you know, you listening to this, you too can do something, you know, beautiful and profound

and impactful in your life. And importantly, it need not have anything to do with status or fame

or money or success. The things that our society presents as a successful, meaningful life.

In fact, when you find that, when you find yourself in a position of having lots of status and fame

and money or success, you often find an emptiness at the core of that, right? It's a broken promise

that this stuff will bring happiness and fulfillment. I think a life of service, of beauty, of compassion,

of connection, a life that attempts to live like Christ or St. Francis, as radical as that way of life

and sometimes be, especially in the modern materialist era, I think that life in any sort of life

like that is infinitely more valuable and worthwhile than a life in pursuit of fame and wealth and

success. So to reject the dominant, you know, stories that, that, you know, capitalist society tells you

about what a fulfilling life is to reject that and look at figures like St. Francis to find a

different way, you know, to not, it's not about the ego, self-angrandism, to be on top of other

people, to be richer and more successful and have a bigger house. All of that is empty nonsense.

You know, a life like St. Francis is the one that you can aspire to and anybody can do it. It's just

a life of caring about other human beings, serving other people and instead of obsessing about

yourself and how others view you and how you can get on top of whatever social ladder you want to

climb to take that out of your head and put it on to others. A life focused on protecting the world

for the future, a life focused on serving the marginalized and the poor. That dovetails very well

with the communist politic and both of those ways of life reject the emptiness that capitalism offers

as the only way to have a meaningful life. And so in that sense, you know, we can all strive to

participate in that type of life. And St. Francis is a touchstone for that.