Well brothers, I just want to say that I really am very happy to be with you and to walk with you during these days of retreat. And you know and I know that the work of the retreat is the work of the Spirit within the heart of each one. So I don't put too much emphasis on what I say or whether what I am going to say will make a real deep impression. I think it's simply that the Spirit can use any word and will use any word if we're open to listen to the Spirit working within our heart. And I just want to assure you that our sisters back home are praying very much for this retreat. That's probably the advantage of having a sister coming out of a community, because they take it very much to heart. This is a special thing for the community. And in some way, they are here with Kathleen and myself.

[01:06]

And they very much will be keeping us all in prayer Perhaps we could just begin our retreat with a little prayer. Lord Jesus, please let your spirit be within our hearts in a special way during these days. That whatever it is that you would want us to hear, would want us to see, We will be open to hear and to see. And we ask this in your own name, Lord Jesus. During retreat, we tend to close down our candy shop and just try to do as little as possible and kind of move into low gear.

[02:07]

So I hope that you may be able to just be able to let go of some of your responsibilities if you can, and just be able to be quiet during these days as much as possible. To begin our retreat, I'd like to tell you about something that happened to me several years ago, and I guess you could call it one of those peak experiences. It was very unexpected and very small in itself, but it had a powerful influence on me. I was in the doctor's office, and it was just about noon, and I think the doctor had gone out to lunch, but there were still several of us waiting. And so we waited and waited. And I noticed across the room from me a woman, and she was a very beautiful woman. She caught my eye. So I was trying to read a book and noticed that a man and a very young child walked into the office.

[03:18]

The child was probably about four or five years old. And they obviously belonged to the woman and walked over to her and were talking with her. Evidently the father, the husband, decided that he would take the child and go because it seemed as though their wait would be too long to stay in the office. And as they turned to leave, I just happened to look up and I caught the look of the mother as she looked at the child. And it was an incredible look. I've never seen anything like it. And her look was only momentary, but it seemed to hold the child. And he looked right back at her. And there was an exchange of love. And it seemed to hold each of them in a non-verbal, non-physical embrace.

[04:21]

And maybe you've heard that term, a long look of love, but that's what I saw in that moment, a long look of love. And I think that that is something of what contemplation is, simply looking with love and being looked upon in love. So, this morning, rather than concentrating our attention on we ourselves being the one who looks, who contemplates with love, which is what we are called to be, I'd like to suggest that we become that child, that one who is looked upon with so much love, so much tenderness, so much total acceptance.

[05:26]

And maybe we hadn't thought about someone looking at us, contemplating us with love. But I think Saint Benedict is very aware that we are constantly in the sight of God. God sees us always, and day and night, God's angels are reporting to him. And sometimes we may think that that's in the sense of telling God what the bad things we're doing. And we don't think of it so much as telling God of our goodness and of God looking upon us with love in his eyes. But what I'd like to urge all of us during these days is that we consciously let God in Christ Jesus look into our inmost heart, into every corner and cave of our being.

[06:34]

Can we let ourselves be known simply as a child looked upon so tenderly, so lovingly, And to aid us in this exercise of allowing ourselves to be looked upon by the Lord, I've chosen just three incidents in the Gospels in which Jesus did truly look at another. There are many other incidents, but these three have particular meaning for me, and I hope they may for you. And as we go to the Word of God, I want to say from the outset that I simply share my Lectio with you. I don't in any way pretend to interpret these scriptures in an exegetical way. But the first scene is the first chapter of the Gospel of John.

[07:44]

John the Contemplative, the one who has seen Jesus in his reality as Son of God. And very often, maybe you've noticed, in the Gospel, John refers to sight. More so, I think, than any other evangelist. But it's particularly striking in the scene of the call of Nathanael. When Jesus saw Nathanael coming, he said of him, There is an Israelite who deserves the name Incapable of Deceit. Jesus doesn't just see Nathaniel, but he sees into him. He sees into his essential being and he names him Incapable of Deceit. And this is who Nathaniel truly is.

[08:49]

And we know from other scriptures that God does have a name for each of us. And I'm sure that name corresponds to the uniqueness of our being, of who we are meant to be. And by letting Christ look on us, know us, we ourselves may come to know our own name. Nathaniel is surprised, but he's calm. He isn't flustered. And it seems to me that very often in life, we can sense peace and maybe even joy, when we sense that someone else truly knows us, knows us in our goodness and knows us in our shadow, in our dark side, but we feel peaceful in that knowledge.

[10:02]

And I suspect that that is perhaps something of what Nathaniel felt. And so he simply asks, how do you know me? And then Jesus tells him, before Philip came to call you, I saw you under the fig tree. I guess there are many interpretations of the fig tree and what Nathaniel might have been doing under the fig tree. Maybe he was just dozing. For me, it reminds me of Adam and Eve in the garden, hiding from Creator God. and covering themselves with fig leaves, afraid to be seen in their true selves, in their true state. But whatever the meaning of the fig tree here, it's enough for Nathaniel. He believes and he exclaims, Rabbi, you are the Son of God.

[11:08]

You are the King of Israel. And then Jesus makes an astonishing promise. You believe just because I said, I saw you under the fig tree. You are going to see greater things. I tell you most solemnly, you will see heaven open and above the son of man, the angels of God ascending and descending. So when Jesus looks on a person and when that person responds with openness, that's really faith, then the person himself begins to see in a new way. Because the look of Christ is dynamic. It never leaves us where we were under a fig tree. But it draws us on and enables us to see with new eyes, the eyes of faith that can see what no human eye has ever seen.

[12:22]

So perhaps we could hold on to that as our first point, that the look of Jesus is dynamic. It probes our deepest motives and it names our essential being, and it enables us to see. The second incident that I'd like to mention is in Luke's Gospel, and it's the look of Jesus on the widow in the temple who dropped her last two coins, all that she had to live on, into the treasury. And this story is very different from the preceding, in that as far as we know, this woman never met Jesus, was never aware of his gaze, and probably never became a disciple. But there is a similarity between Nathaniel and this widow, in that they were both seen in their most true being,

[13:34]

Jesus saw the deepest motives in their hearts. That motive that prompted the widow to give all that she had to the poor. And most especially, he appreciated her. He set her as a model for his disciples. And I'm sure that he loved her. This particular incident has always been really a favorite of mine. And I see a parallel between the widow and the monk, or the nun. As a widow, she is alone. No companion to share her life intimately. No one to care for her as the apple of his eye, except Yahweh. And she's in the temple, the place of worship, And she doesn't have very much to give.

[14:41]

Her gift, the monk's gift, doesn't make a great splash in the church. But the fact is, her gift is her life, all that she has to live on. We, monks, monastic women, are very poor. But if we keep giving even the few pennies that we have, that we are, the Lord does see and accepts. Her way is hidden and for the most part unacknowledged, but she is noticed by one. And her gift is received royally. And that reminds me of one of the visions of Julian of Norwich in her sixth revelation, which to me was one of the most incomprehensible.

[15:53]

In heaven, God will thank us full well. Isn't that incredible that God will thank us, we who have so little to give? And so this is the second characteristic of one who is open to the gaze of Jesus. The sometimes intangible and poor gifts of ourselves to the Lord, this is received. And in that acceptance, there is a consummation of one's whole life. And God thanks us. The third scene in the Gospel is the classic meeting of Jesus with the rich young man. And I've chosen Mark's account since he alone of the three synoptic writers describes the actual look of Jesus.

[16:59]

So I'd just like to read that for you. Jesus was setting out on a journey when a man ran up, knelt before him and put this question to him. Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments. You must not kill. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not bring false witness. You must not do fraud. Honor your father and mother. And he said to him, Master, I have kept all these from my earliest days. Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him. And he said, there is one thing you lack.

[18:03]

Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. But his face fell at these words, and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth." This, for me, is perhaps the most mysterious and poignant of all Christ's encounters. Jesus looks at a man steadily and loves him. He sees in this young man purity, goodness, the extravagance of youth. And his look and his word invite him to follow. And the man refuses, saddened because he was so rich.

[19:07]

I think to myself, how could anyone refuse the Lord? How could anyone refuse such love? But then I think to myself, are there some corners of my own life that I hold on to? Some little hidden cache that I'd rather he not see and call me forth to leave. Maybe you and I sense this invitation to let go on or move on further into the way of discipleship. And maybe we struggle. We are free. Even when we are in direct contact with Christ in prayer, in His Word, in conscience, we are free either to yield or not.

[20:11]

But what I see as most important in this particular meeting is the manifest love of Jesus for this person. As far as I know, this is the only place that speaks so explicitly. And besides his love, there is also real hope and enthusiasm in Jesus. We have the expression, she has great hope in him. Usually it would be of a mother or father for a child. And it implies an appreciation of the potential in the other. And in this passage, Christ does recognize in this young man the potential for true discipleship. And he's enthusiastic.

[21:15]

He really hopes this man will stretch beyond his limited horizon and risk everything. And Jesus knows that he's asking a lot. And as the young man turns away sad, I'm sure there's an echo of sadness in the heart of Christ. But no blame. He still loves the young man. and he still respects his freedom. So we can say as a third characteristic of the look of Jesus that it challenges us. It calls us beyond our narrow limits. Limits that we perhaps place on ourselves. Our own complacency, our own settledness.

[22:18]

And for all that, the look of Christ, the invitation, respects our freedom as human persons. And so Nathaniel, the widow, and the rich young man all fall under the gaze of Jesus. are held in that long look of love. So brothers, I'd like to just repeat what I said earlier on, that during these days of retreat, we might let ourselves be known, received, and maybe challenged or called forth in those areas of our lives that may be dozing under a fig tree or simply too absorbed.

[23:22]

Let the look of Christ enter into your heart. We might expose those areas of our hearts most in need of healing, of mercy, of compassion. Wherever you are now, it is a unique place. It may be a time of struggle for you, interior conflict, conflict with others. It may be a time of darkness or a sort of intangible ennui. Or it may be a time of great serenity. But wherever you are, Christ knows you, loves you, and he accepts the poor gift of yourself and your daily you-ness.

[24:31]

And he continues to call you forth. And during these days of retreat, it's good to step back and know that we are known. and rest in the gaze of our loving God. And then we may learn how to look on ourselves and how to look on others with that look of love that is compassion. I have a great love for the Psalms. So at the end of each talk, I'll just simply propose a couple of Psalms that I think would be echoes of the ideas that I've been presenting. And if you want to follow through on that, you're free to. If not, that's perfectly all right. But Psalm 31 has always

[25:35]

It's been a favorite of mine, and I think that it has something in it of these ideas, also Psalm 33, and Our Lady's Magnificat. Excuse me, this is the grail numbering. Thank you for asking. Do you use grail in your...? Yeah, so you'd be familiar with that. So I conclude, and if there'd be any thoughts you'd like to talk about, questions or reflections of your own, that would be very welcome. I need to go back to the last thing you just said, something about compassion. What I was saying, brother, is that I think that when we allow ourselves to know the look of God in our own hearts, His love and acceptance, it enables us to look on ourselves, first of all, with compassion, and then to look on others with that same compassion.

[26:40]

That was the idea. You know, when I read the rule, it does seem, though, like the emphasis that there is, is kind of Big Brother just watching you. Checking out. It's a long time before you're able to turn around and see that that's a different kind of look that God has. That's right, He's not looking at us in that way. But I think on the surface of a number of things in the rule like that, Not helpful. It's kind of the idea of the fear of the Lord. Yeah, and that kind of demand about perfectionism and so forth. Waiting to see where you're deficient. I mean, you get it from scripture and so forth, but it's a long time to get it. beyond that to tear it right up. Yeah. Yeah, very much along.

[27:42]

It does. Yeah. And I kind of would think along with you, I think it's true, but you know at the end of the degrees of humility, or is it at the end of the prologue where he says that after all these degrees, I guess it's humility, we'll begin to run with unspeakable sweetness of love. And maybe that's what you're referring to as it takes some time and we kind of have to go through the harder part of obligation and we must do this until we become a little bit more free. I just feel it's good to keep knowing that it is a love that's calling us because otherwise it gets awful heavy. What do you mean by heavy? Life can be heavy. That's what I meant, you know.

[28:43]

Yes, yeah. It's like in art, you know, the student practices. For example, in calligraphy, you do the same letter over and over again, and you're looking for every error. When you become the master, you don't see any of that. You're free, yeah. And you don't know that change comes all of a sudden. I think the same thing happens with learning music. I used to play the organ all the time until Kathleen entered. I was so grateful that she entered. And I used to have to practice something over and over and over again. And then all of a sudden it would be mine and I'd be able to play it. But until then, I just had to constantly practice over and over and over again. That's me. I don't think everybody has that same problem, but it's something similar to that.

[29:43]

Then it's yours and you can just go with it. One thing with Nathanael, you said that I'm responding in faith. It's not like the emphasis, and I've lost it. I was speaking of at the end where Jesus said, you will see greater things than this. You will see the heavens opened. And I believe that that is a reference to being able to look with faith, that we can now even see these things, not visibly, but with faith. So I was connecting that when the Lord calls us, he gives us the ability to see things that we wouldn't ordinarily be able to see. And folks without that faith don't see.

[30:44]

Does that make sense? So it's the Lord giving us the capacity to see and think something, or a greater thing. That's what I was saying. Does that make sense? I wasn't sure what you were... I was probably writing something that didn't catch the thought. That's what I meant. goes beyond the world of reasoning at all. That's right, that's right. Kel, on this notion of how difficult it is for us to come to see the look of God as a look of love, do you have any thoughts on why that's so difficult for us, why we want to right away feel guilty, for example? why we see the look of God as one that arouses guilt and not suburban guilt rather than purity of God.

[31:45]

Could we throw that question out? I promise to say what I think later, but... It comes, I think, partly to our... not to blame our parents, I mean, just when you're raising kids, I mean, what is he saying? Are you trying to make me a suicider? Do you have things at barters? I mean, so they're always being told, you know, you're constantly being kind of corrected. Yeah. Daddy's going to see you. I don't think people know how that affects a child. And I think we're all different. Somebody could, you know, correct us and pick us up and love us, and one kid would say, that's great, and the other kid would say, you're a damn hypocrite, you told me I was a stinker, and I'm not a stinker. It's just, it's practically impossible for a parent to raise a kid, but then they are kind of saying no, and you hear it around houses, but in the families, it is so frequently, no, and I knew it was this way, and God, you've done it again, you know, and this kind of stuff, and I think it kind of gets ingrained in us,

[32:48]

I think it gets leeched out, so to speak. We come to recognize our parents weren't trying to correct us or angry with us, but they were concerned that there was a concern that we interpreted, I think, you know, that should form our deficiency. But we don't have enough experience around goodness things. There's other things, we have no experience of that. We're not trying to be good. And so we're taking what other people say of us, and it's always, there's something to be corrected or made better or improved. That gets into self-image. If we don't love ourselves, how can we be sure that God loves us? How can we believe that somebody else loves us? We don't love ourselves. And whether it's parents or somebody else. It's that people's fault, I agree. And sometimes it is, but it's also a cultural thing. We haven't got the capacity to see it in any other way. But I think we men have a harder time with women, at least that's my perception, because something you alluded to at the beginning about letting ourselves be known.

[33:52]

I think that we don't let ourselves be known to each other as males in American society, as women might be apt to. So if you have a bad self-image, but are a disclosing person, you find out by experience that people still love you even though We are false. If you're willing to share your dark side, whatever you want to call it, then you find out that people still love you despite. But I think our handicap is that if we don't disclose, then we don't get that experience. So we're still bad. And it's risky to disclose. In Mike's case, one of the big barriers is it's kind of a two-way street. I think most of us carry around all sets of rather large set of expectations, things we want to do, want to accomplish, or think we should do.

[34:56]

And also carry around a big set of expectations of things we think other people expect us to do or want us to do, think we should do. Those are usually pretty strictly tied up with our idea of giving and receiving, just being in a relationship with somebody or anybody, or giving and receiving love. The idea of something that is completely unconditional is so alien to our experience. I think we always tend to put those human categories onto God. And that love can really be open and unconditional is hard for us to grasp. There is a tendency, I love you if, you know, you save yourself for whatever. And we don't realize that God's love follows us into hell as a matter of fact, you know. But we've never experienced a love like that, because all our loves are moved to some degree.

[36:05]

At least at some point. They're not totally wonderful. They may be wonderful for a moment or for a few minutes. We put conditions on them. One thought I had on it myself too is, The life and the Lord's Prayer forgive us before we forgive others, but it seems to me sometimes my own capacity to really appreciate that I'm forgiven can be seriously blocked by the fact that there are lacks of forgiveness in myself of which I may not even be aware. The tendency to look critically or hold resentments against others that I'm not even aware of perhaps or I'm not willing to be aware of certainly are blocks in me from really fully appreciating that God forgives me. There's a sense in which we can't know that forgiveness until we ourselves are willing to forgive.

[37:08]

And yet on the other hand, it's only experiencing the forgiveness of God that we are freed up to really forgive others. When you say the forgiveness of God, how do you experience it, but through others? Yeah, that would be one way, yeah. Well, no, I'm asking you other ways. I mean, when you just say that, it brings up the question, what do you mean by the forgiveness of sin? Oh, just like in prayer, you know, we're once conscious, you know, look, I've really done this again today, you know, 2,999,000 times. And, you know, if one can come to the Lord and really repent of that and have an experience that, look, it's passed. It's really passed. It's all forgiven. And I think sometimes God does that to us. frees us to do it. Are you saying, Michael, that you think perhaps we can only know that God can forgive us like that if we've experienced it from others in some way?

[38:15]

My guess is that. I can't say that for sure. I think that as experiential, sensate creatures, We can't just intuitively come to some disembodied knowledge. Again, I can't say for sure, but I think that somewhere in our history, in our past, we have to get glimpses of that in order to come to a bigger knowledge. I would suspect that that's true. God can do anything in grace, you know, and a person, I suppose, could be kind of zapped by the experience of forgiveness just flowing in as spiritual grace. But normally, I think I would agree that we do have to have some experience of it as human persons among one another, and then it becomes tangible. I think it seems to me that we can identify with some of the people in scripture, older, who testify. Which, of course, is their experience that's being deliberately passed on to us, so not that it comes from another person, but I think we can get an insight into that, and see that, oops, this is, this is me, you know.

[39:23]

They used to tell me, David, about the, again, who I am, you know, who I am, that man, you know. I mean, we're just like with, you know, God, Moses ain't a God, we're stiff-necked, and we've got his people, like, you know, I remember at one time, we were also at the story of St. Louis, and he had this servant, you know, and he tells him, you know, you have never met my, he talks from, anyway, you've never met my servant, we've been serving you the whole time, you've been in the army with us, you know, so it's just the other way around, and all of a sudden, you know, oops, I can see that, you know, I can see that in myself, and that I can, wound up in the clay people, so the animal has been taken care of, and they went around, and also the Stiplectus and Rebelliousus. And of course, it's so beautiful, the very next word is, I make a covenant with you, in spite of you, Stiplectus and Rebelliousus. Anyway, so that's of course, that's their experience that we're getting in some way, but it's not, I never met Moses in any way, certainly.

[40:25]

I think that's one of the reasons for scripture, because it's part of experience that we've had and it's gone and points out that way, so it makes it authentic and we can find ourselves in that. I don't know. I have trouble with that because We are the children of the incarnation, and this experience of God's love has to be incarnated, which means it has to be human. Well, there was. Yeah, I know, but that's a second-hand experience, and I think unless a person has had a first-hand personal touch, a hands-on experience in their life, then even the words of scripture will not... It's like the bread of the Eucharist. If you don't know food, then the symbol of the Eucharist, the sign of the Eucharist is meaningless. It's purely intellectual. How much of that is the experience of food? And you know what food is, by eating, you know?

[41:33]

And I think the scripture is... the stories of scripture, even though they're valid historically, are not... hands-on, there's somebody else's experience that I learned intellectually, but unless I have a comparable experience, not exactly the same, of course, but a comparable experience. Like, if you tell me, if I have never experienced love, and you tell me, oh, but I have, you've experienced love, well, that may make me feel worse. Yeah, well, I appreciate what you're saying, but I didn't say, this is what you're saying, I could identify with the stiff neckness And since I do that, I can also identify with the man-making covenant. And it's somebody's, it is really somebody's, at least again to me, the experience of Jesus, both a human being and God, is an experience I have access to. I'll grant you all kinds of psychological blocks and so on and so forth, but because he became a human being,

[42:39]

And I'm a human being. I've got access to, in that sense, more than is written in the scriptures about what it means, about Him. And I'm able to enter into somebody else's experience. And, of course, you couldn't do that if you were, you know, on these little bubbles at Notre Dame or, you know, nobody lets you in, and no books, and, you know, totally sterile. environment, but I just don't think our environment is that sterile. And I know what you're saying, but largely I agree with you, but I don't think what the mystery of how something gets through us, it just remains a mystery. And you see even kids out of the worst families, you've got eight kids, six of them turn out to be horse riders and their parents, the other two are up so you come out like snowflakes. How did it happen? God knows. Why something makes an impression on us? I think if we're human enough, and again can identify with either side of those things, that our own experience, we do hook up our experience with this person, and sometimes it's forgiveness, sometimes it's love, sometimes it's misunderstanding, all these things.

[43:52]

We really can identify with this other person. But it's true, something happened in my life that makes it possible to make the connection. That's what I mean. Yeah, I'd see it not as either or, but it has to be both and. That's what I had to, you know, be loved in a way that I can recognize it. There's no way for a blind man to experience red, no matter how much he talks about it, or anybody tells him about it, he'll never experience red. You just can't, you know, he can tell you about color and he can read the descriptions of color and you can describe it scientifically. He's never going to experience what red is. No matter what you do, if you take a prayer now to a mystic child, they don't experience forgiveness. They have no idea what that is. You know, no matter how many times you forgive them, there's nothing there. They don't, there's no, you know, they just don't have any idea what you're, there's no connection.

[44:53]

Unless we experience these things in our lives, it never really connects with God. That's right. It seems to me that we always learn things by process and analogy. In our lives, we never experience in relationship with others the kind of love God has for us, or the type of forgiveness. We experience some degree of love, or experience some degree of forgiveness. But I think there's a shift from our experience to things we can contact, we can have with God in prayer. That something breaks through to us on the basis of things we've experienced analogously. That's a quantum leap. It's a quantum leap, sorry. But you've got to have something, you've got to have your feet touching ground to make a leap. You know what I mean? To carry the analogy of B.J. Hughes. And my point I was making was,

[45:57]

that unless a person has had concrete experiences of love, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, that they can't make a point, that they can't... Well, they don't have to say it's a given anywhere, I think it's a gift. But even God, in a sense, limits himself, just like Jesus did with the Incarnation, if the person hasn't... had those experiences, there's no place for God to push us off of this quantum leap, and I think that's the whole purpose of the Incarnation, to make the ongoing Incarnation, not just the historical Incarnation, which happened 2,000 years ago, but the ongoing Incarnation, so that it seems to me that God's Word is hindered and helped by the inner the human experience, and that's the point I was trying to make. You know, as he said, you can talk to a blind man about college forever, and he's never going to have it, because he can't experience that like you can experience it.

[47:04]

He can only do it intellectually. And I think it's the same. That's my point of argument. I think people have the... I think we'll be a rare person who didn't have any of these experiences, but we'll get people who are... It seems that, maybe I picked up an emphasis on the immediate thing, but it seems that the first ten years of our life, all this love that God is supposed to have for us, it was there. And as we grow older and older, And seeing my mother at her age, for me, it brings things back that memories when I was five years old or three years old. And I can see a lot of, you know, I can connect with a lot of these gifts, you know, from God and not asking and not deserving it and all that.

[48:06]

But it was there. And it's just because of memory and because sometimes of things that were written about the person or something. And the intellect that, you know, for me is still very strong. You know, some people, they say, you know, they can't stand the idea about, you know, to recite our father because, you know, they didn't have a father that was worthy of praise. But, yeah, true, but, you know, maybe if you had a mother that was really, really, made the whole difference. And in my case, I can say something like that. Because for us, the mother was... I've been away from her for over three years now, and just seeing her once or twice a year. Still, there's a lot of meaning that comes across about this love, and it comes all because of her.

[49:14]

But it doesn't have to be, you know, it's not a daily thing that has to come back. But because of the memory and reminiscing, I think it has, you know, it can stay alive. But that's why I have difficulty with people who think that it has to be renewed every day with other people around. That comes across a bit too slowly to me. Let me try the Long Look of Peace part. Long Look of Love? Or is that Chai? That's Chai. There's two that... One gets me all the time. It's so captured in my mind that I'm going to be on a tractor and it will just hit me, and it's the one where Jesus' case and Peter have their third time.

[50:24]

And it isn't so much the... And then, along with that, well, there's actually an event where he's looking at someone. Okay, it's historic with someone else, so I make some associations, but I also make some associations of what he's doing with me. There's the other one that's intriguing to me. It's one I haven't somebody did a painting of it and to cut it in my room. This is the trial one, where the original, you happen to be the author. Now, you can make the association. And now what's happening to you at that time, at that moment? What is he saying? You know, what is going on? You're the object we're looking at? Yes. You mean the face on the shroud? Yeah. It's looking out.

[51:26]

It's looking out. And of course you're looking at the space and speaking to you in some form around it. And it's just me. He's taking the whole gift of you, and he's looking at you. Something is being spoken to you, and that's when you kind of try to get into the conversation or what's being communicated to you. It happens to me, especially in some favorite scriptural line, Peter getting, all of a sudden getting it, and after he told me, you never deny, and I didn't deny it, but forgetting the factual part, now he's gazing at this person you just said that to help you, or whatever came to you. And I just, to share that, somehow it speaks to me,

[52:27]

You know, it's that long gaze, momentary though, I want to say, but that moment is saying something to me. It is, it takes in your person, but then there's somehow to reach in, it's almost like, yes, you walk in your person, but you also come out of yourself to try to enter into him or find out. You know, to get the whole message. And I'm just like a... The horn used the word, coven, since it's like a... There is a communication going on. And I used the word in my own moment, because there is no object, or you are on the island. There's no third person. Thank you for sharing that, Brother, that's beautiful. It's the same idea that I have in mind, that even now, you know, the Lord is looking. So I think the shroud is a good example because it's not historically bound to another person, but to you yourself now.

[53:30]

And that's what I feel is so good. be aware at this moment, right here and now, that the Lord is present and calling us, or loving us simply, forgiving us. I spent a lot of time in the infirmary last year, well, before this time and all this time. And how I had to look out to that was the field between the two buildings. It's just grass. It's really not a very exciting scene. And as I looked out there, begin to think about things. And one of the things that struck me was that the grass was always different. And not only that, every blade of grass is different. And it's so obvious that, you know, after a while it becomes that difference of each individual thing out there. It becomes such a striking thing to me that I begin to realize that that's what God is doing. Everything is different. And His love is that difference.

[54:33]

He extends that love to everything because it's different, not because it's alike. And how much we try to make everything alike. We only like people that are like us. We don't like people that have the same color skin, or the same this, or the same that, or in this community, or in this family. We pick the things that are the same. And God does just the opposite. He makes everything different. Every tree, every leaf, practically every molecule, atoms, there's something different about it. It's directly the opposite of the way we react to love. It's beautiful. That's very true. You said you had some bright ideas. Actually, I think my bright ideas were already said. It was basically something that I think Michael said. It's so hard to think of God looking on us with love because I myself find it hard to love myself and to accept myself.

[55:43]

And then it comes again to the experience of other people loving me or accepting me. And I certainly know in my own life that I have grown to appreciate myself very much through the eyes of others. I mean, that's just a fact. So I think that's basically what I was going to say. I don't know that we start out loving ourselves. Maybe we do, and all the things that come along as parental corrections and so forth cause us to look on ourselves with shame. I don't know, you know, the newborn child who has no consciousness of guilt or failure, if that child has an inbuilt love for himself. It just seems with the development of consciousness, we become aware of our

[56:47]

our shortcomings, how we don't measure up, how we're not as seemingly good as others. So it just seems to come very quickly almost as we become conscious of ourselves that we're not wonderful. So that's all I can say. I don't know why we find it hard to know ourselves as loved by God or by anybody. But it's a fact, I think, that we all have to struggle with that. And we all have to help each other to come to the realization of each one's beauty. Do you have some word of wisdom for us, Father? It's not good for you? Can you hear sister? Father, can you hear me during the conference?

[57:53]

Could you hear me? Well, maybe this afternoon we'll have to be sitting right next to each other. He's answering me, yeah. What did you think about that long look of love? What did that say to you? Did it say anything special to you? We'll get together sometime later.

[58:59]

But he heard me. Somebody had a joke. I would just say, would somebody mind putting on that earphone and let somebody talk to you just to see what is happening? Do you think we don't have a loud enough for the game to play? Well, there are other things we can do. Like this. I turned the volume up here. It's going to come out more. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He could, this thing could be placed in front of the speaker up here, and then he could adjust his own volume. I wouldn't mind holding it if that would help make everybody happy, you know, I could do that. I probably could get a headphone with a longer cord and extension.

[60:02]

I can't hear him. He can't hear us. No, he said he didn't hear the sister. He claims he heard your sister. But I think he did. He answered me. He answered the question. That's what I need. That's what I've got to find out, because I can't get to him. I see. I'm not sure. I think we have to hold the microphone up to your mouth. Oh yeah, that's right. Because sometimes when he has that other box, you can actually hear his earphones, and I couldn't this morning, where we could, yeah, he just needs more volume. But I really wouldn't mind holding it, because I'd be happy to do that. Thank you very much.

[60:58]

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