it two aspects so
hey
polls i've talked about a being and loving not mutually exclusive but day when i think apply to those
solitude tending more towards helping us focus on our own self and the being part of our development and community and the relational are loving as i said it's not mutually exclusive
when he provide a brief review of what community life isn't isn't discussed a couple of models with you and then now bring up a topic that's usually kind of touchy and that is individual versus community needs think about that a little bit with you and and and because it possible to have too much of a guy
good thing like psychology and community life and you can ponder what my answer to that one will be get to that point
ah
if you look back historically some the earliest communities existed as result of a personal relationships there was some real strong connection that tended to bring people together that would be true benedict's case and i think in the francis as case as well
and they often would start that way but would need to have to evolve into something different from what i've read on francis for example his life moved away from that and he himself moved to be lesson interested actually in relationships with other people on the folks can correct me if they know differently but i was actually will have some
prize to hear that about some movement away from that in know and his own experience
and a psychological level we are often very hungry for things that we never quite had enough of things that we might have had a taste of growing up and wish that we could have more or perhaps recapture some early experiences that can be why commute
city life can be so attractive to some individuals that they may be thinking a level that's not necessarily right at awareness if i commend to this life i will have all of those early needs met that i didn't have met or i'll be able to experience again that
and a psychological level that wonderful bliss that the infant feels when and can rest at its mother's breast and of satiated and filled
hum the truth of the matter is is that communities are really only capable of giving to each other into those who come to them what they themselves have so would we are
made up of the individuals that come to us and the work that the community does which those who are members of that
there are varying levels of intimacy and various kinds of communities and in a community over time and among people within the particular community at any various moments and it's important to keep that in mind and also very important to remember that some things community life never promises
this doesn't really promise emotional love or mutual affection and intimacy with everybody who comes into the community are among those who are a part of the community
as i discussed yesterday this build up a sense of intimacy takes time and trust takes time to develop and depending on any number of things that may or may not happen for a particular individual
as long as people are looking and expecting unconditional love and acceptance there will be difficulties and community life and this is often seen and and mashed communities or enmeshed individuals that mesh communities are women there is a real
lack of and kind of sense a boundary and self identity and it is just a very strictly a diffuse community identity where everyone is expected to act and behave in the same way and any efforts towards individuation and and of staking out one sense of self separate from the group
op is very much frowned upon and growth is not allowed in those sorts of situations
let me read to you to lines that i think this to more that can give you descriptions of the extremes of what community life can be like
from the songs now how good and how pleasant it is when people live in unity if you use the exceeded not exclusive language edition it'll talk but when brothers dwell as one that's the version that we use down at our place in kansas so kind of gives a sense of calm marvelous community life can be like
now let me give you another definition of community a group of people who probably would have ended up liking each other if they had gotten together under more favorable circumstances and like a fit like at a federal prison or on a train wreck
an air
so need i say more have certainly we have those kinds of experiences in community life times when it when it really does hang together very well for us and and our individual needs the needs of the community and our spiritual growth are all together as one and then there can be other times and period
the case where it seems like it's a constant struggle because of perhaps unacknowledged needs and expectations that we might have of the community that the community cannot give that's not the only reason we can have this kind of sense of being at at an edge with others
the community when we're in a state of moving towards a new change in ourselves and maybe one we're not in sync with the whole community which should be a fair amount of time actually because everyone is in a developmental track of of his own here and we won't all be working on the say
same issues at the same time so you have to expect some rubs every now and again
in most communities there isn't a great deal of choice about with whom one lives especially
when you've joined the community you might think well you're coming in well okay i get a sense of what these people are like and i guess i could throw my lot in with them but after a while once you've made your final commitment to a place outside of
getting enough no votes at solemn profession time it's very difficult really to have a great deal of control over who lives within a community and after shifts the way the experience is felt
one of the points that i wanted to make yesterday that i forgot to do is to just just throw this out as something to be thinking about we talked about intimacy and the opportunities for that one of the points i liked distresses that there's a difference between a desire for intimacy
and a need for intimacy sometimes when religious man find themselves struggling with issues of being separate and apart and leading a celibate lifestyle feeling alienated and isolated they sometimes have the impression that they're the only ones who
who are having to give up lots of things and sometimes can be useful to broaden one's view and to think that there are any number of other individuals who are forgoing intimacy for one reason or another the person who with his widowed
it's just one example there are many other situations that develop in life and i think it's a useful exercise just to reflect on your own friends and acquaintances and to kind of work to think objective lee is everyone always having in every last of their intimate and the missing
needs and wishes metal time and the answer generally speaking as know that there are some sacrifices that everyone needs to make in that area
so when it isn't his family
and what a can't give you is what family life tries to give with varying degrees of success itself again it's important not to idealize the family experience that can work well it can work okay and that's usually how it is for most folks or can work poorly for individuals by
but the the shared deep intimacy especially that results from the
sexual union of the husband and wife and children had come from that bring a very special quality to those relationships of cannot ever be duplicated in a religious community or really any other kind of community outside family
now there's been a couple of models that have developed over time historically the aesthetical model for a religious community life is manifested by the monastic experience and speaks to a certain detachment separation in order to seek god and a particular way
the a mendicant model which is more of a relational mobile model was formed in reaction to what was experienced as some excess and the detachment of the monastic model and here there was a love for god and immediate neighbors and try to get
more in contact with them
and third model will be that of based on a mission to provide by the jesuits who had a great concern for bringing christ to those who did not know him
useful models and numerous communities have been founded and continue to be founded in these traditions there's one kind of model that starting to creep in that really is not an authentic one and one that i just want to common on as to to alert you to it and that is the therapeutic model
so the answer is yes there can be too much of a good thing that can be too much psychology and religious communities from my perspective
clearly i'm not saying that i'm opposed to psychology or psychological insights or psychotherapy that's not the case what i don't think is an authentic way of leading religious life is to pan and religious life after a therapeutic community
this is
treatment twenty four hours a day to estimate that's the notion of a therapeutic community lots of group therapy lots of democratic methods boating on everything having meetings for this and meetings for that and meetings for everything the whole social structure is designed to address therapeutic issues does
i to work towards the individual equipment needs of the people there the problem is that means a word that sounds kind of nice isn't that good if everyone's individual needs are met want that work towards the up building of the community
no not necessarily is is my answer to that and because what can happen is that the focus on the individual can lead to the neglect of the community's needs which are not always the same thing
also there can be such a thing as too much democracy too much voting on topics that perhaps don't really need to be done the principle of subsidiarity should come into play those who can make decisions should make decisions and not involve everybody for every last little piece of
decision making
and meetings can be overdone this was a think more of in the earlier part of the period after the second vatican council just every last thing was a reaction to the sense of being to separate from the decision-making process
hum
anyway this kind of model leads to him again increase dependence and all the lot i argue here for this kind of sense of familial self in this interdependence i'm never arguing for this kind of unhealthy dependence upon other people
these kind of communities that that have some aspects of this will tend to attract dependent individuals
it's really i think and abuse of the relational model and it neglects the larger community needs so the question comes up well what do you do about that
what comes first individual our community needs that's i don't have an easy answer to that but i i think more often than not community needs need to come first more often than not and in the long haul community needs need to come first it's a great fit when people's individual
needs can be met within the context of the community needs and that is something that i encourage people to be thinking about and they're kind of ongoing formation is there a sense that at least some of the things that are important in my life can be met within the given community structure that exists
as if it doesn't that's going to lead to trouble later on and increased alienation and separation
not a movement towards healthy solitude but a movement towards alienation and distancing from the greater community needs
solitude

before
your community in particular this has a special import and although when i can do by summarization tomorrow i'm going to comment on the need for solitude as an important for all human beings and their ongoing development this aspect of life and prayer looms larger for you
you than it does for many other communities and i wanted to talk about in terms of to areas temperament issues and the capacity to be alone how many you are introverts in here now let's do it this way be issued probably to job how many of your extra hurts
one to a chair

simply summarizing some of the young as ideas and much put on will be virtually you to all the rest of us who are introverts to have the experience of this the does it mean to be integrated that we are socially inept
we can have very fine social skills and course we pride ourselves on our great social capacity direction the uneducated and unformed put introverted of long with kind of computer nerds and people who just you know are always tongue tied around anyone that's got a pulse
that
that's we know really not the case we get our energy and are that sense of identity gets restored and strengthen and developed in times alone
extra routes on the other hand find themselves feeling more energized and their sense of identity gets affirmed and developed in their relationships with other people take two people you go to a party into road next to bird they can both have a great time people can be watching the interactions between them you got a panel
the judges watch him from mirrors and the ceiling they rate them both on their interpersonal skills they come back afterward the extrovert says where's the next party this was really great the introverts has i'm going to my room was a nice time and in a little time along i'll see in two days or whatever
this is neither good nor bad this is just how things are now there can be dangers
and this gets back to a question someone asked i think my first or second session about a unhealthy uses of solitude and i want to comment on the possibilities of there
all of that caricature of the computer nerd a phobic individual is in fact a caricature those of us are introverts have the tendency and that we could be moving in that direction of we're not careful we could become too introverted to pulled within hours
ourselves to ski zoned to use the more technical term
this is particularly true if we tend to be introverted have only a kind of a week sense of ourself and that's coupled with lots of experiences of hurts in our relationships with other people since we have a predisposition to enjoy being by ourselves in the first
place even a things are going well if things are going a little poorly we're going to be even more drawn to sense of isolation and separation and alien nation this will not be a particularly healthy experience
on the other hand extroverts
things can also go wrong for them sometimes not all extrovert but some of them who have difficulties with a solid sense of theirself tend to be
come what might be called a play caters or pleasers trying to do what they can for all the people around them because being with others as how they have a sense of identity but their own one is so fragile that they have to be on good terms with everybody all the time so there forever kind of being
nice and pleasing and subsuming any self expression within them to take care when they were they soon to be the needs of the other people around them
these folks who have more trouble with this often had experiences of a lot of conditional love when they were growing up
so they got to pats on the head from their parents when they did certain things at a certain level and other times they didn't so they weren't just acknowledged for being ah but they were balanced for what they did
so those are the two extremes when i discussed those of different ways in which people needed people someone said well why would some people tend to kind of throw themselves to other as vs separate themselves and i think this is the answer to that from my perspective you throw yourself to others new
keep up these sorts of relationships because you're still hoping to try and find yourself as extrovert my to have these sorts of problems the introverts the ones who need to a whole back there early experiences could be related to kind of being cut off or abandoned or
a psychological level in their early lives and that's not to say that every introverts been abandoned and every extrovert in our hand a conditional loving parents and wanna present the extremes i do think this notion of introversion extraversion is it is a constitutional temperament that were born this way we make some shit
and that but not much
so it's a matter recognizing and understanding our temperament and working with them
this movement towards solitude is authentic when it's not done
because two pts court because you feel like a some lonely bird on a roof and no one else is around therefore you so you just going to go back to your hermitage in and stay there that's not an authentic expression of it if it's a an anti social act on your part because of your own a car
conflicts with people than that's a problem that's not authentic if it's done to deny the socialization qualities that are so important of the extra virgin again that would also a work against an authentic expression of it it is and should be a chance for
individual and personal growth and understanding one's relationship with oneself and with god from my perspective
what you have to watch out for and i see this in my community and to danger for me to as well as to become will an arc and my case you know i'm a bachelor kansas mock it just kind of alone separate
i'm not around other people kind of going through the motions allies that the potentially can be barren instead of enriching the solitude should be a time of enrichment
time of confronting one's self owning one's split off offsides deepening once prayer relationship with god
and i think should be a vehicle for the creative element and people to develop a more creative tendencies and capacities within them the time alone should especially in the early formation process and and kind of training and solitude and i
i think the extrovert perhaps need more help with this since they don't quite take to it as well as the introverts to and into creative uses of the experience of solitude
what facilitates this is the
one's level of capacity to be alone and i think i commented on that earlier this is an idea from a a child analyst named
winnicott from england he was the doctor spock of england used to buy books and articles and and radio shows he was really quite good
his notion is that the young child develops the capacity to be not physically connected with the mother but still near her and not to experience anxiety that moves then to being able to be away from the mother and still hold an image of her
her and again not have anxiety so it's the capacity to be alone in the presence of another starts off with the mother and the same room then it starts off with presence being at a psychological level in one's mind
so for us i think that speaks to
how we feel when we're alone you may have notices would treat me sometimes that the the time alone can be very difficult for them they need to fill it up they need to be doing things they need to be talking things even if it's just talking to god i want so just talking up but that that may not be really what's called for
but it's a defensive maneuver on their part because it's so hard to to be alone and to and to experienced that so the greater the capacity that one has for this the the greater the experience of solitude of the effect the easier it will be can individuals grow in their capacity to
be alone yes i think so
i think that can be done i think a spiritual direction as a big help with that the you don't have mom around anymore but a key relationship to work on i think with this as one's relationship with god and i think the capacity to to be alone and to be one
self in relationship to god and prayer relationship is a very powerful experience very powerful one indeed
when common briefly on loneliness
which affects people whether you are an introvert or an extra extrovert whether we spend all of our time with other people or whether we live a very separate sort of lifestyle
social scientists sometimes have nothing better to do than to take surveys you think it would be unnecessary to do that but did you know that ninety percent of the population has been lonely
ten percent or why i said so
that's all something that we've experienced however about twenty five percent of the population have been severely or painfully lonely at some time in their life and there are different kinds of loneliness and i think this is an important thing to to think about
that there is the sense of emotional loneliness this is a deeper more pervasive kind of loneliness this comes about from the experience the effect of experience of an absence of close intimate attachments
and these individuals in particular will be very apprehensive about spending time alone they feel utterly alone it's equivalent to what a young child would experience when their parents i have gone away even if it's just out for the night of the parents have gone on vacation themselves for something when the
kid is just heartbroken about being alone you know abandoned by his parents or her parents
the second kind of loneliness is i think less severe and called social loneliness or social isolation
here at the childhood level it's the experience of how kid feels over summer vacation when his next door neighbors are gone somewhere else you know you just kind of down in the dumps from open around lonely not as painful as the emotional loneliness and that can be experienced around conditions of absent friends
nds
collegial relationships or feeling marginalized within community life
one of the key needs that human beings have is to be accepted by at least one group as a valued member of that group that's an important need that human beings have and when that gets threatened or when that same as rocky and then these sorts of emotional and these social
isolation and social loneliness issues will come up
interestingly enough people who are chronically lonely seem to be incapable of maintaining close emotional and secure relationships it's almost as though the loneliness causes them to play out the insecurity that is going on within them so
until they deal with the issues of loneliness their relationships are going to
and up making them feel lonely they'll create the problem for themselves over and over again until the issues around loneliness or corrected
what could you look for if you are looking for room signs of pathological loneliness
these would be folks who have a pretty severe fear of rejection and abandonment this is that emotional isolation and i talked about
they have not lasting but sometimes very passionate infatuation with people so they can start but it doesn't sustain relationships don't sustain
the experience of loneliness is acutely painful
for some people wanted severe acutely painful and these folks may sometimes be working to escape this through drugs or alcohol or sex
you'll often noticed some kind of chronic emotional problems either kind of a fairly constant level of anxiety or a fairly constant level of depression
in addition to dealing with the pain by drugs and alcohol and sex they also can deal with their loneliness by throwing themselves into work now not everyone that is a convicted about their work and is finds that important and throws oneself into it is pathologically loma i'm not saying
but this is another way in which people can deal with that

what helps what helps are having a kind of a balanced sense of network of relationships when we just drop what that might look like

so we'll have to extremes here for kind of of war a typical
individual that is gonna have some family
and france
and community who from a religious life here
and then social on other
someone who suffers from more pathological loneliness
the morning person year
doesn't have the rich diversity of numerous family and community social of friends just got a couple of here they're called their network is really quite limited
to problem with an individual who has limited
the networks is what happens when there's a rather lonely in the center here he starts on friday night as a phone call and is upset was as parents because they forgot to remember his birthday so he's kind of ups
set with them and then is next door neighbor was complaining to him because he's being very distracting about allowing the other guy tray like so that's so he's got three people that is kind of odds with at least temporarily
for this poor soul here that's half of his emotional support down the tubes
he's got pure people to turn to this as tends to accentuate and exacerbate the digital copies that he's experiencing and tend to hold him and closer to himself and and more separate from other people
the benefit of having a wider range of relationships is the greater capacity to find emotional support when you need it let me turn the tables here out brother lonely maybe it's not that he's done something wrong with these people maybe his parents are upset because
i twenty nine is going through their backyard then don't have time to be talking with him right now they're too worried about saving their flower garden or something and maybe is confrere and communities having some kind of crisis of faith right now and just doesn't have the emotional reserves to to reach out so rather long we've not done anything but he's still in the same so
situation is a half of his emotional support us are long so by having and maintaining a richer array of relationships that allows you to have a broader capacity for gaining emotional support and help when you need it
it lets you have more conflict free relationships as well if you have a variety of people with whom you can relate it don't always have to be worried about having to keep things just so with the few friends that you do have
and any about any of you who have very bad and relationship with someone who has a hard time forming relationships and and so he's gotta keep the few that he has working you just know what what what an energy drain that is because the person is always the genome that i upset you or i think we're a little off base here
i'm not opposed to those sorts of conversations but i think three times a days is a little much for those the you know what i mean when when people are too concerned about are always wanting to analyze relationships because they want to keep things right
also it allows a person to be more free because there is something that's saw alternately called group tyranny or the tyranny of the week or the tyranny of the minority when people don't have a wide array of people with whom they can be in relationship with
they may feel controlled by the few friends they have and end up moving and directions in their life for example that they perhaps might not like to do
so clues are have to stop and think about what your own relationships are like
even though you've come to a monastic community and you have your brother's here for relationship
it i from my perspective it's it's important to work on maintaining and healing as necessary relationships with family and friends the opportunity that that we have to kind of come to know ourselves better in iraq prayer life with god and in are bumping up a rubbing shoulders and
and everything else with our brothers we come to see our
what our own weaknesses are and how we've done things perhaps that of contribute to contributed to whatever estrangement there may be in family and friends and others and i think it's incumbent upon us to work out to to reach out to them and to do we can to work those out it'll be good for them and will be good for us in the long run as well
those are some discussion starters topics i hope on loneliness and community and solitude let me just end this by reading a quote hear about friendship and loneliness a friendship cannot be possessed one must give oneself
over to friendship that is allowed the friendship to take possession of ones being whereas the response of loneliness involves a heightening of self-consciousness the response of friendship and tails and demands a decrease of self consciousness
friendship eludes the self conscious individual and as denied to the egotistical or self centered person to have a friendship one has to let go
okay comments or questions on these topics
oh
i think we're fortunate by this guests ministry and the huge man that we have people would come and they tend to stylish friendships and come again and again the gods resource my experience also doing other boxes it's from within the monster that when kids your
listen to people he added to it's amazing that people weren't even talking to the familiar group sent me to kinda off and to from in so can be given time
she and i think the experience for solitude
allows the sorts of unfinished issues to bubble up
as we get to as we kind of ruin our self awareness and i will and are deepening faith and prayer life of it that's been experience people myself and people that i worked with as well
we have gone up from a somewhat smaller community to community of about twenty four
and we want to talk the language of primary relationships and secondary relationships and i've heard it argued that it's very difficult to have a streaming into the deep relation with as many as twenty four nervous in st john's college have a hundred and some seeing helping his hundred so as we get bigger you but my hope is
each person can develop immediately around a group of word friends and that is a open groups and related in various ways with other groups so that hopefully the size can be advantageous because everyone advance some kind of buddy for handed two or three and
still this attempt to ever could pass the portra relation with others and then accepting you know developing content central but i would think our size and it's best might be not too big and yet not too small realizing the and just can't yet intimate relations with everyone that's right and it's helpful one these networks here especially when you think
could the individual and community here if there's kind of cross pollination so that's not just that it's that for it takes care of themselves and no one else but that some of these community members are kind of friends with other people as well so there's opportunity for for greater inner connection with people apple
and as your community shifts from kind of a smaller place to a larger place that's going to a place demands on shifting relationships within the community as well as you have more new people coming in that also will color what the experience of the chandi will be like as well
and if those issues are just not on the table that makes it easier than not having them talk to them

is it previously to talk about friendship is on the job that i'm going to see on the other companies

i'd suspected it is realistic it will require some changes in the relationship the kind of contact that you will have through telephone or letters is is not quite the same as those sorts of relationships
where you can have those more frequent face to face contacts but yes i think
a friendship can be maintained that way requires more work
people are less good this these days but writing letters that seems to be like an eighteenth and nineteenth century capacity and i i always have
pleasantly surprised when i could i'm not good at that that i'm easier to pick up the phone or drop an email note or something rather than sit down and write a long letter but
i have a few friends that are very good at that night value that and there's a different kind of connection that comes from that and from just the personal sometimes i think that there's more a deep level of sharing through letters than through face to face sometimes sometimes
hey
why is there such a difference in treatment on
and her version by different psychological tests myers-briggs treat online
can i help him like while i to that
disorder
well mm to see mpi doesn't really address the entered into a the selective introversion they address
that scale zero that has to do more with social isolation than it does with introversion and it was designed to be kind of a more pathological scale but there is a correlation between those two i said i want to say that pretty sure that the roads from when i'm remembering of that
so a part of it is you when you talk about how when different tests do you have to understand very specifically how was designed to to do it and them and p i was designed to look more at
a pathological sense of distancing from other people

mens cars either a feminine side an awesome
who doesn't you didn't know you know
on side crimes
contact email
and others least once i know they have more accountancy to write more of a tendency to out
lot of things with myself to be more of them
gramophone of
i don't there's any problem with my wife that richard
or why mean opposite sex relationships
yeah it does it does does a tend to enrich one's relationship that the greater variety of kind of different characters in our lives
tends to enrich us and challenge us to to further growth to have been
this in the past few years been more of an increase in in studying relationships and
some of the findings out of men in fact seem to have an easier time sharing their emotional sides with a woman rather than with another man and so will value those sorts of friendships with women and order be able to do that
and then i think that the task for us as to work on the and transferring that and working in sharing our emotional sides with other men as well because that if we want to work on really enriching ourselves and each other and deepening our same sex relationships at a level of intimacy that's one of the things that needs to be worked toward overt
time
men have a sense of kind of reciprocity about this it's like a i'll talk in odd i'll share this emotional tidbit about me with a new better show on back or i'll never do it again i mean they're not going to quite say it that way but that's often the case what happens is that we're and a very careful about how we do and we'll we'll take it
chance and then
men's families are kind of very easily heard around these emotional issues that perhaps and on other areas not so much but around these are tend to be rather risky for them an am
our kind of cautious

you point
indiana's number out the shadow is why top of the same thing and home in s themselves with request
then tom
the men need to work
increasing the war on on adjusting themselves
if you can do so free no quid pro quo
and that were always measuring are always industry conditional
well it's i think it's true there's a way in which men have a keen if you go back to this notion i talked about yesterday of the his early experiences with father on ethical issues of competition is a key element we we don't like to share necessarily because we feel we're not going to quite measure up in so
faith sharing if they will should be kind of relatively conflict free right run among a group of monks well it isn't actually because you know what did you find out that he praised better than you do a proper something you know and the one level that's kind of an irrational thing to say but at a gut level these are some of the reactions
people have a are going to come up be ending up being in less than a monk than he is these are concerns that we work toward that we have to kind of work on resolving man again tenant ten operate more kind of shoulder to show shoulder to shoulder relationships and
less kind of i'd i the balance has shifted more to shoulder to shoulder the eye to eye that tends to be reversed for women again nothing particularly wrong with that i mean you get things done when you work shoulder to shoulder and men often like to do things through shared activities that's a way in which they share themselves a way of being intimate with
each other
one of our muslim and our community is very much like the it's rehydrate to talk that unless we're going for a walk somewhere so we got literally side to side or what he wants wants to go for a walk and he wants to talk about something and then he'll let off you know was kind of for a rapid pace and it's going longer legs and i too
some are forever trying to keep up with them but we will have a conversation and there about something important at some point
if you have another for conquer boys
on if you do you
could you think about giving us some gut reactions as cinema commute this situation here if you have any arms they go on for it in with it
the summer suffers
suffering
too much or how what the apple help her
he asked i think it could have
you know one of the best things for middle aged men in order to kind of keep them both psychologically and physically healthy is having intimate relationships spend some studies indicate men and middle age or less likely that kind of get sick and have difficulties both psychologically and physically if they
have important intimate relationships and no one
and what's the definition of middle age from a definition of middle ages always one year older than i am
but if that mid time in our life when when were
oh what is it called different authors you know midlife crisis the age forty issues from levinson the some kind of major shift that starts taking place of the there are certain amount of psychological upheaval and if there's a way in which that can be shared with others than it can be processed directly and doesn't have to be kind of
side tracked through our body through physical problems
or unaddressed issues or on depression and anxiety for example to
so he has not seen that
but it requires careful work to help someone who tends to be more lonely because remember
sometimes therapies is needed for this but i think if you were to think how much you address this in a in a community being aware that the tendency is to replayed problematic relationships just by kind of wanting to be a friend to them initially won't be enough what it will require
where is the ability to point out to them
look every time i'd try and get closer something happens in our relationship here and i'd like to see that not happen is there a way we can work on this mean that's taking a risk on your part to reach out to someone help them kind of confront the way in which their replaying their own lonely experiences they're not usually doing
that on purpose but they're doing it because that's kind of how they expect like to be like so they have the opportunity to ever a new experience with another person can be quite transforming
potential was there for them
you can chew to help and diversity your friends canning which we try not to be ideological hearing simple the boozer conservatism so we to get a realistic community in terms of approaches to the average the children and i think at it's best and can be expanded
the when and then huge range sometimes it gets the rule you choose your own group in they're all or less thrilled to go from brother philip jose the to someone who's twenty nine good at it's best that's exciting people competitive and cultural backgrounds zipped up
nicole etc but it does take work after i understand some communities are real polarized about this issue or there i don't think has happened here again tonight think ongoing work and growing young and i have a couple of thoughts about why i think it gets polarized and what you can do to prevent that or to work on its
hard ones start to to work toward shifting that the my senses that the polarization takes place because
and then my personal views here undue emphasis and importance is placed a particular ideological stances so whether one tends to be let's say theologically liberal or theologically conservative either side if your whole it in
large parts of your sense of yourself is over identify with that viewpoint so that hearing someone else who thinks differently than you is not just having an intellectual disagreement with you but as attacking yourself that's where the polarization starts when there is
i think that this is not the only explanation for but when there's a too fragile sense of one's self and and we have to identify too strongly with movements or ideas to define ourselves that we're not in a position to kind of separate ourselves from those and enjoy
age in some discussion round that and what's that process starts it sets all sorts of things into play and community life so many things immediately go underground as a result of that because then it's kind of impossible to do any share and even on areas where there might be some program
no one wants to talk to each other about things
tremendous anger develops it gets pushed on the ground it erupts and that only reinforces the need not to talk about things than that gets very complicated to to break out of that
wait and europe santa's duty have a pretty good chance were given take it right now in your community with those issues what you would want to do to make sure that kind of stays that way as if you started noticing some people who were pant taking to too much of a stance on that it would have to tie to address that issue early on and indirectly nicely
but directly and help people work towards keeping a balance
i think there's something very energizing and life-giving about the kind of important given take even about important issues that one hold deep in one's heart but to be able to engage in a given take allows for the chance to listen to each other which is why experiencing poorest communities that there is no listening not listening along
if their their pronouncements and that so
first attempt know mama
he was sremmurd make you my friends
right right so the benedict a model about the virtue of balance as really what comes into play doesn't meant gotta keep that balance and that the balance may shift at different times it could be that in the stages of someone's life that they may have to give some additional to
time to healing family relationships and so they spend more time or visit family more often or maybe that the some community relationships have suffered and so they need to cut back on worker other embodiments and just work on kind of being and getting reconnected with the community these would be have i think it
portant individual needs that would help the eventual building up of the community
oh having a why mentor there were problems when people when you're close to the necessarily the have a great percentage of your time toby i i'm going with your encounters with them you have exchanged the world and intimately you could
the growing friends you may not have them you know you because you really should know that my mom greg it's not like you go to other prior so you know i really do my own telephone because i really have to have an hour a day with each of my six friends to keep the relationship gone
most of you will have the experience of people that you're close to but that you don't always have frequent conversations with them are frequent times with them and you may have at least initially in the relationship the fear that you know by being apart from them were going to drift apart and that's true for some relationships but for others that
can not meet accept every once in awhile or talk but you go right to the heart of the matter don't you
been synonymous you think it had that experience that that's true for a pt and me as his that's true we don't see each other all that often and since harvey and they get out the phone and i don't write that makes it valuation more difficult for them will we get back together again it's very easy to get to that level of intimacy that's been there
maintains itself i don't be it's refreshing and to you my friend could be wassup was something grander vision has or hasn't changed them with a really refreshing perspective and reinforces branch you know the long all door and i think the other
the benefit of that is that it enriches once community relationships as well good for friends and with good relations with family and friends outside of the community enrich one's relationships because you come away from that energize more to share with others
enriched by and that gives something for you have more to give them

national credit
are we talking about the the commanded not family that there was something in the franciscans we aren't a lot because they put the word family and so many thanks isn't an official documents and we were struggling decision in reality this is not though we're not live and you would hear this you
and harmless out the and it seemed to push a lot of buttons you know that are sometimes the stirring up them need not be are issues that people are somewhat past our head and and then when the issue the trying to find them a barometer
or what is really right the community decision or with this community good like he resigned from hasn't committed good at supersede the individual but i was wondering if the decade of do not count as a community or ride that your choice that is this really act not have been revamped
while i think that of the with he bought himself with corporate representative met with
when it comes the to
well we think that you know we you're doing a poem has wronged by and let that become to that you know that a statement of the communities conscious and and had in hot and that this is done very arbitrarily and and strangely enough i my experience know
at times other people would get a networked together in the thing and a shadow of that and keep using without the only have and hundred and people
maybe as a reality individual deals visit it is a bill that community keeps his consciousness that it has been
then how did one right right i think it comes down to a how important it is to have the kind of a corporate sense of identity that gets discussed at and level that is not too specific but one of the things that drives me wild the my community
the is when
someone will say to me over others that something is not put monastic and that's a button that will push me off into ice cream sandwich bars apparently court in one mock i'm not monastic the you know and i just want to say that based on what you know and what you know it can you give me an expo
nation of what this is about the the problem is that
the attempt to kind of legislate what is and isn't a corporate identity at that level i think is is a mistake it has to be done at a larger group of in that group and at a larger level of obstruct higher level of abstraction it's very useful to be able to say why were we
founded and that can have a couple sentences about that what is it that we really want to be doing what are the important values in our life that we subscribe to how do we live those out what are the general principles that we operate from and have some consensus about those sorts of issues smaller communities have an easier choice
chance of doing that than do larger communities
so i think that's that that's a first place to start this to start addressing those issues from a psychological level
when when you got folks kind of telling you that you're not doing a community where up
that can be a sign sometimes that of those kind of smaller and mashed communities that i was talking about the very dependent interrelated where it has to be done a certain way that the chance of trying something new even if you watch the pans a little differently as quite worked like it's i've done that way here
that's it that's a sign that there may be a bit too much kind of closing in a necessarily around something as small as they're now be a different thing if if you said that he wanted to start being a parish priest somewhere and someone says but we don't really do that here that that would operate from a different level of abstraction would
then you could make what central that address some a issues
any
it seems to be a kind of crime experiencing community
for on a special on
the investment is there is certainly a phantom that
a conscious living
i think we gonna look at not in this community but outside at some other ones in general i think what happens is when a community starts getting out of touch with its own historical roots and the changes that it needs to continue to make to be in touch with the needs of society and the world needs of the church
ouch the people that start holding on to accidentals as ways of defining themselves
and if that's all dogs who are my view views you'll end up with the dead community in a while
and then wave describe it is that's why the language problem family pushes but sometimes really worth of ideas and measurement and families system that a person rose up the role they play their family
it's played it on again the nurse in him situation is completely different right and an unconscious level that brings out at least two sets of feelings one is i don't want to have a family like i had before or i'm not getting hear what i got from my family's the don't call those the family either way they're not going to want to have a called the family
so
i think that's a mistake to do them at that particular outcome
well if the lester levenson will stop and make you happy