Category: suffering

For My Soul: This is Going to Hurt

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September.
Second-year medical student.
An early patient interview
at the Massachusetts General Hospital
Routine hernia repair planned, not done.
Abdomen opened and closed.
Filled with disease, cancer.

The patient is fifty-six,
a workingman, Irish
I sit with him, notice
the St. Christopher medal
around his neck.
Can’t hurt, can it? he laughs.
I have become his friend.

I bring him a coloring book picture
that shows this thing, this unfamiliar
organ that melted beneath our hands
at dissection:
Pancreas.

Leaving his room, crying,
avoiding classmates,
I take the back stairs.
I find myself locked,
coatless in the courtyard outside.
~Kelley Jean White “Pandora”

At seventeen years old, I thought I had things figured out. I had graduated near the top of my senior class, was heading off to college, and felt confident about who I was becoming. I had attended church all my life but my commitment to my faith was actually waning rather than strengthening.

In anticipation of college tuition bills, I took a summer job at a local nursing home for $1.25 an hour as a nurses’ aide. My total training was two days following a more experienced aide on her rounds of feeding, pottying, dressing and undressing, and bathing her elderly patients. Then I was assigned patients of my own and during a typical shift I carried a load of 13 patients. It didn’t take long for me to learn the rhythm of caretaking, and I enjoyed the work and my patients.

One woman in particular remains vivid in my memory 52 years later. Irene was in her 80’s with no nearby family, bedridden with a painful bone disease that had crippled her for a decade or more. She was unable to do any of her own self care but her mind remained sharp and her eyes bright. Her hearty greeting cheered me when I’d come in her room several times a shift to turn her on her egg-crate mattress bed to prevent pressure sores on her hips and shoulders.

The simple act of turning her in her bed was an ordeal beyond imagining – it always hurt her. I felt as though I was impaling her on hundreds of sharp needles.

I would prepare her for the turn by cushioning her little body with pads and pillows, but no matter how careful I was, her brittle bones would crackle and crunch like Rice Crispies cereal with every movement. Tears would flow from her eyes and she’d always call out “Oh Oh Oh Oh” during the process but then once settled in her new position, she’d look up at me and say “thank you, dear, for making that so much easier for me.”

I would nearly weep in gratitude at her graciousness when I could do so little to alleviate her suffering.

Before I’d leave the room, Irene would grab my hand and ask when I would be returning. Then she’d say “I know the Lord prepared you to take care of me” and she would murmur a prayer to herself.

As difficult as each “turning” was for both of us, I started to look forward to it. I knew she prayed not only for herself, but I knew she prayed for me as well. I felt her blessing each time I walked into her room knowing she was waiting for me. She trusted me to do my best.

One evening I came to work and was told Irene was running a high fever, and struggling to breathe. She was being given oxygen and was having difficulty taking fluids. The nurse I worked under asked that I check Irene more frequently than my usual routine.

As I approached her bed, Irene reached out and held my hand. She was still alert but very weak. She looked me in the eye and said “You know the Lord is coming for me today?” All I could say was “I know you have waited for Him a long time.” She murmured “Come back soon” and closed her eyes.

I returned to her room as often as I could and found her becoming less responsive, yet still breathing, sometimes short shallow breaths and sometimes long and deep. Near the end of my shift, as morning was dawning, when I entered the room, I knew He had come for her.

She lay silent and relaxed for the first time since I had met her. Her little body, so tight with pain only hours before, seemed at ease. It was my job to prepare her for the mortuary workers who would soon come for her. Her body still warm to touch, I washed and dried her skin and brushed her hair and wrapped her in a fresh sheet, wondering at how I could now turn her easily with no pain and no tears. I could see a trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth. I knew then the Lord had lifted her soul from her imprisonment. He had rewarded her faithful perseverance.

I rejoice in the hope of the glory of the Lord, thanks to Irene. She showed me what it means to watch for the morning when He will come. Though immobile in bed, crippled and wracked with pain, her perseverance led to loving a young teenager uncertain in her faith, and helped point me to my future profession in medicine.

Irene brought the Lord home to me when she went home to Him.

And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance
Romans 5:2b-3

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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And Through Eternity: Facing the Storm

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A front of thunderstorms had sought you out.
It vowed to run a diabolical
black line through all that you were sure about—
the ordinary, sane, the sensible.
You raced to get the loose stuff off the lawn,
with purpose rearranged and stacked the chairs,
relieved, almost, when the phenomenon
of gray-green storm clouds simplified your cares.
And though it couldn’t miss, it kind of did.
Darkness at noon gave way to sun at one.
Catastrophe and doom had been short-lived.
Embarrassed that your fears were overblown,
you faced your mundane day-to-day concerns,
vaguely upset that normalcy returns.
~Robert Crawford “Squall”

Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions,
beneath our religion or lack of it,
we are all vulnerable both to the storm without
and to the storm within.
~Frederick Buechner – from Telling the Truth

I watch the storm fronts roll in, threatening my outside and inside: heavy damaging winds, thunder and lightning, torrential unpredictable rains, mudslides, horrible forest fires destroying what is familiar and routine.

Inside my own head, the storm clouds of news headlines overpower day-to-day mundane concerns: devastating wars and violence, crime and protests, homelessness, rampant starvation and disease, man’s ongoing inhumanity to man.

I want to hide under a rock until the storms inside and outside blow over.

In the midst of the tempest — while wars rage on the planet, while a bitter election season is underway — a miracle may be wrought.
Brilliant light exposes how heaven weeps from heavy clouds. A rainbow touches the earth in holy promise.

God assures His people: this storm too will pass, even the storms of our own making. Darkness is overcome by Light.

Painting of snowy Cascades by John Hoyte

He stilled the storm to a whisper;
    the waves of the sea were hushed.
They were glad when it grew calm,
    and he guided them to their desired haven.
Psalm 107:29-30

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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When I Was Sinking Down: A World Bereft

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The darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Inversnaid”

There is despair in untamed hearts lost in the wilderness.
Wildness lies just beneath the surface;
it spills over, swirls round and round, spins out of reach. 

Our world feels that way right now.

How are we spared drowning in its pitch black pool?
Can we thrill to beauty surrounding us
without being tempted into darkness?

Christ came not to tame creation’s wildness,
but to pull us gasping people from its unforgiving clutches
before we sink ever deeper in despair.

We are mere weeds trying to survive this wild world,
to grow, to flourish, to witness to those who are bereft.
O Lord, let us be left to live long in your Light.

Let us be left.

Because of your great compassion
you did not abandon them in the wilderness.
By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path,
nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. 
You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. 
Nehemiah 9: 19-20

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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When I Was Sinking Down: Treading Water

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Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.
~Dan Albergotti “Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale” from The Boatloads.

Down into the icy depths you plunge,
The cold dark undertow of your depression,
Even your memories of light made strange,
As you fall further from all comprehension.
You feel as though they’ve thrown you overboard,
Your fellow Christians on the sunlit deck,
A stone-cold Jonah on whom scorn is poured,
A sacrifice to save them from the wreck.

But someone has their hands on your long line,
You sound for them the depths they sail above,
One who takes Jonah as his only sign
Sinks lower still to hold you in his love,
And though, you cannot see, or speak, or breathe,
The everlasting arms are underneath.
~Malcolm Guite “Christian Plummet”

But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?
…should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Jonah 4:4 and 4:11

Maybe you too feel as though you have been swallowed into the belly of the whale, treading water in the dark, disoriented and not just a little angry about the undeserving state of the world. All you can see of the outside is a bit of blue sky through a tiny hole above your head.

If you are like me, this makes you plenty grumpy. How did we end up in this mess?

Yet the belly of the whale is not forever. Surprisingly, it is a time of contemplation with little distraction other than our own conflicted feelings. We’ll soon be regurgitated back onto the shore of our trivial pursuits and busyness where suddenly life once again will feel too noisy with too many demands.

This quiet time is meant to teach something to you and me, even if it is just to count the mighty ribs protecting us, gaze into our own darkness and contemplate how we were trying to avoid what God asked of us.

I have a long list of things I could have done when the Lord prompted me, but instead stayed stubbornly resistant – treading water through life.

It’s time to stop being angry after being burped out to do what I should have done before sinking down, sinking down, sinking down…

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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When I Was Sinking Down: The Ache in My Heart

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Your cold mornings are filled
with the heartache about the fact that although
we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have,
that it is ours but that it is full of strife,
so that all we can call our own is strife;
but even that is better than nothing at all, isn’t it?

…rejoice that your uncertainty is God’s will
and His grace toward you and that that is beautiful,
and part of a greater certainty…

…be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart
and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive,
still human, and still open to the beauty of the world,
even though you have done nothing to deserve it.
~Paul Harding in Tinkers

I think there is no suffering greater than
what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. 
I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, 
in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. 
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. 
They think faith is a big electric blanket, 
when of course it is the cross. 
It is much harder to believe than not to believe. 
If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: 
keep an open mind. 
Keep it open toward faith, 
keep wanting it, 
keep asking for it, 
and leave the rest to God.
~Flannery O’Connor from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

Nothing that comes from God, even the greatest miracle, can be proven like 2 x 2 = 4. It touches one; it is only seen and grasped when the heart is open and the spirit purged of self. Then it awakens faith.  … the heart is not overcome by faith, there is no force or violence there, compelling belief by rigid certitudes.  What comes from God touches gently, comes quietly; does not disturb freedom; leads to quiet, profound, peaceful resolve within the heart.
~Romano Guardini from The Living God

On my doubting days, days too frequent and tormenting,
I recall how the risen Christ
invited Thomas to place his hand in His wounds,
gently guiding Thomas to His reality,
so it became Thomas’s new reality.
Thomas left it up to a God whose
open wounds called out
Thomas’s mind and heart.
Christ’s flesh and blood
awakened a hidden faith
by a simple touch.

…he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
John 20: 27-28

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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Still Open for Business

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Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be.
Unto us, so much is given.
We just have to be open for business.
~Anne Lamott from Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers

It was my privilege to work in a profession where astonishment and revelation awaited me behind each exam room door.

During an average clinic day, I opened those doors 36 times, then close them behind me and settle in for the ten or fifteen minutes allocated per patient. I needed to peel through the layers of a problem quickly to find the core of truth about why a patient was seeking help.

Sometimes what I was looking for was right on the surface: a bad cough, a swollen ankle, a bad laceration, but also easily were their tears, their pain, their fear. Most of the time, the reason was buried deep and I needed to wade through the rashes and sore throats and headaches to find it.

Once in a while, I could actually do something tangible to help right then and there — sew up the cut, lance the boil, splint the fracture, restore hearing by removing a plug of wax from an ear canal.

Often I simply gave permission to a patient to be sick — to allow themselves time to renew, rest and trust their bodies to know what is needed to heal well.

Sometimes, I was the coach pushing them to stop living “sick” — to stop self-medicating when life is challenging, to stretch even when it hurts, to strive to overcome the overwhelm.

Always I was looking for an opening to say something a patient may consider later — how they might make different choices, how they could be bolder and braver in their self care and care for others, how every day is a thread in the larger tapestry of their one precious life.

At night I took calls and each morning woke early to get online work done, trying to avoid feeling unprepared and inadequate to the volume of tasks heaped upon the day. I know I was frequently stretched beyond my capacity, stressed by administrative pressures and obstacles I faced in providing the best care.

I understood trials my patients were facing because I had faced them too. I shared their worry, their fears and vulnerabilities because I had lived through it too.

Even now, I try to simply let it be, especially through troubled times, when I have been gifted so much over the years. So my own experience is a gift I can still share here, even in retirement.

I’ll never forget: no matter who waited behind the exam room door, they never failed to be astonishing and revelatory to me, professionally and personally.

I’m so grateful I was open for business for 42 years.
I don’t see patients in an exam room any longer.
This Doctor is In, writing every day, with friendly advice.
Let it be so.

Peanuts comic by Charles Schulz

What is it You see
What do I possess
Oh how could it be
I should be so blessed

I am nothing much
Neither saint nor queen
I am just a girl
And You are everything

But if You ask
Let it be so
Let it be so
and if You will
Let it be so

I am so afraid
Of this great unknown
They may turn away
I may be all alone

My life is so small
so small a price to pay
to see my savior come
and take my sin away

I will bear their scorn
I will wear the shame
All things for the good
All things in Your name

Father be my strength
Shepherd hold my hand
Open wide my heart
to welcome who is there
~Sarah Hart

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Sharers in the Guilt

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Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?
It is because people think only about their own business, 
and won’t trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, 
nor bring the wrong-doers to light. 
My doctrine is this: 
that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, 
and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.
~Anna Sewell from Black Beauty

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question
the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.
On the one hand, we are called to play the good Samaritan
on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act.
One day the whole Jericho road must be transformed
so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed
as they make their journey through life.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar;
it understands that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world,
can well lead the way in this revolution of values.
There is nothing, except a tragic death wish,
to prevent us from reordering our priorities…
~Martin Luther King, Jr. from a speech April 4, 1967

We live in a time where the groaning need
and dividedness of humankind
is especially to be felt and recognized.
Countless people are subjected to hatred,
violence and oppression which go unchecked.
The injustice and corruption which exist today
are causing many voices to be raised to protest
and cry out that something be done.
Many men and women are being moved to sacrifice much
in the struggle for justice, freedom, and peace.
There is a movement afoot in our time,
a movement which is growing, awakening.

We must recognize that we as individuals are to blame
for every social injustice,
every oppression,
the downgrading of others
and the injury that man does to man,
whether personal or on a broader plane.…
God must intervene with his spirit and his justice and his truth.
The present misery, need, and decay must pass away
and the new day of the Son of Man must dawn.
This is the advent of God’s coming.
~Dwight Blough from the introduction to When the Time was Fulfilled (1965)

I weep to see ongoing bitter divisions among our citizens
as we fail to learn from history’s past errors.
Here we are again, groaning against one another once more,
ignited by front-running candidates for president
whose ethics and values do not represent
freedom and justice for all.

As we once again walk this hazardous Jericho Road together,
we cannot pass by those who lie dying in the ditch,
our brother, our sister, our neighbor, a stranger.

We must stop and help lest we share the guilt of their suffering.

It could be you or me there bleeding, beaten, abandoned
until Someone took our place
so we can get up and walk Home.

Maranatha.

At the edge of Jericho Road
Beneath the street light’s yellow orange glow
The feared and the fallen go
In the way of predator and prey
No one’s spared
Because hate is too great a weight to bear

In a cage of shadows we meet
Naked and bloodied in the street
At the mercy, at the feet
Of the way of predator and prey
No one’s spared
Because hate is too great a weight to bear

In the darkness on shattered pavement
The better angels fade
Blurred in slumber, murder by numbers
Do you know my name?
Do you know my name?
I believe in you

Because everyone holds some part of the truth
And now, I’m in your way
Do we stay on Jericho Road, forever going nowhere
Till hate is too great a weight to bear

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The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: Blossoming For Him

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He who has come to men
dwells where we cannot tell
nor sight reveal him,
until the hour has struck
when the small heart does break
with hunger for him;

those who do merit least,
those whom no tongue does praise
the first to know him,
and on the face of the earth
the poorest village street
blossoming for him.
~Jane Tyson Clement

In the somber dark
of a near-solstice morning,
when there appears no hope for sun or warmth,
I hunger for solace only He can bring.

He calls me forth from my hiding place,
buried face down from the troubles of the world,
burrowed deep in quilt and pillows,
fearing the news of the day.

Only God glues together
what evil has shattered.
We must hand Him the shards
of our broken hearts.

His offered hand bloodied
by lifting us from the darkness~
into a growing light,
where together we burst

into untimely blossom.

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

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The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: Endless and Suspended

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…we are faced with the shocking reality:
Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality.
He asks you for help in the form of a beggar,
in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing.

He confronts you in every person that you meet.

Christ walks on the earth as your neighbor as long as there are people. He walks on the earth as the one through whom
God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands.

That is the greatest seriousness and the greatest blessedness of the Advent message. Christ stands at the door. Will you keep the door locked or open it to him?
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his Advent Sermon “The Coming of Jesus into our Midst” from God is in the Manger

Upon the darkish, thin, half-broken ice
There seemed to lie a barrel-sized, heart-shaped snowball,
Frozen hard, its white
identical with the untrodden white
of the lake shore. Closer, its somber face—
Mask and beak—came clear, the neck’s
Long cylinder, and the splayed feet, balanced,
Weary, immobile. Black water traced, behind it,
An abandoned gesture. Soft in still air, snowflakes
Fell and fell. Silence
Deepened, deepened. The short day
Suspended itself, endless.
~Denise Levertov “Swan in Falling Snow”

When we witness suffering,
when the stranger in ragged clothes
approaches and asks for help,
how do we respond?

I too easily forget: I am also the least of these,
desperate for rescue,
suspended, immobile, in a darkening quiet,
waiting, waiting.

He patiently stands at the closed door.
His tender mercy lifts our deepening state,
waits for us to open up, gives us wings to the eternal,
endlessly forgiven, endlessly loved, endlessly endless.

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

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The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: Let Me Go There

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And God held in his hand
A small globe.  Look he said.
The son looked.  Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour.  The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
               On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky.  many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs.  The son watched
Them.  Let me go there, he said.
~R.S. Thomas “The Coming”

You have answered
us with the image of yourself
on a hewn tree, suffering
injustice, pardoning it;
pointing as though in either
direction; horrifying us
with the possibility of dislocation.
Ah, love, with your arms out
wide, tell us how much more
they must still be stretched
to embrace a universe drawing
away from us at the speed of light.
~R.S.Thomas “Tell Us”

Ah, this is Love~
You the Incarnate,
stretched and fettered to a tree

arms out wide
to embrace us
who try to grasp
a heaven which eludes us.

This heaven, Your heaven
You brought down to us,
knowing our pain and weakness.

You wanted to come here,
knowing all this.

Holding us firmly
within your wounded grip,
You the Son
handed us back to heaven.

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

O living Word
Please come and dwell in us
Lord wipe away these tears
O ancient Son, so long foretold
We’re desperate souls, draw near

And we will stand
Securely in the strength of the Lord
Every heart will surely come and adore
The Great I Am

O our Shepherd King
Please come and dwell with us
To fields of grace
Lead on

We need You now
Break our chains by Your glory and power
Make us captive to a holy desire
Come to us O Lord
Come to us O Lord

Prince of Peace, Emmanuel
Lord draw us close, unto Thyself
King of kings, God’s chosen One
We need you now, to Thee we run

We need You now
Break our chains by Your glory and power
Make us captive to a holy desire
Come to us O Lord
Come to us O Lord
Songwriter: Eric Marshall

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