all right we'll wrap up
presentation today
i used i do an extended series like this i'm like to use glass dado i say the things that meant to say better same second time cover things i forgot to say when i was going through other things answer questions that come up and in addition have a whole slew of other material present presented well salt combine all that and one prestige
join hill
we've been talking about a monastic community loving from a particular perspective or orientation and that added south and others and i've been stressing with you throughout the week the nature of the ongoing development for our capacity to be and to love
that it is something that begins shortly after our physical birth are psychological birth begins to develop after that and the context of relationships with others and those early experiences have a profound and lasting impact on us and on our future life however for a vast majority of us that is
not enough to completely and finalized the product were always unfinished our sense of being continues to need refinement and certainly our relationships our capacity for loving need to be growing as well if we want to work on that the capacity is always there the question is do you always choose to work on and edited the fact is that we don't
there are some periods in our life when we don't when we stop kind of working on the road process hopefully we get a challenge data from inside or outside to begin the process again so the starting and stopping is not unusual fact that a typical
at least three sorts of things that we're working our looking at the process of understanding and loving or ourself and that includes all of the various selves with a small last that i've touched on just a few of them and old spend a little more time on that today on others those with whom we have about
relationships with and all that course and has to do with our current relationships the people who are our lives right now there's another way to think about this notion of the others and that is some of the work that often needs to be done to heal old relationships even as
they're not actually here with us to do it but we have an image an aspect of them that we've taken in ourselves and part of this kind of loving means kind of going back and reworking some of these older relationships now it's ideal if you can do that when the people are still alive and that's me
makes it much easier but even if people have died i think we
my perspective is that we have both the opportunity and i think the responsibility to ourselves to kind of rework some of those especially if they were very troubled and problematic relationships because if we don't do that in are working in some of that healing it tends to spill over color and jade are other relationships
the the thing to avoid most of all i think is the development of a sense of bitterness wherever that comes from
it's interesting how psychology and psychiatry states is getting a little bit less empirical and moving to another dimension i was reading a eminent empirical scholar and at the end of his book he starts talking about kind of difficult people and he makes this comment which i thought was a very important when he said
there are some things that he thinks just can't be changed in any kind of therapeutic relationship and he said one of those things as bitterness that when people become embittered that that they become perhaps from our expression or your experience or tradition so hardened of heart that it's impossible to shift and you don't use a here
psychiatrists talk about those sorts of things but i think it's an important warning to us that if we don't work on kind of dealing with some our past relationships that can contribute to the inability to form current ones that can and i think does interfere with our relationship with god and can
lead to a sense of and bitterness that we're not careful about that that's an extreme reaction however most of us will know some people will have some degree of bitterness and i'll be talking about one such personal little bit later when i discuss compassion
and a the other or god
i don't want to say it goes without saying because it shouldn't go without saying it should be set a lock that the process that were involved here is this integrated understanding and interrelatedness of ourselves or others and god and so why feeble attempt to
kind of gives some diagram to that i wanted to put a self god and others and some kind of dynamic interchange there and that someone called it the rain on the background there it is my attempt to
say that this sort of relationship of self god and others occurs in a context
of course the self context that we all bring to it is our own past experience but the broader context here to be thinking about this as a community is the fact that you're a monastic community that you are particularly a command the least monastic community and this is big sur california come on the leads monastic
community not to italy or tanzania are or other places as well so that will cover it as well
okay you
this notion of being and loving in such a critical one and i began on monday by outlining just a few possible ways in which some of that being and loving can go wrong and i want to talk briefly today about those again but this time highlighting ways you can think about how you might address that it
if at some point in your life those that those issues arise for you and i want to tell you that i think that they will at some point if you don't have to be severely psychologically disturbed to have those sorts of issues come up we all have them it's part of the the normal process of being human that were incomplete and a different times we're going to add
these experiences so i want to pose some additional questions for you to consider thinking about if and when you find yourself in these situations these aren't the only questions but they are some that might help you and understanding it the first wide talked about is that i need you to convince me that i exist what you can ask
yourself about that is what am i perceiving at this time that seems to be a threat to myself would
what's going on either internally or externally that seems to be a threat to myself would its leading me to act in this way
the second one i had is i need you to tell me who i am
the question and we can ask ourselves here is what is making me fearful of increasing myself definition
and self expansion
remember i indicated that were caught in this polarity of identity maintenance and identity formation you know the pushed to go forward and grow along with the poll to just kind of keep things as they are so the question we can ask ourselves why am i afraid what engendering this for
fear this reluctance and me to expand myself
the third one was i need you to keep me from feeling lost
so the question here is what's happening in my life that i'm feeling lost and at see besides the rain here which is trend this whole thing into an ocean
what's making us feel lost
certainly transitions are a key part of that those of you who are new to this community should expect to have some experience of that the typical
because your worlds are changing your a different setting perhaps very different said i would be some expectation of feeling kind of lost and and without anchoring and
five acknowledging that some of these things are expected bull and also transient that this will go away it helps to at of the great believer and understanding as a means of kind of helping controlling say it doesn't take care of everything i don't believe that understanding is the be all that's too heavy but it sure helped some time
the next one i had was i need you to make me perfect the question here to ask is what am i afraid of owning about myself that i consider bad in quotes
what do i have to project onto others that i can't tolerate and accept within myself what do i have to see is bad and others because i can't tolerate seeing it as bad in me
so when you're up to it and you've got the gumption you can work on a list of what it means to be bad to you and work towards understanding it many of these are kind of irrational yet very powerful and i often think that the things that people think are bad
about themselves are things that they have not fully understood or integrated or owned
things that may feel guilty or ashamed about
i need you to make me feel good about being me
the need of have other is kind of always propping us up and building us up so the question here is in what way am i not accepting who i am have i not really kind of owned and feel comfortable with the values that undergird and guide my life would be one question to think about here

and the last one i mentioned was that i need you to measure me against
question cheers what is so important about fighting why is it that i need to find a lot what does that a sign up for me to think about that or what issues in my life am i tried to control and me buy a controlling others

a few other questions gonna more generally that we can ask ourselves would be
what's so hard about me letting people be who they are
often times it's because my experience of who people were for me in the past was kind of short on goodness and long on badness so that's why we have to believe we have to work on controlling them the experimentation is can i let people be who they are and see that there might be something that will good good will come out of that relationship
the for a more fundamental question for us to be thinking about throughout our lives is what makes it hard for me to acknowledge myself to me and to share that with others that's the course the overarching question that that would struggle with
and i think the answers to these questions come from three areas they come from our own self
reflection
i think they can come from our interactions and discussions with other people are important people in our lives and i think this in a very important way they come when we take these same questions to prayer
and i think that you know reflecting on nation in a prayerful way is a way of consciously inviting a god to help us in this process

some other issues that i stress this week we're friendship intimacy and celibacy because you know this relationship this if we're looking for an intimate friendship and relationships with god and others that part of the context is the monastic life as you people live at here
we're one of the aspects of monastic life is the vowed life of a chance to be celibate chastity depending on how you want to go about describing that so that that has to i think color the way in which we live out our relationships and that would be different than people who do now
not follow of our way of living so i'm going to it's kind of goes without saying but it's important remember that context
i guess i like to think about kind of like general principles what are some general principles that than allow for people to think about how they want to live their life that's some of the residual t and me from my earlier life before i found my true f after leaving the hard sciences and getty
into psychology as one of our monks calls it the suede or science or psychology
anyway i i still like to think back to some larger principles it's organizing for me
what do we need we need to operate out of a sense of integrity
on balance
self knowledge consistency and commitment

the area that gives many people
a lot of difficulty
in religious nut i don't want i want to say that i think it all aspects of living because this is not peculiar just to religious
is the area of sexuality and then need to look at that in the context of celibacy as well i think it's an area that many people have a great deal of difficulty with integrating and owning and achieving some balance some consistency and some self knowledge people i tend to be fairly on
nowhere in many cases and need to grow in that area and that's true for monastic men as well and i'm more my own personal experience obviously and an omega work with others as to do primarily with men's community so i'm only i'm going to talk about that i don't want to generalize to women's communities i suspect that their issues are
are likely different than men's in some way but there probably are some some similarities but i don't know enough to to comment on them
in an area that often comes up
in discussion usually not in
large group meetings like this usually on one to one conversations are questions about sexuality and masturbation and particular and how to understand that and to make sense of that within the monastic context with a sense of celibacy and that's course i think a very good question it's a complicated one on
many levels on which to think about that and
the whole pox could be given on the topic i want to just highlight a couple of key elements of that i think are worth considering and thinking about them we have time for discussion we can talk about that are get i'm available for visiting with people
there are many ways to think about the notion of celibacy in general there is one to take an axe approach a c t s vs taking a process approach to sell but the celibacy and growth and celibacy
there can be some problems when individuals focus too much on the act itself of masturbation or intercourse or whatever it happens to be rather than seeing it within the context of process richard sipe who are who is a former benedictine from st john's i believe that
i'm now lives out in the east coast has a definition that i want to offer here he says that celibacy is of freely chosen dynamic state usually vowed and that the partner i want to emphasize is an honest and sustained attempt to live without sexual gratification and or
order to serve others productively from a spiritual motive
that quotation is it has book you have the book here in your library it's called the secret world
dinner resting book
now just he'll give you some set of numbers and there if you're interested in reading it but the issue masturbation is one that is of concern to a vast majority of male religious his numbers estimate that perhaps at some point or another and their monastic like well over eighty not just monastic religious life
well over eighty percent have had some issues around masturbation and i suspect that it's at least that are higher from from my experience the question i would say is is this is to think about this from the perspective of what is the meaning associated with this
to help you understand this more carefully in your own life digital i think important things to think about
from a psychological standpoint kind of leaving aside what i mean just approach it from there but no evidence that there is anything in it's in and of itself inherently pathological with masturbation can it be a sign or symptom of difficulties in someone's life you bet
can there are some people who suffer from a compulsive masturbation and and have really no control over that in their lives or other sorts of compulsive sexual acting out sometimes masturbation can be a symptom of other kinds of disorders and individuals and
you know evaluations are are needed to help sort that out so i'm not talking about that subgroup because that does exist i'm talking about the run of the mill a typical male religious who is trying to understand and own and live out a process of celibacy in his life
things to think about our what might be some kind of rhythm or pattern with one's own sexual feelings a member i discuss that men often suffer from chronic a or ethnicity the need to pay attention to our own sexual cycles when our sexual feelings are stronger and less
strong and also to think in terms of that versus other aspects of our life it's a mistake to isolate our general sexual feelings as separate from other areas of our life everything from my perspective is of one piece is interrelated and again
remember men's
tendency least some and maybe no one here but the some men tend to have diminished range of emotional expression and awareness of feelings
member i said that you feel honour they feel off so sexual feelings and masturbation following from that can meet many different things and so the task is to work towards understanding it it an expression of loneliness
if so what kind of things need to be done to address loneliness in my life is an expression of anger
if so others some other ways in which i need to be addressing anger
is it a method of tension reduction if so might there be other ways of reducing tension rather than relying on this
is it
sense of self soothing
if so how do i need to make some ships out other areas of my life
i'm more inclined when i worked with people around this to help them think in this way rather than of even if they come to me and say it i just want to stop this so please help me stop it
i'm less inclined to say okay i'll get you a prescription for a depo provera and that will stop it or any other things that probably would not be particularly effective
because i think it does stand for something and i think it needs to be understood sometimes the efforts just to stab yet are reflective more deep seated kind of repressive tendencies and i believe that there are some people who have no masturbated in their lives never had any sexual expression who are priests monks who are not celebrate
not celebrates now why might i say something like that because all that they're concerned about is a repression of their sexual feelings these people can tend to be constructed
split off two dimensional they have denied a whole part of their existence the sense of vitality and liveliness is gone from them and then if something happens so that that a defensive barrier doesn't hold any more and by enlarge it will happen to people in some
time or another in their life what is both happens it erupts and then it just erupts and all of the denied sexual feelings cloud such advantage that they are just completely unprepared for it that's an exam classic example of where there's a will decrease the known in
this area
the thing i want to say about that is the to consider that aspect or sexual selves in conjunction with our whole self to give it too much attention and focus gives it too much power i believe
and i also believe that it can be healthy to have a at opportunities and avenues and people with whom you can discuss your own very personal and very real
work and progress towards celibacy
the same way in which you can read everything there is about it and there's a lot and that will be of necessity incomplete and inherently unsatisfied
i guess i'm of the opinion these days that it's somehow
it's only learned in the
and developed in the context of of community i think it works much better that's why i think it's it's never easy somewhat easier for monastic men as compared the diocesan priests because supportive community and then in a way of kind of sharing one's own growth and struggles with this with other people that i think as a way of capitalizing on the hell
of many brothers that is so much a part of the monastic tradition
so our sexual side can be an important barometer for other imbalances in our life as we're working towards keeping up intimate silva friendships and the broadest sense of all three of those
the terms with ourselves with god and my father's
let me talk a little bit about compassion as an important area that i think from my perspective
is an essential part of community living
one a difference i'm going to give you a couple of here one is that it's a selfless behavior compassion motivated by a compelling altruistic love
selfless behavior motivated by a compelling altruistic love and from my perspective this compelling component to it is the act and action and grace of god the ability for us to be compassionate
in the fullest sense that term is the movement of god in our hearts and spilling over into our relationships with others
matthew fox and you can like some things he says and not like other thing for says
as i do has this quote you may call god love you may call god goodness that the best name for god is compassion so he likes to highlight that as a very important name
a lot of old testament themes for the role of compassion and how that is very much an attribute of god and so make sense them to see that divine element spilling out that attribute of god kind of welling up within us
what it isn't is pity
compare compassion brings people together and knocks down barriers and fosters relationships in the broadest sense pity separates petty distances
and i think relating to people from a sense of pity
is a far cry from a true expression of compassion

it's a useful and i think fruitful exercise to look through the bible scriptures
and to see examples of god's manifestation of compassion would find it we look that god's compassion is unconditional and inclusive so then we need to be asking ourselves
how about us and of course we're going to come up short on that because given our own conflicts and imperfections with being and loving it's likely that are expressions of compassion will be somewhat conditional
do we make judgments about who gets it from us who doesn't who were going to be compassionate to
we can always look at ourselves honestly and and wonder what you know kind of be in awe at the compassionate god has given to us since probably many ways we perhaps don't deserve it either
another interesting thing especially with jesus is that he seemed to reach out to people who were getting what they deserved a lot of the folks had done some objectively wrong things and we're being punished of that didn't stop jesus for reaching out and sharing with them and touching them in important ways

and in community life we can have struggles with people with rivals or opponents folks that have heard us lied to us betrayed us diminished us in some ways can we be opened to reaching out
i think holding onto a sense of compassion as a kind of a cornerstone can be a creative element in our lives and it kinda be that fragile spark that can burst forth into important
experiences of reconciliation and connectedness and then further growth with each other
and this is when i'm reminded of that i had that quote now from tear dish or down and i just didn't do a very good job of reporting the last time here it is some day after the win after mastering the wins the waves tides and gravity we shall harness for god the energies of love and then for a second time and the history of the world we will have discuss
every fire
like that that's kind of an evocative of saying of his that for appealing
concretely there are three elements that i think contribute to the role of compassion it's a disposition of solidarity toward our brothers suffering that includes everyone here in this room plus are larger neighbors the world
secondly it's an act of entering into that suffering as one's own now looking at it and feeling sorry for people from the distance of pity but engaging in it more fully
and a commitment to overcoming the cause of that suffering itself it's not adjust it's not enough just to acknowledge it but it requires that commitment and that's the fraternal love at least at the very least that's called for all of us in a community to to bring that forward to move towards that
and another court that i think that talks about how important it is to and and yeah difficult to make that suffering our our own as from alexander solzhenitsyn he says this if only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and to destroy
them just like that but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being
and who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart
i think that's a powerful statement that he puts their
and reminds us to
remember that sharing that we have with people is not only in their good times but when we reach out and compassion to people who are hurt and pain and something's wrong with them we are being in touch with that kind of hurt and pain and wrong this within ourselves and i think the potential there is for
transforming of our own hurt and pain through the reaching out in relationships to other people as well

let me stop here and spend some time with questions and discussion about anything i've covered today or what i've talked about in the week or what i have not talked about and then i'll just have a few closing comments i'll make it the very end before we stopped for them
presentation
me a common via photo photo of making powers and the
hot
better
address name is compassion a covered is quoted coming mistake
maybe we need pasting and i think it's very much have been a mistake or with the area around the the reasons why
and i think it's because we very much supported by
the best of john where we find a statement that god he's gotta think guy
we have used the word that gap in a popular behind with matters being and hebrew word has it and which is a compassionate and a and he gives his exactly compassionate as is that the charisma of is manifest in news that sentence on these
and and world can be a huge ex ph
fila virus it and i have been a life of a whole explanation is that compassion and manifestation and comes from exodus to the description of god and compassionate and gracious slow to anger rich and steadfast love and faithfulness would be an old testament accidents citation that too
meet when you're talking earlier about why we need other
one the or any other show the right is right the well to me that the foster who think that i've got up my folks so that i need you are other person that show me that all started this org really it's more fundamental than anything yep yeah i guess i don't
you understand well that's good
if you don't understand it then you're not particularly struggling with that okay so
that would be kind of a more fundamental issue
that actually is tends to be seen wherever it's kind of ongoing common problem and people who have some severe character pathologies who really can't hold on to a sense of themselves when there aren't others to support them they're kind of stuff developmentally at what it was like to be a less than a year old psychologically they need my
want to take care of thinks otherwise they won't exist and they have not developed psychologically further along with them
sorry
here is that in the muslim state with question you gave them
i was
what you said i need you to make him perfect ah
there's the one sentence that one near cliche to live
and i don't actually only lot of the that dedication
ah i think that in the context of that there is a been i've been creating fat duration and hatred so time because while we have been jackal is sometimes what we call are being it would be attracted to say
somebody in in my line savings that projection i didn't you to make the perfect i mean even think it up and characters that the on a whose thing
i am attracted to somebody and i think there's go well even friendship our way through the infatuation the
i see you something that the restaurant or something that i could possibly become or before i see you makes me hope so
not just negative sense i feel like something new because i see it and economic problems and so there's something in you and i want from the
oh aware that it can be worried that can be counted relationships through the about his me when i go so far as worship the the new in nottingham
and then maybe trying to get it from you instead of developing
are they on when you get it from me as to have me around you all the time had to have me beat just this same way all the time instead of fighting that see the other but that is you know instead of projecting that hero image and it says you at nine government gave my phone i like went down when you see married couples
where one spouse dies and the others bounces vol pieces you know i think how about that much he especially if the others of i think it happens border men and women has never develop was that women were supposed to have brought forth in the man yeah and then somebody to the outset happened i watched my
grab your time when our all the sudden turned into this loving man that had never been seventy six years on
so the projection of i need you to make the perfect and was in some of things be considered good like and of you what do you mean by love does that mean that he never expected how we want to use that the notion of kind of infatuation seeing things and others that we like it would like to see in ourselves book that is go
good nothing wrong with that it becomes a problem when people when you can't let people change when they have to stay that same way and when they're like an interlocking piece of you so that you're not complete without them staying just the way they are that's where it becomes more troublesome but to acknowledge that other people have qualities that we
don't have that we enjoy and that we could be enriched by being around them that's healthy that that's that's acknowledging who we are some things that we lack and acknowledging our capacity to love with the in relationship and new encouraged a growth between them
if others dynamic was edited most bunch of other prison the other person exactly yeah that's a good way of putting a depression
in this frozen and have anathema against them frozen things
frozen peas was
the can get your might be some people totally upstanding often they're like we're going to celebrate and you can specify the summer i heard of open st thomas aquinas super people that also is a cynic celibacy to fail in effective loving others right
and i think of we can solve this understand the whole catholic and some immaculate impurity and central and that is not healthy to ah
how to plug into the catholic reverence for the whole mighty and sexual and thus of struggling as a new energy center not getting caught in the and darker stuff that's
but they've got in ten minutes using the percents yeah i think that there is so a greater richness of and i don't have this sheet that with them but the catholic theological association came up with a list of kind of what's good sexuality you know and relationship and
dancing by the life getting so rather than defining so much and what it shouldn't be it was saying what it is what of the positive aspects of sexuality putting genital sexuality highlighting that i think that's important
i think there's an evolving process in the church and understanding that big stage but
i so appreciate very much room for an outlet to aspects of service or when scientists continent as yeah
yeah change
why is the and so on and there's something about aspects it has to become completely agnostic aspect as poses as well you can do relationship
outgoing seventy both aspects of the same com
yeah so it's a work in process throughout one's life i think there's a story of
to desert months and one pray to god to be removed of all of his passions and he was and the line and there isn't so he was made impassable so i guess that must be without passion then he went to another father and the father said pray to god to have your passions restored for virtue was only game
the through struggle and so he did that and struggle until his dying day let's be a story from the father
it is a while
like a cat
five
who are then
in love with got how to explain that psychologically
probably i wonder what william son has anyone read william miners book where he does like a psychological study of ignatius of loyola and they will remember read the i wonder if he doesn't try to address that issue in there somewhere i suspect that he probably would i haven't had a chance to read the book yet
with it
it's not i'm not quite sure about the william meissner the jesuit he's a he's a jesuit psychiatry psycho analyst he puts out about one five hundred page book a year the obsession amazing guy someone who knew him said in seminary that this is a man when he would stand up he talked in pair
graphs i it's called came out
will be interesting to see what he would say about a relationship that i dig ditches and and xavier here
they didn't know each other and happy with integrate data
right well the monastic tradition ale rent and his work on spiritual friendship there's been lots of people writing these days about him about what what his sexual orientation was or wasn't and what what that all men but that's i think getting work study these days as
there's an interest and understanding you know the role of the effective life our relationships with each other on reaching that can be even even in america yogi basil
edition
i'm like liked centuries of elvis wisdom them approaches as well you can't be certain that you love that much these you can come to some other hindrance
we're it prevents it from just being some a disembodied
relationship reminds us that we have bottles
now the that spurs of john how can be sing that we can see
when point you may i interested in fully but you're right you know the way to is offer let's be careful of characterizing monastic community as family so we don't have only own expectations because i want to find my mommy here are my and or you might have
that
that when you through you mentioned for fraternal love that somehow christ is her brother he says whoever does not have my gotten used to work so this whole thing is i understand it it's a model for the earliest christian community the concept into getting a new testament and need to avoid young mothers and sharing and
they're good how to live that not have an alienating way but that are in that sense and rocking another singer sense if i could have we are family and the have one father in our and thence yeah it's all says i mean it's not that we take our early fathers and they
a project that onto guy to got his father that there is that brief lying it is from god's father than the all human father who is doing so in a certain sense this is family that takes priority over our natural blood family
that the royal of developing the fraternal relationship that that's the philly else would be the word for love for that
right i think that friendship but i been know whether few men didn't get rather than this is helping again
so i think that would be the one that when i think of the various definitions of words i would think we might apply to an understanding of what the relationship within community are when i say not to think of it as family
it would be i would want to emphasize that it can't and shouldn't be the same as one human family and you can't have the same kind of needs met the relationship from just just had a psychological level the relationship paradigms are different the expectation or different the demands that are placed on people are different
the i think the new testament sense of community
highlights and important point why did they come to they come together for some larger purpose and it's around that that the brotherhood developed as amended it's as a relationship with god and service to each other psychologically we do tend to put onto god what our biological fathers are like even though
no paul tells us to do the opposite in fact that that's their struggle we have of courses to overtime work to see the god that really is there about the the god that we create one way or another in our lives and that's also of i think a lifelong task in are developing relationship with god and let god be who got it
is instead of who we expect that
that one to work existential psychologist who himself had to do lots of therapy i realized years down the line you must projecting a rather from as
religion and didn't think they will have any impact on their lives and how wrong we were
without
as to fight plant i would hate to throw fairly image out completely
my area around pay bow you know there's recently
the the image of marriage contract came up a lot for me
in said so this is now my family of origin but in it a read a recent visit my hand choice you know like this is where i learned how to play
i'm him going to grow with these people and given my life and the people to vote drop of blood relation
just like a of marriages often based on the initial attraction lol arrows so after a couple of years here i'm starting to think well this is the dolphin
yeah i will to change somebody else's a me back in
yeah i'm going to have been the you're doing trash and i'm going to have to do this it's not gonna be on fire
when it's like of is that the longer i'm inherent value and jeepers don't like it's not found us to choose know like an american when you die i love and power
the real dot com and choosing him
as act with it to choose to commit oneself to dynamic process of building so so badly that hadn't okay to throw it out we right words are our friends and our enemies and as we try and define
a concepts here so family isn't kind of very loaded both positively and negatively so you're right to say the other some aspects that are fond of family life that are also upon a community life and as the just kind of saying we're just a community of brothers is that kind of fall flat perhaps and so we want to try and find some other way
i think the yes i would agree with you we don't really have kind of a a good thorough in depth way of fully explaining what this life is like and so many levels of meaning products because really that that will permit at some point you know and like right age makes are about
and get on lager i'm here i realize when somebody new to the community everybody and of books and on and way back your mind while on a girl with this person into my lot of these people to be around while i was beyond the rest of my line and i don't think it really boils down to
but it's it's downright bizarre com
and i'm sorry choosing to second and married like these in love is in someone's a decision that one makes and as to make a daily thank them
on a year but you're saying all the problem first nothing why we need of people
show me
that's the downside right downtime ah like carl rogers trust video public soft and then once you start applying it this authentic so when they don't go by your intuition because as balance so you get angry somebody can express his anger
and it will be like
no
excessive but but you can almost count who trust your action when you find them so i don't even to anything
but yeah right that reflects that of a solid understanding of what self and the in the capacity to to be in relationships with others and to
fight that's a sign of a healthy relationship is when you can fight with someone in a way that has to deal with kind of an issue or a problem and doesn't get down to the level of kind of self annihilation which often happens to some people that's why there are so afraid to to get an argument's because so
self as on the line and but if you have a fairly well established sensor self now you can get into honest real charitable disagreements with that's not a contradiction in terms and work those things out that that's part of that a healthy respect for oneself and the relationship of the other
but about the importance of remembering that your and by and are an essential can save you about volumes and and solvency and no one doesn't negate know what i didn't forget the other oh yeah allergy that to right that's that the self knowledge i think that has
so important
people will throw themselves into too much of any one thing and an effort to run away from something else whatever that happens to be whether to throw myself into one's were or perhaps solitary prayer to avoid relationship that's different than being called of that you know i want to i want to stress that
we have to be aware have a respectable balance to warn us of our own genital sexuality and
i guess my my point here of keeping that in mind along with other aspects of ourselves helps it from becoming neglected where it may kind of then try and jump out at us and also helps prevent that having to hire listed on our list of priorities either said and address what you are
yeah helen
by kristin do a proper sense of environment helps him and built these celibacy guess i'm trying to protect on pure spirit can come sooner or later that famous lawyers who do doing cops can present have right right i can accept of good by
by the subject enjoys a whole range went up then homosexual thing hazards it's contacts me that so snubbed as a real world
sober living
means canada the structuring of one's life in certain what it means taking care of the body which is a movies are things everyone should be doing anyway
we all don't do it as well as we should but it it means structuring our life so that we can if we really want that to be a goal for ourselves and we work towards making that a goal for ourselves we start organizing are strong structure in our life that allows us to to be more sell of it and you know you can use sites or other definitions you want your
you'll get from the definition i think some ideas about how you need to be living your life
i don't need to your principles or other than study looking element sexually active people are psychological profile
ah am
there was a study done comparing her sisters and non-pro sisters and salomon life
so those who chose to stay and those who left
the let me think for a second if i can recall some of the major findings of them not surprisingly those who stayed there were positive experiences with celibacy and those who left have more negative ones
interestingly enough the level of satisfaction with their sexual lives general sexual lives after they left was not particularly high with the people that left
i'm not sure what that means know i'm not enough really to to know that
yeah other questions between well
i don't know that the issues were so much around of a c vs not sell of it but they've done a lot of you know they look try to get characteristics described religious or priests vs on and there's have been on numerous studies in the past that studies were done less frequent sometimes there's an increasing dependency
noted some measure of immaturity and that that thing isn't it for the studies in the past that would be essentially true that the the
people's current reflection i want their training was felt that it had not help them grow emotionally and socially it helped them grow intellectually perhaps and so that was a criticism and then
training has shifted and the stoke and of working to get more balanced approach is in that area
your singular sexual her are sometimes greater certain times and sometimes lesser i was wondering what brings on those urges are what makes it go higher or lower
there are some physiological changes that can be going about it having to do with sperm production and the human body that would add a kind of just a biological level do that from an evolutionary standpoint it's useful for men to feel sexually aroused everyone's while kind of keeps the species going i understand at a evelyn
visionary level and
at a more psychological level that's where you start paying attention to what issues of yours or mine or yours at all of ours tends to make us kind of more or less
aroused is or other some psychological issues
some ways in which emotions might get expressed through sexual feelings that's that's one thing to think about them
a consistency and
that same that
life and him
routine over
was added woodson repeat him
still we have class
so i guess slow thing tennis umpire
to get out of the routine or to think about me that i like this can become pretty not
but then after of the reason that hello
whether a person i think routines a good thing i think it's a helpful thing problem if you've got a regular routine of kind of life and exercise and prayer
that's one thing vs kind of just leading alive and then feeling you know extraordinarily sexual and well i'm going to pray now and then nothing gross successful i think well so much for prayer in on as you know he's got well guy might be saying well but isn't there some kind of routine you and i agreed you'd be following you know if he were
to have that kind of conversation with us so there is something to be said for the the daily routine and there's a price to be paid and following that you know the the insistent ringing of bells that's true in our place to you know how time doesn't go via before you know we have to get up and go somewhere and do something whether we wow
want to or not and
some days were just so pleased to hear the bells and other days you know you can never heard him again and be too so those kind of struggles there's a certain cross i think and and following routine but a good healthy routine is important to one's life
and then commit that it seem like a hundred lives for jack clever the clerk when your mother live credits can
it gets cloudy sometimes i've got my little tornado on the bottom they're going to we're revisiting all of these issues time and time again or do people need to recommit themselves do we need to kind of read look at our vows i think so we do it on an annual basis of
the and around and our community retreat we have an annual kind of renewal symbolic renewal of our vows we do that at the end of buying or treat every year hope that's not the only time we stop and think about that and there may be different periods in our life one but when it becomes more marking we have to revisit and find a new way to recommit ourselves and have a greater understood
standing at what that commitment means to us now given the growth in our relationship with god and others to
lot of people can pick up the crisis or method comprises patio
are never been working on say
well
historically there was a history which some people said was you know the history of man specifically and women in particular said you know so that was that was just about man it doesn't address our issues so women's studies came into being the kind of look at their purse
articular needs then there came a movement towards men's studies and some man and a lot of women said well what you need that for any way you already have everything well i think that what some people say and i would agree with this is that there was some kind of and perhaps mail by
yes but some kind of from generic history and that there are particular issues that men have and that need to be understood more carefully
oh man in general were rather
oh picky about the women's movement didn't like it that they didn't need to do that some of that that was kind of silly and frivolous and perhaps some of that was who knows i think the same thing can be said about some men's movement issues is in the in the effort to kind of understand ourselves as men more people make a lot of false steps i i think
that too
so i would counter the criticism little that it tends to be frivolous which is some criticism to some people make they just think i get out with why you know
i think you have to give people time is there some sort of crisis i think that there might be i don't know that i would
how would i put it what what do i see is the major issue i think the major issue is to try and find a way to come between to some kind of balance of the solitary hero archetype that men seem to be born and and
trained and socialized in versa so away of owning at an earlier stage in their life than middle told age the tender aspect of loving caring side and to find a way in which that can be seen as masculine and the best sense of that work
third

that may not come out
let me just have some closing comments and then we can kind of and the flow after eleven
i want to close with a report from my reinhold niebuhr this was a favorite quote of dr karl men and goods that i heard for the first time at the menninger clinic which i like the lot and i
it has to do with the how it can understand the world and a larger context
nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our own lifetime therefore we must be saved by hope nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any context of history immediately therefore we must be saved by faith nothing we do however virtuous can be accomplished by love them
for we must be sit it can be accomplished alone therefore we must be saved by love
i want to say thanks for your invitation and your hospitality to me during my week stay here i've been very positive a prayerful and very enjoyable experience for me
austin my time here and my chance to visit with people was the sense of balanced intensity there was a sense of important focus that i sensed him the people that i've talked with here and openness have a question questioning of towards an end of kind of right
ordering things in your lives that sedative very good impact on me and has caused me to you know to be more in touch with those same kind of questions for myself and my own life and so from that perspective that something that you as a community of given to me during my stay here
as well so i want to thank you for that and for the opportunity to be here with you
huh