We'd like to do the third location on our pilgrimage, our kind of labyrinth here, the third station. First, I wanted to go back for a moment to something I forgot to mention. We spoke of monasticism as being identified with the first point. East is also identified with the first point. When monasticism comes west, it tends to get transformed somewhat. In fact, it becomes very much a matter of two. You have only to listen to the prologue of the Rule of Saint Benedict to be convinced of that, probably. Number one is about the non-dual experience, the contemplative experience. It's also about solitude, largely, but Benedict's Rule, which has been the dominant monastic code for the West for a thousand years, is not about solitude. It's about community life, and it's a very highly institutionalized community life. It emphasizes certain elements which belong completely to two, especially the Word.

[01:06]

This is the beginning of the Prologue. Listen carefully, my son, to the Master's instructions. Listen. It's about the Word. It's about that personal address, which comes from God, which also comes from the Abbot. And attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a Father who loves you. Welcome it and faithfully put it into practice. The labor of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you have drifted through the sloth of disobedience. It recalls the paradise story and the sin of the first parents. This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience, to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord. That's completely number two. It's about obedience, it's about humility, submission to the Word of another. And listen reflects, of course, that Word of God in the Scripture, which the rule wants to convey to you. So something happens to monasticism when it comes into the West, begins in the East, and

[02:07]

especially when it becomes, as it were, Roman Catholic monasticism, because the Benedictine monastery is like a microcosm of the Catholic Church, with its strong institutional character and its strong central post, sort of the central pillar, which is authority and obedience. There's something else in the Rule of St. Benedict, though, at certain points, number three leaps out, as at the end of the prologue, after telling you about all the hard and disagreeable things that you're going to have to do. But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God's commandments. Our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. Okay, that's pure number three. That's like the flame that's lighted after you've, whatever, lined up the fuel with all this work of obedience. Run on the path of God's commandments. Our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. Sounds like that Psalm 119, whether David was reading that to us last week, where it's

[03:13]

all about the law, but it's all about kind of loving the law. That's where this is coming out of the Rule. That's what's supposed to happen in this transformation process. Well, this afternoon I'd like to talk about this third point, which is the manifestation of the Spirit. And the way that you see these things best used is by contrast. Contrast with the opposite number, with number two. The contrast here is very well expressed in the difference between Matthew's Gospel and Luke's Gospel. If you read Matthew's Gospel, you get the idea of the church, and Matthew talks explicitly of the church. Upon this rock I will build my church. That's Jesus talking to Peter. You get the idea of an institutional church, which is built very solidly and to endure forever. A church that's built in this world by the Lord and is meant to guide everybody to salvation, but it does it through persistence and through teaching, through authoritative teaching. So a very institutional notion.

[04:14]

The church, as I said, is the new Israel, and the Gospel is the new Torah. In Matthew, now, that new Torah has some surprising swings in it. Remember the Sermon on the Mount, where he says, Well, you've heard of all, but I tell you. You heard an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you, you shan't even be angry, let alone kill. Don't even think of revenge, he says. So the new Torah turns the old Torah inside out at times, it seems, but it's still Torah. Matthew still conceives Christianity as law, as it were, and conceives it also in terms of the church holding things together until the final judgment. Now, if you look at Luke, or listen to Luke, you should see a whole different view of Christianity. Instead of being an institution, it's a movement. The church is not something that stands, it's something that moves. It's like a wave of fire moving out. As the Word moves out to the ends of the earth, as it moves from Jerusalem out to the ends of the earth, the Gentiles symbolize by Rome. That's what happens in the Acts of the Apostles.

[05:15]

So Luke's got these two books, the Gospel of Luke and then the Acts of the Apostles, and the whole thing is like a Gospel of the Holy Spirit. Even in the beginning of Luke's Gospel, in the infancy accounts, everything is under the movement, as it were, under the wings of the Holy Spirit. Remember how Mary will be, the Spirit will come to her, will, they say, overshadow her. And then when she visits Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, and the child leaps in her womb, and it goes on and on and on. And these canticles that are sung in the Holy Spirit, and so on. So the whole thing is conceived in terms of energy, conceived in terms of a dynamism of a movement. And it's very refreshing and very necessary that we learn how to think of Christianity as movement, as energy, rather than just something that sits there. Something that stands there like a fortress on a rock, or like some port of salvation for us, where we find rest and safety. Whereas what's really happening is God's movement in the world, is God's energy gradually transforming

[06:17]

the world. And not just transforming it inside a vessel, but moving outwards as well. When we forget that, then a lot of other things happen too. And I think the Gospel really stops moving out. I'd like to talk about Luke, because I think that it's here in the New Testament, it's in Luke and in Paul, that you find this third point most clearly manifested, most clearly expressed, and poignantly and beautifully too. Remember that Paul is the one who starts out by being so far over on number two that he's off scale, right? He's a Pharisee, and he's a great Pharisee, because he's such a man of the Word, such a man of the law. In fact, he's such a vigilante of the law that he persecutes the Christians, right? And then the Lord touches him and turns him completely around, 180 degrees, he makes a terrific U-turn, and comes all the way back and he becomes the apostle to the Gentiles. In other words, he becomes the preacher of the Spirit.

[07:17]

If you put the apostles on here, you're likely to put, say, James over here, the man of the law, the man of the Word, and you have to put Paul over here. Remember, he's leaving the law behind, and he's taking the gospel to the Gentiles. Then you might put John up here, and you might put Peter down here. If you're talking about gospels, you'd put Matthew over here, Mark down here probably, and Luke over here. And I think John here, with his unitiveness, but we'll get into that later. So Luke, in contrast with Matthew, really shows up as character, shows up as character of movement. And the image of God that you get there is not God as authority. Remember how, at the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus meets them at the mountain, and he stands there and he says, all power in heaven and earth is given to me. Go and baptize all nations, teach them everything I told you, and baptize them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and behold, I'm with you all days until the

[08:18]

end of the world. Now that's an authoritative pronouncement, creating an authoritative church, setting up that church with authority, as if on top of a mountain, standing over the world and teaching it, until he comes to judge it. But it's very different in Luke. In Luke, the image that you get is of a movement, is an outflowing, an outpouring, and it's very poignant, very beautiful when you read it, both in the parables and in the narratives, the stories of Jesus, especially his healings. Let me read a couple of texts, short ones, that sort of typify this, that typify the lightness of the Spirit, the flight of the Spirit that you feel throughout Luke, throughout Acts. This is in Luke 4, when Jesus comes into the synagogue at Nazareth, remember, in his hometown. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He reads this, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, immediately the Holy Spirit, immediately this sense of lightness and energy.

[09:21]

It's as if all of a sudden there's a fire sitting there in the synagogue and just blazing. Because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, he sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. It's terrifically dramatic, and it's dramatic in the center of energy that it puts there. That is, the way it puts Jesus in the center. And Jesus is announcing that he's filled with something. He's filled with this energy of the Spirit, and he's ready to pass it on. He's ready to start moving, ready to start acting, ready to start transforming the world. This energy has come into the world, it's come into that synagogue, and it's sitting right in their midst, sitting right in front of them, saying, here I am. It's terrifically dramatic. The anointing that he's talking about, the anointing, the symbolism is the pouring of

[10:23]

oil in the head, you know, of a prophet or of a king. But that anointing is the Spirit itself, the divine Spirit itself, the divine energy itself. And it's Luke's gospel that has the quality of that anointing all the way through it. It's the anointed gospel in that sense. Later on in Luke 10, in that same hour, he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you've hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes. Remember, there's a passage in Matthew like that, but Matthew doesn't mention the Holy Spirit at this point, Luke does. He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit. You have to see Jesus is just about laughing in the Holy Spirit, a bubbling up of this energy that's in it, and that's suddenly come to the surface again. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and nobody knows, no one who the Son has except the Father, who the Father has except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Then he turned to the disciples and he said, Blessed are the eyes which see what you see,

[11:24]

for I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see and did not see it, to hear what you hear and did not hear it. That's the same kind of epiphany, the same kind of announcement, the same kind of appearance as in the synagogue in Nazareth, I think, and it's blessed, anointed by the Holy Spirit in the same way. What they are seeing, what these eyes see, is the one who has it, the one who has the Spirit, the one who's anointed with it, it shines on him. If they call him Son of David, it's because David had some of that too. I'll talk about David a little later. It has something to do with the king, with the real archetypal kingship, with the divine kingship. Then there's Emmaus, at the end of Luke's Gospel. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him and he vanished out of their sight. And they said to each other, Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures? These burning hearts. See, it's Luke who talks about that fire in the heart.

[12:28]

Not just the word, not just the commandment, not just the law, not just the teaching, but the fire. It's as if the teaching itself were a fire. And it's the same fire that comes down when Luke writes about Pentecost Day, okay? The visible symbol of it is those flames, those tongues of flame that come down on the heads of the apostles there. And suddenly they're speaking. Suddenly those tongues of flame are translated into human speech in some way, but all kinds of human speech. All kinds of strange languages they're speaking. Everybody hears them speaking in their own language. This fire of the spirit, which speaks everything at once, this creative spirit of God, which says all things, which is wisdom, which says everything at once. They were announcing the wonderful works of God. Maybe it doesn't matter much what they said, because the thing is experienced within each person. That fire, that abundance, that spirit, is pure experience in a sense. The content is the thing itself. The content is the spirit itself. The content is the illumination, the kindling, you might say, that it brings, the change

[13:31]

that it makes in one's being. Just that experience of being liberated into oneself, liberated into one's free space as it were. When Jesus, risen from the tomb, appears to the disciples, they disbelieve with joy in Luke. They return to Jerusalem with great joy. They were continuing in the temple, blessing God. Remember in Acts, when Peter and John healed that cripple at the gate of the temple, and leaping up, he stood and walked and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. There's that sense of an energy, the sense of something that's welled up, and things are just jumping with it. When this energy of God flashes out, as it does at the healings particularly, it does also in those jailbreaks in the Acts of the Apostles, remember? When their fetters fall off and the prison door bursts open, it's like a big laugh, it's like a big cosmic laugh. And this is after the resurrection of Jesus. This is the thing that's been liberated into the world, this divine energy, which is bigger

[14:35]

and more powerful than anything else, but also more gentle than anything else, which brings people alive from inside of themselves and changes them in the direction of happiness and freedom. Remember where Philip baptizes that eunuch who's riding in the chariot, remember, in the Acts of the Apostles, he went on his way rejoicing afterwards. So it's throughout Luke's writing. There's a kind of constellation in Luke, which is interesting, I think all hangs together around this idea. He talks about the Holy Spirit a lot, the first element is the Holy Spirit, he talks about the power of God, the dunamis of God, which is the Holy Spirit. He talks about joy and freedom, he uses the image of fire, he talks about Jesus as being a prophet, he talks about love and forgiveness, and very often in Luke you find an excess. If in Matthew you find maybe judgment and exactness and justice, in Luke you're more apt to find excess.

[15:35]

Consider the parable of the prodigal son, remember, and let me see if I can find it. The parables that come from Luke are very interesting because they sort of line up in this way. The prodigal son is fifteen, eleven to thirty-two. Remember, the son takes half of the estate and he goes out and he runs out of cash and he gets hungry, he's feeding the swine and then he decides to come back home. He comes back and says, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and embraced

[16:39]

him and kissed him. And the son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him. And put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. And bring a fatted calf and kill it. And let us eat and make merry. For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found. And they began to make merry. I mean, that's incredible. That's Luke's picture of God. That excess, that crazy outpouring of love. As soon as the person turns around, as soon as there's room for it, it expands. As soon as there's a little bit of emptiness, a little bit of openness, as soon as there's a crack in the armor, this pours in and fills the vessel and fills the heart. And this is characteristic of Luke. It's that same thing. It's that same Holy Spirit. It's that energy which is always in excess. It's always more than enough. It's an abundance which is just on the other side of the wall, just on the other side of

[17:39]

the partition, the door. There's, in the parables in Luke, a number of the parables have that quality of excess about them. Also the Good Samaritan, remember, who picks the guy up probably in personal danger and puts him on his own animal and pours oil and wine into his wounds and takes him to the inn and leaves some money at the inn and says, I'll come back and see how he is. I mean, totally impossible because he isn't even the same nation, the same race. It's that excess, that wildness of the Spirit, the sureness of the Spirit, of this Holy Spirit, of this grace, which is unitive because it doesn't have any bounds. Somehow everything belongs to it. Everything belongs to it. Everything is the child of the Spirit. So wherever there's an emptiness, it pours in. It knows everything and everything knows it somehow because it's the thing at the center. It's the fluid, it's the liquid, it's the electricity at the center, the Spirit. And sometimes the parables of Luke are about an emptiness which you require in order to

[18:45]

receive this grace, in order to receive this Spirit. There's a fullness and there's an emptiness, but he doesn't like the area in the middle where you have just enough. Remember those parables of the tower? When you sit down, remember, if you're going to build a tower, then sit down beforehand and count the cost because you want to make sure that you have enough. Otherwise you'll half finish it and people will laugh at you, which is very disagreeable. But remember what he says after that? He says, so anybody who wants to become my disciple has to give up everything he has. So you sit down and then you count up what you have and then you throw it away because you have to be empty, because you have to have nothing in order to be filled. That's what he seems to be saying, isn't it? And the other parable that goes with it is the king who has to go out and fight twice as many people as he has. Okay, so he has to sit down and calculate and probably tell his soldiers to go home because he's got to be empty. It's the same moral. Whoever doesn't give up what he has, let go of what he has, can't be my disciple.

[19:47]

Which means, somehow, we've got to be empty. And it's not the material emptiness so much, it's the inner emptiness, which life scours out in us if we let it. If we're not insistent on filling it up, on refilling the vessel all the time. So that insistence on poverty in Luke, I think, is largely about that. It's partly about social justice. It's partly about sharing. Largely about sharing. But it's also about this capacity for God which demands an emptiness. And the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. You remember that one. Why does the rich man get sent to hell? He didn't do anything wrong. But he had his door closed in some way, didn't he? Lazarus was outside and he didn't even see him. He knew he was there. But he apparently didn't do anything for him. The dogs did more for Lazarus than he did. Remember, they came and licked his sores. The rich man just took Lazarus as part of the scene, part of, what do you call it, the environment, I guess. And he didn't do anything. So he winds up in hell. Lazarus, on the other hand, winds up in Abraham's bosom.

[20:50]

The rich man didn't take Lazarus into his bosom. The rich man winds up in hell. So Lazarus ends up in Abraham's bosom, in the bosom of God. What's going on here? Lazarus was empty enough to be filled, evidently. He was really empty. And the rich man was full and didn't notice that there was somebody empty around. The rich man contained what he had. It didn't flow. It didn't move. And therefore he wound up in a place where nothing moves. Whereas Abraham's bosom is this fullness of life, this fullness of outpouring. There are other parables in Luke where what you're being taught is somehow the movement of energy, translated in some other way, like persistence. Remember the persistent widow who goes to the judge until the judge is just worn down? Or the person who comes to his neighbor at night because somebody's come to visit him and he has nothing to feed him. So he goes and asks for three loaves of bread. And he knocks and he knocks and the guy doesn't get up. And finally, because of his persistence, he gets up and gives him what he wants.

[21:52]

So he says, so your father will respond to you if you keep at it. Now that persistence is kind of, what would you call it, is the reflection of this energy of God, of this outpouring energy, of this grace. It's also the anticipation and the knowledge of this energy. That persistence, that doggedness, that conviction, that not stopping, that pushing forward, that pushiness is, as it were, the reflection and the understanding and the imitation of that outpouring energy of God that comes out of need, that comes out of the emptiness in some way. But you have to read these parables, I think, to be convinced of that. The emptiness is also beautifully witnessed in another parable of the full one and the empty one, like the rich man and Lazarus is the Pharisee and the tax collector, remember? Where there were some who were satisfied with themselves because they were doing very well. They were doing their religious deeds very well.

[22:55]

And Jesus tells them about the Pharisee and the tax collector, the no-good who go up to the temple, the complete outcast who is a publican. And the Pharisee stands there and raises his head and spreads his arms towards the altar or whatever and says, I thank you, Lord, because I'm not like other men. I'm not like this fellow here, but I pay my tithes and I fast twice a week and all of this. And the publican doesn't even raise his head but says, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. And the publican was justified. God received the publican. He received the sinner. We don't even know that he stopped sinning, but he receives the sinner and he, as it were, despises the Pharisee who has separated himself and is full, full of his own good works. He's got a full ego. And the publican is brokenhearted and empty. But he's there. He's there praying. The fullness and the emptiness. The emptiness receives this outpouring of God, which is the Holy Spirit, which is what Luke is about.

[23:58]

And the full person excludes it somehow. Especially when the full person separates instead of giving, separates instead of sharing, separates himself, instead of allowing the outpouring, or at least of acknowledging the oneness with the other. Okay. I don't want to go on on that forever, but Luke is very rich in that way. Luke and Acts. The whole idea is in this image of an outpouring. The image of the Gospel and of God as a movement, as an overflowing, an outpouring. And the whole point of human life is somehow to participate in that outflowing, both by receiving and by giving. Both by being empty enough and persistent enough. Empty enough and believing enough to receive it. And then by being generous enough to share it. Thereby participating in the same movement. Becoming the same movement. Being one with God by doing what God does. If we talk about the number three here,

[25:04]

you know, there have been a lot of three-stage schemes in Christianity for history and for the spiritual life. The scheme of purgation and illumination and union and so on. Or Joachim of Fiore in his three stages of history, the age of the Father and the age of the Son and the age of the Holy Spirit. That one is still very persuasive. We can kind of identify an age of the Father and an age of the Son and an age of the Holy Spirit in the history of religion. The age of the Holy Spirit, however, starts at the time of Jesus. It starts at Pentecost. It starts, you can say, as soon as Jesus is on the scene. Even though the Holy Spirit hasn't been poured out in this way, yet it's there in Jesus. And then at Pentecost it is poured out, it's shared. The age of the Holy Spirit starts there, but it's always starting, it's always beginning because we're always only on the threshold of it. Even though we've received the Spirit, we're always on the threshold of this age. Because somehow the pilot light is there,

[26:05]

but the real burner hasn't come on, usually. The whole thing is not on fire yet. So we're always at that threshold of the age of the Spirit. We're always, Andre Leufe would say, we're always at the hinge between the Testaments, between the Old Testament and the New Testament. We're always in the process of this passage through death to new life, through death to the resurrection. And the far side of this is the age of the Holy Spirit, that Joachim wrote about. The age of the Holy Spirit, where we move, as Paul says, from law to Spirit, from law to grace, from the letter to the Spirit, from servitude, slavery, to freedom, that kind of thing. Now for Paul it's already there, it's already happened, and yet we're always just on the verge, we're always on the threshold. We have to cross that threshold even again and again, each of us in our own life. There are times in history when we sort of taste this, however, in a special way,

[27:06]

when there seems to be a special wave of this movement across the threshold into the age of the Spirit. I think that happened at the time of Vatican II, in the Catholic Church. It happened in a very general way, you could say a global way in the 60s in some way, in crazy ways, but in very important ways. All kinds of activation of the Spirit, of a new energy, an energy of communion, an energy of freedom, for instance, in the 1960s. And then there's always the counter-movement, of course. Rahner would talk about that third age as being the age of a global Christianity, remember. And it's particularly at this point where we have multiplicity, where you have many forms. You can think of this point over here as being a point of metaphor. And metaphor is always moving. Metaphor and poetry, you're always finding another image. You're always moving from one word to another, from one image to another, from one concept. You call something by another name.

[28:06]

It's always moving, it's running, it's a flow. It's like Bach variation, you know, where you seem to have an infinite variety of articulations of a single theme, where everything is living in such a way that it's continually changing its form. And the change itself, somehow, what would you call it? The energy itself is the form, and the form is the energy. That's characteristic. The movement itself is the form. Form is movement. That's this musical theme that we get into at the third point, that we've called this music. And for that reason, music is like a, what would you call it? A participle, a participated energy, a pure communication of energy, in such a sense that when you really hear the music, you are the music. That's what Eliot says to me. You are the music while the music lasts. If you really hear it, then you are the music. You're inside it. You're inside it. Now, it's characteristic, I think, of the spirit that it's pure inside,

[29:08]

that the only way you know it, other than as a word, as a concept, is by being inside it. It's like it has no outside, only an inside, this third point. The spirit that has no outside, only an inside. It's as if the word was a vessel for the spirit. The body is another vessel. But the word is a vessel for the spirit, the exterior of the spirit, the shell. And inside is this spirit, which is, as it were, pure grace, pure liquid. You can't help but somehow associate these two poles, as I said, with masculine and feminine. Masculine and feminine. A masculine word, because remember the word becomes a human being in Jesus, who is a man, who is a male. And over here is the feminine. And if we talk about what this point represents in Jesus' life, I can't help but think that it means some kind of encounter with the feminine. In John's Gospel, at least for me, it's the point where Jesus meets

[30:11]

the Samaritan woman at the well. Remember? That's in John 4. Because I think in the structure of John's Gospel, that's where that episode is. It has a structure of this form. But it's at noonday, he meets this woman at the well. And the well is there, in the middle of the picture, as a continuing setting, as it were, for the whole scene that's happening. It's noonday, there's the meeting of the man and the woman. And the woman says, well, we worship God on this mountain, I suppose you worship God in Jerusalem. And Jesus says, the time has arrived when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem. But you'll worship the Father in spirit and in truth. So he's announcing that something is finished, and something else is beginning. You're moving from one phase to another phase. You're moving, as it were, from a patriarchal phase of worship, which is also a kind of, what do you call it, a vertical worship, which is symbolized by the two mountains,

[31:11]

to another kind of worship which is symbolized by the well. And he says that if anyone drinks of this water which I'll give them, that water will become a spring of living water within their heart, a number leaping up within their heart, leaping up to eternal life. Okay, that's that new phase of religion, which is essentially multiple, it's essentially, what would you call it, plural, infinite in its number. We move out of a shell of the singular word. We move out maybe even of the biblical idiom into something else. Everything becomes a metaphor for God at that point, and for this mystery of Christ at that point. I think I'm getting kind of vague about that. But that meeting of the man and the woman at the well, which happens a number of times in the Old Testament, it's always a nuptial scene, it's always a scene of engagement, it's always a scene of a romance that's happening there, okay? Now this is very important, very significant, because it has something to do with what's happening in history itself. Is it possible that we have two phases

[32:14]

really of revelation, at least two phases? That the first phase is, let us say, the masculine phase of the assertion of the word, of a clear word that comes from God. It has boundaries, and it creates boundaries. In other words, it ropes off, as it were, a certain people as God's people, right? That's the Jewish people in the Old Testament. Then it ropes off on other people as God's people. The New Israel in the New Testament, the word does that. And suppose that we move from that, that phase of the word to a phase of the spirit in which somehow a universality is happening, and you move from an external, as it were, symbol of unity to an interior unity, because what the feminine is at that point is the imminent presence of God. It's the water in the well, it's the living water that Jesus talks about springing up within the heart. Not this mountain or that mountain. This or that, what we call a definitive

[33:14]

form of worship, expression of worship, bounded kind of worship, here or there, but something universal in the human heart, which has now come into the world through Jesus and is springing up. That's what Christianity is supposed to be, but it never quite gets there, does it? And there are all kinds of practical reasons why it doesn't, too, if you just think about Eucharist and so on, how hard it is to draw boundaries. Boundaries that seem essential to draw around the Eucharist, let us say, around the Christian community. Because what Jesus has brought has happened to a certain number of people, and it's also happened somehow to the whole world. When he came into the world, he changed the world. He brought something new into the world. You can say that the Holy Spirit was in the world before Jesus came. The Holy Spirit was with everybody, everywhere in creation before Jesus came, but he brings a quantum, somehow a quantum access, increment of the Holy Spirit, a new presence of the Spirit. And it's very hard for us to draw the balance between those two

[34:15]

things, to know how they work together. But while the Word circumscribes, the Spirit opens and is imminent everywhere. Remember that the Word is the visible, symbolic presence of God, manifestation of God, revelation of the God, of God, whereas the Spirit is working interiorly and is not bounded, even by the Word. And it's as if history can be conceived as a kind of relationship between the two. You can conceive of history as an interweaving between those two principles in the world. Think of history since the coming of Jesus. You have the Church, which is laboring along, proclaiming the Word, alright, and bounded, as it were, by the Word, bounded by the faith of the believers, bounded by the institutional structure, bounded by the structures created by baptism, by the sacraments, by membership in the Church. And then you have another principle, working outside, which somehow

[35:18]

is drawing people together, somehow is bringing people alive in the Spirit, and is inside them, without their even knowing it, a kind of principle of unity within them. When you see the Parliament of Religions, you know, just a few years ago, something like that is happening there. And suppose that history now, since the coming of Jesus, is an interplay, is a kind of drama, woven between these two principles, between these two principles, working as it were together, and together somehow bringing the thing to completion. The masculine principle of the Word, which is especially the preaching of the Gospel, the teaching of the Church, and all of that, which has a particular structure to it, which stands there in a particular place in the world, it has a location in the world, it calls itself the center of the world, even if everybody doesn't accept it. And here you have this imminent principle, a feminine principle, the living water, as it were, which is working in everybody's heart. And the interplay of these two you see especially in this interreligious dialogue,

[36:18]

because it becomes explicit there. When the living water and the Word, as it were, start to converse with one another, this living water which is appearing in other forms, which is expressing itself in other cultures, even in other religions. That may seem kind of vague, but I think it's really happening. The whole of history, in a sense, as an interweaving between these two principles, and the way that we see that history occurring, what we see happening is the emergence of the feminine actually. Because inevitably, the feminine principle tends to be suppressed, not only contained, but suppressed by the masculine principle in history. If there's so much anger over the history of patriarchy on the part of women nowadays, it's because of that. Because it's happened everywhere, all the time, practically speaking. I don't think there was any golden age of matriarchy or something like that, where there are kind of fables of this that are

[37:20]

written sometimes about a golden age when the gender thing was perfectly, what do you call it, equilibrated and so on, so that there wasn't that oppression. But it's pretty unlikely, I think. I think we're gradually moving out of that. And it's the ferment of the spirit which Jesus brought, and the light that he brought that brings us out of it, the light of the gospel and the ferment of the spirit. Suppose that the movement of history actually is centered in the emergence of this feminine principle. Suppose that the history of Christianity up until now has largely been dominated by the masculine principle, by logos, by the patriarchal system, and the whole structural thing. And suppose that the reason why there has been such a stalemate, for instance, in the missionary field in Christianity, is because of that. Because that's run its course. Because that logos, as it were, propagation, that logos presentation of Christ doesn't work anymore. Because it

[38:21]

doesn't connect with what people already have, which is that eminent spirit in their own way. So somehow it has to be Sophia, it has to be the feminine wisdom principle that goes the rest of the way. I don't want to exaggerate because logos goes along with it. But logos somehow is manifested now with that peculiar resonance, that peculiar interiority, that eminence, which is Sophia, which is the feminine principle. I don't quite understand that, but I think it's clearly happening. The emergence of the feminine in our time in a general way, and within Christianity, I think, is the sign of that, the signal of that. For instance, the urgency that people feel for women priests and so on, is the urgency, I think, for that feminine principle to be able to have its role, to play its role before it's too late in the church and in the world. I don't know if it's easy to imagine what the

[39:21]

contrast might be between those two principles. The principle of the logos, of the word, which is clear, which is understood, which is preached, which is taught, which begets structures, begets also hierarchies, which has clear boundaries and outlines, and which tends to make difference. And the feminine principle, which is eminent, that is indwelling everywhere, which somehow becomes one with that which it dwells in, and which unites rather than separates, which doesn't distinguish, but rather joins. Joins in a kind of wild way, which is an energy of communion and also an energy of life, and therefore of a shared life, of a life of communion, which is also spontaneity, which is also, you might say, music or poetry. It's easy to idealize that principle. It's also related to psyche, because if you talk about

[40:23]

the human person, if you take this figure to represent the human person, you might say this is the mind, and this is perhaps psyche, the fullness of the psyche, which in some way almost corresponds to the whole diagram. But the mind is part of it. The mind is like one, what would you call it, one faculty of psyche. It's not the whole thing. It's got a particular function, you might say. Maybe it's even central. It's not the whole thing. But the psyche is the whole thing. And the psyche almost got lost in the West, partly due to the effect of Greek philosophy, I think, and Greek thought, which is analytical and sort of anti-feminine, because the psyche is connected to the feminine, and partly due to Christianity itself, the way Christianity proceeded. So that psychology arises in our time as the beginning of recovery for this principle of psyche. It's almost like everything over here in some way has been suppressed, in some way has been excluded. Even what we are,

[41:25]

which is psyche, consider that in the Cartesian scheme, we are mind and body, are we not? And by that time, psyche, the soul, what's in the middle, has just about completely disappeared. But earlier on, we were either spirit and body or soul and body. But the soul then, in the Christian scheme, was not so much psyche, that is, sensibility and imagination and the feeling part, which we are, which is even hard to put a name on, because it's so much us, it's so much what we are and where we come from. We are our feelings, are we not? We are that whatever that is, it's in between the spirit and the body. Even before the mind-body thing, soul was thought of as the immortal part of you, which survives and goes to heaven, right, when the body dies. The immortal part, so it was almost identical with spirit. The in-between part, the intermediate part, which is where we live and where we

[42:26]

feel and where we experience, where our life really takes place, was almost excluded. So, when modern psychology, contemporary psychology rediscovers it, it's almost comic, but it's very important. It's like forgetting who you are, it's like rediscovering life. All of a sudden, somebody, some scientist somewhere, a doctor taps somebody's knee and it pops up and they say, there's life. They write papers on it and start a school. So they rediscover life. Well, when they discover the unconscious, it's almost like that. It's like discovering who you are. Oh, we thought we were just a conscious mind. I'm a little bit exaggerating, but not too much. So, everything over here, practically, has been put in the shadow or excluded. And the same thing is true down here. Most of this part of us has, in some way, been made very inferior, has been relegated to the shadow. This, in Christianity, in Christian theology, in, let us say, asceticism, monasticism,

[43:28]

especially in the West, I think Eastern Christianity has a somewhat better grip on keeping it all together. So, we find practically, we're dealing with two hemispheres. One which has been preferred and brought into the light and kept in the light, even though this may have been very little understood in its freedom and its fullness. And one which has been put in the dark and excluded. And this, from the human point of view, you would say is the feminine in the body, also the psyche in the body. Whereas the mind and the spirit, at least in the Christian tradition, have been elevated and cherished. Even though the spirit has not been allowed to be the unit of spirit, the real center of the human person, very often in Christianity. But to say it hasn't been allowed is not to say that the mystics haven't experienced it and that ordinary Christians haven't experienced it, but theology hasn't had a place for it. That is, the official doctrine

[44:29]

hasn't very easily been able to handle it. Let me stop for a moment and see if there are any questions. Yes? How do you differentiate the psyche from the ego? A little room within the psyche which tries to moderate and balance in the psyche and mediate between the conscious and the unconscious, let us say, okay, which tries to keep things in an okay situation, in an okay state, and to move forward. It's like a cockpit or a driver's seat within the psyche which attempts to keep it all together. But ego is a very ambiguous word because you'll hear people saying, well, the ego has to die, you have to let go of your ego. You talk about egocentrism or egoism and all of that as being bad things. And Merton will talk about the false self

[45:29]

and he'll talk about getting rid of the ego. You have to be careful because the ego is an essential part of our makeup and we never lose it. I think what happens is it gets opened up. In other words, instead of being locked into itself, closed into a box, like that box over there, it becomes open, permeable, and participating in everything else, okay? At that point it can become transparent to God, transparent to the divine light and the divine energy. But until then we're resisting what's larger than ourselves. We're resisting the divine energy. In fact, I think this is pretty comparable to ego or conscious mind over here. It's the ego, the kind of box that it builds for itself. And then it's relational, let's say, to the feminine and the whole of the psyche, and to the body and to the spirit. The ego is that kind of tough, working compartment there with which we attempt to run everything. We've got to have it. That's our vehicle. That's our automobile,

[46:32]

whatever you want to call it. We have to have it, but it has to become open so that it can participate in everything else, so that there can be that flow of life. And also so that it can let go and the larger force take over. Because somehow the whole has to dominate in the end. That's what Jung would call the self. We would call it God or Christ. So that ego would be moving then towards the spirit as a growth? Yeah, you can see it. This is just a diagram, of course, so it's going to have its limitations, but you can see it either moving in this direction or opening itself or moving to the center, you can see perhaps, or at least, what would you call it? Maybe it's going to have to stay over here, but it's becoming relativized to the center. Now, the center is the whole thing. The center, you would call the self with a big S. So that would be the whole diagram, the whole mandala. What the ego would do would remain in its position, just like the head has to remain on the shoulders, but it would become relativized.

[47:33]

It's no longer the boss. It's no longer president. It's vice-president, as it were. Because the president is here at this point. And the president is both rational and irrational, both conscious and unconscious. It's everything. The self. Which is, as I say, center and totality at once. The center represents the totality. So we're positing that there is a kind of, what would you call it? A kind of intelligence and a kind of wisdom in that totality. Which Jung attributes to the self, of course. But we would attribute, let's say, to the Christ mystery or to God, if you wish. But God as one with our being. Thank you. I haven't done very well in presenting that feminine principle, that principle of Sophia, which I think is very important. If you read, there are several

[48:35]

texts, not many, in the Old Testament about Sophia or divine wisdom and the feminine personification. They're in three books. First, the book of Proverbs. It's about chapter 7, maybe 7, 8, 9, something like that. Then, the book of Sirach, chapter 24, isn't it? And a couple of chapters earlier in Sirach. And then Wisdom of Solomon, that beautiful chapter 7. Let me read a little bit of that. This is from Wisdom of Solomon 7. For wisdom the fashioner of all things taught me. Now this, I believe, is Solomon who's been praying for wisdom. Solomon the king who has big commitments and needs wisdom in order to govern. So he's praying that this woman be given him as a bride by God. That's incredible. How easily he moves into this metaphor of Sophia.

[49:36]

For in her there is a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, pure, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving, good, keen, irresistible. In other words, this is the divine spirit. And it's that fire we were talking about that contains all things. Therefore, you've got 23 different attributes here. It sounds like one of those Buddhist litanies of qualities and attributes. All of these things are listed just as a, what would you call it, just as an induction to the infinite intensity and fullness of that which he's talking about. Which is the divine spirit. He refers to her as Sophia. Beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent and pure and most subtle. For wisdom is more mobile than any motion. Because of her pureness, she pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God and the pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty. Therefore, nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal life. Remember, these things are attributed to Jesus

[50:37]

in the New Testament, in the Letter to the Colossians. Also in Hebrews. This is picked up and applied to the masculine person, Jesus, later on, but it's feminine in the Old Testament. And Christianity has never gotten it back. It has never somehow absorbed, assimilated that femininity of the divine spirit. She is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God and an image of his goodness. Though she is but one, she can do all things. Now, often the fathers of the church would talk like that about the logos. They'd be appropriating part of this feminine to the masculine logos, as it were. It seems to belong properly to this woman. Notice she does all things. She's an energy. She's not just a light, she's an energy. While remaining in herself, she renews all things. In every generation, she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets. For God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom. For she is more

[51:38]

beautiful than the sun and excels every constellation of the stars. Compared with the light, she is found to be superior. For it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom, evil does not prevail. She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well. Now, here's a feminine divinity, isn't it, which has never been permitted inside Christianity. In fact, it was sort of on the margins of Judaism, but there it is in three of our Old Testament books. In Christianity, I believe we somehow simply have to identify that figure with the Holy Spirit. Now we have to ask ourselves, what would change about this Sophia as she comes into the New Testament? She's very much connected with creation in the Old Testament. She was there when God created the world, playing before him, remember? There's a playful spirit that she has, a spontaneity

[52:38]

of freedom, which is very much what we have over here, very much what we have at this point, what we've been connecting with the feminine. But in the New Testament, she's not there at the first creation, she's here at the second creation, the new creation. And what is it that's peculiar about the new creation? It's unity. That is, it brings everything back to God through this imminent spirit that is now within the world, that is now within human beings particularly. So it's her unitive quality somehow that characterizes the new creation. It's not like she's creating something outside of herself. She's helping God make something out there. But she's flowing into things and regenerating them by bringing them into God. And for human persons, bringing them consciously into God, awakening them to the divine eminence, awakening them to the presence of God in themselves. And even their divinity, their own divinity, their godness, she imports

[53:39]

the godness. Now that's the quality of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. And also, in the New Testament, I think there's a maternity about her. There's a maternal quality which doesn't come out in the Old Testament wisdom figure. But I believe that she's still bride. See, in the New Testament in Christianity, we tend to think of the feminine in a maternal way. We think of it in terms of Mary, the mother of Jesus. And we think of it in terms of the church. But both as mother. There's no bride in the New Testament really, except the church is the bride of God. Mary is the bride of God. There's no bride for the human person. There's nothing for the man in Christianity that corresponds to the word is bridegroom for woman, is there? If you look at that spiritual tradition of the spiritual marriage, the soul, the person, is always feminine. Is there anything on the other side? I think that Sophia is on the other side now, and hasn't really been accepted inside Christianity. We've hardly opened that side

[54:40]

of Christianity. But it probably has a lot to do with celibacy, a lot to do with celibacy, at least for males. It probably also has a lot to do with the discovery of the true feminine, the deep feminine for women. Woman as an image of God. Woman as... But what aspect of God does woman image for? Love and compassion, certainly. But also a kind of wisdom in there. A kind of knowledge which is unitive. A knowledge in the bones, as it were. A knowledge which is in the body. A knowledge by oneness. Not only by sympathy, but by oneness. A knowledge which somehow can't permit division and destruction. The feminine is somehow there. And it's the counter-pull to that analytical principle which tends to be on the masculine side. I like that story about Solomon, remember? His first decision about the two women and the child.

[55:41]

And this is the mother, the one who would not let the baby become a man. Now, Solomon's wisdom and the wisdom of that woman, somehow, said okay, let the child be hers, not mine. He was willing to give the baby up. That's one thing. He resonated with what was in that woman and recognized the same wisdom in her, which preferred the life of the child, not hers, to destroying the child and her getting her part. It's that kind of thing. Wisdom which always values life and wholeness above division and possessiveness. I talked before about an apophatic principle, not only in our first principle, but in the third one, and that comes out in a lot of the stories about Jesus in the New Testament.

[56:42]

When Jesus heals that man with a withered hand in the synagogue, he says, put your hand out. He reached out his hand and it cured him. There's a kind of an energy that flashes out of that scene. We need to be on the watch for it. Out of that scene and many scenes with Jesus in them where he does something or he says something, something happens, it's like there's an energy that leaps out at you, which is indescribable in words. But that's this apophatic of energy, apophatic of the divine energy, of the active divine being, you might say, or something like that. Something which is beyond words and yet which is very real. There's an energy within the word, an energy within the scriptures in the New Testament, and it especially leaps out at certain openings, certain points. Lots of times I think there's a recognition scene where somebody suddenly perceives what Jesus is, what's in it, and they open up. You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Or Peter says, depart from me, or I'm a sinful man, or whatever it is

[57:43]

with that reaction, you get the wave of energy that comes out and hits you. As I say, it's beyond the words. It comes through the words, between the words, but it's beyond description. It's another dimension. It's not the dimension of word, it's the dimension of energy. I think I'd better quit now and see if there are any more questions, especially about this. I've been very unfair to several things here which we didn't get to. One of them is music and another one is poetry, because this is the point, this is the location, I would say, of music and poetry, and therefore of resonance. We talked about a resonant word. The resonant word is the revelation which is wedded somehow to this feminine wisdom which is wedded to the spirit, and that's what's characteristic of Jesus. That's his anointing. There's an anticipation of that in David. David, the king, who was both a warrior and a lover. He was both

[58:44]

a king and he was a musician. Very important. He's a king and musician, king and poet. He's got that masculine principle and at the same time he's got this anointing which expresses itself in beauty. It's very important that David is there. David's got a kind of singular glow about him in the Old Testament. There's nobody quite like David in the Old Testament, and what he's got is some of that which Jesus has, but he's able to show it in some ways that Jesus doesn't show it, because Jesus has a certain line that he has to walk. So it's something to reflect on. You can almost say that David is the music of his race in the Old Testament. David is like, somehow, he's got the central energy of Israel. He's got the right energy of Israel in him. He's the music of his race. Something like Francis of Assisi is the music of his race, say, in the 13th century. On either side of Jesus, those two figures who are completely human, they're like incarnations in some way, and each of them has that anointing,

[59:45]

each of them has that peculiar glow, that peculiar gold in them, which relates them to Christ. Both earth, very earthy, and gold, and with the anointing, the shining on them, which belongs to Christ, which is the spirit, which is this third principle, as it were. Let me read you a couple of little psalms to conclude. This is Wallace Stevens, the man with the blue guitar. Now, it's very hard to get poems to say what you want them to say. It's very hard to get a poem about something, which is fortunate, because usually the poem is about itself, okay? Poetry, especially modern poetry, curls around itself, and you find poets writing poems about poetry all the time, okay? What it is, is a revelation of this principle, actually, that the poem is about itself. It somehow is the uniqueness of a particular kind of experience,

[60:47]

the uniqueness of a particular concentration of reality, okay, which corresponds to this third principle, I believe, and which, in modern poetry, is reacting against our locus box, is breaking out of it, punching holes in it. This is Stevens. Throw away the lights, the definitions, and say of what you see in the dark, that it is this, or that it is that, but do not use the rotted names. How should you walk in that space, remember space, remember number one, and know nothing of the madness of space, nothing of its jocular procreations. Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand between you and the shapes you take when the crust of shape has been destroyed. You as you are, you are yourself. The blue guitar surprises you. Somehow, when you let go of the form, you let go of the shape, you let go of that which is, that which is fixed, let go of the principle of the word in that sense, then you discover somehow that you are the energy, and the form you take

[61:48]

surprises you. You are, you as you are, you are yourself. The blue guitar surprises you. Nothing must stand between you and the shapes you take, not one shape, the shapes you take when the crust of shape has been destroyed. You as you are, you are yourself. The blue guitar surprises you. The blue guitar, the metaphor of music, once again, okay? This whole poem goes on forever, and it's a picture of somebody who's playing guitar, happens to be a blue guitar, you get the idea from a Picasso painting, I think. But it's this energy of the music spawning its variations, its variations, as it were, on the one theme, and the one theme is the communication of this magic, the communication of this creative energy, of this spontaneous energy within the human person which is always new, and always ready to generate something new. And what we have at this third point is very much that principle of newness. We could talk

[62:48]

about creativity, we could talk about freedom, or spontaneity, all of those things somehow belong to that point. Whereas what we tend to have at the second point is consistency and solidity and fidelity and reliability, and all of those things, the principle of the rock, of that which is revealed and which remains forever. But Jesus is not just that, he is both. He is that principle of divine revelation which is wedded to the principle of divine spontaneity, the principle of newness. So in bringing himself he brings all newness. Are there any questions about this, or other matters, or comments, or discussion? What was the chapter in Proverbs? In Proverbs... Let me take a look. I think it's 7, 8, or 9, and maybe a couple of those. It's in that area. It's 8 and 9.

[63:55]

Proverbs 8 and 9. That's the beginning of this, because Proverbs is the earliest of those three books. And the other two pick up from that. You have this so-called wisdom tradition which is late in the history of Israel, in the Old Testament. I read one. Here's another. This is from Stephen's book. I had a choice between Stephen, and Bill, and Thomas. They're very different. This is from... What's the name of this one? The Well-Dressed Man with a Beard. That's the name of this book. The other one was The Man with the Hooghook. After the final no, there comes a yes. And on that yes, the future world depends.

[64:58]

No was the night. Yes is this present song. If the rejected things, the things denied, slid over the western cataract, yet one only, one thing that was firm, even though greater than a cricket's horn, no more than a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speech of the self that must sustain itself on speech, one thing remaining infallible would be enough. Adus Companion of that thing. Sweet Bill, I guess. Adus Companion. Companion. Honey in the heart, green in the body, out of a petty phrase, out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed, the form on the pillow, humming while one sleeps, the aureole above the humming house. It can never be satisfied, the mind, never. He seems to go off on a tangent there. But this is that fundamental affirmation. But the affirmation is in the energy of the poem, actually, more than the content. He says, the aureole above the humming house, that would, I presume, be a, it's not a cookie, it's a glowing aureole.

[65:59]

It's a glowing aureole of some kind. Let me read a couple of little poems of Dylan Thomas, which also have this essential energy of poetry in them. Dylan Thomas, his poetry is like a torrent, which picks up everything. It's like a river in flood that has trees and bodies and dogs and houses, everything. But it's, the thing is in full spate, the thing is in full flood, and the essential message is in the flow itself, in that energy of the word, which is the energy of the spirit carrying the word, actually, and which says somehow, in saying nothing, says everything about everything in some way. Here's Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines. Light breaks where no sun shines, where no sea runs, the waters of the heart push in their tides, and broken ghosts with glowworms in their heads, the things of light file through the flesh, where no flesh decks the bones. A candle in the thighs warms

[67:03]

youth and seed, and burns the seeds of age. Where no seed stirs, the fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars, bright as a fig. Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs. Dawn breaks behind the eyes, from poles of skull and toe the windy blood slides like a sea. Nor fence nor stake the gushes of the sky spout to the rod, divining in a smile the oil of tears. Night in the sockets rounds, like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes. Day lights the bone. Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin the winter's rose. The film of spring is hanging from the lids. Light breaks on secret lots, on tips of thought, where thoughts smell in the rain. When logics die, the secret of the soil grows through the eye, and blood jumps in the sun. Above the waste allotments, the dawn halts. People find it very difficult to interpret Thomas' poetry, and with good reason. It's like, I think he either threw out some words, or he gave it a few final

[68:04]

taps with a hammer to squeak it tight together so you couldn't open it up. But what he does is seem to turn the whole world into energy. See, it's that river, that river of spirit, that flow of pure energy which picks up everything in it, and in its metaphor, in its ability to transmute things somehow, gets it across. It's like the power of freedom that humanity puts into the world. It's as if our job is to bring a light and a freedom, which peculiarly belongs to us, into the world. A new principle into the world. It's part of this new creation thing. And when we hear something like that, we're apt to feel that freedom coming into the world and making something new. Even though it's something as fragile and as ephemeral as a poem, it's a bit, it's a sample, it's just a glimpse, a momentary glimmer of that new creation. And it works in two ways. One way is outside of us. In other words, the poet is able to create nature for a moment with that fire

[69:05]

in it, with that glow about it in some way, to get through the surface of things and find the fire that's burning within them. That's part of it. But the other part of it is subjective or interior, that the poet somehow is able in himself or herself, to find that energy which is sovereign. The energy which is sovereign because it's unitive and creative at the same time. Because somehow, in seeming to smear things and mess them up and pick them up and carry them along in the river, it knows that thing at the core of things where they're all one. That sovereign point at which they're all one, in that fire of spirit, as it were, and which regenerates them out of itself. So there's a bit of new creation there. And in himself, in herself, the poet experiences that energy of new creation, which is the gift of God, you know, which is very much this Holy Spirit, and very much this feminine Sophia also. So the jumble of creation, and yet that has this globe, this peculiar energy of

[70:05]

freedom about it, of spontaneity, of quickness, where things are moving before your eye. That is part of the vision of the new creation. Of that fire that is in the world, and yet is always beneath the surface. It's up to the poet to bring it out somehow. But the poet is just doing it to give us a sample for all of us, a sample of that vision of reality, and a sample of that energy of vision which is within us. Which is able to do that in each one of us. I'll read just one more of this. Especially when the October wind with frosty fingers punishes my hair. Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire, and cast a shadow crab upon the land. By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds, hearing the raven cough and winter sticks, my busy heart, who shudders as she talks, sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words. Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark on the horizon, walking like the trees, the wordy shapes of women, and the rows of the star-gestured

[71:07]

children in the park. Some let me make you of the voweled beaches. Some of the oaken voices, from the roots of many a thorny shire, tell you notes. Some let me make you of the water's speeches. Behind a pot of ferns, the wagging clock tells me the hour's word. The neural meaning flies on the shafted disc, declaims the morning, and tells the windy weather in the cock. Some let me make you of the meadow's signs, the signal grass that tells me all I know, breaks with the wormy winter through the eye. Some let me tell you of the raven's sins. Especially when the October wind, some let me make you of autumnal spells, the spider-tongued and the loud hill of whales. With fists of turnips punishes the land. Some let me make you of the heartless words. The heart is drained, its spelling and the scurry of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury. By the sea's side hear the dark-voweled birds." It's a strange

[72:08]

entrancing poetry that he writes, and partly it's because he takes the most intense things of life somehow and pushes them together, jams them together, presses them together into this very dense kind of poetic material, which is almost impossible to analyze. But what happens is that he squeezes it so hard that it turns into energy, turns into a kind of energy, in which the particular things are coming out like the cherries in the fruitcake or something like that, but the essential thing is the energy itself, which seems to absorb them into itself and then recreate them with a kind of glow upon them. And he elicits somehow that same energy in ourselves in our own heart. Okay, I think that's probably more than enough for this afternoon, unless there's some questions. Thank you.

[72:58]

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