May the Divine Assistant close with us. I'm sorry, we already started with the versicone response. I'm used to something else. I want to continue the meditation on fraternal charity by asking questions about basic presuppositions that we have when we come in contact with one another, when we look one another in the eye, when we meet casually in a cloister, or corridor, or have a definite appointment. What is going on? What is the basis of our relationships? Well, there are four basic ones, I suppose, and there may be others. These are just four that I've hit on. And it has to do with basic likes and dislikes. Number one, I like people who are like myself.

[01:03]

I'm attracted to people who are like me, who like what I like, who are interested in the things that I'm interested in, who've lived basically the same kind of life, same basic kind of education, on the same intellectual level. I like opera, you like opera. I like the Steelers, you like the Steelers, that kind of thing. A natural pairing that occurs in human persons, especially people living in a monastic community. And it takes two forms. I can like somebody who's like myself and indulge their weaknesses. because I can see, I know my own weaknesses and I'm not threatened by those weaknesses and I have a kind of natural compassion for them. In other words, since that person is so much like me, I understand where they're coming from.

[02:04]

I know what they're, you know, like you have two pianists in a community and there's no piano. Well, I know how I feel. And I'll betcha I know how he's feeling, you know? No piano. Pianist, but there's no piano. Okay. It's just very, very obvious, very basic. And there's also the kind of relationship where someone is like me, or I like in them what I see in myself, but they're better than I am, and I'm not threatened by that. I like that, because I'm attracted to it, because it reminds me somehow of myself and what I would like. So you see someone who is like a great painter, for example, comes to the monastery, and I'm struggling to paint. And though they're so much better than I am, and I'm not threatened, I'm not even jealous, because they really are good. But I like them, because I understand painting too, and I want to learn from them.

[03:08]

So then you get a kind of master-disciple kind of thing going. But that's okay. We're not talking about moral good or evil here. We're just talking about the way people naturally pair. Okay, so there's the likes. And then there's another kind of like is when I like someone who's opposite myself. for the very reason that they're different. You know, sometimes we get tired of sitting in our own skin, and we project in a good way onto someone else because they're different. Now here you have the basic attraction between the sexes, but it goes much, much, it's a much broader thing than that. You get, frequently you get people in a monastic community who never had a poetic thought in their lives. never thought about literature, and they come to the monastery and all of a sudden they're thrown in a big mix together with people who do like poetry, who do read literature, and who can talk about it.

[04:18]

Very frequently you find people who are suddenly opened up to this kind of thing, attracted to someone who's completely opposite to them, but they like it. It's different. It fulfills a kind of need that they are suddenly aware that they never had. And you find that all over the place. I like so-and-so, I like Brother Sun Tzu because he's so different from me. And he fulfills a need that I have, a thirst that I have for life, for broader life. Or I like someone, I like Brother So-and-So, because he's different from me. I'm a slob and he's neat, and I like that. I like myself, I'm a slob, and I love to walk into somebody's room where everything is in place. It reminds me of some kind of an ideal that I don't have, that I'm just incapable of fulfilling in myself. I may be completely different from Brother X, but he's got it together in this way, and I admire how he has it together, and I don't know how he's got it together, but I like that, and I like being around him for that reason.

[05:28]

Okay, so there's two kinds of likes, very broad, very basic. Then you have the dislikes, and there are two kinds of dislikes. And the first kind is when I really can't stand to spy somebody because they are like me, and because I'm projecting what I don't like in myself onto them. So, I have this, it's so funny in my own community, we've got one of the brothers who is admittedly overweight, like at around 5'6 and weighs 230 pounds, and it's all blah, it's all fat. And we see him stuffing the chocolates in his robe, and you know, I mean, he's just out of control, and he knows it, and he has been for years. That's no problem. We work with that. He's a very dangerously potential stroke victim at this time. Okay, he's managing.

[06:30]

And there's a younger monk who's kind of got it all together, very intelligent, very bright, and came to the monastery when he was about 24, and as slim and slender as a reed. But something happened when he hit 45. I don't know, we're still trying to figure out what happened. And did he balloon? You know, it's got this big... I mean, it's really... And the belt, you know, you can't see the belt because it's... Well, those two, the older brother, who's really a cookie jar, and this monk who's newly acquired his wealth, don't they pair off and tease one another and really can't stand one another because of that? It's just amazing to me how that works. The older brother will say something, and the younger one will come to me and say, can you believe that? I mean, he eats all day long. I mean, it's amazing how blind you can get.

[07:35]

So they're alike. They hate to admit it, and they hate one another. Well, hate, you know what I mean? They're always teasing, and sometimes there's a barb to it. And I just watch that. And I think it shows up how we can dislike our people who are just the same as we are, or very similar. And then you have the other kind of dislike, out of ignorance. And here's where you have kind of the downside to people who are on the opposite side of the fence culturally. So that, you know, the marine type, just doesn't understand anything about music or poetry and doesn't want to, because they're threatened by it, because it represents something that's so completely foreign to them that they just don't want to deal with it at all. And that's devastating in a community, but it happens.

[08:39]

It's devastating in society, but it happens. It's the death both of the sporting culture and also the the fine arts culture. When the two are at war, you have a lessened culture. You have something that's basically schizophrenic. And so that can be very, very dangerous, that fourth kind of like and dislike. So there are two likes. There's the like of the same, and there's the like of the opposite. And then there are two dislikes. the dislike of the same and the dislike of the opposite over jealousy or ignorance. And whenever you've got that going, that fourth kind, that can be very, very dangerous. And when it gets translated into a monastic community, you have a real problem with fraternal charity, because there's both jealousy and ignorance going on there.

[09:39]

Okay, so there are four very broad categories. Can't we get this on any kind of a deeper level? Not to say even a Christian level, but philosophically, can't we get this to a deeper level? I think we can. And the great monastic writers have always talked about it. You have only to look at someone like St. Bernard. who said, you know, there are four degrees of love, and he's following here the traditional monastic psychology. You know, you love yourself, and this is very perceptive of him to say this, you love yourself because of yourself. I love me, and that's where I start. And if anyone thinks that they come out of the womb altruistic, No deaf psychologist will agree to that. No, we come out struggling for life, for me and for me only, and we don't care.

[10:45]

We're not aware of anybody but ourselves, and our needs, and our thirsts, and our hungers. But that translates all through our lives. We always have to start with love of me, because that's how God made us. We are not born Christ-like martyrs. We're just not. And St. Bernard says, if you think you are, you're going to try to bypass that first, most basic step. then your whole structure is just going to fall down. Yeah, you may do some heroic things for somebody else in your life, but if you're not dealing here first, and have that in place, then your structure is eventually going to be revealed as false, because you have to start with love of yourself. Okay, but then you go on, you start there as a basic, but then you go on, and you start to love God, think out of yourself, and love God, not because God is good in himself, not even because I'm attracted to him, but because of law.

[11:49]

But because law says, and it's God's law that says, you should love your neighbor as yourself. Well, I don't know how to do that yet, but when I don't do it, I get smacked. The society smacks me, or my mother smacks me, or the abbot smacks me. If I do silly things that are selfish, somebody's going to correct me. And so that's kind of the basic premise on which law is based. It's a law, and it's enforced. It has sanctions. If you don't do it, you're going to get hurt. You're going to get punished in some way, shape, or form. Either you're going to be ostracized, or you're going to not get what you want. So the smart person immediately reasons that I better be nice to the people I live with, because it's good for me. So we start with love of myself for my own sake, then love of my neighbor for my sake. That's the second stage. Then you go on, and God starts to break through all my selfishness and all that, and I start to be attracted to the good and the beautiful for its own sake.

[13:00]

God's law is good in itself, and what God wants is good in itself, and God's world is good in itself. And I start to be attracted to not just the external, but the interior world of goodness and beauty and virtue. And the person goes on and on. And for the sake of the good in itself, for the sake of God in himself, I will start to love. And I'll be so attracted to that. The ideal, the young person with the glorious ideal, going off to the Peace Corps, going over to whatever, you know, the great idealism in our lives, is proof positive that at some stage we do get to the point where we love God for God's sake, without any reference to me. We love God for God's sake. Then we go on, and we find out that our idealism often crashes. We'll suffer through everything, we'll be selfless through everything, and then all of a sudden, you know, there's this kind of, I watched these surfers the other day, they're on this wonderful surfboard, but to remind them that they can easily forget that the surfboard is not

[14:17]

an extension of themselves, they're tied, their foot is tied to the surfboard so they don't lose it or it doesn't cut them in half or something like that. And then, you know, when you're at the height of the wave, and then the surfboard slips beneath you and pulls you down, you suddenly realize that your idealism has to come down to earth. And when you can integrate your idealism with your humanity, then Saint Bernard says you've really got it. Because then you love yourself no longer for anything else, not even for myself, but for God's sake. So you see the transformation that starts, I love myself for my own sake. I love my neighbor and I love God because I get hurt for myself. if I don't. So I love myself for my own sake. I love my neighbor and I love God for my sake. Then I love God for his sake. And then finally, I love myself for God's sake.

[15:24]

You see how the thing just gets transformed. Okay, well that's the journey that we're all on. But how does that translate now down into into these deeper philosophical questions. Well, St. Thomas' epistemology has it very, very beautifully put. When I first intuit, when I first look at another person, what's going on there But if I can abstract for a moment and peel through all the layers of cultural conventions and prejudices and conditionings, and I get down there, and this is a very hard thing to do, and only people who enjoy abstraction can really get anything out of it. So if I'm boring you, or if I'm wrong, I just turn off for a bit. But if I understand St.

[16:25]

Thomas' epistemology, as it's understood in the 50s and 60s by Dominicans, what they're saying is that the first mirror, the first image of another object on the eye, on the senses, or in feeling, or touch, or ear, hearing, the first intuition is, I'm intuiting, I'm going out for life. I look for recognition. of life for something that somehow mirrors me. And it can be, I may mistake, as St. Thomas said, I may mistake a tree for a person until my eye focuses in more. But the first thing I think of is life. If I suddenly intuit the person there, they may be dead and propped up by hay bales, and I don't care. It's life that I'm looking for. In other words, that basic intuition which we are given, according to the Thomistic scheme of things, is that I thirst for life, for being.

[17:33]

And not just being, that table has a kind of being, but I'm looking for being that can mirror back to me what I love in myself, consciousness. I want to look in another person's eye and be recognized, and see life there. This is very, very basic. This is pre-logical. This is pre-rational. This is something that St. Thomas says is given in creation, in the womb. You know, when God breathes human life, which is a taste of his own life, into the human person. So, aside, deeper than all the conventions and prejudices and all, you know, blonde hair, blue eyes, and all that kind of thing, It's a shimmering image of somebody who's moving, who's got life, and hopefully consciousness. Because I'm not as... if I look out in a field and I see a raccoon and a human being, I'm going to focus on the human being first.

[18:40]

because there's recognition there. There might be eye contact. There's the intuition that here is self-consciousness, and that's what I thirst for, because that's what I love in myself. And you keep taking that back further, and you realize that the seed of possession is not even me. I can speak of my hand, my foot, my arm, but where is the real Where is the real knowing subject? I use the possessive when I talk about this hand. That's my hand. But is that me? Is that who I am? No. It's my foot, but is that who I am? No. If my body is suddenly consumed by cancer or something, I talk about my body, but is it really me? extensive with my being? No, it isn't. Well, where is the seed of possession? Who is it that calls these things my?

[19:42]

Uses the possessive adjective. Well, it's some kind of knowing subject, self-consciousness, that God gives this bulk of, this 120 pounds of chemistry, or whatever it is, and says, you know, gives it self-consciousness, gives it life. So the center of my being is somehow God's gift of consciousness, God's gift of life in me. And there's the seat of possession where I can start to know myself, know that these things belong to me, and also I can start to know other people like that. There's a very important premise that we're getting to here, because What we're trying to say at base is the human person as a knowing subject celebrates life and existence and loves it in one undivided act.

[20:43]

Knowing and loving life and celebrating it in one undivided act. And if anything else ever enters there, you've got a problem. And that's exactly the kind of problem that we're dealing with in a world of division and hate. Because it wasn't supposed to be like that, and it wasn't made that way. When I start to recognize that the person in the field is a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, and I'm attracted to her, first I see that there's an image, there's a person. And when I start to recognize who and what it is, then all this other stuff, preconditioned by my culture and even my sex, and all that starts to come in. It's like a computer turning on and loading up memory. You know, it takes a while for the machine to load up all its memory.

[21:46]

Well, that's what happens to us when we intuit an image there. And the first thing that happens is that we thirst for life, we recognize, we're attracted, we go to it. And then when, as St. Thomas says, when the image starts to focus, so does the mind, and then the preconditions start, you know, the cultural conditionings and all that. And in a split second, we've loaded all this memory and said, oh, that's someone I don't like. Or it's someone I'm attracted to. So, it's like the computer loading on memory, and that's where the problem is. If I am a Samaritan, and I suddenly see that, oh, she's a Jew, I may not... my initial attraction is going to start to pull away. Or, if I see someone in a hat and an overcoat and can't see their skin, I recognize a human person.

[22:48]

And the first thing that happens, and this is in a split second, I go, I'm attracting my eyes, and then they turn around and they're black. It wasn't supposed to be like that. That's a conditioning of my culture and my society. That's not from God. Okay, so we have to then say that the gift of life that we have as a knowing subject, and the ability to recognize and go out to the gift of life in anyone else, in all of creation, but especially a living being, is something that is given by God. How we put all this overlay on top of it, likes, dislikes, opposites, good, ugly, and all that kind of thing, That's a conditioning that we have to be very careful about. And that is somehow under our control as we go through life. We can start to purify these overlays that culture and society put on our recognition of life and being.

[24:01]

And so we can say then that this ephemeral existence of the clothes that people wear, of the color of their skin, of the church they belong to, and all of the slots that they get put into by society, that's very ephemeral. What's basic and real, for real real, is the fact that they live, that they're a knowing subject, and they live and love and know in one undivided act, because they live, know, and love celebrate God as a human being, as a creature. Okay, so you see, all the other stuff that we load on top of there, and that's the point I want to make, is ephemeral. It can change. It's a human product. What the Incarnation is doing is that God is entering into that whole process of cultural overlay.

[25:04]

When Christ came, he came not as just a blob of knowing subject. He came into a culture, into a society, and for all time after that shows us how to live in a culture and society with all the overlays. the possibilities of distinctions and good and bad and sick and all that, and shows how to live there and to be God-like through all of that ephemeral being. It's not basic, but it's ephemeral, and yet God is interested in it. Okay, let's pass on to another consideration. We have basic gifts, that God gives of life. I talked about the gift of consciousness. God gives that life, and that's the first gift. But then there are so many other gifts implied in blonde hair, blue eyes, swift of foot, slow of hand, left-handed, right-handed, I mean, all these other things.

[26:16]

Intelligence, stupidity, I mean, all of them, all of them. We can say, as I said last night, that God loves everyone equally, because we're all created equal, right? I mean, that's a basic presupposition, and yet we're not. What is it that we all share in? It's humanity, right? We can say that God loves everyone equally in the sense that we all share in the divine spark. We each have That basic component of humanity, we each have self-consciousness. The ability to recognize, and know, and love, and celebrate life in one undivided act. Being. We share in God's being. We all share in an equal way in that. Because you can't divide God and say, well, you only have 50% of God's love, and you only have 25%. If it's divine, it's divine. And you can't divide it. So we all share in that, and that's how we're all created equal.

[27:26]

But yet, God did not say, and so therefore you're all lumped in one big pile of spaghetti and there are no differences. No, because God's love isn't a universal candy wrapper that's all alike. God loves, in a particular unique way, each person that he's made. And that's the basis of our differences. And that basis is also extremely important. So that we can distinguish between the basic gift of humanity, the gift of life itself, of being, from what I'll call the gifts of differences, where God loves each one of us in a unique and particular way, and distinguishes us by gifts, differing gifts. And yet you see the trap there. If I start to honor my gift, and I don't refer it back to the basic gift of life or to the God who gave it, and I start to say, oh, this is my hand.

[28:35]

I have two hands, you only have one. And I start to, what we call posturing, I start to say, well, I've got two, and you've only got one. And not referring my gift back to the God who gave it. I'm in trouble. I'm misusing the gift." When you start to think about that, in a monastic community, in society in general, we build lives, epics, empires on posturing. Most of our television culture is built on posturing. People parading around with gifts that they think constitutes their being, when it doesn't constitute their being at all. Take a very basic example. A guy comes to the monastery at 2 p.m., according to the rule now. Another guy comes at 3 p.m. If I've come at 2 p.m. and I have left everything that I ever had and abandoned myself completely to God's mercy and God's will and enter a monastic community and feel like a dethroned monarch or a fleece chick or whatever, I've got nothing, and I come at 2, and somebody else comes at 3, I find out that I'm senior to that bloke who just came at 3, and I start to pile up, I start to

[30:00]

start to create a new life for myself based on false ownerships, just like I did my previous 25 years if I'm a 25 year old. You can see it in any monastic community. We start to posture. We're all equal. We all come, we all wear the same clothes, we all do the same things at the same time. That's a profound move, a profound insight on the part of monasticism. What it's saying is, we all share equally in God's love. And yet, that sameness brings out the differences, because God is different, too, in His love of each one of us. Okay, if I start to posture about my seniority with someone who comes at three, I'm in trouble. And the whole thrust of the rule is to try to break that down, and to show that that's not the basis of anything. Neither birth, nor education, nor money, nor gifts, nor intelligence, nor any of that is the basis for love.

[31:05]

It can help if we refer it back to the Creator, but if we don't, if it doesn't become transparent, if the ephemeral becomes a block to being and life and love, then we're in trouble. But I'm afraid that people, myself included, build a whole lifestyle on posturing, on false ownership of things that are God's, not mine. So we have to distinguish between the gift of life and the gifts of differences. Then you pass on to these really serious problems of posturing and all of that. Let me make just a little meditation on John 9. You see this discussion that Jesus had over this unfortunate man.

[32:10]

He's born blind. He can't see. And the culture of the time says that he sinned. or his parents, and this is a punishment. This is a withholding of a gift of God that most people have, two eyes that can see. And so, the religious culture immediately starts to try to determine what went wrong, and to assign blame or guilt. See, that's not from God. That's human conditioning that does that. So Jesus cuts right through that. And so he asks the question, who sinned, this man or his parents? I mean, he's asked the question, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he's born blind? Jesus said, neither this man nor his parents sinned that he was born blind, but that the works of God might be manifest in him. Now, that's an interesting answer. immediately starts to try to determine what went wrong, and to assign blame or guilt.

[33:17]

See, that's not from God, that's human conditioning that does that. So Jesus cuts right through that, and so he asks the question, who sinned, this man or his parents? I mean, he's asked the question, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus said, neither this man nor his parents sinned that he was born blind. but that the works of God might be manifest in him?" Now, that's an interesting answer. It's suggesting, what I've talked about before, that God doesn't look on these unfortunate things, these misfortunes that happen, as curses. God didn't curse anybody. Well then, it's we who assign such importance to having two eyes and two hands and two legs. It's we who are prejudiced against people because we think they did something wrong, or they've got a curse or something. God never said that. Yeah, that may have been how in the Hebrew Testament people understood, you know, but God can choose any of

[34:24]

these things to be a sign of his displeasure or a sign of his approval, it doesn't matter. It's a gospel teaching, isn't it? I mean, Jesus said that. And I think that teaching from the synoptics needs to pass over right, and a bridge built right to John 9, about the man born blind, one of the great precopies in all of divine revelation. Where Jesus says, you know, your whole outlook on the world has to change. people that you think are misfortunate or unfortunate because they seem to let the poor bloke, you know, sucking his sores in Bombay, you think he's worse off than you are? Maybe not. Not according to the Kingdom of God. But we tend to look down. Who doesn't, in the first part of the world, look down on people who are don't have what we have. I mean, we basically, we have a basic prejudice.

[35:28]

Some of us don't, but a lot of us do. Or this current debating government, these people are welfare, let them help themselves. We got where we got by hard work, let them help themselves. Now I'm not saying, I'm not trying to enter into politics here, but I am saying that that kind of lingo needs to be very carefully examined. Because it certainly doesn't square totally with what we know to be true in divine revelation. It is true that too much welfare will demoralize persons. There's no doubt about that. Will demoralize them and deactivate them. But where do you draw the line between a blanket condemnation of the poor and a kind of discerning ability to see where help might be needed and where it can be put to its best use. I don't know, and I don't think there's any easy answer to that, but I would be aware of the rhetoric that offers blanket condemnations of whole sections of the society.

[36:40]

Okay. You can have two eyes and two ears and a nose and be perfectly formed and be a jerk. in the Kingdom of God. Because you can put a smokescreen there, and those are ephemeral things, and you can make them into what you feel are everlasting things, and your own possession, and they will trip you up on the way to the Kingdom. You see? So, as Jesus says, let's get first things first, and let gifts of difference to celebrate God, and be referred constantly to God. and not to some kind of proud ownership. Let me tease out that meditation a little more. We know a doctor at Mepkin. His name is Bill Ward, and he's a very famous cancer doctor, oncology.

[37:44]

He is probably the country's foremost researcher on cancerous tumors in limbs. legs and arms and all of that, an orthopedic surgeon, but he has, he did an internship and returns frequently to UCLA for research grants to, you know, implants where the section of the bone has cancer, they'll take this section of the bone out and put a synthetic piece of bone there and link it back up to the tumor and cancer's gone and the limb is fine. They will do incredible things with tumors that wrap around muscles, carcinomas that are deadly, deadly, and it's just incredible what he can do. We know, because we had a brother who struggled with cancer for a year last year, but lost the battle. But in the meantime, we had gone up to this man, he's at Bowman Gray Medical Center in North Carolina, Winston-Salem, and that's how we got to know.

[38:47]

nice-looking guy, tall, blonde, well-proportioned man, about 37, 38 years old, a beautiful wife, and four children. So I got to know him, and I said, he said, I need to come down, and after Brother Conrad died, he said, I need to come down to the monastery and spend a few days with you. And I was kind of surprised. This is Bill Ward's eminent doctor. What would he want to come down to Africa for? He's Baptist, what could he find in a Roman Catholic Church? He said, I just need to talk. So he came down. When we tried to get an appointment, it was like chasing a rabbit through a blazing fire. I mean, he was so busy and going all over the country and all that, and yet he took time, but it was hard to track him down. So when he cleared two full days of his schedule to come down and talk to us, I thought there's something of put here. Well, he came down, and he just didn't walk around the garden and all that.

[39:50]

He wanted to talk. And he said, if you can clear some time for me, I'd appreciate it. Well, I said, sure, I'm right here. So I had to cancel all sorts of things, because it never occurred to me that he would really want to talk. What he wanted to talk about was his eldest son, Jed. Jed? was born, their first child, with some kind of cystic encephalitis. I don't know the medical term, but his brain grows cysts. Mashes into the brain as they grow. They can be dissolved chemically, but I don't know, there's something about, well, he's an idiot. He can't speak. He can hardly walk. He has tremendous seizures, like as if it were epilepsy, yeah, and he's 11 years old now and can barely sit up. He's just like a vegetable. They were very brave and had other children who were fine and normal, but taking care of this kid has just enveloped their entire lives.

[40:58]

And his question was, he said, you know, we work with him. My wife We will not send him to an institution. We tried that for six months and he was treated horribly. We brought him home. We work with him every day. You know, you get to a point where he's just about ready to say a word and then a new seizure and he's back to ground zero. And here's this eminent man of science and he's sitting there crying on the table. He said, what do you do with this? I used to go to the Baptist church, and I stopped going. I said, how can God do that to a blob of living flesh, make him such an idiot? And then you try, tease you out, so you try and try and try, and work with the kid, and work with the kid, and work with the kid, and you see a little bit of light, and then a seizure happens, and it's all gone, right before, putty before your face. He said, I don't believe anymore. I don't care about a God who treats people like that.

[42:02]

I'm not interested." You know, crying through his tears, he said, you know, but somehow this tradition, where you people come and give up everything and try to search for something that's everlasting, maybe that's what I need to do with this kid. I mean, it was just really heartrending. And I thought to myself, you know, it's through that horrible misfortune that this man is going to find something far deeper than any kind of medical science, any kind of eminence, any kind of surface goodwill that he thought he was going to do for humanity. Undoubtedly, he will do great things for humanity. God is working through him, I have no doubt about that. But let him not think. God is saying that he's giving a favor to humankind. God is doing it. Dr. Ward has to work his own journey, and he has to come to the realization that God is God.

[43:04]

Be still and worship and know that I am God. And God is doing that through this terrible tragedy of this kid. I mean, it's just really sad. When you see up against, when you see this man, this great great intellect, this great person, up against the mystery of God. Then you have to start to say, well, what is so important about human life here, if it's not going to lead to God? And isn't that the whole point? The gift of life, the gifts of differences, are to lead to God, and when they don't, then you're up against futility. and a dead end. It's not going to work, as God said it wouldn't. It's not God who's going to punish us for not worshipping Him. We're going to punish ourselves, as we have, when we take the gift of life and make it into my own doing. It's the basic sin of pride, but it works itself out in so many subtle ways, even in the monastic community.

[44:08]

Take Demosthenes, you know, the great rhetor. Demosthenes had a lisp, couldn't speak clearly. We don't know what form the lisp took, but it blocked his speech. And Demosthenes, by the grace of God, thought, I'm going to lick this. And he shut himself up in a cave and worked for months and [...] months until it was clear. and came out and became a great orator. What I'm trying to say is that disadvantages, so-called misfortunes, can often spur the human person to make up for them, to go after that ideal, and to make it one's own, and learn a lot about life and God in the process. A terrible misfortune, a list. Maybe not so, if it gets the person closer to a realization of the infinite.

[45:09]

And also, what can be accomplished with hard work? These are things from God. God is teaching us how to live in this world. Take the Coptic tradition in the 3rd and 4th centuries, the Coptic monastic tradition in Egypt, where the cantor was always a blind man. Always. Why? The understanding being that lack of sight made the hearing all the more acute. And it was the people who couldn't see and who developed the whole world to make up for that in hearing, they knew and had a better insight into music and singing than the person who got some of his perception of life from sight and some of it by hearing. And in our own day, you know, there are some famous, in France especially, they developed these kids who were born blind.

[46:12]

They send them right to music school. And some of the great musicians that we've had in Western Europe are blind people. The great Louis Vierre, Jean Langlais, the great organist of Notre Dame, both were blind. most of their lives. Jean-Pierre Lagaze, presently the titulaire at Notre Dame in Paris, is blind. Improvisation, the art is dead, except in those blind people. They know how to improvise. We've lost it in our time, in classical music. Not those people. So, there's something to be said. I'm not glorifying misfortunes, but I'm saying, let's not feel sorry for ourselves when we do have a misfortune. What about, to really get it home, what about the case of AIDS? One of our prelates made this horrible statement at one point, well, it serves him right. It's a terrible sin. Well, that may be true, either drug use or out of control, sexual acting out.

[47:19]

Promiscuous sex? Yeah, I guess it will. It should be punished, I guess. But who's to say? Who's to say? Those who work with the AIDS ministry know that when suddenly confronted in the prime of life with a life-threatening disease as horrible as AIDS, as the HIV virus, and suddenly the knowledge that your young life at 28 or 29 is going to be snuffed out by this horrible, non-curable disease, It makes you think. And a lot of those people die very spiritual deaths. Not everybody, of course, but some of them do. And people who work with these, who are in AIDS ministry, say their own thoughts about life and death get confronted right head on. You know, what is the meaning of life? And these people facing death imminently, every day, and knowing that it's going to come, this slow death, it's one thing to die of a sudden achorax, and it's another thing to know that you're going to be, you're just going to suddenly, not suddenly, but gradually slip away at age 29, you know, month by month by month, in a horrible decline.

[48:35]

It makes you think. All those things are not are not for us to make moral judgments upon. That's up to God. We don't make them, we shouldn't make them. And again, it's Jesus saying, when he's asked, who sinned, this man or his parents? Nobody sinned. Or at least I'm not condemning anybody. As St. Paul said in Romans 8, there's now no more condemnation for those who live in Christ Jesus. There's only the celebration of life in Christ. There's no more, you're right, you're wrong. It's all over. It's a new creation now. Things have new meaning. Or I'd like to think that the initial meaning is restored and glorified. That's the way you might think of it. Let's recapitulate. When I feel good about myself, when I accomplish something and I feel good about myself, am I going to be stupid and refer that to me or am I going to refer it to God and give God the glory?

[49:45]

When something good happens, I accomplish something or I feel loved and affirmed by people in the community, am I going to reason, I guess I am pretty good. Or am I going to refer it to God? Am I going to make the same mistake that people have been making since Noah and the flood, and say, well, I'm pretty good? Or am I going to learn the lesson from humiliations, and learn true humility, and when something goes right, and I do get glory, to give that glory to God, as it says in the prologue of the rule? When I like, when I'm attracted to somebody else, and I'm tempted to cross boundaries, real, I won't call them strict boundaries, but boundaries of the good and the upright, because I like somebody or I want something, you know.

[50:47]

Am I going to celebrate that life and goodness that I'm attracted to out there and refer it to God, or am I going to grasp it for myself? See, that's the question. Am I going to refer it to God and His Kingdom? Am I going to enjoy life for what it is, or am I going to get slinky and take it to myself in an act of aggression? This has to do with personalities, with personal relationships, between men and women, between men and men, and between brothers in a community. I've got a choice. I can be attracted to someone and celebrate their gifts and refer it back to God, or I can be a devil and grasp it and use them and start to be codependent with them or start to pair with them to the detriment of the community. It's my choice. I can start to dislike someone because they're so much like me, because I hate in them what I hate in myself, because I feel badly about myself, because I'm down and out about my own misfortunes and my own lack of abilities, and I get depressed by that.

[52:11]

Am I going to hate myself, or am I going to turn that disadvantage into an advantage in the Kingdom of God, and work hard and pull myself up the way God wants me to, and give Him glory? By the same token, am I going to allow myself, when I see somebody else who's down or out, to pounce further on them, because I'm afraid that their own disability will get translated to me? That happens so often, we despise the poor and the needy because we don't want to be like them, and we tread them down further because we don't want to deal with them. The same happens in a community. Do I marginalize someone that I don't like or that I despise because I can't refer their weakness to the glory of God? I can't see how it might be an insight into the glory of God. So, I think there, those four dislikes and likes, when you re-read them, according to John 9 and Romans 8, and Christ's teaching in the Gospel, puts the whole human scene into a different ballgame.

[53:22]

We celebrate life, but we refer it back to God. We take no weakness as a source of depression, and misfortune. We turn it into a good, or we find the good in it somehow. We don't accept it as a depression and as a lack. We celebrate God's hand in it. We see everything in process towards the glory of God. The whole creation is waiting and growing. As we have it, the whole creation is waiting and growing for the revelation of the children of God. It may sound chummy and nice and easy. It is very, very difficult because the world is, the air is full of other voices and other meanings that try to misinterpret and drag down the divine revolution. It's up to us to have a searing examine every day, every moment of our lives, constant prayer.

[54:31]

That's what the monastic tradition is saying. And I'm suggesting that the content, or part of the content, of continual prayer is a constant correction of lessons mislearned and misunderstood about life and life together. So, we'll go on and see, for the ensuing comment, this will be how to take this Christ-like teaching and apply it to my own life and see exactly what's going on there, when it's a question of reinterpreting life according to Romans 8 and according to the Gospel teaching. Is that one? I think it's... It seems to be so.

[55:24]

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