Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World

by Serene Jones

"Theology is a place and a story. Theology is the place and story you think of when you ask yourself about the meaning of your life, of the world, and the possibility of God."

So begins Serene Jones's epic work of raw truth, fierce love, and spiritual teaching as muscular as the fractured soul of this century demands. From her abiding Oklahoma roots to her historic leadership of a legendary New York seminary, her story illuminates the deep fault lines of this age--and points beyond them. With a voice that is at once frank and poetic, humble and prophetic, intimate and practical, Jones makes complex teachings around hatred, forgiveness, mercy, justice, death, sin, and grace understandable and immediately applicable for modern people. Excavating the wisdom of great theological voices--Soren Kierkegaard, Reinhold Niebuhr, John Calvin, James Baldwin, James Cone, Luce Irigaray, Saint Teresa of Avila--she brings them to life with an intimacy and vividness that illumines our lives and our culture now. At the same time, and with great beauty, Call It Grace reveals Serene Jones as a towering voice of a new, and urgently necessary, public theology for this century.

Genres: Spirituality, Theology, Religion, Nonfiction, Memoir, Christianity, Faith

336 pages, Paperback

Published March 17, 2020

About the author

A highly respected scholar and public intellectual, the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is the 16th President of the historic Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. The first woman to head the 180-year-old institution, Jones occupies the Johnston Family Chair for Religion and Democracy. She is also currently the President of the American Academy of Religion, which annually hosts the world’s largest gathering of scholars of religion. Jones came to Union after seventeen years at Yale University, where she was the Titus Street Professor of Theology at the Divinity School, and Chair of the University’s Program in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies . The author of several books including Trauma and Grace, Jones, a popular public speaker, is sought by media to comment on major issues impacting society because of her deep grounding in theology, politics, women’s studies, economics, history, and ethics.

Reviews

[Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few weeks ago, I had never heard of Serene Jones or Union Theological Seminary. I found out about both when Jones participated in a Q&A with the New York Times.

In that piece, she shared her doubts about the virgin birth and the resurrection, among other things. Her views weren't particularly shocking by themselves, but I was fascinated because of Jones' position as president of a theological seminary.

I was raised to believe that a "Christian" is someone who believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Christian denominations exist for the sole purpose of clarifying, communicating, and protecting their clear ideas about the nature of God, right? So how can a person who scoffs at the traditional premise of the faith find her way into a career as a theologian and administrator at one of the country's oldest seminaries?

This book answers that question in detail, explaining Jones' familial background and her spiritual journey. And those parts of the book are extremely satisfying. Jones carefully articulates her ideas and gives numerous examples of the theologians, both famous and obscure, that helped shape her outlook.

The structure of the book, though, feels a bit like a conversation with a stranger at a party or bar. You start a casual conversation, and soon you become keenly aware that this is a person of unusual depth. You venture onto the topic of God and the next thing you know, you've talked all night. They closed down the bar and then the coffee shop and now it's dawn and you're in someone's kitchen listening as the conversation turns down yet another new path.

What I mean is that it's not an especially coherent, polished presentation of ideas or story. Rather, it's an interesting narrative that at times wanders or gets stuck a little too long on one topic. Like that interesting stranger at the bar, the author needs to be occasionally nudged back on track or to be led back to a particularly interesting point.

The best parts are when she connects the dots and clearly applies her theological outlook to the big conflicts in her life. Like how she coped with her community's racist past, or how her ideas of God's grace and forgiveness were undermined by the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing as well as the subsequent trial and execution of McVeigh.

Other parts, like when she muses about her grandfather and her mother (or to a lesser her extent her sisters, ex-husband and daughter), are somewhat jumbled and felt ...muddier?

Those muddy parts are where new details appear abruptly, giving the "conversation" an ugly turn and completely changing the nature of the book. When revelations about her mother are introduced late in the book, for example, it seems like the end of the memoir is more an exercise in personal therapy...the author working through her complex feelings... rather than the objective theological treatise of earlier chapters.

Overall, it's a solid memoir that includes a lifetime of suggestions for further reading.

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had high hopes for this book...
After listening to a recent interview of Serene Jones on NPR, I eagerly looked forward to reading, Call It Grace. The book is part memoir, part reflection, part theological essay. I'm not certain it really succeeds. As memoir, Jones weaves in family history and memories of her Oakie childhood and racist relatives.

I'm not understanding how she excoriates her racist, child-molesting grandfather on the one hand, while also going on and on about how her background has molded and shaped her to be the conscious and committed person she's become. She honors the hardscrabble lives of her forebears and acknowledges the profound impact they have on her.

Then there's her mother! What a mother! A hateful, vicious, selfish and disturbed woman that Serene Jones never quite gets around to seeing or understanding as mentally unstable. The woman she describes sounds like a classic bipolar. Jones writes about her pettiness, jealousy, vindictiveness and shallow, self-absorption amidst the tight societal confines of 1950's rural America.

Much more than 1950’s mores created the monster her mother became and remained throughout life that ended with deathbed cruelty. Serene Jones tries to frame her mother’s actions against the context of theological ideas of mercy, justice, redemption and faith. Yet, spilling from the frame are un-discussed, never-mentioned example after example of mental instability that screams mental illness. It’s the elephant in the room that Serene Jones just doesn’t see, acknowledge or mention.

Call It Grace gets bogged down in many spots. It drags and is wordy. Chapters are overly long. Jones attempts to peel back the layers of her own theological growth and those theologians and thinkers who influenced her. She weaves back and forth, traveling from the Midwest to India, then Yale and Union Theological Seminary.

Although her understanding of her own journey may be clear to Serene Jones, she doesn’t always make it clear to the reader. So although she offers tidbits of understanding about her family and the people who’ve influenced her, I came away from the book, still unclear about a lot.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an outstanding book– I'm glad I looked it up after listening to Serene Jones being interviewed by Krista Tippett on On Being. It's been a while since I read a book from the more academic realm of theology that captured me like this, probably because it so expertly weaves in narratives that are unflinching about the blend of sin and grace. At times her Calvinist background struck me as a bit harsher than what I grew up with, but in today's fractured national and global context I can see the wisdom and clarity of Calvin's thought as Jones distills it. Her manner of reflecting upon various stages and events in her life theologically is profoundly inspiring, and encourages me to do the same. And her call for a renewed emphasis on public theology is inspiring and challenging... I can see it as long overdue, but grapple with how I might answer that call.

[Elizabeth Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my perpetual frustrations about the current--very worthy--movement among whites to own our ingrained notions of racial supremacy is how rarely we frame them as connected to bigger inherent patterns of human brokenness. "Sin" is an out-of-date word these days, downright scorned, tossed aside with the religious institutions that taught it. But I've found myself wondering if the only way we can, if not overcome, then at least heal our racism is by seeing it in the context of the human propensity for sin. I'm hungry for conversations willing to broach this topic.

Enter CALL IT GRACE, where Serene Jones delves headfirst into her family's ugly racist history, bringing to bear for context the full force of her theological training. Hers is a Calvinist background, which I know little about. Contrary to my prejudices, her Calvinistic sense of sin is relatively free of the judgment, guilt, and shame that permeates much of Protestantism.

"Calvin's understanding of original sin also kept me from reducing white supremacy to my own personal or familial problem, as if it were something that could be fixed through individual enlightenment and a single person's virtuous actions. He reminds us that endemic sin is much bigger than just individual intentions. In fact, it thrives even more strongly in social collectives than it does in single people. It lives in the policies people enact, the attitudes we enforce, the beliefs we propagate." --Serene Jones 59

Jones also relates her family's losses around the Oklahoma City bombing of the federal building, her own divorce, her mother's deep betrayal of her father, and her ethical struggles as president of Union Theological Seminary in this bigger context of sin and grace, so we see her theology writ large, across a lifespan. An author in her position might be inclined to avoid much of the hard material Jones tackles head-on. For her fearlessness, honesty, and theological acumen, I hold this memoir in high regard. Anyone curious to anchor their own experiences in their theological bedrock should use this as a model.

As a committed contemplative, however, I found Jones' theological frameworks unsatisfying in the end. The dynamic personal and collective engagement in daily relationship with the divine is largely missing from this story. The one place it's alive is in the writing--in Jones' deliberate seeking within experience for grace--and that, it turns out, was good enough for me. "I, we, this nation, our world, humanity cannot afford the luxury of naming sin--of reveling in the mire of our collective brokenness--without also naming grace." (61)

[Kelsey Cobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first theological book I was able to read after finishing my MDiv. I appreciated the ways that Jones tied together people and place and current events to the theologians who accompanied her through life. As an Oklahoman, I felt seen by her reflection on our home state, the complicated beauty it is.

Toward the end, as the parts of her life she wrote about became closer and closer to the present, I sensed a change in her tone. Her writing felt defensive at times.

I really appreciate the ways that she tells these stories and emphasizes the experiential theology that informs them, as well as the thinkers who taught her how to see the world through a faithful lens.

[Paul Womack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest in the telling and searingly so in the last chapters, but very nice to have a profrssional theologian affirm the route of my life, too. Dr. Jones and I share a similar religious cultural experience, but as I read the book’s final pages I was reminded of Richard Rohr’s observation that hope is the ability to live without resolution and my fundamental pillar of faith that grace does set the stage for reconciliation. I shall pass the book on…

[JohnClellan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh

[David Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing that strikes you about Serene Jones graceful memoir is its bold and unflinching honesty. She is President of the Union Theological Seminary, and the daughter of a minister who has fought all his life for civil rights and the rights of all people, but she lets us know early on that her grandfather—that wonderful father’s father—was an overt racist and was also sexually abusive to the young women in the family. Her mother, though she was a striking beauty and nominally a Christian, was a self-centered woman who resented her children and treated them badly all their lives. The tirade against her daughter that this woman goes on in her early seventies, when Serene was assuming her post as President of Union, was almost unbelievable in its pettiness and viciousness. She seemed not to have learned a thing in her seventy years of life.

Jones begins winningly with a Forward that announces her six core beliefs, and even to me, a man with a Christian background who now practices Zen, they sound accurate and true to experience.[1] She organizes her book according to what she calls stations of the cross, by which she means key moments that taught her something important, and she tells the story of the early stations succinctly and gracefully. This isn’t the kind of memoir that blathers on with a lot of detail. She talks at some length about the theology of John Calvin, who is apparently central to the thinking of her denomination, the Disciples of Christ, and almost (but not quite) convinces me I should look into his work (she admits that others have a different take on Calvin).[2] And her foray into liberation theology, when she travels to India and becomes very seriously ill with dysentery, is not only an admirable (if perhaps slightly foolish) venture, but she relates her experience to that of the mystic Teresa of Avila, who described four stages of prayer, and in that country where she was surrounded by Hindus and mystics of various kinds, she has what seems very much like an experience of No Self. That’s the good news. The bad news is that she nearly died.[3]

I have to say that I found these early chapters thrilling, and I haven’t really covered all their richness, what she calls the prairie theology of Oklahoma, reflected perhaps most notably in her grandmother, her gradual education through other famous thinkers, like Karl Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Howard Thurman, and her father’s bravery in the face of racism and bigotry. But the book bogged down in the middle, when she got into more traditional Christian concerns (in the second half of the book, the stations are such things as forgiveness, justice, mercy, love), especially the long chapter about forgiveness. In that chapter—surprisingly, after all she’d been through and understood—she seemed to be trying to measure up to some standard of behavior instead of examining what was happening. It was hard enough to try to forgive her husband after their divorce, but she got terribly bogged down with the idea that she should be able to forgive Timothy McVeigh. Talk about impossible tasks.

I happened, right about the time I was reading that chapter of the book, to read a teaching on forgiveness by the Buddhist teacher Susan Piver. It’s well worth a listen, but the gist of it is: feel what you feel when you’re feeling it. If you’re feeling anger (toward Timothy McVeigh), just feel that. Don’t stifle it. Don’t try to measure up to an ideal. As a friend once said to me (about a much more trivial situation): when you understand why the person did what they did, you’ll automatically forgive them. Until you do understand it, you can’t forgive them. It may be that we’ll never understand Timothy McVeigh, but so it goes. We’ll leave that to the saints.

Jones does have a chapter on Breath, when she gives a harrowing account of her battle with cancer, but even there I felt she was overintellectualizing, quoting a Western philosopher named Luce Irigaray, who somehow manages to turn that physiological function into something to think about (when any meditator will tell you just to feel it. It’s a miracle!). Jones largely recovers in her final two chapters, when she gets back to the difficulties of her parents. The closer she stays to her experience as it actually is, the better her writing.

www.davidguy.org

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. This coming from an atheist. I have more in common with SJ than I do some atheist friends. She clearly has an open mind and a kind, human spirit. It’s a bit lightweight in the way it handles other factors besides theology in approaching how one ‘should’ live a good life. There is an entire branch of philosophy (kierkegaard aside) devoted to this topic, not to mention scads that can be learned from various psychological fields (esp those dealing with motivation and loss). Yes, I know an ‘academic’ critique but it can’t be helped. Still there is one fatal area of disagreement—and that is the unwavering assumption that ‘god’ however framed here, is the purveyor of grace, and not it’s counterpart, sin. I disagree with this dichotomy as I can’t reconcile otherwise based on this single reading. Otherwise a decent work with a human story.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well....if you want something besides Covid and politics to think about, this is the book for you. The author includes much of her life as she explores facets of faith that need to be explored personally by each of us. Highly recommend you read this alone first before you read it in a book group.

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't put it down. SJ is a gifted writer who made a theological memoir into a page turner. As it happens I land in the same theological terrain as she and found a kindred spirit here.

[E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Serene Jones has written about the life of faith as a prominent theologian, combining personal and family stories and experiences with the intellectual concepts of the great theological thinkers. A beautiful exploration of how those of us who study Calvin, Barth, Kierdegaard, Cone, etc. make sense of our lives and integrate the intellect with experience. This book will be particularly good for those who don't understand theology, not because it is an intro to theological thinking for it is not, but becuase it describes how the theological imagination works.

Jones is a fellow Oklahoman, so I was drawn to how central the Oklahoma experience is to her theological reflection. I have been slowly working on a project for the last 13 years or so to develop a theology of plains, first focused on Oklahoma but then expanded to include Nebraska when I moved in 2010. Her chapter on Prairie Theology was fun to read.

Large parts of the book are memoiristic, but they are not strictly memoir. As someone who has published a memoir, I felt there were places that her innovative genre allowed her to avoid some of the hard work of memoir. One can't and shouldn't always move to lessons and morals from one's experience. Also, she was able to pick and choose from her experience in a way that papered over some, probably because they didn't fit the genre she had created. I also felt some experiences and relationships were insufficiently examined. But many of these criticisms are somewhat nitpicky.

But I was bothered by two times when she got her facts wrong. The first was when she described leaving her Tuesday morning class and then learning about the OKC bombing (a key event in her narrative). The bombing occurred on a Wednesday. The second was the time of death for Timothy McVeigh. She only got that one wrong by an hour. But what puzzled me is that she didn't doublecheck her memory for these central stories. Nor did any of her readers or editors correct her. Nor did her editor look up all the look-up-able facts as my editor did. Strange.

While it suggest sloppy editing, it also demonstrates the way trauma scrambles our brains.

[Judith McGee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard about Dr. Jones' "Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World" via my college Facebook page; I had heard of the Jones family over the years as they are somewhat of a family dynasty in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), a denomination that I belonged to for many years. Thus I read it on a NOOK e-reader.

Dr. Jones is an excellent writer and I found the sections of the book dealing with her growing up process in Oklahoma "good reading" as an native of the state would say.

I think that the book is a memoir more than religious non-fiction; thus I would recommend it for personal reading but not for book-club discussion. If I am correct about it being a memoir, I would like to hear an update at some point, perhaps after she retires from Union or transitions to another form of service.

I will add - as most Goodreads subscribers have - that the bombing of the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City took place on a Wednesday morning, not a Tuesday, and that the book editor should have caught that.

The most difficult aspect of the book is reading Dr. Jones' assessment of her mother, her mother's personal history and the impact that had on her parenting skills of Dr. Jones (who I believe was the eldest child of three daughters). It is difficult not to wonder what her sisters' experiences with their mother were. Dr. Jones' (and her sisters') mother died of a rare neurological disorder in 2016. It is hard not to wonder whether the Jones sisters' mother was impacted by that disorder well before the symptoms became overt and if so, how did it manifest itself.

Looking forward to reading -and hearing - more from Dr. Jones.

[Bill Poston · Rating 5 out of 5]

The President of Union Theological Seminary describes her life growing up in Oklahoma with a theologian dad who had posters of famous theologians on the wall, a beautiful mother who was angry and critical of her and a grandfather who was a lawman in the community and an abuser and racist at home. The book traces her to Oklahoma University, studying in India and teaching religion at Yale. She confronts family tragedy with the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and the death of her mother. When she interviews at Union for the president's job, she describes the collapse of the chapel spire. One of her major challenges in taking the job is to rebuild school facilities. Jones discusses the impact of the theology she learns and its impact as she lives out her life making peace in her family and leading one of the nation's leading religious progressive institutions.
I hard Jones speak as part of a study of James Cone and black liberation theology, found the book, read a few pages and put it down. When I picked it back up, I could not put it down.

[Jennifer Spiegel]

Well, let me try to make this theologically-accessible! I try to read 12 devotion-ish books a year. I'll read people with whom I agree and those I don't. I'm pretty burnt out from reading the, um, doctrine-heavy tomes of a certain era. That said, I'd say the great irony of my life is that I'm kinda theologically conservative with some politically liberal leanings.

So, Serene Jones! She's the President of Union Theological Seminary in NYC. I only have three things to say:

a. Her theology makes little sense to me, as it is bereft of Jesus pretty-much.

b. I think she writes very well, so much so that I oftentimes didn't want to stop reading. Unlike many theologians, she speaks in stories--personal stories--of her life as an Okie and her India adventures. Her storytelling is good and I truly liked her writing.

c. I'm simultaneously reading Bono's memoir (not finished). And we have more in common theologically than Serene Jones and I. It's more likely that Bono and I would go to the same church than Serene Jones and I.

[Jonathan Schildbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used to read theology fairly often 'for fun' -- and this book reminded me how great that can be. I guess I wouldn't strictly call this theology, as it's fairly heavily tilted toward autobiography/family history, with the theology being woven in thematically. But it's pretty fantastic reading the work of someone who has reached the pro leagues of theology discussing her struggles with keeping the faith and trying to hold to abstract spiritual principles in the face of real-world evils that are 'hitting close to home'--from abusive family members, to the Oklahoma City Bomber, to facing tough decisions about how to meet funding needs for her 'church'. The writing is brilliant but totally accessible.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're struggling to find a way to move through the world right now without feeling angry all the time this might be the book for you. It certainly found me at a time that I needed it. The author is a theologian whose approach to religion, God, the concepts of heaven and hell, etc. were all palatable to me. While this is a memoir, and a good one, the main thrust of the book is finding grace, showing mercy, choosing love over all else. The author does not shy away at how hard this is, but suggests it's a path we must always try to be on. She discusses justice a lot too and also explores American's "original sin" and how we have to come to a reckoning about that. I might just buy this book for to pick up again and again.

[Kenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first found about this author through her remarkable book, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, so I knew I wanted to read this one as well. Hard to imagine a memoir written by a theologian being a page-turner, but that is exactly what this was for me. I loved this book and was deeply moved by her honesty and humility in describing life events that challenged her theology and beliefs and how she struggled, and often fell short, in living them out.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

If progressive theology is your thing, you will love this audiobook. Serene Jones’ warm, slightly twangy Oklahoma voice accompanied me on many walks and lulled me to sleep many nights. I took my time with this one, because I didn’t want it to be over!

in Serene Jones’ telling, ideas about God are not just essential but also accessible, not just relevant but also beautiful. The book is grounded in the story of her life, from her rural Oklahoma childhood to her assuming leadership of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Jones is both an accomplished scholar and a plain speaker, which is refreshing.

[Meredith Goins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serene Jones is a great storyteller. I listened to her narrate the book on audible and appreciated her inflection during reading. I liked how she set up the book as four stations, sin and grace, destiny and freedom, hatred and forgiveness, and redeeming life and death. The full circle of life and all the joys and pains are shared. I particularly enjoyed the last chapter where she details her mother's death and how hard that was on her family, particularly her father. Reading that theologians have a hard time with their faith was refreshing as everyone has this challenge at least once in their life.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book and I love Serene Jones. This is an inspiring and, for me, life changing read.
A memoir of personal theology. Serene has spent a lifetime thinking about theology, using her experiences to come to a closer understanding of her vision of the divine, creating the pillars of her belief system. And she is completely honest when she falls short of her own ideals. It was a liberating change of perspective for me to realize that if a woman who dedicates her life to theology can go through times of confusion and doubt, sometimes lasting years, and come out the other side with a strengthened faith, then I can give myself permission to do the same.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The exploration of her Oklahoma and family roots and how those relate to her theological journey is very interesting. Particularly timely is her discussion of her connections to the Oklahoma City Bombing on April 19, 1995.

And I don't really want to be that kind of person, but she says that the bombing happened the same day as her regular "Tuesday lecture," but April 19, 1995, was a Wednesday. I think the OKC Bombing has become linked in memory to 9/11's Tuesday morning. Small details like that just make my brain spin.

[David Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Serene Jones, the president of the Union Theological Seminary, interviewed by Krista Tippet on the podcast "On Being." She was articulate, thoughtful and engaging to the ear of agnostic like me. She is able to transcend the parts of organized religion that have always made me avoid it, and show how and why it's important to have a spiritual life, in whatever form it takes. I found this to be a very compelling book.

[Jaron Brandt · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We so often, I later came to realize, find the version of theology that our life needs "
- Serene

"We are all children of light and children of darkness. You and me and those men, we are children of the same God... No lecture tonight, girls. Sometimes actions teach theology better than any theologian's words could. Just remember, the grace of God falls upon us all in equal measure."
- Serene's dad, Joe

[Katie Deal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read a bit like a conversation with a campaigning politician at times, but it made me so excited to pick up some Niebuhr and Kierkegaard again. Some of the chapters hit close to home in understanding my own life, but there were others that felt scant for detail — it made me wonder how much was left on the editing floor. Overall, a solid re-introduction to Calvinism and its successors with a memoir interwoven.

[Laura Kisthardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I knew of this book, a classmate and I were speaking about the need for grace in our community. This book, part-memoir and part-theological reflection, was a great read! It gave me so much to think about. Jones doesn't shy away from telling challenging stories, some embarrassing, some sad, and many other emotions. Highly recommend!

[Melisa Buie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The brutal, raw honesty in this book made me squirm a lot. I have a difficult time writing a description - it is autobiographical but at times reads like very personal sermons and at other times, a rant. I cannot even imagine writing something similar about my own life. Her openness about her family and her own struggles make her so human and relatable.

[Vicky Haag · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book speaks of victimization with Calvinism as its backbone. I pray that Christian's can look past personal History to strive for God's TRUE work. We are to view our own lives, not dwell on others and their histories; that brings about judgement.

[Roger Kingston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it.

The author demonstrates Grace through her writing. She is incredibly open about her own life using it to discuss how she sees many Christian concept such as Grace, Sin, Forgiveness, and many other parts of her faith that help enlighten these concepts for her.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

It had moments. But I often found myself pushing myself to keep reading past the non-moments. Actually, it has some memorable and thoughts and I will copy some down and return to them, because they are instructive, and helpful. Very helpful.