A Tribute to the Masque

Okay, I need to admit: I hate things that are too cheesy. I like to have a positive outlook on life but it does not strike me as very honest to not offer some form of criticism as well. Otherwise it sounds like some kind of pep fest for the person or idea that you are discussing instead of a time to delve into some critical questions. (Ah, the perpetual independent thinker I am...) However, I have recently been asked to write some kind of tribute to the Masque Youth Theatre and School, where the director Sylvia Langworthy is retiring. I was involved with the Masque actively when I was younger, so this is what I finaly found myself writing, trying not to be overly cheesy in my approach:

When I heard that there was going to be a collection of stories about Sylvia and the Masque, I was excited to participate in this. However, as I sat down to try to write, I found myself unable to do so effectively. The timing is actually pretty bad because I am finally able to look at these stories, acknowledge how they impacted me, and release them. The reliving of these stories at this point in time formulates questions about what was and what could have been. Right now I am at a place where I am more concerned about what I am now and who I might be able to become even though I have plenty of interesting stories I could tell. Yet, within this context, however, I would say that the Masque and Sylvia has left quite an imprint in terms of some of the values that I am finding myself leaning toward.

I am in graduate school with Berkeley, California as my main geographical base in preparation to become a minister in the context of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. One of the things that they often stress to us is that as future clergy members is how important it is to find people that we would want to be around who are not affliated with the church so that we have a sense of social support somehow. While I have a variety of interests that I could see myself happy to pursue outside the context of the church, the thing that I always think about as a top priority is getting involved with a local theater in some capacity. The community that is formulated around putting a show together is beautiful really as it draws people from a variety of backgrounds and interests together who are interested in bringing a show to life. The creativity that is involved in putting a show together still captivates me the same way it did when I was a child. I truly can not think of anywhere else that I have ever experienced the combination of community and creativity as I have in the context of putting any play together. The Masque is not the only place that I have experienced this in the context of theater. However the Masque is the place that really introduced me to these concepts and I am forever indebted to that.

Also, I think that wanting to be involved with the Masque as well as doing well in school really suited me well. I have a very creative, over active mind. Being in plays really suited me quite well because it was the beginning of articulating my world of imagination to other people. It was also good for me because being involved with plays, especially under Sylvia’s direction, taught me a lot about discipline and priorities at a young age. It actually helped me to become a better student, which I am forever indebted to her for as I am now in a masters degree program.

In many ways, Sylvia and the Masque has left a positive impact on me. Maybe my criticism comes from the fact that often what works for us as a child is not the same as what works as an adult. Yet as my reflection demonstrates, I still bring in a love of the arts, especially theater and literature into my adult world as well. Sylvia and the Masque really nurtured these tendencies of mine as a child, which made me become the person that I am today.

Holy Lingering

My younger brother graduated from Northwestern University this weekend. So I carpooled with my parents to Evanston, Illinois. I really am proud of him as he has already started working for Teach for America.

The whole weekend was wonderful and crazy busy. Connecting with family members, attending various ceremonies, attending parties to meet his friends and their family members. It was nice to finally be able to put faces to names after all of these years. I really am proud of my brother.

However the highlight of my weekend has to be when with my immediete family, we just hung out on a street on Evanston. We started out at a coffee shop, just enjoying each others presence. We continued various discussions we were having about life and life's questions over Chicago style pizza. It was a perfect day really, it was nice out and I was wearing what I was most comfortable in: a tank top and a skirt. There was no rush to be any where and we just enjoyed each other's company. That was the highlight of my weekend.

Upon arriving back by myself in St. Paul, I took care of some basic things that needed to be dealt with. Then, I decided that even though there were people I was wanting to connect with and things I wanted and needed to do, that I was just going to enjoy that it was a nice day. For some reason the question entered my mind if I do not do it now, I will just get consumed by the other good things that I want or need to do with my week.

So I jumped in my car and I went to the Como Zoo. On one hand, since it the entrance fee is optional and because it was a nice day out, there were a lot of young families around. Which is kind of pleasant knowing that the fun that I am having is pretty innocent and can be enjoyed by a variety of ages. I told myself not to think about the things that I wanted to do or the people I hoped to connect with and just enjoy the day. So I did.

I found myself just pleasantly wandering all around the zoo. I felt like I walked into a fairy tale when I walked into a room where butterflies were flying all around. I realized that I would love to have a seal or a sea lion as a pet, feeling drawn to how cute they look and how they swim around the water. (Water is my element of choice, and I realized that since I have been to the midwest my fins have been pretty dry...) I enjoyed watching the monkeys play. I also enjoyed watching a sleeping lion.

In these moments, I found myself really feeling at peace with being around the animals. They live such simple lives. I found myself captivated by how little they need to do, and how easily they seemed content by simple things like a nap sunshine or the presence of their family.

I love being in the Twin Cities. I enjoy the opportunities around here. For the first time in a long time I feel I am not depending completely on other people or books as main source of life's joys. (Dont get me wrong: books, family and friends are some of the things that truly do bring some of the most joy in life. Its just that I feel liberated to find joy in other places as well right now). I just realize that I am taking time to do I have already been bowling, to bars meeting new people through various friends I already have, been to a blues festival, been to see a wonderful production of "Midsummer Nights Dream" at the Guthrie, and am almost done with half of my mission developing class. What I definitely have planned in my agenda for this summer is a mission developing conference, a human rights conference and Chinese cooking classes. There are also countless places that I would love to explore on my own or with a friend around the Cities that I will figure out how to do as time permits. (I amazed at how many free-low cost items there are to do around the Twin Cities!) Definite things I have to do are taking an online class and proceeding on the endorsement for candidacy for ordination in the ELCA. For someone who was afraid of being bored and lonely during this summer, I definitely have a busy summer ahead of me. Yet, I feel like I am actually taking the time to live life outside the context of the goal I am trying to acheive!! It feels wonderful and freeing really having minimal constraints for now.

Yet within the midst of everything that I feel like I really want and need to do in the course of my summer, I realize that the moments that I had today with the animals at the zoo by myself and the intentionally not being busy with my family and just enjoying their company the other day seemed like incredibly precious moments to me. The animals at the zoo seemed to teach me a lot of lessons. Even though I seem to never lack for finding things that I want to do with people, there was something about not being busy with my family and just taking time to connect with each other. It was nice to see how the animals would seem to enjoy being around the other animals without being too busy with activity. Even though I never seem to lack for books I want to read, movies I want to watch or projects I want to pursue on my own, there was something about just detaching myself from all of it temporarily and just going out and enjoying the day. It was nice to see the animals seem content with leisurely swimming around or enjoying a nap in the sun. Animals do not busy themselves with unnecessary things but find a fair amount of joy (and conflict sometimes even) in the simple life that is before them. It was almost as though wandering around the zoo they were encouraging me to slow down and just enjoy the day today without thinking about all the activity I want and need to accomplish.

There seemed to be something holy about these moments. Dietrich Bonhoffer emphasizes that in the context of Christian community, we need time in solitude and time in community. Maybe I can not help but wonder how often even I take to truly enjoy these moments alone and moments with others. There is something about not thinking about what is next that helps me connect with the moment alot better. In the context of walking down the streets of Evanston with my family and around the Como Zoo in St. Paul, I felt like I somehow was just enjoying these moments all the more. These quieting moments or these moments in authentic conversation with people who wanted to connect seemed incredibly holy to me. It came from not obsessing over these little details from life to enjoy my family and the animals in the zoo. I do not think that I am always good at this but I think I am getting better about not worrying completely about what is next. There is a difference between being legitimately concerned, making life happen and being worried, although those items can be blurred at times. I think that I tend to worry about things excessively with good intentions of staying on top of things or trying to make life happen. Yet as I let go of this sense of worry, somehow I am able to enjoy the moments with myself or with my family all the more. And I do not feel like life needs to be rushed so much.

There is a sense of holiness to these moments. I think that God really does want me to slow down and linger in the moment around me even more than I already do. The real question is can I go about each day with this sense of holy lingering? Or is it necessary at times to linger so that I can jump into the craziness of life? Or, as someone recently suggested to me, do I just need to linger more in order to enjoy life more? I could write it off and say that this was just my weekend of holy lingering. Or I could really delve into this peace of lingering more as I think that these are the moments where the Spirit of God really becomes apparent in my life. Yet maybe life does get crazy busy and I need to find moments to take time for Holy Lingering. This holy lingering is to be done both with other people AND by myself, as Bonhoffer really emphasizes in his book Life Together. Maybe the point is that I just need to allow myself to linger whenever I get the chance to find peace with myself, in my relationships and with God. Maybe I just need to make a little more room for holy lingering.

Every Woman Becomes Like Her Mother...That's Her Tragedy...

I just got done taking a course in Strategies in Mission Developing from my mother at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. I would have to say that being in this course has revitalized me even more so for potential service in the church. For some reason, as much as I love my courses and my community out in Berkeley, I often felt that the way that I looked at church was unique from a lot of my peers. I think that a constant dilemma that I have felt like I had was that I have often been looking at church worship rituals from the perspective of people who may not be familiar with the culture of church but a reverence for the faith and for church as a life long Christian. For some reason, I have had a hard time reconciling these two perspectives in my experience at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa and in my experiences as a seminary student out in Berkeley, California. I am going to be bold enough to say that these have been formulative experiences for me. I love the experiences that I had in college with academics, music, activism and traveling. Seminary has not been easy with some major disappointments and the obstacles that everyone has to jump through that are not easy (like Greek, CPE and a difficult teaching parish supervisor).

However I can say that I have probably been having the most fun in seminary than I have in my entire life as well. It has not always made sense to me, however lately I have realized that regardless of the choices that I would have made in life I would have always wound up at seminary by this point in my life, which gives me the goosebumps when I think about it.

Despite all of this, I think there has often been a point in which the perspective that I have about church and the world that is very different from a lot of people who identify as having grown up in the church. I have never been antigonistic towards other worldviews or the reasons why people do not go to church. In fact, I was always taught to really listen to the reasons why people do not go to church and not try to convert them, but listen to why they may not feel compelled to want to go to church and ask the church some challenging questions. In having this perspective in a lot of the faith circles that I have been a part of, however, I have often felt like such an outsider.

Maybe it suddenly makes sense to me now that I have dated a lot of men who are not Christians. Because intellectually, their questions and objections make so much sense to me on the way Christianity is portrayed and the way that things are done in the context of church. The tension has always been that in my heart, I will not give up my faith in Jesus Christ's love or my hope for the church. I really think that I legitimately did love these men as well. Yet intellectually I agree with their perceptions with the way Christianity tends to be portrayed. I think that something I have finally come to realize is the men that I have dated tend to be more of the type of people that I hope to do ministry for. And the seminary students that I have had (brief) dating type relationships with are more inclined for doing ministry to people who are already inclined to go to church. However since I have been in seminary I wanted to stop my Hosea approach to dating relationships because ministry is already hard. For those of you who may not know, Hosea was a prophet who married a prostitute an analogy for God's ultimate unconditional love for Israel despite their ways of turning away from God. This is what I think of when I think of dating a non Christian at this point in life. I want to do ministry for these people but because it is so tough I do not think I could truly date someone who did not share my sense of faith and my philosophy in ministry. This is because I think that ministry and romance are already hard on their own, why put them in conflict with each other?

In reflecting the way this mentality has made dating and ministry challenging, (as if they are not challenging already), I can not help but reflect over how unleashed I felt in the context of taking this mission developing course from my mother this past 2 weeks.

I have to say that I have felt like I have clicked a lot faster with people in this course than anyone else I have met in seminary. I also have to say that I was shocked to find that I was pretty talkative in this course as well, which has not always been the case for me either. I felt very comfortable there and like my perspective was finally one that would not be challenged, but welcomed in the context of this course. This is not speaking ill of anyone in my PLTS experience though. I really have felt like I have really good professors out in Berkeley. I love my PLTS classmates quite a bit, even though I am not always as good at showing it as I would like. However I have often felt like my perspective on being concerned about the reasons why people do not go to church has not been a very valid point. Sometimes I have felt like people understand me philosophically but are not willing to let go of something about church that makes them comfortable: whether its the way music is done, language is constructed, the comfort of the albs, etc.

I am not saying that anyone is free of something that they want to cling onto; I think that I just tend to cling onto my Lutheran theology more than I cling onto any particular practice of church at this point in my life. However I do have a wide sense of openness about not having a set way in which church should be done, with a preference toward more contemporary way of doing things than a traditional way of doing things. I think that it is easy to critique all this conservative theology that is more mainstream; however I often think that this is contextualized to the needs of our current culture a lot better than focus Lutheran theology tends to be. I think its easy to critique reasons people reject the church or Christianity; however I think that these perspectives need to be understood better for the church to be a more welcoming, accepting place.

However I really felt like I came to life in the context of this class in a way that maybe I had never fully come to life before. For some reason, for the first time I felt like a lot of my perspectives and opinions were valid, not just something that sounded like too unconventional of a way to go about church. I think that this was often a sense I had out in Berkeley.

I went and visited a new mission start, Spirit Garage in the Uptown area for a project for the class. I am really drawn to their ministries for some reason. Hearing the other churches people went to made me want to visit every one of these churches.

I read books that seemed to make sense to me in terms of the way I conceptualized church. One book was on starting a new church, another had a large emphasis on community, yet another talked about how 20s and 30s were shaping the future of the church.

I had another PLTS student with me in the class. I felt like he probably got a glimpse of me in this class that most people in Berkeley do not see. I felt lucky to get to know him better as well. I enjoy the friendship that we have developed.

The other people in the class were doing some amazing things on their own. Two people were already into doing more creative ministries on their own which was so cool to hear their perspectives.

My mother was my professor. I was initially nervous about this but it worked out quite nicely. Having not seen her much in a while, having this common ground was actually nice to work with. However living with my mother professor is what I joked to be the seminary version of sleeping with the professor. I just made arrangements for my work to be graded by the academic dean and made the rule that any friendships that I developed in the class I would never talk to her about. We were not good about not bringing work home though because we both love this stuff so much.

I am not sure if mission developing is something that I am ultimately called to do, but the framework that mission developers work with is one that just makes a lot of sense to me. I think that I have felt happier in this past few weeks than I have in a long time. Maybe it poises questions to me about the fact that maybe even if the theology in Berkeley is pretty liberal, the liturgical structure is pretty conservative. The question of if I am ultimately more at home in Minnesota than I ever was in California. If it would not be so bad to serve a church in the midwest if the midwest is more concerned about having more creative styles of worship. The question of what a mission start out in Berkeley would look like.

Maybe in a way there is a sense of wrestling with God if maybe some of the things I have always said about myself would really be truth as well. But I can not help but think of a quote that Oscar Wilde says in "Importance of Being Earnest.": "Every woman becomes like her mother, that's her tragedy. No man does that's his." Because it is my professor mother who has contributed to my feeling validated and feeling very revitalized about the idea of being in ministry. Maybe its scary because I know its not easy work. I think ultimately I do not like the idea of being a single well educated woman in a more rural area. No longer is it fear speaking, but a desire TO have mutual friendships, live in an urban area and be in a romantic relationship that is supportive of the life that I want. But one thing at a time seriously. For right now, I am at least feeling not only better but excited about being in ministry myself because of this class. While it is the philosophy my parents have worked from, I am not embarcing it because they did it. I am embracing it because it is the philosophy that makes sense to me. So if this is a step toward being more like my parents, so be it. While I have been saying that I do not want to marry a pastor or be a mission developer, I am at least wrestling with how I could prepare FOR a job that is related to the latter. Which is a step in the direction of God laughing at me a lot more at my own protestations...

Life is Short

The other day, I got a phone call from one of my dorm brothers who is hanging out in Berkeley for the summer. He told me that he was afraid he had some bad news. I had left my car in Berkeley for the summer. I also had left a lot of stuff in my dorm room. I figured maybe something went wrong with my car or with the dorms.

So imagine my shock when he told me that he had just gotten word that a woman in my class died of a heart attack while she was on CPE. Apparently while doing her rounds, she collapsed on the floor. The doctors did everything they could do, but she died. She was close to my mothers age but she struck me as being really healthy and vibrant. (No offense mom) The news just shocked me quite a bit.

After I got off the phone, I found myself collapsing on the ground in tears. I had interacted with this woman quite a bit, so it saddened me that she is so suddenly dead. I had a few really rough points this past year. I remember one day she found me when I was in one of my rough spots. She listened to me and she told me to hang in there because I am going to be an awesome pastor. She was one of those people that when she would say those kinds of things, you actually really beleived it.

Another day, I was wanting to get off campus. I dressed up a little more just to feel better about myself as I sometimes did for a pick me up. She saw me walking and said, "Oh! Do you have a date tonight?" "No, I don't," I replied. "Well, you look like you do because you look so fabolous." I explained that I was just going to grab a bite for dinner by myself off campus. Suddenly, I looked at her and said, "Do you wanna join me?" It was then she said that she was just on a short break from working the youth festival on campus and said, "That sounds like fun, I would love to, but I have to get back to work. Maybe next time." She was also one of the very few people in my class who was going to be taking classes in the fall, and we had registered for some of the same classes. We had talked about making dinner together in the fall.

Suddenly, all these future events we had hypothetically talked about were taken away. But the reality of what a fun, generous person she was to be with was there. She was so easy to talk to and always made me feel good about myself when I talked to her. The reality is that in attending such a small school we often get to know each other pretty well, even when we do not feel like it. So if anyone dies, or if anyone goes through anything major it has an effect on the entire community. Its a reminder on how interconnected that we all are.

I realized that I HAD to call another friend of mine from PLTS who is also taking the same classes as me in St. Paul for the summer. I didnt catch him on the phone so I had to leave a message. I paced around my apartment frantically. A while later I got a call from one of our mutual friends in the area who graduated from PLTS who knew her as well. He said that they were heading over to my apartment shortly. I paced around the apartment even more. I felt a lot more peaceful when the men arrived on my doorstep. They came into the apartment. We sat down and we all shared some of our stories about this wonderful woman. Then we had a prayer for her.

I was supposed to drive to pick my mom up a few towns over. I was in no shape to do this alone. The men jumped in and were willing to help me drive to Cannon Falls. I seriously would have felt insane without them around. It was such a comfort. And I do not know if it is ironic or not that I felt more restful in my friends car than I did later tossing and turning in my bed. There is something about the presence of another human being who understands what you are going through in times like this that is incredibly comforting.

That night, I swear I heard Margaret talk to me. The presence felt very similar to my grandmother talking to me the night before she died years ago. My friend was tellling me that she was glad we care so much about her but I had to move on and focus on my school work. She also told me something else that I will only know the answer to with the test of time. It made me awaken with a jolt, and the reality of her death sunk in. Yet I swear I had been around her presence as well. I have felt her close many times.

It was really hard the next day being away from Berkeley. We are all scattered for the summer for various things. I was really releived that I had another Berkeley person in class with me. I think I would have felt insane without having him in the same room as me to be quite honest. Yet at the same time I felt so far away from everyone else.

My mother upon hearing the news made sure that we prayed for her family in chapel at Luther Seminary. I just heard the gasp of everyone at this particular prayer at the circumstances of her death. (Figuratively, CPE kills so many people.)

When I came home from class, even though I had a lot of work to do, I found myself attached to my cell phone trying to call people I know from school. I actually caught two girls in my class, which was nice to talk even briefly. I found myself attached to facebook to see if there was any other news that I may be able to learn and as another way to connect to people. I felt so distant from everybody. And yet, it was a bit of a harsh reminder that I may not truly see a lot of these people again. But there was a memorial service on campus which I would have liked to go to.

My friend who died was in seminary with her husband as well. They were such a fun couple to be around, and their plan was to go into ordained ministry together and be a clergy couple. The realization hit me that in her death we lost both her and her husband. Ministry is tough and if you are torn away from your main support, it may be hard to go about this alone. Yet he has gifts for ministry as well.

It is a reminder of how short life is and how every day is such a gift. I probably know even better than some people from my car accident a few years ago how it only takes a moment of brushing with death to realize how short life is. I think that this is a reminder that we are only dust and to dust we shall return. However it is impossible to get through life without getting attached to people even though there is the inevitablity that death is around the corner. You do not let it stop you from living life. Life is such a gift from God. Even though all of this stuff makes sense to me intellectually and theologically, I am still feeling pretty sad.

Please pray for the family of Margaret Monroe, for the PLTS community and for anyone else who is grief stricken by her death. She was an amazing woman.

Big Jay McNeely at Green Bay 1

At the blues festival today, all the music was wonderful and sucked me in. However Big Jay McNeely was my absolute favorite for the day!!! A good portion of the experience is lost not experiencing this music live. However, this is the best way that I can share this music with you. Music like this is meant to be shared.

Blues Festival

I went to a Blues Festival at the Peavy Plaza in Minneapolis today. What was so amazing was that this was free blues music for the entire day. It has everything I am looking for, a sense of innocence yet an edge. I had heard the blues before but today I swear I fell head over heels in love with it. It was a pretty amazing experience too. I had a wonderful time.

I saw people chill out with a beer with their friends, a great way to relax. I saw people bring young kids to the event, a great way to expose their kids to live music and have some fun themselves. I saw people who were there obviously on dates, which seemed like a romantic experience. People were there with their dogs, a demonstration that the enjoyment of music is not limited to human beings.

I had asked around about going with a friend, I wound up enjoying the music by myself and felt pretty safe as a single woman there. While it would have been an amazing experience to share with someone, I am so glad I did not skip out just because I could not find anyone to go with me. I have noticed that sometimes this makes me seem more unattached and attractive when I go somewhere alone. However today the only thing that I had attracted was a bad sunburn. It is really bad because I was wearing a low cut shirt to detract attention away from an unexpectedly swollen eye.

However I must admit that I really hardly even noticed these factors because the music just sucked me in. This is because it truly was really good music. It was a really nice day out in Minneapolis, unlike the rain I drove from in Rochester. This is one of the ways in which corporate america CAN do some good as it was sponsered by Famous Daves. Of course they advertized and they had their wonderful ribs ready to purchase. Yet this is one of the ways I embrace my Lutheran tradition: the living in the paradox between saint and sinner by enjoying things that corporate america produces. (They really were good ribs) Yet it was through this sponsership that people were able to experience this music for absolutely no cost so I can not write them off as completely evil either. Again, the Lutheran paradox.

The diversity of people there and the varied reasons that they used as excuses to come gave me goosebumps. Because it was an event that was experienced in the context of community. It was the way the arts are meant to be: a communal, affordable experience.

HOPE DOES NOT DISAPPOINT

One of the things I havent addressed on this blog is my title "Hope Doesn't Disappoint."
I have really come to beleive this quite a bit. Today in chapel during communion, I felt this.

At one point in life I would have said then that yes my hopes have disappointed me. But this is when maybe my idea of hope was coming from things of this world: things like our political structure, having a romantic partner, having a decent paying job, having my own place are on the list of things that I think that I would think about how my own hopes have defied me.

However as much as I would be happy for any one of these situations to change, I do not think that this is where true happiness or hope comes from. My hope comes from God and God alone. While changing any one of these previously mentioned situations would make me feel really happy, that is not where my hope comes from. My hope comes from God and God alone. It is God alone that does not disappoint me. While God can work through people and things in this world, my trust is ultimately in God alone.

Today in chapel, I felt myself witnessing the amazing ways in which God does not disappoint me. Even though I had been feeling a little weary from an interaction I had the previous day, witnessing word and sacrament really recharged me. There was something about the sermon today that reminded me about this more deep joy in my life. While I shy away from expressing a lot of emotion in worship as much as possible because I want to be socially appropriate to a certain degree mostly to show respect to others, and I find God in reason and thinking analytically. I tend to prefer sermons that challenge me or get me to think over ones that are there to comfort. However I felt tears running down my face in spite of this all because I felt like God really was talking TO ME and that God really does take away all this hurt and fear. I felt recharged after having the sacrament of Holy Communion with this sense of joy that it has given me.

I felt hopeful. I went back to class with people where I feel that for the first time in seminary people are struggling with the same type of questions about the church that I struggle with. And I felt this burning in my heart, knowing that the spirit of God really is in this place. Not only is the spirit of God with me, it is in this community.

And there is this hunger that I have to keep this spirit invoked power that I felt as much as possible. I am at a place where I am reimaging a lot of things realizing that the ideals that I held even as a college graduate really are not realistic. Amongst them is my protestation I would never be a pastor or marry a pastor. Maybe I am called to be a pastor in a more nonconvential sense of the word. I'll just have to be sure not to marry a pastor to keep myself accountable ;) There is a certain level of hope in knowing that I can reimagine life to a certain degree. But the even greater hope comes from knowing that this spirit of God that I really had an unusual sense of today is amongst me and is amongst the community of God.

I know that this may be the most stereotypically religious of the postings I will have ever put up. However it serves as a reminder to me that hope IN GOD never disappoints. Its when the hope is put in anything else that it disappoints.