We've looked at several stories from our tradition that I think highlight something of the basic rhythm of the spiritual life and some of the principles that many of the monastic fathers and mothers of the tradition have themselves emphasized as points of change, points of transition for us. And I think it's wise to think about this during a time of retreat, but I think it's also helpful to have slightly more concrete ways of bringing this into our own lives. One of the principles that I think often gets lost today, when there's such an emphasis on and fascination with the idea of contemplation and contemplative prayer, You can go into Catholic bookstores and find whole sections devoted to Christian contemplation. The question is, what do they mean by that? What is it people are actually going to find when they read these books, or listen to these cassettes, or watch these videos? More often than not, the word contemplation is used in a very specific and narrow, angusta kind of sense to refer to the kind of praying or experiencing of God or being in the presence of the Lord

[01:14]

that involves a letting go of images and words and ideas. And that is certainly an important part of the way that word is used, has been used in the tradition. But it's only one part. A broader, and I would say more wholesome and healthy understanding of contemplation includes many of the dimensions and the dynamics that we've already seen depicted in the story of Benedict and Scholastica, Benedict's own experience, where there was this light, this transcendent experience of God. But remember, creation was in it. It did not exclude the world. Rather, the world, the scintillating, sparkling universe, was held within this light, and Benedict saw that. There is, in the more balanced understanding, certainly in the monastic approach to the definition of the word contemplation, a sense of a movement between God fully present in images and words and ideas and others,

[02:17]

all the diversity that God has made, part of the monastic fascination with the Psalter, and undoubtedly monks contributed to the popularity of the Psalter during the 300s. If we look at the way in which the Scriptures seem to have been used in Christian public prayer, and of course the illegal nature of Christianity prior to Prior to the early 300s, it makes this a little more difficult to assess, but during the 300s, and certainly in the latter half of that century, there was an absolute fascination with and popularity of the Psalter, and monks were one of the primary shakers and movers in that movement. encouraging Christians to use the Psalter as a way of praying. And at the core of this, and again it's articulated in the Desert Fathers very well by Evagrius, borrowing on Origen, is the sense that Christ is himself the diverse wisdom of God. Borrowing from that phrase of St. Paul's, Christ is the polu poikilos, he is the diversity, the variegated complexity.

[03:22]

Christ is all of the words and ideas and songs and images, all the multiplicity and the glory of creation, is Christ. And Christ is, in fact, the creator, the means by which all of this has come into being. And in that multiplicity, we see Christ himself. So, in all the astonishing levels and layers of salvation history that the Psalter consists in, behind all of them is the Lord. And not just because we can make a one-to-one association with certain phrases and say, aha, this is a phrase Jesus prayed during his earthly ministry. True though it may be, on the lips of our Lord, more often than any other book of the Bible, are the Psalms. But, apart from that, there was a monastic conviction that the whole of the Psalter, the whole of salvation history, the whole of this diverse complexity, bears witness to the glory of Christ, the one who stands as a witness to God's love of this complex, varied world.

[04:24]

And that was a really quite astonishing statement, because from the more ancient philosophical tradition, it was the one, the elimination of diversity, the getting out of the created world, which was full of all this uncertainty and shifting and changing and danger, into simplicity. It was getting back into the henad, the primordial union from which we descend, that The philosophers wanted to re-ascend, especially the Platonists, especially those who followed Plato. And the Christian monks said, almost instead, Christ is present in the glory of multiplicity. He's present in all of these created things. And we pray the whole Psalter. We don't even choose particular Psalms. That was more a cathedral office kind of thing. The monks pray the whole of the Psalter with the whole range of astonishing human expression that it contains because it's a reflection of the glory of the diversity which God wills.

[05:27]

So, for monks, Contemplation meant not only, and it did include that more Platonic philosophical image of the letting go of the imagery and simply being in God, but it also included very vigorously and vibrantly God present in the many, God present in the glory of multiplicity, God as much present as we chant the Psalms together as God is present when we silently allow ourselves simply to be with God, and that a real rhythm of movement back and forth between these two poles was necessary for a balanced spiritual life. There was contemplation of God as the One, and this was often called, again, especially by Evagrius, but then throughout the East and the West after that, Theologia, or God in God's self, or essential knowledge. Theology then meant the experience of God that uses words but can finally let go of them and recognize their limitation.

[06:32]

This is taken up into Dionysius the Areopagite and becomes the basis of his negative theology. the letting go or the stripping away of images and ideas and categories and realizing that God's beyond all the assertions that we can make. But that same theologian, Dionysius himself, a monk, also writes a book which has been very little read and commented upon until recently, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchies, where he praises God in diversity, God in multiplicity, God in sacraments. God in the Eucharist, God in the mysterious anointing with myrrh, which is probably a reference to post-baptismal anointing, God in baptism, God in monastic profession, God in ordination, God in all these rituals and rites. It was a very balanced sense that contemplation included the letting go of the many, but God fully present in the many, in the world which God had made. And the consequence of this was that part of the goal of monastic contemplatives, unlike unfortunately a lot of modern Christian spiritual authorities, was not so much to get out of or to get away from or to let go of all those things, but to be able to perceive through them and in them

[07:52]

the one God who stands behind them. That is, if I can find God in all the complexity of the Psalms, if I can assert and then experience that the Lord is present in all those different testaments to salvation history, to all these different events that took place at so many different layers of the lives of the people of Israel, Why then maybe, just maybe, I can believe that Christ is also present in my salvation history, my own personal story. The years it's taken me to walk closer to the Lord, the repentance, the seeking to be better, the falling down, the starting over again, the consecration, the discovery of temptations to despair, the moving closer to the Lord that includes all the stuff of which my life is made, maybe I can believe that God is present in that story too. And so for monastics, the scriptures, and especially the Psalter, were a contemplative laboratory in which we learned the art of beholding God in creation

[09:05]

and in history so that we can also behold God in that part of creation and history which is ourselves, and our relationships, and our own community's stories. Part of the reason for writing down Apothegmata, stories, lives, sayings of the fathers, was so that God present in our own history could be remembered, so that people would have vivid testimony to the fact that God's actually present in the stories of the foundation and the growth of this monastery. The relationships that you have with one another, the experiences you have in your own life, in your lives with guests, in your lives with your brethren, that's the place where God is writing a glorious story. which the liturgy, and especially psalmody, teaches us to see in the light of God, that scintillating, that glittering or glowing creation present in the ray of light which Benedict saw.

[10:07]

And I think a kind of vivid example of how this works, a kind of an unmistakable reminder that this was the approach taken by the early monastic tradition, is found in one of the lives, not of a desert father, but of one of the great desert mothers, the story of the life of St. Pelagia the harlot. Pass these on, if we will. I've used Sister Benedict Award's translation in this, because it's a lovely translation. It's very literal, very, very close to the Latin. And it's important to bear in mind that this story is one of three or four that are very similar, and scholars are not always certain on it. Are we missing one? Do we need an extra? I've got an extra here. What it means when you've got a story that seems to be told in three different ways? Did Pelagia live in Antioch, or did she live in Palestine?

[11:12]

Did the story take place in a monastery, or did it take place in... an agora, kind of a meeting place in a great city. Was it primarily a monastic event, or was it something that involved the diocesan clergy? The story is told in a number of different ways. It may well be that the story exists in different forms because there were different people who did the same thing. There are a number of folks who say the only way women could survive as solitaries in the wilds of Palestine was to pretend to be men. I mean, the kind of punchline of this story is that, you know, the kind of astonishment when the monastics discovered that one of the great Abbas turns out to have been a hidden Amma. and was actually a woman all these years, dispensing advice. And the astonishment was not just that it was a woman, but of course the idea that a woman could give that kind of advice. And yet there are stories specifically of desert mothers, like Sincletica and others, which are part of the apothegmonic tradition. Pelagia's life is remarkable because although it has that kind of an ending, the beginning is very different.

[12:19]

It is because she is a woman, because she is a woman and therefore a symbol and a sign of beauty, and yet at the same time a potential symbol of temptation for men, that her story can be all the more poignant, that her little bit of salvation history can be so significant. But the way this particular version of the story is told, and it's from the Latin version of the Life of Saint Pelagia, is that there are very clear indications at the very beginning of how the vision of Pelagia, the beholding of this woman, is an act of contemplation. A contemplation of God in the many, which is something one learns by learning to behold God in the presence of the Scriptures. That comes out clearly in several of the symbols that are part of the story. And I'd like for us, when we finish, to spend just a moment reflecting on what that can potentially mean for us. We can remind ourselves of the particular context.

[13:21]

It's being told, not by the primary actor, but by one of the secondary players in this play, by the secretary to the Bishop Nanus, who isn't very well known historically, although I gather there is an ecclesiastical gathering, a synod in which his name appears, so he's undoubtedly a real person, who had formerly been a monk. His religious career had begun as a monk, and so his spirituality is primarily monastic. So, apparently, is his secretary, who is telling this story. But the occasion is not a monastic gathering, but an Episcopal one. It's an Episcopal Synod of some sort in the city of Antioch. And the bishops, for one reason or other, have decided to meet in the open, in a little corner of the marketplace, and are having what we today would call a Bible study. It's being led by Nanos, this representative from another diocese. who's giving them a kind of a conference on the scriptures.

[14:22]

And open on his lap, he has the book of the Gospels. He's explicating the text from the scriptures open before him. And the bishops are gathered around, and they're listening, and while they're engaging in this kind of a sacra colloquia, this holy conversation, this explaining of the deeper meaning of the sacred text, something happens. While we were seated, the bishops asked my Lord and Honest to speak to them, and at once the holy bishop began to speak words for the edification and salvation of all. Now, when we were marveling at his holy teaching, lo, suddenly there came among us the chief actress of Antioch, the first in the chorus of the theater, sitting on a donkey. Now, bear in mind, remember that actress is both a description of her profession and a euphemism. because people of the stage were presumed, unfortunately, rightly at this period, also to probably be involved in high-class prostitution. It was a way of supplementing their income.

[15:23]

It was something that happened as a part of the profession, and they were therefore regarded with tremendous disdain and contempt by the clergy and those who sought to live pure lives. She's an actress, which is to say a sinner, which is to say a woman who sells her body. sitting on a donkey. She was dressed in the height of fantasy, wearing nothing but gold, pearls, and precious stones. Even her bare feet were covered with gold and pearls. This also was probably a euphemism. It was probably not just her limbs and her feet that were perplexing their episcopal majesties. It was probably other body parts as well. With her went a great throng of boys and girls, all dressed in cloth of gold, with collars of gold on their necks, going before and following her. So great was her beauty. that all the ages of mankind could never come to the end of it, so they passed through our company, filling the air with traces of music and the most sweet smell of perfume.

[16:27]

When the bishops saw her bare-headed and with all her limbs shamelessly exposed with such lavish display, there was not one who did not hide his face in his veil or his scapular, averting their eyes as if from a very great sin. It helps to be wearing the habit when you tell this story because then you can do that as you read it out. Hiding their faces from this spectacle, this very beautiful woman who is at the same time a reminder of both temptation and of the occasion of sin. But the most blessed Nanus gazed after her very intently for a long space of time. And after she had gone by, he turned round and still gazed after her. Remember, this is the man sitting there with the Scriptures open on his lap, the icon of the explication of the Word of God, who's staring at this beautiful half-naked woman as she passes by, with her retinue of beautiful persons. He's staring at her, and then he turned towards the bishops, sitting round him and said, Were you not delighted by such great beauty?

[17:38]

And their response, of course, was astonishment. What's he talking about? Delighted? We had to keep ourselves from looking at it. When they did not reply, he buried his face on his knees over the Holy Bible, which he held in his hands, and all his emotions came out in tears. Sighing deeply, he said again to the bishops, Were you not delighted by her great beauty? Still, they did not answer. So, indeed, he said, I was very greatly delighted, and her beauty pleased me very much. See, God will place her before his awful and tremendous judgment seat, and he will judge her on her gifts, just as he will judge us on our Episcopal calling. Suddenly, there has been a shift. It is no longer the open Bible on his lap, which he is explicating for the benefit of their excellencies. It is what they have just seen. From salvation history in the book, they have moved to salvation history passing before them.

[18:42]

Ah, Nodus is saying, you condemn her. You regard her as a sinner. She is a person judged by what she does. Very good. Do you not think the same judge will judge us? And suddenly, Pelagia is not just a harlot, an occasion of sin. She's not just an object of scorn, which would have been the most common way of viewing her, literally, of viewing her or of regarding her as an entity. Instead, she becomes a reminder of our responsibility. This beautiful woman becomes a symbol and a sign of the gifts of beauty which God has given to us. And if we have problems, as we ought, with the way she's using those gifts, then the much deeper question is, what does that say to us about the gifts God has given to each one of us? So he went on to say to the bishops, what do you think, beloved brothers? How many hours does this woman spend in her chamber giving all her mind and attention to adorning herself for the play?

[19:47]

In order to lack nothing in beauty and adornment of the body, she wants to please all those who see her, lest those who are her lovers today find her ugly and do not come back tomorrow." That much they know. That much his colleagues and conferers were very much aware of, and that's what caused their response. And then he turns it around. Well, here are we. who have an Almighty Father in heaven, offering us heavenly gifts and rewards, our immortal bridegroom. He reminds them subtly that if the response of Pelagia to her is the potential for the misuse of lust, yet our capacity for responding to beauty, the gift God has given us of sexuality, is itself a reminder of the fact that we are destined for a union with God of which human sexual experience is only a hint. We have an immortal bridegroom who promises good things to his watchman, things that can't be valued, which eyes not seen nor ear heard, nor is it entered into the heart of man to know what things God has prepared for those who love him.

[21:03]

Remember, these are the very words that Benedict uses to describe heaven as well. Benedict is not as verbose when it comes to trying to depict the next world, as is the Master. The Rule of the Master is full of a rather tedious explication of all the trees of paradise and how they're going to taste wonderful and each person will have what they want. You listen and it's very, very not very helpful, Benedict condenses it all down to, what eye has not seen, what ear has not heard, this the Lord has promised to those who follow him or who love him. In the same way, Nonnus uses that text as a way of changing, of shifting, away from the experience of whether or not Pelagia is a woman to be despised. Clearly that's not how she is to be regarded, but instead reminding us that we have a relationship with God that also entails a necessity for a kind of beauty based on our living out of the virtues, based on our following closely to our Lord, so that we can be in union in relationship with Him.

[22:09]

So he concludes, what else can I say? When we have such promises, When we are going to see the great and glorious face of our bridegroom, which has a beauty beyond compare, upon which the cherubim do not dare to gaze, why do we not adorn ourselves and wash the dirt from our unhappy souls? Why do we let ourselves lie so neglected? Which is another way of saying, at least that woman is caring for the gifts God's given her. Not caring for them in a way that does glory to God or herself, but at least she recognizes her gifts and she's seeking to do something with them. Do we do the same? Do we seek to cultivate and use for the glory of our heavenly bridegroom the gifts that God has given us, the beauty that can be attractive, that can win others to the gospel, which is what God's given to us? Now, the ending of the story, of course, is a testament to Nonua's willingness to allow Pelagia to be an occasion of the contemplation of God in creation.

[23:18]

The technical term for this was theoria physicae, or natural contemplation, the beholding of God, the seeing of God in the natural order, in the glory that God has given, in the diversity of creation. Pelagia has been that, and in seeing beyond the surface to the God who has given her those gifts, Nonnus has not only, as it were, seen and spoken of God, but he's also actually achieved a kind of victory from the evangelical standpoint, because Pelagia has never been treated like this by a prelate. She's never been regarded as a symbol of God by anyone. She's never been treated by anyone as anything but a slut. And her response to finding out, presumably, that this is what Nana said, was to decide she wants to become a Christian. And so the next day she appears in his apartments, which is a little bit scandalous, and so he makes sure there are lots of witnesses, and brings up a deaconess to make sure that she receives adequate instruction.

[24:25]

and they sort of, you know, argue for a while over what's to happen, and finally she decides she wants to be baptized, she wants to become a Christian, she insists on it, she gives all of her wealth away to the poor, she's baptized, and shortly after her baptism, she disappears. Nobody knows where she's gone. Pelagia, the great legend of Antioch, the converted harlot whom nobody knows where she is now. And years and years later, the story goes on. The secretary, the one who's telling the story, is asked by Nanus to undertake an embassy to Palestine. and there to deliver some messages. And while you're there, Nonnus says, stop by and visit the holy hermit Pelagius and see what he has to say to you. And he does, and it's an immured hermit, someone who lives behind a wall and who just speaks to the little opening in the wall and his foods pass through. and is amazed at the words of consolation and healing, the gift of discernment, the capacity for saying words that are of benefit to others that this hermit has.

[25:28]

And, of course, we know the end of the story. Pelagius dies, the door is taken down, and it's discovered to be a woman, and not just a woman, but Pelagia herself. Having been seen as a reflection of the glory of God, she could step into that. Having had it said that she was something more than a sinner, that was able to take root, and again, as Cyprian said in that first text that we looked at, beholding God, we begin to be that which we believe ourselves to be. Having been proclaimed to be a reflection of the glory of the Lord, she could indeed become that. So, maybe contemplation is more than just for the sanctification and for the healing and for the reuniting of the one who does it. Maybe our ability to behold God first in the complex variety of a psalmody, in the layers of salvation history, in the testament it gives to God's faithfulness over centuries, can also be for us a kind of a laboratory where we dare to begin to ask, well, what about my own life?

[26:38]

What about the events in my own spiritual journey? Are they not also places wherein God has written some inner meaning, some purpose that I'm to see? Doesn't that diversity and complexity possibly also sparkle with something of the glory of the Lord? And if we can begin to see that, if we can begin to regard it as true, then maybe, the more difficult step, we can begin to do that in our relationships with one another. Not in a facile or a sugary or a kind of a meaningless way, say, oh yeah, you're a real reflection, you're a real sunbeam of God, brother. Not the kind of language or phrase that would basically be so cloying as to be meaningless, but we have the gift of speech. We know each other's vulnerabilities, and we know each other's needs as well. To learn from God the ability to do in community what Nonnus is able to do for Pelagia is a tremendous gift. and not a difficult one, except insofar as it calls us both to an honesty and to a deepening in prayer and to a willingness to speak a potentially healing word to another.

[27:47]

Well, allowing this, as it were, laboratory to be a place of growth for us really does mean being willing to look at our own lives. And when we finish, I won't pass them out because it'll be too complicated. I'll just leave them here on the table. I have three sheets that are, I think, one of the least painful exercises of its kind. I'm sure all of you have at one time or another been subjected to either retreat masters or workshop givers or conference lords who have told you that you need to answer some sort of a questionnaire and that would tell you something about your personality. I assure you this is not one of those. This will not try to tell you whether you're an introvert or an extrovert or whether your favorite color is blue or whether you should only associate with people who like bird watching. I mean, there are all kinds of ways of doing this. It will not attempt to associate your personality with any particular animal either. I promise you that as well. It's a very simple little exercise in which, and again, you can do any of it or none of it or turn it over and use it as scratch paper.

[28:52]

But it's something that a psychologist and oblate friend of our community and I, a number of years ago, came up with, and I found it to be, again, one of the most straightforward and yet revealing ways of allowing our skills at Lectio Divina to also become, if you will, skills at doing a little Lectio on life. It involves just thinking about events of the last few years and writing them down without necessarily saying why or what they mean, and then reminding ourselves of what order they happened in, putting them on a little timeline, and then choosing one or two to do a little more about. Now, these are entirely optional. You can do them or not do them as you choose. But I found it to be a kind of exercise that wears well. That is, over time, I can do it again and find new things, very different things than I once found. And again, it's nothing more than a gentle prod, a gentle encouragement, to do what I think the liturgy is encouraging us to do anyway, and certainly the Eucharistic liturgy and our ongoing experience of self-offering and transformation.

[29:56]

How is my own history also a place on which the Lord is writing a deeper meaning? How is my own life, and how is my own life as a monk, a place wherein I can behold something of the glory of God, just as Nonnus did with Pelagia? So I'll leave those on the desk here, and you can do anything you like with them when you finish. Questions or thoughts or reflections? Yes, I wish, no, this isn't, because I'm used to the Psalter now, a great deal by Zbokov, when he said, you know, don't try to pray the Psalter. And because I heard years ago from a guy who was talking in the liturgy schools, basically reading response and prayer. And I'm not as reused to that reading. Then the response is very personal, and the prayer actually follows from the reading, in the same sense.

[31:02]

That way they become Alexio. Some of them, of course, are prayers that we can intervene with fully. Some of them, I think, we really relate honestly, again, with the psalmist, and don't criticize. that we can do that and then his relationship to God. It's been quite a discovery to get away from it. I want to ask if that's helpful. Oh, I think that's absolutely true, and I think you're absolutely right. I think it is very helpful, and I think we can talk a little more about that, and I've got some things we can look at on that specific point. That really is what the silences are for. That's what the pauses after the psalm are supposed to be about, which were very liturgically prescribed in early monasticism, the gestures, the posture, the length of the prostration, and the standing afterwards, were all very specific, and it was very clear that that was the time when the oratio, the private prayer, the private offering of self and of response to the Lord was taking place.

[32:16]

I think one has to have a certain flexibility, as you very rightly say, And part of what I think one's responding to is the older model, and I don't know when it was supposed to have been drummed into people, that somehow the Opus Dei is our work, is our prayer. Therefore, if we say the Opus Dei, we have prayed, even if we've just become kind of prayer machines, in the sense that We recite the liturgy of the hours, we chant the office, and that constitutes our prayer, our offering to God. And we look back and say, do I remember a single one of those psalms? Did any one of those antiphons actually touch my heart? the importance of rediscovering a rhythm of listening, of offering, of letting something touch, and then offering that which has been touched back to God is a wonderful insight. And, you know, boy, we've only just begun to touch that. I mean, Cardinal Mahoney in Los Angeles got into some trouble that I still don't understand on his pastoral and the liturgy. A lot of people were criticizing it, I think because he dared to say that parish priests were supposed to actually talk to their

[33:22]

their liturgical council or whatever body they set up in the parish in planning liturgies, as if, you know, like the lay people are actually supposed to have something to say about what happens there. And a lot of people reacted with, you know, some very traditional Catholics reacted with horror to the idea that, you know, this should take place. But another thing that he emphasized in that, which I think upset a number of people, was the absolute necessity for a period of silence after every reading. and appropriately during the orations, let us pray, silence, wait, then the offering of prayer. He very clearly, as it were, mandated that, and of course that means that Father has to cut a few minutes out of his homily if the cars are to get out of the parking lot in the proper length of time, and a lot of pastors were frustrated and upset by that. I think it's a wonderful gift to the church and it's something we have to live and be willing to proclaim because it's not that easy to reintroduce. It really has to be done with a lot of very careful catechesis. I remember when we introduced, now of course I'm sure in a community as holy as this you didn't have that problem, but in my own monastery, when we reintroduced the silences about 12 or 13 years ago, we had some of course after readings and during the vigil office, but to reintroduce them

[34:36]

in the course of psalmody, between the psalms, was very difficult for some of the community, and some of them found the most creative, passive-aggressive ways of letting us know how unhappy they were. The loud shuffling of feet, the drumming of fingers on either one's choir stall or one's bench or one's office book, the decision that that was the only moment during the whole day when you could adjust pages of your office book. So there were all sorts of, you know, very effective ways of the community, letting the community know that this was not an easy thing to do. And it literally took years until people were able to be more settled and quiet in that. But of course, now that it's become a part of our life, you know, it would be a terrible thing to have to give it up, you know, to go back to the way we were doing psalmody when I first joined, or, you know, even more so perhaps 15 or 20 years before that. But if it's taken us this long, boy, the careful catechesis, the gentle introduction, the teaching people to love silence as a part of a rhythm is something we've only scratched the surface of.

[35:43]

Lots of people will teach people how to be silent on their own. you know, whether it's with centering prayer or some other method or modality, all of which are valuable and helpful. But the trouble is, for most people today, that creates a single way which is not necessarily integrated into a rhythm. It doesn't become a listening and a response. It doesn't become a silent interval following a period of self-offering. I mean, there's still the whole of those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours on their own, that vast army. to be introduced to the possibility of silence as a part of the rhythm, and then the step further to take that rhythm and allow it to be part of one's own discovery of what God's doing in one's own heart. It's a wonderful challenge. It's every bit as exciting as some of the most exciting stuff in the 50s from the liturgical movement, but it requires a willingness to learn from our tradition to find new ways of expressing it, and then to find creative ways of sharing it with people, as you do here, I'm sure, just inductively by people sharing in your liturgy.

[36:50]

I'm always very intrigued by this story as a wonderful kind of step beyond the rather more Zen-like stories of monks' encounters with nuns, and nuns or women as occasions of sin for monks genre of Desert Father stories. whether it be the abbess with her nuns, from whom the monk turns away and the abbess turns back and says, very good, brother, but if you were a real monk, you would not even have noticed that we were women. Or the story, which is also, I gather, in the Zen tradition and somehow gets shifted into, or maybe the same thing sort of happened in the Syriac tradition of the monk forced to carry the woman across the river and the young monk practically bursting with fury, and then later asking his Abba how he could do that, and the Abba says, I put her down hours ago, you've been carrying her in your heart ever since. This goes quite a bit further.

[38:02]

This represents a tradition which can only really happen in a religion that takes the Incarnation seriously. where the world is more than simply a series of symbols, or opportunities for wisdom, or occasions for koans. This is something more like consecration. This is a representative, okay, she's misusing her gifts, but the gifts are given for good. Beauty is something God's given us to respond to in a way that gives life, because creation is a good and holy thing. This is a very Christian story, and it wouldn't make sense in any other world religious tradition. I was thinking of the commonality, the commons of... Yesterday you talked about the fragmented self. I think it was yesterday, maybe that's when I lost my sanity. It's the last of it.

[39:03]

I was thinking, well, okay, so you have the woman, the fragmented self, coming whole again. The idea being we also are all fragmented at some point, hopefully getting more hold, becoming hold. All I thought of was, you know, the point of the story in which you said, I thought you said it two or three times yesterday, or maybe it was the opening retreat about the fragmented person, which we all are. Yeah, and the monastic acknowledgment of that as a human experience that is not an occasion for despair. You know, it's not like Sartre's discovery of meaninglessness as the sort of ultimate Christian, ultimate human virtue. You are so brave that you acknowledge that there is only the meaning you impose on things.

[40:06]

You wrestle with the suicide question that maybe you survive or maybe you don't. But you're brave because you acknowledge that emptiness, that bleakness, that brokenness, even nausea that comes out when you recognize how distanced you are from the work of your hands. The monastic experience of fragmentation is to discover that the fragments can be brought together again. And even if they fall back apart again, as they often do, what do monks do? One of the Desert Fathers responds, well, we fall down and we get up. We fall down and we get up. And there's a joke behind that. He's speaking of one's sinning and then one's offering of self to God, but he's also talking about what we do during the liturgy. You know, we prostrate and we stand up. We prostrate and we stand up. We pray the Psalms and we give ourselves to God. So if you see a monk, he's saying, what you'll see is somebody who's standing up and falling down, standing up and falling down. That's what monks do, but they also do it at a deeper level. They recognize that the falling can also entail a rising, coming back to God. And if we know that about ourselves, then we don't have to be as hard on Pelagia, or on the Pelagias of the world.

[41:10]

Maybe we can have a word that would help these people to change. And maybe it's not even a word for them, because Nodus isn't preaching to her. He doesn't say, hey lady, you're glorious, you're beautiful, you're a symbol of God. He's preaching to the bishops. doesn't say a word to her. She evidently overhears it or hears it secondhand, and that makes a difference. God will use what we authentically say in the place God has put us in ways beyond what we can imagine, and it's for God to determine how that happens. Again, it's quite a remarkable little paradigm, and it's one of a whole series of very, very beautiful little object lessons that carry a very essentially kind of monastic lesson, because, of course, The monks were those, and it's still present in the Christian East, who held out hope even for the hopeless. The fact that they would hold out hope even for those who went back to the city and began to sin again, and find ways of helping them to come back, or pray for them even if they didn't, to believe that there could be salvation even for those who have strayed beyond imagining.

[42:15]

The monks knew of a grace of God, which if it could touch them, could touch anyone and do something for anyone. There isn't in monastic spirituality, or when it happens, it's rebuked more often than not, as much of a need for heaven will only be enjoyable if there's someone burning in hell. that you can only enjoy heaven if part of the incense before the throne of the saved is the burning of the damned. That's not a monastic insight. It's not a monastic tradition. There's an extending out to the lost that continues, and it's probably why so many monks clung, even in the West, to the apocatastasis, to the universal restoration of all things, as a possibility. which has never been officially condemned as a doctrine in the East as it has been in the West. So, that's kind of underlying this as well. My preaching the gospel is not necessarily predicated upon your going to hell.

[43:17]

On the contrary, my believing in a relationship with Christ means staring in wonder at a God who may be able to do something for you because I know God has done something for one as lost as I am. Good, well, if you want these, feel free to take them and do with them as you will. They are all the same? There are three different pages, but there are three different piles, so if you would take one of each, you will have them all. The one is marked exercise one, the other is marked exercise two, but two and three are on the same page, and the third page is exercise four. So, that's slightly, but not too confusing. Yes, absolutely. Well, more conservative of paper.

[44:05]

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