October 11th, 1992, Serial No. 00070
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Speaker: Esther De Waal
Location: R.B. in Ordinary Life
Possible Title: IV - Sunday A.M.
Additional text: Side A: Esther De Wall - IV - Sunday A.M. 11 Oct 92 R.B. in Ordniary Life\nSide B: contd.
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Oct 9-12, 1992
the internal and the external, because I want to talk today about our whole relationship with the material things and with the world in which we live itself, with the mundane, the ordinary and the material. I will not take you out of the world. Benedict will never let us forget the enormous implications of that small phrase of Christ in the Gospels. Because one of the things that we should do if we're having St. Benedict and the rule of St. Benedict in our lives is to realize that the purpose of Benedict is all the time to point beyond himself, beyond the text of that small rule, which for 1,500 years, this tiny text of 9,000 words has guided men and women in their search for God.
[01:08]
that it points always beyond itself to the Gospel and to the figure of Christ. And in fact, in the Middle Ages, it was quite usual to think of the rule as simply a most brilliant abbreviation, synopsis of the Gospel. And so, I will not take you out of the world, The ordinariness of the rule is one of its greatest gifts to us. It is written about ordinary people and ordinary life. You cannot isolate the sacred and the secular. You cannot separate the material and the spiritual, even though sometimes the message that the church gives us seems to say precisely that. But now Benedict is telling us that all things are to be handled with care.
[02:09]
For him, reverence and respect are key themes. And we ask ourselves today, this quality of reverence and respect and handling with care in a throwaway world? And their answer is that perhaps it is more vital than ever. And it is good order, sensitivity and the reverence which is to be shown to every person and also to tools, material things, building, food and drink, time, daylight and night. When I first picked up the rule, it was a time in my own life when I was extremely busy. I had four teenage sons in five years.
[03:11]
I was living in a huge house. I mean a huge house with very little domestic backup and help. There was endless hospitality. I would easily have between 2,000 and 3,000 people through the house on an average year. To begin with, I thought it was just the cathedral. Then I thought it was the entire Anglican communion. Then when the Pope himself came to lunch, I thought it's the kingdom. And then in the interstices, in the little gap, I was a tutor for the Open University, which is a university for people who write their essays and post them to you and call you up on the telephone at any hours of the day or night when they're getting into difficulties. And finally, because I had tried to make this enormous house in which I was living rather more human by opening up the block up far places so that we could have log fires, I was also responsible for sawing up all the logs.
[04:22]
So, just to tell you that it was a busy life at all sorts of differing levels. And then I read in the rule that I could handle the things in the kitchen, the garden implements, and I added to that the papers and picking up the telephone. But I could handle any of these things with as much love, respect and reverence as if they were the sacred vessels of the altar. At once I knew in St. Benedict I found a man who was speaking to my immediate condition. God exists and is present to every aspect of human existence. Therefore, one must bring a reverent and mindful attitude to life, is something which Terence Cardone wrote in a recent book called Benedictines. And so the starting point this morning is
[05:24]
that reverence and respect, which are such key themes in the rule. Reverence is not only something interior, our own interior attitude, it is also something external, visible and practical. A sense of reverence dictates and regulates the whole of Benedict's life. It all starts, of course, with reverence for the person of God himself, God who sees us in every place. And then reverence for the things of God, and not least his word, reverently contemplated and assimilated in Lectio Divina, by which, as it were, you hold the word, the phrase, and you let its significance sink deep into yourself. And this spreads out, it spills over, as it were, to all persons and things, to all persons that we honour one another, that we show all courtesy of love to one another.
[06:46]
Again, one of Benedict's wonderful phrases, that all courtesy of love. And then all utensils and goods. Nothing is to be treated carelessly, casually, because everything matters. So Benedictine spirituality is a spirituality of the daily, the ordinary and the mundane. Benedict does not expect us to deny the material. He's telling us all the time that things matter. that this is God's world, that we are placed in it as part of God's creation, and that it is in and through this world, not by the denial of it, that we shall reach God. So there is no dualism, there is none of that
[07:51]
terrifying separation of the material and the spiritual. This holistic view of life is reflected in a couple of portraits. And again, one of Benedict's marvellous way of teaching us is to teach us by giving us real-life people, portraits on which to model ourselves, and real-life situations. And I, for one, find that a lot less threatening than being given ethical statements or told abstractly what to do. And so we see the abbot, and he's also an exemplar for us in the way that we are to live. He's responsible for all the day-to-day organization and administration of the brothers, food and sleep and work and education, but he's also responsible for their spiritual life.
[08:55]
And then there's a seller who is, if you like, the bursar. He has got a very practical role in the community. He's responsible for the goods and possessions. He's the man with the key to the cupboard. And his portrait, and when I discovered this only recently, it gave me particular delight to discover it, his portrait is modelled on that of a bishop and is actually taken word for word for one Timothy. So there aren't separate compartments in life. Human life is a whole and there is no aspect of life that cannot, if rightly understood, contribute towards our awareness of God's presence in our daily life. Now, holistic has become quite a favourite word today. Holistic foods, holistic healing.
[09:58]
And it ought to be part of our Christian heritage. The wholeness of life. The holiness of life. Its fullness. But sadly I reflect that this has so often not been the case and I think of my own childhood when I was taught or perhaps not taught consciously but anyway received the message from my father. that the spiritual was far superior, that somehow the body was to be denied, that somehow the more uncomfortable I was when I said my prayers, somehow the more acceptable they were to God. And above all, I grew up feeling
[10:59]
that time spent helping my mother in the kitchen was somehow second class compared to time spent in church saying prayers. And what a tragic waste that was. And how contrary to the Gospel, and how contrary to how I opened this morning, I will not take you out of the world. Christ becoming flesh, human flesh, could surely never hope that we would trample on the body, neglect it, treat it as inferior. Christ dying to redeem the world he loved could never surely want us either to despise, neglect that world.
[12:04]
So Benedict is telling us, rather, that material things are sacramenta, that sleep and food and place and time and tools and people. How I handle things is of fundamental importance. Now, as I have got more deeply into Benedict's understanding, I've also found that what I perceived there has been deepened and enriched and enhanced by another parallel discovery of a Christian tradition that I think we have perhaps neglected and overlaid, and that is the Celtic understanding, which comes very naturally to me since I was growing up. and now live again on the edge of Wales.
[13:08]
And there's a little phrase that comes in one of these Celtic prayers and blessings that I have come to be grateful for and to use in my own life, just simply the handling of my hands. Bless thou, O God, the handling of my hands. Bless thou, O God, my partnership. with you. And that is the first, that is of how a woman in the Celtic countries would begin at the start of the day, lifting the peats of the fire, the night before she's bent the fire down, and then at the start of the day, before her family is awake, She lifts those peats. She does it gently, rhythmically, in the name of the Trinity.
[14:13]
And as she does so, the flame of the fire that last night was bent down springs up to life. And she thanks God for that flame, for what it stands for and gives her in light and in warmth. But it's more than that. It's a flame of love and she makes the whole action a prayer so that that is a flame of love for herself, her family, her kindred, her enemies. and the entire world. And as she starts the day, in those terms, so each successive activity, whatever it may be, milking the cow, making butter, or for the men, taking the herds to the fields, getting into their boats, from morning until the evening, Each daily activity is done for itself, totally, with full attention, in truth, as the Shakers might say, and yet simultaneously becoming a prayer, a way to God, so that
[15:35]
Throughout the day there is this conscious handling of each thing as a blessing. And indeed the book that I've written on the Celtic tradition has been in its American edition renamed Every Earthly Blessing, which pleases me. So that consciously you are celebrating the presence of God in your life. I remember by an amazing chance being on the island of Iona when George Macleod was there a couple of years ago, it must have been, he was in his early 90s and still very vigorous, this great man who has been so much in our own day a prophet of the Celtic understanding.
[16:37]
And we walked round those cloisters of that abbey that in his own lifetime he has rebuilt and made a great centre of pilgrimage for the Celtic world. And we walked round and talked and he said, everybody is saying, what is the matter with today's world? What is the matter in the world today? And the matter is matter. We have neglected material things. We have spiritualized the faith. We have separated the two. And now we are paying the price for that. Now at this point I'll just stop for a moment in case there are any questions or comments, challenges. criticisms. I don't say... Are you comfortable with that, as most Americans seem to say?
[17:42]
Because I don't think that altogether I want you to be comfortable entirely with what I'm saying. But if there are questions that I can clarify before I go any further, just please ask. Who's the fellow you mentioned? George MacLeod is a Presbyterian elder and he recognized that the island of Iona is one of the really holy and sacred places in this country and within his own lifetime he rebuilt The abbey, first it was a Celtic abbey founded by St. Columba in the 5th century and then later it became Benedictine. He's rebuilt it in his own day and now people can go and stay there and it has become a really great powerhouse of prayer but also for the recovery and the living out of all the insights that the Celtic tradition
[18:50]
give. We tend to, in this material world, it's almost contradictory what you're saying. I understand that, you know, what matters is matter. Mm-hmm. And to separate it from a bank ethic, like it's, I mean, don't we kind of put matter up on a pedestal here in the United States? I mean, it is realistic. materialism in terms of as it were, celebrating material success and productivity as taking us a stage away from what I'm really at this minute talking about, which is the God-given material. And actually, I think your question is a very important one, but it will, I think the second half of what I'm talking about is actually going to be
[19:58]
responsible stewardship and how we handle the material, not in order for it to be exploited for our own good, but because we are responsible for sharing with it, with all God's family. So that's actually... Perhaps I better go on to develop that theme because that's a very, very key point indeed. One of the things that I've increasingly come to appreciate in living with the text of the Rule is just how beautifully constructed Benedict's Rule is, and how carefully integrated it is, how beautifully it all fits together. Those of you who saw some of the slides last night may perhaps also feel that some of the buildings that I show you had that same sort of total harmonious relationship.
[21:11]
Now, I'm now going to try to see how, in a succession of, as it were, different layers, Benedict is telling us about how things interconnect and depend on one another. and how that interrelatedness is to be lived out in our own lives. And as so often with this man, deep spiritual truths are shown to us through practical examples. Because chapter 32 could hardly be more practical, because it's dealing with goods and possessions and tools. They're entrusted to the brothers by the abbot and he keeps a list because these things are to be cared for.
[22:16]
They're not to be treated carelessly because they are going to be collected when the job is done because they're just on loan for a length of time. Now we translate that very down to earth and practical example. All the good things, the goods, the tools, possessions in our life are lent to us by Christ, because the abbot is actually the figure of Christ. And they are to be cared for. and they are to be collected. And that Latin word has all sorts of good resonances. It's used later on for the actual physical work of harvesting.
[23:16]
So the idea is all these good things are to be brought in after harvesting is finished. There are all sorts of wonderful scriptural nuances there, aren't there, at once. the gathering in of something that has grown to its full maturity through the careful husbandry of the farmer, through a careful act of faithful stewardship. And then we read this, In parallel with another chapter, which is talking about tools as well, but actually other tools, the tools of our spiritual life and our gifts, our potential, our own, using the word gifts as we do, for our own particular talents. They're also on tools. They're also on loan. We are also responsible for husbanding them and bringing them to fruition.
[24:19]
We are workers in a workshop responsible for dealing responsibly with what has been issued to us. What a denial it is of our full humanity if we are to bury our talents, to deny our skills, fail to use our potential. Come alive, Benedict says, as I've said earlier on in these conferences. Come alive, live life to its fullest. Here is the sense of the goodness and the fullness of our lives. But then, in these parallel, interrelated sections, then each person is also to be gently handled, handled with care. Each person is a vessel.
[25:22]
And the image is actually used in one place where the abbot, who is also the exemplar for each one of us in the way that we're to behave to one another, when he has to correct, heal another, takes care not to rub too hard to remove the rust in case he breaks the vessel. So the person is to be handled with care so they too may be returned, not damaged, at the end of time, at the end of life itself. And here we may perhaps think of the Eucharistic vessel further filling out the sense and bringing us back to the deeply incarnational theology of Benedict.
[26:24]
So we also handle people with the same respect and reverence. But we also handle ourselves. There is to be also this enormous respect and reverence for ourselves. The rule opens a dress to each one of us as a unique person who matters uniquely. And it's nice to see the care with which Benedict is always legislating in the most practical and down-to-earth way for the well-being of his monks, seeing that they get enough sleep, that they get enough food, but they have decent clothes which fit. He's also so wonderfully practical. He is nurturing and he is gentle, because he knows that if each and every one of us is
[27:29]
a temple of the Holy Spirit, whose chief aim is to glorify God, then that temple has to be kept in good repair, looked after, cherished. And burnt-out cases and debilitated bodies are not a worthy offering to God. The glory of God is men and women fully alive. But it is of the handling, the responsibility, the stewardship of the Earth itself that I want now to look just for a moment in rather greater detail. Because we live in a world which lacks vision of the sacredness of creation.
[28:34]
We live in a world of greed, of ruthless exploitation of the earth and of its resources. However much we are becoming more aware, it is still true that we are surrounded by pollution and exploitation, destruction of the environment, greed, Insensitivity. Sister Maria Belding, who is a Benedictine nun in England and who has written much that is extremely wise, has written in words that are almost prophetic when she is writing about this. We do not need a superpower to destroy us. We can destroy our own civilization unaided by giving these forces free play. Now it has always been in the Benedictine tradition, both in the past and today, to challenge this exploitation of the earth and to live with a sense of responsible stewardship.
[29:52]
We Benedictines see creation as a gift of God to be lovingly nurtured so that it fulfills its purpose in serving the whole human family. These words come from a statement of the Benedictine community in St. Louis and when I showed the slides yesterday evening and I showed a dramatically simple modern chapel built by a modern Japanese neri which I thought had somehow captured the whole sense of gothic harmony in itself. That was in fact the chapel of their community. We do not grasp, we try not to waste, We believe in having sufficient but not superfluous. We have the cautious optimism to believe that with the humble effort to understand and to co-operate with the Creator's abundant gifts,
[31:11]
We can bring about on this planet a truly human life for all. Now, recently in England there was a BBC television documentary called The World in Balance by Prince Charles. And whatever the media may like to tell you about him, Prince Charles is in fact an extremely serious and dedicated Christian. In his television program, he said that the patron saint of the environment is always taken to be St. Francis, and we always have this lovely vision of St. Francis surrounded by birds and animals, and everyone assumes that he is naturally the obvious choice. But he told his viewers Saint Benedict, who after all came earlier than Saint Francis, was the man who wanted to give his monks the idea that we are stewards of and with creation
[32:28]
We have a responsibility towards the Earth, and not least towards the faithful cultivation and husbandry of the Earth. By the plough, the Benedictines conquered Europe of the Dark Ages. And when in England each year I gather a group of people at Glastonbury and we live, 25 or so of us, in the Abbey House, living out together for the week the Benedictine rhythm of body, mind and spirit. praying, studying and doing manual work together. The Abbey House looks down on the magnificent ruins of that Benedictine community and we know that all the countryside around owes its fertility and its richness to the way in which
[33:33]
the monks drained the land and made it fertile and opened up water communications. And last night when I showed you the slides of the water system at Canterbury by which Benedictine Prior in the 12th century was a pioneer in hydraulic engineering and brought water down for his community carrying it by lead pipes through these wonderful succession of underground tunnels and conduits bringing it from, I don't understand this at all, but anyway, a sufficient height on a small hill outside the city, so the pressure was such that in the water tower there was a constant supply of water throughout the Middle Ages. And still today that system worked.
[34:35]
We didn't actually drink it when I lived in Canterbury, but we all watered our gardens with it and we were quite sure that geraniums using that monastic water were better. So there is here a real appreciation of human skill and technology, a sense that you greet with gratitude and with responsibility advances in technological knowledge and you use them to the greater glory of God and a greater and improved life for God's family. So now If I'm to sum up what I think Saint Venedict is telling me, I think as so often with this man, he's giving me a paradox.
[35:51]
He's telling me to do two things. at once. He would want me to enjoy all the good things in my life. Enjoy and not deny. Enjoy with gratitude, but recognize that they are only on loan, lent out to us all temporarily, so that we can use them use them to their fullest, and then return them at the proper time. When, like the tools that the abbot hands out to the brothers, there will be that time of accounting, the gathering in at the harvest, and then the question will be, did the land flourish in your hands?
[36:56]
It's easier to say, I find if I'm honest than to live out, that everything is only on loan. The test is to do a thoroughly practical example. Perhaps some of you know a very wise little book by Donald Nicol called Holiness, in which at one point, where he's talking about this, he actually suggests that you go into your room, or you go around your house, and you touch whatever you have, and you say, not mine, only on loan. Not mine, only on loan. And then, I guess, then, He doesn't say it, but having a family of four grown-up sons, I also have to touch the people in my life too and say, not mine, only on loan.
[38:03]
so that we handle with that reverence and that respect which respects the ultimate integrity or mystery of the other and doesn't try to control, to possess. We are trying to live sacramentally. We're trying to see ourselves as partners with God. That again is why I like the Celtic prayers that actually make that a prayer. Bless thou my partnership, O God, says the woman as she is milking a cow. Of each teat in turn she asks for a blessing and she's very aware that God is there and that everything she does is in partnership. We see ourselves as partners with God in handling all these gifts to us so that they can fulfill their purpose in serving the whole
[39:12]
community. Again and again we're drawn back to the fact that this Benedictine spirituality is not isolated, it is communal, it is shared spirituality because we are in a covenant relationship with God. A covenant to establish and to keep the harmony between people and the natural world. So we stand before God responsible for caring for his creation and building a just society. The two interconnect. The human and the natural world are interdependent. Our attitude to one colors our attitude to the other. Exploitation, greed of one involves greed, exploitation of the other.
[40:20]
I think this was brought to me most vividly when I have been in Johannesburg, staying there in Saint Benedict's house, where Pax is written up on the walls of the chapel, but as you stand outside the community you read the words Pax through the rolls of razor wire that have to run round the top of all the walls. And wherever you look, there are the mine dumps on which that city is built, the mining of gold. And apartheid has simply grown out of economic greed, the need for cheap labour. It is the exploitation of the earth that is also interconnected with the exploitation of the men who will work their earth for totally selfish greed.
[41:34]
So we're brought back again to the wholeness, the interconnectedness of the Benedictine vision. We are brought back to our responsibility to the dynamic web of life, to this deeply sacramental, holistic spirituality. So my final point is that Benedict is asking us to reflect on the unity of all things. It seems to me that he has crafted a multi-tiered theology
[42:38]
in which each level of interaction parallels other levels. The way I relate to things should reflect the same sense of sacredness as I use in relating to people, which in turn reflects my own relationship with God. Tangible objects point us to deep, particular theological truths. Each tool is a sacred vessel used carefully and returned. Each person is a sacred vessel to be gently improved and not damaged and brought back to God.
[43:45]
My own particular gifts and talents, whatever they may be, are also tools issued by God, just as much as shovels and baskets issued by the abbot or the seller. The process of lending is the same. The responsibility for good stewardship is the same. The consequences differ in magnitude, but good habits in small matters, as one of the stewardship parables of the gospel teaches us, lead to responsibility in larger matters. So once again, the activities of daily life are used to live out and point us to life in the kingdom. Benedict recognizes with a great deal of insight that life is an integral whole.
[45:00]
Whatever we are dealing with, the same qualities, the same virtues must be operative. And if we learn to live this way, and I would in all honesty say learn, I think it's a discipline, I think we have to go on practicing it. I don't think it comes all together easily or naturally. But if we do, then everything can become a reminder of the whole mystery of life and a deep cause of gratitude and thanksgiving to God the Creator. And so this conference really follows on the whole theme of our Eucharistic celebration earlier today, that we should praise God, our Creator,
[46:14]
and that in all things God may be glorified. Those two little phrases, in fact, come out of the role itself. And they, in some way, totally sum up everything I've been saying about how the sons are to be organized. And that that in all things God may be glorified comes out of the chapter which is about pricing goods for the market. You could hardly get more down-to-earth than that, could you? Trust St. Benedict to be thoroughly practical and mundane and yet revealing to us the deepest of spiritual insights. Thank you a little bit about how you see the Celtic and the Benedictine spiritualities happening.
[48:41]
I guess I was kind of stumped when I started teaching religious history for the umpteenth time this year. Because the culture really was the culture of Europe. Sorry. It's actually not. I think, you know, you don't always appreciate your own natural heritage until you're a little bit distanced from it. So although I grew up on the borderlands of Wales, it was only really when I went to Ireland and saw this just absolutely amazing great Celtic high crosses that there are in Ireland and stood in front of them. They have that great O and the cross like that held together, very distinctive, but they're also very highly carved and they have sort of a succession of panels showing God at work in history.
[49:50]
And on the top panel of all, There was a scene which was Antony of Egypt and Paul of Thebes who are two Egyptian desert fathers. And I thought that is really very extraordinary. Two Egyptian desert fathers in this remote colon of Ireland in the 8th century. And so that set me off on the exploration, which made me realize how totally the Celtic tradition is part of the whole European scene, how it comes out of the very earliest traditions in the church. It's not some little whimsical thing, pushed to the rather eccentric fringes of Scotland and Wales and Ireland, it actually brings together all the insights of the East and of the West. And for me, that has been one of its excitements, that the Eastern and the use of images and the right-hand side of the brain is really deeply there in the Celtic.
[50:54]
And so just like Benedict, coming out of the very earliest traditions of Christendom, I think it has that same sort of insight about the totality of life. And again, because we've got so intellectual and cerebral and rational, That is why I also feel that it deepens what Benedict knows about, and that is the totality of life. So that is why I've come to find that in a way, you know, they come out of the same root. And I started to think that it's kind of, not say the Celtic tradition is primitive, because that sounds a bit derisory. I think it is primal, and I think primal is a good word because that means that it touches something which is basic and universal in all of us.
[52:01]
And I think that if we can recover for ourselves, and I would like to think for the church as well, something which is as primal as this, we shall recover something that we do deeply need. More specifically, the things that tie in and deepen Benedictine is no dualism, this great respect for the material things of life. And I suppose ultimately all that Benedict is trying to do, he isn't trying to teach us to say prayers, he's trying to teach us to make the whole of our life prayers, so that you can't separate praying and living. Well, this is exactly how these Celtic peoples lived. And because they have these prayers or blessings for every moment of the day and every action, they do actually help me to put that into practice, not separating living and praying.
[53:15]
Now, sorry, I'm going on a bit long. You see, I don't, whether to say alas or thank goodness, get up and lift the peat of the fire. I guess my day begins, as it must for many of you, which is groping for the electric kettle in order to make a mug of tea. There's no reason why the insights, the attitude of that woman shouldn't apply. There is no reason why I shouldn't say, thank God for the water so mysteriously coming out of the tap. Thank God for the electricity even more mysteriously. making its way into my kitchen. Thank God for the mug. Having a Potter son, I know something about what's gone into the making of a mug, you see, and a clown. Thank God for this funny teabag.
[54:16]
So suddenly my attitude is the same, which is not taking for granted, but suddenly making it gratitude and intercession. And so And so life is prayer and living and praying aren't separated. So I think that is the profound way that I find the Celtic and the Benedictine have in common. I'm interested in how your breakthrough relationships with your family, you know, if you could expand on that a bit in terms of, you know, how did you or your family receive the rule or were there any changes that happened because of your normal you know, a very, very active life and stuff. Where do you think they sit? Do they only do it a different way, or grade differently, or do you fit in?
[55:20]
Well, I think in a way, you know, I only really discovered the room when all those boys were between about, whatever, 13 upwards. But It was really, reading it was a great sense of coming home. I think that I found that Benedict articulated and, as it were, validated what I had really realized all the time is so vital for family life, particularly when children are younger. I mean, Benedict talks about order, but if one says actually rhythm or structure or framework, that I think is essential for children to feel safe, the gentle certainty that things are always done within a reasonable succession and that they know where they are. If you give children a place to stand, that they are secure, that is going to ultimately lead them into freedom.
[56:24]
And I think I think if I had read the rule when I had tiny children, I do think that I would have been even more conscious of how vital that is for helping anyone into total humanity. I think it validated what we'd always done, which was always to say grace the four meals, holding hands and making that grace one which would really incorporate what I've just been talking about, you know, the unknown hands, if you've got tuna. for supper, you actually thank God for, you know, the dinner and whoever caught the fish and how it has come to your table and encourage the boys to always say the prayers and to make that spontaneous. I think for myself, one of the greatest practical things was, I mean, the menace of my life was having to answer the door and the telephone all the time.
[57:38]
And what I learned for myself, because I said, you learn so much from these portraits, you say, well, one of my favorite characters in the room, is the porter, because there he stands at the gate, and somebody appears, and instead of saying, I would say, oh, I can't bear it. The porter says, Deo gratias, thank God, welcome. He welcomes him with all courtesy of of love and open arms and say, thank God you've come. You are the most important person in the world. Rather like Benedict greeting that person when that priest comes and he says, it's Easter because you're here, you know, the risen Christ. And so I would always try in some way before picking up the telephone or going to the front door to say to myself, I'm glad it's you. I do think, though, that the vows that I was talking about yesterday are, as it were, a set of, I don't know what to say, almost equipment.
[58:58]
which do help you immensely to survive a family life. Listening to one another, really listening, not denying, but the totality of listening. You know, when I would meet would meet them from school when they were very tiny and they'd be walking in front of me. I would try to tell by the back of their knees, by their whole body language, if the day had been a disaster or if they were happy. So the total listening or listening, one man's husband comes in not saying anything but absolutely bowed. So trying to listen to God through one's own family. Stability in terms of just staying with it, hanging on, knowing that we're, you know, in it for the long haul, just simply patience and perseverance.
[60:04]
And then conversatio, continual conversion, because you hang in but it mustn't be static and you mustn't fossilize. You've got to move forward. You've got to let the idols of the past go and the expectations of the past go and always move forward, continually open to the new. And those three, I think, are just profoundly wise in deepening and enriching any set of relationships. Do you and your husband ever just look at a rule for a family in terms of translating the rule? No, we didn't really. I do know people who have done that, and who have done that very successfully and in a very moving way.
[61:13]
I think we didn't go as far as actually to articulate it in that way, but I think we did probably live it out without saying too much about it. My God, it's cold. And was born in London? Is that where you are in England? Well, I don't... I have lived in London recently. I don't live there now. I live rather like it is here, actually, surrounded by sheep in a tiny cottage on the Welsh borders. But I have lived in London and I know London. I see. Well, if he was the youngest of nine children, five boys, four girls, and as he became, I believe, one of their teenagers, they start school in Eton.
[62:16]
My dad went there, and he had a beautiful voice, a thinner voice, and he was asked to smoke, he was asked to speak, and all the smokers in London And I have all the programs from the time there was. My father was quite a bit older than my mother, and they were both quite a bit older than I. I think I was an afterthought. They had four girls. And then they had me, when mother was 42 and dad was 50. And that's kind of a great one, isn't it? Thank you for having me.
[63:21]
Well, the office ended at noon. And right after that, we'll have lunches. We had the other day. Come in and serve yourselves. And then we'll have grace and then speak. So thank you all very much.
[63:33]
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