Our Brexit Turmoil: how will we look back on the Church's reponse?

I blogged yesterday about the Church of England's initiative to get the nation talking about Brexit next weekend. A cup of tea and a candid conversation could help heal division - that was the thrust of it. (Next Friday was due to be Brexit Day of course. It now looks as though it won't be - but we'll have to wait for Brussels' reply to Mrs May's letter asking for a short deferment to be sure.)

It was inevitable that the C of E's gentle encouragement to get us talking would be parodied. In my blog I gave it two cheers on the grounds that anything was better than nothing in the circumstances, and a lot of littles could add up to something big. This is precisely why truth and reconciliation processes have been remarkably successful: my daughter, an Africanist, has facilitated Indaba sessions ("conferences") and testifies to the life-changing effects of purposeful conversation. There is a lot to be said for discussing divisive issues such as Brexit in safe places of trust and candour.

But it needs preparation and proper facilitation to be of real value. To launch an idea like this at ten days' notice does seem not only hasty and misguided, but tepid, as if the project doesn't take itself altogether seriously. One person tweeted a response to my blog: You’re a good man and this is a gracious response, which I admire. But I’m afraid I can’t but think this CofE initiative is beyond parody. The gospel reduced to tea, platitudes and Patience Strong. Sorry. Another said: Very generous of you to offer two cheers for this idea; not sure I could raise even that. It seems very parochial and half-hearted. Still, given that if Brexit does go ahead we'll be setting the clock back to the 1950s, perhaps it's culturally appropriate.

Which brings me to the heart of what I want to say. It's St Cuthbert's Day. It's also the spring equinox. If ever a day should put a new spring (pun intended) in our step, it's today. So maybe I'm allowed to nurture a wish (or if you prefer, a prayer, a longing, a hope, a dream). It's this: that on a day when it's finally clear that Brexit has become a national, not to say European, emergency, the UK churches should put muscle into contributing positively to the debate about what kind of outcome we look for in this tortuous process, and what kind of a people we aspire to be.

It's understandable that our churches have not wanted to take sides in the Brexit debate. Like Parliament, the churches are as divided as the nation is. The other established church in these islands, the Church of Scotland, has been a conspicuous exception in long championing EU membership, as I've pointed out. It’s always made it clear however that its members personally hold a variety of views and no one is asked to endorse its public position. But I don't think I'm alone in having become dissatisfied with the studied impartiality which my own Church of England has observed at an official level. There comes a time when it is Laodicean not to make a choice - even if we must also underline strongly that Anglicans don’t all see things the same way. Diversity of view on this as on many other issues is affirmed in a broad church like ours.

So what ought we to be doing as Christian communities? To my mind, our churches should be drawing on our rich theological and spiritual resources of prophecy and wisdom to put the Brexit controversy into a larger context than nationhood alone. We should offer interpretation that begins not with the "Britain first" mentality but by asking, What might be good for our continent? What might support its poorest and most vulnerable people, including our own? What might make for reconciliation and peacemaking in our world and for the conservation and care of our environment? What might Britain with its wealth of experience bring to the family of nations? And even, What might God's perspective be on all these questions?

What will the starting point be? It's clear enough in the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. When it comes to human life, the Bible summons us to love our neighbours as ourselves. There's no ambiguity about this. So it can only mean that the flourishing of other people should be as prominent in our concerns as our own, and by extension, the welfare of communities, not just individuals. Here's the insight that should challenge these years of self-interested rhetoric about promoting our own wealth by "taking back control".

I've always believed that "better together" expresses an ideal of society at its most wholesome. Collaboration, partnership, common purpose achieved not by coercion but by consent - no nation could survive without them, no church, no community of any kind. That's why our consent to align ourselves with the European Union and play a leading part in its life has served all our nations well in our lifetimes. But now we face the threat of fragmentation wherever we look, not least due to extremist politics that are openly contemptuous of the civilised values most of our post-war generation have grown up with in Europe.

If our churches are not one hundred percent clear about the importance of loving our neighbour, who else is going to be? I'm saying that we now need urgently to speak up for these values before it is too late. That's a matter that goes well beyond Brexit. But Brexit is itself a symptom of disintegration, the loss of belief in values that once held us together, the falling apart of an association of peoples who were all the stronger because they pooled their sovereignty and pledged to work together for the common good. I find this intellectual and spiritual collapse, which is what I largely think it is, extraordinarily sad.

These things were important to those who launched the European project in the aftermath of war. They were not all people of explicit faith, but they were deeply influenced by Catholic social teaching about how human beings flourish when they invest in healthy relationships, strong communities and a just, inclusive and equitable society. It took courage to think in that way and perseverance to put its ideals in practice. It was immensely far-sighted. I think it could be argued that it came to fruition - however slowly and fitfully - because of an understanding of humanity based not on economic or political expediency (though that comes into it) but on humane theological values of justice, peace, truth and charity, which in turn derive from the wisdom and goodness of the Creator.

Who is speaking nowadays about this founding vision? Some faith leaders aren't afraid to do this as individual men and women. They deserve our gratitude and encouragement because it is often controversial and sometimes costly. But what about our churches as public institutions? Where's the voice of urgency, the spirited engagement in what will affect the future of us all? That's where I'm left feeling despondent. Evenhandedness can be a good thing, not least when you can see different sides of a complex question. But now is a time when choices must be made. That’s when voices need to be heard that are prophetic, hopeful and wise. So much hangs on decisions made in the coming days and weeks that will irrevocably affect our lives and those of our children and grandchildren for decades to come.

Yesterday I quoted Archbishop Justin Welby. Launching the Church of England's initiative this week, he said: "A century from now the Church will be remembered for how it responded at this crucial moment in the life of our nation and country". He is right of course. We stand at a moment in history that most generations don't get to experience. At such times, destinies are forged. This brings both the privilege and responsibility of the nation’s institutions to speak publicly in ways that capture the significance of our times and interpret them with wisdom and prophetic insight.

I don't think we have fully understood that yet in the Church of England. But I reckon that if George Bell and William Temple were alive today, they would urge the church to take a robustly positive view of our membership of the EU and not regard it as a matter of indifference. They would speak out against nationalism in all its forms. They would see off the specious doctrine of British exceptionalism. They would surely say, for the sake of justice and the welfare of Europe as well as the UK, let’s give ourselves unreservedly to the life of the continent we’re part of. They would say these things with charity. But they would not hold back when it came to conviction. It would matter to them what side of history the Church of England decided to be on.

So here's my wish and my prayer on this first day of spring. Wouldn't it be marvellous if our churches  embraced the idea of a forward-looking nation, one that grasped hold of a future in which we pledged commitment to our neighbouring peoples and nations and affirmed the friendships and  alliances that have served us so well in Europe? Cuthbert saw the world as a place where everything - including human life - was connected, held together in the love of God. I passionately believe that the European Project is consistent with that life-affirming vision. Why wouldn’t the Church want to say amen?

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words: Thoughts on an Armistice Photo

For me, this will be the abiding image of this weekend's Armistice centenary commemorations.

Amid so much that has been moving in the ceremonies in France and Belgium, and here in the UK, I keep coming back to this photograph. It was taken at Compiègne in northern France where the Armistice was signed in a railway carriage in 1918. It has added poignancy because it was on this very spot that Adolph Hitler received the surrender of France in 1940, a highly symbolic location chosen out of revenge for the Treaty of Versailles.

That clasp of hands, the touching embrace that followed: it came across as completely authentic, entirely unstaged. It touched me deeply, and I wasn't alone. Here's what a non-European posted on Twitter. I'm from the Middle East. This picture moves me nearly to tears - curiously, more than I find it moves young Europeans. Do young Europeans even realize what has been achieved? It's nothing less than sacred, because peace is sacred, because human life is sacred.

I ended my last blog by writing that "there is nothing left to say. Except to be thankful". That's still true today. A picture's worth a thousand words. Yet there is more to say, and I want to write it while the events of this extraordinary weekend are still vivid in the memory. Here are three comments I'd like to make.

First, and most important, could we have asked for a more powerful image of reconciliation and friendship than this? France and Germany had fought each other no fewer than three times in the century leading up to the end of the last war. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the Great War of 1914-18 had cost both nations dear. France, especially, had suffered unimaginably. Among elderly French people, bitter memories even of the earlier conflict were still alive in the 1960s when I started visiting France. To them, the second world war with its terrible destructiveness was an inevitable aftermath of those earlier wars, a continuation of a story of European conflict that would never come to an end.

Up to the time I was born, exactly half-way through the twentieth century, it was inconceivable that these two great European powers could ever be friends. Do young Europeans even realise what has been achieved? asked my middle-eastern Tweeter. Maybe even older Europeans like me haven't quite taken it in. To anyone with a feeling for modern history, it does seem like a miracle. Not that these two leaders should stand together at such an emblematic site, but that their meeting should be so genuine, their gestures so spontaneous, so deeply felt by them both. These are the kinds of events that define history, and that promise great hope for the future. Isn't this what those who fell in war went to their deaths for?

Secondly, as I tried to argue in my last blog, we need to understand what's made this difference. I don't think that reconciliation just happens, or that time is automatically a great healer. Many - maybe most? - of the conflicts of our time are caused precisely because of old wounds that are opened up afresh, unhealed memories that are allowed to fester. What's different on continental Europe is the intention not to allow historical injuries to blight the lives of succeeding generations. "Parents have eaten sour grapes" as the prophet Ezekiel says (18.2), but that's no reason for their children's teeth for ever to be set on edge.

You know what I'm going to say. It's the European project that has created an environment where relationships can be negotiated afresh. The European Union, as we now have it, has brought peoples together in a purposeful way. It has helped fashion a different kind of narrative and discourse where nation-states stop fracturing the continent and instead start living together in peaceful, collaborative relationships in a common European home. We mustn't forget how hard-won that achievement is. Monsieur Macron said today in Paris that "patriotism and nationalism are opposites", that "nationalism is treason" because it is driven by a nation's self-interest, not the welfare of others. This is what causes wars. How much better to affiliate to families of peoples that will protect us from the nationalisms that tear our world apart. It's not that we shouldn't love our country - only that we shouldn't think of it as somehow better than any other country. I don't hesitate to say that renouncing nationalism is one of the most urgent tasks facing our world today. If we don't succeed, I fear it may end up destroying us.

Remembrance means many things - gratitude, sadness and pride among them. But lament for the past needs to be part of it too, and this means a mental and spiritual toughness that is capable of thinking forward to a future that is different from our broken history. So to me, this Armistice centenary and Brexit are closely linked. The peace of 1918 and the peace of 1945 both point to the crying need for nations to reimagine their "belonging", to think beyond national self-interest to the common flourishing of humanity. During the referendum campaign, we heard endlessly about "what's best for Britain", and not nearly enough about what the UK has to contribute to Europe and the wider world. Europeanism is not the end of a process but a beginning, for if we are incapable of thinking globally, then it's likely that the globe itself doesn't have a future worth working for. Clearly, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron understood the profound political significance of the day. How we remember shapes us in the present and (for good or ill) sets directions for the future. The logic that connects the Armistice with the European project is inescapable. It says: choose a different way, a more excellent way. Cultivate love, reconciliation and all that makes for peace. It's all there in that photograph.

Thirdly, and as a bit of an afterthought, it seems to me that there someone is palpably absent from the photo. It's our Prime Minister. Now, there may be all sorts of good reasons why she couldn't be there just then. Maybe she needed to set off for London to be back in time for the evening's Festival of Remembrance. We would all understand that and support it. Maybe the Macron-Merkel photo was set up as "Europhiles only" and she would have been de trop. Perhaps she was asked and politely declined. Nevertheless, her absence is striking.  At Compiègne on 11 November 1918, there were not two signatory nations but three: France, Germany and Great Britain. In the light of that, how could the British not have been included in this powerful image of postwar reconciliation?

I don't know the answer. But what I read in the photo is a European future from which Britain is absent. And that distresses me beyond measure. Just think what a three-way embrace would have symbolised, how powerful its message would have been! But Brexit means Brexit. So while it's a wonderful photograph to treasure out of this weekend of commemorations, it's also a forlorn one, at least as far as Europeans in Britain are concerned. We could have been part of this true European entente cordiale, this tender reaching out of hands to those who have become firm friends and allies.

But while they are better together, we have turned away. We are on our own. And that is unbearably sad. 

Am I Being Unpatriotic?

Dear Michael, I begin to feel that your negativity is bordering on the unpatriotic! Don't you think that our leaders deserve our support?

That was an intriguing tweet to receive yesterday, not as a personal message but publicly. She (it was from someone I know) was responding to a tweet I'd posted that contained a link to an article in The Guardian. It was lamenting our political leaders' lack of imagination and sense of history in their handling of the Brexit negotiations, specifically the matter of the Irish border.

In the two years I've been blogging about the EU, I've been accused of many things: being intemperate, ignorant, theologically inept (yes!), and over-confident about being a Remainer. But this is the first time my patriotism has been called into question (though it's a common jibe from people who should know better that Europhiles collectively are not acting patriotically).

So let's go there. First, we need to disentangle patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism means a love of and loyalty to your homeland. In Roman thought, you owe your homeland that much simply because it bore you and nurtured you. It's an act of piety (pietas) to acknowledge your debt to the people and institutions that have formed you. This is not at all the same as saying that your homeland is better than anyone else's. It's simply yours. It's part of your identity as a human being. That's why it's precious to you. At its best, patriotism is a virtue that is liberal, humane, peaceable and beneficent.

Nationalism is different. "Hard" nationalisms survive and flourish because of an innate conviction that somehow, your nation is superior to others. This can be on the grounds of almost anything you care to name, your proud history for example, or your race, religion, intellectual enlightenment, military prowess or wealth. "Soft" nationalisms are more subtle, and not always conscious. But they are expressed by aims and behaviours such as pursuing political or economic purposes that benefit your own nation in preference to, or at the expense of, others. This tends to foster national autonomy and self-determination, where the good of a nation state is no longer understood in the setting of the wider human family. It's hard not to think that agressive flag-waving, hostility to immigrants and rigorous border controls encourage a kind of national egoism that owes more to a romantic notion of "blood and soil" than to a rational idea of what it means to be good citizens.ii

I've often written about my late mother's side of our family. She was a German Jewess who escaped from the Third Reich before the war and was welcomed as a refugee in the UK. She settled here permanently, married my (gentile) father and wanted nothing else than to live out her days in domestic tranquility. She absorbed British ways, learned to speak English free of any German accent, brought her children up to love this country as the civilised, generous nation she had found it to be when she needed rescuing. She became, I think it's fair to say, a patriotic British citizen (she would never have said "English") and encouraged us to be the same. But her keenly attuned antennae abhorred the slightest whiff of self-regarding nationalism. She was a citizen of the world and of her continent, and for this reason was appalled that her adopted country opted to leave the EU just before she died.

For me, this is the nub of Brexit. What was the patriotic thing to do when we voted in last year's Referendum? Part of the answer is surely, to think about what would be in our country's best interests, what would enable it to flourish in the future. I'm sure that most people voted in that way, whether they were Brexiters or Remainers.

But patriotism (precisely because it is not nationalism) doesn't restrict that question only to "what's best for Britain" (to quote the tiresome rhetoric of David Cameron when he tried to renegotiate the UK's relationship with the EU). It asks how the welfare of our nation sits alongside the welfare of all the nations and of the world as a whole. It plays with the conjecture that what's best for Britain in the long run will also turn out to be best not only for Europe but for the worldwide human family. What if we even entertained the thought that we should start at the other end of the question, so to speak, and begin by asking what's best for others, especially those a lot less privileged than we are? I want to say that that option, too, is a patriotic one because it sees flourishing as mutual. We only prosper in any profound sense when everyone else does as well. It's what it means to love your neighbour as yourself. That Golden Rule should have been right at the heart of the Referendum debate. It grieved me that it wasn't.

So I see patriotism as inextricably linked to our belonging, our citizenship, not only in a national sense but in a global one. Patriotism is certainly not less than loving your country (and why not also your region, your locality, the city, town or village where you live?). If wherever we call "home" is important to us, then we should love it and everyone else whose home it also is. But belonging has concentric circles. I love my European homeland and am proud to carry a passport that announces me to be an EU citizen as well as a British one. I love the planet I have been born on, so broken and divided and carrying infinite burdens of pain, yet for all that still full of beauty and goodness, so rich in the diversity of its peoples with whom it's a joyful mystery of life that we share this globe together. Theresa May was quite wrong to say that if you are a citizen of everywhere, "a citizen of the world", you are a citizen of nowhere. Patriotism means we can be glad and grateful to be citizens of many different "somewheres", all of which we can be loyal to and love, whether it's the world we live in, the nation of our origins, or the particular place that we call "home".

This is why I believe that my vote to remain in the EU was profoundly patriotic. A patriotism for today means that we must continue to strive for a peaceable commonwealth of nations and peoples that transcends national boundaries, in which our own flourishing is part of everyone else's. So was it "bordering on the unpatriotic" to question the leadership of those who are trying to negotiate a Brexit settlement with the EU? I don't think so. A grown-up democracy doesn't blindly follow its leaders, least of all when it fears it may be heading for disaster. Yes, there is a loyalty to democratic choices that is required of all citizens, whether it is the outcome of a referendum or the government we have elected.

But it can never be an uncritical loyalty. To go on questioning, exploring, doubting, challenging, being open to change in the light of new evidence or arguments - these are both the privileges and duties of all of us in a democratic society. When it comes to Brexit, the national conversation was not suddenly closed off on 23 June 2016. On the contrary, each new step forward requires that conversation to be shifted and reconfigured in the light of altered circumstances or newly understood realities. It's patriotic to want the best out of each iteration. And it would be patriotic as well as democratic if, in the light of circumstances, we decided as a nation to change our minds about Brexit. (The "will of the people" refrain trotted out by some of our elected members including many who voted Remain doesn't advance intelligent discourse in any way that I can see.)

So you can call me a member of Her Majesty's loyal "Brexit Opposition" if you like. A twenty-first century recusant even, as Tony Dickinson suggested in response to the first version of this blog. For I believe that it's not only allowable but positively necessary to monitor how such a major decision is being worked out in practice, interrogate it closely, scrutinise the performance of those who are steering it so that we can hold them to account. If I say that I just don't believe that the case has been made for Brexit, and that this year has felt like a catalogue of mistakes, unintended consequences and muddled aims, is that unpatriotic? Not if it's said out of a genuine care for the welfare of my nation. On the contrary, maybe it's those who won't engage any further in the Brexit conversation who don't care enough about what happens to our nation.

I don't accuse the good person (whose tweet started this whole thing off) of not caring. Far from it. But I did think I needed to explain myself and defend what I want to describe as a liberal global patriotism. In these times, we have to learn to construe patriotism in the largest, most international way we can. Our world is simply too small for any of us to imagine that supposedly sacrosanct national borders can still define the limits of our concern. We urgently need to cultivate a good patriotism if all life on the planet is going to be respected and conserved. Nations and peoples need to act together to solve the world’s problems. In partnerships, we can achieve vastly more than we ever can on our own.

As I see it, Brexit is propelling the nation in completely the wrong direction, towards isolationism and disintegration. That’s dangerous. It’s not unpatriotic to say so.

Europa - an Archetypal Victim to Inspire the EU

This week a pro-Brexit group was reported as posting a video suggesting that the EU is guilty of "raping" its citizens. It shows a woman fleeing from a man with the caption "Rapin". The EU flag is prominent. This was roundly accused of being offensive by Remain supporters on the grounds that it made light of sexual violence.

I tweeted on Christians for Europe: "@Vote_Leave may not know their classical myths but they are good at making up their own." This prompted a furious riposte: "What about @StrongerIn's lies, deceit, distortion, hypocrisy and insidious rhetoric of #ProjectFear?" We shall miss all this sound and fury after 23 June. Or then again, maybe we won't.

What was I on about, alleging that Brexiters don't know their classical literature? It goes back to the ancient Greek myth of Europa. Have you ever wondered how Europe got its name? The story takes various forms as most myths do. The commonest version depicted in classical and renaissance art tells how Zeus noticed the beautiful Phoenician maiden Europa in the fields with her father's herds. The god changed himself into a white bull and concealed himself among the cattle. Europa was gathering flowers when she noticed the handsome bull and started caressing it. So gentle was he that she clambered up on to his back. Zeus seized the moment and darted off with her into the sea. With her on his back, he swam to Crete where she became a queen.

My point on Twitter was simple: that in mythology, far from being the (female) perpetrator of rape, Europa was herself a victim of precisely the crime Brexit was accusing her of! In the classical tradition, she is more sinned against than sinning. It's only a myth, of course. But that "only" shouldn't mislead us into thinking too lightly about its potency. Story has a power that lies deeper than facile notions of whether or not "it really happened".

So why should Europe have a founding myth that speaks about victimhood? And why should the European Union adopt the image of Europa as one of the badges of its identity on coins, stamps and banknotes? (So its iconography is a lot more than a big football league.)

I don't know that there's an easy historical answer to the question, how did "Europa" grow from its local Greek origins to becoming, by Charlemagne's time, a significant slice of a continent. But we can play with the symbolic significance of the name as we think about the EU and Britain's place in it.

I rather like the idea that the story of a victim and her ordeal should lie at the heart of our identity as a continent. The story itself is brutal and ugly. Rape always is, always, without exception. There is no defence or special pleading that can make it otherwise. The Brexit video was a shocking lapse in taste in a campaign that has not been distinguished for its sweet reasonableness and depth of serious argument. But in Christian thought, God takes the side of the victim. Those who suffer because of the abuse of power are under his special protection. This is precisely what God himself has experienced in the passion and death of his Son Jesus.

So if we take this central aspect of Europe's founding myth seriously, we ought to find ourselves looking out for all the poor Europas of our own day: the victims of all forms of tyranny, enslavement, poverty and indeed sexual violence committed against the weak and vulnerable. You could say that Europa was the original trafficked slave who was seized against her will and made to dance to the tune of a violent, depraved master. That she was transported across the wine-dark seas of the Eastern Mediterranean only adds to the contemporary resonances. Wherever we see desperate migrants, refugees and asylum seekers looking for a place to call home, we see echoes of the Europa myth. We see images of Christ suffering in all who bear the mark of pain.

In terms of our continent and next month's referendum, what does the story say about the European Union today?

It's not hard to mythologise the threats that will continue to face the EU, whether we are part of it or not. I think there are two powers that threaten to overwhelm the Union in the future and which could all too easily "abduct" Europa and carry her off to strange, alien places or even destroy her altogether. The two words are separated by just one letter. I mean rationalism and nationalism. By rationalism I'm not thinking of the capacity for rigorous analysis, argument and thought, one of Europe's great legacies to the world through the Enlightenment. It's the deadening effect of being closed off to the spiritual inheritance of our continent that I have in mind. It was a sad day when, despite the pleas of faith communities including the Holy Father himself, the preamble to the Maastricht treaty consciously omitted any mention of the part religion has played in shaping Europe. It ignores the vast contribution made by Judaism, Christianity and Islam to the values and ideals of the EU. It's an ominous sign that the EU could be taken over by the kind of doctrinaire secularism that is opaque to the redemptive dimension of a religious vision and a lived faith.

The other threat, nationalism, is easier to see all round us in the populist politics of 2016. Patriotism and nationalism are not at all the same thing. I've constantly argued that it is a fully patriotic choice for this and every other nation to pool sovereignty in the interests of promoting the common good. It is good for nations and peoples, good for the continent and good for the human race. We should love our patria, our homeland. We owe it our loyalty. But it's not the only loyalty we have. What isn't good is to collapse our belonging down to the nation state as if that were an end in itself. This is the mantra of far-right movements across the continent not least in Greece, Hungary, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and France. It should worry us that vast numbers of people are giving up on the idea, so fundamental to the Christian founding fathers of the European Project, that we are "better together". To me, the slogan "we want our country back" is deeply sinister. It's an omen of a fragmented future that goes against everything I believe about what it means to be human and to live together and flourish in community.

The antidote to both nationalism and rationalism could be to think more carefully about the Europa myth. If she is the archetypal victim, then her story can perhaps empower us to resist the intellectual, political, cultural and spiritual tyrannies that threaten to carry us off and enslave us today. It begins, I think, with our own consciousness of who and what we are, and the dignity with which we are invested as creatures made in the image of God whose service, as the Anglican collect says, is "perfect freedom". One etymology of the name Europa is that it means "having an open face". This is why I believe our future lies in the European Union, because we want the UK to be a nation that is outward-turned, generous and inclusive in a Europe that has an "open face" to the world, and especially to its victims.

To vote to remain in the EU could be an unafraid act of joyful liberation, the very opposite of the gloomy worries that plague Brexiters. It could confidently proclaim that there is a better vision of humanity than any we have yet found. The Europa myth could inspire us to reimagine it.