, either solo or with a partner begins with fantasy and imagination. Cooper goes on to explain that often her clients are shy about sharing personal fantasies out of fear of being perceived as strange, bizarre, or disgusting by their partner. She adds that not being fully open about one's sexual desires and needs can lead to problems down the road in the relationship. It seems role playing isn't as taboo as some might think. And as Cooper adds, role playing is one of many options that provide a safe, non-threatening way for couples to explore. Multi-partner sex. Three sums, orgies, you may have come across these terms before. And that may be because of a sexual fantasy involving more than one other partner is pretty common. A study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences had 788 British adults across four age groups take a nationwide quota poll. They found that men were more likely to fantasize about having sex with more than one person, often with anonymous partners. For women, the study states that as a proportion of total fantasy output, women were more likely than men to fantasize about same sex and famous partners. There's more. A 2017 study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior and discussed in an article from Insider found that out of 274 Canadian university undergrads, 64% of them revealed that they had interest in multi-partner sex. When it comes to sexual fantasies, the most important thing to remember is that it's normal and all right to fantasize and explore your sexual desires and interests. If you have a partner, it's a great idea to communicate your sexual fantasies to them. Why? It may just improve your sex life and relationship according to a survey conducted by psychologist Ari Tuckman.  Tuckman adds that these couples are doing a lot of things well, which makes it easy to feel safe with the vulnerable intimacy involved in sharing their most secret desires. The question is, will you share your secret desires with someone else in the bedroom, or will it remain your prized fantasy? A secret only for you to know and enjoy. We hope you enjoyed this video. And if you did, don't forget to click the like button and share it with a friend or partner. Subscribe to Psych2Go and hit the notification bell icon for more content like this. As always, thanks for watching.


Aloha, welcome to Think Tech Hawaiian Today's show, Life and the Law. And I have two guests, two young lawyers, Justine Herrera and Emily Briskey, who are both staff attorneys at Volunteer Legal Services Hawaii, otherwise known as VLSH. So welcome. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us today. So Justine, let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about VLSH. Well, Volunteer Legal Services, we're celebrating our 35th anniversary this year. We're a nonprofit organization that provides civil legal services to low to moderate income individuals. And how we do that is by connecting attorneys who are volunteering their time, pro bono, and we connect them with individuals who need services in particular areas. So for example, a client who needs family law help will match it with an attorney who specializes in family law. And pro bono, let's define for our audience. So pro bono is essentially just giving, volunteering their time to give free legal services. So whether that may be just legal advice and counseling and providing with someone with directions as to where to go for their legal issue or actually going as far as actually representing individuals. So it can be appearing in court on their behalf and actually accepting their case on a pro bono basis, which means that they're not getting paid for their fees. They're not getting paid and the client is also not paying. Correct. Right, yes. Okay, great. How long have you been Emily with VLSH? I've been with VLSH now for exactly a year. Oh, great. And Justine? I've been there for two years now. Okay. Well, I understand we're celebrating something this week. Would you tell us a little bit more about this Hawaii pro bono celebration week? Yes, and we're really excited to be a part of the national pro bono celebration week. So it's a whole national event, but in Hawaii we take this week to really give thanks to all of the volunteers that give so much to the community. So tomorrow at the Supreme Court, there's a pro bono celebration day where they are not only recognizing all the volunteers who do work at the access to justice rooms across the state and to the legal lines and all the other great providers of nonprofit services to the community. But we also get to recognize students in the community. So actually college students and high school students who have done volunteer work in the community. So we recognize them as well at pro bono celebration. So is the pro bono that they're being celebrated about is it only regarding law or is it any kind of pro bono? All kinds of pro bono. The high school students who get recognized, they are getting recognized for their work at, doing work at the Humane Society, pretty much all their volunteer activities. And so they actually are asked to write essays about what they've done in the community to help volunteer. So they get recognized for their volunteer efforts as well as lawyers getting recognized for all their pro bono work in the community. Oh, how exciting. So this is a very newsworthy event then. Yes, absolutely. Will you be there? We will both be there. Celebrating, volunteer legal services recognizing one of our dedicated volunteer attorneys, Diane Mitsuyama, who's been volunteering with us for many, many years. She's a great family law attorney and is currently the chair of the family law section this year. So she has been really instrumental in helping us get more family law attorneys involved with VLSH and really getting them in numbers out to volunteer. So the VLSH organization has a few staff attorneys, you both, and how many other staff attorneys do you have? Well, we run on a very small staff. There's a total of seven of us in office. Emily, myself, our executive director and our pro bono coordinator are all attorneys as well. We have our veterans benefits attorney. She is not licensed in Hawaii, but is a licensed attorney in California. And then we have two intake staff. And how many pro bono lawyers do you have across the state? And I assume all islands. Yes, yes. We're very fortunate to have support from the neighbor islands as well as from Oahu. Currently we have over a hundred volunteer attorneys that are signed up to volunteer. And with this new project that we're launching, we are hoping to reach out to get more volunteer attorneys who maybe haven't been able to give their time in the same capacity of actually donating their physical time in office or on the phone lines. We've developed a new pro bono model to help them hopefully be able to donate their time at home and in other different ways. Great, so that's a perfect lead in. So Emily, tell us about this exciting new project. So on Monday actually this past Monday we launched Hawaii online pro bono and we're calling it Hop. And it is an online based, it's based off of our clinic model. So our neighbor island attorneys as well as anyone else can get involved. And it is internet based. So no need to come to our office, either clients or attorneys to donate their time. So it's very, very simple in that you just log on from anywhere at any time and you can type up your question and it's the same way for attorneys. They just log in from home or their office and they can answer any question they choose. Wow, I think we have some slides. So can we show the first one? So this is our domain name. It's hawaii.freelegalanswers.org. And as long as you don't type www in front of it it will take you to the correct page. And if we wanna go to the next slide it'll show what our homepage looks like. H-O-P. The next slide, we'll move on to the next one. Yeah. It's also important to recognize that this new project Hop is also a part of the American Bar Association. So this is a whole national program that's being launched across, I believe 40 jurisdictions are part of this program. And as you can tell from the top part of the screen it says ABA Free Legal Answers. So that is the national domain name and we're at hawaii.freelegalanswers.org. Okay, so what we're looking at right now it says get free legal answers, get started, sign in. So we can get to that page by going to the website. And if you're a volunteer looking to register you'll have to go all the way up to the top of the page and where it says volunteer attorney registration and it's pretty simple to register both as a client or user and an attorney. You just follow the steps. We have our screenshots from the next couple of slides show exactly how to do that. So do the attorneys, are they screened in any way or can any attorney just? As long as you're an active or, because you can be inactive pro bono as well as long as you're an attorney in good standing in the state of Hawaii and you sign up through us I just have to make sure that you are actually in good standing and I will authorize you to use our website. Okay, so then there are two steps for an attorney. First, the attorney contacts to register as a pro bono attorney in the state. Well, you just register right on the website assuming you're active, but if you're inactive then we have to go through a process and follow the correct affidavit to make sure that you're changed to inactive pro bono. And is there a specialty of law, for instance, family law or immigration that we have to identify? We're always going to be in dire need of family law attorneys to volunteer with us because that's typically one of our most common questions of topics that come up. But any attorney is encouraged to volunteer. The nice thing about Hawaii online pro bono is that the volunteers have plenty of time to research their answers. So if you're new to pro bono for instance and maybe you do transactional law there might be questions about landlord tenant or collections that you can research and figure out how to answer those questions appropriately on your own time. So it takes the pressure off a little bit from exactly how or from an in-person face-to-face setting. Right, except that so the client then will log on and have a landlord tenant question, key in the question, be matched with an attorney. The attorney will actually get to pick the question by themselves. So the attorney themselves is doing the matching. So the question will be if the question goes live as soon as the user posts it and the attorneys can log in at any time and see the questions that have been asked. And then you can go through the queue and choose which question you want to answer. So you're actually allowed, you're able to see the opposing parties, the legal topic and the question itself before you choose to answer it. That way you're only picking questions that you feel are appropriate for yourself to answer. So are you as the project, I understand you're the project manager and developed program in Hawaii. Are you in any way helping to match or screen the questions? Absolutely. So my job in the behind the scenes is to make sure that the questions being asked are appropriately categorized and are appropriate for this site. So for instance, if someone asks a question like, I want to get divorced. That's not really a question. So that person is going to be contacted by me to set them on the right path to asking a question about divorce and specifically what kind of question do they have about getting divorced rather than just saying that? Because that's not a question one and it's not really attractive for an attorney to pick. So my job is going to be trying to flush those out and make sure that the questions are appropriate so attorneys actually want to answer them. And I have that capability to communicate back and forth with the users to make telephone. Nope, it's all online. So they'll get an email from me and I really think that takes down a big barrier of communication that we have with a lot of our Outer Island clients is communicating with them on demand by email. So a lot of times we have a hard time reaching our clients by phone and have to leave voicemails and play phone tag so that email component, they can get to it when they get it. So and they're still getting that same information but then once their questions are updated and asked appropriately, they'll be able to hopefully an attorney would be more likely to answer it then. I see, and so these questions then, if they're very complicated, how does that process? This is mostly going to be a starting point. So if it's a complicated question that might be beyond the scope of what this website is designed for, this website is designed to really be a starting point. It's not supposed to replace in-person, face-to-face legal advice. There's nothing can replace that. So this is more designed for people, especially in rural areas, that it might take two hours to drive to the Access to Justice room and they really have no idea where to start. So instead of driving two hours and being frustrated because they weren't ready or they didn't know what to ask or they didn't have the forms filled out, they can start by going to Hop and asking their question from their home or a local library and a volunteer can come in and say, here's the form, this is how to get started, this is what you need to do to start the divorce process. So then by the time they are making that appointment at the Access to Justice room, they're going to get their forms reviewed or by the time they're having an appointment on the phone with a volunteer legal services attorney, their phone calls, their appointments a lot more worthwhile. Right, efficient. So once the volunteer lawyer is matched with the client online, can the client continue to work with that volunteer lawyer once it gets more complex? And that's where we're hoping to, we're still working that out, but we're hoping to be able to just refer them over to either legal aid or volunteer legal services to further that relationship. But as far as like the way it's set up right now is you can communicate back and forth between the user as well as the attorney. So if you need further information to answer the question, you just have to ask the user to follow or you just follow up with the user and you can also ask them to upload documents or pictures if you need information regarding their court documents or something like that. And then as an attorney, you have complete control over when that relationship ends. So whether that's going back in four, three or four times or it's gotten to a point where they need to be referred, then I'm hoping that I'll be able to catch that on my end or that the attorney says, hey, this needs to be referred, this person needs full representation and then we'll go from there at BLSH. Great, well, this is really exciting program. We're gonna go for a short break and we'll be right back to talk a little bit more about the access to justice rooms and a little bit more about hop. We'll be right back. This is Carol Mon-Lee, Life in the Law with my guest, Justine and Emily from VLSH. We'll be right back, thank you. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki, welcome to Think Tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha, my name is John Wahee and I used to be a part of all the things that you might be angry at. I served in government here and may have made decisions that affects you. So I wanna invite you in. I wanna invite you in to talk story with me and some very special guests every other Monday here at Talk Story with John Wahee. Come on in, join us, express your opinion, learn more about your state and then do something about it. Aloha. Welcome back, this is Carol Mon-Lee, Life in the Law with my guest, Justine and Emily from VLSH and we're talking about an exciting new program called Hop. So just before we went to break, Emily, you mentioned the access to justice rooms on the neighbor islands and in Oahu and I'm thinking our viewers may not know what that is. So Justine, tell us about those. So the access to justice rooms or we call it the ATJ rooms are a program that was actually brought out by the access to justice commission and it was originally founded as an idea from the Equal Justice Conference which is the national conference. And what they are, they're self-help rooms. They're rooms where we have volunteer attorneys and it's run through the Hawaii State Bar Association in connection with the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii and they have volunteer attorneys in law firms that adopt certain months or weeks out of the year to actually donate their time and their associates to these rooms or in certain outer islands desks to actually provide available services for people in the courthouse. So it's really meant for people who are coming straight out of a court hearing maybe didn't quite understand what they needed to do next can go talk to a volunteer attorney in person and get advice or information about where to go. They're designed mainly at the courthouse for that purpose of providing civil legal services directly in the court building. There are no income qualifications because it's a court sanctioned program. So it's pretty much anyone at the courthouse who's lost may not know what they're doing. You see some papers, what is this about? What do I have to do next? But it's only civil. It's only civil, yes. So right now they're located at the district court here in Honolulu as well as there's one in Family Court in Kapolei and there's one in each outer island from Kauai all the way to Hilo, one also in Kona. So there's two on the big island and they act as a place for people to just get assistance as to what to do next, where to go and hopefully while they're still fresh in their mind as to what the judge just told them that they need to do. So it's a way to kind of help bridge that step and all of these different access to justice initiatives that have come out of the Access Justice Commission in Hawaii have that goal of really providing civil legal services to individuals who really just don't know the legal process and don't speak the legal language. And so there's various different projects and by adding in hop into this mix we're just providing a different platform. And it's really meant to be for those outer island families and residents who don't have as easy access to getting down into Honolulu. If you're coming from a far side of the big island driving up to Hilo or Kono could be two to three hours away. And also it's important to note that the outer islands only provide legal information at their self-help centers. They don't actually provide legal advice. And so they are restricted a little bit in their ability as to where they can go to get information. And unfortunately there isn't just a ready attorney available to answer their questions at all hours. Self-help centers throughout the state are only limited to a couple hours a day and sometimes just a couple days a week. So depending on what island you're on can really depend on what level of service and what kind of services you can get from the community. So we're really hoping to just keep expanding and to build on that to really give the community more options and more leeway into how they can get their civil legal questions answered. Right, but you mentioned information versus advice. So is hop giving information only or advice? Both. So we're definitely recruiting volunteer attorneys who are willing and able to provide legal advice and counsel. We don't want to just limit that information. We do have, if that's all the person is asking about that's great, but we really are looking to provide at least a starting point for legal advice. Right, Emily tell us a little bit more about the background of hop. I understand we had already talked about the American Bar Association. Yeah, so hop actually started, well, Hawaii online pro bono actually started in Tennessee. So of all places, it was started by the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services or TALS along with Baker Donaldson in the state of Tennessee. That's a law firm there. And they've been working on this for quite a while now. They've been active for a couple of years, for a year maybe two. And they've had great success with it in Tennessee and decided that they wanted to, or other states decided that, hey, this is a great idea, let's jump in. And- You mean the model? Yeah, well, Baker Donaldson actually licensed the software to all the other states. So the ABA has gotten on board and they did all the web development and they're providing all the fancy website that you see. That's not us. We're just providing the admin support behind the scenes and making sure that everything is marketed to Hawaii in an appropriate way and making sure that our volunteers are happy and as well as our users. But it is part of a national project, as Justine said. There's 40 jurisdictions that have adopted it and we were part of the second wave when we launched it this past Monday. So yeah, we're really looking forward to having a lot of users get their questions answered. I don't quote me on the numbers from Tennessee. I can provide them for you if you want to include them. But do you have a projection for Hawaii what you look forward to seeing the response to be? I don't know, what do you think, Justine? Well, we know that it's so hard for our rural services, our rural islands to get services. So we're really hoping that this will bring an increase in terms of outer island participants. So we don't know exactly what that number is gonna be but our goal is really just to do outreach on the neighbor islands with the help of the state libraries to really reach out to those rural areas that their only connection to an attorney may be picking up the phone and calling and that may not meet their needs. And so we don't know specifically what that number is but we hope that we can reach out to those rural communities and provide them services that they desperately need. So how is the state library involved? We mentioned the access to justice rooms and tell us about the state library. So the state libraries play a huge role mainly because those rural communities may not have internet or cell phone service and so the closest place for them to get on a computer is the state library. And so I know it's foreign to most people who may be watching this who have internet regularly available but a lot of the islands are running on coconut wireless and so they don't have access like most of us here on Oahu on your cell phone to have constant internet access. And so with the help of the state libraries, not only are we gonna get to do outreach with them at their computers having display boards and signs about where they can go to log online to get information but hopefully by working with the librarians they can also filter questions that they may be getting as staff of the library and direct them to our website as an actual place where they can go and get answers to those questions. Great. You know, I think let's go through the rest of the slides. You know, some of them we may have already covered but some of them had some interesting information. So yeah, so this is actually showing you what it looks like to register as a client user and we're just showing you exactly, this is targeted for low to moderate income individuals. So you do need to be income qualified to use the site for a family of four that means you'll be making about $70,000 a year or about $5,800 a month. And you are also required to provide your liquid assets as you are also asset qualified. But there is no way for us to go check this information. So this is a faith-based questionnaire that we're having people fill out. Okay, thank you. Next. And so this is showing you what it actually looks like once you've registered as a user. So if you wanna ask a new question all you have to do is click ask a new question. And the ABA tech team created a very, very user friendly website intentionally making it as simple as possible for our users to actually use the website because we don't need to make any further technology barriers in order for them to get legal assistance. And I think the next slide, it'll show you actually what it looks like to ask a question. So here it'll show you the different legal topics that we're currently covering. And we may expand these depending on our volunteer attorney outreach. But these are the legal topics that we at BLSH cover and that we know we have volunteers willing and able to answer these types of questions. So again, it's very user friendly. It looks just like an email, an email text box. So we're just trying to keep it as simple as possible. And there's also places for them to put legal deadlines as well as the opposing party for conflict checks. And they can also upload documents and photos for the attorney to look at too. So they have to scan them? Yeah, it'll be. And then so in the case of like a landlord-tenant issue where you might be having mold, you can actually upload a picture of what that mold looks like and hopefully the... So I mean, it's helpful for the attorney to be able to look at that. Sure. Okay. And the next one, I believe it shows what the actual... Oh, so this is what an attorney will see once they're registered and logged in. So you can see that Justine and I have asked some sample questions and it'll just show you exactly what you'll see. And you can actually click into the question and read it before you pick the question, which is really helpful to our new volunteers or those who might not be familiar with Pro Bono. So they're not getting in over their heads. So you can actually just see what... Is it something I'm capable of answering or researching in time? Okay, great. So in terms of what's next for the HUB, are you gonna be reevaluating the program? Well, we just launched on Monday. So right now we've had a really, really outstanding response from the attorney community already registering, the number of attorneys that we've had registered this week alone has, I think we have 15 people who have already registered, which has been... It exceeded what we were expecting. Wonderful. And there are, of course, they don't have to be on the same island. No, and we've actually had attorneys, out of state attorneys who are active in the state of Hawaii, who have moved away for whatever reason, but still wanna give back, registered. So that's been fantastic too. Yeah, so this is a way for us to really expand our Pro Bono pool of volunteer attorneys. Something we haven't been able to do before because we've been limited to in-person or over-the-phone consultation. So if they're located in California or in a different state, they wanna continue to give back to the Hawaii community, but haven't been able to. This gives them the perfect opportunity to be able to log on any time of the day, ask a question, answer a question, and feel that they're giving back to the community. Great. It sounds like a great gift to the community. So tell me what else is VLSH working on or doing besides the HOP? Have you been involved in other projects and activities? Always, I mean, we're always looking for new initiatives to really help expand our mission of providing equal access to justice. And so HOP is just one of the starting points where we're hopping off from into other opportunities. We have a pop-up legal clinic happening on November 5th in Y&I, it's a Saturday. We have over 15 volunteer attorneys scheduled to come with us to Y&I High School cafeteria where they'll be meeting with over 50 clients who need services in a period of three hours. So our pop-up legal clinics are a way for us to actually get into the community. So we pop into the community by usually using a cafeteria or some sort of public facility where we bring in our attorneys, we bring in our documents, we schedule appointments and we provide services in the community to those who maybe live far enough out of town that driving into town can become a hassle, especially if you're limited to public transportation. So do they have to make an appointment first? Yes, so we recommend appointments for this. We still have available appointments but we always recommend that you call in advance to make sure that you can get a time to come in. Do we have a contact number or information? Our intake number, 534-528-528-7046? That's correct. So they can call our intake line in order to get a scheduled appointment. They can also walk in, but we recommend that they call in advance just to make sure that we guarantee that they can see someone if they walk in. Okay, great. That's very exciting. And how often do you do those pop-up clinics? We try to get out into the community at least three times a year, if not four. This is gonna be our third pop-up clinic of the year. So we're really excited to be ending the year in Y&I. It's such a great community. It's such a privilege to bring out attorneys. Many of them do not travel to Y&I often. So it's a great way to really get them involved in the community and provide services where some people may have gone to high school that they're coming back later to actually get advice at. Great. We're almost done, and I want you to take this opportunity to look into the camera and tell our viewers, again, a little bit more about Hop, maybe particularly to the Neighbor Island viewers about how they can access and be helped by you. Yeah, absolutely.  This is a great opportunity for you to give back to the community as well as do pro bono in your PJs as our slogan. So you can do pro bono at any time. And if there's any individuals out there who may be watching this, who may be interested in finding a way to get your answer, your questions answered online, please go to hawaii.freelegalanswers.org where you can post a question or as an attorney answer a question and give back to your community. Wonderful. Emily? I think Justine covered it all. That's pretty much it. hawaii.freelegalanswers.org and sign up. And what's your phone number one last time? Our phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Okay, well, thank you so much, Emily. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you, Justine. It's a wonderful project. We look forward to the community being more active in being able to be assisted by Hop and VLSH. Thank you so much. We'll see you all next time. And this is Caroline Lee, Think Hawaii, Life in the Law, aloha.


Remember the arachidonic acid story? We make it, but we can also get it in our diet, eating other animals to make it. Same thing with cholesterol. Well, there are similar necessary components found exclusively, or almost exclusively, in the animal kingdom, not the plant kingdom, such as cornucine, cornutine, creatine, and taurine. But if something's made only by animals, what about those eating vegetarian? Thankfully, vegetarians are animals, too, so they make it themselves. Now true carnivores are the exception, right? Cats don't make taurine, for example, but that's because they're built to eat animals that do. But humans produce all these compounds on their own, unless they have some rare genetic inborn error of metabolism birth defect. There is actually a hereditary disease that may affect as many as 1 in 40,000 births. It's a mutation on chromosome 5 of a carnitine transport protein. They actually make enough carnitine, but because of the birth defect end up peeing too much out, and so develop a carnitine deficiency. And actually, there was a case report about 30 years ago of a 10-year-old boy in Israel in and out of the hospital every 4 or 5 months. No one knew what was going on. The clue only came when he decided to go meat-free, and that made things worse. Then he started having attacks every 3 weeks. Turns out he had that rare disorder. That's why he was sick. But it was being kept somewhat at bay by the exogenous external dietary source of carnitine in the meat that the other 39,999 kids out of the 40,000 don't need. He stayed vegetarian, but they gave him high-dose carnitine supplements, and at the time of the report he was 12, and completely cured.


No, no, no. That's Angelica's breakfast, sweetie. Uh-huh. Babies aren't allowed to eat reptar cereal. It's only for us grown-up people. That's Reptar. He's a tired old star. It's Reptar. Reptar? What? Mushroom brains to go see that, Pabram. I think this Reptar and I sounds like a blast. Let's take the kids. That costume. A mutant dinosaur that tears down cities and steals chickens as a role model for these kids? No wonder the world's in such crummy shape. You know something, Harry. I don't know why I took this job. I can't skate. I don't like kids. And if you want to know the actual fact, lizards give me the creeps. Maybe we got the wrong night and they'll play a hockey game. It's starting.


Yo what's going on LeafreNation it's Leafre back again and welcome back to another NHL21 hockey ultimate team video and this one is a little different I'm going to be starting up a new series where I'm going to be just trying out some new huck cards giving my reviews on them kind of thing so um yeah let's just get right into it with our first ever I guess player review so if it wasn't obvious I'm a huge Leafs fan I don't know if it's obvious or not but today they uh we're not today in NHL21 they added team building sets so you trade in some guys from a team part of the collection and you get a player so today we have enough we completed the collection we're about to complete the collection to get an 85 Darcy Tucker and a prime time pack or a prime pack which doesn't really matter so bang we're getting a Darcy Tucker right now let's complete the set and go open up the pack all right so we got our 85 Darcy Tucker oh my I can't wait to use this card I've been grinding to get this card Darcy Tucker 85 overall he's on work horse so with the synergy even without he looks pretty decent with the synergy he looks even better he's going to be fun to use he's definitely going to be going on my first line I believe all right so we put Darcy Tucker into the lineup he will be playing alongside our Temi Panarin and Alexander Barkov so I can't wait to try out this Tucker this is what my team is looking like though by the way after that uh 12k uh uh pack opening we have Theravine and Patterson, Forsberg, Besser, Lack, Hoffman, Palat, Strowman, Willie Nylander on D we got Klingberg, Riley, OEL, Makar, Hamilton and Brady Shea and then in that we have Freddy but this video today will be focusing on this 85 overall Darcy Tucker all right here we go how fitting we're playing the Montreal Canadians with Tucker in his first game we got a good ping going let's get it I think first shot Tucker is in a score I have a feeling here just realized we have two number 16s on the first line as well so we gotta definitely change that Tucker with the big hit all right can we get that the Tucker Darcy Tucker sauce out across oh okay almost had our first goal there Tucker would have had a nice assist on that what a pick by Patterson let's go just skate that we're obviously faster here get that across bang what a save dude OEL slap shot Theravine and we're getting robbed who does he have a neck get that in front Besser we couldn't get the shot off there we're too in tight get that across oh my god what a block off the boards to Palat wait for the winger to come Strowman what a save oh dude I don't know how we don't have a goal yet end of one I mean Tucker's been good he's laid a couple good hits he made a good pass where I don't know how we didn't score in it still and I don't know for the most part he took a hit like a beast got right back up he feels good I'm not gonna lie all right let's get Tucker the puck here we need a goal from Darcy bang oh my god it's our puck Darcy Tucker Darcy Tucker let's go bark off gets the puck to him Darcy with the fire shot one nothing that's my boy Darcy man that's why we made you he's feeling real good he's feeling real good the pass from Darcy across bang and I'm pretty sure Tucker got an assist on that make that two points for the guy on the play let me just confirm you got it I'm pretty sure you did this Darcy Tucker cards insane best card in the game dude what is happening the puck just keeps going to him oh my god we won't talk about it we won't talk about it yeah just saved me from scoring my own net I think we'll take it bang good little break out there move into the middle to Patterson and Elias Patterson make that three nothing let's go man we're in control let's go Elias across oh what a block dude let's go to our vitamin we got Panarin coming in late bang our Tammy oh I couldn't even do the lake kick we're gonna make him rage quit no and he left what why dude all right well the guy rage quit we got the win we're not gonna complain about it we'll take it we're gonna go look at the game sass I want to see exactly what Tucker did so in 12 minutes and 35 seconds of ice time in the game Darcy Tucker had a goal on assist two points plus one he had two shots on goal so 50 shooting percent uh he had one hit I honestly I really did like Tucker he felt super fast he was able to get around the fenceman he had a really good shot from what I saw um he does get bumped off the puck a little too easy but he's able to recover quickly and get back into the play like he did on that first goal I'm gonna pop up a little replay of it but yeah you know what this Darcy Tucker card we only got like two periods of it but I am a huge fan of this Darcy Tucker card anyways guys that's going to be it for this video if you guys did enjoy the video make sure to drop a like on it if you guys are new around here make sure to hit the subscribe button hopefully you guys did enjoy my review on the one and only Darcy Tucker uh like I said I really did love his huck card and I think he'll be on my team for a little while here anyways guys it's going to be it for this video thank you guys very much for watching I'll talk to you guys later peace