Johnson and Washington the head of NATO is calling the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakar duddy a milestone in the fight against Islamic state but as Teri Schultz reports Secretary-General un Stoltenberg is also warning that battle is far from over our mission is not yet entirely fulfilled secretary general Stoltenberg says in an interview with the German weekly build on Sun tug NATO and its 29 allies are all members of the global coalition to defeat Islamic state still Timberg emphasizes while I asked Doesn't hold territory anymore it sells the networks are still intact as the group reorganizes and tries to make a comeback after al Baghdadi was killed last week in a us raid in Syria I as named. As his successor still Timberg also dismissed calls for NATO to take action against Turkey for its incursion into northern Syria he says Turkey is an important ally that's helped both in fighting i.a.s. And hosting refugees from Syria's civil war for n.p.r. News I'm Terry Schultz in Brussels and the 26.2 mile New York City Marathon the winners are for the men Geoffrey Kemp war of Kenya his 2nd victory in 3 years and Joycelyn Jep coast also of Kenya this is n.p.r. News. Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper is for sale as Vicki Barker reports from London one prospective buyer is Trump loyalists Steve Bannon the former executive chairman of Breitbart News its nickname is the Tory Graf The Daily Telegraph has always been the newspaper of record for Britain's Conservative or Tory voters and its tone has often reflected the genteel courtly sometimes eccentric preoccupations of its readers but to Steve van and the Telegraph is and on tap to resource he's told The Sunday Times of London he'd like to turn it into a global platform promoting populist nationalism that's something Bannan himself has been attempting across Europe both in public appearances and in private approaches to nationalist groups it is not clear though if Bannon can come up with the newspaper's $130000000.00 asking price for n.p.r. News I'm Vicki Barker in London in Hong Kong today the riot police stormed several malls in a move to thwart more pro-democracy protests but violence broke out the when a knife wielding man slashed several people and bit off part of the ear of a local pro-democracy politician there were calls on line urging protesters to gather in 7 locations to sustain a push for political reform following a chaotic day of clashes with police yesterday as the anti-government movement shows no signs of letting up it has been ongoing there for nearly 5 months I'm Louise Schiavone n.p.r. News Washington support for n.p.r. Comes from noon offering a personalized weight loss program based on a cognitive behavioral approach with the goal of losing weight and keeping it off for a good learn more at noon and 000 m. Dot com and listeners like you who donated this n.p.r. Station. M.b.o. Rex This is the Moth Radio Hour I'm Jay Allison producer of the show and coming up we bring you a special live hour recorded at the Players Club The New York City the players was founded in the 1900 centuries a social club for actors by Edwin Booth and friends is housed in a Dr Revival style mansion on grammar see Park most storytellers stand on stage there in a lovely room surrounded by or neatly framed oil paintings of players club members the theme of this evening was tangled and twisted stories of the ties that bind and the host is author and storyteller Peter a boring Welcome to the Mafia everybody. Thank you so much. I think tonight is the ties that bind our 1st story teller when I asked her what was the last rule that you broke she said I jaywalked with my dog Daffy Duck I'm not a splash not narrow were. I used to be a high school English teacher and so words are very important to me you know words have a tremendous amount of power good or bad and you have to be so careful about the words that you choose in my life there are certain words that have tremendous significance and that's really the heart of what I want to tell you about. I met my husband in college and when we would dating we found out that each of us had a cousin who had an adopted child and each of us had a ready made a life plan that included adoption so when we decided to get married we knew just what we were going to do we were going to have a bunch of kids and then we would absolutely adopt Sometimes though life does not work out the way you expect when we 1st got married I didn't want to have kids yet my husband was in school and I was working and I loved my work then eventually I wanted to have kids and I couldn't get pregnant it was really hard it took a very long time finally I got pregnant I had a wonderful pregnancy but the baby had birth defects and died at birth not a good thing hospitals today are far more sensitive than they used to be when a baby dies in those days I didn't see the baby I never held him or said goodbye we had we named him my husband and I and we made arrangements to bury him cause that's what you do but there I was in the hospital devastated all around me were flowers and balloons and mothers in the babies and I went home with no baby back into my neighborhood where it looked like everybody was a young couple having children it was just awful I felt so disconnected Well now I wanted to have a baby more than ever and I still couldn't get pregnant so I went back to teaching and then one day there was one of those moments you know the ones that change the whole rest of your life forever. I was teaching and the teacher came in from next door and she said to me Maris I have to leave early because my brother and sister in law just adopted a baby from Seattle and I want to go see the baby but that was it for me I went home and I said to my husband we said we were going to adopt someday anyway he has thought chance How about if we find out what that couple did and maybe we can adopt a baby now he was fine with that and I did it I spoke to the sister in law and I spoke to the adoption attorney in Seattle and 6 months later we got a coal to come and pick up on newborn baby daughter it was an incredibly exciting time we flew to Seattle on a Sunday I couldn't hold the baby till Monday after we went to court but I could see her so there we were the attorney took us to the hospital only when my husband and I will walking down the car door to get to the big nursery window and I knew I had to warn him because I'm the oldest of 4 and he's the younger of 2 and really didn't know anything about babies so I said to him Listen newborn babies not always pretty. In fact sometimes they're really funny looking but it's Ok they get better just be prepared and sure enough we got to the window of the nursery and there in front of me were 5 of the ugliest babies I had ever seen I didn't. I just wanted to know which one was mine. The attorney said something to the nurse and I figured she was going to point out which was our baby only instead from the back of the nursery came another nurse carrying a newborn wrapped in a new pink blanket that was our baby and I have to tell you she was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen in my life what she really beautiful Who knows but she certainly was beautiful to us the next day we went to court we did everything we had to do and we brought her home now I have to tell you that in the months that we were waiting for that phone call I had an opportunity to talk to a surgeon about having a procedure that maybe would help me get pregnant and I said to the surgeon I don't know what to do we're supposed to adopt a baby and the surgeon said to me Marris this procedure only works half the time anyway and if you do get pregnant it won't be for probably a year or more so have the procedure and go adopt a baby but would you like me to tell you the sequence of events I had the surgery in September we picked up a daughter in November I became pregnant in January and 10 months and 3 weeks after our daughter was born our son was born so now we had 2 babies why am I telling you this because soap words because we never imagined in a 1000000 years that we would hear the words that we heard when we entered this new world of having a baby by birth and a baby by adoption I mean people said really strange things it was not nice words when our son was born somebody said to me Well aren't you sorry you didn't wait a little longer in other words why did we bother going to Seattle and then something worse than that somebody else said to me well you're going to give that girl back now aren't you now that you have your own child incredible as though our daughter were any less my own child than Austin was. People would just amazing we ended up adding a 3rd child to our family by adoption we had had 2 babies in a year I didn't want to double baby so we did what in those years was considered a very brave fact we adopted what was then an older child I wrote a letter and sent an application to a big international adoption agency and we got a referral of a 3 year old girl from Korea who needed a family that's not like today today when you get an international referral you get a photo album you get a video you get a file of medical to bring to your pediatrician not then we got a couple of pages of information which was fine with us and one little picture like a mug shot of this little girl with a very serious face it was enough for us I immediately wrote back to that agency said Yeah we'll take up absolutely she's our earth and then we waited for her to come to America well it was the end of the Vietnam War and it took a really long time we ended up going to Kennedy Airport probably 6 or 7 months later and by coincidence it was a friend of ours who was the bogland here who was bringing her off the plane so as they were walking toward us what struck me was that she wasn't bringing me some new child some stranger who was just coming into our family she was bringing us our daughter who had been our daughter for 6 months are ready and was just finally coming home. Now there we were an interesting family don't you think somebody didn't say something those words again somebody actually said to me Marris it's obvious that you love all 3 of your children but didn't you feel RINGBACK just a little bit different when your son was born after all he's your blood. Now I would have liked to have had the words right then and there to answer people like that and to tell them how I felt about my children but I didn't have the I who love words did not have the words 3 years to really know how to answer people and it didn't stop fast forward 25 years our 3 children a terrific they all grew up great and they all got married imagine 3 out of 3 which is in itself a standing and our son who is our birth child married a woman who had been adopted as a baby so yeah so we had 2 adopted daughters and an adopted daughter in law who in fact has truly become our 3rd daughter and all of them decided they wanted to start a family but you know what I said would you want to adopt and in essence all 3 women answered me the same way oh mom we want to have a baby rightfully so and they did in the course of 15 months each of those 3 women gave birth to a baby girl so now we had these 3 incredible delicious granddaughters not genetically related to each other don't look anything like each other but their close cousins they talk to each other they laugh with each other they play with each other they love each other and all the rest of that stuff is just details that they don't care about don't you think somebody didn't say something to me about them somebody actually said to me math it's obvious that you love all 3 of your grandchildren but didn't you feel just a little bit different when you son's wife had a baby if they're all that once you know blood incredible what people say anyway as our kids got bigger I went back to school and I became a social worker and I. I started to do work with an adoption agency I loved doing adoption work because I was bringing other people to the place where I was and then a bunch of us who did this work together decided that we wanted to open our own adoption agency and we wanted to do it the best possible way we opened our own adoption agency family focus in Queens and it's still going strong all these years later so there we were are sitting around thinking well what should we say to people who come in the door after all people come in they don't know what adoption is we have to be able to explain it to them so that they can decide if it's even something they want to do so I was going to be the trainer of these new families because I was a teacher and I are ready knew in my head what I would say to new people listen adoption isn't just when you go to court and a judge signs papers and it isn't just when a social worker comes to your house and writes a report and you give all this documentation and paperwork adoption is different and it's way more than that and that's when I came on a word the best word and actually the word that had probably been inside of me all of those years and all of a sudden it popped right out of my mouth I said I know what adoption is it's just a claim you make you claim your child. And it's forever and that's it everybody in the room picked up on the power of that word right away and in fact we've been using it in our training in all these years since and I'll tell you that all adoptive parents understand it because what it is saying is that we claim our children exactly the way birth parents claim their birth children and I'll tell you who else understands that step parents many step parents can never go to court to legally claim the a step children but in their hearts they absolutely claim them and that's forever to an end adoptive parents don't only have to claim babies a woman once came to our agency who wanted to adopt really an older child not like my 3 year old and she looked in a picture book of children who needed to be adopted and she saw a teenage boy who really needed a family he had some learning disabilities he had some medical issues but mostly he had had many many disappointments in his life she liked him she read his material she asked if she could meet him we introduce them they got along really well she visited with him a very long time until he felt comfortable enough to move into her house she moved in and they went to court and she adopted him 2 years later I happen to bump into her at a conference after we did this whole big hello this mutual Hello I said Aha So how's Larry Oh she said and she reached into her giant pocketbook and pulled out one of those little plastic photo albums the kind that new mothers a new grandmothers used to have before everybody put their pictures in a smart phone and she said Look Larry graduated from high school he has his picture and he went to the. Problem look at his tuxedo and here he is in his uniform working in McDonald's and I realized this was a new mother who had claimed her baby didn't matter that he was 18 years old he was her baby and she was one happy woman so did I ever claim my baby that died or did I remain forever disconnected of course I claimed him absolutely I realized long long ago that he is every bit as much my child as all of the others and as far as that ridiculous question when you love a child you didn't create as much as you love your blood child I have an answer for that too now and it's really simple there is no such thing as as much as because love is not measurable our children all of our children are claimed by us and that's it what's ours is ours and that's my last word. Thank you very. Very seminaries brush International. Maris bless Schnur is a licensed clinical social worker and educator she spent the last 38 years working for the improvement of adoption and the child welfare system in addition to training and doing consulting she also mentors for children score and teaches at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. You want to make contact with the market on Facebook or Twitter you can find us at the mall coming up more stories from this live event at the Players Club in New York City. 'd 1 The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts and presented by p.r. X. In her short musical career Janis Joplin's impact as a tenacious artist performer and human being was unparalleled she had this kind of fearlessness that she would just push yourself. Beyond Fear we discussed the life and legacy of the legendary Janis Joplin this week on sound and that sound opinion Sunday afternoon at 4 here on j p r. You can surf the web with any internet connection but there's just one Jeff that the only i.s.p. The directly supports j p r Jeff net is a noncommercial community oriented service of the j.p. Your listeners guild and your subscription helps us underwrite the new music and entertainment we bring you on the air and online you need an internet connection so choose the one that supports your favorite public radio station choose just learn how and Jeff not dot org or call us at 866 Jeff now. This is the Moth Radio Hour from p.r. X. I'm Jay Allison you're listening to a special edition of The Moth Radio Hour with stories we're corded live at an event held in New York City with the theme The Ties That Bind here's your host Peter a go arrow Ok We're going to keep moving on our next story teller when I asked him what his last rule that he broke This is a quote he said I use this out of my laptop and between landing and before we got to the gate. Please welcome Joshua Wolf to shank. Thank you. My parents split up when I was 7 years old and they got joint custody My mom stayed in the house on Hilltop lane and my dad moved to a crappy apartment about 5 minutes away and then he moved to a little house in another house he was always. 5 minutes away if you put a compass needle in my mom's house and swung it around it was always the same distance and I would go back and forth between them and I never really felt like I was home either place it was like I lived in that space in between it was like being a pinball except for my parents were super hostile to each other they were very lonely and unhappy people of that time so I was like bouncing back and forth between these 2 angry bumpers making this very loud screeching sound I came up left I left home and went to college and I had this split in me no matter where I lived there was always one specific place I thought I should be that wasn't my home I lived in Manhattan and I looked with these wide eyes over the river at Brooklyn and then I moved to Brooklyn and I look back at Manhattan with the exact same expression and I had enough therapy to know what was going on Brooklyn was like my mom and more. Warm and inviting and how it was like my dad elusive and bipolar but I. I couldn't shake it I went for a run one day and I got all emotional and I came back and I called my mom. We had gotten to be very good friends as I grew up and I said Mom I had this breakthrough on my run I realize why I can't settle down and get a home of my own there's a part of me that still feels like the little boy living on Hilltop lane and I think that that little boy Me thinks that if he gets a home of his own that means dad is really not coming back. My dad was definitely not coming back. After I went to college he came into some money and he started traveling all around the world he was a photographer a great photographer and he would pack up his equipment and go and I often litter literally did not know where in the world he was and I would beg him to tell me his itinerary so I could track him in my mind but even that stopped mattering because he studied for his pilot's license and bought a little plane and began to fly himself and he really did try to show up he came to my brother John's wedding and he was there for the rehearsal dinner and he was there for the wedding but on Sunday morning when I woke up I said where's dad and someone said he flew out at dawn he was an awkward guy around a lot of us but the sort of dark heart of his energy in those years was this fury at my mom decades after they divorced he couldn't stand to be in the same room with her and so he just got further and further away and higher and higher up in the sky until one day suddenly he came down in April 2008 my dad was flying from Colorado where he had he was living to Virginia and he was going to stop in lieu of will for the night just for one night that was his way and as he approached. The airport and suburban Louisville Bowman field something happened with the plane and it and it came down quickly through the trees and into this suburban neighborhood and smashed on the ground and went careening through a yard across a road and smacked into a retaining wall and burst into flames and this little girl saw it from her front window and called 911 and they said What's the emergency and she said there's a plane on fire at my front yard and it took at least 5 minutes for the fire crew to get there my dad was trapped in the cockpit burning and it took a few more minutes for them to get the fire out and and and extract him from this tangled and twisted plane when I saw him late that night in the burn unit at university a little hospital his head had swollen to the size of a basketball and was all wrapped in as he had 2nd and 3rd degree burns over 70 percent of his body his back was broken and if he survived he would surely be paralyzed I hate euphemisms but the doctors used was actually a very good euphemism they said we should prepare for the worst and the worst thing for me is that if my dad died in that moment he would die with us as strangers felt like every everywhere I went I had this white board in my mind these 3 phrases that describe my relationship with my dad I felt that we couldn't connect we never connected and I felt that I wasn't useful to him and I didn't know if he was proud of me and. He was in a coma and I was carrying this I was walking around in this days and now the split in me was the split between wherever I had to be for work and the hospital and I would come see him for about a week at a time and sit by his side for long hours with him in a coma on the worrying and clicking of of all these machines keeping him alive and then he was well enough still in terrible shape but well enough for them to bring him out of this coma and one day it was sitting with him he was unable to speak but he was awake and this was a moment when I thought maybe this is going to be like one of those movies where the worst possible thing has this underpinning of light kind of coming up from underneath because my mom had come up to be with me and she was in the waiting room she would never have dared to actually come and into the into the hospital room and I said Dad had Mom is out there would you like to see here and he nodded his head yes I felt he was so vulnerable that anyone who had any kind of tenderness for him in needed he needed to have them in his life and about a a month later he was high on morphine and my mom was on the phone with one of us and he he asked for the phone and he said Joanne I know things got a little helter skelter between us but if things don't work out with Sidney that's her husband of 24 years at this point. Things don't work I was in the I still want to make it work. And that's when this really strange thing happened and I want to remind you of the geography which is that my dad was living in Colorado and he was flying to Virginia and he crashed in little that's 90 miles from Cincinnati so after a couple of months in and critical care at the University of Louisville it made sense a transfer into Cincinnati because he had so many family and friends there and he could he could survive the moves who we we made that move for him and he was in critical care University of Cincinnati for many more months and then it made sense to move him to a rehab hospital and the rehab hospital in Cincinnati is 5 minutes from my mom's house. So in the summer of 2008 my week came up and I and I where I could I could leave work and go be with my dad and I flew to Cincinnati and I went to my mom's house on Hilltop lane and I I dropped my bags and I I went to see my dad and that we can it was like one by one I took on a racer the circumstances of my relationship with my dad took on a race or to those phrases in that white board I never felt like I could connect with him it used to be that it was like a miracle to get my dad on the line for 2 minutes at a time but now we were talking all day and we talked about real things he told me about studying with Hansel Adams and we talked about Judaism and he was the wise old man with stories but I was right there with him and I was asking him questions and I was arguing with him when I disagreed and I never felt useful to my dad. But I was so obviously useful I was I was critical I was I was interfacing with the with the the nurses and the doctors about his care which was constant and I when he he he was just able to have something down his throat for the 1st time I went got him ice chips every hour from the machine he was then he was hot and I went and got up a fan and put it together for him and I shaved him and when I was shaving him I said Dad you remember when I was little I used to ask me to cut your ear hairs. You had this funny little scissors that he and he would have me cut his era hairs and I did that again for him in the bathroom from his hospital room and I never knew it my dad was proud of me but it just happened that that week after months of negotiation with the psychiatrist at Harvard I wanted to write about for the Atlantic we finally agreed on terms for me to get access to this very unusual study and I got the assignment to write a cover story for The Atlantic and I took the call in the room next to my dad and I came back and I told him that he wanted to know how much I was going to get paid and I told him the number and he he was a little impressed. And later that day my brother John was on the phone on speaker phone and he said What do you think of our boy Josh my dad said he's not a boy he's all man and you know. We have these long days together and then at the end of the day he was tired he was ready to sleep and it was just so natural to say good bye and I'll see you tomorrow and I would go home to my mom's house and drive up the hill to hilltop lane and my mom had dinner waiting for me and we would talk about the day and she wanted to know how my dad was and she wanted to know how it felt for me and I would go sleep in my childhood bed and and and then and wake up and go do it again and for once in my life I felt like maybe I was still a pinball but how it was like nestled in this flipper everything was Ok and I was my both my parents were holding me and I was holding them and I I felt like I could shoot out into the world the last day was nothing like it had been the whole week it was that I had had these long languorous. Days with my dad and plenty of of time and now we were rushed because I had a plane to catch and somehow even though he was really really profoundly vulnerable and his body most of the week I wasn't thinking about his body I was he was so President as mine at one point in the weeks somebody came in the room for a little bit to visit and it's clear the guy my dad didn't like him when he left my dad said somebody crack a window in here. But this last day the nurses were were were were cleaning him and changing his bedding and they had him tipped over on his side and his flesh was hanging off of him and it was so pink and raw it was like a cut of meat you would see at the butchers and. I was standing at the door I had to go and I was so full of longing for my dad and I had been so good all week while he was still alive and especially since he since he died 3 years later that phrase has come to mean so much more to me it's come to mean you can go back to the places you're hurt and get a little better and you can come back to the people in your memory and spend a little bit more time with them and as I think about that week with my dad I can't help but I would give anything to go back. Thank you. Thank. Very much Joshua Wolf. Joshua Wolf thank you as the author most recently of powers of 2 How Relationships drive creativity He's the executive director and writer in residence of the Beverly Rodgers Carol c. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. You can share these stories or any others from the moth archive through our website the moth dot org You can send the u.r.l. Right to your friends or family and you can find us on Facebook and Twitter at the moth and find out about upcoming shows all over the country. In a moment our final story from this live event at the players and New York City. Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange p r x dot org. Support for Jefferson Public Radio comes from our listeners and from travel southern Oregon travel southern Oregon is committed to creating an unforgettable destination experience for all of our region's visitors from Crater Lake to the wild and scenic Rogue river and beyond trouble southern Oregon supports a diverse thriving and sustainable visitor economy to create a better life for all of the region's residents more destination info at travel southern Oregon dot com southern Oregon do something great. Little Critter live in Medford Oregon I donated in 1995 Chevrolet pick up to do a p.r. And also deduction on my income tax in deciding how to dispose of it I thought I would 'd put it to a good purpose so I was happy to find an avenue of which to donate a car radio station same time as a tremendous benefit really giving money without having to take money out of your pocket donate your car today call it for 4 g. P.r. Auto. This is the Moth Radio Hour from p.r. X. I'm Jay Allison producer of this show you're listening to a live moth event held at the venerable Players Club The New York City with a theme tangled and twisted here's your host Peter and where oh all right now we're back we're ready to go on right now remember like we said before we ask all of our story tellers a question said you know a lot of times we're tied to the rules of life but what was the last time that you broke a rule and our our next story to our. Sentiment just make sure I get this correct that's right she said she's been on 50 planes this year and has never once put her phone in airplane mode. Based on the Please welcome Nadi of poets Webber. Basically the least comfortable situation I can imagine myself in was when I was in a few years ago where I was in a conference room with 500 Lutherans. It's super uncomfortable for me even if technically I am a Lutheran pastor 2. So I spent most of that meeting in the lobby because I found the other half a dozen misanthropic clergy people to hang out with in the lobby and talk smack about other people and then one of them said hey we should go around the circle and say what adjective if someone used it to describe you would be like the worst. When someone said stupid I thought that's bad. And then someone else a boring I was like yeah but when it came to me I knew absolutely what it was going to be which is needy. I would so much rather be described as stupid or boring than needy it's super important that everyone know that I'm like strong as hell and can handle everything myself as a matter of fact my mom said. That the 1st time as a kid that I said more than one word at a time I like skipped 2 word combinations all together and went straight to do it self. I will do it myself. Usually that works out for you pretty good but not when about a year after that I had an opportunity to go to the Holy Land and as. A Lutheran pastor I really wanted to go to the Holy Land in even if it was with 20 super nice Lutherans from Wisconsin. And so I had a strategy for dealing with being in close quarters to perceive 20 super nice Lutherans Miss constant which was that I decided that I would just just really keep my distance and just kind of keep to myself and that I wasn't going to get close to anyone to really engage with them very much mostly out of fear that they want might like want something from me like to laugh at corny puns or look at lots of pictures of their grandchildren and so I just chose to keep to myself. And that plan worked pretty well until about 5 days into the trip when we had this day trip that we were taking from Bethlehem to Jericho and because I hadn't really made much of a connection with anyone nobody knew that I had this horrible fear of driving and mountain roads an actual sort of anxiety disorder which is not completely convenient to them from Colorado but. Nobody knew this and I. I knew that Jericho was like the lowest habitable place on earth and I knew that Bethlehem was just like sea level and I didn't know that the road that we would have to take to get to Jericho was so steep it wouldn't actually be legal in the States and that we would be traveling on this road in a tour bus and it was so steep and it had so many hairpin turns and so few guard rails that I spent the entire time praying and cursing and praying and cursing and I kept it to myself having my little private panic attack. We finally got to the end of the road we were in Jericho and I had done it but I knew I had no reserves left and I was going to spend the entire time in Jericho freaked out about the fact that we would have to be taking the same road back up but that time it would be in the dark and so there's this thing cool thing you can do in Jericho which is there's this little cliff and it's not a little clip it's kind of a big one but you take this lift gondola thing up this cliff to go to this beautiful monastery that's just like carved out of this cliff and I'm not afraid of heights at all unless I'm in a car and on a road but so I was fine with that and so my whole tour groups like in line to wait for these ski lift gondola things and I systematically go to each person in my group most of whom the soon be the 1st time I've talked to them in 5 days trying to be seen as super strong and not needy is hard when you go to each person and ask if they have any value. So I went to each one and they all gave me the same Midwestern tilted headed Oh so sorry I can't help you crestfallen thing it was totally legit and. Until I got to the last person and I said hey Sharon and I was like I couldn't believe I got her name right I was like Sharon do you have any volume and she said no. And I thought Ok I'm going to I'm going to be able to do this I think I can do it and so I get into a gondola and as it sort of lifts up into the the dry air I can see Jericho it's so beautiful there and I thought about the Bible story that Jericho is and then there's the situation where the people fought this incredible battle there in the walls came tumbling down and the only reason they were able to win the battle was that the 2 spies that were sent had help from this character named Rahab but she was sort of the least likely person to give them help she was a prostitute and I kept wondering as we went and I could see Jericho if it was humiliating for them receiving help from a prostitute and would they have even spoken to her if they met her on the street or otherwise so we make it to the top of my whole tour group goes and does the sort of pious group activity I'm not sure like prayer so I don't know but I kept my. Self and I kind of I would I would kind of chat with the other people I'd meet along the way I mean I was friendly enough to people on this trip who I had I knew I'd only see for like 5 minutes I tend to have like a really similar policy on airplanes where I disappear into magazines and head phones until the final descent at which time I decide to be friendly and ask if they are coming home or leaving home and that way if they're you know stupid boring or needy it's like a 10 minute commitment tops it's not the whole flight and so. So I chatted with a couple of people but mostly when we were up at the monastery I was formulating a plan for how I was going to do this myself to get back up without any borrowed value and so the plan I had was I thought I'll just not look out the window and it's painful as it is all engage in small talk with someone and maybe just distract myself so much that I won't freak out so I get into a gondola to come back down. And it's filled not with people from my tour group but with these 5 Kenyans all in these bright turquoise matching church shirts and were in the gondola and as soon as it starts moving this big beautiful black woman next to me grabs my knee and starts rocking back and forth and I look at her friends like What the hell's going on they said well she's afraid of heights and so I put my hand on her hand that was on my knee and with the other hand I rubbed her back and I go you're Ok I'm right here you're Ok I'm right here and I'm like I'm praying and like her friends are now singing hymns then and I say. Like if God can bring down the walls of Jericho God's going to get this gone down the well I promise you you're Ok and I wondered in that moment like did she ever think that her need would be met by this heavily tattooed tall white lady from America and as I say am I someone she would have voluntarily spoken to on the street or not I don't know but in that moment I was helping her. In her need to and so we get down finally to the and and my whole tour groups waiting for me and they see this unexplainable side of me in 5 Kenyans pour out of a gondola all hugging each other and one falls to her knees and says Praise Jesus. And now these are like my best friends but I haven't talked to any of the 20 super nice Lutherans from Wisconsin in 5 days. So we get into the sick and and I think I can do this I'm going to distract myself and I totally succeeded for like 10 minutes I was engaging in small talk feeling super proud and like not looking out the window until all the sudden the bus stopped very violently and we all jerked forward there's this really loud sound underneath the us and I like Oh what the hell and I swing around I look out and the left side we had failed to make a hair pin term. And now the left side of the us is facing a cliff and the right side of the bus is blocking traffic in both directions on the hair pin turn on this one lane road with 2 wager. That are tour buses on. And as soon as the driver tried to reengage the clutch and go forward we lurched back to about 10 feet and he swung open the door and said Leave your stuff and get out and my vision just like blurs all around the edges and I start not being able to breathe and I run out of the us and all I could see was there's this like patch of concrete along the side of the road and I just made a beeline for it and I crawled up onto this patch of concrete and I start rocking back and forth and my meals are like soaked in my tears and I'm shaking and I can't like get oxygen in my lungs that just keeps getting rejected over and over and over it won't go in and I have a full blown panic attack in front of 20 super nice Lutheran from Wisconsin then which is basically the worst thing that could ever happen to me. And I don't even know when she came up to me but all the sudden I realize that Sharon's hands were on my shoulders and she said you're Ok I'm right here you're Ok And she was like keeping the lid on for me so something didn't escape that I needed like my sanity or the ability for my body and mind to be in the same place at the same time and. She was so strong and calm and amazing and everything I want people to think I am and everything I wasn't in that moment and she was exactly what I needed and like an hour an hour earlier I had a hard time knowing her name and at this point the bus was righted in was about was kind of in a position where it could keep going. And everyone else was getting back on the bus and I saw that and I kept rocking back and forth going I'm not going on the bus I'm not going on that bus and Sharon said to our tour guide under no circumstances not be allowed to get on the bus for which I loved her and so we stopped the Saudi the 1st car we saw and these 2 Palestinian men rolled down the window and flicked out their cigarettes and there's that can we help you and they agreed to take the shaking crazy needy heavily tattooed tall white American woman back up the road to bow to him to safety and the next morning I was the 1st person at breakfast in there was like this light streaming in the window and I felt sort of cleansed like you do after a cry or a hard rain and I realized that whatever I was trying to protect on that road was taken from me and I saw Sharon and her husband commend for breakfast and I motioned for them to join me and I realize that they had seen me and my most unguarded raw needy state in which I couldn't do it myself and they hadn't made a big deal about it they just wanted to make sure I was Ok but I knew I had experience like a spiritual. By way of humiliation. And my heart was open finally it took 5 days in my heart was finally open to these people I mean maybe not like enough to laugh at corny puns but. When they sat down I looked at them and I said So do you guys have any pictures of your grandchildren . Anything. With thank that's not a or both whenever. The Reverend bolts Weber is the founding pastor of house for all sinners and saints in Denver Colorado She's the author of Accidental Saints finding God in all the wrong people and the New York Times best selling theological memoir pass tricks the cranky beautiful faith of a sinner and saint That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour join us next time and that's the story from the mall. Was. Your host this hour was Peter of the arrow Peter was born and raised in southern New Jersey he performs host and produces storytelling burlesque and variety shows all over New York City his most recent show is called daddy issues the stories in this hour were directed by Catherine Burns and Jennifer Hicks and the rest of the most directorial staff include Sarah Habermann Sarah Austen Janessa and make bowls production support from Whitney Jones and Michelle Joel our scheme more stories are true is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers often vents recorded by Argo studios in New York City supervised by Paul ruins our theme music is by the drift of other music in this hour from Dan Romer and Ben Zeitlin tone and John Zorn you can find links to all the music we use at our website. Is produced by. Meet Jay Allison with Vicky Merritt at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole Massachusetts is hours produced with bombs from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting the National Endowment for the Arts and the John b. And Catherine Deneuve are the foundation committed to building a more just verdant and peaceful more radio hours presented by p.r. X. For more about our podcast for information on pitching your own story and everything else go to our website the moth dot org. Hey this is a p.r. I'm Danielle Kelley I love listening to public radio because Public Radio in riches my life with new ideas new sounds and new perspectives I listen because it's a non biased source of information presented clearly unfairly it's news I can trust I listen to feed my hunger for new music music that broadens my horizons and introduces me to my new faves g.p.i. Runs and great programs and the generous support of our listeners if you're current j.p. 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