Help us to understand, help us to love, help us to live, all we ask is in Jesus' name. Last time I think we got through question 14, it's on, consider your call introduction page 5 or somewhere. Next time I think we can just move forward, we can move forward into chapter 1 of consider your call. When we get to chapter 2 and 3, which we'll also do, I'll give you more questions. We were talking about the monastery as a little church and the positive and the negative. It sort of goes along with the positive and the negative, thinking of yourself as somebody who's striving to be a perfect Christian, or a monastic person as a perfect Christian. And of course for the monk himself, that's a perfectly valid goal, that's what it means.

[01:06]

On the other hand, if you define monk in that way, then you leave everybody else out in the cold. If you define monastery as a little church, ecclesio as they put it, then you lose the interaction of the monk and the monastery with the other organs of the church. The one organ pretends to be everything, in a sense, so that it says, I'm the heart, and I don't need the kidneys, I don't need the liver. There's something about that complementarity of the different ways of life, which appears when you, if you talk to lay people, you see what their lives are like, what they're doing, and the conflicts and things that they do and that they have. And that and the monastic life are the same issue, in some way. And he says the meaning of, he's talking about the difficulty of distinguishing monasticism from the other kinds of religious life.

[02:07]

He says, well, don't worry, because maybe that means that monasticism is in the center rather than the periphery of the church's life. That's up on the top of the next page there. But what does that mean? Because you can feel also a kind of evaporation happening at that point, the danger of something vaporizing and getting lost. If to be in the center of the church's life means you don't have any distinguishing characteristics, there's nothing different, you're the same as every other religious group, only without their specific elements. It sounds like there's some local missing. If you say center in Pentecostal sense, then center implies depth, doesn't it? So that there'd be a search for the center, so the center couldn't be conceived as a goal and as the intersection of a depth dimension in which the path of life would be distinguished by its depth. So it wouldn't have a function which is specifically distinct from the other religious

[03:11]

ways of life. As the religious ways of life tend to themselves, they tend to move towards one kind of apostrophe or another function in the church. But if you say that at the heart of religious life, monasticism tries to open up the depth dimension of all religious life, then it should be distinguished by progress in that depth dimension, then it can make satisfactory sense. But he's hesitant to make that kind of claim for monasticism, and he isn't thinking that there's a degree of center in that way. But I agree with him that it's to be said that center doesn't exist. But then you have this paradox that, well, I thought monks were marginal people, and you're not in the middle of the church area, and you're not in the middle of the parish or of the public church life. But that seems right in some way, doesn't it? Even if Jesus could enter the world as its center, he's also marginal. He's on the periphery. In some way, he's peripheral to the Jewish establishment.

[04:13]

It sounds presumptuous for the monk to claim that same kind of marginal centricity or whatever you call it, but there's something to it in the aim and the aspiration. Which question were you talking about earlier? This is while standing up. The angel one. The angel one. Question 15. Oh, I'm sorry. I was down there. It's almost like a cross of an X figure. In an external dualistic sense, the monk is a peripheral person. And from society's point of view, marginal sort of out there in some way, not in the

[05:22]

center, but looking at life from the point of view of mysticology, the whole Christian history of life, that maybe the monastic life or other kinds of life that are nominally and hopefully more deeply than nominally dedicated to the quest for God, that does have a kind of centrality. So it's both of that. And in a certain way, even though the more institutional parts of the church, the diocese and the bishop and parishes and the life of that, it's in some ways the center is hard to define. And so a really, I think in a way, a really religious, like Gospel today, Christ reading

[06:28]

the book of Isaiah right in the middle of the synagogue, calling the people right back to the center, calling the people back, even though he goes into their center, their town, he's the one calling them back to the center. And he comes from the periphery to do that. And so even though they're structurally built around a center, he's calling them to a deeper center within that. I guess a truly religious life is doing that. It's a little like John the Baptist in Jerusalem, probably. John the Baptist is off-center, he's eccentric in the sense that he's out in the desert there. And yet what he's calling the people, he calls them out of Jerusalem. The image you get is they go out on droves from the center out into the desert because he's witnessing to them some kind of deeper center and they find it. So somehow the monastic thing would seem to play that role. But then Jesus comes back into the city and he dies just outside the city.

[07:35]

He comes back in. His life is moving back in from there. So it's a little complex, but you really get the idea of two centers. There's one center which is like organizational or official, institutional, maybe an epicenter you call it. And then you go into a kind of solid geometry instead of the plain geometry, and there's another center way down inside, like the center of a sphere rather than a circle. And that's what the John the Baptist or Jesus were the more court-witnessed. So, in reflecting on the East again, what I found interesting was for, for example, for Buddhists, it's quite clear that in a sense their ministers are monks. The people they turn to for spiritual nourishment are monks. They go to the monasteries and they're ordained monks right away.

[08:40]

And one would think even in a sense for the Hindu, though it's so many diverse practices, they're monks that are at the center of it. They're the contemplators that are at the center of it. So, it seems pretty logical, you know, that that's where you're going to the people who are really contemplatives. But even, I'm thinking in the Eastern Orthodox Church, there's the bridge. Really the center of that church tends to be, I think, in the contemplative tradition and in the monastic tradition too, they get their hierarchy from the monasteries. Even though they have a very clergy, they get their hierarchy from the monasteries. It seems like the center of that, they go back. There's more commerce with monks in the Eastern Orthodox Church among regular ordinary folks than there is in the Roman Church. Except it's true of the Roman Church in a certain period. Yeah. Around the 11th century, around the time when St. Martin was. It seems like that's a thing that we've lost in the West.

[09:43]

It doesn't necessarily feel like we're the center. It feels like we're an eccentric thing. Well, it feels like the monastic tradition is the eccentric thing, but I don't find it that way. I'm here because I think this is the center. I think this is the basics. Monasticism plays a more mysterious role in the West than the modern West. There's been a differentiation in the West, especially that split between the institutional and the interior of the contemplative. And it comes down to that, doesn't it? It's not necessarily the monastic, it's the contemplative. It's the universal call to contemplation. It's that, that's the center thing. The monasticism being the means to that end. But still, the glaring archetype of that is still in the monastic life. Yeah, I think in a way it's interiority.

[10:45]

It's like you have an exoteric Christianity and an esoteric Christianity and an interior Christianity that are in the same center. The same visible center. Although with a pope like this one, you begin to see a strong relationship between the two centers again. Okay, because Pope John Paul is really what is the carnalizing. So it's a contemplative thing, really. His focus is often there. But it's not enough to pull the whole church in that direction. And it would be wrong to pull the church in that direction for some reason. But something else is going on. Something else is going on. Which monasticism didn't sufficiently express, I think. It's like, you know, that Peter and John thing at the end of John's Gospel. Jesus says to John, you stay here until I come. So John stays there. The Eastern Church stays there, right with the mystery. But Peter has to follow him. And it's as if in the West there's something going on which is important, which has to move away from that same restriction. A lot of the darkness and the alienation and the splits in the West and all that, it's somewhat connected with that.

[11:46]

Whatever they call that historical development. From one point of view, it's the development of the subject to the individual, and kind of pulling away from the collective. Another point of view, it's the critical reason. Another point of view, it's just this kind of autonomy of the natural from the supernatural so that they can reunite later on in a deeper, more integral way. It's hard. Something's going on. And from another point of view, it's the creative thing. That somehow, emancipation from that original solidity, that original kind of monolith was necessary so that the individual, personal, subjective, creative human being could find itself. And then it can come back to you. But actually, that's what's going on in the West. Those things are going on in the West, but they're always, I think, within a kind of enclosure in the East. And they tend to be a little more closed to the East.

[12:51]

Well, like the Christian East, they say, if it isn't in the councils, it's not for us. In other words, if tradition has not sanctioned it, it's like the fundamentalism of tradition. That if it's not in those first seven councils, well, it's not for us. Perhaps even Western Christianity's gift to the Church has been its extroversion. You know, building hospitals and schools and missions and things like that. Maybe having lost, I mean, definitely having lost something in the process, but somehow that has become... And eventually, what happens? You get something like the real beginning of altering these social structures in the world. In other words, after a while, it begins to get to the root, the root of the tree of oppression and so on. In other words, it begins to make the gospel cut at a deeper level in human life. Marx had been spinoffed from Christianity in a sense, and so it begins to cut at those things that traditional Christianity didn't cut at.

[13:52]

It begins to break down the old order. And somehow at the heart of it is a gospel, and a gospel from it. Somehow the gift of the West is involved with all that. A real change in the world, a real transformation of the external world. Not the movement into interiority, and then kind of, well, suffering the world from a position of unity and interiority, but moving out into the world, and really seizing a kind of charism to transform the world, to make a new creation in that sense. Now monasticism has had a real hard time, being devoted, specializing in that interiority. A real hard time. Which is not to say that monasticism hasn't been creative, but certainly it hasn't been very creative in recent centuries. It's sort of in a position of, how do you call it? Inferiority. This is not just a kind of point we touched on at one time,

[15:01]

it's a critical point for us, I think, for all of us. It's what does history mean for us? Where are we in history? Yeah, I was recommended to these guys, I thought that we would read C. H. Lawrence's book on medieval monasticism. Have you seen that yet? No. I really think it's fabulous. And then along the way to talk about seeing our life in the context of what else has been going on in monastic history, since we don't have that course taught here anymore. It's really quite an eye-opener. To me, the more I study monastic history, the more I just keep looking better. It's a very, what do you call it? Disorderly message. From where it goes. Yeah. Augustine. Some of these things about some of the paradoxes in trying to figure this stuff out.

[16:02]

In some ways, with the interest in spirituality taking off again, and with some kind of realization of the damage that a self-centered, selfish stance can wreak upon the environment, upon communities. For example, in Hollywood, there's a lot of criticism of simple, mindless suburban life. I'm not saying that that's what it is, but a lot of Hollywood cynical movies, funny movies, will make fun of that. And that, I think in some ways, is good and refreshing. But at the same time, you would think that if that was really an authentic movement, they'd be breaking down the doors of monasteries to populate. And in some ways, I'm surprised that that's not happening. There are people interested in monastic life and stuff, but there isn't that definite John the Baptist exodus into the desert to do this.

[17:07]

There is, but it's still locked into life in the world as it is now. Like, people might come here for a weekend. I'm not casting any stars at anyone. Or they might go to Barnes & Noble and look in the spirituality section or something like that. But it's not yet to the point where this conscious criticism of our way of life, which maybe has never happened before in history, a real sense of uneasiness with it, but the action of that is not yet biting. It's biting in some ways, but not in others. When you say that, what I mean is the American public. Yeah, and a real deeper change, but in some ways it is. Like the fact that kids on a telegraph happening in Berkeley will be, in some ways, like if somebody does something that's authoritarian or something, they'll say, hey, you can't do that.

[18:10]

That's my civil rights revestment there. And there's something strangely, deeply Christian in that, or more aware of that sort of awareness, the expansion of the Western mind, that I think what Father Bruno was saying about this deep, in many ways, like Mark's Gospel, very dark, this descent into the earth, but it's coming up by kids sitting on Telegraph Avenue, aware of the fact that humans have civil rights. I don't know, in some ways that's profound. In some ways, it's not profound, because it's, you know, kids sitting on Telegraph Avenue, that's, you know, I don't know if we could have a theological, if we could have this theological conversation with that kid, or whatever, he might not be interested in things, but there's some awareness of him that's happened on us that is profound, and later on these pages talk about worldwide communication,

[19:10]

and how, in one sense, that's just wild. The first time I hopped on that interview, I hopped to a bulletin board in Madagascar, and there's something incredible about that, but at the same time there's something terrifyingly superficial, and mechanistic, and big brotherish about that. You know, if this technology gets used in the wrong way, look out. So it's, I don't know, does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. My inclination is to attribute the forward movement to Christianity, ultimately. But Christianity almost diffused way down into the soil, and then coming up in the ground water, so rather than explicit, yeah. And monasticism has to reckon with that, and the Muslims had a hard time doing it, partly because of its shell, very thick institutional and traditional shell, and partly because it's been persuaded that all it had to do was find the center, even at its best, it tends to think that what it's about is simply to interiorize, and that that solves all the problems,

[20:11]

setting aside that transforming kind of firmament in the world. Merton was good, because he was, what do you call it, schizophrenic enough to move in both directions, and acutely sensitive to both sides. Okay, I guess... Then he criticizes the effort to find an answer to the question, what is a monk? Because we can get too, what do you call it, self-gazing, very easily. Then he starts a new section on monastic renewal, and he's interested, of course, in the monastic theology, that's what the book is about. So he's setting the basis for that, for what he wants to do. Augustine has brought up the, I'm down on bottom page six now, that question of traditional forms.

[21:13]

He says, well, they have to be, it's not a question of throwing them away, but a question of interiorizing them, assimilating, interiorizing, and then sort of bringing them back out from inside, which sounds beautiful, but it's extremely difficult to do. It takes time, it takes great kind of attention, fidelity, persistence. So, on the top of page seven, so the renewal is not an operation of life from outside, but something that's coming from inside. The kind of embodiment, incarnation of that matanoia, which monasticism is about. And then he talks about two lines, and that corresponds to these two alternative ways of looking at monasticism at the outset. One is to look at renewal in terms of the monastic archetype, you might say, and the way that it's realized in its purity, often in other traditions, like the Buddhist tradition. If we criticize our life in the light of Buddhist monasticism, something like that.

[22:14]

The second way is to consider the renewal of monastic life in terms of the church, and in terms of realization of the Christ mysteries, the Paschal mysteries, it puts it. There's a little of both, more than a little of both going on. That inter-traditional vocabulary of religious experience is an interesting idea, isn't it? The fact that, and it's partly scientific, in the sense that you get a language which becomes a, what do you call it, a vulgate language, a common lingua franca, that's the expression, I guess, for the whole world in spiritual terms, okay? You find vocabulary in spiritual corners of the internet, which would be fairly well understood by a Buddhist, or a Christian, or a Sufi, or whoever. They begin to learn one another's vocabulary, and even to use it, and even to use it in connection with their own experience. For Christians, it's especially Advaita, I think, a non-duality in the Eastern tradition.

[23:20]

But a whole bunch of other things, too. People fling around the language of karma, you know. I was thinking even more of the language of Zen Buddhism, because so many, especially Catholics, have been attracted to it. It's almost like a not-language, it's a non-language. It is, it is exactly a not-language, isn't it? Apophatic. And that's why Buddhism is, I think, a monastic religion, in the sense that it's an apophatic religion. A monastic is the apophatic tradition within a religion, okay? So, apophatic life, in that sense. So when you spoke of monasticism being at the heart of the Buddhist culture, I think it's true, a Buddhist religion. He makes a point that the important thing is not just reading books, but the contact between people steeped in their own faith.

[24:23]

Yeah. I'd rather read the books, of course. But I think one of the things that our age, in particular, has to be really aware of, or just, and even we have to worry ourselves about it, our sense of complacency, is that in order for this contact to be genuine, we do have to be steeped in, remember the Dalai Lama said, people, if they want to go up in a spiritual pyramid, just pick a world religion and do it. Just go into it. And I think that for us, I mean, I love reading other religions and talking about it and stuff, but at the same time, to really get deep into Christianity, and with what that matters, what he's saying about the external observances and structures, the danger of them being washed away, and they're, I think,

[25:27]

ultimately designed, these structures and observances, to get us deep into this religion, into this Christ mystery. But with the structures of bigger institutional life going away, it's strange, it's like the individual person has to be more self-disciplined now, because the bigger structures are going away. If we do rival deeply into the ground of our own religion, we need these observances and structures to help us go deep, and how to do this in both a communal sense and an individual discipline way, and also from this, learning our own religion, we should be able to talk with others. Often there's quite a bit of reinforcement for structures from the other traditions,

[26:27]

like solitude, or the monastic institution itself, I think, is encouraged by an encounter with Buddhism, for instance. That is, the things that you're doing are persuaded meaningfully, that they're, in fact, universal. The pursuit of interiority, the pursuit of the contrary. When I come home from Tassajara, I see our life in a whole other way. I'm seeing it through a different window. I'm looking at the child through another window. And I like our life even more, having seen some of the validity because of the universal language there. But I think you're dead on there. The only way we really can approach this dialogue is so well-steeped in our own tradition, otherwise we're not bringing anything to it either. The Buddhists are not looking for us to pretend like we're Buddhists. There's an awful lot of people today that kind of float in the religious sea

[27:32]

and pick what they want and make a religion. I think it's important, the image we have of ourselves, I forget whether it was Nasser or whoever did it, the idea that religions are different organisms. They're different plants. You're rooted in one. You're not rooted in two or three, you're rooted in one, especially if you're a Christian, because you're sacramental in your faith connection with Christ. That's what you are. You can relate to the others, but you are not the others. But people swear that and smear it today. They think, well, a little of this, a little of that. What I heard that kind of destroyed somebody else's argument was comparing Christianity to Buddhism is like comparing apples to tennis. That's a little too far. You can play tennis with apples if you're careful. We have a special kind of racket. All right, yeah.

[28:40]

And of course, the area where this comes in, the Kamali's thing is with Shantimanam, I'll say, with Pete Griffiths. He talks about the growth of, he's quoting Merton here, Merton's Asian Journal, the growth of a truly universal consciousness in the modern world. And Merton's language is so pungent. Universal consciousness can be a consciousness of transcendent freedom and vision or simply a vast blur of mechanized triviality and ethical clichés. That's Merton crashing through his finality. He's got a sarcastic vein in him. He just loves to play that music. It's true. And the Internet, I suppose, you have access to both. Okay, then he talks about the second way of looking at renewal,

[29:48]

and that's within Christianity, within the Church. So connected with the renewal of the Church itself, as inspired by Vatican II, and essentially a deeper participation in the past commentary of Christ. So then you look at monasticism, you divide it in those terms, more or less, as a participation in Jesus' death and resurrection, and therefore a realization of baptismal days. Yeah, I wonder what the adjournmental means, has meant for monasticism. The adjournment of what? It's broken open the container of monasticism, apostolism. In other words, things that were built, the masonry which enclosed Benedictine monasticism especially, all of it, all Catholic monasticism, has been blasted open, so that the stones have to be reexamined and then reassembled, sort of a dangerous procedure, a dangerous moment.

[30:48]

And then it has opened up a new and more critical looking at the sources, so that you really are permitted, the thing loosens up enough so that you can really ask yourself, what is monasticism? You couldn't really do that before, and so the answers were so enforced, the answers were so loud that you couldn't hear the questions. So a lot of it is that. You know, the answers from the word go, listen my son, that's the first word. So anyway, his choice is to do it from inside. But I'm grateful he's looked at the outside first. Just jumping in, on the top of page 9, it talks about two main requirements for religious renewal.

[31:53]

Return to the sources, and even though it's within the council, it's at the same time has the potential to be a super radical move, because it's, like you said, going through the answers, you're going back to the beginnings, and daring to ask certain questions again, and this asking of the questions might result in all sorts of walls being torn down, and all sorts of institutions just being blown out, and all sorts of stuff. But it's that return to the source, just this last couple of minutes, how much more powerful, revolutionary move that could be. You're not just returning to the same old mill, but you're returning to the source, and if that's well done, it could really radically re-ask some questions, and challenge some structures. It's a very radical move. The council doesn't pander to the council at all,

[32:56]

it's open. Interesting that the two poles are mentioned there, and the middle is left out, to the source and to the present. Yeah, what's in the middle? Sometimes, this is one of the criticisms of the liturgical movement anyway, the return to the source and the adaptation to the present. Some people just want to toss out everything between the 6th century and the 20th, which isn't the point either necessarily. Maybe something good might have happened along the way that you can keep in a Palestrina, or something like that. But I would say the same thing with monasticism. Religious life in general, I suppose, to the source and to the present. It's a very radical move, but it's amazing. But I think what we want to do is break down this whole rickety edifice of what had been built for a thousand years in between the two,

[33:59]

and say maybe this is a little too big. There's no more water running through it. What's in the middle is what we are concretely, what we are traditionally, as we have received tradition and so on. All of the structures and all of the concepts are over. And going back to the sources and going forward to the present is also like going into the original source, the interior inspiration or charism, and then outward to the world that surrounds you, freshly, without the mediation of a set structure, a set world, a set institutional world, or intellectual world, doctrinal world. What's interesting is either what's going on now seems in the great church anyway is this kind of return to a neo-traditionalism, a neo-conservatism.

[35:03]

Let's hear Bishop Niederer say a nostalgia for a church that never existed. This is not necessarily a good movement. But at the same time, there was this whole thing going on in the 70s that was this huge reaction against the 1950s and 40s and 30s. So this wasn't necessarily... That was a wild, tossing everything out the alley, again, after the 6th century. So, in terms of monasticism, where does that leave us, I wonder? In some monasteries you're going to a kind of neo-traditional. The Christ in the Desert now, they're wearing habits. I'm not sure if that's the same movement, but he talks about altars and the same kind of neo-traditionalism. So, I'd hate to think that the fire of Vatican II has already set off. People in the church are going to say, oh, forget it, let's just go back and let's just all... It's so hard when it comes down to concrete things.

[36:05]

It comes down to concrete liturgy, concrete where it's agonizing. Because you can't just generate newness. You can't create liturgy which has a substance of power and conviction to it. It can't just be made. It's extremely difficult. But interiorly, in our minds, in our hearts, we can see and we can feel those two things, you know, that they're made to embody stability. It's so easy to talk about it, it's so hard to do it. There can't be choices. And once that dies away, once that fire of renewal, once that fire of evangelization, once that dies away, then the structures that were starting to grow out of that new fire don't make sense anymore. So things that are starting to be happening, you know, if everybody would please, really just like the priesthood moment, there goes the fire. So, well, let's just go back to the way the business is usually.

[37:06]

The inertia is so, it's so easy for the inertia to go back, just the business as usual, I think. Does that make sense? Yep. I don't think the fire's going to die away, but it's awful hard for, it smolders, you know, but it's awful hard for it to catch the whole thing. I think in some way, your question about what does that mean for monasticism right now, and also for some of the forms of the liturgy and stuff, in some way I think that now, it's almost like the only thing monasticism has now, in a certain way, is its depth dimension, what's below the grave, because it's almost like what's above the grave has been cleared away, like it's gone, and only our roots, what Father Bruno in his monastic compass calls the potato, that deeper thing is underground and is there,

[38:07]

and the treasure is somehow buried underground, but almost that, we can almost make a form of that naked simplicity of the edifice being knocked away, like just when we're standing in a circle around the altar, it's a bunch of human beings standing in a circle, which is probably a fairly new liturgical move, except maybe at the origins of Christianity, but certainly that wasn't happening in Cluny or anything like that, that circle of human beings, and if we have a lot of people, multiple circles, concentric circles of human beings around the altar, that's incredibly powerful, and it's almost like our eschewing of icons, of statues, of that sort of renewal, is really powerful like that, and just the sort of invisible waves of humanity emanating from that is really, I think, incredible liturgy, but then how do you do that

[39:10]

on a larger scale? How do you do that at the parish and stuff? No, the monks don't have to solve those problems if they can make it present in one place and leave it to others to transfer it. No, I agree with that, yeah. And what you say about if it were all bulldozed away, or it has been bulldozed away, theoretically monasticism or Christianity should be able to be bulldozed every day and regenerate from the ground, from the root, which is the root, let's say, not so much in the tradition, but it's the charism and the seed of the thing that lies, the mustard seed inside, but also the root in the individual person, because the monasticism is involved with the individual person, I believe, with the invisible center of the person, and if that's there, then in a sense the whole rest can be grown afresh from each time. Theoretically, but it's real in some cases, like Romeo, you know, you get these people who have that thing burning inside of them, and they can regenerate it anyway. Put them into a historic monastery.

[40:10]

Or a hermitage. And in a way that should be monasticism, it's probably called pride, or it's freedom, or something like that. That utter simplicity of the interior fullness. He's getting to the question of theology in monastic renewal, because that's what he's about. So, he talks about monastic life, work, and then theology, those three levels. And then the two great directions are at the top of page nine. Back to the sources, forward to... That's got all kinds of profound resonances, that double movement, I think. It's like a movement back to the Father. And, I mean, really, there's several stories to that. A movement back to the Father, or in to the source, the unitive source. A movement forward and out in the Spirit,

[41:13]

actually to create. The unitive return to the center, and the creative movement out into the world, in a sense. Because to meet the conditions, is also to meet the demands. Which means, meet the demands of the world for a new creation. It demands a creative response. Then he talks about this dearth of... Oh, the kind of theologies as well. People often say, don't give me theory, give me practice. Here he points out that unless you've got theory practice, you're not going to go anywhere. Practical reform without theology is blind. But the purpose of monastic theology is not primarily to suggest concrete changes, concrete measures, but to provide some kind of vision, which precedes the concrete decisions. And then he talks about this dearth of monastic theology today. That opens a whole thing, which Nodat will return to.

[42:15]

That movement from a wisdom Christianity to another kind of Christianity. I think it's something we do need to look at in depth sometime. See, there's a certain kind of vision that belongs to monasticism, that's native to monasticism, which is eclipsed. Between the scholastics and Trent. By the time Trent hit... Several waves. Scholasticism first. The individual human reason beginning to take over. And put that, I think, that ecto-intellectus out of sight. That noose, you know, of the Eastern tradition. The contemplative intellect begins to be eclipsed by the individual human reason. Ratio, rather than intellectus. And then along comes the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. And the whole scrap displaces the center. You can't even conceive of that deep center anymore. Or of the universal Christianity. It's still not an explanation.

[43:17]

And then the Enlightenment finishes it up. And then the Church gets totally in the back of that. We're caught reacting against all the enemies after that. And to react means to be pulled out of your center, out of your depth, onto that kind of battlefield. But now comes the question, does it come back? And if it comes back, what's it going to be? If this wisdom vision comes back, and if monasticism has the vocation, in part, to bring it back, to help seminate it, to help bring it out of the ground, what's it going to be like? Because it isn't going to be the same as it was before. Very interesting. There's one little point. You didn't bring up the questions, about a failure on the part of Catholic theology to keep up with contemporary anthropology. And that's, to me, that's where it comes back. That it comes back in contemporary anthropology. And I wonder... What do you mean by anthropology? When I saw that word, I was tongue-tied. I said, what does it mean?

[44:17]

That's why I wrote my thesis on that. I think it's this understanding of what the human person is in language that works. Let's see. That's what I understand to be anthropology. This understanding, and having completely changed our understanding of the human person because of that psychology. A. Maybe A and B and C and D. Maybe that's this whole discovery. This discovery of the psyche in the Western tradition, which other traditions were still exploring, not calling it psychiatry. They were calling it spirituality. Perhaps that's where we've really... That's where we've failed, is not to keep up with the psyche. That's why people are going to psychiatrists now instead of spiritual directors in the West, because somehow... I don't even know where or when or how, but somehow that's what we lost.

[45:20]

Once, when we turned to masculine reason, or ratio, from the intellectuses, we excluded that psuche. We excluded the other, the antipole, the counterpole of that ratio. And we did, you know. And then we talk about what mind and matter, where mind and body came. It's crazy. The psyche is totally... That question here, that business of anthropology sent me to Rahner, because Rahner is one who tries to bring the center of theology back to anthropology. So I looked up to see what his vision was. What would a new, a contemporary anthropology be? And he looks at the whole of history in terms of the emergence of the subject, of subjectivity, the personal subject. So when you say psyche, and depth psychology and so on, you're getting into that, into that subjective experience, which is simply not there. What you find, when you find even contemplative literature, is my experience reflecting the doctrine, my experience reflecting the revelation, my experience of the word, let us say,

[46:22]

but not translated into terms of my experience, still in terms of the word. Even in St. Bernard and so on. You would feel, let's say, the kiss of the bridegroom or something like that. But that's the language of scripture. It hasn't yet come into you, disappeared and come back out in your own language. That's only part of it. But I think he's right about the subject. Interesting. Now suppose monasticism is tied to that subject. Suppose the vocation of monasticism is tied to the subject in the sense of the metapersonal subject or the deep subject. Bringing it together with that emerging subject of the West. Take the Atman, or the spirit of this triple anthropology and bring it back to this emerging subjectivity of the West. A critical reason too. And what emerges is a holy language. Yep. Which is what we're not

[47:24]

completely comfortable with yet, I don't think. There are probably many languages. Because it's got to be in some way pluralistic. But somehow I think the vocation of monasticism is about that, itself. The deep self. When he talks about the Vedic revelation, the core of it for him is that search for the self, it seems to me, the Atman. Now to bring that back but one with, wedded to this emerging personal subjectivity with its creative dimension too. Monasticism could have that role. And a monastic theology could have that role. Because it has the structure to... Well, because monastic theology has to be wedded to that intellectus, to that deep contemplative center of the person. To that anthropology. When it loses that, it loses its own self-consciousness. It loses its knowledge of who it is. And it did lose it. Just so I can use my favorite word once this time.

[48:24]

But it's still somehow monasticism has the structure to keep it from drifting into solipsism. It's a creak. It's a bed. I don't know if this was in your thesis or if you've said this in another sentence or where we were talking about how it took millennia for the Vedic masters to finally reach the awareness Atman is Brahman. And so there's that final realization of subjective self being somehow part and parcel with Brahman. Brahman with the first person in the trinity, whatever that is. And that somehow

[49:30]

this inner awareness of that presence within is also related to an awareness of other people as subjects, as proper individual subjects, as real entities. And so it's kind of murky but it's somehow that greater realization of self and other. For a long while it seems possible for people to be other people as if they were not subjects. You're not a person. You're a creation. Even the approach to ethics and moral theology done through manuals exists. There wasn't the notion of there could be a subjective experience. Even that was in the manuals I suppose at some point. A lot of moral theology today is polarized

[50:30]

between principles and subjective experience. Even the whole sexual area. Birth control and abortion are largely polarized around this. I hope we can return to this particular issue because I think it's very important. Where monasticism is going, let's say, what it has to give to the church and to the world or what's different and that wisdom connection and then the subject, the self, the person. The person may be as it emerges. I think what you read in Martin is something like a seed of that person aside from what he says. What he's saying is often an observation. But the voice that you hear from there is like the seed of that new person breaking out of his shell. Because he's so he's unable to let go

[51:32]

either of that deep, let's say, Atman of the East which he sought for so many years or of the realities of the present world and the movement of the spirit in the world. Anyway, he talks at some length here about this what has to be done in order to regenerate a monastic theology. Now, in a way, a monastic theology can't be monastic in the sense of just being interested in monastic life. That's one of the tricks about it, I think. It's distinguished by its universality in some way. I think it should be. If it's really at that unitive point at that point of the deep self the deep intellectus, let us say then it can't be just monastic and it can't even be only Christian any longer. It has to be universal. That's what distinguishes it. And yet it is Christian. And yet it is monastic.

[52:33]

But it's not somehow it's not interested as much in distinctions of that kind as it is in the unitive center and source from which it comes. But it's soaked with what would you call it? Christian grace, Christian faith. And somehow intuitively knowing the relationship between Christ and all the rest and the universality, even if he can't express it. Now he talks about the different directions that are needed here. Historical research. You see people spending their lives working out the... And then... And then... Rethink Christian monasticism in light of contemporary ecclesiality. New vision of the church. And then thirdly

[53:36]

theological give and take between the values of creation and revelation. Now here he's stepping away a little bit from monasticism. It's not explicit. But what he means is the word in the cosmos as opposed to the word in nature or Christianity and humanity or that which particularly pertains to our revelation from the word and that which is universal and human, simply human. Things he talks about there are connected with person, subject and with society. Yeah, because you're at the top of page 10. Again, back to the anthropology question. Some things which were taken for granted in the early period of theology do not ring as true to us today, such as the notions of contempt for the world and the angelic life. It's just interesting to listen to people's comments about

[54:38]

poor Nazarene and how she's just not being trained very much, you know. Or just something about the way she says things. You know, even the notion of self-hate, self-hate and self-love, you know, to use the word nowadays of self-love essentially doesn't mean the same thing. Our language has gotten more subtle for our understanding. It's like those are the first crude sketches of a language of an expression and later on you get too subtle for them. And often I think, see, when somebody has an enormous overwhelming grace, they pick up the vocabulary at hand. They're not going to find that subtle vocabulary. She would express her, maybe what would be a very subtle and complex grace, you know, in crude terms because that's all she wants to say. But it takes so much translating for somebody to go back and say, what she really meant was...

[55:39]

But we hear self-hatred, you know, beep, [...] you know. She hasn't got another language for it. That's the classical language. It's just that idea of nowadays, you know, all Christianity, we're supposed to be, or the history of Christianity, we're supposed to be going, we're not supposed to be encouraging the self. The unrefined self is the prideful, covetous, sinful self, and we're supposed to be going against that, although nowadays, especially with anthropology and stuff, and this emergence of this aware of the subject, there is a real, I think in its best forms, healthy respect for the self, and you know, that true self-love, it's almost like Christ's great command, two great commands, love God, and then

[56:39]

love your neighbor as yourself, but that self is mentioned last. It's almost like the healthy love of self that somehow emerges as the concentration of the love on God and on the neighbor happens that just can't stick an psychology book in our hands and say, okay, now we're okay. We're healthy and full and everything, but somehow it is wrapped up in this process and where we make the distinctions between just where tons of things in myself that need work and stuff that is still, in the old language, evil inclinations and stuff like that, but also trying to mesh that with an idea of healthy care for the self, taking care of the body, taking care of the healthy mind and stuff like that, and

[57:42]

you know, sometimes I try not to worry too much about it, but I find that there's definitely distinctions that have to be made, and sometimes I crack a lip at myself and say, you know, you don't need that food or you don't need this or that, you know, there is room for even some tough self-discipline sometimes, and even, I think, times for that attitude of self-hatred, especially if you're caught up in a legitimate quest for the other, for God, and at the same time realize that human needs are made in the image and likeness of God and are precious. Yeah, it's very hard to generalize on that, and it's a matter of individual phase, where a person is, and also the guidance of the Spirit, I think, you know, so... Yeah, at the bottom, the foundation of what theology is. The foundation of all theology, the person is made in the image and likeness of God. How could, if that's our deepest self, how could we hate it? So self-hate means, self-hate and self-love mean something different

[58:43]

to us now than they used to mean. Yeah. I think different writers have done different things in history with that, but some people will say that we're, right now, we're on a journey from some sort of image to greater likeness. And so, in that journey to the likeness of God, we sometimes have to cast away the current image that we're at, or something like that. So, it's a shallow self-hatred. Sure. A self-hatred to get rid of the where we were yesterday, get rid of that, and get to the likeness. But I would say 30 years ago, we wouldn't have even talked about the false self and the real self. This is new language, and I think it's really beneficial language. Because even if we're heading toward image, already we are made in the image and likeness of God. There is something already sealed. So, there is a deep self, there is a true self that we are already sealed with that. It's a question of it being manifested, perhaps.

[59:44]

a lot of the revolution is there, I think. I think it's moving from the image to likeness. So much of the self-hatred in the past, or the doctrine of self-hatred, is tied up with a quote you call heteronomy, with giving yourself over to, let's say, the institution, and monasticism, to obedience, and so on. No trouble is that it never came back, in a sense. Because there wasn't anything to bring back the sense of self, especially the sense of a deep self. Well, which goes in the whole approach to asceticism in general. What's it for? Is it because of a hatred of self? Is it because of a love of self? I mean, you could say it either way. I mean, asceticism is a great thing when it is a means toward what end? I mean, to discovering the deepest self. It has to be an expression of the self. It has to be a language of the self. It has to somehow cast off certain things in order to realize itself. And if

[60:48]

it becomes, asceticism can become itself a form of pride, self-love, and the other way of saying, I'm doing all this to get to heaven. Well, I mean, what's a deeper love of self could you have than that? I mean, it's still in a sense, so the language kind of It can itself become a false personality. And then again, a lot of minds would just throw off asceticism completely, which, you know, that too is a reaction. But there's a whole approach. When they talk about contempt for the world, angelic life, we're right in that realm of talking about asceticism. Yup. Okay, the idea of the evangelical councils in that way was some people were called to the life of the precepts, the commandments, and other people were called to the life of the councils. Father Benedetto used to carry on about that. So there are those who are called to be perfect, and others are called to be mediocre. Now those are the

[61:50]

vast majority of Christians. The monks are called to be perfect until they become Oh no, I was good for mediocre. The councils being the council of absolute poverty and absolute chastity. I think in monastic theology, by the way, the sort of rediscoverer of monastic theology is Jean Leclerc. The classic book is The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. I don't know if it's in your book. It's funny that he put a name to it, and monks were fumbling around and kind of unsure. It's amazing. This happened in the 40s probably. 40s or 50s. Maybe 50s. He was teaching at St. Anselm once. Putting a name on monastic theology as a wisdom theology and distinguishing it from scholastic theology. Can you imagine that that had to be done? It had to be

[62:50]

held up and distinguished. That's the kind of following that he did. And specifically in that book that he did that? Is it that old? I think it goes back to the 50s. Maybe 60s. The latest would be around 1960. Not absolutely sure. Yeah, you're right. 1965. And he's a Benedictine. Well, next time let's carry on with the first chapter of the European. The Word of the Father to the Son of the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be, worldwide and Amen. I'm going to talk

[64:02]

about Lectio when he talks about teaching the academic life. He even notes there that that's a different way of looking at learning or something. That's a different type of reading. Monastic way of reading, totally different. Is this the article of Vouillier? The Search for God? That's the first part of Vouillier's meaning of monasticism. This is the book. Are there more of these in the library? You can have that one. I think we have two of them in the library. I don't know where the other one is right now. This one's really full of paper. Wonderful. He was like a

[65:07]

fly-type guy. Just... Just... Just...

[65:09]

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