Yesterday I mentioned to you something of the degrees of truth of Saint Bernard, and this appears in his treatise on the degrees of pride. I don't know if you're familiar with that little treatise. If you would ever like to get an insight into the degrees of humility of Saint Benedict, these degrees of pride are directly related. One degree of pride relates to the degree of humility. Besides, I think, being interesting, they're also amusing. Bernard has a good sense of humor. But in the introduction to this treatise, he starts out by describing the three degrees of truth. And as I mentioned last night, the first degree of truth is truth in oneself. And that is that we come to a self-knowledge

[01:01]

an understanding of ourselves that is true. He speaks of that truth as an experience of our own misery. And from that first experience of truth, we come to the second degree of truth, which is seeing the truth in our neighbor. And because we have accepted our own truth, our own misery, when we meet the truth in our neighbor, we can be compassionate. And then the third degree of truth is the vision of truth in God, which is contemplation. And his thesis is that each degree of truth leads us to that vision of God, which we hope we'll be talking about tomorrow.

[02:06]

So when we can see the truth in our neighbor and compassionate his struggle, because we know our own, and we can also see the beauty in our neighbor, because my brother is also black but beautiful. In Chapter 72 of the Rule, Saint Benedict says, they should each try to be the first to show respect to the other, supporting with the greatest patience one another's weaknesses of body and behavior. A while ago we had a visit from seven very special people at our monastery, and they were all handicapped. Most of them were moderately retarded, and there was one blind girl. And the two sisters who brought them had worked with them so that they could present a little presentation to a parish or a community to raise consciousness, raise awareness of others to the needs of the handicapped and to the potential that they held for service in the church.

[03:36]

It was a very, as you can imagine, very touching and very powerful experience for our community to visit with these people. very hard in some ways. To hear a woman with gray hair tell about walking down the street one day, a street where she had lived for many years, and she was going to a job that she had held for many years, hearing children call out, there goes retarded, let's throw stones at her. And this There goes retarded. Let's throw stones at her. And the same woman told of going into the parish church and sitting in a pew. And a couple came in and sat down next to her. And then in a few minutes, they just stood up and went to another pew. And the people, as they told these stories to us, were not bitter.

[04:40]

They wanted us to understand that they really felt called to serve in the church. And they felt they had a place in the church. And of course we know that they do. But it's hard for them to be allowed to find that place. But what one man kept saying was, I hurt. He just said that over and over again. I hurt. For me, what was most striking, as each of them told their story, was the way that they had come to accept their situation and then move on in life. In fact, they spoke about that explicitly. I have to accept who I am as I am, and I have to move on in my life and to live to their fullest capacity. The reason I mention this is that we are all handicapped in some way.

[05:49]

And we too have to learn to live as fully as we can with our own limitations and to help our brothers and sisters to live with theirs. Our friends showed a beautiful solicitude for each other. And one of the men told how he had helped Maura, who has a spinal twist, to go down to the hairdresser. And he would wait for her and help her to walk home. And even as they were leaving, getting into the cars, you could see them helping each other. It was very beautiful. St. Benedict says, support with the greatest patience one another's weakness of body and behavior. And sometimes I can be afraid of another's weakness or handicap because it reflects my own.

[06:53]

And I can be afraid to face my own handicap or weakness. And also sometimes it can happen that my sister's weakness comes across as strength or power to me, and it may in a way catch me off guard. It isn't so hard to give a helping hand to someone who obviously is in need, but when her weakness lies in a brusque or overbearing manner or in temper that sometimes comes out uncontrolled, then it's much harder for me to recognize it as weakness. And I have to try to distance myself from my own feelings and recognize that that truly is her point of woundedness.

[07:54]

And it may be a very great burden for her. Someone in our community a long, long time ago had some rather rough edges to her personality. And I, being a strong, introverted-feeling, sensitive person, used to get a little caught with these rough edges every once in a while. And I didn't understand her very well. And it was only when I became Abbess and she would share with me that I realized that her rough edges hurt her much more than they hurt anybody else. And I realized what a burden that she carried with that. I heard once about a certain state in India. I believe it's called Kerala. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, but I'm pretty sure that that's the state.

[08:59]

where there are stone pillars along the road between the fields and the town. And the pillars are of varying heights. And as the workers come in from the fields carrying their load, their burdens on their backs, they'll walk next to one of these pillars and just rest their burden on the pillar that corresponds to their own height, so they don't have to put it down on the ground and lift it up again. And when they're rested, then they continue on their journey. And these pillars seem to me a good description of what we are meant to be for one another. We all carry burdens, and we all need support. Perhaps more at one time, less at another. But we are meant to be there for one another, to give rest, to give encouragement.

[10:04]

But if my brother is going to feel free to rest his burden on me, he needs to know that I am willing to just be there for him. Sean Vanier said once, What we need in relationship is authenticity, not verbalization. I may not need to say much at all, but I need to be there in such a way that my brother can't doubt that I accept him, even in his woundedness. Because it's in the woundedness of one another that we meet Jesus. And I think this support, this being for, can be very simple. As simple as a word of welcome to a brother who's been away, or a word of appreciation, of encouragement.

[11:13]

Living together, as we all have learned from experience, is a delicate art. And in this delicate art of living together, sometimes I'll fail. I simply won't be there for the other. I'll speak the angry word in return or whatever. I don't know how men handle this. But if a woman wants to let it known that she's not available for someone else, we usually move into what I call emotional absenteeism. We're simply not there and we withdraw into hurt feelings or whatever. And maybe at that moment, I'm so overwhelmed by my own anxieties, I just can't carry another straw. And so I miss the wounded Christ and my sister.

[12:24]

And Jesus has told us what to do when this happens. And to tell you the truth, it seems to me that he presumes it will happen because he says, when. He doesn't say if. When. When you haven't met the need of another, go to your brother, to your sister, and be reconciled, and then offer your gift at the altar. And maybe we could say that reconciliation is where weakness and failure become the point at which we receive God's mercy through one another. The weakness of one becomes a point of compassion in the heart of another. And then the next day, the roles are turned because we're all in this together.

[13:30]

And in that moment of reconciliation, in that apology, in that simple word of forgiveness, we give each other hope. In a sense, we say to each other, it's okay. It's fine. We're in this together. We can move on now. At Mississippi, we've tried various things to replace the chapter of faults. I don't know if you ever had the chapter of faults, but most communities today find it very difficult to find something, some communal way of acknowledging faults. I have to say that in the various things that we've tried, we still seem to find that the best is simply to go to another and speak that word of apology or that word of forgiveness.

[14:37]

We still try the community reconciliation periodically, but the personal seems to work best. What we've been speaking about so far deals mainly with one monk in relation to another. But this delicate art of living together, or what we call community life, in a way has a life of its own. And I'd like to talk about that for a minute. What fosters community? And how can the community foster compassion and understanding among the brothers? Baldwin of Ford, and I guess I don't have to apologize for quoting Cistercian sources. You'll bear with me, I hope.

[15:40]

But anyway, Baldwin of Ford was a Cistercian abbot in England. either contemporary or shortly after Saint Bernard. And he wrote a treatise on the common life. And he goes to great lengths to show that the common life is based on the life of the Trinity. And even more, that this common life will lead us into full communion with the blessed who share the life of God. The treatise itself I don't recommend. I kind of had to plow through it. It's a bit dry. But there's one sentence in the treatise that I think is a gem. It's a paraphrase of the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 4. So I'd like to just read it to you, if you don't mind. There is a communion of those who live together

[16:42]

of which it is said, of the multitude of believers, there was one heart and one soul. Nor did any of them say something that he possessed was his own, but all things were common to all. And so, one heart and one soul and communion in all things affect the common life. That effect is with an E. This last sentence seems important to me. One heart and one soul and communion in all things affect the common life. Now what's surprising in the treatise is that Baldwin uses the expression communion in all things. And then he speaks of dearest friends who could not bear to have something, anything, that the other would need or even desire and not share it with him.

[17:55]

This linking of friendship and community of goods or non-possessiveness is striking and surprising to me. But it's found also in Kashin. In his conferences, Abba Joseph says, The first foundation of true friendship consists in contempt for worldly substance and scorn for all things that we possess. For if a monk claims nothing for himself, he entirely cuts off the first cause of a quarrel. And Abba Abraham says, Monks also maintain a lasting union in intimacy and possess all things in common as they hold everything which belongs to their brothers as theirs and everything which is theirs as belonging to their brothers.

[19:01]

That concept is very beautiful. I had three brothers. One of them was a very free-spirited brother. He was the middle brother. And for my brother Jack, anything that belonged to anybody was his. So my other brother's ties or suit coats or shoes even were his property to use as he needed. I don't think that's exactly what Abba Abraham is talking about. We used to have the old usage, and perhaps you did also, of calling everything our, our cowl and our toothbrush and our eyeglasses. And because it was a bit strange, we dropped the practice, but perhaps expressed a reality that maybe we are not as aware of today.

[20:09]

that really nothing is mine, not even my body, nor my talents, nor even my spiritual gifts. When it comes to holding all things in common, Saint Benedict is very strong, even stronger than the rule of the Master, which is unusual. And I have a theory on why this is so. I could be off base, but for the Master, if you read his rule, monastic life was very vertical. The monk and God. He never mentions the monk relating to the other monk or monks. But Benedict sees things very differently. He's very concerned with the quality of fraternal relations and the peace and harmony of the community as a whole.

[21:17]

And I think this is the reason Saint Benedict insists on the uprooting of private ownership, because it's divisive. So we can say that in living the rule of Benedict within the monastic tradition, The goal of our poverty or communion of goods is not regimentation or individual assesis, and certainly not economics, but it is peace and harmony in the monastery, A while ago I read a book which perhaps you have read also, Audacity to Believe by Sheila Cassidy. Are you familiar with the book? Do you know the background? Sheila Cassidy is an English doctor, and she was a very young woman when she went to Chile to assist the missionaries there.

[22:24]

And she was arrested, and it was at the time of the revolution. She was tortured. And she was put into prison with other women who I think were all, or almost all, communists. She was in prison for several months. I don't know exactly how long. But anyway, she tells the story of the atmosphere among these women. Many of them were arrested over and over again. Many of them tortured over and over again. And they had a very strong creed among them that anything that was given to one belonged to all. And it would be doled out according to the need. And that meant that those women who were tortured more often would receive more of a sustenance that they needed.

[23:30]

And Sheila tells the story of a visit she received from two sisters, and they brought her a box of biscuits, or of cookies that we call them. And she went through this mental torture of whether she should give up these biscuits, as all the other communist women would. She was not communist. And finally, in the end, she couldn't. And so she brought the box back to her cell and she offered a biscuit to her cellmate and the cellmate wouldn't take it because she didn't have a right to it. And that story struck me very much because I suspect that St. Benedict had something in mind like that, that we have nothing. Everything that is given, everything that we are is for the community.

[24:34]

The final point I'd like to touch on as a way by which community can foster understanding and compassion is communion of gifts. And what I mean by that is the willingness on the part of each one to communicate his gifts, whether they are spiritual, intellectual, or practical skills, or gifts of insight. Of course, this is happening all the time. This is not something new. But just to speak from our experience at Mississippi, every once in a while, we realize that this particular community dialogue or this particular discernment, this particular revision that we have, has been a real faith event for the whole community.

[25:41]

And we realize that it's because of the quality of the sharing. the speaking and the listening. It happened recently, and it was so obviously the Spirit working among us, but it was because each one was willing to speak that the Spirit could work. It can be risky business to share my thoughts, my hope, my vision, or whatever. It really is exposing a precious part of myself. And to do this, I need a certain trust that my brothers will receive this self-disclosure with reverence. If I sense that others are really listening and at least trying to understand, then I can be free.

[26:43]

It isn't necessary that everyone agree with me. But when we do enable each other to share their inner truths and insight, the whole community is enriched and the bond of unity is strengthened. All of us have received unique gifts from the Lord. Saint Paul enumerates a few. And these gifts are meant for the up-building of the whole community, the whole body of Christ. And so the way I would sum up these thoughts, brothers, is this, that each of us comes to community handicapped in some way, wounded in some area, And each of us comes to community gifted by God. And community happens when each brother is accepted wholly, both in his fragility and in his strength by all the brothers.

[27:57]

I'd like to suggest something today. that I have to confess I've never suggested before, and maybe it's your acceptance that gives me the courage to suggest this. I have done it, but I haven't publicly suggested it to other people. But what I'd like to suggest is that in some unobserved moment, you might look at one of your brothers, with that long look of love, with a love that accepts that brother totally, with a love that's compassionate, a love that understands. And then look with that compassionate receiving love on another brother and on another brother.

[29:03]

God has looked on us with love, a love that holds us in being. Can we look on one another with that same love? Because the way that we look at our brothers makes a difference in the way that we act toward them. If we look with love and compassion, we can support our brother and enable him to grow. The psalm that I recommend today is an obvious one, Psalm 132. And I'd like to just close with a story that perhaps you've heard before, maybe you know it well, or maybe you've never heard it. It's the story called The Rabbi's Gift. And the story goes that there was a great monastery in Russia on the edge of a forest.

[30:13]

And the monastery was very often visited by people. They would come and share the liturgy and there was just a lot of life and vitality in the monastery. And close to the monastery, An old rabbi used to have a little hut, and periodically he would come out to the hut, and he would walk through the woods. And whenever the rabbi walked through the woods, the monks in the monastery felt his prayerful support, and they were very aware of him. And over the years various vicissitudes hit the country and probably the church and the monastery. And so the monastery fell into hard times and it was no longer visited often and the monks had gone down in numbers. And so there was a certain sense of discouragement in the monastery.

[31:16]

The life and vitality were not quite the same. But the rabbi still walked in the woods. And whenever he was walking in the woods, the monks felt supported by his prayers. So one day, the abbot of the monastery decided he was going to go out and talk to the rabbi and tell him of his concerns, his anxiety. So he went out to the hut. And to his surprise, the rabbi was standing at the threshold of the hut, ready to meet him, as though he knew he was coming. And he had his arms outstretched to embrace the abbot. And he drew the abbot into the hut, and the two of them sat across a table, and they wept, and they wept, and they wept. And when they were all cried out, The rabbi said to the abbot, you've come for a word.

[32:20]

And the abbot said, yes. And the rabbi said, I will give you one word, but you are to repeat this word to your brothers. And then no one must ever repeat that word again. So the abbot said, we will do that. And so the rabbi said to the abbot, the Messiah is among you. Tell your brothers that. So the abbot went home, and he called the brothers to him, and he was very happy. And he said, brothers, the rabbi has given us a word, and he's told us that we must not repeat the word, but I'll tell you what it is. The rabbi said, one of us is the Messiah. So the brothers kind of wondered at this message.

[33:24]

just kind of went around, they couldn't talk about it, and they didn't repeat it, but they just kind of wondered about it. One of us is the Messiah. Is it Brother John, or is it Brother Peter, or is it Brother Bartholomew? And gradually, the brothers kind of treated each other a little differently, and they had a great reverence for each other, because maybe the brother was the Messiah. And the atmosphere in the monastery kind of lightened and became very happy. And people began to notice this change. And they began to come out and pray with the brothers and talk to the brothers. And gradually, more monks began to come and live the monastic life there. And so the monastery, again, was very vital and full of life. And the rabbi no longer walked in the woods.

[34:27]

His hut had fallen into ruins. But the monks remembered the rabbi. And they still felt sustained by his prayerful presence. So that's the story of the rabbi's gift. Would there be any thoughts you'd like to exchange or any questions? You're compounded with the community things in terms of chapter reforms and various regular It's very difficult. The one thing that we have found that over a period of time works. Many will work for a short period of time.

[35:30]

But the one that we find really is helpful is what we call a speech and silence revision. And that is very specific. We do it about two or three times a year, and it's basically geared towards a speech and silence guideline. And we check ourselves on it, and we review the guideline itself, whether it's still feasible, whether it's helpful, how we're doing with it. That one seems to work well. That still has a lot of life in it and has an effect. Don't put your customs of speech in silence. We drew up a guideline. See, we came from a history of no speaking. Then we went into speaking and, of course, it always happens that you go way overboard. And we didn't have, we hadn't for a long time arrived at what would be our understanding of speech in silence. So, actually it was Brother Ronnie Fogarty who worked with us on that.

[36:35]

And we drew up a guideline for ourselves. It's very skeletal. It's not terribly spelled out. But that forms the basis of what we are doing in the Revision. Periodically, like on Holy Thursday, we would have a reconciliation. Yeah, and sometimes at the end of a retreat we'd have a community reconciliation. And on January 1st we have a special, it's not really a reconciliation, it's just kind of a special way of ending the year and bringing in moving into the new year in which we recall the good things of the past year and the hard things of the past year and then share our hopes for the coming year. But that's not really a reconciliation. I haven't heard of any community yet that has found something that they really feel happy with as far as replacing the chapter of faults.

[37:44]

Have you? No, we tried that with Bee, a long time ago. Yeah. But so quickly it moves into just a kind of warm feeling. That's right. All the words and images come out of your head. That's right. And maybe the fact that this revision that we have is specifically for one particular point. We know what it is. We're anxious to do it. The community really wants to maintain an atmosphere of silence and yet also respect the good of speech. So that might have a different spirit to it. How do you do that? How do you run a revision of the speech? A speech in silence revision. Usually I begin it. And I will either, well usually we begin by reading the guideline. And then I usually give a little talk that just may bring out a particular aspect of the guideline.

[38:53]

Or I may ask that we approach the subject in different ways. Like one time I suggested that we just go around and each person evaluate not her own silence and not anybody else's silence, but silence in different places in the house or something like that. We do it differently each time and I usually Then, it's just open for anyone to speak. We try to begin by acknowledging our own performance, good or bad. And we do not point out one another's specifically, but we would say in general, the kitchen is really getting noisy or the cloister is really getting noisy or something like that, but we don't point out two individuals. And that's probably the big difference between that and chapter faults. And then we might say something like, there's one particular place that seems so noisy and it's really disturbing to people in their cells or something.

[40:03]

Could we just decide that for now we won't use that as a speaking area? And we kind of have to come to an agreement on that. If we don't come to a strong agreement, then it's not going to work. It'll just be, you know, words. But we find we do have to do it three or four times a year because we forget and we fall down. So it's a recurring thing. Kathy? I'd say, too, that we have follow-up on it, too, you know, because Bill usually didn't keep some of it and we didn't extract it all. Yeah. And then sometimes we'll put up Either somebody will put up a little creative sign about it, either if it's a particular place in that place or whatever it is. So just so that there's a way of learning. self-consciousness, if there's some days you want to be silent? Yeah, if it's that, or if it's just like one time there was a stroke of practice, actually this was just before I came home, but there was a stroke one about one of the main lines in our speech, and the key point for me in our speech of silence guidelines is that when we do speak, it's in such a way as to respect the silence of others.

[41:10]

Because we did away with a lot of details on where and when we didn't speak. So that's rather the key one. And I came home and there were all these little signs in different parts of the house saying, very sort of flowery, respect, how did it go, what was it, remember that one? Respect, protect. Remembrance. Remembrance, the silence of the avatars or something like that. And that was in a number of little places along, up around the house, you know, that it was difficult. So we've had different little races today, haven't we? So talking about it, bringing in sort of the level of awareness you find important. Yes, I do, yeah. And so I personally don't get discouraged because we have to have them periodically. I just think that's human nature. Some people feel, well, what's the sense in talking about it again?

[42:12]

If we've talked about it once, and then we don't do it perfectly, why should we talk about it again? I don't see it that way. I feel, you know, we talk about it once, we raise awareness, it's good for a while, and then we begin to forget, so we talk about it again. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but that's the way I see it. Talking about the monastery and the rabbi, I'm always puzzled as to why the rabbi's hut is abandoned at the end. Maybe he wasn't... Why the rabbi's hut is abandoned at the end. It falls into ruins, yeah. That's the way the story goes. Do you have any idea why? Oh, was it? Who says that the rabbi was no longer needed?

[43:39]

Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, that's his interpretation of that. Right. Of course, Christianity is the true religion. One of those claims that you're pretty satisfied. You didn't look all the way. I don't believe that. Nervous. Positive. I feel he's done his, he's pointed the way. Yeah, mission accomplished, that's right. It's like the tape that self-destructs. I'm not sure if they call it the emotional absenteeism. That's just my... Absent. There were several things in that. What I was, I think what I was speaking of then was that sometimes we simply can't meet the need in our brother or sister, that we're so needy ourselves that we at that moment can't rise to allow that person to rest his burden on us.

[45:10]

And what I said, I don't know how men let it be known that they're not available for other people's burdens. But for women, we very often will kind of retreat into hurt feelings or we just withdraw emotionally so that people can't approach us with their problems. That's what I meant by emotional absenteeism. And so we miss the opportunity to make Christ or to minister to Christ in the world of another. That's what I was saying. Then it was something like Christ. It's going to happen. All I wrote down was to ask you for some advice. You said about the gospel, and the gospel doesn't say give.

[46:13]

Oh, yes, that's right. You're just going to have problems. That's right. That's what I was referring to. In the gospel, where Jesus says, when you... How does he say it? when you offend your brother or something, go be reconciled to your brother and then come off your gift at the altar. It's not if you have a problem with your brother, but when you have a problem with your brother, meaning you're going to have a problem with your brother sometime, but be reconciled and then come off your gift. My only point was, it seems to me that Jesus expects we're going to have a few problems. Well, the regular human cooperation, they came from Portsmouth Priority. They have been the superior there at one time. Related the story to a bus novices. He said that there were two very distinguished members of the community. One of them was discussing with a guest something about some of her problems. The other man entered the room and then made some media delivery messages.

[47:17]

He walked out. The woman said, there is a living saint. The other man said, well, if you have to live with them all the time, you wouldn't think so. I guess that's the main trial. That's right. The common life is, no matter how fine an individual is, somebody from the outside observes them as virtues. They don't see the human frailty. And we who live with each other sometimes can only see the human frailty. What is going on here? I would say that that's a question of discernment of spirits within myself. And if someone's there needing me, and I all of a sudden remember that I would like to pray. It doesn't require keenness. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's right.

[48:17]

That's right. And that's a greater charity. And if you can say that and say, I'll be back at another time, I'd be happy to meet you, then the other person knows you're not just leaving them flat. And sometimes we can't even do that because we're just not up to it. Oh yeah, I think it really is a discernment, because I certainly wouldn't want to say we should be always out there. We need to retreat and to be in silence and solitude and prayer in order to be able to meet others. It's a balance, and it's a very hard balance to hit, I think. It's not American. the answers and then go to the movie and saw the movie.

[49:19]

You see that in Canada too, I believe. It's a lot like a Canadian guy as well. He just didn't go to the movie. You see, being afraid of someone else is... Maybe you saw it and it didn't play well. Yeah, what I said was I was talking about my own experience. Sometimes I think we can be afraid to accept the weakness or what I was calling handicap in another because it's too close to my own and I'd have to face it in myself. and accepted in myself, and I don't like it. It's what they call the shadow side of myself. So seeing that in another, I think those are the areas in my brother or sister that I'm least likely to be able to accept, because they're too close to my own.

[50:29]

You said sometimes, in other words, being afraid of somebody else's. I'll make up a pattern of thought. Okay, sure. It suggests to me, being in praise, somebody suggests something about oneself. She said, you know, I put, she said, sometimes. And so what that says to me, when you say sometimes, it's not always. Well, I don't think we're always afraid. I think if we've come to a pretty good self-acceptance ourselves, then I think we're not afraid to accept even the same kind of a weakness in another. Right. What I'm saying is, if you're afraid of whatever the other person's weakness is, then it suggests something within ourselves.

[51:32]

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, Kathy? I was just going to say, I think there's some, if I understood you correctly, there's some, I think what you said was sometimes What it reflects is that I have the same weakness. But sometimes it can be that I have a different weakness that's causing that fear. Like my fear of this sister who tended to get angry really easily. And I have a hard time handling the anger of another. So maybe I have a hard time handling my own anger, I don't know. But at that time in my life, that scared me. Her anger scared me. And so I don't think it really was so much that I can't handle my own anger. I think it was simply that I didn't grow up with a lot of anger in my family. So it threatened me. I didn't know what to do with it. And that's what I meant by sometimes. Okay. Thank you.

[52:33]

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