Praytell

Monday, May 31, 2010

Falling Shadows, Rising Light

Minneapolis, Minnesota

These seem to be the days of many falls.

I write not of an epic fall from Eden, or the fall of a collapsed oil rig, or the fall of the economy and the Euro.  Little I could say would add or detract from what has already been said about each one.

I write of four falls, far more mundane.  Each one had its loss.  And, with each one, there came a blessing.

When my father fell, I’ve shared with you that immediately there were one, two, three, four people on the sidewalk with me, asking if they could help, offering to do whatever they could.  The manager came out of the store.  One broken leg was surrounded by twelve legs keeping balance until the situation was under control.  Nobody knew anybody.  But their presence was kind-hearted, concerned, and I think back on it with gratitude.

Then, a few weeks later, riding my bicycle (a 1957 Schwinn Traveler) I was crossing the bicycle bridge built over the highway in this city that loves bicycles.  My wallet worked its way out of my pocket.  I arrived home.  No wallet.  Whoops!  I immediately rode the two miles back to the store, looking for the lost wallet.  No dice.  “Call in your cards,” a police officer said.  “Quickly!”  I rode back home.  Called in the cards.  Applied for a new driver’s license.

The phone rang.  The police had my wallet.  I went to the precinct.  They couldn’t find it.  They called the evidence office downtown.  They didn’t have it.  Two nights later, at midnight, a knock on the door.  Two officers stand there with my wallet.  Somebody found it.  Somebody turned it in.  Nothing was taken from it.

Goodwill abounds.

Three days ago, riding my bicycle again, I arrive at the grocery store and begin to lock my bike.  This town, you know, it would be stolen in a minute.  I hear somebody calling.  A child, maybe six or seven at most, is running to me from the bus stop.  “Is this yours?” he asked.  My tail light had fallen.  “Yes,” I said.  “Thank you.”  Amazing.

This morning, riding my bicycle again, the rider in front of me crossed the street and tried to get on the bike trail.  There was, however, a curb.  A short curb, maybe a one-inch curb.  Instead of going up over it her tire went parallel to it, and she fell.  Loudly she fell.  Flat on her back she fell.  I ran over.  Four bikes stopped.  She didn’t have helmet (neither did I).  She seemed okay.  We helped her up.  One of the bikers had a wrench.  One was a retired EMT.  “Splash this over her,” he said.  I did, having had some experience splashing water over people at baptisms.  She got her balance back.  We all waited to make sure her bike worked and that she was okay.  I was touched again by the quick kindness, the community of helpers who didn’t know each other and did what they could.

Four falls.

And what do we do after Eden’s fall?

We help each other.

Such is life.

And thank God for it.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

It was in South Dakota, in February that I heard the three words that constitute the title of this “blog.”  (My but I dislike that word, “blog.”)

The snow drifts were inordinately high.  My host needed a front end loader to scoop snow out of his driveway, leaving a canyon six or seven feet high.  I was on a retreat.  Problems that I no longer remember had taken hold and I was chasing them like a dog chases its tail, to no avail.

“I want you to work the word,” he said.

“What word,” I asked.

“Romans 8,” he answered.  “Take all day and work it.”

I had done many an exegetical study in seminary, always hoping to get it right and to receive not just a passing grade, but a mark of distinction.  Hours, weeks, days in theological libraries were essential in trying to piece together just what the text had to say.

But this was different.  It wasn’t an academic exercise.  The goal was not a grade, but taking the word to heart.  To do that I had to work it from my heart.  Arguments had to sink into a broader perception.  Justice had to find mercy, self needed to connect with purpose, hope needed to at least make a subtle return.  And so I read and wrote, wrote and read, read what I’d written, and then began it again.

The retreat center was in the basement of a barn.  My bunk was made of wood that once was a manger.  Hmmm, I thought.  A good place for rebirth.

I share this because tomorrow morning, I’ve been asked to share a few words about Wisdom, and a few words from Romans about suffering producing endurance, and endurance producing character, and character producing hope leading us to recognize once again the love of God in our hearts.

That means today I must work the word.  I do not find this to be easy.  Restraining impulse never is.  I find myself awash in grief as the oil washes ashore, as bodies are carried out of a mosque in Pakistan, as even the Washington Post carries a column about who will “win” and who will “lose” politically from the oil spill.  If ever there was a time that called for a word of wisdom, this is it.  But just what is that word?

Is a poetic response a lost cause?  Or is it the cause?  All of Job’s straight-arrowed complaints were met with the compelling winds of poetry.  “Get a grip,” they said.  “Keep perspective.”  “Every argument you have is true, but there is something more, something deeper, something more beautiful.”

And so I sink into the word, wondering what will surface and trusting that somehow, something will give itself even if words do not.  In the midst of despair, it will be a word of life because it is a word of life.  There are no snow banks outside.  The trees no longer carry the yellow tones of spring.  They are deep green, their shadows cool.

Wisdom is calling.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

“Let a word to the wise be sufficient,” a high school teacher once said.

Elementary teachers use a different approach to accomplish the same attention-gathering task.

“Eyes,” they say, slowly.  “Ears,” they say next.

Once we have been put on guard and brought to attention, a learning moment can ensue.

I doubt seriously that teachers took their cue from Proverbs, but they might have for it is a word not to the wise, but from Wisdom herself.

“Am I not calling,” Wisdom says.  “Is not understanding raising her voice?” she asks.

In a snagged world, wisdom and understanding sure would help.  We have, you see, these dilemmas, these problems, these traps that somehow restrain our spirit and replace wisdom with a “quick answer.”  If only we could hear the voice of Wisdom who knows how wars might cease and oil spills never happen.

It would require a return to something elemental, something practical, and something born of experience instead of ideas, and something joyful.

I received a letter from an ecumenical outfit not long ago that began by rehearsing the plight of our time.  Churches are really up against it, denominations are withering, many churches are closing, and those remaining can’t float a pastor, much less pay for health insurance.  And the challenges of our time are almost intractable.  How do we sustain the public good without funds to pay for it?  How are we to proclaim peace in a time of war?

Each line was perfectly true.  And I suspect each was intended to create a sense of solidarity.  “At last,” a reader might have said.  “Somebody understands my pain.”

But it touched me in a different way.

“Where’s the joy?” I wondered.  “Where’s the fun?”  Issues have a way of drowning life with their weighty implications and never-ending set of demands. “Can’t we find a way to love the remnant church?”

Were I to be a church consultant, I’d

The Other Side of the Field

ask congregations two questions.  “Are you having fun?”  would be the first.  Wisdom says that she rejoices in the inhabited world, and delights in humankind.  If I put two and two together, I’d say if you’re not rejoicing, and having fun, wisdom may be lacking.

That leads to the second question.  “What have you learned?”  And then, if the answer is, “Our knotty problems are impossible to un-not.”  I’d ask, “What do you want to learn?”

Eyes.

Ears.

People.

We live in an age that does not rejoice much in this notion of “we.”  We assign blame to someone, or something.  We want someone or something to solve our problems.  Not wisdom.  Wisdom says that she raises her voice to ALL THAT LIVE.

Hers is a voice of hope.  Hers is a voice of encouragement.  Hers is a voice of creation.  Over and over she creates a teachable moment.

If we will be look and see, hear and understand, it is also a beautiful moment.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Church calendars reveal things that aren’t exactly obvious.

According to the church calendar, for example, we are now in summer. There is no need to wait for June 21.  It also reveals that this coming Sunday is “Trinity Sunday.”

A monotheist might ask, “What’s that?” and ask where the word “Trinity” is found in the Bible.  And then, hearing that it isn’t found anywhere as a word, he or she might say, “Hmmm.  How many Gods do you worship?”

And then a talk about mysticism would begin.  One God, three persons.  A mystery that takes places somewhere out there far beyond logic.

I’ve been asked to share some words this Sunday.  So I’m wondering what might be said about this “trinity,” and readings from what is called Wisdom literature.  Wisdom is born from experience.  It should be that life goes a certain way, that hope always eludes despair, that God looks with favor upon those who trust in his/her existence.  But experience tells us it’s not always true.  Bad things do happen to good people, and good things do happen to bad people.  Since the beginning of time, it’s been that way.  So, we have to learn.

In that thought I find gratitude for Trinity Sunday.

You see, I can get stuck.

Sometimes I want to say “everything is of God.”  But if everything is God, is anything God?  All-encompassing mysticism is comforting, but it lacks an edge.  Differentiating good from evil is important.  It’s also unavoidable.  Too much mysticism can damper creative engagement.

Sometimes I’m likely to get stuck in love of the Spirit.  I wonder what the clouds say, what the wind is trying to do, and where it is going.  I think of its creative action, of its capacity to wander, to meander like a stream, and to speak with us as it moves.  It can make each moment to precious I almost forget about the author of that moment, and God begins to fade.

Sometimes I get stuck on Jesus.  “God-talk is Jesus-talk,” a seminary professor once said, “and Jesus-talk is God-talk.”  Just what is this relationship with Jesus?  Is it a healing relationship?  Doesn’t it require the Spirit to move?  If any question can be answered by saying, “Jesus,” has any question been answered?

But that’s when this notion of the Trinity gets down to work.  When I’m entranced by the Spirit, the other two begin to push me and pull me.  When I’m too small for the creator of life to care about, the other two begin to push me and pull me.  If Jesus is all there is, and the stars have something to say, the Spirit and ________ begin to speak.

I know.

It’s all one.

Eventually, there is always something to learn.  This too is part of the good news.

Take care,

Larry

Monday, May 24, 2010

Madison, Wisconsin

The road leading north out of Madison used to be empty, save for the fields.

Empty doesn’t stay that way for long.

The beltway  brought traffic, the traffic brought stores, the stores brought box stores.  First thing you know Menard’s has replaced soil with concrete, Taco Bell wants and gets a spot, Target likes the location, and so on.  But I do not write to add a predictable and romantic complaint.

One day, three or four years ago, on a visit home, I noticed a gigantic church where once there had been fields.  It had its own three-tired parking lot.  I noticed a policeman directing traffic along Mineral Point Road when the mega-church let out.  Its name was Black Hawk church, and it is huge.

As liberals are wont to do, I sneered just a bit.  Who would appropriate Black Hawk’s name and glue it to a church after what he and his people so grievously suffered during the Black Hawk wars?  And besides, I’m a small church guy.  I not only like, I love the densely beautiful depth of connections that make up the life of a small town or a small church.  I prefer to not shop at Walmart.

But yesterday, on the way to my parent’s former farm I was driving by Black Hawk and I decided to stop in.  We’re trying to build our church in Minneapolis, and so I’m curious about seating arrangements.  Should we use pews?  Should we use chairs?  What kind of chairs?  What did they do?

And so I went in.

The first floor felt like a stadium.   It had a gym, an “Underground” something or other.  It was for kids.  For youth.  The entire floor.  There was an information desk.  I walked up and said to the young woman that I’d never been in the church, and I just wanted to see what they do.  She welcomed me, and then said that for security reasons, adults have to stay upstairs.

So I went upstairs.

I opened a door to a sanctuary.  Were there two or three?  I don’t know.  Felt like a lot.  There must have been 300 people there on a Sunday evening.

I walked in and took a seat in the back row, just to see what was going on.  The preacher wore no robe.  There was no pulpit.  He was speaking about forgiveness.

Forgiveness takes work, he said.  Forgiveness requires hard work, he said.  We’d like to say “out of sight, out of mind,” but that’s not how forgiveness works, he said.  Jesus taught that when we have a dispute, we are not to turn away from it, we are to meet it head on.  We are to move towards it.  We are to name it.  If it can’t be resolved, then move on.

It was a good sermon.  There was not a person in the room, including him, who does not struggle with the authentic meaning of forgiveness.

And then.

“Let’s hear what a member has to say about her journey towards forgiveness,” he said.  The room darkened.  A film began.  A member spoke movingly about forgiving her father after years, and years of conflict born of distance.

I immediately thought.  What a wonderful idea.  Preach about forgiveness and then let someone from the congregation tell their story.  Preach about acceptance, and let someone share their story.  Preach about hope and then let someone share how they lost it, and then found it anew.

The service drew to a close.  My car was in a long line of cars making our way to Mineral Point where the police officer directed traffic.

I still think Black Hawk might be turning in his grave.  But I was wrong in my judgements.  No surprise there.

Wonder what I’ll learn today.

And you?

Friday, May 21, 2010

Emphasis in the Pyrenees

Minneapolis, Minnesota

There are times I find myself just a few steps away from a mixture of fury and sadness.  It happens whenever I begin to write about the marriage of medical care and money.  I do not understand a system that saves your life and then breaks your back.

It eludes all that I hold dear.  It cannot be wished away.  It cannot even be prayed away.  Moving mountains is nothing compared to untying the Gordian knot of money and medicine.

And, of course, my perception has a blind spot.  The very “system” I decry is the system that has saved my life not once, but many times.  Had I been born before the era of insulin, my life would have ended at my seventh birthday.  Every morning, as I hold two bottles of insulin, I am thankful for Eli Lilly, for Drs. Banting and Best who discovered it, and the truck drivers who haul it from Indianapolis (or wherever) to my drugstore.

And I’m thankful for the stent in my heart that allows blood to flow as it was intended to flow.  Without it all would have ended on my 40th year, and then again in my 50th year.

And so, it behooves me to share a kind word.

But in each case, the “fix” could not be a cure.  Diabetes and cardiac disease continue each day and every day, with an assortment of hills, valleys and complications.  Which is to say . . . the “fix” has very little to do with healing.  Healing is quite another thing.  Healing happens “out there.”  Healing happens as we learn to incorporate what we learned from a life-changing and life-threatening diagnosis.  Healing has almost nothing to do with emergency rooms, and frightfully expensive medical care.  Healing happens sometimes almost accidentally, sometimes intentionally, and always over a long period of time.  At the end of our time it is always spiritual, always personal, and always unique.

And so I ask for a change not in content but in emphasis.  Our medical systems need all the help they can get from the communities that receive us after our diagnosis–our churches, our families, our places of work, our friends.  A change in emphasis would be the simple, but profound awareness, of their healing presence.

I recall a parishioner who had a heart by-pass.  I visited him in the hospital.  A few weeks later I asked him if he’d been walking.  “Yes,” he said.  “Every morning at 6:00.”  “I’m coming out,” I said.  And so we met the next morning, and walked a mile or so as the dawn filled the sky and mountains with light.  I don’t remember what we talked about.  But it was the stuff of healing, for both of us.

I didn’t send him a bill or a medical code that would allow insurance companies to pay for the trip to his place or the theraputic blessings of the morning walk.  Where we heal, you see, healings are free, pleasurable, and a joy.  They make up the very core of meaningful relationship.

If only the “fix” could be blessed by an awareness of just where it is we heal.

Emphasis.  I’ve been working on some paintings.  I’m still not sure what colors to use.  But then I realize, perfection is not the key.  Emphasis is.  What’s true for a painting is true for the art of healing.  And ministry.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Something Wisconsin Said

Minneapolis, Minnesota

One day things seem to be fine.

Or, better said, one day some things seem to be fine.

The search for a job has gone on too long, the offerings too few, the jobs available offer neither hope nor security.  Each interview is a “big deal,” full of promise and the realization that echoes in one’s soul, “I could do that.  And that.  Give me  a chance.”

I write not about myself, here, though I know the rhythm well.  I write of an acquaintance who shows up each week to ask of the weekly text, “What does it mean?”  Before the discussion he had something to share.

“I had a heart attack,” he said. “Just like that, I had a heart attack.”

“What did they do?”

“They put in a stent.”

He could just as well have said, “They saved my life.”

And here he was, a few days later, reading a text and figuring  out what it has to do with an oil spill, mean-spirited politics, his life, our lives, life in general.  With gratitude the opening prayer gave thanks for his life and the chance to save it.

Not long ago, in Minnesota, he had some health coverage.  But then the governor read the books with the precision of an accountant, and decided the budget had to be balanced no matter what.  Anybody single, and without children, would be ineligible for continuing coverage.  They were on their own.  That was the end of that.

I do not know the cost of a stent.  But it is a pretty sum, of that I am sure.  He was in the emergency room.  Then they must have pushed a tube up his arteries to see just where the blockage was, and then another one to insert the stent.  And then there is pay for the hospital stay in and of itself.  (The cost of jello in a hospital puts the cost of rare wine to shame).  Let’s say we’re up to $25,000 at this point.  I’d be glad to say that’s too much, but my guess is I’m not far off.

“I don’t have any coverage,” he said.  “I did, but . . . ”

“It’s not your fault,” I said to him.  “It is so important that you believe that.  Nobody can pay a hospital bill without insurance these days.  It’s not your fault you don’t have coverage, it’s not your fault you have a bill you cannot pay on your own.”

There is shame in not paying bills.

A woman beside me who works on health-care advocacy, says it utter clarity, “It’s a sin,” she said realizing how he had been thrown out into the cold through no fault of his own.

A life saved turns into a debt rather than a gift of life.

Who knows how it will settle out.  Not me.  Perhaps the hospital will cover the cost.  There are always “problem patients.”

For now, I rejoice in a life saved.  And once again I find myself vehemently opposed to the lethal embrace of money and medicine.

This story shared here happened in Minneapolis.  And, today, it happened somewhere in Dallas, Newark, Biloxi, Seattle, Great Falls, Cheyenne, August, Honolulu, and Cedar Rapids.  It is a common text waiting for us to ask the same question we bring to the text each week, “What does it mean?”

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Sea Change

Minneapolis, Minnesota

It was an experiment tried only once.  I’m quite sure it has never been replicated.  When I tell you what it was, you may well say, “Thank heavens!”

I was learning to teach.

“What did you teach?” people often ask me.

“Kids,” I reply.

“No, what did you teach?”  I stifle a smile, and give the same answer.

As a pastor I was privileged to share in the lives of human beings, to walk with them as best I could through the oceans of change that affected us all.  As a teacher, I did the same thing.  Teaching was all about conveying the idea that the lives of young people and their parents actually mattered.  We could not push them through a system without caring for them.  Subjects were secondary.  Lives came first.

In school we couldn’t help but notice something that you’ve noticed as well.  By and large, math students don’t care much for English, and English students don’t care much for math.

English students became English teachers, and math students became math teachers.  Like it or not, we catered to students who understood our way of thinking.  English teachers  just couldn’t understand why a portion of our class never “got” Shakespeare any more than math teachers could figure out why equations weren’t perfectly obvious to anyone with a logical mind.

“A negative times a negative results in a positive,” a math teacher would say.  “It does?” an English student would respond.  “Since when do two wrongs make a right?”

The impasse called for a change.  If the school was to emphasize learning, and care about it, we would have to throw subject matter to the winds.

“For the next month or two, all English teachers will teach math,” came the edict from the Headmaster’s office.  “And all math teachers will teach English.”

“We will?”

“Yes.  You will.  We must learn how to learn if we are learn how to teach.”

The next morning I was in a classroom as the sun was beginning its rise, wondering how on earth I was going to teach the laws of geometry.  I drew triangles on the board.  I tried to prove something.  I did a pretty good job, or so I thought.  But then a math-liking student showed where I’d erred.  We laughed, and, chastised, I made the correction.  This learning stuff is harder than I thought it was.

It was a thrilling few months as we learned about learning.

But you may be wondering what it has to do with a change in emphasis or emphatic change?

To try this experiment we had to find a way to emphasize the study of learning.  It was that change of emphasis that led to emphatic change.  Had we tried with change, without the emphasis, it would have been a hopeless endeavor.

As it is in teaching, so it is in many areas.  When we emphasize our learning, our sharing, our living, change occurs.  All kinds of changes occur.  Good things happen when you emphasize life.  Some of them are dramatic.  Some are fun.  And some we will still remember with a smile many years later as we continue to figure out just what Pythagoras actually meant when he said the word, “geometry.”

Monday, May 17, 2010

Life Study

Minneapolis, Minnesota

It is said that those of us with strokes get stuck with ideas.  Or, better said, get stuck with an idea.

Once I put it this way:  Words don’t give themselves.  When fluency becomes deliberate, language itself changes.  Fending off confusion and trying to convey and receive meaning necessitates  holding onto and even defending coherence when framed not in the plural but in the beauty of a single workable idea.

It is into such a world that two thoughts, two memories, two hopes, live in my heart.

The first came as a scientific benediction shared with geology students at the University of Wisconsin.  For a year they had studied glaciers, the driftless areas, fossils that had stories to tell about oceans that covered the earth 400 million years ago, limestones and dolomites, layers of flat rock that bent like a paperclip, plate tectonics, the taste of rocks, the origins of Baraboo quartzite, and so on.  In each lecture they learned the earth is anything but static.  It is always changing.  Those stone and concrete walls can’t help but lean after a century or two.

The lights in the room at this last lecture dimmed.  A screen appeared.  On the screen was the unforgettable NASA image of the earth taken from the moon.

“It’s alive!”  my father said.  “It’s alive!”

Mountains move, seas dry up, rocks change, it is all alive.

One day, a student accidentally met my father and me on the elevator at their apartment.

“I know you,” she said with a smile.  “I will never forget that lecture.  I will never forget your saying, ‘It’s alive!’  It changed my life.”

She was not a geologist.  But no matter.  A single thought touched her life, just as the single thought of life itself touched the planet earth.

“It’s alive.”

There is a creek on the south shore of Lake Superior.  When I was a child, the first thing we did when arriving at the cottage was to run down to the shore and see what changes the creek had wrought.  Sometimes a storm had pushed sand unto its mouth, blocking the waters until they were high enough to cut a new channel.  Sometimes a new channel ran all the way down the shore itself.  There was a time, almost a century ago, when there were some attempts to “save” the beach by putting in some logs to block the creek from going where it wanted to go.

It never worked.  The creek, the lake, the winds, each had a mind of its own and did exactly what it wanted to do.

It is alive.  This creek, this lake, this planet.

And so, although navigation skills may not be what they once were, I cling to beauty in all things, and add my song to a two-word benediction.

It’s alive.

And so are we.

Thanks be to God.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

The Land's Open Secret

Minneapolis, Minnesota

We are working against HIPPA here.  With that as a lead-in sentence, know that I will scrupulously change the names and conditions of each of the people I now write about.  No matter how clever you are you will never figure out who they are.

We live, you see, in a building with much uncertainty.  One day we’re here, the next day we’re not.  One of my neighbors, 28 floors away from us, on the SSEW side of the building lived on the streets for three years, and is now adjusting to an apartment for the first time in many years.  Will she/he beall-r ight?  If not, what might we do?

I walked up to the 89th floor at 8:00 a few (centuries) ago and found (Xerxes) reading his/her Bible, as she/he does every morning.  Xerxia is a good person.  This being lived three years in the homeless shelter our church serves at in Abiline, Texas once a (millenium), before coming here.  He/She is known as a deeply caring human being.

We start talking about Ghengis, who was in the hospital for five days.  We didn’t know he was there.  Nobody could tell us.  HIPPA forbids it.  We couldn’t visit Ghengis, we couldn’t even offer a prayer on (her) behalf regarding a procedure/surgery/intervention that was necessary to perhaps save (his/her) life.  Same thing happened when Moses was in the hospital.  Where’d he go?  Don’t know.  HIPPA couldn’t wouldn’t shouldn’t tell.  And besides, Sallie May Annie Belle is also in a MEDICAL INSTITUTION pending treatment for a condition that rhyms with prancer or bloke or shot, we’re not sure.

And so, Xerxes and I wonder how to get around HIPPA.  We’re neighbors, you see.  Now where I come from, and where he comes from, the word “neighbor” is a verb more than it is a noun.  It means that when you “see something” you “both say something” and “do something.”  As a pastor, I know, or I learned, the importance of keeping confidence.  And there is room, and space, and a need for private space.  But there is that within a community, and within a church, that resists secrecy.

If we are to care for each other, we need to know something about each other.  Never too much, one hopes, but certainly enough to go on.  When the chance for communication is taken away, or even made illegal, we cannot be a community.

Congregations, it has been said, are open secrets.  On Sundays, either at church or in the coffee hour, we learn that Jane had surgery, that Paul’s in a fight with his family that Fred lost his job.  “Let’s offer our prayers” is a standard refrain of congregational life.

And so, in the sub-basement of our building, down where nobody will overhear our conversation, Xerxes and I are trying to find ways to poke holes in HIPPA.  We’d like to care.  We’d like to do so with the precision of the medical community itself:  sometimes the operation works, sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes we might really help someone, sometimes we might not.

Either way, communities heal.  And, for us, HIPPA is a problem to be overcome.

With that I end my words signing in absentia, but utter clarity,

My name, which is, Fred Smith/Johnson/Andersen/Anderson the IV, Jr.