Welcome, everybody, to this week's OpenShift Commons briefing. We're really lucky to have Hugo Rivera, who's one of our senior certification managers for Red Hat with us this morning, and I know I advertised this as the how to get your apps, containerized apps, enterprise ready and Red Hat certified. But it really is all about building a trusted container ecosystem, and that's what we're trying to do here with OpenShift 3 and the upcoming release. So we're pleased to have a great strategy here at Red Hat for making our containers trusted, and I'm going to let Hugo take it off and tell us all about that this morning. Thanks, Anne. Hello, thanks for joining. I'm part of the ecosystem team here at Red Hat. We work closely with partners in creating healthy, robust product ecosystems around our different platform offerings. And today I'm going to talk about our efforts around containers, which is obviously a technology of great interest to our customers and our partners. And based on customer demand for a trusted container ecosystem, we put together some offerings that we hope will be of interest to you. We're going to start with a bit of an intro about certification at Red Hat and clarified terminology. You might have heard about Red Hat certification in the concept of certified skills, so people that become a certified Red Hat system administrator, for example. But what you may not know is that we also have a large organization that works with commercial vendors to certify their products on the Red Hat platform. This is a collaborative effort. And what we aim to do is to assure our mutual customers that, first, the technology stack that they're going to deploy has been tested and validated. A lot of our customers like an open platform, like Linux, of course, and complementary technologies, but they want to make sure that the pieces have been tested together, and they're not going to be the first one paving a way for deployment. And the second aspect of certification is an assurance that the stack that our customers are deploying is fully supported both by Red Hat and our partners. So this is the principle behind our ecosystems. And I'm going to talk about what we're doing specifically in the context of containers. So applying the principles I just mentioned to container certification, the first question is why are we doing this? And from our perspective, is we all about trust? If you follow the news around containers, you might have seen a recent report about analysis of the Docker Hub. And a company called BanyanOps found that over 30% of the images in the official repos are acceptable to security attacks, things like Shell Shock or Harbleed. So this is a big cause of concerns for customers who like containers to love the simplicity for deployment, but they want to make sure that they're not going to introduce any security risk in their production environment. So what we want to do with container certification is to assist with these three questions. Can you guarantee the origin of a container? Do you know where it comes from? Can you verify that it's been tested on the target platform? Because the containers can incorporate a number of different runtimes. And it is important that a specific application runtime has been verified on the host oets and that we know for sure that the different pieces are working together. And finally, and most importantly, is this stack fully supported by all vendors involved? So containers are a great platform. They've been embraced by developers and getting a lot of traction. We want to make sure that we take that same technology to the enterprise space, much like we've done with other technologies like Linux and OpenStack. So this is an example of what I'm talking about. I use this PostgresQL as an application, but you can do similar searches on the Docker Hub. If a customer is interested or has a dependency for a commercial application that requires PostgresQL and they do a search, this is the results that you can find. Over 400 different repositories, different image names. It is hard to know all the processes that are produced in these images. So a customer may be wondering, who built this? And can I trust this? Does this have production quality? How was it tested? If I'm going to deploy a specific platform like Rehat Enterprise Linux, do we know if this has been tested or not target? And who maintains it? If there are bugs, if there are issues, if there are security vulnerabilities, do I know who to contact to get a fresh image? So we're trying to address these issues. And by the way, we like what Docker is doing. We work closely with Docker, the project and the company. But we understand that our enterprise partners have some very unique needs that we're trying to address through certification. So what do we do? That would certification, basically, we provide assurance that the container is coming from a trusted source. So we have established a relationship with the container developer and maintainer. We guarantee that the container can be safely deployed across Rehat Enterprise Linux platforms. And I'll talk a little bit more about this, but if you use the RAIL runtime, what we offer is package it once correctly as a container, and then you have a broad addressable market for your product. We're also sure that the platform is free from known vulnerabilities, because we check that the dependencies that are being used in a container image have not been reported to have a vulnerability issue. And finally, this is backed up by collaborative support. So we have a support relationship with the company that is behind this container. And if issues come up in production, we can work together to fix them. And you see here in the upper right hand corner, we have a certified technology logo. So for any of our partners who go through this process, they'll be able to use this product alongside with their application. Now, as I mentioned, the goal is to certify a partner container image and rely on a single application delivery model for containers across a whole portfolio from Red Hat. So we have enabled our different products to deploy containers. We did it a while ago with Rehat Enterprise Linux 7. Then with the release, a purpose-built product to run containers, which is Rehat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host. And of course, we have OpenShift that in its version three, it's all based on containers. So we're providing a broad range of deployment options which translates into a broad range of deployment targets for your own products. And the beauty of this is, the application is built and packaged in a standard way, according to best practices, then the same container image can be taken and deployed across all of these options. All right, so let me switch gears here and give you some examples. So I'm gonna escape this and open my browser. First of all, I'm gonna show you the user interface that our partners have access to. We offer to our partners a tool to handle certifications. And what is he here is the user interface. We also have a command line interface, but I'm showing you the user interface for managing certifications. Now you see that we actually have multiple certification types. So our intent is to have a single tool that can manage your different certification processes. So our hardware vendors use the same process to certify their hardware. We have partners working in the open stack space for infrastructure service and they use the same tool. And now we've added container certifications as another path for working with Red Hat. So you have some examples here that I've used submitting images. So I'm just gonna click on this and see. So basically, for this tool, the metter uploads both the image and the Docker file. You see an image here that we've been testing about 236 meg when it was tested and submitted. And then, I'll show you a report in a second, but basically the way the process works is you take an existing container and you upload it into a certification service from Red Hat. We have a set of automated tools that will introspect that container image. We look at what layers it has, we look at what the penises it's using, and we generate a report automatically that then you can go and check. So let me give you an example of the report here. So this is an example of a container submission that has a couple of failures. So there's a test to make sure a container does not have a security vulnerability. And in this case, the image that was made it had a failure. So I can go in and see what happened. And basically, and this is kind of a wordy, but it shows you that there's some packages down here that have some security issues. We analyze the content against our own security advisers from Red Hat so we can see that there's some security advisory that has the reported problems with this package. And so we hide the same issue on a few packages that are included in that image. So the submitter can go and review that advisory by this string and say, okay, I want to see what the problem was, and then they'll be able to take remedial action and update their image accordingly. There are a couple of other tests we're doing here. For example, we test that the base image is supported by Red Hat. So if you build an application that uses a different runtime, for example, Debian, Red Hat cannot really stand behind those libraries and that create a support issue for enterprise customers. So we make sure that whatever image was built to create a container happens to be an image that a base layer that Red Hat can support. The supported package in format here has to do with the right Docker version. So we make sure that the tools that were used to package a given container come from a version that is supported by Red Hat. And finally, we check that if you have Red Hat dependencies or layers that you're not making changes to those packages that come directly from us because if you do that invalidates our support. So for example here, there was a Red Hat provided file that was modified in this image and we report a file name, we report the RPM. So basically this has to be fixed because otherwise this wouldn't validate Red Hat supports on the customer end. In addition to the mandatory tests that give you a pass or fail status, we also add some notifications and basically we're letting you know that it might be more recent content or more recent version of certain packages that you use. So for example, this application is using a package called dzData, and this is the version and we're just letting you know that by the way there's a newer version of that package. You can still certify this is because you may have verified that that exact version is the one your application needs but we're letting you know that there's more recent content that you may want to incorporate. So that's an overview of the certification report that you get and after reviewing the errors and making the necessary changes you can submit your image again. I think I have a different image here of a certification has passed. So all of those four texts that I mentioned completed successfully and we have a warning here. In this case, just like I mentioned before, there's more recent content for that package dzData but again from our perspective is just a warning since this does not contain a vulnerability issue it's okay to release this image for consumption even though it was using a slightly older version of one of our packages. So that's in a nutshell, you know, a summary of the type of information that you get if you submit your container for certification and as I mentioned, you know, there's a user interface here that you will use to send your container over and then that report gets generated automatically. And I'm showing you the GUI, we're working on the command line option as well so that you can incorporate the same type of operations into your CI or CD environment and you can check for a pass file automatically and that's going to be coming shortly. So let me, I think it was a question on blue jeans. I don't know if I need to check for, all right. Okay, so I see there's a question about best practice building Docker images. So I'll get back to, thank you for raising that Pablo. I'll make sure I covered that in the slides. Let me go back here to presentation mode. Oops. Now, there's a topic closely related to certification which is around the distribution of those certified containers. And we have created the infrastructure to allow commercial software vendors to make their containers available for the broad audience. We are not making a red enterprise Linux container images available on the Docker Hub right now because it doesn't have the type of control that we need for our own software and our entitlements. So what we offered to our partners is a service called Rehecontainer Registry. And this is available for all certified containers and it's actually hosted an OpenShift which is the platform you all know very well. What we give you is the software that can handle the Docker distribution and within it, it takes care of managing the layers from the right sources. So our ISVs are software partners on the distribution of their bits and we are just providing the infrastructure and this registry is integrated with the certified catalog. So you would set up an account or OpenShift or you probably already have one and you will give access to the Rehat certification service so that once the image succeeds and get a pass report, that image gets uploaded automatically to that registry and is ready for distribution. So any customer of yours or any new potential customer that wants to get access to that certified image would just do a Docker pull from your registry instance and they would get access to those bits pretty much using the standard Docker commands. This is integrated with the Rehat certified catalog. So we have, let me go back to my browser here. We have in our customer portal, a destination where we publish certified products is divided into certified hardware, software and cloud because we cover a broad range of products. You can see that we allow customers to browse by software, hardware, they can browse by different ecosystems. We're going to open a new section for containers here where we can list all of those commercial software products that are packaged in a container format. So, and this is the prime destination for the Rehat customers to find information about the ecosystem around Rehat products. So this gives exposure to your product to a broad range of potential users and what we will do in the listing is include the Docker pull command. So you'll be able to, if anybody finds your product listing they can just copy the Docker pull command paste it into the system and with one line command it access to that application. What does this mean to you and why should you pursue this type of work with Rehat? And when I talk about this, I talk from both perspective of the software vendor and the customer. So if you're a software vendor, the reason for pursuing a continuous station of your applications is to achieve a greatly simplified application delivery model. So a simple one line command will now allow your customers to have your application up and running and you gain a lot more control over the application runtime because you're going to package it and configure it with exactly the right dependencies so that it's ready to go. The whole process of installation and configuration is a lot less error prone because it's greatly simplified. You don't need to tell your customers to go and look at a lengthy installation configuration guide.  And finally, it's a trusted enterprise platform. So, and Docker is a great technology but it is important to make sure that it's under control when it comes to vulnerabilities and security risks in the images themselves. So by having a formal process that you go through we're raising the level of assurance. And on the consumer side for our mutual customers they benefit from the application deployment just like we mentioned. The time to get applications up and running is greatly reduced and they get a better support experience, right? Less calls to support because they don't know how to install and configure. Less calls to support because they have the wrong dependencies. And if they do run into issues with production we have a way to collaborate and overall providing a better support experience. And again, it's all about trust. So, they have access to a pool of applications in a container format that they don't have invalidated on the right targets. And as I mentioned before our goal from Rehab perspective is to give a broad range of deployment options. Of course, open shift first and foremost because that's ideal environment for development applications at scale. But if customers want to deploy this in bare metal or in virtual machines, they can do it as well. And of course they can always pursue cloud deployments including public cloud with some of our cloud partners or their own private cloud. Now, let me talk a bit about the mechanics and the workflow that is involved in this. So, we have a program called Rehab Connect for Technology Partners and I'll talk a little bit about that. This is the destination where we offer the resources and the workflow that you pursue for certification purposes. We have tools to assist with the build process although this is really for people developing on other platforms. We have a container development kit that includes vagrant boxes and vagrant images so that you can create containers based on a Rehab platform even if you're developing on say Mac OS or Windows. We have the container certification steps that I covered already and then we have the distribution attained through the Rehab Container Registry Service. So, our goal is to guide our commercial software vendors through a simple process so that they can go through these steps and quickly get an application out for consumption. Let me spend a couple of minutes talking about the program itself. Rehab Connect for Technology Partners is a Rehab program for commercial vendors who have products that get deployed on or with Rehab platforms. So, you can be a traditional ISV, you can be an IHV, an OEM, but if you have a product that gets deployed alongside a Rehab product, then this is an important destination for you. What we offer is access to Rehab software, we have roadmap information, we have content for developers as well as for people conducting marketing activities and we're grouping content into zones which you can think of as interest groups. So, right now we have four zones, we have one specifically for containers, we have other zones for areas like metalware and open stack and through these zones, we present the workflow that I mentioned and kind of three simple steps, align, build and certify. So, come along, make sure we are aligned, make sure that this is the right technology that your product should be deployed with, build your application and then proceed with certification. Let me break to my browser again. Yeah, so this is the site Rehab Connect for technology partners, this is the container zone. So, as I mentioned, there are steps that you can follow to certify your application. So, we built that workflow here for you. We have information about why certify which covers some of the content that I went through in this presentation and they have a number of resources. So, there was a question about best practices for containerizing applications. So, we're posting our resources here. You have technical information here about containers, get started, portability, introduction to Docker and so on. And then we have things that you can download. You can request software access. So, again, if you're working in OpenShift, you already have access to a lot of these resources but for those partners working out of OpenShift, they may need to deploy some pieces themselves. We have the background boxes and other tools that I mentioned that help you develop if you're using other platforms like Mac or Windows. And then we have some other information here, updates, blogs, verification and so on. So, it's a good destination. I think it complements well what you already get access to within the OpenShift framework and we're working closely with the OpenShift team to make sure that all of the content is fully aligned. All right, I'll go back to the questions and thank you for tracking these questions. Let me finish with the slides and then I'll make sure we cover all of your questions. I've talked before about the ability to engage in collaborative support. We think this is one of the big benefits of engaging with us on certification. And the goal here is for us and our technology partners to collaborate to address support issues on behalf of mutual customers. So, without such an agreement, if a customer calls Red Hat and we believe that the issue is related to the application, we would tell the customer, sorry, we're taking it as far as we can, go and contact your application vendor or vice versa, a customer would call your company and you think it's a Red Hat issue. In the old days, you would tell the customer, sorry, called your operating system vendor. We have established a way for our support organizations to reach out to each other so that your support team would have direct access to Red Hat's global support services in vice versa. So, if you're in trouble shooting, we believe that the issue may be related to one of those certified applications. We can reach out to your company on behalf of a customer and you have the same privileges. So, again, this is great value for mutual customers. It reduces the finger pointing and it allows for a direct engagement path that would overall help increase quality of the whole stack. We used a multi-vendor support framework called TSA Net for this. So, if some of your companies are already part of TSA Net then you may already benefit from this, but if not and you decide to join our program, we will give you access to this framework at no additional cost. So, that's the end of my presentation, the end of the slides. My personal call to action is if you're an independent software vendor, you're probably already working with OpenShift and you're getting a lot of valuable resources there. If you want to know specifically about certification flow that I mentioned, you can reach out to me directly or join us through the containers zone at connect.redhat.com where we can get you started on the process. And if you happen to be an enterprise user of containers, we encourage you to ask your software providers to for certify containers and inform them that there is this process to the Red Hat that can help increase overall quality of the container ecosystem. And with that, let me... Let's flip over into those questions because there's quite a few here. Which is... All right. We go up to the top there. Okay. I think Chris answered Pablo's first question around both practices, but if you have any more advice around that. All right. So, see, when is atomic platform gonna be supported on public or in private cloud base on OpenStack? Is that question specifically about the atomic post? No, Chris, you had some comments there. Yeah, I think Katie and I addressed that one. You probably want to start with Michael Virgil's questions. These are the ones I haven't answered. All right. So how to certify versions handle customized re-responsibility. So this is something we're looking into. What we do today is we inform the vendor if there are updates, specifically their vulnerabilities. It is a vendor responsibility to practically release a new image. So, we depend on the software provider to update and re-certify once they patch the image. We're looking into ways that we can connect on the customer side and be able to complete the flow, if you may, to issue the same type of notifications to the end consumer of that image. So, but I think that that's not something that's fully implemented yet. So, at this point, we do have the workflow to tell the vendor to update the image and we rely on those vendors to take proactive action and notify their customers as well. I don't know if that answers your question, Michael. Yeah, it does. Thank you. So, if one becomes, like for example, if there's a vulnerability to one of the base images, does this website, does it hide it so that no one can pull it? Does it guard against additional? Right. So, we're looking into that and whether we hide it completely or we put a warning. And again, there are two ways for images to be found. One is we have a catalog that I show that it's a website where you can search and find information. So, we can certainly add a warning there that an image has a vulnerability issue. You will also be able to find these images doing a standard Docker search command. And I didn't talk much about how search works on the Rehab platform, but by default, if you're running on one of our many container-enabled platforms and you do a Docker search, you hit the Rehab registry first that includes all of these partner images. So, you'll be able to do, for example, the Docker search for, you know, I gave example PostgreSQL and see at the top of the results the certified partner images. So, in that case, we're kind of bombed by the Docker CLI and what information it displayed there. So, you know, we're working with the Docker project to improve what gets portrayed in the Docker CLI and be able to issue the right, you know, warning there. We can work with the vendor, and if the vendor agrees, they can pull the image completely from Docker pool. But again, it is their application. So, it's ultimately the vendor decision whether to pull it off or not. All right, thank you. So, Hugo, Pablo asked a good question or a variation on the questions that's been asked before, but is there a possibility or any plan to offer the review process for our enterprise customers so that they can verify their in-house images? So, the answer is, yeah, the satellite team is looking into this to use the same technology for scanning images. And again, right now, what we do is we look into our own security advisories, we're looking into areas like OpenSCAP and be able to do a direct analysis against, and I forgot the name of the site that gives you an oval feed for vulnerabilities. So, we're looking into expanding that offering and we're doing that in coordination with satellite team. So, that's, you know, that will be the vehicle for be able to do that type of analysis on the customer side in-house images. That's awesome. And Arcady has one more question here. After a containerized app is certified and some of its dependencies have new version, what happens to the support of a certified app? And Arcady, you're off mute now. So, if you'd like to speak to that. So, again, we're notifying the partner if there's newer content, but we don't think that in and by itself is recent enough to invalidate an image. We know that, you know, with containers and so many layers, there are different pieces that move at its own pace. So, you know, we don't expect people to be rebuilding images at a fast rate necessarily. I mean, some vendors may they have a good CI environment and they're able to consume updates automatically. Other vendors may be more cautious and just pick up updates, you know, on a case-by-case. Again, you know, it is really the vendor's own prerogative on what they consider a tested and validated stack. All we want to make sure is that it doesn't contain vulnerabilities. I don't know, Arcady, if that answers your question. Almost. The second reason is, you know, as underlying library dependency move forward, you basically, you know, you can recertify it and then you have now multiple version of the application. So is there a recommended kind of versioning control or, you know, what is the mechanism recommended for the apps? So we have some naming recommendation for images. And by the way, this is going to be an area of where we're going to see dramatic change because, you know, as I mentioned before, in the old days, there was a kind of a clean separation between the different layers and, you know, different vendors were revving at their own pace. Now you're combining everything, which is great for consumers, but it brings in this version management to the front. So, you know, ultimately, is the application vendor who, you know, needs to define a policy on how to update, you know, layer updates and how to cooperate into versioning. And they ultimately own the versioning mechanism and scheme for their specific products. We're going to be proactive with doing notifications on layer changes and something I forgot to mention. We are working on defining standard metadata for containers through the usage of labels so that you can include version and information in a somewhat standard manner by using specific label types. So you can include a label with, you know, the vendor name, the application name, the application version, and then, you know, revise that label as you issue new images. So, again, you know, we have some guidelines on how to do naming. We're not getting too much into versioning prescriptions yet, although we'd like to hear a feedback, Akadia, and see, you know, how do you think is going to impact your own product release cycle and what kind of things you'd like to see offered as part of the platform. All right, then. Are there any other questions that anyone might have while we still have Hugo on the line here and? I have a quick one. This is Michael again. Is there a, like, ISV administrator's dashboard so I can manage all my certified image so I can look at a dashboard-like view and just kind of see the state and status of my images and see which ones I need to take action on or is there reports that's generated available around aridine and the state and status of my certified images? Yeah, so the, you know, I show the user interface for the tool, which is kind of access, the kind of dashboard that you're mentioning.  The notifications right now are done by email to the contact we have who submitted the application. We have a feature request to get that notification included in the dashboard as well to give you a single pane of control. But I don't think it's there yet. But again, that does the intent. We're all of the things related to your certifications, both completed and in progress are gonna be displayed there. Okay, great, thanks. All right, then. I'm not seeing, oops, maybe one more question here. That seems to have answered everybody's questions, Hugo. There's lots more information on the partners, customer partner site as well as Chris mentioned earlier. So on the connectredhat.com and under zones and containers there's a whole slew of informations and a couple of videos as well to watch. So I wanna make sure that if you have any questions at all you can feel free to contact Hugo or post them to the commons mailing list and we'll make sure we hook you up with Hugo and the appropriate folks on the certification team. So thanks very much Hugo for taking the time this morning and this video will be posted shortly. Yeah, and I included my email address in the chat. Diane is hrevero, that's H-R-I-V-E-R-O at redhat.com. People wanna contact me directly. I recognize some of the voices here on the Q and A so happy to have that discussion individually but if anybody wants to offer feedback again, this is an exciting time and opportunity for us. A lot of room for improvements and refinements. So, interesting hearing what you have to suggest. All right, thank you very much everyone for attending and we'll see you next week. All right, take care. Thanks.


Welcome to the nonprofit show. We are so glad you're here. It's another episode, another day, and another fantastic guest. So I want to welcome to the show Laurie Hennessy, Executive Director, Pacific Northwest, One Love. And Laurie, we're excited to have you to talk to us about crisis communication in a nutshell. So stay with us as we dive deep into this very important and critical conversation that we're going to have with Laurie. But we want to remind you, I like to say if we have not met you yet, Julia Patrick, hello to you. Julia serves as the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. And I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. We have been together for over four years. Thank you to our amazing, loyal, dedicated, presenting sponsors. They allow us these opportunities of conversation. So shout out to our friends at Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, your part-time controller, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staffing boutique, nonprofit nerd, as well as nonprofit tech talk. So these companies keep us going and growing because we have not come off the airwaves since early of March. So again, just really glad to be of service here. If you missed any of our episodes, we've produced nearly 900 now. You can download the app, go ahead and take your phone out. You can scan the QR code. You can also still find us on all of the streaming broadcast platforms. If you have a smart TV, you can just tell it to pull up the nonprofit show. The same with podcasts. We're on all of the main podcast platforms. We hope that you'll tune in, you know, in just a couple of hours after our live conversation that we're having with Lori right now. This episode will be up and on all of these platforms. So you can go back and listen, you can share them with your team, however you want to really just continue to learn and educate yourself.  So check us out on these platforms. And again, we are so thrilled, Lori, to have you with us. Again, for those watching and listening, we do have Lori Hennessey with us. She's the executive director, Pacific Northwest with One Love.  Hi, nice to be here. Yeah. Lori, tell us before we get going what One Love does. Because you as the executive director have to do a lot of things, but I would imagine you've done a lot and you continue to do a lot with communication. But let's back up and find out more about One Love. So One Love is a national foundation and we're all about healthy relationships. We were named for Yardley Love, La Crosse Player who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and her family put together One Love more than a decade ago with the idea that everyone deserves to have a healthy relationship and if they had known some of the signs that were going on in their family member's life, that tragedy could have been averted. So we go into school, go talk to community groups and talk about what are the signs of a healthy relationship and what are the signs of an unhealthy relationship? And we do that as long as young of fifth grade now, just trying to reach as many young people as possible to tell them what those signs are. Love it, that's fabulous, really cool. Well, being that you are involved in the sector or segment of the nonprofit sector, it's even more meaningful to have this conversation because I would imagine you and your teams are confronted with a lot of bad news and tragic things. And so communicating in times of duress and everything, it's even more important. But let's start off our conversation with you kind of advise us to have a framework that crisis is not if, but when. Talk to us about that. Yeah, that's always been sort of my overarching theme for folks when they think about crisis is that some people think of it as a hypothetical, it only happens to other people, other organizations, not true, it will happen to everyone in the nonprofit sector at some point. So you can either plan for it and be ready for it and be smart about how you'll handle it or not.  So the most important thing is to actually have a plan. And that's kind of where I usually begin my conversation. That's really important. I have a question and it might seem odd, but like who defines if it's a crisis? Is it the internal organization? Is it the external stakeholders, right? Like who decides this is now a crisis and it requires communication? You know, I'm a huge believer in transparency. That sort of my, I think if you were to do one of those surveys, that would be the agenda that I connect to the most. And as a communicator, crisis to me is the time when most organizations go underground instinctively, either there's a problem with their finances or someone says something really bad or there's an accusation. Historically that was a time in our culture where people would pull inward. And what crisis communications is about and answer your question in terms of when it's a crisis to me, it's when the belief in you that is out there in the community goes down. The love for your organization, the belief in you, people wanting to follow you that all start to eroding really, really quickly because of something that happened. And once that crisis happened, you can't just ignore it and wish it away. In our green room chatter, you mentioned that there's really one primary goal of a crisis intervention or communication. What is that? You know, it's all about the apology. If there's one thing that I would tell people to keep in their mind as they navigate a crisis, it's that communications during a crisis really is about how you apologize. And when you apologize, and there's a whole school of thought, I actually teach about crisis comms at the university now and we have a whole segment on apologies and what makes an apology strong or weak, but the three key pieces you have to remember when you apologize, the first thing is it has to be fast. And in the social media world, it has to be faster than it used to be, right? Because things spiral quickly. And the second is you have to take accountability. You have to accept the blame. You can't deflect, blame the staff. It has to be accepted. But the third piece that most people miss when they apologize is what you're going to do. So a lot of times with elected officials who get caught in some scandal, they deflect and they never say how they're going to change the behavior. So to me, that's the biggest piece that most people miss when they do crisis communications is they have to react quickly, accept responsibility and then say, and here's what I'm going to do to either fix the situation or to pay the community back for this or to make things right. That's the piece that's really critical. Interesting. That's fascinating. And I wouldn't have necessarily put it in that context. But I think it's a, I love that you teed us up this way because I think it really reframes the conversation. And I want to ask you kind of moving forward. You talk about surviving crisis within your internal audience. Talk to us about what that means to you. I'm a big believer in the fact that the internal audience is the single most important audience during any crisis. Again, in the past, people forgot the internal audience. Oftentimes part of that pulling inward that leaders had was to start obfuscating, not sharing information. We now live in an age where if you don't have your internal audience, your employees, like in lockstep with you, supporting you, advocating for you, there can be tremendous damage, both short-term and long-term. So I always tell people within that crisis communications plan that you do, the first audience has to be internal. You can't start doing press releases if the local people don't know what's happening. You know, I love that because you're right, Lori. There's so much instant access to public information. And it typically starts internally with an employee or a recent employee sharing something online, and then it just snowballs into this, I don't know, ongoing negative spiral. So I love that you address this, particularly starting with that internal audience, because you're right. I love that you said they need to be in lockstep with you because then you have more people supporting and sharing the same message. Yeah, yeah. Your internal audience can either help you or they can hurt you. So that's like our staff and our board. And, you know, I'm assuming committees and support organizations, things of that. But now let's talk about what we would call the key stakeholders. I'm assuming you're talking about funders and donors, government, contractors, what does that ecosystem look like? In most crisis communications plans, there's a variety of things that come to play, right? You'll have a key messages, piece, oftentimes. You'll have like a call list of, and that's critical by the way, who to call in the middle of the night, who staffs your social media account. All of those pieces should be included in your plan. But one of the pieces I usually recommend is a matrix that outlines those key stakeholders. Something that shows here are the key groups that we have to go within a crisis and how to reach them, who's gonna be lead for reaching each one and when. And you can kind of prioritize in the 36, 48 hours after something happens, who gets notified when. So usually it's like internal audiences are very high, key donors very high, but oftentimes depending on your nonprofit, there's elected officials and elected officials are usually before anyone else. So the internal elected officials, key donors, and you work your way through all those audiences. A key audience that I always include is critics. Like who have been your critics in the past who have had a concern with your nonprofit? And for those audiences, I usually suggest developing something called rude cues, a series of rude questions that you would have ready to go. So if the leader has his talk or is in the community, he's ready for those people who have always been most vocally critical of the organization. So you can kind of target those audiences. Love that. I've never heard of that, but I love it. I think that's just genius. Cause I can see that it builds confidence. It kind of erodes the power of that other naysayer or other competing, you know, force. That's really smart. Wow, I'm taking that to the bank. That's super cool. Really. Do you recommend that everyone receives a phone call? Are there certain levels of relationships or connections that maybe a certain group of those stakeholders, you know, deserve a phone, and maybe not deserve as the right word, but, you know, should have a phone call. Others get an email. Others part of like social media. How do you decide that level of connection? That's the beauty of doing your planning now, right? Before whatever happens. Okay. You have all those key people from your organization in a room saying, okay, who's getting a call in the first 24 hours after something happened? Who's going to have responsibility for that person? And what are they going to say? And then maybe it's, okay, the next three days, who's going to get email? And who's going to have responsibility for that? And you can kind of plan for those tiers of who you're going to go to and what order. Not everyone gets a call. Sometimes for like the general public, it just might be a social media posting, right? They just might see something on your Facebook page, but you have to outline it so that that person in the community doesn't see something on Facebook before the mayor gets a phone call. So that's all part of planning that, I always say three to five day period is really critical. Okay, so let's jump into that because that's what I'm so intrigued. I love your idea of an action spreadsheet. I can kind of see it in my mind, but let's talk about the timing of this. I loved Jared's first question. How do we know we're in crisis? How do we define it? But you're talking about hours, minutes, hours and days, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're in an age now where it's not like it was when I started my career, right? And you would have the luxury and putting in our press release and I don't know, faxing it. The news cycle, yeah? We had a news cycle, can you imagine? Yeah. But now, because everything can happen so quickly, that's why I think it's so critically important that we plan because those who are our detractors will be on social media very quickly. And there are a lot of examples of this. The one I use usually is the United Airlines incident where a passenger was dragged off of a plane. That went very badly for the United because social media made that happen, right? There was just a woman there filming it. And the next thing you know, it went crazy. So United waited, I think it was three days before they responded, and it just did not go over well at all because of the pacing of social media. Yeah, you're right. There's a lot of things that are posted as they are happening now with live media streams because going back to the news cycle, it used to only be reporters had access to live outlets. We all have access now to live outlets. We've equalized that level of power where now anyone has as much power. The person who filmed the person in United, if you remember another incident of someone getting on a plane while he was saying something sort of racist about AIDS. By the time her plane landed, she'd been fired from her job because of social media. So all of a sudden we've spread power out where more people now can actually be carrying messages and communicating, which is fantastic. But we need to plan for it. So when you're talking about planning, I've got a couple of real drill down questions. One of them is to kind of bump to what Jared said. Do you create scenarios of crisis? And then say if crisis A happens, here's the plan of crisis B. I mean, do you get that specific? Yeah, a good crisis communications plan. You can have something that is so deep where it'll say, here's five scenarios. One, like I worked at the zoo in Seattle. So you can have a spreadsheet and it's really, data geeks would really enjoy this. It has the two access bars. And one shows the impact of the crisis on your organization from low to high. And the other shows the chances that this would happen from low to high, right? So those crises that are the worst are those that have a high chance of happening and high impact on your organization. So if you plot those on a graph, those are the worst. So like at a zoo, that would be an animal, an animal attacking someone would have horrible impact on the organization, but it's not very likely to happen. So you don't put as much time in the planning for that in your plan, you put more time in the things that are more likely to happen. But you can put that all in the plan. Interesting, that is interesting. Talk to us about your breakdown, just given that we just talked about social media. Do you time this out? Do you say that these are like step one through 10 based on hours in a day? Or what does that look like when it comes to planning? What I usually would do is have a spreadsheet where it's actually, it's issue areas, right? So like one thing would be social media, what you're gonna do there. Media relations, who the key targets are, who's gonna be cleared to talk to people. One of the things that seems really simple that people forget is that a crisis communications plan needs to have contact information. Like if something happens to your nonprofit at night, you want to be able to reach your communications person, your person who does social media and you want it all in one place. So that's the kind of stuff that I usually put in there is some of the duties and jobs you'll be doing and who you should be reaching and what the audiences are you'll be reaching in each. Interesting. Do you use with media outlets? So that if they actually hear of a crisis before the community does, hopefully they come to you first. Have you seen that happen to where like they kind of stave off the news because they have a relationship with you? The media outlets, you mean? Yes. Yeah, I mean, you can, I mean, I obviously, you're not sharing the plan with them but you're reaching out to like, let's say I'm in Seattle, let's say you reach out to the person who's in charge of following the nonprofit area from the local paper or local public radio, make sure you have that relationship. You don't ideally want your first call to any outlet being a crisis, right? So you want to make sure you have a good media relationship person who has that relationship. And as you all know, I'm sure in our sector, that's kind of a dying thing. Back when I entered the nonprofit sector, the thing I was proudest about was my media relations time, right? And my relationships. That's an area that nonprofits don't focus on as much as they used to. We focus more and more on social media. So I always encourage nonprofits to make sure you have at least one person on staff who really spends time developing relationships because the media still is very important. It hasn't gone away. Exactly. And I think that there are a lot of stories that get blown up. And it's a small thing that then escalates. And I think if you have strong relationships, there's an opportunity, maybe for a story not to be killed, like Jared's implying, but maybe at least that reporter or producer picks up the phone and calls and says, hey, this might be a story it might not be. Tell us why it is or why it isn't. And I think sometimes you can head off something or at least get your point of view as an organization and not end up being reactionary. Definitely. Definitely. And one, I'm sorry, did I interrupt you there? Yeah, one thing I always say is that for me, I oftentimes when I talk about crisis, people always say, well, give me an example. Who does crisis communications well? My example would be Dr. Anthony Fauci. And the reason was for me, when we all went through this massive crisis together, the reason he's seen as a crisis communicator expert is because he always didn't know.  And then the key piece, empathy, always saying in his communications, I feel for you, family, they're suffering right now. So there's a lot of scholarly work now being done, looking at Dr. Fauci and what he's taught us about communication. So if anyone out there is looking for, oh, this is so big, how do I start? Go watch some of those best conferences. Well, that's interesting. Talk about a silver lining of the last how many years now? Yeah, I love that you said that because I think that's true. I think that it's especially in the nonprofit sector where we're always educating ourselves, we're learning about new things, we have new crises that come up, we don't have the answers. And yet our community looks to us, I think almost like we're at fault if we don't have the answer. Does that make sense? I mean, Jared, do you see that? Oh yeah, I do. And especially on social media, people are really quick to tag an organization. And I've been a part of this as an interim CEO, Laurie, where the organization was tagged saying that they had talked to all of the executives and they hadn't, right? But you also don't wanna come back to that person in a negative light because I also believe how we respond to people is part of our messaging. That's, it's funny, you just touched on, I usually have like the top 10 things that I've gone through and one of them always is to not be defensive. Whenever you're defensive, it only hurts you. I always tell people, if you're angry, go and kick the wall. And then do an interview because defensiveness never helps anyone. Even though sometimes there's great injustice, right? Either an unfair article or something that shouldn't have happened. But there's lots of research around how people physically respond to anger and defensiveness. And the minute they see that through someone, they will stop listening to you. So I always tell people, put your person in front of the camera who radiates empathy, kindness, transparency. And if you're the CEO who doesn't know how to get tough questions without being defensive, don't put them in front of the camera or don't put her in front of the camera.  It's the same thing with no comment. Don't ever say no comment. I know. That's like one of my number one rules, don't ever say no comment. Say, I don't know. I always tell people there's a thousand ways to say no comment. You can just say, oh boy, we're still doing all the research and data and we'll get back to you soon. I just said no comment. But yeah, the minute people hear that, they think you're guilty. I agree. And I think it's lazy. And I think it tags into what you just said. It's defensive. Whether you mean to be or not, I just think it is a communication that leads to nothing good. So yeah, really, really interesting, this conversation. And I think, Laurie, what you said in the very beginning by framing this up, it's not if, it's when. You can be doing the work of the angels, but bad things happen to good people and you gotta be prepared. One of my last questions for you today is, how often should we be doing a communications plan? You know, I think my theory is we should have a crisis communications plan and it can to a degree be kind of an evergreen document that sits there. You just wanna update it one for a while. So if you have a crisis comms plan and the first page is emergency contact info, that should be people who currently work with you, right? You don't have to redo the whole thing, but you should take it out occasionally and just brush it up. I also think in case we didn't mention it, in addition to a crisis comms plan, please, please do media training.  And again, media still matters because it becomes social content. So I always say have a crisis comms plan, update it occasionally, like let's say yearly, just look at it to make sure it's accurate. Get some media training for your top executives. If you do those things alone, you will be way ahead of the game. Yeah. And then what about these scenarios you mentioned? Is that something the board should be involved in? Like as we have our strategic planning sessions or we have certain meetings, right? Are we asking our board members to contribute to this? I don't think the board has to contribute, especially, I mean, depending on your communications department size, they can really own this, but I think the board should hear how it ends up. Like I've had places where the comms team will go into the board and say, and some people don't have a team, right? There might be the media and a small nonprofit coming and saying, we've put together a crisis comms plan. Here's what it is in general, walk them through it and say, are you all good with it? I don't think the board has to be involved in responding to crisis, unless of course it involves something happening to the executive director. And I think the board chair has a different role on this situation. Okay, I love it. Great, thank you. Well, you have been tremendous. I've really enjoyed hearing your thoughtful approach and why this is necessary and how we can achieve it, even with a small team. I feel like the things that you've outlined for us are logical and they're achievable and something we really need to have in place. Lori Hennessey, executive director, Pacific Northwest One Love. Join OneLove.org is their website. You need to check it out. They have a vast network of folks around the country doing amazing things and it really is an important topic in society today. JoinOneLove.org, like I said, check them out. Lori, this is great. You've been speaking my love language. These are the things that I love. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, been joined today by Jared R. Ransom, non-profit nerd, my non-profit nerd, but she can be yours too. Great job. We like to say that. Hey, again, we are here because of our amazing sponsors and they include Blumerang American Non-profit Academy, your part-time controller, non-profit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, staff and boutique, non-profit nerd, and non-profit tech talk. These are the people that join us day in and day out so that we can get daily episodes to you. Jared reminded me briefly, we're marching on 900 episodes, which I'm like, what the hell? That's incredible. There's a lot of information out there. Yeah, there's a lot. I know, I love it. I think we're like 840, but really working towards that 900, we'll hit 1,000 probably over this year, so really exciting. And thank you to Lori and all of our other amazing guests that allow us this opportunity because we certainly, Julia, I know there's days where it seems like a really heavy lift and I am so extremely glad to have the support of our sponsors and our guests and our viewers, right? Our viewers, our viewers make it all worthwhile and we have a great team that works on this. You get to see Jared and I, but there are folks behind us that really support us and lift us up and so it's really a remarkable thing. I guess that we're witnessing our communications, Lori, right before you. Nice job. But anyway, hey everybody. We like to end every episode with this message and especially for our nonprofit sector. And the message is very simple. Just stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow.


Again a blessing it is to be able to have everybody and gather everybody It's been such a strange time and a strange year our theme that we're we're gonna hear a lot about is taken from the Acts of the Apostles It says get up now and stand on your feet I have appeared to you for this purpose To appoint you as a servant and a witness of what you have seen and what you will be shown and I just found myself Over the last year just kind of praying and reflecting about what what was going on and where we saw ourselves and And how we were supposed to be church in the midst of a COVID and and how we were supposed to gather and how we're supposed to pray And how we're supposed to encounter Jesus and and one of the iconic moments for me from the Holy Father was actually in March 27th or 29th I don't remember the date that that he had the holy hour in St. Peter's Square and there was just something kind of surreal about that and and having been in the St. Peter's Square numerous times and there's always a huge crowd and there's an Excitement and electricity in the air and and to see a feeble Holy Father walk out kind of limping and He holds this holy hour for literally the world And one of the things he said is that this is an opportunity for us to reevaluate He said don't waste this time and nobody obviously knew what this time was going to look like But it was something that resonated in my heart then and it continues to resonate in my heart this This time and how did we use it and and what does it mean for us to? Reprioritize and take a look at what's valuable and what's most important and what's essential The last year's had all kinds of conversations about what's essential and and I think we largely got it wrong Most of the time those of you who are from Brooklyn. We got a few Brooklyn priests here To all right. All right But just obviously they were in the press and the media lots Claiming that religion is essential worship is essential But we're living in a world It's more and more that's saying that it wasn't essential the governor of Virginia comes out and literally says that he says It's not essential that we gather together to pray Which just caused me to think more and more over the last many weeks and months about About those core things that are essential to us that kind of define and direct give direction to us in our life in our ministry When everything else is stripped away provides us this opportunity to focus and in some ways that was my prayer For for this time during the the pandemic particularly the early times when people weren't able to go to mass My hope of my prayer was that that they discovered Jesus. It's present I mean so much of our spiritual life as we go right we go here we go to mass We go to prayer group we go to Bible studies we go to men's groups We go to all of these things, but there was a couple of months there where nobody could go anywhere And it seemed to me a perfect and a beautiful opportunity to allow the Lord to come to them and to encounter them where they were And it caused me to reflect more on the early church When there weren't these huge massive churches for people to go to There wasn't this place that they could all gather And the people were in smaller groups Then I had an occasion in the in the fall dealing with a friend of the university and some actually it was it was not the fall it was the spring Because biden had already been elected And and he was talking about how he had a spirit of entitlement Some of the things that were going on he felt frustrated and anxious and he realized that he was really entitled He felt entitled as a christian. It's like how could you do this? How could we deal with this that this shouldn't be happening because this is the united states of america How is this and he realized that he was very entitled in what he expected and what he was demanding And again, it just caused me to think more and more about what we are and where we are and where we find ourselves in a church I ran across the quote of pope john paul That he wrote to the letter to the christian faithful He says it is necessary then to keep a watchful eye on this our world with its problems and its values its unrests its hope its defeats and triumphs A world whose economic social political and cultural affairs pose problems with great grave difficulties Holy father john paul warned us that a number of years ago And he began to talk about the christian world that we lived in is no longer present and things have substantially changed Pope benedict picked up on that a bit and pope francis has spoken a great deal of it Francis would say we no longer live under a christian regime because the faith especially in europe but also in much of the west No longer constitutes an obvious premise of common life On the contrary It is even often denied derided marginalized and ridiculed If we think back on the holy father's early pontificate He spoke about the church being in the periphery and the necessity that that we recognize that And just as i've been praying over the last many months i've come to that place that and again We understand it and we're aware of it But i don't know what it is maybe the pandemic and all that just really resonated in my heart That we find ourselves in a profoundly different world And what does it look like for us as ministers of the gospel and what does it look like of us? Just basically as disciples right as disciples of Jesus. How do we live in this world? i'm struck again by by the book that that I just got black guys encouraged to be catholic Vigil church Vigil wrote and he said at the heart of the struggle and at the heart of the scandal over the last many Two decades was that ultimately people weren't being disciples They weren't being disciples of Jesus So what does that look like for us as men those of us who are priests Those of us who ordained those of us who are in seminary. What does that look like for us to live the christian life in the world that we find ourselves in? What i've been doing over the last couple months is just praying and reflecting doing a little bit of reading About what the early church looked like i was thinking you know When was this other time when was the time when when christianity wasn't in the center? And that's one of the things that pope francis has said time and time again that that we grew accustomed to the Being of the source of power the church was in a source of power And because of everything that's taken place over the last decades, but particularly over the last couple of years that's not the case And he said in one sense that's okay because the church was never supposed to be the center of power It was never what this is about But the church has lived in the periphery and brothers we're seeing that happen more and more Is that we are being moved to the side? And that desire that that spirit of entitlement that we're we're catholic christian. This is what we're built on We don't live in that world anymore So I was taking a look and contrasting as some of the elements of the early church when they had this same This same struggle that they had so what are the common things first off? There's been a profound rejection of god The one of the significant things that's changed over the last many years is that guys that the reality is those of us who Were in the ordained ministry we were part of the solution right the church was part of the solution We had problems and struggles and difficulties in the world And we would look to the church to be able to help bring some reconciliation healing some comfort. We're now the problem Rather than seem being seen as a part of the solution So we who are faith are being pushed to the side We're being told well You just think that because of your faith not because some argument may actually make perfectly good sense Apparently following science only works if it actually defends the opinion that an individual has I went to a march for life Not this year obviously the year before and there was this one image that I had that just is seared in my mind This woman was holding is kind of a beautiful placard of our lady And and on it. It said we wouldn't be in this problem if mary would have had an abortion That we who are believers we who are men of faith we who represent something greater than ourselves are actually seen Is the problem And in the early church in the roman empire, there was a profound rejection of this idea of god that we the christian community Was bringing The world that we live in that the idea of any objective we know this idea of any objective truth is profoundly mocked Not only do we have a crisis of morality? But there is no morality anymore that there was at one time a moral norm that could be offended There's nothing anything you want right now, right? And we're trying to bring some sense of Sanity into this But if we have no moral high ground to be able to stand on And no influence and if the very foundations of what we believe are being dismissed and mocked How do we live in the midst of that? How do when the when the scriptures invite us right when the scriptures invite us to stand up? Well, what is it that we stand up and do what is it that we stand up and say what is it that we stand up to encounter? What does it look like for us in this world that we find ourselves to be able to stand up and profess faith? And what can we learn from the early church? So I take a look at a couple of the elements of the pre christian world where where the dominant empire was the roman empire And it was not the christian community And a couple of things I think would be for us again getting back to these priorities and these essentials and Reprioritizing at the heart of it was their recognition that they were christian and obviously we understand that But this was something profoundly different than what we found in the jewish community Is that they were largely born into that it was a race. It was an ethnicity The christian community was not we find in the in the romans. It says there is neither jew nor greek nor male nor female That how the individual identified themselves and they all looked profoundly different But they identified themselves because they had encountered christ Paul says in the chrithians and we ought to bear witness to this right He says I don't come with you with great talks and great speaking.  The only thing that mattered was that they had encountered jesus I had an experience a number of years ago. I was in taiwan It was obviously just a very small christian community about one or two percent And I was giving a talk at the university that was there and everybody was kind of introducing themselves There were a vice president of this dean of that faculty member of this And this woman came up to me and she shook my hand and she said hello. My name is maria. I'm a christian I was struck by that What did she want me to know the thing that was most important for her to be able to share with me Was that she was christian They had nothing else right The early christian community what they identified themselves was not power was not influence But it was the fact that they were christian and they came to that by a choice Paul says in galatians for through faith you are children of god in christ jesus For all of us who are baptized into christ have clothed themselves with christ. There is neither jew Nor greek. There is neither slave nor free person There is not male or female for all or one in christ jesus. Galatians 5 23 Christ is the center of everything And I think that one of the things that that that we're being invited to right now is Is to reflect and spend some time thinking about what does that mean that christ is the center of everything I think in the past We've been looking for the government or for organizations to be able to do things that were ultimately our responsibility And do the men and women that we're ministering with and even ourselves when we first and when we look at ourselves And we reflect on on our relationship with the lord. How is it that we identify ourselves? This idea of getting back to that which is most important what priorities the most that I stand before you As a christian I come before us that we come before one another is this basic fundamental reality That jesus is lord for me That he's my savior and there are struggles and there are difficulties going on in the culture that are going on the church And going all around us, but when we get through it all that's what brings us together brothers Is that we have the same lord? We have the same redeemer. We have the same savior It isn't he that is our hope he that is our strength He that is our counsel he that it continues to want to animate our life by the power of his spirit Amen I mean this is what ought to give us life in the midst of no matter what the struggles and the circumstances that we find ourselves in The early christian community had nowhere else to go because all they had was their relationship with one another And their encounter that they've had with christ There was nothing else that they could look to And in some ways for us this year so many of the things that we leaned on were taken away from us And we found ourselves at times like what do I do? And where do I go and how we're supposed to navigate this? And in one sense that was an uncomfortable experience, but at other is it was there was something refreshing and life giving about it so in the early church was was Experiencing persecution experiencing struggle and difficulty what they had was they had their relationship with one another The encounters that they had with one another And this is something I think that bears reflection for us that That when everything else is taken away and our communities were able to come back together What was their experience of faith in that? How much was their experience of faith in their experience? Necessity or built on their experience of church Their experience of literally the building sacraments Had they encountered and what was their encounter of jesus? Because so much of it was stripped away and the same thing with the question that we have to ask ourselves In the midst of the ministry as I mentioned that that I never imagined that I was going to have to tell people That they couldn't come to the sacraments What is that? I'm a priest right That's what I do That i'm able to minister to the people of god so so even when that's taken away and that's stripped away What do we find and what do we discover? Well for the early church it was jesus And it was just jesus because that's all they had And I think this is what the lord is inviting us to come back to What what was your encounter with jesus how how is your relationship with jesus changed over the last many months? Did you find him in the midst of the struggle? Did you find him in the midst of the difficulty when you cried out? I had an experience it was for some of you are aware that in november my older brother died of cancer He was diagnosed and lasted about three months my brother passed away and there was this one particular day When I was trying to get home to be able to spend some time with him that there was that there was the All that was going on with covet was raging at the time and I was sitting in our little friary chapel And and I felt like the walls were like just caving in on me and it's like lord I mean what's going on in the midst of all of this and and in the midst of the pressure and the anxiety and all of that Jesus just broke through and he said dave. I will not let you be crushed I will not let you be crushed And at that moment it's like well, it really doesn't feel like that right I mean this feels pretty pretty pretty heavy for me. He says I will not let you be crushed But what I experienced in that it was This image that I use is of an image of star wars and I wish bob were here Because I don't know exactly which star wars film it was and it actually really bugs bob That I don't know which one it was but it was the one when princess leah and I think Luke or in this it's like this big trash compactor.  I say star trek But in the midst of right in midst of all this caving in there was this this profound presence of jesus And experiencing yeah experiencing him in the midst of that It was this refocusing It's it's the things that that I'd lean on that I leaned on that I held on to that all of I mean literally just being taken away And we have to ask the question and it's a question that I love of st. Francis St. Francis says oh god you are enough for me Oh god you are enough for me And I must say over the last many months and last year I prayed over that a glotton especially that one morning in my little chapel in the friary You know here you are lord you and I and I feel like everything's being caved in and me are you enough for me? And sometimes maybe it takes having all of this stuff happen all these things stripped away from us That we begin to refocus How has christ been your savior? How has he been your hope? How do we respond to that? Again when with them reflect on the early church Well when they came to christ they came to him as their savior and they begin to give their life and this becomes the focus of their life And they deal with struggles and difficulties because of that It's our experience and our story as well But each one of us I think is given this invitation to ask ourselves How is it that we encounter jesus more in the last year? And has he become the center of our everything? How is it that the crutches and the things that we lean on as they're taking away? Are we comfortable with that? Are we okay with that? How do we reconcile that where do we ultimately find our worth? If my worth and my dignity is just merely in what I do What happens when that's taken away? Again the the image of of the holy father saying we need to reprioritize brother was what is most important well in the early church in the early communities It was jesus because that's all they had Let's just take a moment just take a breath If you were to think for a moment reflect for a moment How did you encounter jesus? How did your relationship with him? How did he animate your life differently? Actually the apostles too says every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area And breaking bread in their homes They ate their meals with exaltation and sincerity of heart praising god enjoying favor with all the people When I was spending some time just reflecting and thinking about some of again the similarities between the early church I was struck and brought back to that this this gathering that the community had In the relationship with one another I shared when we were talking at the beginning one of the concerns I had is that some people come in thinking you know in some ways this year wasn't that bad And it is something for us to bear in mind that that everything is not terrible about this year I met a young couple that had been trying to have a child for a number of years And they finally conceived and they had their baby in november And they said 2020 is always going to be a year of grace and a year of blessing for us Right one of our students here at the university She was she was a freshman and she was talking to a couple of the older students and they were saying you know We're just sorry that you had to deal with COVID in the midst you had to deal your first year in the midst of COVID She goes well, what do you mean? And she goes well, you know, it's just not like it normally is and again the freshman girl She says well, what do you mean? And they said well, it's usually better than this and the freshman says this has been the best year of my life This has been the best year of my life. I can't imagine that it gets better than this Well in my own life one of the blessings of this year has been my relationship with my brothers I mean while everything was locked down and we weren't having conferences the friars We just drank beer and played cornhole. We basically bunch of rednecks, right? All right, but it was it was honestly just about every evening We just gathered together played a game maybe watched a movie played hours and hours and hours of cornhole And in many ways, it was the best couple of months. Just this is funny I put gas in my car in March 3rd and did not put gas in my car again until June 11th Right And and there was there was parts of that that were profoundly graced But what it caused was a greater communal life And then in the scripture that we're using this idea of standing up it says that we are going to stand And the question I think we have to ask ourselves brothers is What is the relationship we have who are the people in our life that we're looking to That that that we're able to receive ministry to We're able to let them see us Let them know us Hold ourselves accountable to them them holding themselves accountable to us I think one of the graces and the blessing that we see in the early church Was the way they lived in relationship with one another The way they shared their life with one another One of my greatest concerns and I'm sure you could speak to it as well of the last year was the isolation That's why when we were talking about what we were going to do at the university You know people always said you know father Dave We're so proud of you that you allowed the kids to come back to campus that was never in my radar I couldn't imagine not letting the students come back to campus. This is where they belong But the idea of them being isolated was so profoundly disturbing to me I said we're going to do whatever we can do to make sure that they're going to be back Now at the time I didn't think what we're going to offer is allow them to come back to pay without paying tuition So we ended up doing so it's not exactly what the plan was but apparently got at a plan for that I think brothers too many of us isolate ourselves Is that we're not living in relationship We're not living and communicating with brothers that are allowing themselves to really open up our heart and make ourselves vulnerable and allow ourselves to be seen And I think more and more what we're going to have to find guys is what we're going to see is Is as things get more and more crazy and confusing in our culture that we are going to have to come together And I think it's the Pope Benedict was the first one that I remember John Paul might have been saying it but he says that the church is going to become smaller And she's going to become more pure Now I didn't know what a pandemic was going to look like I didn't know if that was going to be a part of what this pruning is going to look like But we brothers have got to be able to come together And when we look at the early church, they gathered in little places They gathered in houses and they gathered together and they prayed and they supported and they encouraged My invitation for you in this in this week is to do just that there'll be various opportunities for you to be able to kind of Share your life with one another And share with what's going on But my concern is that is that we're out there and we're trying to do everything by ourselves And we're trying we're doing all of these great works But ultimately is it developing and deepening our relationship with Jesus and our relationship with one another And what does it look like for we as brothers to be able to Witness to our parishioners and to the people in our communities How important it is that we come together that we pray that we forgive one another that we repent to one another That we support each other that we encourage one another that we challenge one another And I think my one of my concerns was that what what COVID did was it allowed us to just kind of hide And be separated and I know because I've talked to many people. I've been traveling for the last many months And a lot of guys struggled And they were kind of locked up in their rectory and they struggled and they fell into things that they hadn't followed struggled with for years And it's into that that I think the Lord wants to speak Into that deep desire to be seen And to be known And yes first that that takes place with Jesus and just allowing him to look into us and to bear into our hearts But also in our relationship with one another And it's easy for me to say, you know, who's that person in your in your diocese or in your area They're sharing your life with but I know some of your stories and it's just not that simple So what do we do this week? That allows us the opportunity to be in relationship to come together As a community in the midst of the craziness and come together and support one another And encourage one another And to be honest with one another So to that end I invite you during the meals and the recreation time and and some of you come in here And you know some people and you're going to catch up on relationships that you've had for years And others you you don't know anybody So in your meal time going for a walk just Try to reach out Try to allow yourself to be known try to make yourself available to others Amen The other part of this That I've been reflecting on Is how we we we see literally going in front of us two different kingdoms when jesus comes in the scriptures And he says the kingdom of god is at hand They're just an image that I really appreciate, but I also see the world shaking at that I don't know if you read the uh, Bishop baron's letter to the suffering church that he wrote that I thought was really quite beautiful But one of the things that he said was that this was what's been going on and I would actually In many respects say what's taken place in the last 18 months has been demonic It's man of the kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of the world or the spirit of the age Or whatever language that we want to be able to use But I think it's imperative for us that are there ministering in the midst of this To be able to recognize and see how the evil one is working And to see how he's active catechism states Catechism 550 The coming of god's kingdom means the defeat of satans It is by the spirit of god that I cast out demons Then the kingdom of god is upon us You know over the last many months I've just found myself reflecting and praying on the the relationship between the kingdom of god and the kingdom of the world And just some contrasting that I think is important to spend some time reflecting and thinking about That we live in the world where the human person in one sense is the center of the world Now we may think that's cool to be in the center of the world until we realize that that's everybody's experience And that the person standing next to us wherever they are also in the center of their world And because of that it's created. I think this massive confusion Where the kingdom of god is crisis at the center And we are with the center and everybody at the center is focusing on that I think the invitation that we're being given is to refocus the people that we minister to but even refocus in ourselves Is jesus at the center of everything that we're doing If it's a program or if it's a movement, I don't know what it is, right? But refocusing in our all of our eyes on the same thing The kingdom of the world is becoming more and more tribal Division is essential Keep us apart Keep us against them Get ahead of them keep them down Focus on what is different I gave a talk to the kids the other day the students at the youth conference And I was talking about just all that's going on in the race relations that we have that that fundamentally Much of the culture is moving to we identify ourselves by the color of our skin And it's becoming more and more us against them and I was just reflecting on martin luther's king's Desire and hope that it would not be the color of the skin, but the content of their character And I find myself praying and reflecting more and more on the the how the evil one is fundamentally the divider And the evil one wants to divide and if he can divide and he can isolate and he can make it us against them Then he begins to see the victory and the pandemic was the perfect opportunity for that And it was interesting when we come out of the pandemic the first thing that happens Is the whole thing in the situation in minneapolis with george floyd When the opportunity for us to begin to come together after this literally global one of the few things in the history of the world That all of the people in the world were experiencing we have this This profound horrible thing that took place in minnesota And the opportunity for us to begin to come together was only ruined The kingdom of god is about unity Again in the early church that was neither greek male female But they came together because they'd expanded counter jesus The kingdom of god calls us to himself calls us to his heart matters not our skin color Our background our history our story or even our sin But it's one of unity We have to recognize i think the way the evil one wants to divide wants to divide our hearts wants to divide our community Wants to divide our ministry wants to divide our diocese our parishes And how is it that we can use the spirit of god to bring us together The kingdom of god the kingdom of the world is about controlling restraining binding restricting fear darkness sin The kingdom of god is about freedom It's about transformation It's about holiness It's about light The kingdom of the world is about the enemy And the enemy in recognizing in the kingdom of world wants to make each one of us the enemy That if we can look at our neighbor and we can say that they're the problem they're the struggle there is what's wrong But the kingdom of god reminds us that is not the king that we are not the enemy The enemy is we hear in Ephesians 6 12 is not flesh and blood But principalities The kingdom of the world the prize is the soul and our heart And the kingdom of god is the prize is our soul and our heart Catechism says in 408 The consequences of original sin and of all men's personal sin puts the world as a whole In the sinful condition aptly described in st. John's expression The sins of the world And it is to this brothers That we are invited to come forward and to be able to stand and recognize that god is present And that he's asking something of us And what does it look like for us to be able to in the midst of all of this craziness that's going on To be able to stand up To be able to give witness But I suggest brothers that if if this is not something that we've experienced in our own life If the lord isn't breathing his presence into our own life is he isn't moving in our own life Then it's not going to be able to do that when we stand up in front of our communities And when we try to minister to them, but ultimately we ring shallow when we ring empty But if we're encountering him and he's becoming the source and he's becoming more of the center in our life This this return to these fundamental basics we ask ourselves. Why is it that I do what I do? I Think when I was I was reflecting recently about how Jesus has come to rescue me and save me But I think oftentimes if I was honest what I was trying to do is I was trying to pay him back for what he's done for me I mean god has been so profoundly good for me And there has to be some response and it's like so much of what I do It's like I want to pay you back as if I could ever pay him back for what he's done for me You know I could just do this or I could do that or I could do this better I could do more and there comes this place in my own life And I think hopefully in our own all of our lives. It's not about paying him back for him saving us And for him rescuing us and for him calling us by name Rather, it's about us being able to surrender And allowing him to be who he wants to be for us getting rid of of all of the The trappings that go along with our ministry And the programs and all they just getting rid of all of that and say Jesus, this is just about you and it's just about me And this was the invitation that the Lord gave me this year Is Literally everything being taken away those things that are most dear to me being taken away And what do I do now? And what do we do now? So what we're going to do is we're just going to spend a couple of minutes and and just even as I was speaking Just this this like this forest that is just being opened up for us And getting back to the basic and getting back to that which is essential And what is the Lord inviting you to in the midst of that? So do me a favor just take a breath Just for a moment Pray that God's spirit would be present to you In his spirit would be light Lord come with your light The light of your holy spirit, what does it look like for us to get back to the basics? What does it look like for us to Willfully surrender the trappings? What's it look like for you to be the center of our life? What have we cling to other than you Jesus? What have we held on to? What would we not let go of? Jesus come with your light Or how have we hid from our brothers Not allowing ourselves to be seen. How have we put up a facade?