I’m very excited that my poem, “Urban Distances”, was selected for publication in Tiger’s Eye Journal. It is a pleasure, an honor, as well as humbling to be included in a poetry journal inspired by William Blake’s poem, “The Tiger,” an ode to all people living a creative life.

The Tiger

By William Blake

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Check out my interview on Crack the Spine’s website: Wordsmith Interview!

In the Climate March in New York City I marched alongside 400,000 others willing to take to the streets to awaken people everywhere of the importance of remaking ourselves worldwide into sustainable communities. Organizers expected around 100,000 and four times as many came! The dialogue has begun, and with this kind of momentum I believe there is no turning back.

Monday after the Climate March I participated in Flood Wall Street, a civil disobedience action in which 3,000 of us took over the streets at the intersection of Wall St. and Broadway. We also sat in for hours all around the iconic bronze bull sculpture, metaphorically dancing on its back with a clean energy future. We remained nonviolent, which I believe is a must for breaking the cycle of violence the state inflicts to maintain a status quo that has unfortunately become suicidal for the human race and countless other species.

Christian Peacemaker Teams’ mission is “Building partnerships to transform violence and oppression.” It seems to me Jesus did that by nonviolently walking all the way to the cross in solidarity with the human race, the very same folks that would kill him and, in doing so, we in a strange way unleashed restorative justice and love. What is more important words or actions? Jesus’ speaking the Beatitudes to us, or Jesus’ passion acted out on the cross? One of my favorite people, Cornel West, says, “Love in private is tenderness; love in public is social justice.” One of my favorite Texans, Molly Ivins, the great political activist and journalist who died 2007, once said, “Folks often ask me, Molly, most of your causes are losing battles, so why fight them?” And her response was, “You may be right, but fighting them with all your heart may be the only truly good fun you ever have.” I say our words must inspire our actions, and both must be a kind of poem to our Loving Creator. In doing this peace and cooperation can break out when you least expect it.

We do win our battles, every time I learn how to be more human, more loving, by developing relationships, friendships, with those such as the Palestinian people in the town of Old Hebron, whom the western powers that be are oppressing, keeping under boot heal, and yet, these people extended to me hospitality and hope, a thirst for reconciliation, friendship, and nonviolent partnership for peaceful transformation, a kind not found in my home city of Houston, Texas, or most other places I visit in the west. It’s no secret that we have become an “I” society, and the truth is, the Palestinians are much more of a “we” community. So, my solidarity with the Palestinians of Old Hebron feeds me, I believe, transforms me into more of a man of action, action that creates peace. By me taking action, ironically, they give me the gift. And by taking it with CPT’s team in Old Hebron, which has developed a decade and a half of relationship building and peacemaking together with our Palestinian partners, I get to stand on the shoulders of all that trust. The Palestinian people great you with warm smiles and big hellos as you walk the streets with your red CPT hat on.

On our delegation we met with many Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers, and there is one particular story I’d like to share with you. CPT’s presence in the village of A’twani, for several years CPT assisted the community until it got a point in which the people of A’twani felt CPT’s ongoing presence there was no longer needed, although CPT and the people there still share a close, communicative, and supportive relationship, with CPT helping out on specific matters. Together, the people of A’twani and CPTers worked CPT out of a job. Among other things CPT would escort Palestinian children back and forth to school who had to pass right by illegal Israeli settlements, from which settlers would come out and harass and at times attack the children. The Israeli army was supposed to oversee the children’s safe passage, but that was spotty at best. Over time the residents of A’twani formed community patrols that achieve safe passage for the children, and the patrols document any abuses to bring attention to bear if necessary. Also, CPT and the women of A’twani developed crafts and textile making to bring economy to the village that it didn’t have before. The women carry this on with pride today. At first, the men of the village were a bit skeptical of their wives’ work outside homemaking, but as funds started coming in from sales of the goods the women made, things got happier all around, indeed.

Our delegation met in one of these family’s homes, and the family was also host to a young man who is ex-Israeli military and has become a leader in a group of ex-Israeli military called Breaking The Silence. Breaking The Silence produces video’s of ex-Israeli military speaking of abuses and atrocities systematically perpetrated on Palestinians. This young man educated us on “Straw Widow House Raids”. A straw widow, he explained, is a woman of the house whose husband is off to war and missing in action, she doesn’t know whether he’s alive or dead. Thus, the Israeli military’s twisted name for these raids on Palestinians. For the military does practice raids, in which they break doors down, barge in and ransack a Palestinian home, in the process taking the male head of the household off, shackled and hooded. Again, according to this young ex-Israeli-military man, this is done systematically for practice with no evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing by any of those in the home. I personally have witnessed assault rifles at checkpoints leveled on children going to school, seven, eight, and nine year olds. As the young man with Breaking The Silence completed his comments, the woman of the house became impassioned, tears filling her eyes, and she confronted him with the fact that these raids rip Palestinian families open, keep them in a perpetual state of fear, and that he, himself, had been part of it. And it will not stop. What did he have to say about that? In a very tender moment, the young ex-soldier, looked her in the eyes and said, “I know, you are right, I cannot stop it, but this is what I know how to do, bring it out into the open, get as many of my fellow Israeli soldiers to come forward in documenting abuses and atrocities as I can. I will keep doing it. I’m sorry, and I know that isn’t good enough.” The next thing that happened is that the woman of the house told him that he was welcome in her home anytime, and then they hugged. Later, her husband shook the young man’s hand. Now that is peacemaking with words and actions.

At that time, Breaking The Silence had produced over 800 videos.

I believe perhaps our best shot at not blowing one another up in some WMD fest is to deepen each of our faiths and practices in our own religion of choice and, while doing that to not simply tolerate others, but learn from others’ religions, respect them, love with others, in short, risk being wrong about faith choices, even entirely wrong. Now, I know this may seem like an oxymoron of sorts, but not really. I’ve experienced it in this work with CPT and our partnering communities. Here’s an example: Each morning when in Palestine, our delegation along with the CPT permanent team in Old Hebron would worship together. The facilitation for this was passed around. One morning Fataha, a Muslim CPT team member gave the homily. She started out by saying that she always believed our two religions had more in common than they had in differences. She then proceeded to recite Quranic and Christian scriptures that supported peacemaking and community building, with those of other faiths, especially with them. We didn’t tolerate others religions that morning, or merely learn from them, we were transformed in faith by them, all the while deepening our religion of choice, making it better the next time around by being in it with this transformation in us.

Okay, so how does a guy get from his conservative Garland, Texas upbringing to become a CPT Corp member reservist with a three year commitment to be on the Old Hebron team for one to three months a year?

Corporatized, State-co-opted, Constantine-ized, Bible belt-ized one size fits all theology, maybe with a little spandex in the waistband, but that’s about it and not too much, thank you, Are you saved? You’ve got God on your side in every war exceptional America participates in, so thank you’re lucky stars you’re, of course, Texan first and then American; well, all that and more just didn’t ever smell quite right to me. Yet, for all of it, a need for a real spiritual life wouldn’t go away.

One day at lunch at a Chili’s restaurant in Houston’s Galleria Mall, I came across an article by the founder of Sojourner’s, Jim Wallis, that laid out a great case for the religious right not having a lock on morality and, in fact, a very narrow, misguided, view of morality at times. Progressives, yes, even radicals, were needed in the body of Christ. Now, for a hale and hearty juvenile delinquent all dressed up in a business suit with a respectable job, that article was music to my ears. (FYI, I long ago became a guy who writes novels and poems. I didn’t say I was an author or a poet, that’s for others to decide, or quite honestly, not give a hoot about.)

Okay, fast forward to the US’s war with Iraq. My son was eighteen then, and he and his buddies were aching to be brave, exert their Texas testosterone by defending America in war. And I could see not only the bloodlust of youthful egomania in their eyes, I could also see an equal amount of fear. After the bluster, they’d more quietly discuss whether the war effort would end up with a draft. In a talk with my son, just he and I, I told him about something called conscientious objector status to opt out of military service. I went on to say that each individual had to make his or her own decision about this and no one could make it for them. What I wanted him to understand was that if he ever made a choice to elect conscientious objector status that it would be a courageous choice for sure. Well, after that big heart to heart with my son, I found myself having another heart to heart with yours truly. If that’s what I believed, that violence only creates more violence, then what was I going to do about it. That’s when articles I’d read in Jim Wallis’s Sojourners magazine about CPT’s work in war torn and violent areas of the world became very important to me.

In Texas we have a phrase, “Fixin’ to”. It doesn’t mean you’re about to do something. Have made the decision to do something. No, it’s kind of a thing were you’re about to about to do. I went into a ten year “fixin’ to” period with regard to joining CPT. I did begin to think of what it would be like getting on the front lines, reaching out to some of the most difficult relationships in the world and try to bring some peace between oppressed and oppressor, perhaps be transformed from my own oppressive tendencies and white privilege in the process. Once you start asking those questions in earnest, beware, you’ll move right on out of the “fixin’ to” phase.

I went one and a half years ago to the Wild Goose Festival, a great gathering of progressive and radical followers of Jesus and others who want to see what’s up and enjoy some great art, theater, and music along with thought provoking conversation and presentations by leaders in the movement of remaking the Church. Tim Nafziger, outreach coordinator at the time for CPT, Peter Harsnip and other CPTers were at the festival manning a booth. I went over and visited, bought several books on CPT, and six months later went on a two week delegation to Palestine/Isreal, and a year later I participated in the rigorous and life changing month long non-violent peacemaking training at CPT headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. Fortunately, I somehow graduated and became a member of the Hebron Team. One of the proudest days of my life. And now, the work begins.

I want to end with a poem by Wendell Berry, my favorite poet of whom I read one of his poems at the start of most every day. Its called The Contrariness Of The Mad Farmer (I’ve taken the literary liberty of making God gender neutral in it):

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission

to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.

I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,

and tilled somewhat by incantation and singing,

and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,

in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught

so often laughing at funerals, that was because

I knew the dead were already slipping away,

preparing a comeback, and can I help it?

And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed

my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom

had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not

be resurrected by a piece of cake. “Dance,” they told me,

and I stood still, and while they stood

quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.

“Pray,” they said, and I laughed, covering myself

in the earth’s brightness, and then stole off gray

into the midst of revel, and prayed like an orphan.

When they said, “I know that my Redeemer liveth,”

I told them, “God’s dead.” And when they told me,

“God is dead,” I answered, “He and she goes fishing every day in the Kentucky River. I see God often.”

When they asked me would I like to contribute

I said no, and when they had collected

more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.

When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t,

and then went off by myself and did more

than they would have asked. “Well, then,” they said,

“go and organize the International Order

of Contraries,” and I said, “Did you finish killing

everybody who was against peace?” So be it.

Going against men and women, I have heard at times

a deep harmony

thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what

I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest

way to come to the truth. It is one way.

Now, I’m here in the Bay Area to help CPT raise funds for its Plowing and Planting Campaign, an old contrarian working for a beautifully contrarian organization. We’re working to Plow under the debt on our headquarters and training center in Chicago to ensure a physical place to transform people into active peacemakers, and also to Plant more extensive counseling services by trained counselors to help CPTers in the field and on their transitions back home. PTSD can be a very real thing for military soldiers and CPTers alike. In my training, it was very comforting to meet the counselor I could call and Skype with from Old Hebron if things needed working through some, and/or could also go to a CPT retreat with upon return home. I want to do my part in helping make sure more and more CPTers get this kind of support.

So, with all this being said, Jesus help us pray like orphans for help, so we may walk just even a little better in your shoes to not live and die by the sword, but instead be transformed by your words and our words and our actions and by the words and actions of others of our faith, or of their faith, or of no particular faith, all of us trying to break lose of the bonds of the oppressor and the oppressed alike, resurrected over and over again. Whatever you do, don’t leave me “fixin’ to” for nearly so long again on spreading your courageous, non-violent love in places it is sorely needed.

Amen, and amen.

COLOMBIA: Good news for Las Pavas!  Government revokes gun permits for Aportes San Isidro security guards.

The Superintendencia de Vigilancia y Seguridad Privada (The Superintendent of Vigilance and Private Security), the government institution that regulates surveillance and grants firearms licenses for private security firms has revoked Aportes San Isidro SA’s license, stripping the right of the corporation’s private guards to bear arms.

Since mid 2011, under the leadership of Mario Marmol, the head of security for palm company Aportes San Isidro SA and company lawyer Danilo Palacio, the campesino community of Las Pavas has suffered many incidents of harassment and injury by the company’s armed security.

The presence of armed men on the farm has created an overall insecure work environment for community members who spend much of their day in pairs or alone working the land.  The community’s animals and food crops have been destroyed and killed, theirranchos have been torn down, and members of the community have been shot at and attacked. These acts of intimidation and terrorism have not only threatened the community’s food security but have created a climate of forced displacement, an experience etched deep in the historical memory of the community.  The violence perpetrated by the company’s thugs has increased in proportion to the legal decisions ruled in favor of the community.

The Superintendent’s decision is a positive step in guaranteeing the safety, freedom of movement and right to a livelihood of the community.  However, considering the historical ineffectiveness of the local police force in enforcing the court’s decisions and protecting the rights of the people, it remains to be seen if these decisions will have a concrete, positive impact for the community.

Reprinted with permission from CPT.org.

On Friday, 26 July, CPTers and supporters took to the streets of Chicago calling for an end to violence against the community of Las Pavas, Colombia. Donning cardboard palm trees and straw hats, participants dramatized palm oil producer Aportes San Isidro’s acts of aggression towards the subsistence farmers of Las Pavas.

In recent months, the company’s armed security guards have destroyed crops, damaged farm equipment, fire bombed homes and buildings, killed animals, threatened people at gunpoint, and brutally attacked one community member with a machete.  Despite government orders granting the land to the Las Pavas community, Colombian police have done nothing to stop the company’s attacks and encroachment upon Las Pavas territory.

“We are calling on the Colombian government to protect the families of Las Pavas,” said Cass Bangay of Ontario, Canada in front of the Colombian Consulate in downtown Chicago.  She went on to read from a series of testimonies by Las Pavas community members: “Roberto Puerta Peña, father of six says, ‘I’m trying to make a good life for my family here on the farm, but I haven’t achieved that yet.  The violent harassment from the palm company is really hard.  One time they held a gun fifteen centimeters from my head.  Then they threatened to hurt my family.’”  A small delegation delivered a letter to the Consul General along with a small palm tree and images and testimonies from the Las Pavas community symbolizing the group’s concerns.

The peacemakers then continued their witness, winding through the downtown area amidst the lunch-hour crowd singing, distributing leaflets, and repeating the street theater.  They stopped at the Chicago Tribune newspaper headquarters urging mainstream media to report on what is happening in places like Las Pavas, and passed through a crowded park singing and writing their message with sidewalk chalk.  The witness culminated at the Federal Building office of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, a high-ranking Democrat serving on both the Appropriations Committee (Foreign Operations Sub-Committee) and the Foreign Relations Committee.

Five members of the group took a letter to the Senator’s office drawing the connection between U.S. aid for training Colombian police and the complete lack of law enforcement to protect the people of Las Pavas.  They found the office door locked.  A staffer took the letter, but refused the group’s request to meet directly with an aide.  Within minutes, half a dozen Federal security officers appeared in the hallway, demanded to see everyone’s ID, and promptly escorted the group out of the building.

“I’m disappointed in the way we were treated simply for expecting to speak with our political representative,” said King Grossman of Texas, USA. “The U.S. relationship to Colombia runs deep and Senator Durbin has the power and influence to impact the situation for Las Pavas.”

CPT’s Colombia team has been accompanying the community of Las Pavas in their nonviolent struggle to remain their land for nearly five years.

CPTers in training who organized the witness were Cassandra Bangay (Ontario, Canada), King Grossman (Texas, USA), Menno Meijer (Ontario, Canada), Harmeet Sooden (Auckland, New Zealand), John Valley (Atikameksheng First Nation), Jonathan Vogel-Borne (Massachusetts, USA), and Chuck Wright (Manitoba, Canada).

Reprinted with permission. Original article posted here.

Homily

Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church

June 2, 2013

Presenter: King Grossman

I begin with a quote from Wendell Berry: “The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles . . . only by a spiritual journey . . . by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.” In today’s Gospel reading from Luke, the interchange between the Roman centurion and Jesus makes me question where the centurion was along the path of his spiritual journey, where am I; and, pray God, my homily helps you and me ask ourselves this question in a little clearer light.

The centurion had been behaving publicly in ways that won him the favor of Jewish elders. He had built them a synagogue, and treated the Jews with respect, even with love from the point of view of the elders who went to summon Jesus to heal the centurion’s infirmed slave. It seems the centurion deftly maintained all the right connections, having turned natural political adversaries to his side while keeping his esteemed position in tact with the powers that be—the Romans. But on Jesus nearing the centurion’s home, other friends came to pronounce this message, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. For I am also a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” The message was unusual enough coming from a man of worldly authority for Jesus to be amazed; and then Jesus said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such a faith.” My question is why not? The centurion’s confession of treating the Jews with seeming respect and love while also being a man that used power capriciously enough to make him feel unworthy of Jesus, probably holds the answer. I emphasize the confession at this point, not his ongoing lifestyle and behavior. After all, there is no evidence that the centurion resigned his compromising position of doing an oppressor’s bidding, or sold all his worldly possessions, as Jesus on another occasion asked of a rich young ruler.

This encounter with the powerful yet contrite centurion brings to mind the hubris of American political leaders today trying to bring democracy at the end of gun barrels to people, or of corporate leaders funding efforts to destroy union organizing, or union leaders taking home fat paychecks and selling out their workers, or in the face of global weird-ing (make that devastating manmade climate change) me moving slowly on the commitment to make my home sustainable and renewable with solar energy, rainwater trapping, and vegetable gardens. Where is their contriteness, where is mine? When will we confess to wearing masks of righteousness, and at the same time in our hearts and actions doing harm, going with the cultural flow, not the Holy Spirit’s flow? Why do I keep repeating the same mistakes, or put off doing what I dream of doing to create a little more heaven on earth? Perhaps the bad behavior can’t change much until the confession is sincere and the individual is aware of his or her own internal conflicts.

In John A. Sanford’s book The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meanings of Jesus’ Sayings the act of “repentance”—in the Greek, metanoia, which means “turning about”—is given new dimension. Sanford, a Judeo Christian devotee of the seminal psychologist Carl Jung, suggests we would do better than simply turning from our behavior by first turning to face our “Inner Adversary”.  He writes, “The adversary is the person within who contradicts the outer front: the one who thinks the thoughts we do not want to acknowledge as our own, who has feelings and urges we dare not openly express because to do so would throw into jeopardy the egocentric role and image we have assumed for ourselves. . . . This is the Mr. Hyde to our Dr. Jekyll, the one who manages to bring about some evil in spite of our pretensions to virtue or, more passively, the one who stands between us and our conscious goals or ideals and prevents our achieving them. . . . The more we are identified with a mask the more the unconscious will set up an opposing viewpoint in the form of the inner enemy. The more we pretend to be this or that, the more the enemy will be the opposite. Therefore, it is only as we become conscious of the mask we wear that we can hope to make peace with it.” So, praise God for the Roman centurion’s confession to Jesus. I call this the beginning of shrinking the devil down to size. Our Savior sure seemed to appreciate the effort.

For me this is more a journey than a point in time, although repentance, a turning about, has to be at the start of every journey. And once on a spiritual journey, it’s hard to get off and stay off the rails. This is why I believe the Roman centurion went on to find more of the peace that passes all understanding, which Jesus promises to those who follow Him. I pray he did. Notice that Jesus accepted the centurion’s request not to go all the way to face him, and Jesus healed the slave anyway. It was the centurion’s friends who returned to see the slave restored to good health. Perhaps, Jesus knew that the kind thing to do for the centurion was to give him time to get more comfortable in his faith. To allow the centurion to shrink the devil down to size, to become more at peace with the paradox of being a flawed human and fully lovable by God.

When I do something in my thoughts or my actions that create shame or guilt, something I consider a sin, on a good day I’ll ask for forgiveness and prayerfully state my willingness and desire to repent¾to turn from my sin and go a new way, a way our Loving Creator would be pleased with. But there always is some haunting blue feeling that follows my repentance. If I knew how to eradicate sin from my life, I would certainly do it. I do not know how. As long as I simply rely on God and try to will away the thoughts or behavior, I stay stuck in cycles of sin even after repenting. Sometimes it seems the harder I try the worse it gets. So, my prayer has changed to ask God to “help” me repent. Help me become more whole, holy, and healed, so I feel the need to repent less often.

Franciscan Richard Rohr in his book The Naked Now: Learning To See As The Mystics See suggests: “You will seek only what you have partially already discovered and seen within yourself . . . Call it the ‘Principle of Likeness,’ if you will. The enormous breakthrough is that when you honor and accept the divine image within yourself, you cannot help but see it in everybody else, too, and you know that it is as undeserved and unmerited as it is in you. That is why you stop judging, and that is how you start loving unconditionally and without asking whether someone is worthy or not. The breakthrough occurs at once, although the realization deepens and takes on greater conviction over time. . . .

“Wholeness (head, heart, and body, all present and positive) can see and call forth wholeness in others.

“What you see is what you get. What you seek is also what you get,” Rohr states.

This journey for me is as much a circle of wholeness, inside a square of God’s containing love, as it is a cross experience. Death and resurrection require the blessed cross, but living in joy more of the time requires other help. As a visual person who gets a great deal out of religious icons connecting to the mystery of Our Loving Creator, it’s easy to believe we would benefit by having as many circles and squares as we have crosses hung as icons on our walls, inlaid in churches’ stained glass windows, worn as jewelry, engraved in the leather covers of family bibles. Reminders that it is a religious experience indeed to circle back on ourselves, on each other, to be boxed in by God’s love, all of it centered on the cross of truth, love, and human paradox. A Jungian psychologist Christian friend of mine, suggested a way to get centered and look inward to what is distressing me, making me a victim blaming others, would be to practice what Jung himself did when unsettled. Jung would sit and draw circles and squares while meditating, listening for God. I tried it, circles beside squares beside circles over and over, and something seemed missing until I added the cross. Then, somehow it was all there before me but disjointed, unconnected. That is, until I drew the square that I consider the bounds of boundless eternity, God’s ever containing love; inside the square I drew the circle of connectedness to God, myself, humanity, and all of creation; and inside the circle I drew the cross of death and redemption, which I need over and over, not just in the hereafter, Praise God. This settles me, brings me a glimpse of the peace that passes all understanding. You may or may not want to try it. I’m positive there’re as many ways to connect with God and oneself, as there are imaginations alive and well. What’s more, I pray the Roman centurion did some version of this on many an occasion.

Perhaps Crosby, Stills & Nash sang it best: By taking ourselves “back to the garden”, we invite members of the community and citizens of the world along for the rides of their lives.

Behind my studio this agave, known commonly as the century plant, is sending up its au revoir once-in-a-lifetime bloom. The plant senses when conditions are just right for its seeds to flourish and then it sends up a single huge stalk. The white flowers open and spread seeds. Then the plant begins to decay until death. As this happens, little pup plants are sent up from its root system to keep the cycle of life going. Once in a lifetime, it gives life!! Pretty cool, this happening outback my place. Check it out.