Resisting the Siren Song on Black Friday

On this day after Thanksgiving, with our stomachs still full of yesterday’s feasts, we will be pounded by the siren song of unabashed consumerism. This should be distinguished from a consumption of what we need to survive or even that which will make us happy. Consumption is necessary for survival, consumerism is not. Indeed, this is a particularly vicious consumerism that will draw our very identities into question only to supply a manufactured – and inevitably costly – replacement.

Buying Into Myths of Inadequate Lives

We will be told that our lives cannot be happy unless we have the newest bells and whistles of technologies with ever shorter shelf lives. This guarantees an ongoing downward spiral of consumption of goods manufactured from rare metals and toxic plastics at great cost to the Earth. 

We will be told that people will not love us unless we demonstrate our love with the consumer goods we have been assured will win their hearts and insure their ongoing affection toward us. We will be told our social gatherings will be unbearably dull without sugar and fat laden food and beverages we will purchase for people who will arrive wearing the latest mass-produced “fashions” and gaudy jewels pitched through the smarmiest of names and sentimental ads. 

They will come wreaking of bottled scents bearing exotic names we are told will transport us from our pedestrian lives. And they will drive the latest earth-destroying vehicles we are told will convey our status and reflect our fondest childhood wishes to our gatherings .

Ironically, many of us will purchase all these commodities to commemorate the birth of a Christ-child born into poverty whose most memorable teaching began “Blessed are the poor…”  

Many of us will gladly respond to the siren song on this Black Friday. Indeed, before the last food from our Thanksgiving feast was stored in freezer bags and dishes were washed and put away last night, the local consumerist cheerleading masquerading as news was already reporting that people were beating down the doors of big box stores. Live coverage showed shoppers frantically sprinting down store aisles to join the feeding frenzies around bins of goods temporarily marked down to prices slightly above the cost of production plus a modest profit.

You see, they’ve figured out the game. The know those marked down goods in inevitably limited supplies won’t last. Indeed, they are merely the lure ultimately designed to insure bait and switch sales to higher priced goods once the mark downs run out and well trained consumers feel they cannot leave the stores empty-handed.

And thus the Oracle of the gods of consumerism was very clear last night: You, too, should join the throngs – Do it NOW!

Our senses of inadequacy and vulnerability have been carefully cultured by a skillful consumer advertising industry and a hypercompetitive society which proclaims to be meritocratic but in fact is largely stacked against the vast majority in favor of the privileged few. Those senses of inadequacy will be pimped this day with a vengeance resulting in a mindless orgy of acquisitiveness.

But it is a drivenness doomed to disappointment. The truth is that there will never be enough material goods in this world, no matter how new, improved or remarkable, to fill the holes in our souls, those places where gratitude for lives of plenty, relationships with the Other(s) and awareness of the good creation we share should rightly reside.

Giving Something of Value

So, why not part company with the herd and do something countercultural this day? Why not celebrate Buy Nothing Day instead?

Why not spend the day mindfully considering the things you might actually need rather than be pimped into confusing needs with wants artificially cultivated by consumerist advertising? Why not consider giving things that actually mean something this year – your time and your undivided attentiveness?  Why not put the damned cellphone away (yes, your addiction really can wait) and be fully present with the Other(s)? Why not give yourself the gift of downtime, time spent alone to sort your thoughts and feelings, time spent outside, becoming newly aware of the natural world that you pass through each day unnoticed which waits patiently to impress you with her wonders?

If you must give material goods to show your affection (and a truly thoughtful gift – as opposed to guilt-driven consumerist purchases – is often appreciated), why not give something you’ve made, grown, created? How much more valuable is a gift that actually embodies your life capital as opposed to the artificial currency in your pocket?

And if you feel you simply cannot spare the time and energy to do that (a real warning sign about both your time management skills and the quality of your life), consider that there are 363 other days a year (minus Black Friday and Christmas Day) to carefully and thoughtfully consider what you wish to buy. 

Corporations may be worried about their bottom line on Black Friday, hoping to meet the insatiable demands of stockholders for ever greater dividends even among profitable companies. But the stock clerks, checkout agents, waiters and management of these establishments work year-round - many of them working without ongoing guarantees of full-time hours and the salaries and benefits that go with them. All of them benefit from your business year-round.  Take the time, money and life energies that you’d spend in an orgy of ruthless hypercompetitiveness on Black Friday and spread it out across the year.

On this day after Thanksgiving, I wish you well. I am grateful for your reading my thoughts and for those of you who will actually consider them. And I close with thoughts from a Buddhist tradition which has long recognized the dangers of materialism and attachment:

May all beings everywhere be happy and free,

and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life

contribute in some way

to that happiness and to that freedom for all.

 - Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu Sanskrit prayer of blessing for the world 

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Harry Scott Coverston

Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

harry.coverston@knights.ucf.edu

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)

 © Harry Coverston 2017

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Gratitude: For All Who Have Made Our Lives Possible

On this national holiday in the United States devoted to giving thanks, I offer a series of meditations on gratitude. I begin with a portion of one of my favorite poems from fellow Anglican John Donne:

'No Man is an Island'

No man is an island entire of itself; 

every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, 

Europe is the less, 

as well as if a promontory were, 

as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; 

any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 

it tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII

Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

John Donne

Gratitude - Family of Birth

There is no such thing as self-made men or women. All of us are here because of Others whose gifts to our lives, both positive and negative, helped make us who we are. On this day of gratitude, let us remember our Families of Birth.

They are the ones who gave you your genetic material that started you on your way. The ones who insured you had enough food, clothing, medical care, shelter and security to survive to adulthood.

They are the ones who taught you and modeled many of the values you now call your own. The ones whose imperfections as adults used to seem so huge and obvious until you became an adult and realized that it is precisely those imperfections that help make us human. The ones who held great hopes for our lives, both the unrealized aspirations of their own lives as well as the light they saw glowing in you that needed encouragement and support.

They are the siblings and cousins who shared your journey, the aunts, uncles and grandparents who played starring roles in your life. And now they include your own children in whom the cycle has begun once again.

For whom among your Family of Birth would you give thanks this day of gratitude?

Gratitude – Family of Choice

There is no such thing as self-made men or women. All of us are here because of Others whose gifts to our lives, both positive and negative, helped make us who we are. On this day of gratitude, let us remember our Families of Choice.

They are the ones who shared your life journey through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood. They are the ones with whom you shared your deepest secrets, the ones with whom you did the things you were told not to do and prayed you wouldn’t get caught. They are the ones who suddenly came unbidden and unexpected into your life and everything changed in that moment. They are the ones with whom you have studied, worked, played and made love.

They are the ones whose dry, absorbent shoulders you always found awaiting your tears in times of loss and tragedy. They are the ones who have shared that one extra glass of wine with you as well as the pounding hangover the next morning when you celebrated life’s little victories and all were had by a good time. They are the ones who have forgiven you when you did not deserve forgiveness and those to whom you have returned that favor. And they are the ones whose holes in your life can never be filled when they eventually must leave.

For whom among your Family of Choice would you give thanks this day of gratitude? 

Gratitude – Life Companions

There is no such thing as self-made men or women. All of us are here because of Others whose gifts to our lives, both positive and negative, helped make us who we are. On this day of gratitude, let us remember our Life Companions.

To our lovers, soul mates, partners, spouses. To those with whom we waited a lifetime before being able to legally say I do and to those whose vows were exchanged with as little effort as an application, a fee and the repetition of the words at the notary public’s office.

To our children, both the fruit of our own wombs as well as those whom life brought to us to love and changed us forever. To our non-human children, our dogs, cats, horses, and the wide range of living beings who have made our lives worth living and reminded us that love, devotion and compassion transcend the bounds of living species. To the trees that have shaded us, the flowers that have brought us joy, to the gardens we have nurtured and whose care in turn provided the means to nurture our own souls.

For whom among your Life Companions would you give thanks this day of gratitude?

Gratitude – Life Matrix

There is no such thing as self-made men or women. All of us are here because of Others whose gifts to our lives, both positive and negative, helped make us who we are. On this day of gratitude, let us remember all those within the matrix in which our lives have developed.

They are the ones who taught us in our schools, who cared for us when we were ill and set our arms when we broke them. They are the ones who keep our homes and streets safe and who insure that we have lighting and internet. They are the ones who work long hours at menial tasks to insure our toll booths, entertainment outlets, big box stores and fast food outlets are available to us in these lives of privilege we lead.

They are our clergy, counselors, our fire fighters, our farmers. They are our bus and truck drivers, our wait staff at restaurants, our banking staff and our garbage collectors. They are our soldiers and our political leaders, when they actually lead. They are our friends and the neighbors we actually know.

 For whom among those within our shared Life Matrix would you give thanks this day of gratitude?

Gratitude – the Good Creation

There is no such thing as self-made men or women. All of us are here because of Others whose gifts to our lives, both positive and negative, helped make us who we are. On this day of gratitude, let us remember the Good Creation, this fragile Earth our island home.

The parameters of life on this planet are limited and precious. Slight variations in carbon or nitrogen content in our air and most current life forms on this planet would die. It is a bountiful creation, with enough natural resources to feed all living beings on the planet even as some starve because of human greed and collective choices. It is a place of striking beauty from the deserts of the Gobi to the windswept Faroe Islands to the rapidly disappearing rainforests, the lungs of the Earth, along the Amazon. 

Whatever or whoever caused this place to come into being, if anything, is worthy of our deepest gratitude. More importantly, the Creation we call home is worthy of our responsible care that takes into consideration all of its living beings.

How would you show your gratitude this day for the Good Creation we too often take for granted but without which we could not exist?

Gratitude – Conclusion

For all those lives who have touched my life, molding me, encouraging me, weeping because of me, for those who have comforted me, disciplined me, disappointed me, yet loved me despite my worst behaviors and for those whose time with me was all too brief before they had to leave me, I give thanks this day.

For the Good Creation of which I am a part but only a part, I give thanks this day and I pray that I and my fellow human animals will learn to treat you with the respect you are due. And to the G_d whom I experience as the very ground of my being and my constant companion, the G-d from whom all Being arises and to whom all Being returns, I offer my deepest gratitude.  

And now, I invite you to do the same.

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Harry Scott Coverston

Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

harry.coverston@knights.ucf.edu

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)

 © Harry Coverston 2017

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Hope and Resilience on the Whiffy Express

He got on at the Walmart stop and came to the back of the bus where I sat. He was young, mocha colored skin with one arm nearly completely covered in tattoos. His eyes were that brilliant shade of gold that I have known and loved in a number of black friends and students. His hair stood straight up in twisted spikes. And when he smiled his beautiful teeth lit up his handsome young face. 

After briefly acknowledging him I went back to grading my papers, my pastime on the bus ride home from the college in the afternoons. Rush hour traffic makes the usual hour and five minute trip up to an hour and a half before arriving backing in downtown Orlando. By the time I reach my stop, I have all of my papers graded.

Today’s traffic was fairly typical. I was in no rush.

Dear Lord, What’s That Smell?

At the next stop an elderly black man who was clearly intoxicated stumbled up the aisle to the back of the bus coming to rest in the seat immediately in front of the seat where I sat. I always choose the row of seats which face into the aisle with backs to the windows near the very back of the bus. There is plenty of room there to spread out my papers there when there isn’t much ridership and I can stretch out my aching arthritic knees into the aisle.

Within minutes I began to realize my initially chosen seat was not going to work that day. The elderly man, now snoring, had clearly not had a bath in several days. Worse yet, somewhere along the line he had urinated on himself. 

I am accustomed to workers getting on the bus at the end of the day in need of showers after a long day of manual labor.  I sometimes call that rush hour run The Whiffy Express.

But this was more than the usual worker odor. I leaned into the aisle to see if the air was any more breathable there but I knew quickly that I’d need to move.

I often tell my students that if they have an emergency, don’t ask me, just go on to the bathroom. I’m a sympathetic vomiter on a good day and I fear I’d just add to the pile if someone managed to spew in front of me, fears that go back to my days as a middle school teacher. And I knew the aroma rising from this pathetic, debilitated man was enough to set that response into motion.

I quickly crossed the aisle to the seats now directly in front of the young man. He laughed, his beautiful teeth lighting up his handsome young face.

“I don’t blame you,” he chuckled. “I’d have moved. too.”

I said I felt sorry for the fellow. He was clearly out of it. The young man’s face became very serious. He said that he had known a lot of folks like this guy. “You try to help them, to get them to straighten up and get out of this mess they’re in. But some of them just don’t want to. And they go back to the drinking and drugs. And they end up like this.”

They Came for a New Life

Thereupon began a long conversation that would flow until we reached my stop at the SODO development where I park my car and catch the city bus two days a week.

He told me that his family had moved him out of the Bronx when he was five. They’d moved to nearby Poinciana with little to start a new life. But that new life had to be better than a life fending off or joining the gangs that dominated the streets of their old neighborhood. His Mother now worked at a bank. His father worked as an electrician.

When he asked me what I did (i.e., What’s a professional middle class white man doing riding the city bus with us working class schmoes?) I said I was retired from the university but taught part-time now as an adjunct at Valencia.

His face lit up.

The young man said he was working about 60 hours a week at two different jobs, one a fast food joint, the other a big box store. But he was also taking two classes from Valencia online. “It’s the only way I can do this,” he said. “I’d like to take the classes on campus with everyone else but I have to work.”

I hear this story regularly. Students take classes online for a number of reasons. Some engage in the misguided bottom line philosophy that presumes that since online classes don’t require you to actually come to class, they probably won’t require much else of you. Easy A and three hour credit. 

These are students who often end up feeling betrayed when the class requires more than they’re willing or able to contribute given their time constraints. These are also the folks that most predictably register their discontent on end of term consumer surveys. “Worst class ever.” "Unreasonable demands." “Avoid this teacher at all costs.”

Others take online courses because it relieves them of any obligations to actually deal with other human beings in person. We have raised an entire generation of children whom we allowed technology to babysit with varying degrees of deficiencies in interpersonal skills to show for it. Online classes allow them to escape yet again the difficult but essential task of developing the same.

Then there are those like my conversational companion on the bus. Online classes are less costly in terms of time, obligations to be present and the costs of transportation to and presence at the college. They are often the only avenues to college education available to the working poor. And while they offer at best a truncated educational experience, the credit hours they earn count the same as those in actual live classes.

He spoke of saving enough money to be able to take classes on campus in the future. His wife, who also works at a bank, already is doing so.

On Living While Black

The young man eventually asked me if he could borrow a dollar for bus fare. He said he was headed up to visit his aunt in one of the more dangerous sections of Orlando. I pulled out my wallet and gave him the dollar. Later he’d confess that he actually needed two dollars and only wanted to ask for one. I know the bus fare is $2. So I pulled out my wallet and gave him the other dollar.

My Franciscan sensibility about these encounters is simple: If I have the money and don’t absolutely need it (i.e., for my own bus fare home) and the person I’m encountering seems to need it, I simply give it to them. No questions asked, no conditions. Once the money leaves my hands it’s no longer mine and I have no rights to dictate how it’s used. Conditional gifts are little more than contracts for performance at best, thinly disguised behavioral manipulation at worst.

He asked me what I thought about Donald Trump. I said, “Not much.” I could see the look of relief on his face as he launched into a long diatribe about how Trump was a clown and was endangering the whole world. Apparently the young man has time to catch the news periodically.

The worst part, he said, was that Trump was dividing the country, turning people against one another. I agreed. And I asked if that had impacted him personally.

His face darkened as he responded. “I think every black man in America feels the impact of this,” he said. He told of how he’d been accused of a robbery at a Walmart when he was a juvenile. “I spent 21 days in juvenile before they decided they couldn’t prove the charges,” he said.

Seems the manager of the Walmart offered testimony and the surveillance camera footage from the day of the robbery that clearly showed this young man was not the robber. That didn’t stop the local prosecutor from holding him another week until trial before entering a nolle prosequi notice voluntarily dismissing the case.  

I shook my head. I remembered far too many cases like that from my days as a public defender. It was an abuse of the law and smacked of racism. But it was common. And, ultimately, it would be one of many reasons I’d leave the practice of law. I simply didn’t want to help enable that system to continue anymore. And said as much.

All the Time in the World, All the Patience of Job

It’s a little over an hour ride from the college to my destination at the SODO development where I park my car. I park there because there is a shelter to sit under while waiting for the morning bus and the afternoon bus stops within 100 feet of a traffic light that allows me to cross busy Orange Avenue. The parking garage is designed for patrons of the SODO development and between its restaurants and the Target store there, I have been a regular patron there. I feel no hesitation about parking in the covered garage to catch the bus.

But this day, the hour had flown by. This was an amazing young man, a study in determination in the face of forces beyond his control which would have readily derailed most lives that encountered them. He spoke of his dreams of finishing his degree, of working at a job that would pay him a decent wage and allow him a modicum of self-respect. Most of all, he spoke of his desires to provide a good life for the children he desired to bring into the world, “once I’ve got the job and house down,” he said.

In my life as a teacher, this is the kind of kid I have always taught for. I have all the patience of Job and all the time in the world for people who want to work hard to make it in life and just need someone to help them along the way.

A mere two stops from my destination, he asked if he could use my cell phone. He probably misread my hesitation at that point. I was happy to let him use the phone and when he handed it back to me for the password, gladly provided it. The problem was I was getting off two stops later.

“Make it quick,” I said.

He did. And then moved to another seat. He turned and waved as I bounded off the bus at the Grant Street stop.

I pray that this man will be able to make a good life for himself and his family. I believe that he will, given the determination, resourcefulness and will power I saw on the bus that afternoon.

There are a lot of young people like this man in our society. His entire generation is struggling to make lives that we in previous generations took for granted. We have not made it easy for them at all. We would do well to encourage them, to do what we can to help them along their way and then to demand of them that they perform at the level of the ability at which they have evidenced capacity to perform.

Truth be told, we need this young man. We have no lives to spare. We need him to be healthy, educated and productive. We need him to offer the gifts that only he can.

Hillary Clinton got this one right. We are ALL better together. We need everyone.

Every. Single. One.

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Harry Scott Coverston

Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

harry.coverston@knights.ucf.edu

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)

 © Harry Coverston 2017

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Scenes from a Changing World

Waves of change wash over our planet daily. Even here in Orlando the backwash of those waves are beginning to lap up on our shores as can be seen in these events from the past three days.  

Scene 1: Sonny’s Barbeque.

As I sit awaiting my lunch, a young female server brings two plates heaped to the brim with pulled pork, beans and French fries to the table in front of me. She is about to set them down on the table in front of the two young Muslim men, students at the nearby Full Sail technological college.

Their expression quickly indicates that this would be a big mistake.

“Did I get your order wrong?” she asks cheerfully. “We ordered chicken,” the one curtly replied.

The waitress walks away, plates still in hand, looking puzzled. These guys acted like I had insulted them just because I got their order wrong.

She generally doesn’t get that reaction from the fire fighters and police officers who frequent this place.

She has no idea what halal and haram means. But they do. And if she is going to remain in this business in a country where Muslims now outnumber Episcopalians, she will need to learn. 

Our world is changing.

Scene 2: Lake Underhill Drive

I’m returning from the Home Depot with newly purchased plants and pots. I want to get home to get my gardening done before the rain begins.

There is a black SUV with tinted windows ahead of me. It comes to a stop at the point where Lake Underhill Drive dead ends into Palmer Street. One has to go either right or left on Palmer. It is free of traffic.

I wait.

After 30 seconds or so, I figure the driver is distracted and touch my horn. No response. I beep again, this time a bit more emphatically.

No response.

I back up and begin to drive around the car, half irritated, half concerned that I might encounter a driver having some kind of medical emergency.

There in the front seat sits a woman my age, texting away, completely oblivious to where she is or the fact she is holding up other drivers. 

She never looks up. 

She is busy feeding her addiction.

Indeed, the addiction to communications technology in our culture by far exceeds the opioid crisis our pharmaceutical industry has fostered in its pervasiveness and its potential seriousness.

Texting while driving is only a secondary offense in Florida and cannot be the primary reason an officer stops a driver even as the insurance industry now reports that texting while driving is much more likely to result in accidents than driving under the influence of alcohol.

Thus far, there is no  pressure group equivalent to Mothers Against Drunk Driving crying out to regulate driving distracted by technology. And the communications industry lobbyists have paid our state legislature and governor quite handsomely to turn a blind eye to the dangers  of this addiction. As Upton Sinclair noted a century ago, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

But how many drivers will continue to patiently wait while the oblivious texter carries on their conversation without erupting into angry violence? And at what point will we admit we’ve made a serious error in judgment in acquiescing to this culture of addiction? Will it be too late?

Our world is changing. 

But is it for the better?

Scene 3: Miller’s Ale House

The elevated tables next to our booth in the outdoor seating section are full of middle aged Latino men talking and drinking from pitchers of beer. There are empty seats awaiting arriving guests.

Within minutes, a group of men and women enter and the energy level in the room leaps several notches. Amidst joyful greetings complete with kisses and hugs, the group sits down together and begins an animated conversation. From my best Spanish (which is hardly fluent on a good day) I am able to overhear snippets of conversation: lots of trees down everywhere; no power; everyone is OK but they have no water.

These friends and family are among the thousands who have arrived from Puerto Rico this week, fleeing the wrath of Hurricane Maria and the ongoing misery of its aftermath, bearing news of loved ones left behind. The local Boricuas are delighted to see them, relieved to know they are OK. And the new arrivals are clearly happy to be out of the suffering they have endured on this isle of enchantment in which three quarters of its residents languish without power a month after a killer hurricane.

My guess is that a good number of these visitors will remain. Many have left destroyed homes. Most have no jobs to return to at businesses that no longer exist. They have come to begin new lives on the mainland.

Florida and the US will never be the same.

This is the vanguard of the waves of climate change refugees who will eventually land on our shores. They follow those who have preceded them in smaller numbers fleeing US wars and economic dislocation through treaties like NAFTA. They arrive in a cultural climate in which immigrants are widely demonized. They will be caricaturized by politicians eager to stoke and manipulate public fear for political gain even as the reasons for their emigration remain largely unexamined.

The coming of the Boricuas, as they call themselves, has been relatively easy. Puerto Rico is an American commonwealth. And their numbers are comparatively small.

But climate change is no respecter of the imaginary lines on the earth’s surface called borders. And as superstorms are charged up by heated oceans and droughts, heat waves and firestorms ravage inland locations, desperate people will do whatever they can to save their families. That includes fleeing their homelands and crossing hostile borders. And it includes enduring vilification in the countries in which they seek refuge. 

Our world is changing. 

How will we respond? 

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Harry Scott Coverston

Orlando, Florida

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

harry.coverston@knights.ucf.edu

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)

 © Harry Coverston 2017

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