So welcome. Welcome, everybody. Nice to see you all. I'll do just a little bit of a review of what we did to the preceding classes and then with an invitation to see if you have any questions or comments. So as you might remember, on Tuesday, we started with Kim introducing this idea of

the ordinary gods, that is, these things that we find ourselves taking refuge in, jobs, bank

accounts, relationships, etc. And then these common ways in which we find ourselves transitioning

away from what we might call

these ordinary gods towards a deeper refuge or a different type of refuge. And often that's because

we've had the failure of this ordinary refuge to turn out to be a reliable refuge after maybe a major disruption in our life of some

sort or maybe there's just a disenchantment of the conventional ways in which we've been

living our life or maybe there's we've been touched by something beautiful in the spiritual

life and wanting to turn towards that way.

And then for the four of us, we described a little bit how we made this transition and encouraged you guys to do that in the small groups.

And then on Thursday, David and Kim discussed the idea, the concept of inner and outer refuges of the

Buddha, Dharma, and Sanga, recognizing that this is a distinction that, you know, isn't,

that we're making up as an, or I'm not saying we're only making up, but that gets made up as a way

to maybe consider it. Doesn't have to're only making up, but that gets made up as a way to maybe consider it.

It doesn't have to be considered this way, but can be really useful and helpful.

And then I also spoke about refuge in what we might say in nibana or non-clinging as a way to be a support for one's life.

And we ended the class with Ajan Passeno doing the refuge chant within a community.

So with that is just a little overview of what we've done the past two classes.

Now, I'd like to open it up to see if there's some comments or questions

of what we've covered thus far before we continue on today. And you can use your Zoom hand,

your physical hand, or if you'd like, you could put some things in the chat box too

any comments or questions I have a theory. If I allow an awkward silence, somebody will just be bound to just get us out of the awkwardness.

...