Spiritual Instruction Module: Cynthia Winton-‐Henry Ritual as High Play “People shall be called to account for all the permitted pleasures they failed to enjoy.” Talmud Contents Ritual as High Play Checklist for Creating Moo-‐ving Ritual: Body Prayer, Dobo, etc. High Play Rituals: Ceremony of Wings, Permission Slip Ritual, Ancestor: Pine Branch Spiral, House of Sacred Stories, Dance of Apology, Caution Tape Dance, InterSoulstice Chant Dance The Last Word: Hallelujah, by Osho Prayer is the Highest Form of Play.
Real ritual rattles us in just the right way when it helps us move deeper into life and open up against all odds. I’ve attended many, many rituals that were beautiful, meaningful, and necessary. Some of them bored and irritated me. But, my favorites were leaky, transparent, messy and swung on Spirit’s hinges with room for serendipities beyond human intention. Witnessing the ritual play of indigenous people I’ve glimpsed effortless humor-‐ filled mundanity give way to utter transcendence. I’ve wondered at the trust of ancient forms that allows people to drop ego, improvise and have fun. For this reason I do not resist tradition. The roots I need are there. Perhaps it’s just a sign of immaturity when we take any ritual too seriously. Ritual is high play, art handed over to a higher power whose biggest secret is that simple ingredients create great effect. As a body rests on bones, underlying pulses, room to be, and lots of breath so too does ritual. The modest template of a beginning middle and end will birth an imaginative space and the embodied actions needed to transform the ordinary into the sacred. The Mystery of this still amazes me. It’s like Terah Cox suggests in (The Light of Invisible Bodies)
The Path of Heart Song It's not the destination… But the path that takes you there It's not the path… But the dance that moves you down it It's not the dance… But the song that drives it It's not the song… But the dreaming hearts that sing it. How are we to trust the ability to rearrange, mess around and return the ordinary to be holy and wild? I decided to study dance and theology and work toward a PhD in worship. Was this necessary? Probably not. I was designing dance for worship in high school, and in my twenties literally toured artful liturgies for real congregations. To be honest, its just fun to train and think like a Catherine Bell who wrote Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice and reclaims the body by illuminating a single phrase in Ronald L. Grimes “Defining Nascent Ritual” Beginnings in Ritual Studies. To quote, “Ritualizing transpires as animated persons enact formative gestures in the face of receptivity during crucial times in founded places,” Breaking it down she exposes the underlying theory of embodied ritual that sounds like a prose poem. Here’s my edited version.
“...transpires... trans, spirare” means to breath across…breathing always gets away from us. So does ritual. We can form it and modulate it, but because it is a response to processes that encompass and exceed us, we cannot contain it for long. It escapes, finds other forms, and spawns new modes. ... as animated persons...To animate is to “enspirit.” Whether we imagine the animating power as a soul, deeper self, god, state, spirit, animal, cosmos, or society, the body in some sense borrows the life breathed into it. ... enact... ritual action is not an ordinary action... It is action thick with sensory meaning… Nongoal oriented actions...are the seedbeds of ritualizing….Not exhaustively explainable… not without sense just because those doing them cannot say what their actions mean. ... formative gestures...the total bearing of a body expressing a valued style of living, ritualizing physical ways of searching for the sources of creativity, struggling to connect what feels disconnected, trying to discern climactic turns in ongoing processes. ... in the face of receptivity... the surroundings expose a vulnerable (vulner = wound) side…The more deeply an enactment is received, the more an audience becomes a congregation and the more a performance becomes ritualized. “Sacred is the name we give to the deepest forms of receptivity”
... during crucial times... In ritualizing we concentrate, and thereby consecrate, time. The auspicious moment, the kairos, is a pulse of opening and closing…occurring when enactment and receptivity are in synchrony...in once-‐in-‐ a-‐life times and here-‐we-‐go-‐again times. ... in founded places...[Ritual spaces] are curiously vacant, even haunting, when the actions of ritual are not occurring in them….They are sequestered from the hubbub... with the establishment of perspectival boundaries: inside/outside, hidden/ revealed, open/closed, front/back Bell quotes Foucault as saying the body is “the place where the most minute and local social practices are linked up with the large scale organization of power.” The body is a political field. “Power relations…invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.” The body is the most basic and fundamental level of power relations, the “microphysics” of the micropolitics of power. Ritualization therefore is a strategic play of power, of domination and resistance, within the arena of the social body….that necessitates and engenders both consent and resistance…. does not assume or implement total social control….is a flexible strategy that requires complicity to the point of public consent, but not much more than that.
Ultimately, the resistance it addresses and produces is not merely a limit on the rite’s ability to control; it is also a feature of its efficacy.” This said, playing with ritual we pay attention to many things as Rumi says, translated by Nader Khhaliji Look at Love... how it tangles with the one fallen in love look at spirit how it fuses with earth giving it new life why are you so busy with this or that or good or bad pay attention to how things blend why talk about all the known and the unknown see how unknown merges into the known why think separately
of this life and the next when one is born from the last look at your heart and tongue one feels but deaf and dumb the other speaks in words and signs look at water and fire earth and wind enemies and friends all at once the wolf and the lamb the lion and the deer far away yet together look at the unity of this spring and winter manifested in the equinox you too must mingle my friends since the earth and the sky are mingled just for you and me be like sugarcane sweet yet silent don't get mixed up with bitter words my beloved grows right out of my own heart how much more union can there be
Checklist for Creating Moo-‐ving Ritual
Stay simple Let there be breath Be embodied Be yourself Let mystery surprise you. Play in present time. Do remember that spirituality is experiential. Use simple forms to retrieve and refresh soul: Dance, Story, Song, Stillness, Touch Do choose to focus on form and content. Find a simple structure and key story. 1) Gather in body (Seated or standing warm-‐up, breath, song) 2) Gather the people’s story (Walk Stop Run with 3 sentence stories.) 3) Uplift stories with dance, song, music. 4) Offer a tale for the time. (presentation) 5) Respond or notice in dance, song, music stories, stillness, poems, actions. 6) Bless and Raise the Energy 7) Close Do Respect the group. It’s the only way forward. Release unrealistic responsibility for conjuring emotions or saving people.
Build community each time you gather any group. Create clear endings and beginnings for any section and for the whole, except when the best transitions is no transition. JUMP! Put the group body first, while paying attention to individual needs. Balance individual and group needs. Over focus on either fatigues. Attend to how your body affects bodies in the group: Going on too long, too fast or slow will drain energy. Play with rhythms of lead and follow and call and response to help players engage or let go. Common Western Ritual Form Beginning–Call to Ritual: Sung or Spoken Prayer/Act/Call and Response Middle– Song Sacred Text Response in Dance, Song, Instrument, Silence, or Storied forms (duet/solo/ group) contact/ shape and stillness/ follow and lead). A Telling (Big Body stories etc.) Prayers or Dances on Behalf of with dancers or congregation Offerings Gifts, Song and Dance End– Blessing: sung or danced A Body Prayer Pattern: 30 minutes 1. Gather bodies through silence or song (3 minutes) 2. Ground, gather and release energies through movement such as InterPlay warm up and meditation. (7-‐10 minutes) 3. Intercessory movement and voice. Dancing/singing/speaking on behalf of those for whom we carry concern (3-‐5 minutes.) 4. Offering a gift, brief ritual or particular need for prayer. (10’) 5. Blessing (hand-‐to-‐hand contact, contact dances, circle dance, song, or stillness (3 minutes)
ONE-‐HOUR Dance On Behalf Of (DOBO) Prep One hour before: set up musicians/space/focal point/ beverages 15 minutes prior: ask people on the street for requests that we can dance, sing on behalf of. Welcome: verbal intro. Invite people to witness or join in. Opening: Start off with more shape at the beginning: Music/ Dance/ spoken word assigned in advance. Seated or Standing Warm-‐up to Awaken Spirit. Words of joy, concerns: brainstorm and write on individual pieces of paper. Dance on Behalf of Individual Concerns: Empty bowl placed in the space to receive paper prayers. Distribute prayers to dancers. One by one dancers read requests then dance or sing on behalf, placing each prayer in bowl before or after dancing. Alternate: Read concerns of the people while all dancers move side by side. Special Focus Invited Players, special guests offer improvised or prepared piece focused on a collective concern: Energy/ Place/Peace/Food. A leader may call forms that involve everyone along with space to witness stories, poems, or offerings, and observe stillness. Closing Toning, Group Songs, Group Hand Dance, other form. Share names, pass the hat, time for noticing, invitations to upcoming events, invitation to refreshment, Final Blessing to release the circle
Invitation to Volunteer Participants Your beauty changes the world. You are needed to improvise with silence, music, movement, dance, and spoken word on behalf of ________ in our communities to lift up physical connections and creative energy. make your offering on the street or in the room. offer your body to pray for transformation. This is an opportunity to chill, sing out, witness, move, and find center in a space where dancers, musicians, poets create on behalf of hopes, dreams, and concerns. We join hands with friends and strangers, breathe, play, and drink in beauty and truth. Stay for refreshments and to bless the neighborhood. Have anything you need dances on behalf off? We'll dance for you. Other Intentions 1) Allow people freedom to just witness! 2) Build email list. 3) Tell about events. 4) Expose people to a global social movement. 5) have fun and play. . Come early to Support movement, voice, art, ideas, musicians Set the space, set out luminaries, signs bring beverages/snacks Ask people for DOBO requests and write on postcards. Offer a card about DOBO event. Share requests at the DOBO. Greet people at the door, invite them to sign in with their email. Pass the hat at the end. Clean up.
High Play Rituals Ceremony of Wings, Permission Slip Ritual, Ancestor: Pine Branch Spiral, House of Sacred Stories, Dance of Apology, Caution Tape Dance, InterSoulstice Chant Dance A Danger of Angels Tradition says: Stand by the well and draw up water, bucket by small bucket. Stand on the shore. Watch waves lap up. Draw back from the tide. Sit in a concert. Hear the music. At the end, clap your hands. If you’re bold, whistle. Give a brief shout. Oh! So bold! And all the while, something is restless. Something stirs. Something dark whispers at your back. A rustle of wings. But no one’s there. You gaze down the well’s stony sides and see a face rippling back at you. Beckoning. A whisper: Come in. Get wet. Go deep. See what lives down here. A river perhaps that rushes under your life? You feel terror. You feel no.
You feel yes. The ocean too murmurs: Come in. Get wet. Swim. Let waves hold you up and knock you down. Sweep you off your timid feet. Batter you on rock, in swirling sand. And the music says: Be mine. Move out of your still, pale appreciation and into heat of color and sound, the place your body knows. The breath on your neck grows hot. A danger of angels say: Go! Into the well. Down dark stone walls where your very breath echoes, your heartbeat quickens and you meet the face that’s waited for you. The face that saw the stirring. The one that knew a bucket of water was too small a portion for your growing thirst. Go! say the angels. All your life you’ve stood on the shore. Stayed in your seat. Jump! Swim! Dance! You may die. You may drown. You may live.
The Ceremony of Wings: Celebration to Ritualize Passages
A little hoopla to affirm anything that got easier. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =qya_eyIt_jI You crossed the desert, danced backwards, snuck by alligators, dived to the bottom for treasure. You played and survived. You surrendered. You fought, lost and won. You may have a certificate, but, have you received your wings? Wings are granted by Spirit and loving community when we advance from one season to another. Wings are creative power multiplied by collective witness. Wings offer flight, freedom, and new views. Many have no wings for lack of community witness, wanting to remain discreet, or that in aging our ceremonies grow few. What do you need to ceremonialize, or are you called to witness others? Come, Play, and Celebrate. Going the Speed of the Body
Bev Voss My body-‐-‐slow as growing grass. And cool. It breathes the ghost breath of wind that rustles the top of the sycamore. And is gone. Can it match your heartbeat? It’s faster… a silver fish darting Behind the water hyacinth. Suspended there...perhaps forever. Perhaps there is no matching. Only the dance of slow and quick Gold and black flickers between Dark and the morning star Ancient wheelings of touch and go My body is restless as the dance when the music is captive still inside the wooden box. When the musicians delay fiddling with their strings, their bows. Stretch out a leg, an arm Let out the sound, the song, the groan. Fall into the moan of movement. Be the song. The dance. Wait no more for the musicians. They could tune themselves all night.
Tools and Practices: For Taking Up Space: Flaps Up Flaps Down To Beat the Clock: Expand from center rather than project To Increase Energy: Depleted? Fillerup. For Releasing Old Agreements: Get on, Get Off, Get Over It! Shake Out, Cut the Cord, Lift Up Warm up Meditation Where Are We Now? WSR with 3 sentence stories Whine Made Up Language Popcorn: Things We Saw or Learned Recently Wisdom of Flaps Up, Flaps Down, Letting Go of Integration. Witnessing Each Other’s Wings Dance With A Witness I could talk abouts: Gifts, miracles, superpowers used. Where was I alive? Did I Move, Sing, Tell, Stillness, Make Contact or Art Where was I in service– Body Mind Heart Spirit: needn’t be work Write, Doodle, Draw or Map Your Wings Initiations–anything that got easier Wild Affirmations in partners or group Things We Did this Week. Anything we practiced. DT3’s on initiations in Health, Learning, Family, Spirituality, Love, Business, Courageous Exploits. Create “I Got WINGS Certificates” The Wings Hoopla Using feather boas, a hula hoop, wings, and certificates to celebrate anything that got easier or can now move toward. One by one initiates choose a boa from the center to do a dance talk walk once around the outside of the circle sharing what got easier, culminating as they step into the hula hoop in the circle as it is lifted and shaken up from the floor and over their head saying HOOOOOOOOPLA! Then they receive their WINGS certificate” as group sings “I’m gonna lift my sister up….she’s not heavy.”
Permission Slip Ritual
Intersecting InterPlay and mindfulness in movement, voice, and stillness first we distinguish between the big body, small body and how to honor both. To create a more beautiful, restful, or creative life discern if we need permission for our big or little body. Make a permission slip and then get ready to claim permission in community! Do This by Bev Voss Follow color. Follow the look of gold-‐yellow next to burnt sienna next to turquoise and cobalt blue that look like Persian script escaping from a prayer.
Follow the shadow cast by sun that paints an inky branch of redbud on the morning blind. Follow the smear of brush dipped first in grey, then red, then orange. Fall into the darkness of wet black paint glistening like an oil slick or like death. I pause and want to weep. Nothing I write, nothing I draw shows the beauty I see. Nothing shows the restlessness, the horror, the danger, the dread. Nothing praises enough the green tulip that opened pink-‐-‐ a gasp of quiet glory. Who cares! whispers the muse. You are the song of God and the song is never God. But in failing to be God, sing louder. Draw more wildly. Dance more freely. God will smile and you will be the smile of God.
12/29/12 9:17 AM Ancestor Ritual Pine Branch Spiral Dance
The Tree of Life is a world-‐wide symbol of life and generational connection. The human body mirrors its roots, limbs, trunk and leaves. In a ceremony of music, drumming, song, movement and candle light we create a spiral with branches from the tree, bring an ancestral object for the altar, take time to write ancestral names on leaves and move our offerings into the heart of the Tree to honor our ancestors.
When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego, and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power, we shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down, we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper. D. H. Lawrence
House of Sacred Stories: Body & Soul
When did you last dance? When did you last sing? When did you last tell your story? Indigenous elders know that the Sacred shows up in many forms. Sometimes we can articulate what we know, sometimes we can’t. Yet we can honor the holy in our body, mind, heart, and spirit, see Spirit in others, and offer our part of the story. In the Spirithouse there is room for faith and no faith, the simple and extraordinary, the recognizable and mysterious, the contemplative and flamboyant, the funny and sad. Playfully listen in on sacred messages among us. circle wisdom-‐ sedonia cahill I invite you to enter for a moment into Sacred Time and Space, into a way of seeing that is broad and spacious. See this Day, from the time you arose this morning
until you sleep this evening, as one Ceremony, divided into small and familiar rituals, your Heart as the Altar. You, part of the Cycles of Light and Darkness. Now begin to see your Life, from the moment of your Conception until the time of your Death as one long, continuous Ceremony, filled with many rituals, some familiar, some unknown and challenging. Your Home and all Your Relations, the Altar. You, part of many Seasons and Cycles. Now see this Ceremony of your Life as part of a much larger Ceremony that extends Seven Generations into the Past and Seven into the Future, made up of many Births and Deaths. This beautiful spinning Earth the Altar. You, part of the great Ebb and Flow. Now, if you will, imagine this larger Ceremony to be but one part of a Ceremony so grand, so magnificent as to be hardly comprehensible, a great, vast Ceremonial Circle, rich and vibrant with millions upon millions of swirling Circles of Dancing Light, and You, one of those Dancing Circles, a Dancer on the Altar that is the Universe, where Time is Eternal. May You Dance In Beauty.
12/29/12 9:17 AM Dance of Apology
When we awaken to injustices perpetrated by our group on people or land and long to offer apology this ritual offers InterPlay practices to perform the collective apology and step toward living amends. Anyone oppressed or harmed needn't attend unless they desire to do so. Those under age 50 set the space. Elders who have done work related to the trespass are primary participants. This apology is not cathartic. Participation requires advance preparation. Praise What Comes ~ Jeanne Lohmann ~ surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs you never intended. At the end there may be no answers and only a few very simple questions: did I love, finish my task in the world? Learn at least one of the many names of God? At the intersections, the boundaries where one life began and another ended, the jumping-‐off places between fear and possibility, at the ragged edges of pain, did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?
InterSoulstice ChantDance
InterPlay warm up drum or instrument travels among and blesses movers. Stillness 1: Shape and stillness to rain stick and poem. Leader hands flower to each participant. Let’s meet at the confluence where you flow into me and one breath swirls between our lungs” 16 million tons of rain are falling every second
on the planet an ocean
Reader "Hymn to the sacred body of the universe" Drew Dillinger 1-‐3 Chant Leaders of different faiths
perpetually falling and every drop
Flowers in vase by the entrance Altar: greens in large vase, candle
is your body every motion, every feather, every thought
Drum, Instrumentalist, Rainstick, Meditation Bell.
is your body,
and the infinite curled inside like
Gather people to be seated or stand. Welcome everyone. During this soulstice meditation you will be invited to move, sing along or sit in stillness.
invisible rainbows folded into light every word of every tongue is love telling a story to her own ears let our lives be incense burning
Ishe Oluwa–One Earth or other earth chant in call & response http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ K-‐ixb8jxQ&feature=youtu.be
a hymn to the sacred body of the universe.
Chant or Instrument from the East for flower offering: Model placing a flower in the vase in gratitude for Earth, Creation, Creator. Others follow. Stillness 2: Sitting Meditation with meditation bell Invite people to lay down, be seated or stand to focus on breath, welcome renewal and let go of what is no longer needed, Poem is read to begin and end. my religion is rain my religion is stone my religion reveals itself to me in sweaty epiphanies every leaf, every river, every animal, my body Yemanja Chant from Brazil (The Queen of the Waters) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlQmDIpZztE Upbeat Gratitude ChantDances such as these Hebrew chants Walk Stop Run Flaps Up: “My cup overflows psalm 23” Interlocking contact meeting palm to palm and then look at hands. You are engraved on the palm of my hand/Hayn al kpayim chakotich Join hands singing call and response before leading into a line dance. http://rabbicreditor.blogspot.com/2012/11/olam-‐chesed-‐yibaneh-‐sung-‐by-‐smiling.html (Setting: Menachem Creditor) Olam chesed yibaneh. La la la la… I will build this world from love And you must build this world from love. And if we build this world from love, Then God will build this world from love. Hum and step side to side naming what we are grateful for.
Stillness 3: Be seated to witness or find a place dance as we use InterPlay forms with selected readings. 10 million people are dreaming that they are flying Junipers and violets are blossoming Stars exploding and being born God Is having Déjà vu (…) Let’s meet at the confluence where you flow into me.” Closing In a circle say each others names, take time to notice, share announcements Earth Song A solo voice to bless everyone
Caution Tape Dance in 5 movements
A large roll of caution tape from a hardward store. Singer, Flute, Drum, Bell, Amplified Music, or Poetry. Names of victims can be incorporated. Movement One: Admission A leader or a group unrolls caution tape through the people encouraging the audience to grab on (during music or poetry or a bell). “We admit we live in a web of caution, struggling against violence and rage.”
To fulfill a need for people to dance on behalf of issues of violence, notice growing levels of suspicion and reweave the web of community among the willing. This public dance requires strong improvisational leadership to hold space, call people in, and move them through simple processes with as few words as possible. Versions have been done at public and private events with up to 1000 people. Needed: A few participants prepared in advance who may be given special roles.
Movement Two: Confession Tighten and lift the tape to view the tension. Dancers may dance along and around the lines.
Movement Four: Reassurance Never underestimate the bodies need for reassurance. We begin by connecting to one another. Dancers make contact or engage hand to hand connection to music poetry, flute.
Movement Three: Intercession “Violence hurts us all. We lower the tape and stand together in silence (with music.) bearing witness to the harm done.” Dancers may move into shape and stillness dancing on behalf of victims.
Movement Five: Dreaming of throwing caution to the wind If desirable, small groups can lift dancers and move them through the space to music or a song to demand and dream of a world safe for every female, every child, every man and boy. Invite people to point up in the air and sing I’m going to lift my sister up she’s not heavy I’m gonna lift m y sister up she’s not heavy
I’m gonna lift my sister up she’s not heavy If I don’t lift her up. If I don’t lift her up. If I don’t lift her up. She will fall down. Dancers may gather caution tape, toss, play and dance away with the tape if appropriate to drums or percussion.
The Last Word: Hallelujah! By Osho Prayer is the Highest Form of Play chapter 5
The mind is a very small thing – it cannot contain the vastness of truth. So there is no way to
say it. It can be shown but cannot be said. It can be indicated... fingers pointing to the moon. That’s what all scriptures are: fingers pointing to the moon. But the finger is not the moon and the word ’god’ is not god;; the word ’love’ is not love either – just fingers pointing to the moon.
The fingers have forgotten – one has to look beyond the fingers; one should not become to
much attached to the fingers. One should not start sucking the finger. That’s what people have been doing down the ages. Reading the Bible again and again, or the Geeta again and again, is just sucking the finger. Just like a small child sucking his own thumb – utterly stupid; it is not going to help. See where the finger is pointing and don’t be caught in the finger itself.
All words are impotent when trying to say the truth, for a very basic reason: language is
schizophrenic. It divides reality, and god is indivisible, whole. If you say ’God is light,’ then of necessity you have denied darkness its divinity, then darkness is excluded and nothing can be excluded; god contains all. He is light and he is darkness too, because only he is. If you say ’God is love,’ then what will happen to hate?
Just the other day I was reading a very strange but very beautiful Hassidic saying:’God is not
nice; god is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.’ But again, even though the saying is beautiful, something is excluded: God is not an uncle.’ I say he is and he is not; he is both. God is a rose flower too, as much as he is an earthquake. And yes, god is sweet and bitter both. But this is the problem: if you say one thing, you exclude the other, and nothing can be excluded. Language cannot say anything without excluding something. Language cannot be all-‐inclusive, otherwise it will be meaningless. Its meaning depends on creating a split in existence.
Only music comes very close to saying it, but music is not language. No word is used – you
can only feel. Music makes no statements. It simply shows. You can be engulfed in it, you can be lost in it, you can have a taste on the tip of your tongue, or you can have a great pain in your heart – sweet, ecstatic. You can fall into oblivion, you can become drunk with it, but it says nothing: it shows. Music comes closest. Music is the best finger pointing to the moon. Even a song is not so good. A song is a compromise between language and music; a song has to use words. It becomes contaminated that much, but music is pure.
[Veet samvado] means: it cannot be said but it can be experienced. Just as one experiences
music, just as one experiences love, god is an experience, an existential experience. God is not philosophy but music, not theology but a dance.…Make it a meditation... go deeper into it. If one can find some bridge between oneself and any kind of music, that is the best thing in life. Then everything else is unnecessary. Music is the short-‐cut to god; all other paths are long and arduous. Just go deeper and deeper into it.