I try not to write too much about being a gay Christian. Whilst it’s clearly a central part of my life it’s not at all the main aspect of my ministry. But since posting the talk I gave recently  I’ve been embroiled in more and more conversations about it. One of the things that has emerged for me is the type of phrases that well meaning Christians say when they’re talking about or to gay people. They seem to reveal the unhelpful framework in which these things are debated in the church.

I’m aware that plenty of people from outside the church read this blog and if that’s you then you may want to skip this post. As my friend Mick commented on my talk “the majority of ordinary people don’t give one jot over this as an issue”.  In my experience outside the church I think this is quite right. Unfortunately inside the church it’s still up for debate. I know that in a liberal Western democracy in the 21^st century this can beggar belief but I’ve heard the phrases below used over and over again in a church context and wanted to point out that, however well meaning the person saying them may be, they’re still awful things to say.

If you’re part of a church you may well recognise them, if you’re not and are still reading then welcome to “churchworld” please try not to roll your eyes too much in disbelief, everything below I have either heard said or read online or in print at least once over the last year.

I’ve  ranked them in order from least to most egregious. So starting with number 8 we have…

#8 “I’m on a journey with this”

This phrase only just scrapes into the ‘awful’ list because I know that a lot of people who use it are genuinely engaging in dialogue with a generous and open mind. It tends to be used by those who come from a more conservative background but are finding that over the years their views are changing to be more open and inclusive. Without doubt this is a good thing.

Nevertheless it I’m still taken aback when I hear it, particularly when it comes from lovely people who I know well and respect, and here’s why:

If you’re straight and married to the most wonderful person in the world who you love with all your heart and you feel that God has blessed your relationship then imagine someone saying to you, “That sounds nice, but I’m on a journey with this.”  In other words the person hasn’t decided whether your relationship really is a good thing and is still open to the possibility that it might be an abomination before God. If this was a person you respected then the phrase may well smart a little.

In fact this is the position of the Methodist Church in Britain; the official line is that we are on a ‘Pilgrimage of Faith’, journeying together through the issues. I’m sure this is a good thing. but by God it’s hard work sometimes as a gay person when we’re reminded that these good people still aren’t really sure whether our relationships are valid or not.

So if you are on this journey (and I hope we’re all on various journeys of understanding in all kinds of areas) then that’s great and I commend your honesty and the fact that you make yourself vulnerable by saying ‘I’m not sure’. But just be aware of the impact on those of us who are sure. And we’re not sure because someone persuaded us, we’re just sure because it’s simply who we are.

#7  ‘The gay issue’

Hearing this phrase yet again was what prompted me to write this list. A good, open minded church leader who I respect and whose integrity I no way wish to denigrate used it repeatedly as he led a discussion looking at what the Bible says about same sex relationships. It crops up a lot: “the gay issue” or “the issue of homosexuality” and so on.

I understand that it’s short hand for a whole host of conversations that are ongoing but I don’t think I’m being an oversensitive drama queen (perish the thought!) to caution those who use these type of phrases.

When I hear ‘the gay issue’ it makes me feel that my presence, even my very existence, is seen as a problem. And indeed, I suppose it is a problem to some people.

When the phrase is used it suggests to me that the discussion has been framed in an unhelpful manner. For a start it’s not gay people who have an issue (we’re just fine thanks) it’s a certain group of straight people  who are mainly, although not exclusively, men that has the problem. In fact being gay is only an issue for us when a culture dominated by straight people screws us up. So, I had a nervous breakdown when I began to discover my sexuality  not because I’m gay but because the church culture I’d been immersed in had punched my sense of self into submission (I’m fine now by the way – thanks for asking).

In the church it seems to me that all the problems that emerge in this area aren’t because it’s a gay issue, although the presence of gay people may well bring it to the surface. It’s a much deeper and wider issue of our understanding of human nature and what it means to be truly embodied, sexual and gendered beings in all our wonderful, messy and beautiful variety. But rather than opening up that uncomfortable conversation which affects us all it’s much easier to put it all in a little box we can call ‘the gay issue’.

The conversation can then be sidelined as a minority interest because…

#6 “It doesn’t affect that many people so why waste time on it.”

I understand this, I really do. In a world where our government is running the country into the ground, where the poor are demonised whilst the rich fill their pockets I know that there are plenty of serious, important areas that anyone who cares about justice in the world needs to engage with. It comes up a lot in the political arena in the debate about equal marriage when people say that surely there are more important things to devote parliamentary time to.

I can see why, if you’re a straight person in the church with no gay friends or relatives (or at least none that you know of) then discussing the inclusion of gay people may seem irrelevant to your life. It appears to be a peripheral issue. But those of us who it does affect it affects deeply and profoundly. And this effect isn’t just on those of us whose identity doesn’t conform to that of the heterosexual majority but also our families. My family are brilliant and, because they’re not involved with the church at all, thankfully haven’t had to deal with some of the heartache that some parents and grandparents with gay children have had inflicted on them by Christian communities. So once you start to count up, not just us gays but also our families and friends in the church this begins to affect more than just a small minority of people.

Nevertheless, even if it only affected a minority of one this is still an important conversation to engage in because how we deal with this says something about our identity as a community. If there were a village populated with white people except for one family from another ethnic group who were constantly abused by the white majority it would be obscene to say ‘this community shouldn’t waste time talking about racism because it only affects a small number of people’. In fact the racist attitudes affect everyone because they say something deeply unsettling about the nature of the community and it’s only by bringing these issues out into the open that healing for everyone can begin to happen.

So it is with the church. Even if our attitudes and policies with regards to gay people and same sex relationships only seem to affect a minority we need to look deeper than the surface, utilitarian arguments. In so doing we will begin to uncover the soul of our church community. This is inevitably a painful process both as an individual and as a group because chances are that when the curtain is pulled back and we gaze into our soul we won’t like what we see.

 #5 “There’s pain on both sides of the argument”

The first three statements on this list I find easiest to forgive because most of the time they are said by people who are seeking to be inclusive but don’t fully understand the impact of their words, and in most cases would be mortified to think they might have said something that causes upset. Now in mid-table we’re starting to get to the statements that make my blood boil.

There seems to be two perspectives from which people make the point “There’s pain on both sides of the argument”, one of these perspectives is well meaning but still wrong-headed, the other is rather nasty and insidious.

One of the characteristics of the Methodist Church in this country is its ability to hold a variety of arguments and points of view together. We are a broad church which is one of the things I love about Methodism. I’m glad to be able to work alongside Christians with a wide range of views and experiences. Well meaning and generous spirited people in the church extend this to our views on human sexuality, and there is indeed a range of views on same sex relationships. In encouraging us to listen to the views of people whose opinion differs from ours (no bad thing at all and something to be actively encouraged) we are then asked to acknowledge that there is pain on both sides of the argument about the acceptability of same sex relationships.

This sounds like a nice, reasonable, liberal position to take and in some ways is true: there is indeed pain for gay people in the church who have been the brunt of anti-gay theologies and I can (if I try hard) imagine there is pain for those who feel that for the church to be more inclusive would somehow offend God. But this isn’t a level playing field.

Saying there is pain on both sides is like equating a scratch on the hand to a severed arm. For a gay person to enter into a dialogue on this there is far more at stake than for a straight person who takes a traditional view. If the church continues to hold to a traditional view on human relationships then the straight person can go home and sleep safely with their husband or wife, whilst the gay person has their very sense of self denied. If the church becomes more inclusive then the person who takes a traditional view merely has to come to terms with the fact that they have lost an argument, their sense of self has never been under attack. I don’t deny that this might be hard to take on board for them but to equate that pain with the pain of rejecting the core identity of a gay person surely isn’t equivocal.

So the ‘pain on both sides’ statement is used by people who are genuinely trying to listen to all the voices in the discussion and facilitate a fruitful conversation, which is in itself an admirable aim. However, it’s also used by those who take a more conservative view in an attempt to claim the cloak of victimhood. Archbishop George Carey is a particular offender in this area as he has equated criticism of those who hold to a traditional view of marriage to the persecution meted out by the Nazi’s to minority groups. There is so much that is obviously ill-informed, unwise and insensitive about this argument that it’s not even worth denouncing.

The Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond also wheeled out the victim mentality recently by saying that legalising equal marriage ‘vast numbers’ of people will be angered by the redefinition of marriage . Perhaps I’m very slow witted but really I’m at a loss to understand how allowing same sex couples to marry negatively affects straight couples in any way at all.

So, there may well be ‘pain on both sides of the argument’ but forgive me if I don’t shed a tear for the petty posturing and faux victimhood displayed by the likes of Carey and Hammond.

The first four points here are often made by people who already take a more inclusive view of same sex relationships or are moving towards that position and by highlighting them I don’t intend to close down open and honest debate. If you are courageous enough to make yourself vulnerable and say that you’re on a journey (for example) then I hope I can tell you why I might find that upsetting. It doesn’t mean I don’t respect your integrity or value the conversation, just that we can both be more honest about our experiences.

In my next post I’ll start to plumb the depths of some far more awful and at times destructive phrases that well meaning Christians still roll out when they’re talking about gay people. I wonder if you can guess what makes it to number 1.

And, because I really don’t want to drown in an ocean of negativity, in a third post I will then explain why I stick with the church, am hopeful for the future and also look at ways in which these conversations can be framed more helpfully for all concerned.

Another event I was involved in at the conference I mentioned in the last post involved the poet Martin Daws.

I was struck by the way that, as with many great poets, when Martin performs one of his poems he doesn’t just use his voice but his whole body. Watching him reminded me of a phrase from the beginning of John’s gospel:

‘…the Word became flesh and lived among us.’  (John 1v.14)

As Martin performed I saw words becoming embodied. He breathed life into them and they lifted up from the page like a swarm of butterflies; lively, unpredictable and unsettling. 

We sought to play with this idea at an evening event in the theatre. John’s gospel sees the Word as the eternal. John (or whoever wrote the gospel) says ‘the Word was with God and the Word was God’. For John this Word becomes embodied and is made flesh in Jesus. At the event that night I made a figure out of clay to represent the body of Jesus and then we invited people to come and take a piece of the clay, a piece of the flesh, and mould it into a word. A word to complete the sentence: ‘Flesh means…’.

We then gathered the words together and scattered them around Martin as he sat on the stage. I felt a like the sorcerer’s apprentice collecting the raw materials for magic and offering them to the one who knew how to weave the spell.

As we watched then Martin typed and the cauldron of words became a poem. With the poem complete Martin stood up and performed, embodying (or re-embodying) the words that we had moulded and offered to him. And then we spoke the words together, the words embodied in community.

Word made flesh, we take the flesh and remake a word that emerges from our experience, we offer the word to the community, the words we offer merge and are shaped by a wise soul and then re-emerge, embodied once more.

Everyday we speak and live the rhythm: Word…flesh…word…flesh…. All the words embodied in our lives, heard by others, changed by others, re-emerging as their words to be heard again and embodied again. It is a spiral of creativity and community that I find inspiring but also challenging. Because whether I like it or not I am responsible for part of that rhythm and my part in it may determine whether this swarm of living words that changes the world spirals up into the light or elsewhere to somewhere darker and less life-giving.

Here is the poem that emerged from that night:

Struggle In my body to touch you 

                                      touch you real 

                                      so raw 

broken from sickness to death 

the pain of life 

body of life covers womb communion 

newness of  being sin reborn in transience

intimacy of un-wrappings - your gift of frailty 

Frail love payment Shylock made vulnerable 

vulnerable Immanuel

touch tomorrow real 

organic fragility 

holy touch of skin 

murder thought beyond beauty 

thought beyond (your presence) 

sacrifice mortality for mercy (in your presence) 

warm juice of body caress incarnate (in your presence) 

time covered physicality (in your presence) 

mortal mercy being beauty (in your presence)

wholeness/hope/faith alive (in your presence)

Last week I was involved in a Christian conference in Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast. I’m not generally a fan of these types of gathering but working with some of my friends and colleagues from across the country we were able to do some creative stuff and engage in some fruitful conversations so it was a good few days.

One of the talks I gave explored being gay as a God given identity. I try not to get involved in some of the slanging matches the church can sometimes engage in regarding same sex relationships and wanted simply to offer a positive reflection on my experience of being a gay Christian. People said I was very courageous to offer this talk but, in all honesty, it didn’t feel like I needed much courage to do it. My friend Lou Davis also offered a talk on her and others experiences in the area of fertility/infertility, motherhood and what it means to be a woman today. It was a sacred moment to hear someone speak so honestly and openly. 

We were both trying to be as honest about our experiences as possible and one of the things we found through doing this was the power of authentic presence.

By this I mean that once we strip away all the dross we wrap around ourselves: the presentable face, the face that is strong enough to cope and will never admit to being broken, the face that is clever, wise or good; then we enter into a different way of being. There is something so simple here that is difficult to do in practice. The moment we start to strip these masks away our ego objects, sometimes strongly and sometimes more subtly because we have mistaken the wrappings for the person we actually are and removing them feels like we are being diminished. The truth is, however, that as we remove them we move towards freedom. There’s no doubt that this is a painful process but it is ultimately liberating not only for us but for those around us.

As we are honest about who we really are, without artifice, we are offering the gift of authentic presence to those around us. Authentic presence opens up sacred space. As we are genuinely offering ourselves to others so they are enabled to genuinely be  themselves. And in that space we meet each other without pretence. I no longer need to be seen to be clever, or successful or unbroken, I’m simply being who I am. This is the reason that it didn’t feel like I needed courage to speak last week. I was, as far as I was able, simply being who I am, for good or ill. And there is no striving there or fear of failure or fear of criticism because all I was seeking to achieve was to offer myself. And transformation comes when we are able to meet people in that authentic space.

If you’re interested in what I said here is a recording of the talk. For those listening from a context outside the church in Britain you’ll have to look past some of the churchy references and asides, I was speaking in a certain context and in other places wouldn’t use some of the allusions I do here but I hope that my meaning is still clear.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others”

I’ve just finished painting the first part of this quote from the choreographer Martha Graham on the window of the new artspace at 35 Chapel Walk.

As I painted on the inside of the glass then people would stop and watch from the other side as if I were an exhibit in a zoo. The process felt like I was offering the words as a blessing for the city.

The idea of the ‘queer divine dissatisfaction’ that she identifies resonates with the yearning that I wrote about in the previous post. An awe-full, joyful, overwhelming sadness and longing for something beyond.

I can feel it in the process of painting. Each piece of work feels a step along the journey but at the end, after the final brushstroke I step back and want to move onto the next thing, feeling that new doorways and new possibilities have opened up that I am compelled to explore deeper and further. No matter how good or bad the final painting is I always get a sense that there must be more, more to discover, more to create. Here the creative and spiritual journeys are in parallel. There is no arriving only a continual longing to move towards the ineffable that calls us: the ‘queer, divine, dissatisfaction’ that unsettles us from our stupor and prevents us from staying where we are.

Graham claims that this unrest is what makes artists more alive than others. I would say that it’s what separates those of us who are alive from those who are simply content to remain at rest in whatever rut the tides of life have washed us into. This isn’t just about artists; it’s about what it means to be fully alive and to be fully human. Anything less is a capitulation to the ever so tempting and ever so comforting glittering, plastic façade of banality.

On Monday I saw the band Sigur Ros in concert. It was an astonishing night. Experiencing live music is different to merely listening to it and the all-consuming experience of that night was overwhelming.

For me their music is made more intense by the fact that their lead singer Jónsi sings in his native Icelandic, or sometimes in his own language that he calls Hopelandic (which in less proficient hands might be unbearably pretentious). Not that it makes much difference anyway as my Icelandic isn’t up to much, whatever language he sings in his voice is like an otherworldly instrument in the mix.

Without coherent words to cling to my ear seeks out the familiar melodies, rhythms and patterns in the music. Their sound is so amorphous at times that this is hard to do but then a recognisable phrase emerges from the maelstrom of sound like a bright tendril of meaning that coils around my soul to draw me onwards and out of myself.

And that’s what I found so overwhelming about the experience: an awakening longing and yearning at once deeply sad and intensely joyful. Words are not the language of the soul. The sounds, lights, and all encompassing experience beckoned to a deeper place that if I’d had the security of words I could sing along to or at least follow in my head, I would never have reached. I experienced something similar a few years ago when I walked the Camino to Santiago de Compestela in Spain. Each night I would attend mass in one of the little churches along the way. As I know very little Spanish this meant that the only way I could connect with these services was to engage with the deeper rhythm of the soul, the enacted story, the smell of the incense, the tone of the prayers and I was drawn to that place beyond words.

It is a human instinct to seek out meaning in the world; whether words at a concert, pictures in the random shape of the clouds or reasons behind the coincidences of life. We seek out stories that make sense of the random series of events that occur each day: bright tendrils of meaning to cling to because it feels as if our life depends on it. In a recent interview about his book ‘The Heretics’ Will Storr says:

“At any given moment the brain is bombarded by what’s been termed a superabundance of information. And yet it has to present us with a coherent version of the world, often by weaving an easy-to-understand story of our lives, complete with heroes and villains. But stories can have a terrible relationship with the truth. We demonise our foes and unfairly elevate those whom we admire, all the while defending our beliefs with often egregiously biased thinking”

When we grasp for these stories then that process leads some of us to religion and others away from it. For me the story that seems to make sense most of the time (although by no means all the time) is a story that includes God, particularly the God that emerges from the Jesus tradition. Sometimes the God/Jesus story makes sense as I fumble for meaning and sometimes it doesn’t but the story is only a signpost to a deeper truth and experience beyond the sparkling and enticing meaning it brings. Just as the music called me onward, outward and deeper on Monday night so I feel the same yearning here.

This relates to the ongoing dialogue between ambiguity and definition I wrote about in the previous post. Our brain needs something to latch on to in order to lead us into deeper experience. But if we stay clinging to that meaning we never get to the place beyond words. It becomes an idol, a false god that feels comforting and secure but ultimately has no power to transform us.

The mistake is to see God as a ‘thing’ to be believed in or disbelieved: just as we might believe or not believe in the existence of the Loch Ness monster or unicorns. It’s a mistake that atheists and theists alike so often make, particularly as they argue with each other. Furthermore, so much damage has been done by those who think that God is a thing that can be possessed and understood. God is no ‘thing’ and when reduced to a ‘thing’ becomes an idol; a bright tendril of meaning that distracts from a deeper truth and a deeper transformative experience.

So, even though I find the God story and the Jesus story meaning-full, which I do more and more these days, I hold those stories lightly because they are pointing somewhere else that is beyond themselves, somewhere far beyond my limited experience. And if I stay too long with these stories and comforting words I’ve fallen for the lie that I’ve already found what I was looking for.

…So said Henri Matisse when he was interviewed in 1925 (although he said it in French of course). This brings home to me that throughout the process of painting I’m often caught in a struggle between definition and ambiguity.

“Would not it be best to leave room for mystery?”…

…He says elsewhere. Yes, of course he’s right. The paintings I find most compelling have just enough definition to allow me to enter into the world of the image but then plenty of space, plenty of mystery to open up possibilities for me to revel in the ambiguity of the piece. This allows my own story and experience to come alive as I explore the piece of the artist’s soul that he or she has put on the canvas.

But this is not a comfortable process.

When I paint I always have an instinct to be definite, to paint a hand that looks like a hand, or a face in the right proportions. I fear this is my ego expressing itself, trying to prove to the world that I can do it. But then the sense of freedom, the extravagant spontaneity of ambiguity fights back and I need to find a way of bringing chaos and unpredictability into my carefully constructed image.

I love the work of Gerhard Richter, particularly the way in which he smears paint across the surface of the canvas. So, inspired by him, I take a rubber squeegee and drag it across my neatly constructed painting; the oil colours blurring together in a way that is organic and satisfying:

But soon the instinct to define returns and I attempt to corral the chaos of smeared paint back into a coherent image.

Back and forth between ambiguity and definition.

So, if “exactitude is not truth” then where does truth lie?

Last year I was fortunate enough to be able to take a trip into the Sinai desert to visit St Catherine’s monastery. This is a small cluster of buildings at the foot of Mount Sinai. To get there we had to travel for hours through endless tracts of desert. The wilderness was awe inspiring. Sand, stones and mountains seemed to stretch forever and without the road we would have been truly lost, with no sense of place or direction.

Experiencing this wild space without boundaries was a deep moment of the soul for me, I felt elated and free, as if anything were possible. I often find Orthodox Churches to be beautiful and affecting places so was excited as we arrived at St Catherine’s. But for some reason the building left me feeling empty and cold (metaphorically if not physically – this was the middle of the desert) and I found myself longing for the vast emptiness outside the walls.

The ambiguity and limitless possibilities of the wilderness versus the stone walls and long history of ancient tradition: whilst my instinct longs for the former, I sense something important too in the richness of the latter.

On reflection I think both are important. Just as in my painting the interaction between ambiguity and definition, at its best, is a creative one. So the tension between the wild spirit of the desert and the safe walls of the monastery can result in a fruitful and life giving dialogue. The desert may seem wild and exciting but I wouldn’t last long as I wandered without structure or boundary and the Monastery is so beautiful, its ancient rhythms offer a deep holding space for the soul but if all we have are the walls and structure then life is suffocated.

This is the season of Lent when the Jesus tradition remembers his time in the wilderness. In my painting during this time I’m aiming for more ambiguity and openness. But I’m trying not to forget that the walls are there for a reason, rather than being a prison they may well be just what is required for life to flourish.

Matisse is right, exactitude is not truth but sometimes we need it to point the way towards the Truth that is beyond anything we could ever imagine.

St Kevin was a hermit who lived in Ireland in the 6th century. Some of the legends and stories about him that survive are starting to inspire the way that I make art and explore what it means to do the strange task that the church has given me here in Sheffield.

Kevin was a man who constantly sought solitude. He would go out into the forests of the Wicklow Mountains, particularly in the area known as Glendalough (the valley with two lakes) and then, amidst the deep dark mossy green, in the womb of the forest, he would pray. And as he prayed people would come to him. His fame spread and soon so many people sought him out that he ended up founding a monastery in the valley. From the stories that surround him you get the impression of someone unsettled by the limelight, whenever he is able to he retreats deeper into the woodland’s heart.

One of the stories told of his life tells of the time he went to pray in the forest with his arms outstretched. In the stillness a blackbird flew and alighted on his open hand. As he held that place of gentle meditation the bird laid her eggs. And so he held his palm open, cradling them, holding that still place, for the two weeks it took for the eggs to hatch.

I love this story of stillness beckoning and nurturing life. It’s the opposite model of Christianity that many churches seem to espouse today. This isn’t a faith that goes out and shouts about itself, urgently and eagerly trying to persuade people to a particular system of doctrines and beliefs. It’s a faith that takes an inward journey towards stillness; withdrawing into quiet. But that withdrawing isn’t a retreat from the world, instead it is a deep engagement with the world. It’s only in stillness that the timid creatures of the forest can emerge.

And so if we can find a similar stillness in our own souls then that enables us to be with people in such a way as to encourage their hidden riches to emerge. So often when we engage with others our own ego is to the fore: we’re thinking what to say next, how too look clever, cool or funny and how to forward our own agendas. It’s a discipline to allow our ego to withdraw from the shared space so that we can genuinely and deeply engage with the other person. If we can hold a space in that way, with St Kevin’s gentle outstretched hand, then all kinds of surprising life and wonders will come out of the shadows. Whatever does grow there we can be sure it will be outside of our control and that the moment we try to grasp it in order to own it we will destroy it as surely as a hand clenching around a little blue egg.

That’s what I’m aiming for in the space at 35 Chapel Walk in the heart of Sheffield, a place where all kinds of people hurry by each day. The desire is to create a still space, a sacred space, a beautiful and creative space. And in that stillness in the midst of the city who can tell what life might emerge from the shadows?

Even today, as I walked to the artspace in order to make the image to accompany this piece I was pondering on how to enable the premises to be used by art students in the city for their exhibitions. Who might we need to contact? What publicity might we need to produce? It turns out all I needed was the hand of St Kevin. When I arrived at Chapel Walk a handwritten note had been pushed under the door. It was a message from an art student who had been passing by and had looked through the window at the space inside. She was asking whether she and some of her fellow students would be able to show some of their work there for an arts festival this spring.

Slowly I’m beginning to trust that life will emerge if we take the time to find this stillness and to live with Kevin’s patient, open hand.