Well, thank you very much for this opportunity to be with you for these next few days on a retreat. And as you may know, I come from St. John's Abbey in Collegeville. I've been there since I entered in 1974. So I have at least a few years behind me in monastic life. But as I look around, there's a lot of experience here of living the life. And so, what I've done as a major theme to carry us through the next few years in a very general way, it's the visionary life of the monk. And I think as you mentioned as we went into the church today, that transfiguration holds a very special place in in sort of the imagination of your community. So, in some ways this whole issue of where is it of having a sort of vision of God and how is God present with us in our very down to earth embodied existence?

[01:05]

That's the kind of thing that I'd like to explore through the various conferences and various aspects as we move along. So, I hesitated in thinking through this I was happy to see that transfiguration had such an important part in your community's imagination. Because oftentimes I think when you start talking about vision, it all gets perhaps a little bit too abstract and difficult to really get a hold of. But clearly, I think you've wrestled with this and see the dynamism that can be part of this. So, I have prepared comments. I don't like reading from a text, but I'll try and read through it at least to get us going and we'll see where everything goes as we move along here. We've traditionally talked about the active and the contemplative life and how challenging it is to keep these in balance.

[02:06]

The congregation I come from is American Cassanese, and it's very typically in that congregation run schools. And so whatever form of life you're in, the way your communities, apostolates, are shaped, I'm sure you wrestle with this question. Smaller communities, I think you probably end up with millions and millions of very practical jobs that begin to weigh down on you. In our life, we may get caught up in a particular project, a certain profession, there may be tension between pushing a career and being faithful to monastic life. And so whatever practical situation we find ourselves in, that tension, how do I keep what I do? in balance with paying attention to how God is with me. It's an ongoing question for all of us. So, what I want to explore with you, as I said in this retreat, are the various ways in which the visionary component of our life is vital to keeping this balance, navigating through tough times, and staying faithful to God and to one another.

[03:22]

It's this capacity to look at the larger canvas, to think big, that helps us to be sensitive to one another and to keep our own efforts in perspective. With our sights set on the right things, we see where our place is and can strive to stay on track. Many times this way to God will seem like a narrow road in which we are perhaps like a gymnast on the balance beam, where one is fighting with the force of gravity and trying to stay on the beam, but not simply clutching to it. but rather carrying out these daring kinds of flips and handstands. To stay on this narrow beam, this narrow way, it calls for discipline and practice, but above all, it calls for God's help. Living the monastic life requires us to bring mind and heart, body and spirit together.

[04:25]

This activity of integration is one that can only come about through God's presence. Our spirits must be joined to God's Spirit in order to follow this pathway towards wholeness and happiness. How we envision this pathway is crucial to our success. To see the way and then to decide to follow it require that all of our resources as a human person are brought to bear on this. The essential starting point for any Christian who strives to be on the right pathway toward God is a sense of wonder and awe at God's creation. The psalmist helps us to abide in this experience. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. One day to the next conveys that message, and one night to the next imparts that knowledge.

[05:30]

There is no sound or word, no voices heard, yet their report goes forth through all the earth, their message to the ends of the world." It's from Psalm 19. Most of us probably have to make a special effort to look at the nighttime sky. We live primarily inside structures and we navigate by artificial lights. If we go camping, then we may have the leisure to let our eyes roam across the skies. The experience of the shepherd, and I think probably your experiences of working as shepherds, is quite a bit different from what we imagine in the ancient Middle East, in which you're out there with the sheep. And so you probably, I even think at that time, it would have been difficult, he was probably so preoccupied with taking care, how much freedom to simply look back and to gaze at the stars and the firmament that's there.

[06:35]

But the experience of the shepherd then, at least, is closer to this. But even he, I think, has to make a special effort to pay attention. A few years ago, probably three, four years back, we were encouraged to look at an unusual appearance of a comet that was coming close to the Earth. And our monk astronomer at that time, Father Melchior, who has always been affectionately known by his students as Meteor Mel, urged us on by noting that this something of this comet, it would not come back for thousands of years. It was a gentle but a striking kind of light. I recall that it looked like a little lamp or a lantern that was up there flickering off in the distance. So, it was very much unlike any other kind of planet or star that was up there.

[07:38]

But in Psalm 19, what this psalmist celebrates when he says, look at the nighttime sky, he's not asking us to look at something that's going to be unusual or unique or once in a thousand years, but rather he's wrapped up in the wonder of that firmament that's always out there. It's so much a part of our environment that we take it for granted. and probably do not allow this wonder to be a factor in our assessment of how things are going for us. You're sitting here, mountains, trees, very beautiful. Somewhat terrain is different. We have lots of trees where I come from, lakes, etc. Also very, very beautiful kind of thing. We keep reminding ourselves of how we get in our routines, we start moving along, and we don't step back. and we don't pay enough attention to what is there. And so it's good for us to be reminded of that.

[08:41]

So in looking at this nighttime sky, this can help us to put our lives and all of our struggles into perspective. When I see the heavens, the work of your hands," the psalmist says, when I do this, then I know that life is good and that life is a gift. And whenever I encounter problems in my work or in my relationships, I need to remember this, that fundamentally life is good and life is a gift. And if I do this, then I can respond to others with sensitivity and in a much more measured way. For no matter how much responsibility I bear for a particular project, This project's always part of a much larger fabric, one that has been given to us and one that is sustained by God. Towards the end of this Psalm 19, after viewing the wonder of this nighttime sky and the sun's circuit of the heaven from dawn to sunset, and then he moves into the wonders of the Torah that has been given God's revelation in written form, the psalmist then in the last or the third part of the psalm becomes very anxious about himself.

[10:08]

He says, Who can detect heedless failings? Cleanse me from my unknown faults." And this trepidation, when we stop and think about it, of the psalmist is really quite understandable. His humility, I think, is laudable. The wonder over God's holiness and the beauty of his works can overwhelm us at times. But the sense of human dignity and the honored place of humans within this We should not overlook this even though the psalmist there is in trepidation. We obviously are very small and vulnerable when we encounter the holiness of God. But to counter that or to balance that out, when we look at Psalm 8, we hear the honored place that human beings have in the cosmos. When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the psalmist says in Psalm 8, the moon and the stars which you set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

[11:20]

Yet you have made him little less than God. crowned him with glory and honor and you've given him rule over the works of your hands and put all things at his feet. So, human beings have obviously been placed at the highest levels of creation. We've been given dominion over the animals, the things of creation. But what's fundamental to this psalm is that this meditation on the place of humans in creation is framed at the beginning and at the end by this proclamation. O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is your name over all the earth. And so you have this expression of praise at the beginning, and it recurs again at the end. And what that does is it puts in proper perspective the question that's at the very center of that psalm, what is man or what are humans that you've made them? So a human being is one who's able to carry on this role

[12:25]

of being a human within creation only by praising God as the creator and the sustainer of all that is. If we don't frame what we do with praise of God, then We are prone, we are subject to the anxieties and the appetites that consume us and those around us. So we hear about stewardship over creation that becomes much more important in our day and age, when after centuries of exploitation, which has ramped up in the past 20, 30, 40 years, we become much more conscious of how we need to be reverent and stewards of this creation. And where it comes from is, what do we do with all those appetites and anxieties within us? So our stewardship over creation, as we try to fill the emptiness that wells up within us either by consumption or whatever, it's trying to deal with the fact that God has withdrawn from us.

[13:35]

And God's withdrawing from us is a very natural part of the whole cycle of the journey towards God. And it's knowing how to deal with that that is so crucial, which the Psalms give us a lot of help of trying how to do this better. In the act of praise then, we are drawn outside of ourselves and we focus upon another person or thing and we forget ourselves, at least somewhat, in the process. Parents and grandparents are usually very excited over the birth of a child. In the last couple of years, my niece gave birth to twins, and you can imagine what happened within the family at that point. They had, with all this internet now where you can take electronic pictures and you send them around, well, every week you got another update on how much these kids had grown in that time. But it's a very natural kind of human response to be excited about this newness.

[14:40]

which birth brings. And you get a renewed sense of the wonder that at the gift of life. And so for us as monks who have passed over this role of fathering children, it's important that we have alternative expressions of the way life is a gift. And I would wager that this celebration of life as a gift is really a central element to the monastic call. We are to be conveyors of God's creation, of the wonders of God's creation, of its giftedness, and of so much that is good around us that we are to acknowledge and accept. One of our older monks who died two, three, four years ago now, and he died at the age of 96, and he had been affectionately known by his students through the decades as Smiling Jack. And what was characteristic, he had a very

[15:43]

And I knew him in his last 20, 25 years in which he was finally retiring from teaching and he moved around the community, but he always had a real positive attitude. He would affirm someone and say, oh, that's wonderful. And he would do it in a way that it was almost automatic. It was not out of the ordinary, but yet somehow there was a sense of genuineness. You knew what he was up to when he was saying this. And we had small group discussions at one point in our community gatherings. And he, in his turn, came up to talk about things. He said, oh, I'm ready now for God to do with me what he wants. And there was a kind of freedom that he expressed here to which I think we all aspire. And yet we know, I think, that we're our own worst enemies in trying to get to that point.

[16:48]

This capacity to be surprised at life, and to marvel at it and then be encouraging of others, this is a way of life in which praise is real. Monks should be good at this way of praise because we pray the divine office day after day. And the recitation of the Psalms is a rhythm of praise and petition in which we bring the full range of human experience and we set it before God. Praise is something that we as humans do not do naturally. Praise of others and praise of God usually only happen with some effort. And yet our expression of praise is a good yardstick of our progress towards God. If we miss the divine office and feel that something is missing, I would suggest that it's probably more than a sense of guilt that we're feeling. It's rather an experience of absence.

[17:50]

The diminished connection with God is one that tugs at us and tells us that this dialogue reaches parts of ourselves that we're not really fully conscious of. And these parts of us need this kind of nourishment that comes from praying the songs in common. The great promise of the continual round of the divine office is that it will do something to us. It will change us over time. And the act of praise then that frames Psalm 8, O Lord, O Lord, how glorious is your name over all the earth, is an example of a verse that Benedict wanted to populate the imaginations and memories of his monks. Just as tunes from a song or a hymn can dance around in our heads, so can these psalm verses. In so doing, they are taking the vision and the life of the divine office

[18:51]

and they're helping to incarnate it into the happenings of our daily experience. It's a way of sanctifying our days. It occurs quietly and privately in our minds and hearts as these verses dance around. Yet the fruits of these ruminations get communicated to others. So this elderly monk that I talked about, Smiling Jack, who seemed to always be so upbeat, it seems like the part of praying these Psalms day after day, probably had a lot to do with this. And I don't, of course, I can't verify that, but I do know that he was always at office, and even when mobility was a real problem, and he'd come with his walker, he was always there. So these words of the Psalms, even if they do not rise to our consciousness in our day-to-day activities, I think they're there working inside of us, and they're strengthening us even when we do not really notice this.

[20:02]

They're nourishing words then that give us wisdom and give light to our eyes and strength. That's probably why Thomas Merrick talked about these things as what, bread for the wilderness? And somehow they get inside of us and they nourish us in ways that we don't really have to be always conscious of. So the experience of wonder that gives rise to praise is closely related to the experience of gratitude that gives rise to praise. Parents of a new child have a sense of awe at the mystery of life, but they also have a sense of gratitude that a child has been entrusted to them and holds so much promise for the continuation of their own lives. This sense of gratitude is also strongly felt when we have come through difficult times. The psalmist in Psalm 66 proclaims, come and see the works of God, his tremendous deeds among the people.

[21:09]

He changed the sea into dry land Through the river they passed on foot. Therefore, let us rejoice in him who rules by might forever, whose eyes are fixed upon the nations." Psalmist then goes on to speak directly to God. You tested us, O God. You tried us as silver tried by fire. You led us into a snare. You bound us at the waist as captives. You let captors set foot on our neck. And we went through fire and water, and then you led us out to freedom. In those times in which we feel saved or healed or delivered from danger, We are drawn outside of ourselves by the goodness that has been shown to us. And when other humans do this, we make every effort to show our appreciation to them.

[22:11]

When God does this, we, like the psalmists, summon others to share in our joy. When we are truly grateful, we find it almost impossible to contain the joy that we feel over the great thing that happens to us. When we think of that gospel story about the healing of the lepers, and I think we just had this last week, and Jesus in Mark's gospel tells him, don't you go out and tell anyone about this. Well, obviously that's the first thing he does when he goes out, and in many ways it speaks to us very much about what's a natural human response in which we feel a great gift of something that's really been burdening us, and we feel released from that. We're going to go out and share that kind of joy with everyone else. And, if you look through all the Thanksgiving Psalms and the Psalter, this indeed is the expected response.

[23:12]

When something good happens to us, we actually are obliged to tell others about it. to tell how God has worked in our lives. And then this, what may be a very intensely felt individual experience of God having come into my life, then it becomes something that's a communal experience. And in our common covenant with God, how God intervenes and is very real in our lives, that's what makes the covenant gain texture and gain substance. And that's what we need. And so, we really sustain one another in this covenant relationship when we do this kind of proclamation of thanksgiving. A psalm that Benedict drew heavily upon was Psalm 34. It's a wisdom psalm, and it has sections in it that make it also, we could call it not only a wisdom psalm, but it's a model psalm of thanksgiving.

[24:20]

In other words, this psalm tells us that it's a mark of wisdom to give thanks, and particularly to be attentive to those around us who are giving thanks. We have much to learn from God's goodness, from what others have experienced. In the form of successive proverbs in this psalm, the psalmist imparts pearls of wisdom. I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and he delivered me from all my fears. Look to him and be radiant. Let your faces not blush with shame. When the afflicted man called out, the Lord heard, and from all his distress he saved him." When I hear someone associating these words with their own experience, I can then grow in confidence that life is good and that God is near and God is watching over his people. And the more we see these individual acts of deliverance, the more we are ready to acknowledge that such acts of deliverance are characteristic of the way that God rules the world.

[25:33]

And therefore, we can say with Psalmist in Psalm 113, High above all nations is the Lord, above the heavens his glory. Who is like the Lord our God, who is enthroned on high and looks upon the heavens and the earth below? Psalm 113. Our God is this all-powerful one who watches over his people and does it with care. He's enthroned on high, yet at the same time he is near. And these are the two key components of psalms of praise that you find in every psalm of praise throughout the Psalter. God is to be acknowledged for his greatness and his power, but at the same time, he's to be acknowledged for his care for us. This psalm, it shows that God does not simply take this power and sort of bask in this greatness and stand aloof, but he uses this power to care for us.

[26:38]

And Psalm 113 is a forerunner of the Magnificat, which we pray regularly. When Mary has traveled to her cousin Elizabeth to announce the great joy that she has over the coming birth of her child, she draws upon the words of this psalm to give her feelings expression. And such joy wins out over the anxiety and the fear that she must have felt as a young woman at that time, expecting a child and yet not married. So as we gather day after day to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, we draw upon this ancient and traditional language to give expression to the movement in our own hearts. The sentiments that come to expression in the selection of psalms used in the office cover a wide range. And obviously, we cannot immediately feel them in each instance.

[27:39]

But they do spark memories of times when we had these experiences, and they also help us to connect with others who may be experiencing those feelings either of joy or deep anguish, they help us to connect with them in the present. So the Psalms then, with this appeal to this wide range of human emotions, are trying to keep us in dialogue with God and to keep that kind of dialogue alive. And it's this I-Thou dialogue that lies at the very heart of what we call the covenant with God. It goes on. It's a dialogue, as I tried to indicate. It's a dialogue that goes on at a conscious level, but it's also one that goes on unconsciously within us. And keeping this dialogue alive is essential to the integrity or the wholeness of our lives, of keeping all of the pieces of our lives working in a kind of harmony in the face of all those stresses and strains that we inevitably undergo.

[28:47]

And it is this dialogue then that keeps what we have as a vision of God alive and on track. So as we go through these next few days, I want to explore with you aspects of the monastic life that I set in dialogue with texts either from Psalms, from the book of Genesis, the book of Ezekiel, Paul's letter to the Romans. and other texts from the Pentateuch in particular. And issues such as rivalry, obedience, undergoing change, navigating crisis, kind of relinquishment, seeking personal integration, these are some of the themes that I'd like to explore with you. And the question that threads these reflections together is how our vision of God, fragmentary and as episodic as it may be in the here and now, this is the key to the meaningfulness and the vitality of the monastic journey.

[29:53]

So we'll want to be particularly attentive to the ways that our dialogue with God is endangered on the journey and how we might expand this dialogue and strengthen it. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be world without end. Amen. Our help is in the name of the Lord. Amen. The topic this afternoon I've entitled is, Rivalry Within the Christian Community. I think over years of preaching, one of our older fathers told me, he said, he says, usually one gets up to preach is usually preaching at themselves.

[31:04]

I think that ends up being the same case when you start looking at topics like this, that inevitably it's going to reflect a lot of my own experience. So, I hope in some ways there are a few little links, connects, so it makes some sense in that case. But so, and I'm going to base it on Genesis 2 through 4, 11 and 37, I believe. Yeah. getting into the Joseph story a bit. So, Cain and Abel, Joseph story. When was the last time that you praised someone for a good thing that they had accomplished? And when was the last time that you praised someone whose work overlaps with your work and is met in many ways as a relative equal in something that you consider quite important to your own identity? If I can praise arrival, I think I have at least momentarily achieved a measure of detachment that is positive.

[32:12]

But it seems that genuine praise of a rival is really quite rare, if that person really is a rival. The competitive forces within any one of us will often twist this act of praise around to some form of calculation to see how I might profit from in a very convoluted way how I might profit from praising someone. For example, onlookers may see such praise that I give to another as generous. and a praiseworthy thing to do. So they in turn praise me for praising my rival. So it kind of comes back. So in the end, I've really gained points over my rival by doing this. So that whole move towards really generously acknowledging someone who I might, for some reason, think of as a threat, and I praise them nevertheless. That kind of movement outside of oneself is very important and difficult.

[33:19]

According to our biblical heritage, the rivalry between human groups erupts immediately after the explosion from the Garden of Eden. In the story of Cain and Abel, we meet two brothers. They're relatively equal in status, but each has a different occupation. Cain, of course, is the farmer, and Abel is the sheepherder. Both are honorable professions within the society of their time. We know that farming is really a sine qua non of city life in the ancient Near East and in the Mediterranean region. Because if you didn't have a cultivation of crops that you could gain a kind of surplus, there would be no way to support the population that concentrated in the city. But farming was not opposed to herding. If any of you have had the chance to go to the Ancient Near East, not the Ancient Near East, but to Jerusalem, and if you've been there, you'll notice when you start moving into the dry season, it quits raining over there in about March.

[34:29]

and then it won't rain again until October, November, on into that. So, as you start moving towards August, Jerusalem, which has a lot of growth and green grass, etc., during the rainy season. Once you get into August, it really has moved into the desert. But nevertheless, there's enough irrigation from water they piped in that there's still some grass around. So, you're looking in Jerusalem, you see these Bedouin tents, that are parked down in the old city in certain parts where there would be a little grassy knoll or something. And so, what that points to in relation to the Cain and Abel story, we have these mixtures of two cultures, farming and herding. that there was really an interchange, a sort of common life or symbiosis between them all the way through the ancient Near East. So when we see this Cain and Abel story, what ends up is we begin asking, well, you know, Cain brings an offering,

[35:37]

And then Abel brings an offering, but God accepts Abel's offering, but Cain, he does not accept. And you look at this story and you say, well, why did God show favoritism, or why did God honor Abel in this story? And you look through and you might pick up a little piece where it says that Abel brought the firstlings of his flock and Cain brought some of his crop. And so when we really try and look for some way to justify why God made the choice and to sort of free God from a form of favoritism, we probably would jump on that and try and say, well, it was because Cain was a little bit more greedy and didn't hand over. But you look at that story really closely, and there really isn't a reason. And what this story ends up doing is you notice when God comes and he confronts Cain after he's killed Abel, he confronts Cain and he says in terms of, why are you angry?

[36:49]

And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it." I think what the story is trying to tell us is that there's a perceived unfairness on the part of Cain towards the way God acted. There's a favoritism. And that the story is trying to say what the real challenge that comes before Cain is to deal with the anger. and the sense of being treated unfairly. He's supposed to master that. And that's the key thing that he needs to deal with. And I think if you look at this and you go through the rest of the Genesis stories, and you get to the point where parents show favoritism towards children, and that's going to show up in the Joseph story. This issue of favoritism, I think, in the book of Genesis really relates to the fact that God chose one people.

[37:51]

And you walk through that land of Israel and it's beautiful, but you wonder, why is it that God chose this place and these people? And we really don't have an answer for that as to why God picked this one particular people out. But the I think the issue is that it's really important to, in terms of this history of salvation, is to accept that and to move forward with it. And we see here where Cain found great difficulty with that. But I think monastically what this has a lesson embedded in this for us is we know that a lot of our spiritual fathers and leaders from the early centuries, Cassian in particular, one of the big concerns was how we dealt with anger. and that somehow that was really corrosive. If we didn't figure out a way to address that head-on, right at the beginning of when we experienced that, that it can play tricks on us, it can go below the surface, and it can drive us in ways that we probably aren't really fully aware of what's going on.

[39:06]

So, the issue of anger that comes through here in this story at the very beginning, it's almost as if God is saying that unfairness is going to inevitably be an experience for every one of us, and that the key question is how we deal with it constructively rather than trying to make sure that we get revenge, get justice, or whatever in this case. So, in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 5, Jesus challenges us with the command that prior to the Eucharist, if any one of us has a dispute with another in the community, that we must first go and become reconciled. And in practice, this is really going to stretch us. and it may be too high of an expectation at times, but it points us in the right direction, and it emphasizes the urgency of seeking reconciliation.

[40:08]

And so, we may take some intermediate steps, such as praying some of the Lament Psalms, that have implications against our foes. For example, if you look at Psalm 34, verses 4 through 6, it says, Let them be put to shame and dishonor, who seek after my life. Let them be turned back and confounded, who devise evil against me. Let them be like chaff before the wind, with the angel of the Lord driving them on. And this may strike us as a kind of prayer, well, that belongs to the Old Testament. But there's a realism in these imprecations in the Psalms that we should stay with and not dismiss it too readily. When we feel unfairly treated, we are angry, we want to get even. But these laments which include these imprecations, they invite us to express our anger and they give us very strong language for doing so with the goal that we move beyond this anger.

[41:15]

In fact, when someone is outraged at another, it may be a very good thing to pull out Psalm 109, which is, with its long list of curses, it's really quite outrageous at points. So, it includes the following, May his days be few. May another seize his goods. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. May his children wander about and beg. May they be driven out of the ruins they inhabit. May the creditor seize all that he has. May strangers plunder the fruits of his toil. May his posterity be cut off, and may his name be blotted out in the second generation." And so after reciting a few of these verses, one who has been wronged and is quite angry probably will say, well, I've been hurt, but it's not quite that bad. So you're ready to sort of back off. from this. So, I think in some ways there's a real wisdom in these Old Testament psalms because they acknowledge the legitimacy and the reality of how we do experience hurt and anger at points.

[42:30]

And that the most important thing that we're doing then when we pray through these psalms and acknowledge these implications, and if we happen to pick up the psalm at a point when I I feel really wronged and I pray this. The movement obviously is I'm taking my experience and I'm taking it before God and I'm asking God to deal with this. And it's a way of handing it over and letting it go. So, again, I think the wisdom of the Psalter, the more you go through this, it's trying to tell us that all human emotions have a place, and they have a place before God. And that the Psalter really tries to bring those forward, so that we're, not only when we're experiencing them, but when things may be going very well for us and we pray one of these real strong lament psalms, it does invite us to acknowledge that perhaps this has been part of my experience some other time, or it

[43:36]

in even another way, it invites us to acknowledge that there are people in other parts of the globe that are experiencing this at this point, and it's almost like our intercession or our solidarity and feeling with them at that point. So, the strong language of the laments, we took Psalm 137, which is where you dash your babies on the rocks at the end. We used to pray that for noon prayer almost all the time. And there began to be a discussion about should we actually because we have so many visitors that come in, and we pray that at noon, and we prayed along. The first part of it's wonderful. How can I forget your Jerusalem, etc. But you get to that last little section, and you've got these monks up there saying that we ought to be dashing. So the question was, do we quit praying the psalm, or do we excerpt that piece out of there? And there has been a movement towards excerpting those, but doing that,

[44:39]

I can see the logic of it, but there also is a point at which if we were praying them privately, or at least the people that were part of this were there all the time, we could talk about this and see why it really is important to acknowledge that sentiment that's at the end of that psalm, and to realize that there probably are people in present-day Iraq, for example, where they feel that, and they would like their Babylon, which is probably us, to undergo that kind of experience for all of the trauma that they've experienced. So, it's a way of making our prayer not just my prayer, but it's prayer for all of God's people. So, the favoritism then in that Cain and Abel story, so the favoritism that God shows to Abel, it's echoed in Jacob's treatment of his son Joseph.

[45:41]

Jacob favors Joseph and Benjamin because they were born from Rachel, who was his favorite wife. So, when you start reading Genesis 37, Joseph, who's 17 years old, and if you think of lifespans at that time, maybe 40. Psalm says 70 or 80 if you're strong, but that seems to be really stretching it. They've gone through king's lists trying to figure out how many of these did the Kings, who would have had a very special privileged life, how long did they live? And they're backing this off in the 40s or so. So by age 17, this kid ought to be out carrying his part of the deal. So it may be a clue that he was kind of had his father's best interests, and he got special treatment. So his brothers are out tending the flocks. They're at quite a distance. Jacob sends Joseph to them to see how they're doing, and he's supposed to bring back a report to them.

[46:47]

And he sets out, and of course he's got this coat on, which his father had given it to him, and it symbolized that favoritism. And Joseph, of course, the way we meet him, he does, he tells them these dreams that he's received. And so he comes off as kind of a brash young fellow, and it's easy to see why his brothers, they're supposed to bow down to him, why he was, he got their wrath. So, when the stage is set then in this remote region for the brothers to get back at him, and the intent of the majority of them is to murder him, but Reuben and Judah, they want to punish him or to send him away, and they don't want to shed blood. In the end, Joseph is sold to the Midianite traders who take him to Egypt, but they take his cloak and they slaughter a goat and they dip the coat in it.

[47:51]

their alibi to Jacob will be that Joseph was killed by wild animals. Their slaughter of a goat ends up being the substitute for Joseph, the blood of the goat in place of the blood of Joseph. A few decades ago, there was a literary critic or social philosopher by the name of Rene Girard And he introduced a theory on the origin of animal sacrifice that fits in well with this Joseph story. At the end of the story, we see then that the blood of the goat substitutes for the blood of Joseph. This theorist, Girard, he hypothesized that the fact that we see animal sacrifice, you see it in almost every culture regardless. And it didn't just diffuse from one place, but it seems to have grown up within each culture on its own. And he argues that it's a means of diffusing irresolvable tensions within the community.

[48:55]

So what he hypothesizes is that when you get humans gathering in groups and they see one person doing a good deed and you really find that very appealing. And so you look up to the person and you begin to imitate this. And this happens repeatedly throughout the community where one is imitating the other. And if you imitate someone who's advanced beyond you, after you do this so long, you start to narrow the distance between. And so instead of being just honoring the person by imitating, you've actually turned into a rival for them. So Girard's point is that by this kind of imitating action and this the increasing of a number of rivalries within the community started getting tensions to where it was almost like everyone against everybody else is how his theory goes. And he says what they figured then is they found one person who had done something that they all could agree that this person had done something wrong and therefore there was some common thread that drew them together.

[50:08]

And so they all ganged up on this one person. which, of course, we understand that immediately is a kind of scapegoating, because usually what happens is it's not just what the person has done, but because it's diffusing a lot of other tensions that we have, more gets funneled into this one incident than what is appropriate in that case. So, what happens then is that, in Girard's theory, is that this one individual that was turned into a scapegoat was banished from the community or killed. And obviously that kind of killing of another person was not going to last very long, so they decided to substitute animals for this instead of human going. So they would substitute and the life of the, once the life of the animal was taken, that it somehow also, by substitution, tended to resolve tensions within that community.

[51:09]

Whether this theory is fully credible or not, it's one that's caught a lot of attention, and it does, I think, in my mind, what I find really helpful about it, is it makes me aware of this all-too-human mechanism of scapegoating which we can slip into and do a lot of harm. There's another kind of this ganging up or rivalry that we can slip into at times that I refer to as triangling in our conversation. And what this means is that in conversing with another that I'm acquainted with, But somewhat, I don't really know the person too well yet, and I'm a bit uneasy of how I connect with this other person. And so the uneasiness that I feel as we talk along, it gets diffused by talking about someone else who's not there, and usually it's in a form of criticism.

[52:16]

And so we kind of put this person on the outside. This person who is made into the other or the outsider in the context of the conversation is the one who is taking away all of these anxious vibes about whether I am acceptable or not to the person that I am in conversation with. Whenever and wherever this kind of triangling shows up, it's obviously, as we all know, it's not a constructive way to build a friendship. And it seems to be the problem that lies at the heart of gossip when gossip is understood in a negative way. it's speaking ill of another without the other person being there with the intention to dismiss the person rather than to perhaps take a conflict or concern directly into the person. So it's a variation on this whole theme of rivalry and how we connect. Rivalry obviously doesn't just occur between human beings, although that's our primary place in which we see it.

[53:25]

It also takes a form in which humans try to take over the place of God. We see this biblically, most clearly it shows up in the Tower of Babel story. People say to one another, come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. The problem is that God has commanded the first human couple to be fruitful, multiply, and spread abroad on the earth. But these humans that build the Tower of Babel, they seem to have another vision, which is alternative to that of God. They want to resist spreading over the earth, and instead what they're after in building this tower, as the story tells us, is that they're trying to make a name for themselves. And it's a kind of immortality that these humans wanted was not one that's typical in the Israelite tradition, the way that people found immortality, which they didn't really think of afterlife in a meaningful way.

[54:35]

They thought of it, you know, I have a family and I live on in my descendants. But this other form where you try to do something grand, you make a monument, you do something great that people are going to remember you by. The Tower of Babel story is trying to call that and to critique this. This plan was one that aimed to make them occupy a place in the heavens. They were trying to go their own way and as autonomous beings to live in an alternative way over against God. So God, we know, intervenes, acts very decisively to stop this action in which they would have become God's rivals. A similar form of divine intervention shows up at the end of the Garden of Eden story. And we see the first human couple. They've been expelled and driven out of Eden. But God, who's speaking with another heavenly beings at that point, says, Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

[55:43]

And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, God then stations the flaming cherub with the flaming sword there to try and keep them from getting to the tree of life at that point. and it would keep them out of the garden. So this eating of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil had given human beings a new level of perception, but it also has given to us a new level of responsibility. Humans now possess this godlike capacity to reason that would allow them to search into the mysteries of the universe. But at the same time, they would make discoveries that would challenge the very existence of humans. So knowledge, which is a very desirable and it's a divine-like reality, it's a reality that can become too much for us sometimes as humans and become subject to some of our baser, more individualistic desires that undercut the common good and undermine the fabric of the human community.

[56:59]

Perhaps it was in the early monastic tradition, they were very skeptical of wisdom that came in from other cultures. And it was more or less, they were very biblical centered. And you wonder if this kind of knowledge of the liberal arts was something that they had a little bit of skepticism of how we would use this at that point. I remember a few years ago when the news came out of the first cloning of animals. And there was a prediction at that time that the cloning of humans was not very far off. One of my friends who's a scientist, he was very much concerned about this kind of development because he had a sense that there was something momentous in this cloning act in which he said it was almost as if humans were taking over this divine capacity to create life.

[58:03]

So when the first human beings broke the taboo of not eating that fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no turning back. the divine capacity or the way of knowing has become part of us. And it becomes something that we delight in and we benefit greatly from. But on the other hand, it also is a very heavy burden that could undermine us. So there's a real doubleness, there's an ambiguity about that kind of knowledge, which feeds into this whole question then of how do humans become rivals with God? And of course, competing with God is at the opposite pole of praising God. And somehow to be good stewards of creation, which is that exalted role that we have from God at creation, we have to curb our desires either to secure ourselves or to act apart from God as autonomous beings.

[59:11]

We're doomed now. We're outside of Eden, so we're doomed to seek for knowledge. How we handle this knowledge is the question. And the Bible encourages us to praise God and to be ready to praise others for their very good deeds as a way of kind of putting this other very good capacity that we have, divine-like capacity of thinking, reasoning, searching, it puts that within a bigger context. There's something really much more vital and fundamental to being human, which is to be in right relationship with God, to praise God. So if we do that, we probably have some counterbalance to this other kind of searching that we're in seeking for knowledge. So is there a tendency within Christian life to refrain from praising one another for fear that that other person might become proud? And I often wonder about that in monastic life.

[60:14]

Well, of course, I don't praise this person too directly. They might take it too much to heart and become proud. But I think that probably is not much of a difficulty. And it's probably a rationalization that I would use on my own part not to praise someone. The failure to affirm others can have a negative effect on the atmosphere in a community, but perhaps what's even more problematic about not affirming someone else is what it says to each one of us, what's going on in my own heart, why am I Why am I reluctant to affirm that other person and to encourage them? So if I compete with others, then I'm saying in my heart that what's really important for me is what I do for myself. So what I accomplish is so important that I even unconsciously try to protect that and to make it unique.

[61:22]

But what really, is it true that what really counts is what I accomplish? We can't get back to the garden by our own efforts, that Garden of Eden, harmony, right relationship with God. But we do have to come into right relationship with God. But we are not going to be able to just sort of move right back into that garden. As Christians, we're asked and called to be watchful of what's going on in our own hearts and to curb those ambitions through which we try to secure ourselves. A while ago, I was reading, it was about this time of year also, and I was reading at our community Eucharist, and the readings were from the Book of Tobit, And I was pronouncing this name in Persia as Ekbatana. It seemed right to me. One of our monks sent me this email shortly thereafter, and he spelled it out, and it was Ekbatana.

[62:28]

Which, of course, this is a good helpful reminder, but I, of course, my self-estimation, I teach Old Testament. What are you doing trying to tell me how to pronounce this? But, you know, it clearly was within, it was a very important kind of thing. But what is it that would make me resist that and to push off against that kind of correction? And learning how to take that kind of criticism is another kind of barometer which says, am I really too caught up in what I accomplish and what I do? And can I live a little bit more freely in this regard? So how does the ego get control of our discernment such that we overinvest in securing ourselves and the image that we want to project of ourselves?

[63:33]

Is it true then, that as some contemporary theorists contend, that a greater temptation for spiritual growth of Christians is work, rather than, we look back into Augustinian times, early Christian times, and you almost get the preoccupation is you've got to avoid sexual temptation. That was the big one that you had to really be on your guard for. But more and more theorists are starting to say that maybe the big, the real issue, the big temptation that we have is this effort to secure ourselves, what we do by our own efforts and how we build ourselves up, that that can probably be a greater disadvantage to our spiritual growth. So is the vision that guides our day-to-day lives large enough to keep us on track in the search for God? Or does our vision allow us to stay on a kind of treadmill in which over and over again we keep shoring up this ego, which of course always needs more affirmation, and not allowing that presence of God to put us in a bigger world?

[64:55]

So I'll conclude. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, shall be, world without end. Amen.

[65:15]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ