The following interview with Rev. Wayne Muller, therapist and founder of Bread for the Journey and the Institute for Engaged Spirituality, published in Pathways magazine, traces the history of the organization.

PATHWAYS: Wayne, you are the founder of "Bread for the Journey," a non-profit organization serving families in Northern New Mexico. How did you come up with the idea for this unique organization and what type of charitable projects are you involved with at this point?

MULLER: Let's see, how did I come up with the idea? Well, actually "Bread for the Journey" started as an idea of mine when I first went into private practice. I had spent the first twelve years of my career in community mental health before I went into the seminary. And when I left the seminary and went into private practice, while I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life, it felt really important to honor in some way the larger community to which I belonged. And doing therapy with individual people felt a little small in a way. To just be in a room with one other person - usually one other person who could afford to be in that room with me - really wasn't honoring what I had done and what I had always believed in.

So I resolved to set aside a percentage of whatever money we generated in that hour to be spent in the larger community. That way we would have a sort of tangible sense that even when we're meeting here, we're connected both in our wounds and in our healing to the larger community to which we belong. That was important to me. It seemed to have a sense of usefulness and a quality of right action to it when I shared the idea with the people who came to see me. So at the end of the year, I would give away whatever money had accumulated in this bank account to whatever charities were around.

And then what happened was people started to hear that I was doing this and they started to just give me money to give away. They trusted that I would know the best places for it to go. And once they started doing that, I realized that perhaps this needed to be something a tad more formal than just a coffee can in my office.

So we started a charity that was designed specifically to listen for the people in the community who were not being served by the larger organizations or governmental entities or charities. We also wanted to listen for people's naturally arising wisdom and compassion and enthusiasm and to get behind them. We would give them a little bit of money or a legal umbrella or some organizational support so they could take whatever they were excited about - a day care center, a weaving cooperative, a woodworking cooperative, or a shelter for battered women - and make it happen.

PATHWAYS: So you tried to connect with the ideas and enthusiasm of the people themselves.

MULLER: That's right. Communities are saturated with people who are ready to be useful and helpful in some kind of creative and intelligent way. What they lack is a small amount of financial capital to buy stamps, to get an office, to have a telephone, or to get something else they need. And it's generally not a lot of money. What they really need is just a sense that they can do it. They need the blessing of someone who stands next to them and says, "You know, I really believe that you can do this."

And so it turned out to be a kind of incubator where we supported the natural wisdom and creativity and fundamental divinity, if you will, of people by simply standing next to them while they followed their passion. And essentially, "Bread for the Journey" as a model remains quite simple. We have hardly any overhead. We give people just a small amount of money with hardly any strings attached. There's no formal application procedure. It's mostly done by word of mouth. And in the past year or so, we've gotten calls from all over the country from people who like the simplicity of the model. People are always looking to be useful in a way that's simple and effective.

PATHWAYS: And direct.

MULLER: And direct, exactly. And without feeling like they need to create something enormous and without feeling like they need to give over their entire life. People want to feel as if what they do has some kind of, as you said, direct impact. So in the past year, the model's really been growing and has become quite an attractive thing for people who want ...

PATHWAYS: I think it's a marvelous thing. It reminds me of the Center for the Arts, in a way. I love the seed of it - that it came from a one-on-one professional situation where someone is paying for services, yet part of the fee is earmarked for the community. It's simple and easy.

MULLER: Yeah, easy is one of our fundamental guidelines. It really remains one of our catch words and something that we use as a "constitutional test" whenever we set something up.

For example, when we first started our board of directors, we started with three people and kept it that way for the first seven years. We wanted to be able to turn money around in twenty-four hours. That way, when people had a need, we could respond quickly.

A lot of what happens in the healing of the world happens because of timing, as much as anything else. It's important to catch the wave of readiness that arises out of people's lives. And when that readiness is there, if they have to apply to a foundation and it takes nine months to get the grant, then a lot of that readiness dissipates. To catch that readiness is really a great part of it.

PATHWAYS: I can hear the tenderness and commitment in your voice as you talk about this very special program to spread loving-kindness in the world.

MULLER: "Bread for the Journey" has really been close to my heart for quite some time. In spite of all the other things I've become involved in, I think it is a beacon that will continue to guide me, in one way or another, for the rest of my life.

PATHWAYS: In addition to being an ordained minister and a therapist, you are also the founder of the Institute for Engaged Spirituality in Santa Fe (by the way, when do you sleep?), which just held its third annual summer conference. What can you tell our readers about this aspect of your ministry?

MULLER: In a way, the Institute grew out of "Bread for the Journey" just as "Bread for the Journey" grew out of my private practice and out of my time in community mental health. The Institute for Engaged Spirituality grew out of the need of many people to simply be in one another's company.

Through "Bread for the Journey" and my travels around the country, I kept bumping into people who were on the growing edge of social and spiritual involvement. They were very much interested in working in the world, but felt in one way or another that the social work model didn't have the heart or soul or wisdom to truly understand the nature of suffering - nor could it teach how to alleviate that suffering in the deepest sense.

Even though these people were drawn, as many of us are, to spiritual practices or prayers or contemplative living, none of them were monks or nuns. They hadn't taken that step to completely withdraw from the world. Instead, they were living on the subtle membrane between monasticism and social work, where there is a kind of engaged spirituality that attempts to listen for right action and right understanding and right livelihood, as the Buddha would say.

In Christian terms, they were feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting those in prison. There are ways to do that and not really end up alleviating suffering. And there are ways to do that and really listen for what does heal people in the deepest sense.

PATHWAYS: So, the Institute is really a place for like-minded people to come together for mutual support and encouragement - a kind of sangha of loving involvement.

MULLER: That's it, exactly. It's really more of a gathering vehicle than a teaching vehicle. People just end up in the same room and hang out and tell stories and share difficulties and miracles and talk about all the things that happen in people's lives.

Just being in the company of people with a like mind and heart provides a tremendous amount of nourishment. I get a lot of credit for the Institute, far beyond any effort I've put into it or anything I deserve. Basically all I do is hold a space for people to gather: people who are often very lonely at their work because they are living on the razor's edge. And so the Institute alleviates a lot of loneliness.

And then, as an additional boon, we get to talk about - well, you know, where does prayer fit into this? Where does meditation fit into this? What are we trying to listen for? What's the right thing to do in the context of a bureaucracy?

PATHWAYS: Has there been anything published on the proceedings of the Institute since it began meeting three years ago? Can other people read about what has been discussed when you meet?

MULLER: It's been pretty informal so far, although there was a rather lengthy article in the New Age Journal in February of 1997. People can read that if they are interested.

PATHWAYS: Wayne, we know that you are very interested in both Christianity and Buddhism. Can you talk a little about your own spiritual journey and how you came to honor the teachings of other traditions and to integrate them with your Christian faith?

MULLER: Well, I think the integration process is probably still continuing. I started out as a Presbyterian - growing up in a basic, suburban Presbyterian family. We weren't particularly religious. But I did love going to church because whenever we went to church there was some kind of presence there that could keep grownups quiet for forty-five minutes.

Anything that could do that was completely impressive to me. I had to know more about that. So even though I didn't become religious right away, I always had a kind of a secret reverence and devotion for whatever that power was that got people's attention.

"I also think Jesus was speaking to people who, for the most part, didn't understand a word he was saying."

And I started off, as I said, in the field of psychotherapy and then found that the language of psychotherapy wasn't really sufficient to address what I thought was the depth and breadth and shape of people's wounds. This was especially true for poor people, whom I worked with a lot. When faced with family violence or alcoholism or other difficulties, they were more likely to go to a mass than to a community mental health worker - unless they were ordered to do so by the court.

Even then, it seemed intrusive to be involved in their lives primarily on a psychotherapeutic level. They were trying to understand life on a deeply spiritual level. The wheels that were turning in them were much larger than the ones I was trying to address with psychological concepts.

PATHWAYS: Is that when you decided to go to seminary?

MULLER: Yes, it was. It felt important for me to go to the seminary in order to learn more about the language of spirituality. Not just the language, of course, but the experience as well. And so I deepened my scriptural understanding of Christianity and deepened some of my Christian practices. But after attending Harvard Divinity School for some time, I discovered that it was providing me with a lot of intellectual grounding and not quite so much spiritual experience. So I began when I was there to study Vipassana meditation.

For the last twelve or thirteen years, I guess, I have practiced Buddhist meditation and studied with a variety of Buddhist teachers. And what I love about Buddhism is its precision about the techniques of the practices.

PATHWAYS: Christianity isn't as methodologically precise?

MULLER: No, it isn't. Christianity talks in these glowing, poetic terms about spiritual realities that I think are quite true, but they're very short on the specifics about how that really happens in real life. I think that's why there are so many diverse kinds of Christians who all claim to have the true faith. There's really so little there on the specifics of how one can actually and very specifically live in the Way of Christ. The Buddhists, by contrast, have a very rich tradition of specific instruction in spiritual practice.

PATHWAYS: So your study and practice of Buddhism has informed your Christian faith?

MULLER: Yes, I think so. I've learned quite a bit about what I think Jesus was trying to tell us by studying what the Buddha taught. I also think Jesus was speaking to people who, for the most part, didn't understand a word he was saying. Which I think is why he's always saying, "Those who have ears, let them hear. Those who have eyes, let them see."

I think Jesus' ministry was one of considerably frustration in that the people who were listening to him were coming out of a culture where there was a lot of inter-tribal warfare. Most of the people of his day were simply concerned with grabbing their fair share.There wasn't a long tradition of meditation or contemplation practices or deep spiritual lineages.

I don't mean to disregard the rich spiritual practice of the Hebrew tradition, but most people were excluded from that. That was happening more in the priestly class. It wasn't really happening among the lay people.

I think that only now, now that Jesus has met the Buddha, are we even able to hear some of the things that Jesus was talking about. So my own personal pilgrimage has actually brought me around in kind of a circle. Having done that work in Buddhism, I now find myself listening more carefully to my Christian lineage in order to find out what I can use and how I can stand with those people and still be authentic.

PATHWAYS: You sound frustrated with contemporary Christianity.

MULLER: I suppose I am. To be honest, much of Christianity as it is practiced today is just silliness as far as I can tell. But I think a lot of what Jesus said was miraculous. How to separate the miraculous from the silliness and still stay in that tradition is, of course, something that a lot of us are trying to wrestle with.

PATHWAYS: You said earlier that Buddhists have a much richer tradition of specific spiritual practices than Christians. Why is that?

MULLER: Well, for one thing, Jesus only got to teach for three years while the Buddha got to teach for fifty years. Over a fifty-year period, you really do refine your practice.

What Jesus had to convey, he could only convey during the first three years of a teaching practice. And the first three years of a teaching practice are very different than the last three years of a fifty-year teaching practice. The Buddha could really refine and change course and do a lot of mid-course correction in his teaching. He had time to listen for where his disciples were getting it wrong and correct them or be more precise in their instruction. Jesus never really had that opportunity.

I think what we see in Buddhism is a kind of precision that would have evolved had Jesus lived longer. Christians have lived with this imprecision for two millennia now. I think that's what gives people permission to have inquisitions. All the different interpretations are so widely divergent because the precision is missing. Those of us who have spent time in Buddhism are now trying to listen for how that precision may have evolved had Jesus had a longer period of time to teach.

PATHWAYS: In your best selling book, Legacy of the Heart, you beautifully reframe childhood pain as an opportunity for genuine spiritual development. How did you discover this marvelous truth in your own life?

MULLER: It was not a question of discovery as much as it was something that I've always felt in my body. I've always had a sense of what the psychologists would call "unconditional positive regard," although I wouldn't call it that. I didn't really have a name for it. Now I would be more likely to use spiritual language such as "still, small voice," "light of the world," "Buddha nature." It is a fundamental spiritual resilience that doesn't break regardless of what we've given.

I always had a sense that this was present. I always felt it in my own mind. I always felt it in the lives of people I knew. I always felt it in difficult situations. I couldn't always rely on it in the immediate sense, but in the larger view. When people came to me as clients - whether they were runaways or drug addicts or alcoholics - I always felt that essence that was still whole within them. Thomas Merton called it "their hidden wholeness" - that which remained imbedded within whatever garbage they felt they were bringing to me.

I also always felt that my role was to hold that and watch that and very patiently wait until they could see it too. And really, even on my best days, that was all I could ever do as a psychotherapist. I would just patiently hold up their divinity until they could begin to imagine that it was really there.

PATHWAYS: So it wasn't something you really ever figured out or put together?

MULLER: That's right. I think it was a gift, something that was just given to me. It's just a visceral sense in my body and it's never really left and it's the place I always go when people come to me who have been wounded in some kind of terrible way. I go to where it's not broken, and allow myself to watch and listen to the ripples that go out from there. Then the client and I can begin to work our way back to where the stone got thrown in the pool, all the way back, ripple by ripple. Ultimately, we make our way back to that still water where there is some peace and wholeness.

PATHWAYS: You make the statement at one point that "pain is nobody's fault." Can you expand on this and talk out how you have used this principle in working with people?

MULLER: Again, if we take a larger view of what happens to human beings, people who come to me often have some kind of pain that they've been given in their childhood or in their life in some way. It could be an illness, an abusive parent, neglect, alcoholism, incest - but it's a burden they carry. And they feel as if it's somehow personal, like it's about them. And they think it has something to say about how broken or defective or handicapped they are because they were given this pain.

Let's pan the camera back. The Buddha talked about the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows that are the indispensable legacy of what it means to take birth as a human being. That means that everyone gets pain and no one is exempt. The form of the pain may change, but the fact of it doesn't. I may get South Africa. You may get Nazi Germany. I may get the south in the 1940s. We may all get racism, drought, flood, civil war.

The point is, the types of pain are endless, they're numberless. And we each get a portion of the pain that's given to human beings. If we take it personally then it creates a tremendous amount of psychological suffering. If we feel as if this incest or this alcoholism or this abuse is somehow about me personally, then I can figure my whole life around the shape of that wound. But if what I've been given is just a portion of what's given to all human beings, then it's really not about me at all. And then I can become much more spacious.

PATHWAYS: The Buddhists talk a lot about cultivating an internal sense of spaciousness, don't they?

"When we consecrate a time to listen to the still, small voices, we reclaim the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. We remember from where we are most deeply nourished."

MULLER: Yes, it's one of the main fruits of meditation practice. The Buddhists have this wonderful image they use to illustrate spaciousness. What do you think would happen if I took a tablespoon of salt and put it in a glass of water and then stirred it up and gave it to you to drink?

PATHWAYS: I think I would cancel your retreat with Pathways this fall!

MULLER: Exactly. But what if I took that same tablespoon of salt and put it in an enormous, clear mountain lake and then gave you a glass of water from the lake to drink? I'm sure it would taste quite sweet and that you would still let me lead the retreat.

The point is this - the salt isn't the problem. The problem is the spaciousness of the container. If you think pain has something to do with you, then you will become very small. If you think the pain has something to do with just simply being alive, then you can become quite large. And out of that spaciousness comes some freedom and some ability to move and breathe. That's really the greatest beginning for healing liberation.

PATHWAYS: How does this fit in with your eloquent discussion of the practice of nonharming and forgiveness?

MULLER: First and foremost, we shouldn't harm ourselves through judgment or internal criticism because of what we imagine we've become because of the suffering we were given. This is so common among people who are hurt, especially when they were hurt as children. They develop this terrible inner critic that is always trying to get them to be perfect. The secret hope, especially in the child's mind, is if I'm perfect, they won't hurt me, or they won't hit me, or they won't abuse me, or they won't violate me.

As a child, this makes sense - unless you've already bumped into the Buddha. Because the Buddha says, "Well, I'm sorry, suffering's part of the deal, and it really has nothing to do with you at all. Doesn't matter how perfect you are, you can still get cancer, you can still get hit by a bus, and you can still be abused by your parents. It doesn't really have anything to do with what you've done or not done."

It we can look deeply into this teaching, we can adopt a sense of mercy and nonharming around whatever pain we are given. Then we won't have to take it quite so personally. And in the same way, the people who harmed us - those who brought us alcoholism or incest or illness or loss - are not necessarily at fault for the fact that we had pain. It's the fault of having taken birth that we have pain. And so forgiving them actually lets us have more space.

PATHWAYS: So forgiveness of those who appear to bring us pain is a way to become more spacious and therefore less vulnerable to future pain.

MULLER: Of course. Again, spaciousness in order to grow. If I don't forgive my alcoholic father or my incestuous mother then my whole life, my story and my experience, will never be any larger than the place I got stuck. Which is a very small place.

If I forgive them, I'm not condoning their actions. But by forgiving them, I can begin to understand how much suffering they must have been experiencing in order to have been so confused and terribly anguished to have visited that kind of distress on me. If I can forgive that and let them go, then I am no longer just a child of incest or a child of alcoholism or a child of abuse. I'm free to become the child of God or a child of the universe or a child of the family of the earth. And all of a sudden, I can get much bigger. Forgiveness, then, is actually an enzyme that sets me free.

PATHWAYS: In your luminous new book, How, Then, Shall We Live?, you examine four simple questions that you say are an essential part of the spiritual journey: "Who am I?" "What do I love?" "How shall I live knowing I will die?" and "What is my gift to the family of the earth?" Why did you choose these particular questions and is there one that may be more important than the others?

MULLER: Well, I'm not sure I chose them as much as they just sort of appeared. It was more a matter of trying to listen to the simplicity that was available.

The older I get, the more I love simplicity. I don't know if it's because my mind can't comprehend complexity, which I'm beginning to believe is probably true, or that I am becoming more enamored with the beauty of simplicity. I think the "Bread for the Journey" model is a simple model and people like that model because of its simplicity.

The four questions are simple questions. They're not necessarily the only questions. There could have been more. There could have been less. But they're some of the basic ones that people ask themselves when they begin to undertake some kind of spiritual pilgrimage.

Who am I? What do I love? Regardless of your spiritual tradition, your teacher will ask you these kinds of questions. Who do you believe yourself to be? Do you believe yourself to be a child of original sin? Do you believe yourself to be a child of incest? Do you believe yourself to be the light of the world? Do you believe yourself to have a self at all, as the Buddhists would ask? The way in which you answer these questions sets a number of things in motion. Even when we can't answer them, if we will just spend time listening to them - living with them and holding them in our hearts as we walk through life - this can be very fruitful.

PATHWAYS: You have spent much of your life ministering to the terminally ill and to their loved ones. How did you first become involved in this work? Can you share some of the challenges and insights this work has presented to your heart over the years?

MULLER: Probably by now, most of us have been blessed by being in the company of someone who has died. That process, as we all know, can be a mixed blessing. There's a great deal of sadness and confusion and anger and fear and grief. And at the same time, there's honesty and tenderness and companionship and intimacy.

For me, there are many lessons to be learned from this experience. To be close to the mortality of someone I love reminds me obviously of my own mortality. This creates a kind of mindfulness in me and in them as well. When we're both aware that we're going to die, then we become more awake to life. We're more aware of what's precious - every word that we speak, the touch of our hands, when I sit on the bed, when we breathe in the wind coming through the window. Everything has a kind of sweetness to it. We can feel the richness of the gift of this life in new ways at such moments.

PATHWAYS: Is this a common experience among those who die?

MULLER: No, in fact some people die quite bitter and angry and closed. But still, even that kind of death can be instructive in that it reminds us of all the ways to die that mirror the ways that we can live. It creates an awareness that enables us to choose how to live each day with some kind of intention rather than going through life by accident.

I think the company of those who have been sick and dying has blessed me tremendously. I find it interesting that in the Beatitudes it says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." It doesn't say blessed are those who take care of those who mourn. It says, "Blessed are those who mourn," as if there's a blessing imbedded in the sadness itself. I think is really quite a delicious metaphor that Jesus used.

PATHWAYS: Speaking of confronting death as a part of the spiritual journey, I know that you were very close to Henri Nouwen, the author of The Wounded Healer, The Return of the Prodigal Son, and many other marvelous books, who just died this year. He was your mentor and your friend for many years. Can you share with our readers a little of what his life has meant to you?

MULLER: Boy, you know, that's an enormous question because Henri was a very large man. He was physically large, his hands were large. I remember his hands holding mine - he had such a physical presence about him.

He also had this emotional largeness that he carried around with him. His life was important because he was so painfully honest about all of the struggles he experienced trying to be a Christian and be like Jesus. He was less concerned with the church than he was about being like Jesus, and he was constantly pointing to all of the places where he fell short.

I think that kind of humility and honesty was a real invitation for many people to look at themselves in a very non-threatening way because he wasn't preaching at all. He wasn't trying to convert anyone to any point of view. He was merely confessing, really. All of his books are confessions, in one way or another, of the failures in Henri's capacity to be like Jesus. And he was relentless in the way that he would describe his perceived failings.

On a personal level, he was a dear friend. I remember walking around Walden Pond with him in the spring and lying down in the tall grass together. He'd put his head on my belly and we'd sleep, and you know, we were like a couple of puppies. He had a real tenderness, a real intimacy about him that was palpable to those people who knew him and loved him and that he loved.

He is also the one who ordained me. We shared many questions together over meals and walks concerning what it really means to live a spiritual life and still be affiliated with institutions and principalities and powers. I think that's a question we all wrestle with in our more noble moments. Just being close to Henri was an invitation to be more deeply authentic about my own failings and successes.

PATHWAYS: What a remarkable friend he must have been. You must miss him a lot.

Wayne, we spoke recently of your interest in the Sabbath. Can you describe the work you are currently doing in this area? What is the nature of your own spiritual practice at this point?

MULLER: Well, the Sabbath. What can I say about the Sabbath that wouldn't take all day long? I chose to write about the Sabbath because it seems to me that there's a pervasive form of contemporary violence in our society - namely, business and overwork.

We've murdered the rhythm between action and rest in our civilization. The lack of rest really has been a kind of violence. Even when we're trying to do good we do good badly because our kindness doesn't even have quiet in it.

PATHWAYS: So your concern with the Sabbath is not just about resting on the seventh day?

MULLER: Not necessarily the day of the week, per se, but the day of the week and the scriptural underpinnings of that day are a good place to start. We need to invoke some kind of civic dialogue, some kind of conversation in our nation and our world about what is truly valuable.

I think this would involve a discussion of a number of issues. For example, we've really taken the "pursuit of happiness," which is the founding premise of our nation, and replaced it with the "satisfaction of desire" as the guiding inspiration of our individual lives. Remember that the Buddha said that desire is the source of all suffering. So, we've actually gone from creating a civilization dedicated to the pursuit of happiness to one that actually creates suffering.

PATHWAYS: That doesn't sound good.

MULLER: It's not. Our civilization is actually designed now to create suffering, because the thirst and craving for material goods is what drives the machine. And the thirst and craving for things you don't have is, by the Buddhist definition, the very nature of suffering.

So it's a curious world that we've built. It's a world in which we never have the time to ask the larger questions - the very questions that might set us free. What is a civilization for, other than the production and consumption of goods and services? Is it to create beauty? Is it to heal those who are sick? Is it to alleviate the suffering of all beings?

What is the purpose of a life well-lived in a civilization well-built? You can listen to any news program or open any magazine in this country and you won't find anyone asking these questions. These are the kind of questions you can only ask when you've had some time to be quiet. As long as we can work with being quiet, these questions will never get asked.

I'm hoping that the Sabbath book will invite us all to rest. Jesus said, "Come to me, all ye who are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." He could have said any number of things. He could have said, "I'll give you great coping strategies." He could have said, "I'll give you all the esoteric teachings that I didn't give anybody else." But what he said was, "I'll give you rest." And he said it as if rest was a very tangible, visceral, spiritual good in and of itself. Not just so that you could get more energy and go back to work. Rest actually has a very potent and essential usefulness-in-uselessness that we've completely forgotten.

Interestingly, it's the only commandment that says "remember," as if it's the one we would forget. All the other ones - Do Not Steal, Do Not Kill, Do Not Lie - they make sense. You can understand why those would be commandments. But right up there, with all the others, is an additional commandment to take a day off. Yet we don't treat that commandment with the same kind of respect and awe we do some of the others.

Maybe that's because it's not a commandment from some nasty God who wants to make our lives miserable. It simply points to the way things are - that in all of life there is this rhythmicity between seasonal, tidal changes. It is the rhythm of light and dark, winter and spring, summer and fall, lunar cycles and tidal cycles, Circadian rhythms and dormancy. There are so many rhythms that are imbedded in life. That's why the Sabbath story is part of the creation story. It's part of how things work.

Copyright © 1997 by Pathways Magazine

Reprinted by permission of Pathways: A Magazine of Psychological and Spiritual Transformation, from the Sept.-Oct., 1997 issue.

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