Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . INTERVIEW . Rev. Jerry Kramer . April 14, 2006

Read more of Kim Lawton's interview with the Reverend Jerry Kramer, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Annunciation in New Orleans:

Q: Church of the Annunciation was the first parish you were in charge of in the United States.

Photo of Rev. JERRY KRAMER

A: Yes, absolutely. It is very different than being in charge of a parish in Africa. I was director of the cathedral in Arusha, Tanzania, but I always tell people, "Don't get impressed with that." It's just a bigger hut, and then the other churches were, literally, huts, boxes, crates, you know, under a tree. ... Just getting acclimated as a pastor here in the U.S. and in New Orleans, which was an incredibly challenging city before Katrina -- it was far more difficult than East Africa as a mission field, far more. We were struggling with those growing pains early in ministry, and then the storm hit, and it just changed the whole landscape.

Q: Describe your congregation.

A: This is a very eclectic, diverse parish. Post-Katrina, I was in exile about 100 miles away, actually about three hours away, and we would have visiting priests come in. I would ask them to have services in the parking lot on chairs, and I would always ask them on Monday by phone, "Well, how did it go?" And they would stutter and stammer and say, "A bit eclectic." [It was] about half black, half white; most of our black folk are actually from Belize or the Caribbean. This is the headquarters for those folks. And we went from newborn [to members] well into their 80s. Our associate youth director was 84 years old. She lived in the neighborhood, and she walked here every day for service, and she was just inseparable from our youth director and always around. [It was] a very working poor community -- people with no benefits, many without transportation, can't afford cell phones, credit cards; a group of people who really, really lived on the fine edge and who lived hand to mouth and, you know, we saw that come into play as a huge factor during the evacuation and afterwards, because you take people who don't have cars, don't have benefits, don't have insurance, don't have credit, don't have credit cards, don't have cell phones, and lift them out of their community and deposit them around the country, and they are really stranded. They were just left with nothing all over the place, and really the first few weeks after the storm was just trying to get people stabilized wherever they were -- just pushing out money and making connections, getting them in touch with the resources, calling up a local Episcopal parish wherever they might be and saying, "I've got this family in a hotel or on the roadside by you. Can you come get them?" That's where we really saw the face of poverty in a real way, confronting it when we were forced with that situation, to care for these people and help them. It was very interesting. I found, too, they're a very gritty bunch; they work hard, and every single one of them who was physically able got jobs wherever they landed. They worked, right away they got to work where they were, and they came back, and they are working here now. We put the "working" in "working poor." You know, they really get after it, but they are fragile. We did not have a Sunday collection from August 21 until Christmas, and we needed the last collection of every month to make payroll, and at Christmastime we had $15 in the bank, because we were pushing out resources and doing relief work and just throwing everything we had at [it,] using our own credit cards, those of us who had them, for relief supplies, just to keep it going.

Q: How many people were here before the storm, and how many are here now?

A: When we got here in January, we were kind of at 50-ish on Sunday, and just before Katrina we were averaging in the ballpark of 100, with some Sundays of 120. Right now about 90 to 95 percent of our people are back or trying to get back, committed to coming back. We look like anywhere from 45 to 65 on Sunday right now. Part of the challenge is that they may be back in the area, but they still could be a ways from us. Also people [are] without cars, so with the bus service very limited, they can't get here. So some of them are around, and also, you know, right now they're just exhausted. They're really tired, and they kind of take shifts coming for Bible study during the week, because some of them are just working to stay afloat, and they got to work on their houses, and it's just -- every hour of every day is such a struggle. You are exhausted by the end of the day.

Q: What are some of the spiritual needs you are seeing at this point among members of your congregation?

A: Obviously, in the aftermath of the storm [they were] trying to grapple with how could a good God let this happen, and we had to sort of work through that issue and, you know, what we've seen since very early on, since coming back to this city, is that issue has been solved, in a way. They know that God did not cause this storm, but we are seeing God redeeming his creatures and his creation. We are seeing God's redemption, his love, you know, just chipping away at it day by day with volunteers coming in from all over to help us with doing our ministries -- just the love, support, and prayers from people around the world, really, and so we are thriving on that grace. That is what is keeping us. I think that pastorally right now, it's acute in a couple of ways. One, really, [is] the elderly. They are struggling the most. We've had an angioplasty, a stroke, a broken hip in five places. One fell and badly wounded her face. They're falling apart. They came back for their Christmas Eve service, and they sat in the church and just cried throughout the whole thing because, you know, we have folks who've been in this church since they were teenagers, who are now in their 80s, and they know they are not going to live to see it rebuilt. They are not going to live to see their neighborhood and their homes, and they've lost everything, and they are just like the 84-year-old co-youth director. What kept her alive was this church, was hanging around with our 20-something youth director. [It] gave her a purpose in life, and she's stranded in Georgia right now, away from the church family she has been with for most of her life and that gave her life, and she doesn't have that right now. Pastorally, just caring for elderly folks is a big, big issue.

The other piece of it, though, is just the sense we go through of some hopelessness here, you know, not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. That is really hard. I was talking to one of my brother priests on the Mississippi coast. We have a biweekly conference call with front-line clergy in Mississippi and Louisiana, and we are in very different situations, but part of these calls is to say, "What do you have that I might need? What do we have that you might need? We need bleach. Do you got any?" I asked the question one day of my brother priest in Pass Christian, Mississippi. I just said, "You know, my folks are losing hope, they are losing heart, they are depressed, they are tired. What are you doing to keep hope alive?" He said, "We have a master plan, the architect has been out, we have drawings of the new church and what it is going to look like, and they're all excited." And I said, "I am still on the street corner handing out 100 gallons of bleach a day. We can't even get an insurance report on the church building until the new flood maps come out, and we don't know when that's going to happen, and then they have to get the new city code."

It's so hard to go through life without any givens, particularly in the most important aspects of your life: where you live, where you work, where you worship, where your kids go to school, where you get medical care. There are just no answers, and there aren't going to be any anytime soon. It is an incredible challenge to try to be hopeful when there isn't any light at the end of the tunnel. That is something we wrestle with every day, every hour. I can do mad, glad, and sad before my second cup of coffee every morning. That is what you see -- it's a roller coaster. Our highs are real high, like when we got power to the trailers. Six and a half months in, the power arrived and there was just euphoria, but then we hear that the flood maps are going to be delayed for a while. And they're still talking about our neighborhood being in a flood mitigation zone, and then we go just right back down again. Or [we] look at the checkbook and go, "Oh Lord, how are we going to make it this week?" We are up and we're down, we're up and we're down. People are really fragile emotionally. You have to be really careful in keeping away from anything contentious, because their nerves are frayed, and they'll just snap like that, absolutely snap, because they are so worn out and tired and frazzled. That's a huge pastoral challenge we are dealing with right now.

Q: How do you deal with that as a pastor? Do you feel a heavy sense of responsibility? You are supposed to be the caretaker for their spiritual needs. That's got to be a big burden for you.

A: It is very hard. It is hard enough being a baby pastor in an incredibly difficult city, in an incredibly different environment -- to be a community of faith [is] a real challenge. It was very hard before Katrina. I say the only difference between New Orleans and East Africa before Katrina was that the schools and the roads were better in East Africa -- and less violent. I mean, we have had more flat tires and our car broken into more times here than we ever did in East Africa. And so it was hard, it was hard. But that experience of being in Africa really made the difference. We thought our life's work was going to be in Africa, and we had sold all of our things, moved there, and we weren't coming back. As a matter of fact, we were here over Christmas to really tell the bishop and the diocese that we didn't think we were ever coming back, and we got an e-mail New Year's Eve that we weren't going back [to Africa], and here we were. That experience of having to function, to live hand to mouth -- not a daily dependence on God. That is so trite. This was a minute-by-minute dependence on God, literally. Talk about Paul and prayer without ceasing. That experience of just not having anything and having to make do, figure it out -- that's what we had to do in the mission fields. I mean, just plunk down among the Masai people in the middle of nowhere in East Africa, you know -- work with God and make it happen.

The big part of the burden is just, you know, there are just so many hours in the day, and I have to function. I have to wear so many hats. I have to be a fund raiser to keep this place going. I got to be teacher. I mean, we are still doing our adult education and Bible study. I got to be community activist, working with our neighborhood people. I have to be relief worker out there in the streets with our crew. I have to be cheerleader, keeping their spirits up, and I have to be counselor. I have to be priest and pastor. There just are so many hats, and it is literally constantly trading one out for the other all throughout the day -- and no church secretary. I mean, we can't afford a church secretary for years. I can't see the light at the end of that tunnel right now. I was up at two in the morning last night doing the bulletins, and that's scary, because before the storm our secretary wouldn't let me hit the print button without adult supervision on the printer, and I am teaching myself Microsoft Publisher and running off to Kinko's to get these things copied and folded, and it's just so much -- it's really incredibly overwhelming.

Q: How do you make sure you don't burn out spiritually?

A: That's a good question. You have to stay disciplined to prayer. Priests are called to say the Daily Office in the morning and at night, and just when you don't feel like it and you're so tired, that discipline -- you know, to just to sit there and rest in the Lord for a while is so essential. The Eucharist, which is the great mystery -- and we are living in this great mystery, so there are great Eucharistic connections right now. We are people who are, you know, standing at the foot of the cross, really. We've been in Good Friday since, you know, late August. I've been asked to go around the parishes and do the Wednesday night Lenten programs and, you know, I just say our Lenten journey began on August 27. We've been in it [since then]. I guess what has helped here is that an old spiritual director told me I had a very Jesuit spirituality; I was a doer. I'm fed by doing, and there is plenty to do. And so I do. I get energized by being involved, by watching God's grace in action in the lives of people here just doing great work on the streets and giving so much of themselves when they've lost everything, or leaving behind their families and homes and jobs and dropping everything and coming in to work with us and help us. That certainly gives me an incredible shot in the arm. I really hadn't had a breakdown until last Saturday, and after six months it's real interesting. I see it every day and see the images and talk to the people and hear their stories and don't even have time to worry about my own house or our stuff. We lost everything, but who has time to dwell on that, you know? I was at my parents' house, and I watched a video that was made by one of the mission teams that came in from Plano, Texas, and I just sat there in my parents' house watching that DVD on my laptop and just completely lost it and broke down. But what triggered it -- what did it wasn't the images of the doom and gloom and sadness. It was the images of them coming in and working, mucking [around in] houses and just remembering their time here with us, and it was tears of joy, in a sense. That's God's grace. That's the redeeming power of God's love -- that these people who have come to our aid -- and I see every person who comes here to be with us -- they're really an outward, visible sign of God's love and grace. They're living, walking, breathing sacraments, you know, and so we partake in that as they come. There is this balance of trying to get some quiet time, but also just doing [God's] kingdom-building work does fuel your fires. It is tiring, but it does keep the fires burning.

Q: I am interested in your reflections this year on the themes of Easter, from Lent through Good Friday and the Resurrection.

A: We are people who live with a pretty high level of cognitive dissonance. You know, we live in both the reality of the Cross, but also the reality of Resurrection, and we are caught in that tension. As a matter of fact, the first sermon I preached here in January was how we live in a middle hour of our salvation -- that the kingdom [of God] has broken in, but it's not yet complete, and so there is going to be pain and suffering and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but we know that the victory of the Cross has already been won, and what we are doing is living out that victory. You know, that is assured for us, and so that knowledge, that faith in the Resurrection power of Jesus, of God continually renewing his creatures and his creation -- you know, living in that, but it is the tension that we walk in. We are people of the Cross, but we are also people who look at the empty tomb and see it very empty and recognize that our Lord has risen and that the great work of redemption is ongoing and also that we're called to participate in that. And that's what is extraordinary -- how our God shares with us the ongoing creation of humanity. God shares that with us and also, in Jesus, the ongoing redemption of the world and building the kingdom. God shares that work with us. So to understand that this is our role, this is what we are called to do -- to be kingdom builders who have to go out with our heads held high to show the world that the victory has already been won, and not to slump and pout and cry and whine, but to go out and say that victory is there. We've got to live it out. God is in here with us. You can't but walk around and see the power and the reality of the Resurrection and the kingdom coming. You can't. Because [of] just the extraordinary self-giving and signs of hope and people giving so much.

We have an African-American woman who lost her home in New Orleans East, and she came here for relief supplies way back when, in the early pioneer days of our relief operation, and she's since moved out to a trailer. She comes here every day to volunteer; every single day she volunteers with us. She's giving back, and that is a sign of God's redemption and redeeming, and so you can look around and see the landscape of Calvary, but then you also see what God is doing. I mean, you look all around [and] every day we look at the landscape of Calvary. We see it, we live it, we smell it, and we touch it. It's so hard to convey that to other people right now around the country. One of the hardest things for us to do while we were missionaries in Africa was to explain to people by e-mail what "nothing" looked like.

Americans can't get that. We Westerners cannot get our arms around what "nothing" looks like. We live that landscape, but then on the plain of that very broken landscape we see redemption going on, we see God's grace, we see people being really transformed by the Holy Spirit. We see people growing in their relationship with the Lord, and we see people giving so much of themselves who have lost everything. We see the victory of the Resurrection, the reality of it, just in people's lives and in so many people doing such great kingdom-building work. I parked my car on the neutral ground out here the other day after coming back from Pass Christian. I was there at Trinity Church that had a water line 30-something feet [high] on it, and everything else washed away in the town, and then I had to come back to New Orleans. I parked my car. I just sat and watched from the street, and we had 350 people here that day for relief supplies, and they were all lined up, and what was real interesting was we had so many people, and we were short on volunteers. They would get their stuff, put it off to the side, and they would switch and go on the other side of the table and help the others. Just kindly and gently working with each other. And then our neighborhood association was having a meeting here, and our youth director was out on the lawn where we have 30, 40 kids every day waiting for the bus to come pick them up, and she brings out a snack tray out for them. Wheels it out and begins talking with them and developing relationships with them. I said to myself, "This is the kingdom. This is the kingdom being built. This is what God's grace really looks like." You see these sort of explosions of grace in the midst of the rubble, and that's what this middle hour of our salvation looks like.

Q: Yet you say sometimes you feel stuck in Good Friday here.

A: Good Friday has been going for a long time in New Orleans, but there was a lot of Good Friday before Katrina, too. Certainly, some days just all we see is the Cross, and that's hard, and the idea to just dig down and to still recognize the reality of the Resurrection, but the skies can look awful gray sometimes to us -- things just not moving. Hundreds of thousands of people trying to find where they're going to live. Just the daily realities of how are we going to get this done today? How can we move forward? It's something we just have to swim in, and certainly, you know, that challenges your faith, but it strengthens your faith, too. I guess Mother Teresa said there was a 10-year period of her life where she didn't feel any presence of God. That's extraordinary, and she persevered in faith just convinced, knowing in faith that yes, God is there with her. We have those days when we have to grit up like she did and just trust. Also the stories of the Old Testament -- when the message is very clear, is in the dark days: "Remember God's deeds of the past. Remember that." We talked about that this week at our weekly Bible study, and I told the folks -- because it was a euphoric night. We had some good news. We have an organist coming down; he's relocating to the parish and that was truly exciting, and so we were up high as a kite, and I had to remind them, though, you know, starting tomorrow morning again we will have our dark days. Things are going to get harder for us in a lot of ways as we go forward, weathering this storm, and we have to look to what the prophets of old reminded the people -- to look back and remember God's deeds in the past and how he delivered, just like during the Exodus, and remembering the Exodus while you are in captivity. God delivered, God saved, and remember that God got us through the storm together. God got us back here, the remnant group, relatively safe and sound in a trailer. And to dwell on that, to remember that God does deliver. We have to keep faith and keep that memory alive to get us through some of the dark times that are present and ahead for us.

Q: How much of your time is spent fund raising, and why do you have to do so much of that?

A: We hadn't had a Sunday collection [for four months] and we roughly have half the congregation back. But they are really struggling. A number of them have completely lost their jobs, have taken much lower-paying jobs -- just the cost of replacing basic items, you know, comes right out of your paycheck. Having to buy new linens, blankets, towels, clothes -- and many of us haven't received any insurance help whatsoever yet or have been denied FEMA assistance for one reason or another. So we are really strapped and strained as a congregation. One thing I've told them, though, is we cannot ask for nor expect help from others unless we are giving all we can. The standard is the tithe, and I expect us to tithe through this, and also we are still tithing what comes into the parish to people less fortunate than we are. We're doing that -- we must do that, but I have to spend hours and hours every morning on the phone and e-mail, just making connections with other parishes and congregations, sharing our story and seeking their generosity to help us weather this. Our expenses as a parish, per se, are down. I've had to let go the staff, except for our youth director. We don't have the utilities we used to have, the copy machine. But our relief budget dwarfs the parish operations. ... We would see about 200 a day coming for help; then we dwindled down in February to about 85 a day. Then, starting a couple of weeks ago, we went up to 350 a day, and there are things we can't get for free. We try to get all we can from the relief providers. But things like water and bleach and diapers we have to go buy -- Depends, hygiene items -- and so we have to go purchase those things, and that's very costly, particularly in the volume we are dealing with. So, definitely, one of my hats right now is fund raiser.

Q: You spend a lot of time on the road doing that.

A: Absolutely. I'm going to be gone most Sundays between now and [the] end of April which, again, is a real struggle pastorally, you know, not being here for my flock, but if I am not on the road, we're not going to be here. It's hard, but they accept that. They understand that we are very short on clergy right now. A 72-year-old retired priest drove in from Virginia for a month -- I mean, God love him -- with his wife. He's going to be here on Sundays with us throughout a month to help out so I can go other places and tell our story. One of the things that we did in Africa, though, and we are maintaining here is we never ask. We don't ask. We just tell the story, because what we are trying to share is what God is doing here. This is God working in our midst and building the kingdom. And it's his work, not ours. All I do is to share what is happening, the reality of it, trying to get across to people what this looks and feels and smells and tastes like, and then share how we are going about building the kingdom in the midst of this rubble, and then let God do the rest. It really creates, again, a dependence on God. We learned that in Africa -- that you're not going to have [a] safety net. You are not going to have money in the bank, you are going to worry how you are going to get this done by Friday or pay this bill, but it forces you on your knees all the time. It's what God wants -- a relationship with us, you know. He wants to be a part of every moment of our life. And so it has certainly strengthened that desire to really invite the Lord into our lives and our situation and to let him walk with us. It's hard. It really takes an act of faith, but that is what we are called to do.

Q: The Episcopal Church has said it is helping this diocese. It has said it is paying the salary of the clergy. How much do you feel responsible for doing yourself?

A: One of the big struggles is that we were a poor parish without an endowment before the storm, and our diocese didn't have a lot of money reserved before Katrina. You know, they had about $600,000 in the bank, something like that. And so they're doing the best they can. They are doing all they can. I mean, our bishop has been heroic. I don't feel badly for myself, because he's got, on a much bigger level, all these parishes to care for, a whole diocese to care for, and he's got to go out and try to keep the boat afloat and raise money and tell the story, and he's been extraordinary throughout this. But the reality is there is so much devastation here, and the funds are limited, I mean, they can only do so much. They're trying right now just to make sure none of us suffer. We're only able to buy groceries because the bishop's wife is able to give us Wal-Mart cards. We have to pay the mortgage on our house; we don't have our tenant anymore and the mortgage was predicated on having the tenant. And then we have to pay for an apartment at an exorbitant rate, and at the end of the month, it doesn't work. We're way in the hole. But our bishop's wife has a ministry of taking care of the clergy's wives and families and spouses, and so she floats us gift cards so we are able to go buy groceries. And, again, they're working heroically. But it's just -- I don't think people grasp the magnitude of this. There are so many other parishes just like we are.

But then you have to realize it's not just New Orleans, because you've got the North Shore and the River Parish of Baton Rouge inundated with people, and they are trying to take care of this mass exodus of humanity that's arrived on their doorsteps. We're stretched from corner to corner in our diocese local church. There is no parish not affected. Everybody is dealing with this; it's just what they're dealing with, what it looks like for them. So that's why we have had to scramble ourselves to find the funds for these trailers. They certainly aren't from FEMA. Scramble for the funds to pay for the generator until we got power. It was $500 a week rental, $100 a day to run one of them. And just the purchasing of relief supplies -- again, sometimes we just had to use our own credit cards to get it done for the day until some help came.

Everybody's trying; everybody's working as hard as they can and being the best they can, I'm convinced of that. What's really, really extraordinary is just to see how all the parishes are responding. It's so creative and so unique. We're doing different things serving the needs of the people. What we are really learning for the first time -- the bishop has always said this, that we are one church in mission, but nobody ever paid any attention to that. What's happened now, though, is we are really seeing the reality, because we've been forced into it. It's that we are one church in mission. We are just one outpost here of a whole local church. And what we're realizing is that we can't be all things to all people. We just can't. So every site is developing its own niche, and it is fun to watch. St. George's down the street is doing this great hot feeding program at their Dragon Caf�; St. Anna's -- they're doing medical ministry and legal aid; Trinity is doing Loaves and Fishes; us here with the bleach, water -- house-mucking people is basically what we do here, and community activists. Holy Comforter in Gentilly is doing great stuff with neighborhood cleanup and working with the neighborhood there. So a network is coming about that we've never had before; partnerships are coming. I guess they've been forced on us, but we're twining up with some other parishes here locally in helping each other out, because we have to work smart; we have to work efficiently, and that's part of it, too. That's our responsibility. We have to be good stewards, and so we are finding ways to be more interrelated with each other so that we are not overlapping, and we are working smart and are working efficiently. Again, we've had to do this just because the need is so massive, and the resources are finite.

Q: Talk about the project in cooperation with Harvard and the encouragement it brought.

One of the great blessings that's come about in this aftermath has been getting involved with our neighborhood association. I didn't know how to do it before Katrina; I didn't know how to make contact with them, I didn't know what they did, they didn't know what we did. Our only interaction with them would be, every once in a while, they'd fuss about where we were parking cars. What's happened now is we've opened up our trailer office space, and we are permanently housing the neighborhood association, which is the oldest, longest-running neighborhood association in the country. The Bring Back New Orleans Plan put a big circle around our neighborhood and labeled it as a flood mitigation zone, and that really brought into question the viability of our homes, the church, the neighborhood. So we organized very quickly to prove to the city that we were coming back.

I remember our first meeting. It was a really cold night out on Napoleon, and we had to bring in a generator under a tent, and we had over 300 people there, and we started polling. Ninety-seven percent of the people wanted to come back. And our first three meetings we've had in the neighborhood association, we've collected over 500 people right away, and, again, almost all of them wanted to come back. But we were really struggling with this issue, showing our viability and really not just surviving but building a better community, because we have a lot of issues in the neighborhood before the storm as far as poverty, as far as lack of services, education, the library, etc., housing. During the midst of this organization, we didn't realize this, but Harvard University was lurking around, looking for their spot where they were going to make a difference, who they were going to partner with, and they were evaluating neighborhoods and communities, and ultimately it's worked out to where they've decided to work with Broadmoor to make it the model for how to rebuild New Orleans.

We announced to the people the other night the cavalry is here. We told the community and I've told my parishioners this. We told people from day one that if we just stay on our feet, if we scrape, and we claw, and we dig our heels in, and we stay standing -- if we are here five years from now, we are going to be in a much better reality. We have to weather this storm, and it's going to be a long, drawn-out battle. But there was the beginning of a break in the clouds for us because [Harvard is] sending in their education school, their urban planners, their architects, their business school, their medical school people to partner with us, to work with us to redesign what an urban inner-city community can really look like, and to make it attract people -- a place where people can move in and bring their families to live here, and that's what we want. We are very committed to this neighborhood; we moved here intentionally, right back behind the church. One of the criteria -- they had seven criteria: diversity, historic value, particularly just the desire to rebuild, which has been so evident. Our neighborhood has pulled twice as many building permits as any other neighborhood in this city. Even though we didn't know what that meant, or what we were able to do, or what money was available, we pulled those permits to show the world that we were coming back. And it's just that sort of spunkiness -- and also they wanted a challenge.

One of the things [Harvard] told us was they wanted someplace that was under threat, that had a lot of issues pre-Katrina, that was going to be well worth their time and be a challenge for their personnel. We certainly provided that. But that news of them coming and partnering with us to create a vision -- that's where the hope comes in. The hope comes in the vision, what it could look like if we all pull together. What's also really extraordinary is that since the storm, this is the first time I've ever seen black and white and Asian and Hispanic folks sitting around at the same meeting, side by side, all on the same page. There's some real opportunity here for racial healing.

It could blow up. We could see it blow up, but right now I can at least speak to our neighborhood. We said the floodwaters were the great leveler. It didn't matter if you were in public housing, on assistance, or an attorney or a doctor or a priest. The floodwaters got everybody, and when you lose everything you are just a person who has lost everything. It has put us all at the same table with the same concerns for the first time. We have the same issues in life, and it brought us together, so that's very helpful. We're walking side by side, very blended, very together, because these issues have made us get on the same page together. But Harvard -- that announcement is extraordinary to us.