An Apology or Something...

“Hello” he said and I looked up.  Shaved head, kind eyes, twenty-something - I recognized him from a week ago.  He motioned to the chair across from me, “May I sit?”

I mumbled a nodding,  “Of course”, shuffling coffee and napkins to one side of the table while nudging my computer nearer the wall to clear space for his elbows.

“I wanted to apologize,” he began, leaning into that space, his elbows perched on the walnut edge, fingers wrapped around the customary white and green cup.  He brushed through the details of our encounter a week before: some mutual acquaintances were passing the time in our coffee shop trying to flirt and teach me inappropriate words in their language.  I, having been exposed to enough games of, “No, it doesn’t mean anything bad – just say it” throughout my life’s travels, had recognized immediately what was going on, but felt trapped by cultural sensitivity.  Uncomfortable pointing out their obviously juvenile behavior, I (repeatedly) tried to politely leave.  Finally, in what I hoped was an appropriately respectful and face-saving out, I asked the kind-eyed twenty-something sitting on the fringe how to say, “Good night” in their language.  I had never met him before, but he seemed the trust worthiest of the group.  He rescued me and I slipped away.       

Now, he sat in front of me, distraught and embarrassed by his friends’ conduct.   “It does not reflect well on my culture,” he explained, “We should not behave like that.”  He stood to leave and offered me his hand, “Please, I hope you do not take offense”.  I shook it, assuring him I did not.  He smiled and left.  Minutes later, I stood for a coffee refill and the barista handed me a drink already prepared.  I was startled and confused.  The barista shrugged, “That guy bought it for you – said it was an apology or something”    

An apology or something.  Although the honest truth was that I hadn’t given the incident a second thought nor had it even occurred to me to be offended, how many times have we wished for an apology?  Or something?  For someone to recognize that we’ve been hurt, that their actions led to consequences and we were wounded in the crossfire? 

Fractured bits of broken hearts hedge the road mankind has been limping down throughout history.  No matter what century or culture, the civil war between every man and his neighbor has claimed the greatest number of casualties.  We humans have a tremendous capacity for offense, whether intentional or otherwise, and others bear the bruises of our choices.  We, in turn, bear the bruises of theirs.  An apology is a balm that aids healing, though deeper scars often remain.

Why do we get offended?  Why do we wish for apologies?  Why are apologies so difficult to give?  Every culture has at least one term/phrase of apology, and some have several.  It seems we all agree that certain behavior is acceptable and certain behavior is not – it demands an apology.  An apology is an agreement that unacceptable conduct has occurred and that it should not have; it begs the offended to forgive. (Note that while some specific actions which offend may vary from culture to culture, the idea of offense, through word or deed, is universal.)  

I believe we get offended, disappointed, and hurt because we have expectations for how we feel everyone should behave.  We instinctively expect others to recognize our inherent value and treat us with respect, kindness, and (gentle) honesty.  Funnily enough, those are the same traits I struggle to consistently find in myself, though I excuse their absence much more easily in my life than in everyone else’s.  I judge others by their actions and myself by my intentions. 

In fact, intention seems to be the lynchpin of offense.  Did someone intend to hurt me or was it an accident? “He/She/I meant well” seems to be the blanket caveat used to excuse all disagreeable deeds.  If the outcome is just as painful, why does intent matter?  Why am I more upset if someone meant to trip me and failed than if someone accidentally tripped me and I fell?  The ache in my soul at the intended wrongdoing is often more acute than the actual physical pain incurred by falling to the ground – why?       

As we continue the quest for an Ultimate Reality, one phenomenon we cannot ignore is the idea that there seems to be a certain underlying standard of behavior: we should, at the very least, intend to do right by one another.  And if we do not do right by one another, we should recognize our failure to do so and apologize.  Where do these expectations come from?  Why are they instinctive?  Why is it so hard for me to admit I’ve done something wrong and apologize?

The expectations which we seem to be consistently incapable of reaching may, at first, seem like the enemy, setting us up to fall.  “No one’s perfect”, we mutter, irritated that people expect us to be.  Would life be simpler without the expectations?  Could we dismiss them if we chose to?

No. I know what my heart is capable of, and I know how my words and choices wound those close enough to get caught in the crossfire.  I, myself, bear bruises of the wars that others have fought with themselves and lost.  Letting go of expectations for kindness, compassion, honesty, respect, dignity, unselfishness, gratefulness, and love can have only one result: the death of hope. Hope is what drives us; hope that the world could be less broken tomorrow by our actions today is the thready heartbeat beneath the skin of every "should".  Expectations are what make hope possible.  Without hope, people perish.  And, I'm sorry, but that’s bad in every language.

"We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made

Forged in the fires of human passions, choking on the fumes of selfish rage

And with these, our hells and our heavens, so few inches apart

We must be awfully small

And not as strong as we think we are..."

-Rich Mullins

The Two Sides of Truth

Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold. Cold. My feet slapped out the rhythm of the word with every step.  The sky was clear and winter blue, naked spindled fingers of trees raked it as I ran by.  Frosted oxygen pierced my lungs with every panting breath, and my fingers crawled inside my sleeves, curling up against my wrists for warmth.  Bitter blades of passing winds stabbed color into my cheeks and nose – first blush, then pink.  Then icy shades of red.  My toes were slowly numbing inside my shoes.   I’d been running for ten minutes.  It was 32 degrees.

Five kilometers later, my hands swung free from their sleeves, pumping into the home stretch.   Red still splayed across my cheeks, but fire had replaced ice and they burned with exertion.  My toes felt the weight of each step and a trickle of sweat slid down my neck.  The sky was clear and winter blue, half frozen fountains stubbornly spilled barely flowing drips of water over their fallen brothers as I ran by.  It was 32 degrees.

In the span of half an hour, my reality blew hot and cold – literally.  If you had asked me to tell the truth about how I felt at the beginning of my run, I would have honestly answered “cold”.  If you had asked me at the end, I would have honestly answered “hot.”  However, although I had changed, the temperature through which I was running had not – it remained 32 degrees throughout.  One reality (the external temperature) remained constant, while another (my internal perception of the temperature) fluctuated.

Why does it matter?  Because if we’re going to take a long hard look at the possibility of an Ultimate Reality and what makes it up, we have to understand the difference between personal (subjective) reality and impersonal (objective) reality.  Too often I hear people say, “Well, that might be true for you, but it isn’t true for me.” Or, “Perception is reality”.  Others fight back with ideas about Absolute Truth and make grand sweeping generalizations meant to apply to everyone and everything everywhere.  Who is right?

I think they both are. 

The life I’ve known has simply been the succession of one personal experience after another and I believe in the legitimacy of those experiences.  No one has ever seen the world exactly the way that I do, steeped in the family, the upbringing, the culture, and the relationships I have.  I am uniquely me and everything I come across is cast with a certain hue of experience no one else can fully understand.  Others may have lives painted with a similar palette, but the proportions of this to that, or these darkened pigments playing off of those lighter ones cannot possibly be identical to mine.  All realities any of us encounter are slightly tinted with the shades of our own personal perceptions.  This is what makes the idea of fashioning individual serving sizes of truth seem reasonable.

At the same time, all of my very legitimate personal experiences happened in the context of an independent reality.  The sun shone, the trees were leafless, the frozen fountains half-flowed in a land of 32 degrees whether I went running today or not.  All of those realities existed independently of my experience.  Furthermore, anyone who wandered outside today could have encountered the same sun, the same bare trees and the same fountains.  While their perceptions may have been stained slightly darker or lighter or greener than mine, they still bumped up against the same reality I did.  A family-style truth existed which was greater than mere us.

We humans are made of both body and soul, mechanism and mystery, independent reality and personal experience.  An Ultimate Reality must be able to account for it all.   And yet, if each of us is so unique, seeing the world through our own life-colored lenses, how is it possible to discover any sort of supreme commonality?

Whatever is really Real must be large enough to absorb the truth of everything we can discover “out there” and small enough to satisfy the aching universe “in here”, spilling over into every valley of our souls.  If a thing is real to me and real to you, it’s very likely to be real to everyone.  Mankind, for all its many-splendored hues, does actually share the majority of life’s experiences. 

What, then, is Real?  Love is real.  I know for I have loved and been loved, gladly giving, laughing, listening, sharing, and holding on so tightly there were moments we ceased to be two and dissolved into one.  Because of love, I know that loneliness is real. The company of some I so enjoy that it seems the world drops a color when we are apart.  A note is missing from every chord.  The knees of my heart buckle when I think of the time and space between us.  A hundred people could fill a room, a thousand throng around me, and I could still feel as if the only one there. 

Compassion is real.  I’ve seen it with my eyes, felt the blisters of it on my hands.  I’ve watched the sacrifices made in mud, in hospital rooms, in orphanages and gypsy villages.  Sorrow is real and so is joy.  I’ve encountered them on multitudes of lips and eyelashes, sometimes welling up alone, sometimes side by side.  Life is real, and death.  Breathing and talking and eating and walking, singing and sighing and pain.  The world is a kaleidoscope of experience and perhaps if we look at it closely enough, we can discover the spring from which all its colors flow.

32 degrees is the freezing point and the fountains I ran past were straddling the line.  Water had frozen and water still flowed; the dripping diamond-kissed result a glittered work of art.  No matter the shape, however, no matter how rigid or fluid, no matter the weather or the winter blue shade of sky, the substance poised and running over the chiseled stone lips was water. H₂O.  The experience of each drop was ever changing, but its substance remained the same.  Subjective reality.  Objective reality.  The truth lay hot and cold in both.    

"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from."

--C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

Rosario and Reality

There’s a jumble of delightful Italian chaos tucked inside a specialty shop just off the cobbled streets of Stresa.  Run by a gregarious whirlwind named Rosario, charm and dust mingle on wooden shelves packed with local wines, ancient Balsamic vinegars, and the goldy-green oil of freshly pressed olives.  Spices with hand-scrawled labels are pressed into corners with other secrets of nirvana-inducing Italian cuisine, entire stretches of Tuscan-colored walls devoted to jams and limoncellos, truffle oils and sweet cream honey.

Italian living ebbs with its own particular passions, rising and falling with the sun’s sleepy glow over the waters of Lago Maggiore.  I was determined to savor it, though I was in the area for a conference.  On a free afternoon, some friends and I went hunting for authentic Italy along the uneven paths of Stresa, scavenging for scarves and the other usual non-touristy but still envy-inducing fare Americans in Europe love to collect.   We were admiring some hand-painted serving trays carelessly tossed in a splintered basket when Rosario called to us from her doorway, like a carnival-hawker.

“Come!  You come here and you try some Balsamico.  It is the best in Italy.  My friend, he make it.  It is fourteen years old. You come”.   Rosario’s hair shoots out from her scalp like an iron blond halo and her voice is just as unyielding.  She is not the sort of woman one disobeys.  We stepped in, wide-eyed, breathing deeply the shop’s tangy colors and warm herbal aura with the intentionality saved for those rare moments you sense are in process of becoming extraordinary memories.  Every shelf was magic, every label enchanting.  We could have stayed an hour or forever, but we were meeting others for lunch very soon and said as much to Rosario.

“You come back after lunch.”  It was a command, not an invitation.  “You bring your friends and I do for you a wine and vinegar tasting.  You come.”  What could we do? We nodded.  We would come. 

  

Convincing the others wasn’t difficult, so after pasta and cappuccino al fresco, we traipsed back to Rosario’s emporium.  She threw up her hands at the sight of us, hustling us in and leading us to a dark angled half-room near the back, fussing over us like a hot-blooded Italian hen.  We soon were seated along an ancient oak table, worn smooth in spots by other others who had once breathed in the scents of sweet vinegar and herbs with intentionality.  Her husband perched on a three-legged wooden stool to her left, firmly in her orbit, but never speaking a word.  When we were all settled, she began.

For nearly an hour she lectured and laughed, clapping her hands and pouring potent dark liquids into our tasting glasses.  She would punctuate important thoughts with her index finger, stabbing the musty air near her head, then lowering her voice and raising one eyebrow to give us a sly knowing look.   We knew we were expected to nod in response, whether we had any idea what she was talking about or not.

“I have an American friend” she started, after a long litany detailing the birth of balsamic vinegar and the pressing of olives, “She is very bright.  A psychologist!” Again the finger, thrust into her husband’s orbit, with a dramatic wrist twist for emphasis.  He moved ever so slightly to his left.  “Alfred remembers.  We go to visit her in America, I think it was Pennsylvania, and this woman – a psychologist! She make us lunch before she go to work.”  At this, Rosario closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.   The stabbing finger rejoined her hand and fluttered to her chest.  When she continued, it was in the tones one reserves for funerals and very bad news.

“She make pork chops.”  She stopped, then corrected herself, “Eh -She try to make pork chops.  She put them in the pyrex dish and she-,” Rosario eyebrows arched with disbelief, her slightly bugging eyes imploring each of us to share in her incredulity. “On top of them she pour chicken stock.  Chicken stock!”  She flung her head back and slapped her forehead with the horror of it.  “She tell me to cover it with tin foil and to cook it in the oven for 35 minutes.”  The iron blond halo shook from side to side.  “This woman, she is brilliant – a psychologist!  But, she is a terrorist in the kitchen, I tell you.  A terrorist in the kitchen!”

We all shared a hearty laugh and she settled into her sly knowing look to tell us the rest of the story:  Instead of baking the offending pork chops, she and Alfred snuck into the psychologist’s back yard, dug a hole, and buried them!   The terrorist in the kitchen never knew and Rosario brought forth the authentic taste of Italy meal after meal for the rest of their visit.

Most of us hunger for the taste of authenticity, these days.  So much of the world we live in is fake – fake hair, fake teeth, fake body parts; fake friends, fake personalities, fake celebrities.  Generations of targeted advertising have taken their toll – salesman-sensing skeptics loiter in the back of our minds, sizing up everyone we meet.  Those trying to sell us something are immediately under suspicion.  Our minds and our wallets are equally guarded against swindlers, whether financial or philosophical.  We don’t really trust anyone. 

And because of it, when we happen to stumble upon a rare specimen of authenticity - whether cultural, spiritual, or relational - we take notice.  Although we spend most of our lives hiding behind the projection of a much better self than we know we truly are, when we see others brave enough to be transparent, we envy them.  We value honesty.  Candor.  Being “real”.

Why?  Because we know that if what we see is fake, it is because the “fake” can only exist as a distorted imitation of an actual reality.   Every year, millions of people go to “Italy” in Florida, at Epcot Center.  They visit the pink and white marble 14^th century replica of Doge’s Palace, girded by gardens of olive trees, Mediterranean citrus, kumquat trees, cypress and pines.  Canals echo with baritone strains of “O Sole Mio” from gondoliers in striped shirts, expertly guiding tourists in tapered boats through the waterways.  Bernini’s “Fontana de Nettuno” is there, as well as St. Mark’s Square, Illy coffee and Venetian glass.   But, Rosario is not.  And while no one who visits Epcot is under the illusion they are actually in Italy, it is because authentic Italy exists that Epcot Italy was born.

If we go back to the Big Questions – Who are we? Where did we come from? Is there a God? How should we live? Etc. - our hunger for authenticity reveals that not only is it logical for an actual Truth (vs. non-truth) to exist, it is important to us, as humans, to identify what that Reality entails.  What is “real”?  Is love real?  Loneliness?  The Orion Nebula?  Joy, Compassion, or Dodo Birds?  If we want to know the Truth that lies behind everything we experience, we must first identify what is real, because the authentic Truth must be compatible with every reality we encounter (or else it cannot be true). 

I’ll take the lead in being real and name my bias from the start – I believe in God.  I believe that He made things and spoke up, clearly communicating our purposes and our privileges as mankind.  I don’t, however, believe in swallowing a faith blindly just for the sake of believing in Something.  There are scores of “fake” belief systems for sale in the marketplace of ideas and sheer logic tells us that they cannot all be true, nor can they be equally authentic.  If so many imitations have been born, however, it must be because somewhere in the universe, an Original exists. 

I am not interested in the things that are fake – bury them out back with Rosario’s pork chops.  I want what started it all: the good stuff, the Original, and I believe the only way to find it is to be brave enough to take an honest look at the evidence.  If God is who I think He is, He’s not afraid of my doubts, my fears, or my wonderings.  If He cannot handle the hard questions, He must not be God.

My life has flowed with my own particular passions - through it I have made every effort to breathe life in with intentionality.  I want to taste the reality of extraordinary memories because I need to know that I am real, that my relationships are real, that my experiences are real and that somewhere, an independent Reality defines them.  I can be as brilliant as the next person, but if am focusing that brilliance on imitations that distract while carelessly whipping up a quick, sub-standard explanation for what feeds the hunger inside me, I am not a realist.  I am a terrorist in the kitchen.       

  

“No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions”

 -Charles P. Steinmetz 

Faux Fur and Feelings...

The smoky smell of kerosene lingers at the top of the stairs.  If memories attach as strongly to scents as they say, it’s no wonder that the short climb from downstairs to up leads me to winters in Albania fourteen years back.  Brief stints in Romania waft there, too, visions of red tile roofs and lye-dipped concrete mix with friends and laughter and mud, onion-based soups and potatoes.

It’s cold in northern Virginia.  Not Alaska cold or Norway cold – it’s not even Michigan cold, but I live in a house that will soon celebrate a century and the air outside is accustomed to creeping in the edges of windows and doors.  The heater is a tad asthmatic, and so a glowing flame of kerosene fills in the gaps until it breathes again.  Bits of skin left bare by slippers and socks, blankets and the sort of nubbly shapeless sweaters adored at home but never worn in public lean in its direction like sunflowers toward the sun in late afternoon.  Fingers reach easily, but my nose is held prisoner by posture, bumping against chilled walls unseen whenever I turn my head.  Every now and then it must be thawed by leaning in to the kerosene sun and breathing deep.  Aaaah… Albania again.

Two winters I spent there, devoid of central heating and running water after 11:00 pm.  Hand-made blankets, knitted by loving hands unknown and donated to the orphans with whom I lived, hung heavily from nails pounded into the corners of my doorways.  I slept in hat and gloves, three layers of pajamas and the ugliest faux cow fur coat someone’s well-intentioned grandmother gave me.  The hood was soft and lined, though, and dreams care little for fashion, so like a gypsy queen I settled my cattle-colored self under swaths of blankets every night, breathing in kerosene fumes till the tender warmth of sleep’s cradle rocked me out cold.

If I close my eyes, my senses – the smell of kerosene, the whispered shudder of dancing flames - tell me that I’m somewhere in Eastern Europe.  As much as I might want to believe it, however, my passport bears no new stamps since May (clearly, a travesty), and the cars outside my window whiz past with license plates from Virginia, Maryland and DC.  The reality suggested by my feelings exists only in my head.  A literal reality denies the one I feel – I type these words from Virginia, not Albania.  It’s 12:00 am and I need only to turn on my faucet for confirmation.

As I consider the Big Questions of life – Where Did I Come From?  Is There a God?  If so, What is He/She/It Like? Where am I Going? How Should I Live? – it’s very tempting to base my answers on my senses.  It feels true that what I feel must be true, even if what feels true to me contradicts what feels true to you. 

With eyes closed and the scent of kerosene clouding my internal GPS, it feels like I should be getting ready to tell my sweet orphans a bedtime story, tangling my tongue around their ancient language, then kissing their foreheads and tucking them tight in their beds.  But, Facebook and experience tell me that they are grown.  They have children of their own now - I’ve seen photos and met them myself.  The objective truth is, it’s 2012 and I’ve called this hundred-year-old house outside of DC my home for more than two years.  They speak English (mostly) outside these walls and no matter what European dream my mind chases, my feet still walk thick black Virginia pavement.  The truth is undeniable.

The reason I ask the Big Questions to begin with is because I know somewhere, something is true.  Objectively true.  Legitimately true.  True whether I know it, believe it, accept it or not.  I will not console myself with feelings as warm and fuzzy as my favorite shapeless sweater, placating my curiosity with the idea that whatever I want to be true is true.  That makes no sense and is the catchphrase of fools.  Where am I sitting?  There is an answer, and it is NOT Albania. 

Accepting the idea of one actual reality is the first step in finding substantial answers to my questions.  If no answer exists, there’s no point in asking the questions in the first place – it’s an exercise in futility.  If I just follow my nose to whatever I think is true, the direction changes every time I turn my head, and my journey to enlightenment becomes nothing but a series of random rest stops on the way to nowhere.  As interesting as rest stops can be, there’s more to life than toilets and fast food (which, ironically, create a fairly co-dependent cycle).

The truth is, I live on a plot of land commonly regarded as the State of Virginia.  There are longitudes and latitudes, Google maps and satellite photos to confirm my location.   Albania, Romania and the ones I love who live there are located half a world away, and although I might be with them in spirit, talk to them on Skype, or reminisce our days together in my mind, too many miles lie between us to hug.  No lingering kerosene cloud can erase that fact.  If my location is defined by a literal truth in relation to their location (as well as a literal un-truth – I cannot truthfully say we are hugging if we are not), other realities in life must, therefore, be defined by literal truths and literal un-truths.  No matter how I feel when I smell them. 

"We cannot escape the reality of what is, no matter what we say we believe or think."      -Francis Schaeffer 

Big Ideas and Bolognese

He was a lawyer.  Partner in a British firm by the time he was 35, drove a hard-top in the winter and a convertible in the summer.  He commanded house staff, fearful interns, and a parrot that cursed for fun at parties.  He was a man of every means.

He tells the story of being invited to a gathering at a colleague’s home.  He attended, intending to poach a competitor’s business contacts, but instead found himself discussing second rate philosophy over third rate spaghetti bolognese.  The gathering was a spiritual discussion group and he hated it, but discovered he was curiously drawn to the spaghetti-sopped assembly week after week because, as he put it:

“I was afraid that someone somewhere would ask me what I thought about the deep issues of life and I would be unable to answer.  The humiliating truth was, I had never even considered them.  I thought to save myself embarrassment, I ought to at least formulate some sort of opinion.  Everyone, at some point, should consider what they think about the big issues of life and why.”

I agree.  It’s common to know more about sports scores, celebrity break-ups and the latest app than we do about the thoughts steering our own souls.  Big ideas are intimidating, and as the world gets smaller, they run into one another, their edges smudging and blurring so that a once colorful rainbow of different philosophies now resembles so many melted crayons on a summer day - a grey-brown sludge of truth, opinion, and possibility, streaked with colors once crisp and concrete.  Rather than go through the painstaking process of separating one critical idea from another, the simpler solution is to throw the whole mess in a mental box, and shove it to the back of our minds.  We have other things to do.

The problem is that the mess at the back of our minds somehow affects our other things to do.  Our seemingly superfluous worldview, it turns out, is the rudder directing our choices, our relationships, and our self-image.  Ignoring it won’t change the fact that subconscious feelings and convictions govern our actions, opinions, and fears.  Taking our invisible beliefs out of the box and into the light is the best way to discover why we do what we do. If our feelings and convictions are based on solid facts or on little more than temperamental fluff, we ought to know, either way.  

My upbringing was defined by one particular hue of the philosophical rainbow, and even now, it’s hard to see anything not colored by it.  But, I am not fool enough to trust that just because someone taught me an idea was true means it actually is objectively true.  I have one life and I refuse to spend it believing something simply to make me feel good and gooey.  A singer once crooned, “I believe it even though I know it isn’t true.”  If what I say I believe is not based on reasonable, logical, credible actuality, then I’m letting it go.  I have other things to do.

My journey to the heart of the legitimately believable has taken me across countries and continents, into conversations unsuitable for the easily satisfied.  I have been challenged, questioned, interrogated, and disbelieved, and I am grateful for it.  A belief system that cannot withstand such pushing and shoving is worthless.  I don’t want a faith I cannot jump up and down upon, because such a faith will not hold me up when I fall.  Trust does not come easily to me and an ideology must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt before I will allow it to cradle my heart.  If God gave me a brain, then He expects me to use it.

These writings chronicle patches of that journey.  I have been given the incalculable gift of interesting friends, many of whom I have randomly collected at Starbucks, their life experiences and convictions painted other shades of the philosophical rainbow, our respective colors bumping into one another over coffee and affectionate heated conversations.  Through their eyes, I have seen my own faith anew, how it is perceived and understood and misunderstood.  I respect the perspectives they offer and can only hope to do them justice as I share what I consider the treasure of what I have learned.  

Come along, if you like.  Consider the big issues of life, perhaps for the first time, perhaps for the hundred and first.  It’s an endless conversation, and one than never fails to fascinate me.  Think, argue, question, discuss, pontificate, chew, wrestle, doubt.  Just don’t give up until you’ve reached a reasonable conclusion.  I’ll be here, doing the same.  Stop by anytime - I’ll spare you the spaghetti.