And then the how, we said, leads us into the understanding. That's a dynamic aspect. It's a process. The understanding is a process. Lastly, how means, how shall I live? And also, how shall I live my monastic life? And the answer is through contemplation in action, through contemplation in action, through finding God from within, through all that I do in love and lovingly. You understand only through doing. And so you understand God by doing what we call God's will by lovingly.

[01:01]

One of the questions was, what was Father Damascus's vision for monastic life? What was the uniqueness of Father Damascus's vision for monastic life? What was his vision for stability, obedience, conversatio morum? What was typical for him? I think we really do justice to his vision if we understand it as a Trinitarian vision of monastic life. That stability leads us into that mystery of the Father, connects us with that mystery of the Father. because stability and silence and even solitude are connected.

[02:21]

Stability ought to be seen in a much wider sense than where do you belong. That's very important and very helpful for us, but there's a lot more to us. Stability is the stability of a ball that you put into a bowl and it rolls and rolls until it comes to the bottom. and that bottom in which we can, is the point of rest. There we are at rest. And Father Damos has always greatly emphasized this coming to rest in the love of God, in the love of the Father. And all other aspects of stability are connected with that. He emphasized very much that it was not Stabilitas Loci, and that was not it. It doesn't say Stabilitas Loci.

[03:27]

Very often when people who are Not Benedictines talk about Benedictine stability. They call it stabilitas loci. That's nowhere in the Benedictine tradition or in the Benedictine rule. It says stabilitas in communitate. So it's not the stability of place that is emphasized. It's the stability in the community. So, I have said silence and solitude. How does that go with community? Well, the community makes it possible. The community makes your silence and solitude possible. A solitude that is not in community is simply loneliness. There's a great difference between solitude and loneliness. Solitude is the aloneness that is supported by the community.

[04:30]

The community supports, through your stability in the community, supports this silence. And Father Damascus was emphasizing that silence in many ways that go far beyond keeping your mouth shut. For instance, he would always say, keep your hands under your scapula. Hands talk, he said. When you take your hands out, you are talking. Put your hands under your scapula. That's why you have a scapula, he said, because you hide your hands and that is an expression of silence. That's a very small point and I wouldn't get compulsive about it, but it was one of the ways in which he emphasized that silence and the way in which you sit and the way in which you walk.

[05:35]

Those are expressions of your silence, whether you're fidgety and fidgeting around or whether your inner silence ought to express itself also in your composure, in the way in which you comport yourself. So, and very important that this is really an expression of our life in God and of God's life within us. Otherwise, it simply becomes a human convention and very superficial. And what Thomas has always emphasized, go to the depths, go deeper, go deeper. And at the deepest level, that stability is an expression of our life in God. And then obedience.

[06:38]

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