"That's what a lady does."

I have discovered Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on PBS and, despite the lead character's amorality, I love the show.  It takes place in Australia in, I believe, the 1920s.  The lead character is Phryne (pronounced Fry-nee) Fisher, an elegant, wealthy young woman who, among other good deeds, tries to help young street girls to better lives; she has taken Dot on as a lady's maid and has adopted Jane.  And, of course, she is an amateur detective who helps Inspector Jack Robinson to solve murders.  In last night's episode, she is teaching several such girls social graces.  One of them doesn't show to dinner, and they find her on the beach, drowned.  The mystery is rather complex and brilliantly solved by the combined efforts of Phryne and Jack, but another aspect is how the murder changes Phryne's teaching of the girls.

Here is the scene from which the title quote comes:  a day or two after the murder, the girls have gathered to practice dancing.  They are dressed nicely and, scattered about the room as they wait for Phryne, they are trying out graceful dance movements.  Phryne sweeps in wearing an elegant skirt set, looks about, and says, "Gather 'round, girls.  We're doing something different today."  She then demonstrates and sets to teaching them judo moves -- because self-defense will be far more practical for them than the fox-trot.

They are well into it when Inspector Robinson enters.  He seats himself near the door and observes with interest.  When his Detective Constable murmurs, "Miss Fisher knows judo, sir?" with some amazement, Jack merely replies, "Of course she does" -- he is beyond being surprised by her.

One of the girls finally sees the two men and alerts Phryne.  She turns, arches her eyebrows, and waits for Jack to speak.

Jack, deadpan:  "I hope you're not concealing a dangerous weapon under that skirt."

Phryne, archly:  "I'm concealing a lot of things.  That's what a lady does."

Ladies, let's be ladies!

Living Reality in Light of Eternity

“The people of our time are helpless, distracted, and rebellious, unable to interpret that which is happening, and full of apprehension about that which is to come, largely because they have lost this sure hold on the eternal which gives to each life meaning and direction, and with meaning and direction gives steadiness. I do not mean by this a mere escape from our problems and dangers, a slinking away from the actual to enjoy the eternal. I mean an acceptance and living out of the actual, in its homeliest details and its utmost demands, in the light of the eternal, and with that peculiar sense of ultimate security which only a hold on the eternal brings. When the vivid reality which is meant by these rather abstract words is truly possessed by us, when that which is unchanging in ourselves is given its chance, and emerges from the stream of succession to recognize its true home and goal, which is God – then though much suffering may, indeed will remain, apprehension, confusion, instability, despair will cease.”

When I read this passage from Evelyn Underhill’s Radiance, I was struck by the way it echoes what I have been saying about literature (good literature, true literature) for a very long time. We are not healed or helped or eased by escape from reality, whether into the worlds of literature or into a world of esoteric contemplation. The saint cannot very well be a saint if he does not live in reality, after all. We are not saints for God’s sake; we are saints for the sake of our neighbor. God pours Himself into us to make us saints, of course – we can hardly be saints on our own power – but He doesn’t do this because He has some personal need for our patience, our endurance, our joy, our love. He surely desires these things of us, and offers them to us for our growth and strength, but He is all this and all else that is Good, so when we offer Him these we offer Him nothing He doesn’t already have.

Rather, it is our neighbors who need us to be saints. We need to be saints in the midst of the reality of this broken world in order to serve our neighbors. We need to offer them the fruit of the joy, the faithfulness, the compassion, the diligence that He has poured out and wrought in us, to draw them to the only real Hope offered to any of us. We need to find the eternal, to turn to the eternal, to rejoice in the eternal and find our strength there in order to live well here, in, as Underhill calls it, the “actual.”

And while the road of the mystic, the road of contemplation, is one way into the eternal which informs our life in the actual, another road is that of literature, the words of the wise from all of time gathered in the soul to remind us of, of course, the eternal in the actual. I have said that literature shows us the ideal, the way the world ought to be. Not, if it is true, ideal in the sense of unfallen – we have no idea what an unfallen world would be – but ideal in demonstrating to us the way to live well in the midst of that fallenness, to demonstrate courage and compassion and forgiveness and gratitude, and to bear witness to their Source.

For my youngest

You have chosen a Navy career, at least for the short term, and tomorrow you begin in earnest. I’ve watched you embrace this choice over the last few months as you have waited to begin Basic Training, and I’m proud of the way you’ve prepared yourself mentally and physically.

For us, it’s the empty nest at last; you leave just a few days before your oldest sibling’s 35^th birthday. I tease about wanting your room and being ready for this new stage of your dad’s and my lives – but I will miss you, my tag-along who has brought so much joy, lifting my heart with laughter, offering words of encouragement on difficult days, offering me hugs and sharing photos and songs and films . . . making me grateful every day for the gift of your life.

Yes, I will miss you, however I may pretend otherwise.

I pray for you, my son, as you go into an environment containing – as all the world contains – so much of good and so many temptations. I pray that you will embrace every opportunity offered you to grow in honor and courage and selflessness and service, to become every day more and more the man God created you to be. And I pray that you will pursue wisdom above all else – wisdom that will protect you from the temptations to follow mere self-serving, momentary pleasures that will turn to ash; that you will be courageous to stand for that which is honorable in every area of life, unafraid to turn away – joyfully, and with a smile and laugh perhaps, never self-righteously – from that which would drag you down into behavior that will harm you and those around you, now or in the future. I pray for your mistakes – because we all make them – to be ones from which you can recover, having learned to be that much greater a man.

You will be different when next I see you. I look forward with joy to finding how you will have grown, to begin knowing you not merely as my youngest child, but as a man in your own right, becoming more a man after God’s own heart every day.

God be with you, son. I love you.

(And maybe I’ll let you crash in my new study when you come home. :))

photo credits: Keiller Impson; Steven Franklin

Just Musing

A friend of mine, a high school teacher, wrote about a student needing to look up a word. She sent him to the library's print dictionary. When he opened it, she said that he stood staring, almost reverently, for a few seconds and then, in hushed tones, said, "There are so many of them!"

I laughed heartily, but it gave me pause. I grew up using print dictionaries, of course, and always found them fascinating, word lover that I am. Every time I needed a definition or a spelling, I was reminded of the huge numbers of words I didn't know, the amazing potential of the English language.

But today -- you just get on the web, look up the word in question at dictionary.com, and see . . . that word only, at most a couple more forms or similar spellings. No mysterious unknown words surround it to entice the eye and mind; no sense of how many words there are. We have reduced our sense of wonder and the potential to stretch our horizons.

The online thesaurus is as bad, really. You find a few more words there, a little more potential to become intrigued and follow the trail of this word, and then that one, and then another -- but still the actual number of words seen at any one moment is extremely limited. And the one niggling my mind, refusing to come forward, never does seem to be in the limited list, though I find it so often in the print thesaurus, over there on the facing page at the top, in a slightly different category . . .

Yes, yes, yes, benefits come from technology. I weary of saying this; anyone who knows me in the least knows that I joyfully benefit from many forms of technology every day. But there are losses with every new technology that comes our way, and someone ought to point this out -- and I do not think these losses are always merely acceptable trade-offs. We have more speed and convenience -- and so often lose wonder and mystery and a sense of awe.

And we lose even a clear sense of how the world works, sometimes, without any actual gains that I can see. Take digital clocks. All you see on a digital clock is this one exact moment, then another single exact moment, then another. There is no sense of the cycle of time with a digital clock. Sure, it's a mite easier to read a series of numbers than a dial face -- but does the series of numbers give a sense of the reality of time, that it circles from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day?

Where I teach there are digital clocks on the classroom walls. I hate them. I have to have my traditional dial-face watch to get through the hour. With a dial face, I have only to glance at it to see the hands and know how much time I have left. I don't need to know the time; I only need to see the minute hand just past the seven to know that I have a bit less than fifteen minutes left before class ends. I see the whole hour at once and know where within that hour I am; past and present and future all reveal themselves to me in that one quick glance.

But that digital clock tells me nothing of the time passed or the time left. It only tells me what this present exact moment is, forcing me to consciously process the time left. It says 9:36:41 (42,43,44,45 . . .), and how many minutes is that, what portion of an hour, until 9:50? Have I grown a bit more used to them over time? Of course -- but what is the cost to those who have known only the digital clock? Isn't it a reflection of our modern cultural insistence that the only thing that matters is the present moment? The past is gone and is therefore of no use to us; the future hasn't come and is therefore unimportant. Live for the moment without thought to what brought you to that moment or its influence on future moments.

Thoughtfulness -- that's all I really want. Just because something exists, just because something can be done, doesn't mean it's an unmitigated good. If we were thoughtful, we'd still use most modern technology, but maybe we'd use it better, with attention paid to possible losses, and maybe we'd attempt to mitigate those losses. And maybe there would even be times when we'd say "no, thanks; we don't need that." And that would be a marvel of wisdom.

Love Makes Us Wise

Tony Esolen has another excellent post up at Mere Comments today, "I Want to be on that Man's Team." It's about baseball player Albert Pujols, who is apparently a truly great player (about which Inscapes readers will know that I can attest nothing): "I only want to be remembered as a man who loved the Lord," Pujols told a Sports Illustrated reporter. We should all desire to be remembered this way, because, as Tony writes, "the love of Christ -- Christ's love for us, and our love for Him -- is the most remarkable thing in the history of the world."

The gospel is not first of all or mainly for the philosophers and theologians, Tony asserts, though of course we need doctrine, "if only to keep certain riffraff off the streets." The gospel is too complex for even such a brilliant intellect as a Thomas Aquinas and yet at the same time simple enough for any little child to understand. And it is love, he says, that makes us truly wise:

"And all these simple people who love Christ, who may not be able to persuade a single skeptic that God even exists, know what they know by their love, and are far the wiser for it. They are my brothers and sisters, my teammates, in the oldest and most glorious communion the world has seen; a communion that has brought the world the odd idea that only in love is there freedom; because Truth has said so."

I was reminded by this post of a constant tension I find in my own thinking -- the mysteries and intellectual complexities of Scripture and tradition make my mind reel at times and I feel almost despair: how can I ever know what is true amid all the confusion of these varying interpretations and depths and layers of meaning . . . and then I am brought up short by some simple thing -- a song, or a hug from a friend, or a moonrise -- and I think, it's all so very, very simple: "Jesus loves me, this I know / for the Bible tells me so."

I tend to think of myself as an intellectual, if a rather minor one, and it is good to be reminded that my intellectual grasp of anything is beside the point. Not unimportant or worthless, but merely beside the point. For without love, all my knowledge is at best a clanging cymbal.

Tony says it much better; read his whole post .

"A Strange Glory"

Chapter 3 of Death on a Friday Afternoon is a meditation on the third word from the Cross, first to Mary and then to John: "Woman, behold your son. [. . .] Behold, your mother!" Here Neuhaus explores the position of Mary as simultaneously mother of Jesus and first disciple of Jesus. He emphasizes two of her statements in particular.

"Let it be to me according to your word." Mary accepts, in full trust, the commission of God to bear His Son and have her own heart broken. She risks all human security -- how could she know if Joseph would choose to protect her? -- for absolute obedience to the Absolute. She is our model for how to respond to the Father, no matter what He asks of us.

"Do whatever He tells you." These, Neuhaus notes, are the last words of Mary recorded in the Scriptures, and he stresses their importance: "Everything about Mary is from Christ and to Christ," he writes; "Mary is the icon of the disciple-Church."

Mary's obedience and trust show us our own way. "To say that Mary's way is not our way is to say that Christ's way is not our way," Neuhaus says, "for Mary was in every respect the disciple of her Son." And "What she said she also did, and in her loss of her Son and her loss of herself she knew 'Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.'"

Mary gave herself in "total availabilty to the will of God. She had no business of her own. She was always on call." But it is this availability, this trust that leads one through the inevitable hardship and brokenness of obedience -- for we are all called to die to self and abandon all that we see for only a hope -- to the light of the Cross. "At the heart of darkness the hope of the world is dying on a cross, and the longest stride of soul is to see in this a strange glory": the glory of hope and redemption, of love and life.

"In wonder is wisdom born." I desire to lose myself this Lent in wonder at the strange glory of the Cross, the redemption that would come, not from armed battle and kingly grasp of power, but from the utter sacrifice that to the world was a fool's mad suicide. May we have the courage, the trust, the will, to "do whatever He tells us," to know that the Fool is truly King of kings and Lord of lords and worthy of all glory and honor and praise.

Waterwalk

I've just read Steven Faulkner's Waterwalk, a memoir of his canoe journey from the upper North to St. Louis to "discover" the Mississippi with his son Justin, following the route of Marquet and Joliet. It's a good book -- Faulkner is a good descriptive writer, and his meditations on his relationship with his son are honest and thoughtful. There are days of lovely solitude, of excitement and near-disaster, of back-breaking boredom. There's history as he weaves the two journeys together. I found his discussions of environmental and technological issues a bit heavy-handed; even though I agee with quite a bit of what he says, it felt more like being preached at than reflective musing, which is what the rest of the book seems to call for. But despite that particular flaw (to me; others won't mind it), the book is well worth reading to encourage one to think again about the need to slow down, to see what's around us, to reflect, to try to connect with mind and heart instead of cell phone and Facebook. And, in the end, to remember that we can only know so much of any other created being, that we are mysteries even to ourselves, that wisdom can be passed on but must also be learned, each of us in his own unique journey. We may travel together for a time, but even together we may be in very different places; finally, we can only love and pray.

Blue Skies

I have had several occasions this semester to remind students that we stand before God and not before man. There was the young woman who had to finish several incompletes, the result of illness last semester, and so fell behind and did poorly on her first essay for my lit class. "Did you do the best you could with what you had?" I asked her. When she nodded through her tears, I reminded her, "Then you can stand before God without shame and be unconcerned with your grade. His judgment of your character is far more important than your performance on this essay, or my evaluation of it." And with the incompletes out of the way, she went on to do well in the class; God did not let her fail because of circumstances beyond her control.

He may have done so, however. There was, too, the young woman pouring herself into her classes, valiently fighting freshman homesickness and discouragement, and yet -- despite her intelligence, understanding, and hard work -- somehow not making the grades she could have legitimately expected. "What might God be teaching you about trust?" I asked her when we talked about an assignment she had done poorly on. "Might He be inviting you to trust Him without seeing results, to know His love for you despite a less-than-stellar performance? Perhaps the struggle itself is His gift to you this semester?"

We can only ever do the best we can in any circumstances. We don't have any more. We have only the knowledge and the wisdom thus far gained, only the time and energy granted, only the desire to give enough, knowing that what we have may never be enough, not from man's perspective, and not in a broken world. And after that -- the results are His, and our job is to learn to accept them, not rail against them or despair over them when they aren't what we'd like . . .

On a Jorma CD, Stars in My Crown, that a dear friend sent me, my favorite song has become "Heart Temporary":

Blue skies in the morning,
Stars, they fill the night.
Fall wind rustling through the trees
Sings a song of great delight.
On such a day you think you'd say
Exactly what you mean.
But in God's perfection, things ain't always
Just the way they seem.

chorus:
When the best you have to offer
Falls short of the mark,
Self-inflicted holes are piercin'
Deep within your heart.

Blue skies in the afternoon,
Breeze, it starts to still;
Two dogs sleepin' in the sun,
They lie upon that grassy hill.
At such a time you think you'd find
A way to share your heart,
But though you're reaching for her hand,
Still you walk apart.

(chorus)

Sun upon that old barn roof
Celebrates the day.
I hold this moment in my hand,
Follow it along my way.
The future flows; this feeling grows
Outside my window sill.
By letting go, I might escape
The prison of my will.

(chorus)

When the best you have to offer
Is all you have to give,
Enjoy the moment: God has granted
One more day to live.

Blue skies out my window
Said good-bye to early morning rain.

From the Mouths of Babes . . .

All four of our married children -- the grandchildren -- and four of their children -- the great-grandchildren -- attended the memorial service for my mother-in-law: a lovely blessing indeed. Lots of sibling pictures were taken -- it was the first time in eight years all five were together -- and we look forward to receiving them in the days to come.

Our middle son's 5-year-old daughter was the questioner. Her daddy had prepared them for the service, discussing death and heaven and the fact that Grandma June was no longer here with us. "I wish Grandma was still alive," she would say now and then. Riding across Denton in the back seat of her daddy's van, she and I talked.

"Why is papa [Grandpa] giving Daddy money?"

"It's money from Grandma June to help Daddy pay for the motel so you could be here this weekend."

Puzzled look: "Grandma June is still alive?"

"No; she left some money to help people."

"She can help people after she died?"

"Yes -- before she died, she left some money with us that we could use for her to help people."

After digesting that for a while, "Is Grandma June in heaven?"

"Yes, she's with Jesus now."

"I'm afraid to go to heaven."

"You needn't be -- Jesus loves you very much, and when it's time for you to live in heaven, you'll live with Him forever, and see Grandma again, too."

"Can we go to heaven in a rocket ship?"

"Well, no -- heaven isn't the kind of place you can get to in a rocket ship or a car or an airplane. Jesus has to take you there when it's time for you to go."

Eyes wide with sudden insight, voice breathless with delight:

"You mean Jesus picks us up in His arms and carries us there?"

Writing Again

I am at such a loss. There is too much information; too many bits and pieces are slamming against each other in the agitated stew that is my mind just now, competing for attention, for the place of most importance.

So much can be said, needs to be said, on my subject. I am desperate for a focus, but so far it eludes me utterly. I could write a book quite easily in comparison to this attempt to condense my ideas into a meaningful eight or ten pages.

To be glib and superficial, to confuse the issue or discourage with incompleteness, would be disastrous. Yet there is not space for nuance or apology or exposition of every possible misunderstanding. If I could grasp with any certainty the most important need of my audience, then maybe I could see my way. But every time I try to pin down that one need, it instantly grows: this -- and this-- and this -- oh, and this . . .

What is meat and potatoes; what is mere flavoring? For wisdom, oh, for wisdom!

Longing for Wisdom

I have just read a book on writing, somewhat too New-Agey, Zennish for my taste, but with nuggets of interest that do intrigue and will no doubt inform the writing over time. However, one concept that occurs throughout it disturbs me: that it is necessary for the artist to be a flouter of convention and breaker of rules to be true to art and to speak truth at all.

Now, I fully concur that convention can be wrongly constraining and rules can be unjust. But the sense here is the Romantic one: all conventions and rules, by definition, are always wrongful and probably evil constraints upon us; in fact, the way we prove ourselves to be human and worthy of the name is by flouting -- or as the Romantics and neo-Romantics would say, transcending -- conventions and rules.

This way lies madness.

Reality and Truth are not found within us. They exist outside the self. (Perhaps we discern them, at times, as we honestly explore the self, an idea I've not thought through.) I do not create Reality; I discover it, I perceive it (even if only through a glass darkly), but I do not create it. And Reality and Truth have principles -- conventions and rules, if you will, though I realize these are not always synonymous -- which we flout at our peril and cannot transcend. Some actions are simply wrong; some are simply right. Not "for me" -- for all of us.

I cannot write "anything I want." I cannot be "anything I want." I cannot do "anything I want."

Unless . . . Unless I am given over to Reality, to Truth, and allow Him to give me the desires of my heart: not fulfill my fleshly desires but implant the desires themselves so that I desire what He desires.

Just as in writing, one must understand the principles and how the conventions and rules embody the principles, in order to know when and how to flout them -- and when it is not possible -- for the sake of the writing, so it is in life.

To flout fallen human conventions and rules? Yes. But not all conventions and rules are fallen, just because human beings articulate them. So the need is to understand His principles in order to discern what may be flouted, what must be flouted -- and what must be honored.

Oh, for wisdom!

Phoebe

As I drove round the bend this morning, the moon dazzled my eyes to near blindness. No soft glow or haze of clouds to mute her, she could have muted the loud glare of bright headlights had any challenged her. She did not peek from behind the trees, as so often happens; rather, her insistent brilliance demanded notice and required obedience.

Phoebe, so changeful, from seeming absence to full presence, from romantic hazy glow to icy clear radiance. I am reminded of Dickinson's poem:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind --

There is time for this circuitous telling, certainly, for partial or hazy revelation, but there is time too for bright Truth straight on. May God grant the wisdom to know which phase any given moment may require.

En-Visioning Again

It's fall break here. This morning, K and the YM went to run errands. I fixed something to eat, stared at the book I am reviewing, read a bit in Lilith again, then pulled our hymnal off the shelf. It's been so long since I've just sung hymns, and the rare times we do so in our church it's to a new tune or with added choruses, and never all the verses, as though the writer's thought can be known and edify us in snippets or by cut and paste. So I just sang, hymn after hymn, and found myself for the first time in a very long time feeling something in worship. It was good, very good.

This particular hymn has always been a favorite, and it spoke to me strongly today, so I thought I'd share.

"Be Thou My Vision"

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Nought be all else to me, save that Thou art --
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word:
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord,
Thou my great Father and I Thy true son,
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

"Without a vision, the people perish." May the vision be His, indeed Him, and may I learn to pursue with a whole heart. Vision and wisdom, Lord; grant me vision and wisdom.

Blocked

I know writers who claim there is no such thing as writer’s block. I suspect if I had to make my living writing I would find this to be true. However, since I make my living teaching, with all its attendant components – creating syllabi, preparing each day's work, grading papers, not to mention actually meeting classes and conferencing with individual students – the writing is not as a rule immediately compelling. I would like to believe that the ability to do it periodically disappears for that reason. It would at least supply an excuse.

However, the block often occurs when I actually have time on my hands (relatively speaking). This is depressing, to say the least, and seems inexplicable. I know full well that the solution to my present difficulty will suddenly appear just as I am sitting in faculty workshop (no doubt while the dean or president is speaking on some absolutely vital topic and I am sitting in such a place that my mental non-attendance will be noted) or when I am finally getting the freshman comp website done ten minutes before the first class meeting. At which point I will tear my hair in frustration, at least mentally, and try not to curse my wayward muse, at least not aloud.

The pressure of a deadline or a great deal to do has always been good for my writing. Of course, this can be frustrating for me and for those around me, as I try to juggle the urgent (the everyday “stuff”) with the important (the writing). Is the writing worth it? I’ve read so many writers recently, the ones who say they cannot not write, the ones who say this is delusional arrogance, the ones who reduce writing to craft, the ones who elevate it to religion. I know that writing keeps me sane. That alone is enough to tell me I must be careful not to neglect it for the urgent.

But I want to finish something someday, something worth having spent the time and the energy it took and worth the sacrifices that I and others make for it. Today, my husband is 53 – which means I will be the same in just two months. Time is running out.

And now I read, “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). Wisdom. Ah, yes, wisdom is the goal, not publication. Is this writing contributing to my wisdom, my understanding of God and His reality? If so, and if that wisdom is applied in the urgencies of my everyday life, then the writing is worth it, whatever its worldly fate.

“Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding; for her proceeds are better than profits of silver, and her gain than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all the things you may desire cannot compare with her” (Proverbs 3:13-15).

Thanks to Him once again for the check, for the eternal perspective. May I keep it clearly in heart as well as mind as the daily round of a school year begins again, and may I keep Him before all else as I enter it.

The Simple Life

Advice to young folks who wish they weren't treated as such:

Life is pretty simple, really.

* If you don't wish to be treated like a child, act like an adult.

* If you don't wish to be disciplined, obey.

* If you wish to have a sense of positive self worth, a) understand your relationship to the Saviour who died to redeem you; and b) work hard to accomplish your goals.

* If you wish to feel a sense of personal satisfaction, serve.

Think on it. Life's too short to be continually concerned with perceived complexities and injustices. You are the only person you have any control over, and your choices moment by moment will largely determine your future. Your choice of attitude towards those things you cannot control will determine how much joy you experience. No one can rob you of these choices; only you can determine to be miserable and bitter.

And note: I said life's simple, not easy. But the right choices unleash God's power to work in us through whatever comes.

Did I say advice for the young? How I need to remember it every day myself!