Rohadi TC, welcome. The question I ask all visitors to the show is to situate themselves to the land, situate themselves so listeners can get a picture geographically of where you are but also to name the traditional lands on which your feet touch right now. TC , so I'm coming to you from the ancestral homelands of the Dakota and the Ojibwe peoples. Commonly referred to as the Twin Cities. Rohadi Twin Cities. Which for our Canadian listeners who may not know. TC In Minnesota. , that's right. Rohadi And St. Paul. Which I've been to. I played a soccer tournament. A long time ago. It was either like '98 or like 95 or They called it the U.S.A. Cup. TC U.S.A. Cup? , up and up in Blaine, right? Blaine, Minnesota. Does that ring a bell? Ro I feel like it was close enough. We stayed on the campus the Gopher's campus. And so it must have been close enough. So I don't know if Blaine's close enough. it was so hot. That's what I remember. It was summer. It was so hot. Hey, you got this book. This is your debut, isn't it? TC , I, you know, a few years back when I was in LA, I was teaching a class on hermeneutics and I taught it. Probably 3 or 4 times and people were asking for some kind of physical resource. And so I compiled my notes from that book into a book. That I just self published but other than that no this is my first kind of published. Debut work. Ro Self-published books count. They count. This book Forged: following Jesus into a new kind of family. And what I want to unpack with you for the ball of our time. Is the concept of family. And what that looks like in in your contact so you can speak predominantly to your context but we also know that culture is shifting all around us and the church is usually slow to shift. And so what are your takes of how to develop how to build into this new picture, which may be an old picture of what family is. But before we do that, let's just jump in to situate we already have situated around geography, but to give Listeners a quick summary of your we were talking off-bear about your travels your travels as a minister because you have a cool story of juxtaposing family and belonging. In a past life and then you have this like road long road and you young But this long road of ministry as well. TC . , I think, you know, when it comes to forging family, I think the journey begins when I was 19 and I moved to New Orleans. That was really where I felt the call. To begin serving and to move into the neighborhood and to love my neighbors and serve my neighbors and I was there from 2000 to 2005. And if it weren't for Katrina, I'd probably still be there. Because Katrina really uprooted us in a very abrupt way. In a very like traumatic way too, like suddenly we realized we couldn't go home. And we had to find someplace else to live. And I had a buddy from Bible college who was from New York but had started seminary in Boston and he said we could come and stay with them in Boston. So the next leg of our travels was 10 years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, like 5 min from Harvard. Kind of intelligentsia land. You know, , it was, you know, very heady, very heavy time and I was in seminary as well. And during that period we planted a church and I started a mentoring program and we built our family. We added a few more kids to our family. So a couple of my kids are Bostonians. And then from Boston, we went clear cross country to LA for almost 3 years. And took a call out there to a church in downtown And, and then 6 years ago. I accepted a call here to to St. Paul. So I've been here for 6 years. Ro What's kind of neat that I found Although, would it be accurate to say that you you grew up in an urban context. Is that accurate? TC I think so. Champagne or band. I grew up in Champaign, Urbana, which is a campus town. It's probably a hundred 1,000 people, you know, and then the city swells to like, 150 when the college students come to town. It's like 50,000 college students and so it's you know it's 2 h south of Chicago a lot of Chicago transplants those are my friends. So I think of it as like, , I think of it as urban, but. Not urban in the sense of like. You know, major metropolitan area. . Right, right, , okay. Okay. Ro Your ministry journey has taken you into different cultural contexts as well. From that the heart of Harvard. To LA, which was, you minister, were you on skid row? TC The church that I was on staff at was about 2 blocks from Skid Row. It was on Spring Street, if you know downtown LA. It's like couple of blocks. . A lot of our like about a third of our congregation were currently experiencing homelessness. Ro Was that the first time that you would have engaged a church community. That was. In its makeup and its congregation crossed that type of intersection? TC Yes. So in Boston, I had a lot of. Friends who worked in in that in homeless ministries and so I had a lot of exposure to it but never in the church congregation. Not integrated like that. . That was that was a new experience for me and it was really eye-opening. I write about it in the book like people would come and visit and they would say What does this church do for the homeless? And I'd be like, What do you mean by the homeless? Like, like they're this group out there and I'm like they're part of our church. They're our sisters and brothers like are you talking about Tony? Because Tony is like my brother in Christ. Ro But dude's right here. TC Like, he's not the homeless. . Ro What does that do to shift your understanding of ministry? Like I, I think back of my own experience of when we, well, at church planted but quickly connected with 2 other small communities and we were in the inner city. And operate out of a coffee shop. And there were times where we would do these outreach events where the big church would send folks in to help. And you could tell the disconnect of wanting to serve. But not to not be too integrated. Versus when we would hold our version of services like we would have the unhoused youth or folks who were working in the industry come through and and with all of their reality they were part of the community and that shifted my understanding of ministry a lot a lot. I don't know if you pull out some some ideas of what types of say presuppositions or how about this formation of pastoral leadership that went through the ringer as you're like, oh, community looks like this. TC So the way that I described that in the book is by contrasting 2. Superhero Teams. So as a young Pentecostal preacher, Like one of my go to analogies was the X-men. I grew up on the X-men. That was like my favorite comic but growing up. And so if you're Pentecostal and you're in First Corinthians a lot and you're in Axe a lot You know, you're talking about the gifts and the body of Christ and everybody gets a gift and we're all superheroes and we're all we all have our superpowers. And so you kind of envision the body of Christ as this elite. Team who can all be superheroes in their own right You know, they don't really need the team. The team is just like an added bonus. You know, you could see Storm just being storm all by herself. You know, Storm doesn't need storm doesn't need Wolverine. Storm can just be storm all by herself. But along comes the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Guardians of the Galaxy. Depicts a different kind of superhero team where each member definitely has their gifts. But they need one another because they're on a healing journey together. They're in they're more interdependent. Than the X-men. I feel like they're all kind of misfits in their own way. And left to their own devices, they would sort of be screw ups, you know? But when they, but when they come together, they like form something better together, you know, and they're helping one another and they're forging family. They're really bonding in a way that they need one another and their community for one another. So I, I, I contrast those 2 teams in the book by saying, I used to have this picture of the church as like the churches like the X-men. But my my experience in LA was like, no, actually. The church is supposed to be the guardians of the galaxy. We're kind of like misfits and we're We're interdependent. We need one another and we're on a healing journey together. You know, I don't know if you've seen the sequel. Where Rocket kind of discovers his like origin, you know, man, that's emotional, man. I was in, I was in the, I was in the theater like. Choked up. Right. Ro Like, what's happening? Geez. Bradley Cooper, no. TC But they're on a healing journey, you know? And that's more like us. Ro I like like the unpacking and the use of that that metaphor and that also challenges so much of culture of which superheroes are built upon our culture to really emphasize the The supreme individual. So the call comes. You shift to The Twin Cities was that the first time you ministered in an intentionally, as I understood it, multi-ethnic context slash congregation. TC No, not at all. Actually. I was really, really fortunate to come to faith in a very diverse Pentecostal church in Urbana because it's a campus town, there's a lot of international students. And the church was situated right across the street from international student housing. And so the church that I learned how to follow Jesus in as a teenager was filled with people from around the world. And I got the benefit of just that cultural immersion and getting to know people who are so much different than me and grew up in so many different ways and so many different countries. So that that was actually my introduction to Christianity was was really the multi-ethnic church. And then from there in New Orleans, The ministry that I served and the churches that I served were all multi-ethnic with the exception of one. I did for a time. Was the youth pastor of a church in Buy you boutique, Louisiana, which is a real place. Buy you booty, Louisiana. And there, most of the youth, almost all of the youth were Cajun. And I remember them describing their culture to me and just being it being very, very different than what how I grew up. They rode boats to school through the through the bayou. Instead of like taking the bus like I would take the bus to school when I was a kid. They rode their boats and their their boats were called Pirogues. They were like flat bottom boats. And they like I rode my Pirogues to school this morning, you know, what is a Pirogues? So that's the only, non-multi-ethnic church. That I've ever served. But the church in LA was crazy diverse. The church in downtown LA We did a demographic study one year I was there and it was 18 to 22%. Black, white, Latino, and Asian. That's how that's how evenly distributed. The ethnicity was in that church. And like I said before, about a third of the church were currently experiencing homelessness. So it's very socioeconomically diverse as well. Ro Hmm , I think for the majority of churches and I know there are places in America, especially in the big cities where this is shifting a little bit, where you find more. Multi-ethnic churches, but by and large churches are described by their sameness. In fact, they're organized around sameness. Everyone earns thinks acts looks the same. Lives in the same place. Usually. So to have these Congregations that crisscross intersections is a gift. It's rare but it's a gift. Would you say that the churches that you can that you ministered in were multi-ethnic and congregation where they also that was the makeup of leadership expressive of the congregation as well? TC The church that I served in in LA, the lead pastor was Korean American. And the I think I was the only no there was another there was another white woman on staff So there was 2 white pastors on staff. Delonte Goldstein, who's a wonderful pastor in DC now, was on staff. He's African American. Our worship pastor like our pastor for musical worship was Latino it was a very very diverse staff really beautiful too, like our teamwork was amazing. Our chemistry was amazing. Up until it wasn't. Which I talk about in the book. So, , and then thinking back to in New Orleans, the church that I was a part of. In the neighborhood where I served was a AME church plant and the pastor was African American. And then let's see back in Boston. Soon Chan Rah planted the church that I attended for a while and then his successor Larry Kim, who's a good friend of mine, was the pastor, Korean American. So , for a while. I was on staff at a wonderful church in Dorchester called Rescued Church. Ricky Grant was the lead pastor of that church, African-american pastor, and Mako Nagasawa was the kind of teaching pastor, Japanese-american brother from like inner varsity background. Amazing, church, very, very diverse. I think it was Baptist. Ro That's That's a gift to be coming from Baptist, Pentecostal, non-denominational, and all these having different expressions of multi-ethnicity in them, although that doesn't solve every intersection of course, but that alone just. Tears away at some of the foundational perhaps attributes in the Western Church being racialized sameness. So you have all that underneath your belt as you move into St. Paul. Into a church that was already multi-ethnic, wasn't it? TC Planted by a Hmong American pastor in 2014. Ro And that's where you've been ever since. Well, let's go into like unpacking because that's that's really useful context for the listener but also as indicative of your own leadership context of now what informs you and your picture of what community can be. And how you lead and so forth like that. The language of family, let's let's go there now. Your book is about forged following Jesus into a new kind of family. I think right off the bat when folks hear that if you have Growing up in the church and that's not your jam anymore You might bristle at the notion of family. TC There was a cult called the family, Didn't Netflix do something about the family? Wasn't there like something about like There was a, are we talking about the same thing? Ro Oh no no no, you're talking about . Yes. Right in DC. , I remember that. There was so, there's a call calling the family. Then that the like the evangelical behind the scenes money money power , , , , . A prayer breakfast. And the family. , . Kind of like the type that the TC No, I actually addressed that in the book because I feel the same way. Because of my experience, Not having very much biological family to speak of it was just me and my mom and my mom was schizophrenic and never, never met my biological father, no siblings. So because of a lack of biological family. My concept of family in a healthy context has come from these, these relationships that I've forged over many years, right? In a kind of chosen family sort of way. So I have this positive outlook on family. But one time I was teaching on this concept at church and we do kind of a dialogue model and so there was talk back and so a wonderful sister in my church name Renee was like you know TC. You have this very like optimistic view of family. And she's like, but you know, to me, sometimes when I hear family, I hear insiders versus outsiders. and I was like, oh, that's good. That's good. Like I needed to hear that. And so I spend the second chapter of the book talking about some of the ways that family dynamics can become really toxic. And so for that chapter, I use Encanto as an example. And Kanto is a great like modern parable of the ways in which family can go wrong and the ways in which we need to understand enmeshment. And differentiation from our families. You could be too en meshed into your family unit that you don't really have your own sense of self and you could be so indifferent. To your to your family that you don't have a sense of solidarity, a sense of like collective with your family. And so there's this beautiful, you know, picture in Encanto at the end when Marabel really like discovers how to be in right relationship with her family through the toxicity, right? he has to work through, you know, Bruno being oppressed and being marginalized herself, right? Like, like that's all really good analogies for how we navigate our own biological families and chosen families as well. Another resource that I use in the book that I think is really helpful is a church called Tov. By Scott McKnight who really talks about some of these toxic culture traits that show up in institutional churches, which are easily identifiable and he's he's operating from the perspective of the institutional church and he's specifically addressing you know he was like theologian in residence at Willow Creek when that blew up so so he's addressing some of those toxic traits that we're that unveiled revealed in that time. So , so , I spend the second chapter really kind of addressing how family can go wrong and the red flags and when you need to walk away from a system that's toxic, right? RO In reality it sounds like this book is a reclamation of sorts of family especially for those who have come out of places where where they've been wounded they've been harmed by family, by community. It's like, I don't want to hear that word. Like the church, that's culty that is indicative of the us versus them and if you're not in you're out It is a way to be marginalized by people who are close to you. Like there's a lot of wounds for folks. Around, let's keep it with church community around church community. When I think of folks who are deconstructing, one of the biggest pieces is the grief that you hold when you try to call out the harm. And then you realize the folks who were your family. Actually nowhere to be found. And you are left alone. And that leaves wounds where you were gonna have a tough time to trust again. TC absolutely. I think for I I think for me, that's where the spirit steps in. So outside of those institutions that marginize those institutions that proclaim their family to you but then turn on you when you point out the inconsistencies or you just ask too many questions. I mean those institutions where you know just raising your hand and asking questions is too much. I think that's where outside of those institutions is where the spirit is at work forging family. That's where we discover our siblings. In Christ. And I use this analogy in the book to kind of contrast. The institutional church from. What I'm describing as forged family. There's a there's a famous story in the Gospels of Jesus taking James, Peter James and John with him up on a mountain. And on this mountain. Jesus reveals his heavenly glory to this these few you know, special. Disciples, right? Like 3 people in history have seen this, heavenly glory, right? And in the midst of this miracle, you know, Elijah shows up and Moses shows up. So this is amazing. This is a once in a forever kind of thing to happen. And in that exact moment, Peter goes, Hey, can we build 3 chapels right here? And even Luke says something like, he didn't know what he was talking about, you know? I just think that's such a perfect analogy for what we're doing when we're trying to institutionalize this movement of the spirit that is forging family. There's a miracle taking place where God is making strangers into family and we're saying can we build a chapel right here and just kind of box this up and bottle it into a 500, and one c 3 that we can, you know, get tax exempt status for like, no, that's the wrong question to be asking. And I think that like Sometimes in my journey, I have forged family in the midst of the local church and the local church has been the site where those bonds have been forged. But oftentimes it's been in the most informal relationships outside of the institution where I forged the strongest bonds in Christ. And I feel like that's what I'm trying to say is that we don't need. Another institution. We don't need to replace the crumbling one with a new one. We need to look for the miracle that the spirit is doing, in the midst of us. Ro Hmm. Now that's the challenge out there. So let's stick with it and and stick with folks who have grown up with so you know a lot of the language around. A lot of the language around family that you use, I don't think a lot of readers would be, would find that foreign. They would resonate or they have heard it before. What that conjures up, however, might be those aspects of being wounded. Of the harm. So Why should I trust again? Why should I draw myself into the prospects and and I love how you've put it because I think you're you're right, Christianity is calling us into a new logic of how to Do community. And I wonder if many of us who have been, well, if you have been harmed in that and there hasn't been repair, then that wasn't it. But it's so glib for a minister like you and I to be like Oh, just, you know, come on through like won't happen again. Won't happen here. But forget that no no this place this place. We can be family Why should these folks trust? TC Well, , I don't think that I'm inviting people into a new you know church like i'm not standing at the door and being like this time will be different I'm saying, man, if you need to leave my church. To find Forged family. Do it. Like that's where the spirit is at work. The movement of the spirit is not confined to any one church or any denomination or I would even argue even any faith tradition, you know, God is God is bigger than our than our faith traditions. So The spirit is at work forging family. I don't know if it's a matter of trying. I think the spirit is going to lead you. And draw you into forged family. One of the things I say in the book is that God was family before anything else existed. God was family all by God's self. The, you know, the the way that early Jesus disciples conceptualized God was as love. And how do we understand God being love? How can God be love? Well, one of the ways that early Christians conceptualized this was inside of God's self. There is lover, beloved, and the love they share. There's this movement of love. This parachoretic dance of love within God God's self. And so this movement of love. Was already forming family before the world began. And so I'm saying in this book that that same spirit. Is at work in the world right now? Forming family, forging family. And I'm not I'm not asking people to just trust that another institution is not going to hurt you this time. 'm saying Trust the God who is love to lead you into forged family wherever you are. I was not looking for Forge family. I didn't go, I didn't go like, Hey, I'm gonna try again with this church. No, I was lost. I was lost and scared and hurting and broken and the spirit set me in family. That's what Psalm 58 says. It says, God is a father to the fatherless, setting the lonely in families. RO Okay, fill in the gap here because that was so good. There you you as as leader as past here did not create the strategy or the or the ministry or the outreach. To you know the forged family outreach program you didn't have that and then you were called the spirit guided you into a place where the possibilities of such a family could take place. Where are the pieces there? TC I'm describing my own, sort of encounter with the spirit when I was, when I was 16, almost 17 years old. You know, I, I, I got invited to a church, but I was not trying to become part of a church. I mean, that was the last thing on my mind was like. Joining a church or even becoming a Christian was not on my mind. But I had this encounter with the living God that I couldn't deny in my experience. So what I'm saying is that When people are wounded, when people are ostracized when they are cast out. With those people first. That's where God is at work. In the marginalized among those and the spirit is drawing those communities into forged family. RO Oooh That's a good one. TC Like, okay, for example, here's a here's a great example. Where do we see right now in society? The strongest examples of chosen family. In the LGBT community. That's where chosen family is really taking root. And supplanting the traditional concepts of family. Why is that? Because they're marginalized. Because they've been cast out of institutions, even their own families. That is where the spirits out work. Ro , I've heard that somewhere. It's almost as if last shall be first that there is this , , can you imagine and the spirit is working on the margins first? To build this chosen family. Okay, I'm not going to put it within a church context. Let's stick with marginalized communities because whether it's LGBTQ, whether it is disabled. Whether it is racialized. Let's not put it within a church context, but it actually makes a lot of sense when it is there in healthy expressions. But facets, features. Pieces that I if I'm drawn into the potential of said family would be able to notice as markers of health What are those pieces of chosen family? What am I looking up for? What are the rhythms? What are unpacked up for us? TC The first one I would say is The sharing of your life. When I was 17 and needed to understand what wholeness and healing and purpose in my life looked like, someone shared their life with me. Someone drew me into their orbit. And walked with me as I wrestled with these questions. And made mistakes and got up again and tried something new. That act of solidarity, that act of loyalty, that act of community. Is the first step to forging family. You got to be open and vulnerable. You got to be willing to share your life. I quote the apostle Paul in that chapter who said, we, we not only shared the gospel with you, but we shared our own lives as well. It's not just about a message or a book. It's about a person and embodied in fleshed reality, right? I didn't need a handbook when I was 17. I needed a person to walk with me. To be that guide, to be that companion on the journey. That's step one. And then inevitably in any kind of loyal, committed relationship, you're going to have to figure out how to work through conflict. So I have a chapter on how do we work through conflict. If we're going to be committed to each other for the long haul. We got to have a framework. We got to have a way of approaching conflict that's going to get us through to the other side. Right, so Forged families are they share their lives with one another. They work through conflict. And then, like you said, they have rhythms. So. Every family is going to develop rhythms. Like for example, I don't use this example in the book, but my family has this. Quirky tradition of going to the movies on Christmas morning in our PJs. That's just something that emerged organically out of our family culture. You know, I think 1 one Christmas morning we were like, hey, we're all still in our PJs. Let's go to the movies. I don't know how it happened honestly, but it's just become this family tradition. And last Christmas, 2 of my kids came downstairs. They were not in their PJs. And my oldest was like, what are you doing? Go back upstairs, put your PJs on. Like you're not ruining the family tradition, right? It was so funny to watch him be the guardian of this tradition. Right? And so like families develop these rhythms. In Christ, we have these rhythms of gathering together around a meal. And it's so fascinating to me that Jesus didn't give us manual didn't give us a book didn't give us 16 fundamental truths she just gave us a meal to gather around a table and to share our lives with one another. As as so many people can testify to when you share a meal with someone, you share a part of yourself. You cook for them, you express some of your culture in that cooking, you sit around the table, you get to know one another. There's something about a meal that brings people together in an intimate way. That's a rhythm. Another one is, serving one another. I think forged families get into a rhythm of serving one another. You need something. I'm there for you. I need something. You're there for me. They show up for one another and they serve one another. That becomes a rhythm. And then lastly, I think forged families have to have a prophetic witness. And what I mean by that is, I have a chapter called. Giving special honor. Giving special honor. So I have a chapter in the book called Giving Special Honor because Forged families are aware of their social locations. They're aware of their relationship to the broader society and how it's unjustly structured. And they're creating equity within the community. To combat and to be a witness to that broader community. And then, and then solidarity, I guess the last one would be solidarity. So my last chapter is called Love in Public and it's about the murder of George Floyd because in our community in St. Paul, There was tension. Simmering beneath the surface between the Mong community and the black community. And this rose to the surface when one of the officers who sort of Handled crowd control while Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, you know, he was Hmong American. And this really kind of this exacerbated that tension. And at the same time that was going on, our church had invited a precious brother to me, Der Lore, on staff among American brother to be a pastor in residence as he was seeking his next call. And Dur and I went down to the third precinct. The night that it was burned down and we were out there and We were part of the protest, we were part of the, you know. he kind of open air service that was there. You know, Durs sign was really simple. It said, Hmong Americans for Black Lives. And I felt like that simple act of solidarity was so prophetic in that moment in that context. So those are sort of like the markers, the signs of forged family, I would say. Ro I really value those and I can see however I want to talk about the rhythms, but before that step one, I can see how There's a problem there. Because if you It's a paradox. It's a paradox really. When it comes to relationship and vulnerability, in that you don't want to get hurt again. Yet in order to find your whole self, you need to be in community. See you gotta risk it again. And that's just like this huge unknown. It's stymies, I think, most people into let's not do that again. And if you're, you know, a good Asian like me, let's just bury that and never go that way again and never talk about it. What we got to do. To be vulnerable again, we So I, I feel like there is a block. In that space especially for folks who have been wounded. By community before. 30 to get into a place where You can be vulnerable again because That's risky. That's risky. What should we do with that? TC For me, it wasn't a conscious choice. I felt led by the spirit into relationships in which I did not. Choose? I was invited. I was shown radical hospitality in a way that could only be from God. And that opened me up. To be vulnerable because I sense the spirit at work in this community. I sense the spirit at work in these relationships. And I think you have to be discerning. You know, not every community, not every relationship is the right one. So I think you have to really rely on your. Your gut. You have to rely on the spirit within you. You have to rely on your intuition to say, Is this a person that I can that I can open up to? Is this a community that will that will believe me that will that will hold my story with honor that will, treat me with dignity. And if not, the spirit is not leading you. There. The spirit is not leading you there. Ro He's peace. Peace out. That's there's something to be said about as As we deal if folks have come out of places where they have been wounded, whether where they have been othered or wronged, marginalized that There's work around dealing with that grief. Individual work you know you have to deal with that grief unfortunately You have to deal with that grief and and when we do It in fact builds a capacity, an alertness, a consciousness around identifying and this is a skill. Of naming. When those red flags pop up again. So in fact, our healing and always healing. Healing leads us into a place that developing competencies around being more alert and aware. Of the baddies. B ut our wholeness is found in in the community. I appreciate the rhythms, rhythms and and I just read a book on rituals. And how we as society we have lost are so many rituals. And how they are used to has these grounding pieces to our day-to-day and beyond narratives of life. The rituals and the rhythms. I wonder how that plays into as I mused out loud on this and maybe will trail out now. On ultimately belonging. That not merely rhythms of belonging but how Our yearning for belonging right now is one that can send us down the road of polarization. And that so many of us aren't ready to. Or I'm still unpacking this but aren't ready to risk. Looking inside of ourselves for that sense of community that we'll find. Places and spaces that in fact detract from our humanity. And spit out a certain venom of self. And so when I look at the polarization around politics in America and in Canada now, We have, I think underneath the surface problems of Belonging of community of identity surrounding healthy community and belonging. TC , I learned a lot from, I don't know if you've read any of his work, but, James KA. Smith has done a lot of work on cultural liturgies. And the ways in which society has these rituals. That are almost invisible to those who are to those for whom they're normative, right? We go through the motions sometimes. Unconsciously and just do these things that We don't even realize our forming us in a certain way. Like for example, here in the Twin Cities, you know, there's a lot of sporting events and I've been to a lot of sporting events and if you know if you go to a twins game and you get there early enough. You know, they're gonna be like, please remove your hats and place your hands over your hearts for the national anthem and I'm like, I'm not doing that. You can announce it over the loudspeaker but I don't know why you think you're gonna get compliance that way. That's a cultural liturgy that they're like, please. Please place your heart. Please place your hand over your heart. What does that symbolize? This anthem is really going to the heart of me. This, I'm really pledging my allegiance, my heart. To this flag, to this nation, right? It's literally a ritual. About allegiance, you know, and people just do it kind of unconscious. Like, yep, that's what you do at the baseball game. You pledge your allegiance to the flag and , I mean, so. We have to be intentional about the rituals that we form. That we enact in our forced families. What are the embodied practices? That are forming us in a healthy way towards healthy allegiances. I remember, so I tell this during the book, I remember when I was working with youth that are court involved. And this young man was talking about how he wants to turn over a new leaf. He's done with the life that he was living and he's ready to like cut off those friends. And start living a new life. And A friend of mine was there and he was like, that's not good enough. He's like, you can't just cut off the people that you were with before. You have to gather with your with new people who are on a different kind of time. You know, and have a different kind of mindset and you got to gather with them on a regular basis and you've got to like practice. Something grounding, meditation, you got to do something together that's going to keep you mentally focused on what your goals are and I was looking at this guy like, are you really describing church? Are you like, should he do it once a week on Sunday morning? Should he, you know, like, but like, but, we intuitively know that we need each other and we need these rhythms that are going to form us in the right direction. It's just are we intentional about the kind of rituals that we develop for ourselves and for our communities that are forming us in the right direction. And sometimes we aren't. Sometimes we just go through the emotions. Well, that's how we've always done it. That's what my, you know, previous, that's what my grandfather did, you know, it's like. Maybe the rituals need to change. RO maybe the and I think rituals do change as those who upheld them in the past. They go away, they pass on, and then the next gen comes through to. Question whether or not they still hold value for us. I think that that's search for belonging or community that's search for family can lead you in a place where you fill that void. We all need it, but you can fill that void with. Aspects that detract from your humanity. Communities that detract from the humanity of those on the marginalized, which would be a great litmus test. You know, measure based on how your rituals, your ideas, your community, your family treat those on the margins first. But we still hold that. In the tension of we need this and if I don't have it I need to risk trying to find it again so I don't venture these mean streets alone. Hey, we, we criss crossed the galaxy here on family and it was so good. I wonder if you want to trail off and leave us with a shout-outs to where folks can find you and your book. TC So it releases on February thirteenth, but from what I've been told, Amazon just ships books as soon as they get them. People are already getting their pre orders now. So, you know, , it's out in a sense and and you can go to forged family.com. That's a book website where you can pre-order from various venues including bookshop if you're not into the big corporate booksellers Bookshop is a indie local bookstore seller and you can order it directly from Broadleaf Ro Where can folks find you on line? TC I have a, a page about myself@tcmoor.net. M. You know, I am kind of reluctantly, now, I'm not on you know, formerly known as Twitter X. I'm not on X anymore. I think I'm on threads and and Instagram. , follow me on Instagram, TC, underscore more. I'm on Instagram and I'm on Facebook. Look me up on Facebook. Ro Cool. Well, next, next time in Twin Cities. I'll roll through. TC You coming back to the U.S.A. Cup? , why not? That would be great. Ro No, they don't have an over 40 division. . I'd be dead. Forget it.