with a little prayer in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. We give you thanks, Almighty God, that you have created us with hearts, places within ourselves wherein you dwell. Give us the grace to see that it is you dwelling within us who enable us to be words of compassion for one another. Give us the grace to rely on you, present within us, to give us the words we need and teach us in our Sabbath rest to behold your glory dwelling in our hearts. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. I'd like to shift things around just a little bit from what we did this morning when we looked at St. Pelagia as an example of natural contemplation, or perhaps better said, the contemplation or the beholding of God in nature, that is to say in created things, bearing in mind what I suggest in the first conference, that we in our day

[01:06]

are much more inclined to think of the beautiful creation which mirrors the glory of God, not in terms of people, but rather in terms of forests, or mountains, or other kinds of places. And this is a very interesting thing. When you think about it, I think this probably expresses some of the very great distance between a difference between the ancient world and our own world. We can look at a forest, or even at a desert, or a mountaintop, and think, ah, what a beautiful thing, what a beautiful sight, how I would love to be there, what a wonderful place for prayer, and quiet, and meditation. Whereas in the ancient world, to look at most of those things would have meant to look at the possibility of death. The forest was not a pleasant place. It was a place where wild animals dwelled. And deserts, as we know, from biblical times and from monastic experience,

[02:09]

was anything but a pleasant place. It's always kind of amusing and we have to suppress a smile at Valjarmo when people come to us and say, oh, I needed a desert day. I needed to come spend some time with you in the desert. And what they mean by that is they do not mean I want my soul to be torn open and I want to struggle with the demons, which is what the desert meant in antiquity. They mean they want to come apart from the city, they want to come away from the dangerous place and enter into something quiet, something meditative. in the time of the early fathers of the desert, and indeed in the ancient world, the desert was exactly the opposite. The desert was the dangerous place. It was the frontier. You were safe in the city, because that's where the guards were. And they more or less kept criminals at bay, and you wouldn't imagine that your life would necessarily be taken. But boy, if you left and went through the desert, you needed a caravan to keep you safe. It was not a safe place, either from animals or from evil human beings. or from worse forces, from the spiritual forces that dwelt therein, the demons and demonettes, which were constantly populating that horrible, frightening place.

[03:19]

We think of the wilderness, whether it be a dry desert or a tree and sort of a non-human filled forest, as being a positive thing. But in the ancient world, it was possible for the ascetics to go into these places precisely because they were dangerous, because they were not thought of as the place of peace and repose, because they were the place where you push the frontiers of the spirit forward. From that perspective, I think it's wise to bear in mind that, again, in the ancient world, the place where God would have been sought in nature was not so much beautiful, natural things like a state park, but that part of nature which is the human self. And the metaphor for the deepest level of the self in biblical terminology is, of course, the heart. Now, there are a lot of different words to describe this central core, this base of personality, this place within ourselves wherein we reflect the glory of God, this part of ourselves that's made in the image of God, which is really the object of natural contemplation, which is the principal focus when we seek to find God in created things.

[04:39]

We are, above all else, finding God in the scriptures, and in other people, in our relationships with other people, and in our own deepest selves. It's well to bear in mind that the model of human personality that was held by the fathers of the desert, by our monastic forefathers and foremothers, and by Saint Benedict, was rather different from our own. And that's the subject of tonight's handout, which has pictures. I'll keep one of them. You want the one with the rather more cartoon-looking picture. It's got pictures on both sides, but the side with the fewer pictures, with the only one picture called the tripartite soul, is the one we're going to start out with. Some of you may recognize that picture, but don't give it away until we get to the proper place. I sometimes think that the world of modern psychology is becoming as bewildering and disconnected as the world of modern philosophy.

[05:44]

Every thinker in these disciplines wants you to memorize their own vocabulary and to accept their jargon before you can understand what it is they want to say, either about being on the one hand or about consciousness on the other. And, of course, the fields are getting mixed for those who think that there is no philosophy except for the study of consciousness itself. And in the midst of all of this, you know, bewildering array of people vying with one another for trying to tell us how we think and what we should think about, I think it can be helpful to go back, to look at how the human self was understood as being structured in the world where our tradition and our literature come from. Because I think that model of human personality is a very durable one. Many of the insights that our ancestors, our spiritual and intellectual forebears, came to on the basis of this model are quite fresh and quite helpful to us even as moderns.

[06:47]

And the basis for it, for this model of a self that is, as it were, threefold, really comes from Plato. Now, we'll recover the biblical model in a little bit, but for the moment, let's set aside the sort of complicated exegetical questions of, Well, what is the heart, and what is meant by that? And what is the difference between, for St. Paul, the spirit, and is there any significant difference between spirit and soul? Let's kind of put those questions in brackets for the moment, and try to look at a model or an image of ourselves, of our most basic self, which was held by most of the fathers and mystics of the Church, right down to relatively modern times. And it's based on an image that comes from Plato, and he describes it in a number of places, both principally in Republic and in Phaedrus. And in these two dialogues, especially in Phaedrus, he tries to describe our deepest self, we might say our heart, our soul, our most inner place within us, as a charioteer with two-winged horses.

[07:58]

The model he uses is of a chariot that is going towards God, going towards the One. We've fallen away somehow from a kind of a primordial union with the One, or at least, however it's happened, we are not where we're supposed to be. And deep within us is a set of longings and desirings and impulses that will, if they're properly controlled, Lead us back into union with the one from whom we've fallen. This is Plato's Plato's model, of course, it leads to a doctrine of reincarnation and a whole notion of who gets to go quickest back to the one. And, of course, for Plato, who's a philosopher, the philosophers get there the fastest, and the people he dislikes the most, namely the epic poets, will take the longest. Not quite the longest, actually. The tyrants and other nasty people seem to take longer getting back into union with the one, if indeed they ever get there. But the model of personality that he uses is really quite lovely.

[09:00]

The most central self for him is described by words for which there are really no good English equivalent. And when we try to use English equivalents, we end up meaning something very different from what was originally meant. The words Plato uses to describe this innermost self are the words nous, or logos, or logisticon, to describe the sort of, if you will, environment of this deepest core self. Noose, we usually translate in Latin as intellectus and in English as intellect, but it does not mean the part of ourself that's smartest, the part of the self that comes to ideas fastest, the part of the self that's, if you will, most intelligent. To put it in terms that would make sense to us, and this is what Bishop Callistos Ware likes to say, the noose has to be understood as being the contemplative core of the self. That is to say, the part of the self that yearns for the vision of God.

[10:04]

It's as if we have somewhere buried deep within us this noose, this organ of contemplation that wants to behold the glory of God. Just as, if you will, it's a metaphor, of course, our eyes want to see, they rejoice in the light. Our ears rejoice in hearing beautiful sounds. Our sense of taste delights in things that taste good. In the same way, we have within us, it was believed in the ancient world, an organ, a place that yearns for, that is motivated by, that's centrally oriented towards the vision of God. This is the noose. And it's also the part of ourself that is involved in making choices, in being most reasonable, in assessing things. But its primary purpose is not what we would call logical or problem-solving. Its primary purpose is the beholding of God. That's what motivates and activates it, and that's what it's primarily for.

[11:09]

So the deepest level of human personality is the part that responds to the vision, to the glory of God, that sees beyond the external appearance of the world. For Plato and for those who followed him, all that we see in the created world, the world made of the four elements as it was believed, is but a representation, a kind of a hint, a shadow of the real world. He used the great image of our life being rather like people chained to chairs inside a deep cave where all we ever really see are shadows of people who are conducting a kind of a little puppet show behind us in a fire. All we ever see is a kind of a reflected puppet show in front of us. And the person who learns to see with their noose, who really learns to see with his deepest self, is the person who gets up from the cave, goes out of the cave, and moves up and looks at the stars first, and then eventually has eyes, inner eyes, strong enough to see the moon, and then finally things by the light of day.

[12:17]

To use this noose is to look past the little shadow play world that surrounds us, and to behold a real world, the world created by God, resplendent with God's glory. And again, this is all there in ancient if you will, philosophy, although to be honest, Plato was even more of a theologian than he is a philosopher in the modern sense of the world. And this is the kind of language and tradition that our spiritual forefathers inherited. This is the central part of the self, but it's not the only part of the self. This place within us, this deepest core of our personhood that yearns for the vision of, and finally for union with, the One. is aided in the project of getting there by two energies. And the symbol he used was of two winged horses. Now, the horses I've given you here in this picture are not winged. I'm sorry about this, but I can't find any others. If you come across a picture of a charioteer with two good winged horses, I'd very much love to hear about it.

[13:20]

and I'll put it into this handout in the future. These horses actually look a little tired. It almost looks like they're sitting down and troubled by having to pull that rather heavy, bulky chariot. But nonetheless, the image is supposed to be of two mighty steeds. One of them is epithumia, the word translated as desire or longing, sometimes as yearning. Now that's not how it's usually translated in the New Testament. St. Paul usually uses it as an equivalent of lust, that is to say, the misuse of longing or desire, the misuse of our, usually, our faculty for seeing that degenerates into sexual desire for the sake of some sort of gratification. But that's not the only way it's used in the New Testament. Our Lord himself uses this word in the sense of a longing for relationship.

[14:21]

that proceeds from the very heart of God. In St. Luke's Gospel, where Jesus is inviting the disciples to prepare for the celebration of the Passover meal, he says in describing, and after they've done that, he says in describing the meal, just in the prelude to the Passover narrative, the narrative of the institution of the Lord's Supper, he says, epithumia, epithumesa, tutetapasca, phagein, methumon. He uses two forms of the word epithumia, and he puts it into a case that basically comes out as, with great desire, or with great longing, I have longed, desired, to share this meal with you, this pasca, this pascal meal. Jesus himself uses this word to describe his own longing to share the meal of union with his disciples. So, even though the most frequent use of it in the New Testament is in a rather negative sense, on the lips of Jesus we have one example, and there are a couple of other minor ones, but we have a principle of example of this rather more ancient sense of this word being used to describe a desire,

[15:37]

an energy, if you will, that draws us toward all kinds of things, especially towards each other. Epithumia is what happens when we catch a glimpse of the divine glory. in a created thing, usually in a created person. Often we're awakened to it because, as in the case of Pelagia, it's a beautiful person. And we respond by wanting to be close, by maybe even a physical desire to be close to that person. That's the exterior, most superficial expression of this energy God gives us that keeps us from being cut off from one another, that keeps us from being solitary, isolated, individual monads. We have this energy that draws us into union, even in a natural physical way. But at a higher level, this is an energy which will draw us into union with everything that sparkles with the glory of God, and hopefully, if we use it rightly, beyond those appearances to God himself.

[16:42]

This horse will lead us through desiring or yearning into union with God the beloved, God the beautiful. But, we live in a fallen world. We live in a world that's dangerous. We live in a world where our best intentions often go astray, partly because of our own lack of planning, or our own ill will, or partly because of the demons. We do not live in a purely objective order, where everything goes as it should. The cards are stacked just a bit against things going well in a universe where the demonic exists. We not only need to have desire or yearning or a movement towards that which reflects the beauty of God, we also need within us the capacity to say no to that which separates us from God. We need strength and courage and a sword to wield against enemies which keep us from our goal, and enemies will exist.

[17:43]

Enemies do exist, primarily the devil, primarily the demonic. If we're going to move towards God, we need not only yearning, but also the, if you will, rather more virile, manly, soldierly virtues, which Benedict, of course, uses right at the beginning of the rule, speaking of of what it means to follow Christ and to be accepted into this almost military service, a very traditional model of what it means to be a monk for Christ. He's invoking this category of the virtues that are capable of saying no to excess, that are capable of saying no to temptation to misuse our capacities, and which finally can also be used in the context of justice, to say no to that which is harmful to others, which hurts or destroys or abuses or misuses other human beings. We have to have a strong part of ourselves in order to move towards God as well.

[18:44]

So we have this energy of desire, epithumia. And we also have this energy of thumos, which actually means, literally, a kind of a bubbling. It's supposedly the sound that vinegar makes when it's boiling. In ancient Hippocratic times, this was specifically a kind of a rumbling, bubbling sound of indignation. We speak about boiling indignation, about a righteous sense that something has to be done to stop the wrong. That's thumos, properly used in its best and purest sense. However, Plato recognized that we have these energies, we have this, if you will, ruling central core of the self that yearns for the vision of God, but he says in order for us to actually get there, these energies and this self have to be coordinated properly. The one who makes the decisions has to be the contemplative and reasoning self, the logos. It has to be this part of the self that can see through to the deeper truth of the world around us.

[19:50]

You can't let desire be in charge, and you can't let the soldier be in charge. They have to be the winged steeds that will lead us to God. And they have to be reined in, they have to be controlled, because... sometimes things go very badly. And Plato believed that things always go badly, because in his mind, these horses were not well balanced. In the ancient model of a chariot, you had to have your horses well balanced, not pulling too much on one side or the other, or you'd go around in circles or you'd fall over. And Plato says the problem is, generally speaking, One of these horses is unbalanced, and he's a little cagey about it, but when you read closely, you discover that what he thinks is the dangerous horse is desire, epithemia. That's going to lead us into trouble. Our yearnings are going to get us into more trouble than our rather more soldierly virtues. Now, this is probably what you would expect from someone living in a culture which was about to conquer the known world, for the person of Alexander. And so, the soldierly virtues were elevated to a kind of an important height, and you do find, in people who employ this model, a sense that you have to get your say-no self to be in charge of your I-want-to-be-in-union self, otherwise you're going to be all mixed up and constantly falling over yourself.

[21:11]

Well, that's not necessarily the way the Christian fathers approached this problem. They thought that model wasn't a bad one, but Gregory of Nyssa, for example, said, well, let's lay aside this image of chariots and charioteers And think about the soul more as the portal of entry, the door through which we move towards God. And let's use the image of the door which was anointed with the blood of the Lamb at the Passover, the very first Passover. Obviously a very allegorical kind of image, but his reason for using that was to say what you want this door to have is doorposts that are equally strong. You don't want one too high and the other too low. You want your energy of yearning and your energy of saying no, being strong and manly and valorous, to both be in present and equal quantity and equal quality.

[22:13]

And they will both hold up this, if you will, decision-making self. So, I think we find in the Christian sources who adopt this model, a little more willingness to not necessarily be as suspicious of desire or of longing as perhaps the pagan philosophers were, but that could perhaps be argued. In any case, our point here tonight is to look at this as a model, not necessarily as the be-all and end-all of our understanding of human personality. If you turn the page over, you catch a glimpse of what was done with this model. both by ancient philosophers and, to a great extent, by our spiritual forebears, by the Desert Fathers, who adapted this model rather significantly. I've suggested that the image of noose that Christians tend to opt for is less charioteer and winged steeds than holy wisdom.

[23:16]

Our Lady is a particularly powerful example of the highest virtue of this part of ourselves. Wisdom is traditionally associated with the right use of our contemplative faculty, the part of ourself that longs for God. So I've tried to find a feminine image of Mary with the child Jesus on her lap as a kind of a symbol of this innermost core of personality. What happens, and to a great extent it happens already with Aristotle and with the Stoic tradition, but especially amongst the Desert Fathers, is that The proper use and the wrong use of these different parts of the self become the source of a theory of virtues and vices, which is to say, it becomes the source of what we're supposed to do in our ascetical lives. It's the basis for a lot of what St. Benedict describes in the ladder of humility and in the instruments of good works, although he doesn't necessarily arrange them according to this, you know, three-fold model of human personality.

[24:26]

What I think is helpful is to notice how different the monastic understanding of this ranking of good things and of problematic things is from the way the world usually interprets it. If you look at, particularly at Avagrius and then those who followed him, John Cashion and Thomas Aquinas, Burroughs in this model as well, if you look at the way that those authors describe the primary vices, the primary misuse of these energies for good and the virtues which are supposed to counterbalance them or enable you to get back into into harmony or balance. It's interesting that although we live in a very sex-crazed world, the monastic model is not primarily concerned with lust as a misuse of our capacity for desiring or longing. First on the list of monastic vices is almost always gluttony, the misuse of our capacity for food.

[25:29]

And it's a proper insight into the fact that if you're alone in the desert, you're probably not going to be fantasizing so much about a beautiful person as about a Big Mac or a steak. That's the kind of thing that comes first to mind. And it is true that the energy of misusing that which is supposed to be a natural function is something which is pretty common. Among the monastics who describe the way that the energy of desire gets used wrongly, gluttony tends to be listed first, and a proper abstinence, a proper approach to fasting, from food and from drink, not constant but balanced, based on the season, based on one's own personal need for asceticism, is very much a part of the tradition. in order that our real desire may be sharpened. And that's what St. Benedict says in his description of how we prepare for Lent, that we might long for Holy Easter with all spiritual desire comes as a capstone on the description of our own Lenten abstinence.

[26:38]

Our Lenten abstinence is not so much for its own sake, as a way of sharpening or heightening our real desiring for God. The books we read, the prayer we undertake, even the things we do not engage in, or the things we specifically withdraw from, are not for the purpose of coldly saying no to our desires, but allowing ourselves to taste and to experience our real deepest desire, our yearning for God, that desiring for our celebration of Holy Easter. And in the same way, as the story of Pelagia brought out, lust is simply the misuse of our capacity to respond primordially, basically, physically, to the beautiful in creation, primarily to the beautiful as it's manifested in human beings. And there's a quality of temperance involved in our ability to give glory to God, as Nanus did, to look beyond simply our first response to the deeper question of who this person is in the sight of God and what that person says about our relationship with God.

[27:48]

The misuse of the things we've been given, particularly of money, is counterbalanced by almsgiving, by sharing what we have with the poor. Now, that's how this category of desire, or epithumia, was often looked at in the ancient tradition. What's fascinating to me as well is how this category of thumos, this virtue for which there's very little in the way of exact English equivalent. One could talk about spiritual strength. spiritual valor, a capacity to strongly say no, but there's more to it than just that. The virtue of endurance, of patient endurance, of being willing to put up with difficulties, is often seen as being the counterbalance to the misuse of this energy in the form of anger directed against the brethren. Evacrius says that the problem in communities is that the demons do not have to attack us directly.

[28:55]

We don't have to see little imps running around the rooms for the simple reason that their tactic is to use each other against each other. They find our weaknesses and employ those weaknesses to make us perceive the demonic in each other. and to perceive the other as the demonic, so that instead of directing our energy of thumos against the devil, we direct it against the brother, against what was never intended to be directed. We bring spiritual nuclear weapons and employ them against a light breeze, and as a consequence, we get nothing but Fallout everywhere anger is for the purpose for the sole purpose of being directed against the demonic origin of Factions and and problems in our relationships interestingly many of the monastic authors looked to this strength, to this part of ourselves in which valor arises, also as the place from which sadness and depression arise.

[29:57]

That there is an intimate connection between our capacity to use anger rightly and our tendency to become depressed. Now, Freud thought he was the first person to figure this out in the 19th century, and around the turn of the century. In fact, it's found in many ancient sources, and in lots and lots of the desert fathers and mothers, that there's an intimate relationship between the part of the self that's attempting to properly use and process that weapon of anger directed against the demons, and our misuse of it against ourselves, which results in excessive sadness and even in depression. We're intended to be enthusiastic, to experience a kind of an ongoing zeal for good, says Saint Benedict. And the misuse of that zealous energy for good is a chedia, or apathy, or a tendency to just disregard and discount. everything holy in our lives, to want nothing whatever to do with the things that make for holiness.

[30:58]

The person afflicted with achadia, you'll remember, is the one who's looking out the window wondering when it's going to be an opportunity to offer hospitality, rather than taking the opportunity to pray a psalm or two, using any excuse to avoid contact with God. Well, these are the vices we tend to think of most. These are the energies that tend, as it were, to be most prominent in our own inner struggles and frustrations. But they are not the most destructive ones. They are not the ones that are emphasized as that which can most fully separate us from God. And in our day, I think it's very important for us to remember the real meaning of the words that describe the vices which can thoroughly separate a soul from God, from each other, from our own deepest selves. Vices are pride and vainglory, and some of the Desert Fathers as well, a deliberate choice not to see what God is doing.

[32:03]

Pride and vainglory are basically the interior assertion, in the case of vainglory, that the beautiful and good and glorious things that exist around me are from me. I am the source of all of these things. It is a failure to give glory to the God who has given me these gifts. It's a failure to recognize that I am in relationship with God and with other people. I wouldn't have anything. If it hadn't been for my parents and my friends and my monastery, my brothers, who have crafted and shaped me in good ways and in painful ways, and all the good that is achieved is as attributable to them as it is to me, vainglory is a failure to recognize that level of interrelatedness. But pride is something far worse. Pride is the assertion that I don't need anybody or anything. I'm sufficient in myself. I do not require God or a god.

[33:07]

I do not require other people. I do not require personal insight into the deepest levels of my personality. Unfortunately, This vice is precisely what one finds, at least in my part of the world, in Southern California, being touted as the goal of life. You want to live in a kind of splendid isolation, in your home in Malibu, overlooking the ocean, with neighbors kept at bay by electric fences, with relationships only as you choose to have them and none of them particularly deep or committed, With a religion of your own making, a kind of a New Age mixture of all the things you like, and nothing that involves a deep relationship with a deity out there, and very little insight into what's going on in your heart, this is the sin by which angels fall. This is the soul-corroding kind of vice that really does a good job of separating the soul from God. And finally, it means that people who are really able to achieve the Southern Californian dream are enjoying all the benefits of damnation without having to die.

[34:14]

They don't connect with other people, they don't connect with God, they don't have any particular insight into what's going on in their own hearts. They are already enjoying the benefits of hell without having to be there, as it were, in the flesh, or physically, or metaphysically, in the spirit. The tragedy is, that which should be the thing we strive against is very often touted in the media as being something we ought to want. Well, this is a model of personality that has very practical consequences. It allows us to look at ourselves as if through a prism. The part of ourselves that yearns for the vision of God, can be tempted to want to be isolated, can be tempted to not want to make the spiritual journey in the presence of others. Benedict, at the end of chapter 72, says, He who, may he bring us all together to everlasting life, although there are those who contest that particular translation of that verse, that Pariter strongly suggests that salvation for us is something that happens together.

[35:31]

We are together in this journey towards God, and the danger of pride and vainglory is to not want that to be the case, to want it to be just my own little personal journey. This prism also reminds us of our need to have a proper respect for and a stewardship of our appetites for food, for drink, for our desire for presence to others, for intimacy with others, to be careful about the appropriate of both borders and the need for sharing with one another. and at the same time to be outgoing and giving with the things that God's given us. And the model also invites us to recognize that our energy of saying no to sin should not mean that we react in unthinking wrath against the brethren as if they were in fact the ones by whom they may well, we may all at times,

[36:32]

be motivated, which is to say, by the demonic. We use the weapons of compassion, not of contradiction against the brethren. But there's much more to that. There's much more to this model than just than just a kind of a three-way look at our own inner striving. There is, and I think we'll probably do best to save that for tomorrow, a sense that this self, as it strives for deeper union with God, is truly the image of God, is truly the place of God. And the more we strive to allow God to show us how to be put into more proper balance, how to gather together the fragmented parts of ourselves and allow God to bring them into union, Then we also begin to grow in a capacity to see God in the other person's heart, because we are all structured in this way, and also to see God in our own hearts.

[37:41]

To begin to see, as several of the Desert Fathers say, the light of this nous, this inner self, glowing within the self at prayer. The reflection of God, not so much outside ourselves, but in our own hearts and in the other person's heart. This is the person with whom we're called upon to interact. In our relationships with one another, we are called to be conscious of what C.S. Lewis says in his great sermon, in which he speaks on a whole variety of subjects, and finally concludes, when we are able to see one another, if we are able to see one another as the beings which we truly are, we would find ourselves in the presence of beings we would be tempted to worship. What we are, what God is within us, what God is working within us, is glorious, is truly that which the innermost part of the self, the noose, yearns to see.

[38:53]

And in our relationships with one another, we ought to pray for the grace to see that in others and also to see that in the self. And next time we'll look at a model drawn both from the scriptures and from some patristic texts that begins to describe that vision of the self in light, in the heart, and we'll also see how that is reflected in a rather practical way in the monastic practice, the mass monastic discipline of praying the Psalms of the divine office. Well, this is a lot of stuff, and one could argue that it's kind of a review of a very, very ancient model, and indeed it is. But I think it's a worthy one. I think it's one worth being aware of. I think it can provide a kind of a useful little inner barometer in looking at questions of what it is we need to undertake in our own deepening in the spiritual life. It can provide a kind of a useful checklist in our own sense of what we're doing personally and what we're doing relationally.

[39:59]

And I think it can also be a reminder of the fact that there's more to our inner self than just the drives and, if you will, forced non-freedom, which many of the social sciences want to claim is the deepest level of human personality in our own day. Questions or thoughts? the kind of flow from one, let's say, like reinforces or leads to the other, worked out by them. Absolutely. A good correlation. You know, you start when I, if I, if, for example, well, when Dominguez doesn't get it, he, just himself, I mean, he also takes it from a number of other, a number of others of the Desert Fathers, but the idea that

[41:01]

Gluttony is often listed first because, of course, it's the most natural thing other than breathing. I mean, we have to eat, so it is something we're going to have to be making choices about. If I'm making bad choices about that, then that will put me in a physiological state which makes me more susceptible to other kinds of temptations, notably lust, and then it'll degenerate into all kinds of other things. That acquisitiveness will tend to make me naturally anger. angry, and so there's a kind of a, it's as if the dike's breaking a little bit and the water begins to cascade down into different problematic pools. And it's done in different ways, as you say, by different ones of the fathers, that if you break down here, this is likely to happen in that way. But those kinds of things can be awfully reassuring at times, because a person will sit back and say, why am I going through this? Why am I being so troubled with this problem at this moment, and sometimes looking back at this kind of a sense of, well, these are the constellation of the potentially good and potentially problematic use of, if you will, this energy or this drive and the personality.

[42:14]

Is there anything there that seems to be related to it? And this is the kind of chain of failures that our holy mothers and fathers have said very often happen. Is there anything there that can give me insight? And very often there is. Very often they were very astute psychologists. It's amazing, I think, that the Desert Fathers actually moved to breathe into an antedated Freud, so I mean, and then you think, well, they themselves got it from the scriptures, wisdom. I mean, that's just as plain, of course, a psychologist would lose half his business if people were Yeah, and one talks a lot these days about the helping professions, those who do psychotherapy, whether clinical psychologists or social workers or psychiatrists or whomever, the licensed people.

[43:15]

And people get paid money for doing that. One talks about, well, that's because the clergy are doing it or people aren't looking to the clergy. I think it's much more primordial and basic than that. I was fascinated a couple of years ago when a friend of mine whom I grew up with, she and I were in college together and we went off to Europe at the same time and for a year away. says, and she's been working with young people for quite a long time as a nurse, she said, do you remember how when we were growing up, how exciting science fiction was to people? How in the 60s, you know, Star Trek first got going. Of course, it's still going in many ways, but how those were the kinds of exciting images that gave people a sense of something beyond, something that you didn't have, something that had never happened. And she said, well, kids have seen people walking on the moon now. That's not new. Satellites are going up all the time. People are floating weightless on television, and it's real. It's not just imagined. What she has found young people absolutely fascinated with in her own line of work is stories about friendship.

[44:25]

about meeting somebody who cares for you and might even be willing to give something up for you in order that you might profit, because they've never experienced that, never had a relationship like that. It's very possible that the helping professions are doing so well because vainglory and pride are so widespread that the idea of actually having relationships like friendship is so unpopular and so uncommon in our own day that people are willing to pay for it. They're willing to pay for what should be the most ordinary and simple gift of human beings to each other. People are lonely, they're desperately lonely, and they're willing to pay somebody to listen to them. That may be overly simplistic, but I think there's something to it. Well, in terms of spiritual direction, the Jesuits at Warnersville told some retreatants that have been up here, you know, never mind looking for the world's best spiritual director, but if you just come back to the ladies in the kitchens, be honest with them.

[45:32]

They'll be honest with you. I love this, because that's really what it is. honest relationship with one another. A willingness to say back to the other what you hear them saying, and the truth that for whatever reason they're going to be blinded to. There again, in the sermon I alluded to by Lewis called The Weight of Glory, in one of his In one of his books, That Hideous Strength, he has a beautiful image of a wonderful kind of party, where there are fantastic costumes that have to be put on, but in the room where you dress for it, there are no mirrors, because you have to be mirrors for each other. You have to depend on someone else to tell you how you're dressed, and you have to depend on their reaction to let you know how you really look. That's a kind of a symbolic way of describing something that really does happen in relationships. There are parts of ourselves we cannot see or hear except through the lips of another human being, and occasions for that are so rare in our own day.

[46:35]

That's why all these talk shows, on the one hand, people want to share, somebody's got to listen to me. And then on the other hand, there's this nosiness. Because people are so, they'll do anything to Well, and the tragedy of it is that, you know, why don't they go gossip with their neighbors rather than sitting there pretending to gossip with someone from thousands of miles away whom they're never going to meet? I mean, it may not be a particularly virtuous thing to do, although I think probably most of it's moderately harmless most of the time. But the reality is that people sitting watching those talk shows are not having coffee with their neighbors. They're sitting there in front of that box. apparently getting something like the same thing, but they really aren't. They're just sitting blitzed out in front of that machine. I mean, I'm so grateful to God that my community at home only watches TV in the form of a video every couple of weeks because I, you know, My name's Luke, and I'm a television addict.

[47:41]

I would be if I were living in the world, but thank God I'm not. God spares me that by keeping me in the monastery. It's a very difficult temptation to avoid, and what it does is cut you off from a lot of the relationships that would actually be sort of wholesome. I mean, you know, you can have artificial gossip. You don't even have to have the real thing. You can watch somebody else's. Boy, you know, what does that say? So it's like a science fiction program where people aren't really alive, they're just sort of suspended in some state somewhere and thinking that they're actually having lives or relationships with other people. Well, it's moving in that direction and television is the medium. But at that time you had such a thing going on, as a Jesuit, I read some tapes a number of years ago, I mean, without a telephone you spoke to your neighbors, neighbors across town, across the country, and so forth, and as you were saying, all the tits-joggers, oh glad to have you with us today, you buy into that, you think that means somebody.

[48:41]

That's right. And all the toffee is as if, but if you ask the child, back and forth with real life people that you might not even want to be with at the moment, or whatever, and work it out, you can flip to jackals and get something that you want. As James said, it's a gossip, it doesn't mean anything, but it's perfectly safe for you and for them. It is an interesting house. Very suddenly these things have slightly changed our lives, and I don't think we've recognized it and adapted to it. No, I think that's absolutely true. We've kind of been bolted. to the same, you know, mechanical, if you want, impersonal surface that they have. I know what you mean.

[49:47]

I know the person I'm living with seems to be a different person. I know exactly what you mean." You know, it goes on and on. And then they ask themselves the question, well, how can I stay in it because my feelings aren't the same? And the answer is, well, you're not a novice anymore. You can't say that in those words, but you have to help them appreciate the same reality, that God doesn't want me to be a novice all my life in the sense of, and again, having been a novice master, I wish I could reacquire some of the zeal that I had when I was a novice, but at the same time, There's a discovery that one has to find, as I mentioned, Father Eliezer is always saying, I have to find the reason for today for staying in this, for staying in this relationship with God and with these people. That's the same choice that lies there for married people, but nobody tells them that. Nobody tells them that there's any reason for staying together except that they still have the same warm feelings about the other person that they had when they started out. Well, what nonsense. But, you know, it's very prevalent nonsense.

[50:49]

Well, if we could start tomorrow night at 7, in other words, right after Vespers, we'd have a little celebration with one of our brothers who's having a... Oh, I'll bear that in mind and the conference won't be too long, I promise. I could. Thank you.

[51:18]

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