well as we provide section heard from
is a and our experience elementary most common continuous actually with continues with the last couple of points or for seven because he's talking about the contemplative live in a world today and what's different about him so we however do
didn't have time last time to cover these first two sections which my would have liked to go for labour's free to talk about the last work before we begin to go through this i wanted to make a couple of a broader observations
just in case they get squeezed out of the end
it would be nice to have an overview appropriate i'm talking about and put it into a context two kinds of contact one of them we've already tried to do that to theological context how do we look at contemplation in the light of our whole christian vision and that means not just division of christianity with a vision of humanity of it
you know that because cosmic creation so
we've been helped to do that by martin and also by a runner and couple of other people
but the other contexts that we would like to look at our study and is the historical context and merton begins to do that and this last section is very significant that he does that very significant that his last issue here is west point and it is that sort of open ended i think is the
relationship between contemplation in history
has anything changed as anything changed in it and a contemplative experience actually let us say of christians in our tradition i think it has and we need to be able to ask ourselves what that is and whether it's an essential change or to what degree it's intrinsic to the contemplative experiences it's just a difference in and term
is an actual difference in the experience i think there's also a difference in to experience another one who has studied this
question is karl rahner fact he's written quite a bit about the experience god today and he comes towards it with a very strong theological even philosophical perspective so he's not he's not talking too much about empirical evidence that is a of experience even though he is talking about of
but he's really do it doing is making a thesis proposal that there is a simple but very simple experience of god which is the essential and universal experience with good there's one article that products which is especially precious in that regard as called the experience of god today which and theological investigation
number eleven and i couldn't find that this today probably because i already have it out
they couldn't find a packer
but i have a copy of it and it first time i'll talk about that one of them but this is in a line of what we've heard from runner before that this basic experience of god is the presence of mystery the mystery which is god which is infinitely close to us and yet infinitely on grasp
herbal and which we experience as are on transcendence or on movement into transcendence and which we experience with more and it's purity and in it's power when we arrive at our own limits and we arrive at moments of limitation on my book sharply up against our own boundary lines whether it be in the shadow of death or have some very search
a decision that we have to make more some loss or and the experience of love and a number of other examples
so that's one approach to this question which i think is a valid approach but
it seems to me also that the if you read the writings of the spanish mistakes from the sixteenth century home of avalanche and john on across you get a very different picture of a mistake or life with the contemplative life than what is experienced today i think there's a lot more extraordinary experience is much more
vertical than is our experience you today
and what how is that possible
first of all is it possible that we've been thinking of contemplation and a too individualistic way and they actually were participating in something like a communal experience on an invisible level but i mean is that we are experience of god is our experience of god in the whole of humanity and in the
and the church and in a body which itself is on a journey okay and other which we as a collective factor a communal factored in our experience of people have written about for instance a collective dark night of the soul and our time and i remember martin i think it was
section six says it will are contemplative experience today can't be the same side of the fathers because we live in the time without auschwitz and hiroshima and things like that there's going to be a dark shadow and our contemplation
and another place maybe the end of the same selection he said that we can't expect a wonderful things in our interior light because man has lost the capacity for wondering at god and at the things of god because man is full of wonder and is addicted to wonder at the as it were the wonders of the beast at that point he gets a
a little bit apocalyptic sounding
but the idea that something has happened in human consciousness at least in the west which has radically changed our relationship to contemplative experience that and the fact look at it from another angle that the church and the western humanities going through a particular experience which may be described in this sense
as an experience of darkness now what i'm insisting i was not the darkness but to communal character of the fact is that are individual contemplative experience is not an absolute standing by itself but is from one perspective part of something else which is experienced by a larger body and therefore it doesn't reach
aspen to abstract structures that are erected at a certain time because the holy spirit is acting differently at another time and the whole church for the whole of humanity is experiencing something different that another point in history is it possible that we can say that
one thing that is concerned here is the movement from a relative state of passivity and the human person that they got to nature with regard to the cosmos to the world to creation might say to an active position of the human person with respected creation so that the human person becomes
for humanity of it becomes co-creator and somebody now we see this in science and technology in other which humanity begins to transform the world that least the surface of the world you may be very ambivalent about the value of the depth of that the fact of it can be right now does that have anything to do with our experienced more contemplative huge brands or expr
arians should cut it reached i believe it does in this respect that as we become more rational more analytical more critical the experience of god has to become in some sense more subtle more crafty more invisible more more of an unknowing as are now
knowing becomes more aggressive more both more imperialistic innocence more dominate so that's i think runner ducks about that to and is it were the the landscape of mysticism itself changes as this process happens and not everybody's participate in same
extending that process average me but i think it has an effect on doesn't effect through this communal dimension we were talking about yes it was thinking waste last week of burden on the other hand and i mean
television and media culture which
huh pauses to passivity is simply not tried being there instead of a critical reflective from capacity to one sees in him for the alone junior not try to get curious thing either one of us which is probably going to change the situation change our receptivity and either one of them can change
it and apparently and negative boy the tv addiction think certain way and a negative way as he says it's a pseudo contemplation which can effectively totally black probably actual kind of patient expect for some great except for some great intervention of god
the other the other dimension is this that if there's a change and they politico that either were phenomenology because it got too many symbols but too many syllables but if there's a change in the profile of mystical experience of contemplative experience so that the profile is lower so that the experiences more ordinary so that it
sort of disappears into the ground this is related to the in and another way
it's related in the sense that as we become poorer with respect to even our interior experience we've noticed we become less exalted we become less i would just say less than a sense confidence of confidence of our wrong even i would you say our own identity in a certain sense
a certain level of identity begins to be chewed away for instance the sense of superiority of the catholic of the christian okay and what's happening there is that we're beginning to experience solidarity with all of humanity
when which has it has a whether to grow anticipation and the old testament doesn't it and the exile of the jewish people for instance when they had the temple when they had jerusalem when i heard all that glory they were the chosen people of god than the tempo is destroyed and their in captivity in another lab
and where they see the glory actually is of another imperial power and they're just nobody there that's another experiences and remember that the wisdom tradition tend to grow up and about that time about the time of exile later so part of this change
in the experience of contemplation i think is a movement and to solidarity with all of humanity so that our experience as no how no higher profile than the rest of the experience of human people now there's not an absolute average the that this is what it seems to me runner and say but
i'm sure that's what he's saying and also what martin seems to be indicating sometimes notice that in the first two sections of section eighty and first two parts he's talking about the little brothers of jesus and charles for called who just go out and to they go out in the world which will call on out into into another
christian people into a big and people and a poor people and just live there just a presence among among humanity and among the outsiders and a diaspora situation in the presence of those who were utterly unwashed and some such now to be present among them now that express
thing in a sense of solidarity which from the other side i think becomes an experience in the change of our profile as i say a contemplative experience and then he talks about for the martian and actually shot your gonna the ashram which is also a diaspora experience among
among others who and a sense have a more highly developed contemplative life than we do at least at this time
it's another experience of solidarity and of a real change in the relationship between inside and outside between but as a christian or catholic
contemplative and other religions and other humanity and in general even non contemplative ordinary people and poor people so there's a very strong lowering of the vertical because if you read centuries ago and jonathan ross you get to feeling this is it i mean this here at the
art of catholicism is the ultimate supreme experience of union with god of all of humanity this is a place to be and what is it is attracted to that by as it were that the magnetism of the center and wants nothing like that and considers everything outside to be inferior what we're on a radically different fun
mission today and i think there's a reason for that the vertical is coming down and the horizontal is moving out and it's important for us to to realize it because somehow it's got a lot to do with location with what god wants from the church at this particular time
yes is there
in reddit any benefit then he knows if cries oh yes yeah definitely but if i were in canada there's going to say and if i experience and ninety bridge in a africa are sharing in them
yeah when we talk about experienced during the question it raises important when we talk about experience
first of all talking about the exalted experience has let us say of contemplation and thing now and and are those what connect us to god or those but constitute salvation or fulfillment or realization in the ultimate sins
and i think the answer is largely know it's not our experienced that that is the end it's something else which were actually connected with fate which for us is fate and ultimately as love okay so there's a very sharp knife that cuts between the essence who
which is faith in love and any kind of experience any kind of mean even that the highest and apparently deepest mystical experience can
it's not
not necessarily
in a sense they can cabinet in his experience the unique experience yet in that which is outraged to eternal life and salvation yes and no no no i think so i think you can say the basic unit of experience which is like
background of consciousness and the faith which is rooted in that and which is are voluntary or you say picking up of a voluntary relationship to that round of consciousness through the act of faith and love that is it legit but not the unity of experience itself and the sense of the conducted
that's a hell but i mean a unity of experience in the broader sense i mean like i like a sacramento experience can be a real experience that yeah experience chance at it love can be good experience and making others as equivalent can be competitive experience or otherwise why
why the priority of the contemplative life
yeah it is it because those things help because those things are building something which is deeper than those things themselves the essential distinction is between experience and between reality and between ultimately make reality that is so what ron i would say is that those things are still actually
but the ultimate reality is deeper than those things valuable because they are on their value of valuable largely because they built faith because they give us a push because they help us to intensify the way it's actually at the center which is a union with god which is deeper than experience
which doesn't mean that those things are going to be dismissed at all their precious and we nearly make them and goal of like it's just that between those things between absolute gouging those experiences and what we can absolute judge there's a gulf there's a desert
there's a discontinuity there's a transcendent
we have to be able to see the real thing somehow transcending any experience of our own
but let me
and then you know i think there's a there's a self verifying experience just the same okay was just need to be dismissed and one that's happened it's almost like it goes beyond the get out of the out of the theology classroom management has just self verify it's a kiss her and embrace or it's it's a kind of what would you call it
self authenticating experience which puts it a permanent stamp in you which nothing can contradict okay so there's always an exception to what we're saying and that's the exception another exception is this relationship with christ now when we talk about the experiences being the same is that if somebody else but that's not quite true
me because they experience or christ the faith in christ as something distinctive about it which is not just an act but it's also an experience right yeah i don't make experience and i would be way over my head you but i mean experience so much as as subjective phenomenon as
the union to that
and somehow you to do with the objective reality that love prayer death at that time when there are equivalent yeah you know i mean so like
beats a watershed the only thing akin to the contemplative life is falling in love yes you have come out of your share some of the magnetic you could meet isn't a priority and contemplative live for us because we are
we're hoping for that you need to objective unit of experience i'm faking years we've experienced not because you're not think that's subjective november but now there is an experience which has an objective an expensive something objective you know i don't like the word objective because we split it into these new possibilities and it's really different than that you know and follow the her but
but what the the thing i'm pushing now is this was difference between experience and especially any kind of extraordinary experience and the essence and the the essence being that which is accessible to everybody
okay so i'm sort of short of barking from runners out the street at this point we could go over to the other side of the street and talk about the self worth medicating experience and the the fact that it's possible to experience yahya the kind of metaphysical union in at some point isn't it necessary to say as christians
that we have access to that but we only have access to christ and be know
okay i didn't quite the and the anonymous christian or not yet at that i mean that's that's
i will wear it as christ's into this of pattern yeah well that's what i say when we have to be careful about making our experience inside exactly the same mutation manchester i there's a difference were saying that there is no experience that matters inside that's not also out because there is and at princeton
so whenever you take a theological principal like and make an absolute out of it you're going to have to add something a corrective after which because your amputated part of the truth and that's true in this case to and other words if something unique about the recognition of christ and the connection that's made with grace through faith which is also experiential okay and yet every protect
fuller experience of that can can go into the ground and disappear from you it's it's something that's that's in you and and which may sometimes be in the world of experience i'm going to disappear right out of number of experience so you have nothing with that faith but faith itself and assented is partly experiential so
yeah these are these are difficult things last character and won't like joseph jacket and the an anonymous christian where we've been talking about the anonymous christian without anonymously without mentioning
because he's the one that has you know that was the same essential experience which verano this is the acceptance of your lives receptive to your basically which is faith okay which is faith but it's not fake mediated directly and explicitly for crows yeah the but i'm at the same the same tack doesn't somebody like
for example pine i hate that way a public archives of off the edge kind of guy goes off the edge
well i'm i'm gonna ask them you know where the edge have you seen hacking and as the arrogance the edges and the role that you give to christ and your relationship with crushed yeah and if you read that article you will see how that for him bill into this and to this vision okay but it's difficult territory
as you can't build one metal structure that holds all together so you look at it at once you've gotta look at this site over again and you go running illustrated shape this is also true kind move back and forth
but now there is there is an experience or christ and commitment to christ a living relationship with christ all of which can somehow be centered in the face which is what would you say different and a quantum way from anything outside and which is of
very great significance very great importance
and it would we'd have to talk about that for a long while and to bring it out exactly how that's chewing but it's it's obvious to us the job vs cialis and yet to charges shot off a few words
that a particular presence over the qualified president to the holy spirit to connected with christian faith
now number what jesus says to the american one you worship what you do not know we wish to put me know because salvation is from huge
the first part of that statement road underline
there's a particular knowledge okay
which is is central which isn't his final
i think a fair price sanitation can be powers and increase in people on well and face shaping the actually replication and at the same time is so foggy asked down yes wonderful trash as image and sometimes i think it's it's a question just a limitation
of our understanding we don't know yet how to get those two things together but we know they're both true okay so we may seem to pretend that we understand how all of this structure but we dont we're working from two sides and i know both of them are true okay
so you have to do is say this and then come over to make sure we conserve this and then go back over iran china for the back and forth
okay and even like questioning before we descend into our apartment section

so he starts out talking about small communities in the world and particularly can create a about a little brothers of jesus and note that this is first of all there's a form of life which is or diaspora bowser honor and martin right about the diaspora churchmen murderer read somewhere about the monk in the diaspora
but the idea was wrong
this is a diaspora situation where the monastic community has sacrificed all of its structures and it's image as it work and it's almost like christ among the alien in some way not preaching not communicating the word not attempting to convert but just being there
and works says down at the bottom of one or two this of course is a strictly contemplative view of the christian life acne
in other words the whatever is happening is happening at a deeper level than the physical level
and with this goes a particular kind of experience according to fernando that quote is from handle this what the general of the of a little brothers
that is together with the disappearance of the external image there appears in this kind of prayer and note martin has selected this quote and disappearance of the interior image that is a disappearance of anything special in the contemplative life so you're sharing the external life of poverty and ordinariness and other what we
you'd call it outside or sense and you're also sharing the interior experience with that largely although that's not all of it obviously
and note that a lot of this didn't come from theory it came from a kind of interior inspiration and intuition an invitation of the spirit for instance this and of charles will call to call out into the joseph
yeah see how martin as a continually restless within the structure of the large monastery behind the institutionalized monastery which gets them in english
and course there were a lot of small community effort and also fizzled then started in the sixties and then he talks about eastern christian monasticism the ashram that further manchin and especially about shanti mona
sister pascoe and and her profile of father key
as the little section on the beginning of them
shocking about on the ashram and tunnel now dedicated the most holy trinity had been founded and nineteen fifty by two french preached by the jewels munching on diocese in missionary and father henri so i wish it to nanda that is
from the abbey of calcutta
but a merchant on arrive in indian nineteen thirty nine first good for the bishop and then a directory and a little by which is only a few miles from shunting economy ride their bicycle it's the closest anything like us i suppose you'd call it a town and i'm right across the street from chatting on them there's a little little village tenure public
you want to find a bank or a barbershop can have to go to color
only and nineteen forty eight that a donor or for a few acres and treaty that's the city
well that's the that's the province now
city and look up near the cauvery river where he and i wish shocked and under began worshipping in a tiny chapel that they had built with their own hands and and instead
that must have been a not the chapel they have them they used english sanskrit antonio and their liturgies meeting three times daily for common prayer using scriptures of the different religions using the roman rite themselves
they lived and thatched huts the real poverty of the poor in india and nineteen fifty seven for the mansion on died in france where he had gone for surgery abu ishaq stayed on at shantytown on but traveled up to the cage and the himalayas often auditory as to nineteen sixty eight that someone from original monochrome and he returned to the north
rae died and he died in education nineteen seventy three so father bede griffiths arrived ashanti bottom and nineteen sixty eight from greece from over to other monks
and from then on the community revolved around here vinci he developed it
keeping pretty much the same orientation trying to stay right on the earth

so finds two things and cash around development one is another movement out from the highly institutional big structured monastery and the second one is the would you call a dialogue or coexistence with an asian tradition and specifically over the hindu tradition of course the shelter than this
which is written extensively about elsewhere
and that ends that
discussion of contemplative communities in the world
yet you can kiss it's unusual to swim community in paris no know paris france
not paris texas for monitors to have that
no fear the few the rule you will use when he spent time in the desert with brothers and then after being there with rather
yeah decided to come back and establish what he calls the desert in the city
so that there is this monastic community that there's a women's and men's room they agree on the same the gothic church together three times a day of just turns out goes and all morning they work and secular job on after leaving contemplative study time and
hurt to go like this way and yet not try centered mr the monastic institutions that's right there they seemed to be not quite concerned about or so leaving behind the the image as merton as with it's a different a different when you call integration of the two sides because they keep the big church and so on
they a part of it the liturgical part of their life sounds like it it remains within the the traditional sort of image than the rest of their life is out there and the fact of being in the city of course there's a real
a real adventure now there's this one of their sisters who live there for quite awhile it with our sisters new york summit attempt to her learn something about
i was there for about three weeks couple of years ago the liturgy liturgies absolutely gorgeous
their ladies and some can also lead as earlids and of arts and discern by shot
that's a very important with model enough for for the urban experiment
okay
how we get to back to his attempt to save what
monasticism has to do with the world and how it how it exists in and world and what its value of is in the world i'm going to end up to talk about the world is about history as well because the world is a very dynamic genetic thing in our time so on a middle of phage one on fiber has three forty be
ships to that
contemplative life is primarily a life of unity
now he goes back to the beginning of the book where that was his his thesis and and i think is a very strong and valid access for the book
now here the two choices one choice is simply to withdraw and leave the world behind and that's what he seems to have done in the seven storey mountain to beginning and now he's very to say
rigorous and and gentlemen of of simple withdrawal from the world and he contends another contemplative is the person is i was more engaged for the world or engage with it at a deeper level even in being physically detached from it
and then well what's this about what does the contemplative have to offer and the rest of his final section here is about that

and it has a lot of it has to do so would somehow with insight and here is a bit of
a battle with himself because he's gonna say that the contemplative should have a particular depth of understanding and then he's going to come back and say well it's by his very poverty and unknowing and lack of any special wisdom that that's what's essential to him okay so it goes back and forth between us to and that has something to do with attention
between within burton and between his special gifts and his vocation or his way of life and the monastic idea of an intersection essence
which is concerned with a hispanic or says that glisten simplicity or are simple interiority and the poverty that goes with it
as a simple interiority martin doesn't just that that's not enough that there has to be some kind of openness towards the world the book where he wrestles with this at greatest length that nick is contemplation in a world of action it's a very good book of very valuable for written just was published posting on the face instruments of new one so
something like that as a an introduction by genre character it's after merchants of death and so he looked back upon martin's contributions
and it's got
articles on the main aspects of this whole issue of monasticism and the world my monasticism and history which are very important reading i think for a monk at a certain point in his by not right at the beginning but after some years when some of these problems have begun to
impinge upon him or maybe one he begins to become aware of these forgotten these issues too much and needs to become a little more conscious of it and the relationship of the of his monastic life to the world
now here he starts talking about a fascinating issue that i mentioned last time as this thing about the wisdom of history the logos of man's present situation as he puts it here in the middle of on our six and he
speaks of marxism and a kind of marxist mystique of history
which he says has presents a challenge to the christian
and so i went to have ferreted out a couple of other things that martin wrote a that martin wrote about marxism
one of them is that last talk that he ever gave in bangkok and i raised the question why in heaven's name that he talk about marxism to a bunch of people who are interested in an eastern christian monasticism what you've got to do with marxism
and another one is the article in contemplation a world of action quote is the world of problem he gets into marxism that

he says firstly what he was confronted on even just before we went to asia he was confronted they had a meeting at their do they call center for democratic
it was intern with village center for democracy is something i've gotta say sandwich santa barbara area
a friend of his ever gets the fellow's name that it was one of the officers and then so he gave a talk down and he was he was confronted by a young man who identified himself as a marxist and said well we're more much to the implication being that we're more my monks than you are so martin accepted the challenge and then had to reflect on
what monasticism marxism marxism haven't come and the first thing that he comes up with and of course he hates e h style aneurysm he hates soviet the soviet monster of communism and song but he also hates the anticommunist what would you call it idiotic
eg which conceals and cover so many sins in the united states other that whole use of communism as a kind of antichrist in order to achieve other ends whether by somebody like senator mccarthy or by any number of politicians would justify anything by an anticommunist position
and often calling innocent people communists and in some way
and some my punishing them i'm just me
he finds first of all that both monasticism and
christian monasticism and or any good and marxism are counterculture and some way they react against the establishment it's kind of us when beginning with the very start
but then he says a haven't common that they both want change they both are discontented with the world as it is especially the social world the political world the economic world they want to see it change and he says hear the difference comes up because the marxist wants to change the structures out in the world and the one wants to change himself wants to change his own heart
he wants to arrive a purity of heart so he puts the interior transformation first and whatever external transformations second and maybe doesn't even think about it
and of course martin says that this is the only way to do it if you try to do it the other way it won't work cause it's
the patch trying to wash itself from sunlight
i looked around to try to find where this wonderful mystique of history was in and market and i couldn't find any that i don't think it's in chrome such and the the idea of the dialectic april table yeah it's it's an ego and it gets into marxism okay but not all the marxists follow it as
actually the orthodox marxists there's a particular breed of existentialist is evidently mark hughes's is one of them who follow this line and i tried to read a bit of that book the one dimensional man that are trying to put be unreadable it's so abstract
so that particular research project struck very successful is that as a
history is cassia
well that's an egg of yeah yeah how does see that as the sort of the steep things that you can start ask some gnostic bring yourself into knowledge of that would be south africans actually i think there is something that christianity kim
there's something exciting in that there's something exciting and a certain interpretation of measures or knobs front of that i'm looking for
a market quote which says a little better
at all my neck or something
yeah i think he's got a logo on decent house when it when he starts talking about the american and technocrat is agnostic and and things get over them behind them okay this is from the kind of vision or world of action article he's been talking about the frozen
kind of caravan yen carolingian structures it causes of medieval western medieval christianity and society the suggestion and as now most obviously replaced out of the caravan genes is that of karl marx and this view history is not finished it has just reached the point where it may if we are smart begin
there is no pre-determined divine plan although frankly the messiah aneurysm and marx has basically biblical and eschatological after a long precarious evolution matter has reached the point and man where can become fully aware of it
control its own destiny and now at last that great seething mass of material forces the world will enter upon his true destiny by being raised to a human level
the instrument by which this can be accomplished technology cybernetics are now in our power
but are we and our own power etc and so it goes up so that idea i can see where we found the excitement and marxism them and that particular idea which resonates with two yards idea of moving from cosmos because my genesis remember when evolution takes off from within itself no longer does pre-determined
but evolution proceeds after a human person comes on the scene as sort of co-creator from within it so through the human mind and world through human creativity
now it's somebody christian he wanted to grow working as which is possibly and will challenge of history and think this comment karma considering that he also wrestle with the kind of marxist usually school and trying to her to choice for manoeuvre consumption that they said you should just and behind the scripture virginia to
savage history fish merge a choice as passengers go up and live in a cave and contemplate through monitor other sometimes well gets into the history of the oppression and through a series of to the leads his people out and changes history and changes they have and they to so
that of it's an interesting thing that it doesn't he with arcs but it begins with this whole judeo-christian inside the histories radically words resell patients at me through not just work of you know why it's not going work working with this god was radically industry moving troops history so it's a kind of excel
leading kind over and should say tr rates and even cosmic side of of the cosmos is not just stay that things are happening in the others
so that's where of when martin comes out of comes out of this he comes up with per day of your vote is precisely and maturation that as per day of who are saying that we misinterpreted christianity in terms of a kind of gloomy religion of only salvation and only individu
oh salvage he's talking about the modern west and medical was took allergy
although he sees a great deal of virtue in the middle ages that the conserving of as he says a creative energies on it doesn't really have a lot of respect for the contemplative thing itself but the conserving as he says and disciplining of creative forces in the middle ages but he says that's a misinterpretation of christianity which are
it comes from farther from the platonism kind of verticality of it also but the real christianity is
human creativity emerging from history that is the gift of to get to be the image of god by being free and we have created in the world so that's what martin picks up there when includes per day it
so he if you're interested in that kind of thing he's a just a treasure of the day because he's done more of that anybody else i know
and in contrast with they already doesn't talk about the cosmic picture in the focus is smaller than focuses on the hill and scene and specifically on history is he's always analyzing history the russians as he points out seem to have ever a great what would you call a gift and an attraction to a theology of history
partly because they're between east and west they still got this what we got this totality of the mystery of the eastern christianity inside them and they're confronted with this accelerated history of the west especially in the best couple of centuries of between those two something that happens to them that have enough to s
got a logical thing has always been in the russian so
was it is possible to be unfair to her western medieval inserting a figure like gregory the great it gets called the father of religious recently and was truly intemperately up given it's also right in the middle of history much energy and got to get the extra corn and are to sicily and keeping and thing
need your editing to radically
render democratic the community in the sense bringing in the market rates in the slaves and they're absolutely equal to the aristocrats and i think like model incredible intellect practices etc but you rose true a challenge around and see if anyone lost the boat it was the eastern orthodox just weren't able to
meet the challenge of change a renaissance of history etc and so they can get them i think birthday or six is equally critical of orthodoxy i know
in fact he's looking largely and orthodoxy when it makes these when he makes these accusations of christian he says the patristic christianity's have been not enough
and so he really
proposes a christianity of
freedom and creativity
these a and that's why matthew fox of course picks him up and and coach in time and even though there's a lot a hamlet or to probably wouldn't
yes but if you have any awareness of why president also interested in reading orthodox relate to some any other time
i'm not sure
i'm great passion he has things well part they maybe from his own experience being on the boundary line you know of eastern europe being brought up there are currently also probably she's a great stabilizing and launched the weight of tradition and theological solidity which is and the orthodox tradition it's got a mom
our bullets they've got any and the stability is more important for him that if you'd probably find a via a bottomless
foundation of theological stability over there
which is true but there's also other usually something machine
doesn't seem to connect the history blood flow
as much as the less that term well i don't want to go to bush like latin america really shitty problems now
the other side now
i think that
and as difficult a difficult to talk about that in this context it's a big a big issue i think them sometimes humorous dialogue in this is a certain book because so much of it's not dark triangle had and cultural we just presuppose biblical scholarship for instance and criticism and for about which word of god
and that's why we presuppose the influence of origin even though he was condemned and for them origin and de vargas they're condemned so there's no truth to them this year you can be at its worst very british ship and fixes to try a holistic patient at its best it as a comprehension of the mystery
the luminous contemplative understanding experience of industry at its worst it's simply break critical and a kind of fundamentalism all it's gone i'm everyone in our chancellor
as the encountered every gps not apple's some yet university atheists because you're pretending to be christian and others with neil diamond and s for his priestly lesson series that will credit spread with boxing
okay back from the pigs
the big picture

so i spent some time talking about this contemplative revision of history and first of all getting this little spark the stimulation from outside christianity and marxism and then coming back and finding it and finding its roots and costs
miami and finding an expression of send birthday is
there's a very powerful rich writer
he was a marxist themselves as a matter of fact hundred beginning for there
and that's where the marks is able to steal from christianity one of its most prominent characteristic clan that it has come to demonise the freedom and the spirit of man amount of it
christians hearing us for the first time for getting their baptism as a new birth of children of god with the vocation of the highest creative responsibilities have not understood the hidden implications of this claim by blasphemous only word separation or wants to contact it's interesting you know that the psychological doctrine of the shadow that boston on here have a particular and ten
perfect for somebody else because you see in that person not only your dark side but also your unrealized potential and i think communism has been such a shadowy figure such a probably call it a nemesis a shadow figure and ultimate black beast for the christian west and our time largely because
communism was pushing the buttons of those unrealized potentiality right in christianity especially to transcend the static cultural social political economic structures and become itself so it stole this right and as fire from christianity went off with it comes back and confirm
nsa's with it and is tremendously deeply disturbing so that christians find that they have to absolutely demonize everything that has any and a taint of marxism communism was like quality recording their he scraped up during set the apostolic
you think take that over a threat record and that's about three markets because that's where the change goes of course is towards the end of it is towards the a kind of come here on him and then of course communism itself becomes travels to show
okay

and then finally on the last couple of pages he attempts to sum up what he believes monasticism has to give to the world or value for the world and in the world
ball he speaks of energy clarity and peace
over on one online identity in the value that he stresses his freedom that's where it comes down
human freedom and distinctions two levels of freedom as bothers the freedom of the flesh and the freedom of spirit and says that the monkey supposed to be the witness of this true freedom
freedom of the deep were to sell freedom of spirit in the world
it is a contemplative who keeps this liberty live in the world and it shows others obscurely and without realizing it we'll real freedom me
it's interesting that there should be a location to be free vacation and this is he seems to and he hadn't given more importance to this doesn't event to the knowledge that penetration of reality the understanding with a history and charm and the and the fundamental values free
adam no freedom for m remember equates with that unity of the human person that he was talking about in the beginning it's not as if those are two different things freedom is the quality is the sphere is the movement of that
true self or unify person person who is one

okay any questions in here in i find this really interesting coming later this life it's a free asset in the beginning he had so much freedom stop reading folks
and even before he entered the monastery and the first twenty seven year the secular merge yeah secular are mentally he saw these strength distorted contain his freedom oh is it and then he wanted to move out into the early stage of or into the world and just a wonderful journey
and of the best of the journey
deeper paper into freedom that needs to be frame before it can be given now try and that sort of thing and he really how to frame it gets know many of those you when you think that he didn't even go out of the monastery well those years except for in a couple of traction
one or two trips to new york committed to the east
of and i think a lot of the value of nem that he was true to his own and are such that as which identifies with that freedom
and himself as a witness to witness to freedom and freedom which has found god and christ in faith
but doesn't like go to be the one of those men system to show have to be one of the faith and freedom ottoman or or one thing
okay thank you very much character