But it's worth hearing. It's something I found years ago, and it has to do with envy, and it's perhaps entertaining, but it's entitled Envy. It wasn't just the man. It was his shoes. and not so much the shoes as their flawless shine. Week after week he returned, unruffled, pink with shoes. I changed. One day placid, the next day raw. But those shoes and their men with them seemed to live in a preserve. The assaults suffered by my shoes in the course of a day somehow passed his by, deflected by a shield of self-assurance that descended from the man and enveloped his feet.

[01:13]

My eyes were drawn to his shoes as the tongue is helplessly attracted by a lodged particle of food. I tried to ignore them. to be happy with my own shoes, to find goodness in the man himself. But gleaming like the parquet of Versailles, they remained the sign of a superiority that I could only admire cross-eyed and urban peasant in clogs. To shine my own shoes meant nothing. They would gleam and remind me of his shoes. And his handkerchief! Not the working handkerchief, discreetly hidden, that makes all men one, but the breast-pocket handkerchief folded like a flower, insolently waving its multi-petaled head.

[02:19]

I considered wearing one like it. Nothing prevents a man from adopting a fashion from appearing at the office one day changed, but when I approached my dresser to select a suitable combed cotton square, perhaps a silk, my heart sank. I had no idea how to fold it. It kept coming out like that other handkerchief, the one you use. How many little points is right? Hadn't I read somewhere about a symbolism of the folds? Would I be inadvertently telling the world I was gay? I withdrew, sobered, but somewhere in the dead zones of my imagination, the offending image of his handkerchief lingered on, as white as a ghost, a grandeur that had escaped. Interesting little reflection on envy, covetousness. This evening I want to try to go through two more stages of development and looking at two more capital sins.

[03:30]

I hope we can do this. I hope we can fly through, although the material is getting a little bit longer and the day is getting longer, and we'll see what we can do. This is the one, this is the age of development that's so striking in the West, in our culture, and it is the one that involves the crisis of identity. And it was Erickson himself who coined the concept, not only the word, but the crisis of identity that occurs in adolescence that we are very familiar with in our culture. And the conflict is between identity and confusion at this stage. And so we see our young people walking around the mall with nose rings, earrings, and God knows what else, bolts in their neck, and hairdos, and hair dyed green and blue, and it's part of this process of coming of age in our culture.

[04:36]

It seems that it's more striking here than maybe in other places. The violence that gets associated with gang behavior is another fearful aspect of this age of development, but it certainly is. The question that keeps coming up is, who is this person? And the person is asking him or her the same question, who am I? The girls wear black fingernail polish and black lipstick, there's some strange behaviors and it's a question of identity. And Erickson was right on, especially with this one, that age really contends with this conflict of identity versus confusion, and there's an awful lot of confusion among the young people. Now, we would think that with the emergence of sexuality during this period of development, that lust would be the capital sin that we could associate here, but not so.

[05:39]

Pride is the one that perhaps is worth our reflection as we look at adolescence. Many look back on their own adolescence and own teenage time. This is getting extended, as we see, longer and longer. People are now about 30, I guess, when they get out of it, when they finish graduate school, because it's somehow linked with that whole dependency that we have on parents or institutions before we become able to assume an identity and set ourselves out working in the world. Many people look back at a time of pain and inner turbulence at adolescence, and that's not to be minimized. It can also be looked back as a time of an important awakening to the self. Now, we can ask ourselves or reflect on some questions about our own adolescence and things that we might remember.

[06:42]

I certainly remember it being a time when death became a reality. up until then it wasn't a real consideration, but that the limitation of life personally became a very, very important issue. And I think it was a question of vocation that emerged in that too, that if this is indeed a temporary arrangement, well, what is the meaning and purpose of it all? And so those questions came up in my reflection as well. There are positive as well as negative aspects of the conflicts that work in us. They can motivate us for growth as well as cause stagnation. Now, Erickson developed the concept of identity crisis because after the Second World War, he was working with patients in England who were neither malingerers nor shell-shocked.

[07:45]

They were people who were suffering the ravages of the Second World War, who weren't faking it, and nor were they, in the classic sense, shell-shocked, but they had lost a sense of personal sameness and historical continuity. That's what he called it, you know, through the experience of the war. It may be worth remembering that Teilhard de Chardin experienced a similar thing during the First World War. that the horror of that experience really caused a volcanic reaction in people's personality. It's the experience of Vietnam veterans and it's also the experience perhaps of some of the Gulf War veterans and certainly the experience of AIDS patients today. this crisis of identity and it raises issues of guilt and shame and all the other things that we've been talking about because it is a profound disturbance.

[08:56]

Now, it's evident in some of the disturbance that adolescents go through, the confusion, because they can be seen as having a war within. There perhaps may be corporate or communal dimensions of this identity issue too. The negative side of it though, is that confusion results. And the way out of that traditionally has been occupational identity. That when the young person focused on an occupation, he worked out the issue of identity. Holding on to a commitment would be another way that people have traditionally worked their way through this. Perceiving oneself in a social role valued by society or coping with the tension of self-reliance versus institutional dependency.

[10:05]

All these things are thrown up in the air today because people, young people, as we see, are not really able to make or hold on to commitments. It's really, really a problem. So it's an extreme experience in our culture, in our society. Now, pride is assigned to this age of life for our reflection. Pride is often considered the chief of the deadly sins and the root of all sin. Gregory the Great, following Cassian, puts pride at the top of the list. Pride. Pride is an exaggerated self-esteem or arrogant behavior. The sin of pride is in the exaggerated aspect. The excess is what is sinful. And now a number of sins derived from pride, conceit, vanity, vainglory, these exaggerated opinions that one can have of themselves, the excessive desire to be admired for achievements and appearance, or extreme conceit manifested by boasting and arrogance.

[11:16]

Karl Mininger, in his book Whatever Became of Sin, points out that pride appears most conspicuously in group pride, nationalism, or racism, or tribalism. The group, as a nation, may identify itself or its leader with God. The unconditional loyalty of all citizens is demanded then in the name of public safety and personal survival. And soon individuals have identified themselves with the group and that it is all for one and one for all. And anything that the group leader then decides to do is right. And that's probably the extreme of group pride. Self-respect, self-approval, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-affirmation are all part of the normal and healthy concern. Imbalance of self-concern and others equals the narcissism which is rampant, perhaps, in our time.

[12:29]

The failure of so many marriages in our culture, I don't know what the percentage is, 51%? 53%? I don't know. We bat that around and you hear pastoral articles or things are put out with this in mind. Many marriages, most marriages it seems today, fail. The percentage is over 50%. And it seems that that's the result of infatuation and love affairs that are based on this narcissism. And the people who are involved in this marriage that doesn't work often don't have a sense of identity. They're grasping for that. In other words, they're looking for intimacy, which is coming up later on, before they have achieved a sense of identity. The battle is essentially religious, that is going on in the person at this stage of life and perhaps having its overtones as we travel along through life.

[13:47]

World religions, no matter what they are, all have as essential theme the overcoming of one's self-love. The solution to the adolescent identity crisis is essentially religious. The answer to exaggerated self-centeredness is to become centered in God. You know, the overcoming of pride is perhaps a the way to God that is close to our hearts because of St. Benedict's rule. Humility, the traditional way to overcome pride, is an essential part of monastic life, and it is a characteristic of Benedictines. While Dominicans may be preaching and concerned for the truth, and Franciscans connected with poverty, the way of the monk is by humility. We have a lot in St.

[15:04]

Benedict's rule dealing with the notion of pride. The instruments of good works continually talk about pride as the enemy and it's all over the rule. Let's look at the 12 steps of humility shortly here and consider the fifth degree of humility The fifth degree of humility is that the monk hide from his abbot none of the evil thoughts that enter his heart or the sins committed in secret, but that he humbly confess them. Scripture urges us to do this when it says, Reveal your way to the Lord, and hope in Him. And again, Confess to the Lord, for He is good, and His mercy endures forever.

[16:07]

And the prophet likewise says, My offense I have made known to you, and my iniquities I have not covered up. I said, I will declare against myself my iniquities to the Lord, and you forgave the wickedness of my heart. Now, what might we find as a modern word for the fifth degree of humility? And the suggestion that's made is that romance be the concept to understand the fifth degree of humility. The relationship of individual and the guide is as intimate as any established in the course of life. One's spiritual director, one's guide, one's Abba, most people in the outside world use their analyst or their therapist, but that relationship is as intimate, in fact, perhaps more so than any others that we experience in the course of life.

[17:23]

People usually think of marriage as the natural corollary of romantic intimacy, but this is only one kind of union. The spiritual relationship is of a higher order. For a seeker, one who is on the journey to bear the most intimate thoughts to another, creates a spiritual union that will last forever. Hopes, dreams, weaknesses, failures, into the care of another is a spiritual romance that endures. Now, what might be a practical implementation of how to go about this and how to put this into practice in our life? If you're keeping a little notebook, expressions of camaraderie, cheerful assistance given or received.

[18:29]

ought to be jotted down. And not so much for the purpose of self-gratification, but for understanding that there is a relationship. that's going on. It would be helpful in the romance of our monastic life to keep track of expressions of camaraderie and community, cheerful assistance that's given or received, a kind word or an act just noted in a notebook that we can destroy, but just to look at and see that that occurs in the course of our experience. Let me go on quickly to look at the next stage of development, and then we can have a discussion. The next stage of development is, according to Erickson, is early adulthood. And the conflict is going to be between intimacy versus isolation.

[19:37]

And the sin that emerges here will be lust. Intimacy versus isolation. The developmental conflict at young adulthood stage, intimacy versus isolation, tells us that intimacy is only possible when the formulation of an identity is underway. People can only share intimacy after the identity has been established. This, of course, is a big problem. A big problem in our culture. It's a big problem with young people coming to the monastery today if they are not sure of their identity. They are incapable of achieving an intimacy with God or the romance that we were talking about with a guide to help them on their way to God. It's impossible if they don't have an identity. And this is a big problem.

[20:46]

As we've said already, it's the reason why so many marriages don't work. People who are unsure of identity will either shy away from interpersonal intimacy or engage in acts of intimacy that are promiscuous without true commitment or without genuine self-abandon. The person who is working on and successful in an emerging identity is willing and eager to fuse that identity with others. And that person is eager and able to commit themselves to affiliations and partnerships and to join organizations or a life partner. Now, it's very important for us to keep in mind that intimacy includes close friendships. close friendships with guides or mentors, and also a closeness with what some authors call the recesses of the self.

[21:55]

The failure to do this is isolation. Isolation is the opposite pole of intimacy, the inability to take chances. Withdrawal is the common form of isolation, but it can also be manifested in combativeness and competitiveness. Lust is the sin that can be considered as dominant or the flaw that emerges in this stage of a person's development. Lust is a desire to gratify the senses. It is also sexual desire, libido, often implying the desire for unrestrained gratification, or it is also an over-mastering desire, like the lust for power. Most writers focus on the sexual aspect of lust, and they overlook the aspect of a lust for power, or the relationship of sexual lust and lust for power, or domination.

[23:03]

or cruelty, which are expressions of that. Lust is never interested in partners, but only in self-gratification. It is not interested in choices, but accepts what is available. It surrenders the need and ability to give and receive. Lust seeks momentary gratification, and it envisions no continuity of relationship. It lives for the moment and returns to isolation. Unlike love, lust does not get involved and refuses to accept responsibility. As I said, lust usually involves cruelty and cruelty has many, many forms. Now, young adults are no more involved with lusty behavior than adolescents or older adults. It's placed for our consideration here at the young adult stage because of the conflict between intimacy and isolation.

[24:05]

Love is perhaps the real way out of the problem of lust. Love outlasts lust. Love is forever. It assumes new forms. It never ends. While lust is a fire that burns itself out, it lacks continuance. Love is an energy that lives through many transformations and thus defeats lust by outlasting it." Here is the key. perhaps to also with sexual problems that arise along the course of the journey. Oftentimes, you know, there's two extremes. Often sexuality or sexual problems are made too much of or else they're minimized.

[25:13]

A realistic look at this in ourselves as sexual beings, it's not an easy thing to do. And if anybody has figured out their own sexual problems, they can go for a walk with me tomorrow and tell me the secret. I mean, we have, and especially, it's complicated for celibates, it's perhaps even more complicated than for married people who haven't figured out their sexual lives. Some people have said that maybe there's an expression of God's sense of humor in all this. But it does touch us on the deepest levels, and that's why we're so sensitive to issues of sexuality. It touches our personality, and we're very Freudian, whether we like it or not, in our treatment of sex, because he based his whole dynamic theory on sex, and we seem to agree because of the importance that we give it.

[26:14]

It's either too important or not important enough. It's very, very hard to balance this. The example of Benedict is to roll in the thorns. Well, I remember walking up to Subiaco with one of the abbots on one of our visits, and he decided, the abbot from South Africa, Gernot, decided to take a shortcut. And he got caught in the thorns, and he arrived at the cave all ripped and bleeding, and he said to me, It didn't work. Well, our consciences, our notion of shame and guilt is worse than any thorn bush. And we can use sex to beat ourselves up with more than anything else. The secret is, if it's a problem along the monastic journey, Throw yourself into helping other people.

[27:18]

Make that the goal and focus of your life. And in other words, get the attention off yourself and off the issue of sexual problems. Let me go on quickly and just talk a little bit about how the extreme, of course, experience of sex and cruelty or lust and cruelty is rape. We had a very sad experience at our monastery almost a year ago of the lady in the gift shop being raped and robbed at knife point. What a horror for our community and for the whole place. One of the children from the school had escaped and he was sixteen years old and uh... unknown to any of of the school people or to us he had a criminal record of seventeen or twenty three i'm not sure juvenile offenses he wasn't supposed to be placed there well on the sunday morning the poor woman is in the shop alone and uh...

[28:23]

He comes to the door, and she gets nervous. I mean, you know, people have intuitive senses. Something's wrong. She goes in the storeroom. She's getting things ready to... He made her lock the doors, and then he robbed the place, and then he raped her at knife point. Fortunately, there was a visitor coming by and saw that something was wrong. and went back to the monastery and called the police. But in that time that it took him to get to the monastery, it had already occurred, he called the police. They were there in 30 seconds. They had been passing by in a police car when the call came in, and they captured this boy running from the building. And well, I mean, they got him. And of course, unfortunately, these things become part of the public record. So the newspaper had headlines for days about this rape at the Abbey, you know, and the gift shop is part of the Abbey.

[29:33]

It's a separate building, but it's part of the community and part of the monastery. So it's in the headlines and they're interviewing the abbot, and they're interviewing everybody they can. Fortunately, the woman is protected by law, so her privacy is. But the devastating, the devastating impact of that on her life. She no longer works in the gift shop, she works at the monastery, but it's very sad. She was unable to go shopping in the supermarket for almost a year. I mean, she just couldn't, she couldn't be alone. What an unfortunate thing. And of course, the case is coming up now and she's going to, everything will be brought up again when it goes to court. And the boy is being tried as an adult in our county. They tried to get it moved, but elections are coming up in the fall and everybody on the bandwagon making sure that this gets dealt out, and it's a real mess.

[30:35]

It's a real sad thing. But that's an extreme of lust, but brought to its horrible conclusion. Let's take a quick look at Saint Benedict and see what we might say about the sixth degree of humility. Saint Benedict says, The sixth degree of humility is that a monk be content with the poorest and worst of everything, and that in every occupation assigned him, he consider himself a bad and worthless workman, saying with the prophet, I am brought to nothing and I am without understanding. I have become as a beast of burden before you, before you, and I am always with you. Now, what word can we use to perhaps assist with the sixth degree of humility, I would suggest devotion.

[31:37]

The sacrifice of lesser interests to greater ideals. A devotion that requires and inspires action, not merely a feeling of pious pleasure. Now, what can we do practically to instill that notion of devotion in our lives? Focus on the best in your world. In your contacts with friends and visitors, with confreres, discover on purpose the ideal in all situations. It is through ordinary circumstances, through ordinary contacts, that we find eternal values. Well, I'm sorry I pushed through two things again tonight.

[32:42]

It's a long day. It wasn't easy to follow all these ideas and thoughts, but something in there may have sparked a comment or an idea or something that you might want to share. And all day, it seems to me that things change so fast that really it's not prudent to make the commitment. I mean, when I think of the Luke stories about getting a job, think about the Luke stories about getting a job. We had the pastor's recommendation. We had different recommendations. He went to a job that he was going to stay in for a good long time, and there was a loyalty between the company and the employee and all this kind of stuff, you know. That's absolutely gone now. And security. And I wouldn't, for example, I wouldn't urge anybody to get into political science on the graduate level.

[33:48]

Because the political situation is absolutely fluid. You didn't become any historian. Because there is no, the political science has lost its It's reasonable. You know, you've just, you got historical things flashing back and forth, but lost the science part of what happens in governance. But in jobs, for example, there's no loyalty between the employer and the employee. I shouldn't say no, it's a bit of a hard, but the downsizing, and you see it in sports teams. I mean, somebody's not any farther back than Joe DiMaggio or somebody talked to him. He was a Yankee, I believe, in New York. We're now playing for the team. Nothing's conceivable. Now these guys do these goofy dances when they make a touchdown as if they're the only person in the stadium, you know. And they, whoever plays against them, that's where they go. But I'm just thinking in terms of, let's say, the knowledge explosion in this, you know, in science and in business things.

[34:51]

Things change so fast. that what can you do that you're going to be doing the same thing learning more and so forth in 25 years or not. It just blows off the whole surface. And so you can't commit to it because it's such a moving target. It's frightening. It's frightening. And it has its impact upon people who might come knocking on the door. It really does. It has a terrible, terrible impact. I'm going to say some things and here's where I'm a borderline hypocrite. I have a laptop and I use it for communication by email and information. I've dabbled in the information age. But I do think, I do think one of the horrors that has happened has been the denigration of the word by cyberspace. Whereas the word in our culture has been, we have been people of the book and we honor and we gather around the word as a very, very important thing.

[36:00]

One of the things that happens in our, is happening in our culture is that, you know, you hit a button and where does it go? Off the screen. So that the word as written and honored is becoming fluid, right? It really is a difficulty. I don't know the answer to this. I mean, you have to use that little machine today, or else, I mean, it's very, very slow. I tried. I said I was going to do all my letter writing by hand. Well, you can't do it by hand anymore. You have to use the, I mean, especially with, I can be, and get an answer from confrères in Germany, you know, in a half a day. They'll answer their email and be in touch and it's amazing what a blessing that is on the one hand and then on the other it's, we're losing their respect or everything is changing so fast.

[37:10]

Well, the monastery is a place of stability and a source of being grounded. in the midst of all this. I think people have told me that they find it comforting, as they're writing and commuting to work, to know that there are monks praying in their monastery. It's a grounding for their life. Because they don't have that in their own life, but they know that there are monks, and they know monks, and they know that that's what they're doing. It's a grounding for them in their life. But they're willing to make that commitment themselves. And then we'll die out. And there'll be no monks. So it would be like the Japanese that have the Buddhist robot that comes down. Did you ever see that? Yeah, it's a funeral home, for example. And then it's a cybernetic Buddhist monk that you put in so many yen.

[38:15]

And then the monk comes and says the prayers and everything, the robot, and it goes back up. I think that it's dogfight at a Japanese temple. But my question is this, you know, looking at psychology, and it is important to look at psychology, but, you know, what some of you two have said makes me too leery of even accepting right off the bat Eric Cincinnati or anyone else's evaluation, because to what extent is the psychological result that they are studying affected by the situation in which they find themselves, or external situation, and not necessarily an intrinsic part of human psychology in itself. Do you see what I mean? That it could be the industrial revolution, say for example, that's causing that dislocation, rather than it being an intrinsic part of human psychology. And that would make a great deal of difference how you deal with it.

[39:17]

Because in other societies, In our own society, in the past, people were mature at 17 or 18. And making decisions for life. I mean, everything became clean at 17. It's curious too to look at photographs of people in the past. And to find out their ages, they don't look like what we have today. They don't look like children. They look like adults at 18 or 17. And it's very striking. We probably have produced this prolonged childishness in our culture. Dealing with it, what about the communication, what you were just talking about? Do you think that in monasteries, the idea of limiting access to that type of influence, like television, etc., because all of that is part of society, we don't have to...

[40:25]

So we're part of that. Those, the conversions and everything, they're strictly geared, they're very psychologically structured, they're professional, they touch us even when we're not aware of it. There are messages there, subliminal messages, purposefully placed there to move us. We're part of that society. So in a sense, the striving to flee the world, even in those days where they didn't have digital computers, they were still influenced by those things. Do you think they will know? I believe that. Do you have television in Nigeria? Every five minutes. Tanzania only got television about five years ago. It was forbidden by the government until about five or six years ago. And an interesting thing happening, of having visited that country over 15 or 16 years, to see in the middle of that time television arrived on the scene.

[41:29]

And it is causing trouble. All the worst programs are on. And I said, the children will learn English, but they're also going to learn the worst of sex and violence and drug abuse and everything else in Western, because they're buying all the programs that are cheap that are on the market from from the United States, and I thought it was a remarkable thing because nobody was talking or sharing their experience. Everybody's staring at the television. It's a novelty there, but there's something true about that. It's very regulated. In Lagos, in the big cities, it's 24 hours. In the States, only in the evening to 12 midnight. Now, as you are going to Namibia, you cannot do without a laptop. What are you going to do there? Probably draw in the sand. But there's something to be said about, in the monastic oasis, about how much of that ought to be part of... Because in the last, you know, I'm perfectly under control.

[42:49]

I'm just watching a movie. It's not going to do anything. No, because it appeals to the fantasy, and it is subliminal. Right. Later on it comes out in a monologue. We have all these difficulties. It's his name, how many, Milroy, his paper, but you people should have gone to Congress, his open paper was on that. What do we do with it? I mean, there it is in our culture. And it seems like, you know, just to deny it, you can't do that. And to take a full blast without any discernment, you can't do that either. So, somehow, we've got to work to think outwards of what's done. You know, it's interesting, then they don't talk about what you saw outside, now we... We'll bring outside into it. But the other thing, it's, you know, I'm not for child labor at all in that sense, but children in agricultural, when we were more of an agricultural society, had responsibilities.

[43:59]

And you can't give a kid any responsibility, not except dumping the garbage. He may be nasty. Most students, when they get to a graduate level, realize they've been stealing other people's ideas, and they have some of the awfulest self-images known to man, because they've never done anything, never had any real responsibility, and you can't give a kid responsibility these days, the way that our culture is structured. Now it's not 100% true, but it's a whole lot different than it was, and I think that's one of the factors that delays maturity, there is no responsibility in everything that's going on. Set in a way that that it wasn't you know and or it is or no you don't need to use your imagination and of course television I mean there's before it I don't think the sex the violence is nearest bad as it's a blanket to the imagination Where it's a radio and a broadcast right together and was interesting television everybody go is You know it's the kind of zombies because it damn you see everything there's no

[45:01]

Even in the list of baseball games, you've got to imagine again. It's the loss of imagination. We have talked about this at our general chapter in the past, about the decline of a reading culture. that whereas in the past, one would read and then engage the imagination, you know, following a text, that's declining. And that's an important monastic issue, because we are part of that reading culture. And if a culture is not reading, if it's using the video image, it does It does destroy imagination because it tells you. It's a control. Perhaps a violence.

[46:04]

It's telling you what you're seeing. I wanted to say that television creates a virtual environment in which many values are transmitted without any respect to whether they're good, bad, indifferent, violent, whatever. And in the moment that you're receiving them, you are most vulnerable and least resistant to them. They come at you. It's like taking a trip in a virtual, you know, a car trip where, you know, you've got this virtual reality. It's that easy. Fantasy and imagination, right, of being controlled. The other thing that I'm surprised at is that our culture is, in general, our society is accepting this and allowing it to go on. There are television cameras now on streets and towns that are watching the population, and I'm just surprised that there's no, that there's no protest of privacy here about, you know, of being able to walk down the street without being watched.

[47:16]

even in Anchorage. We called up some friends in California and had them look up on their computer on the Alaska cam. We were waving at a camera on top of a building that's taking everyone's picture. Do you remember the old European movie, Fahrenheit 751? Yes. Well that was where they used television to spy on people, to observe them. People sat in front of their television sets and got their marching orders for the day. and the whole country was controlled by farming. Do you know what the most, the city that has the most public televisions and cameras watching everyone? You would, well, if you're not familiar, and it's one of the so-called freer societies in the world. Stockholms. Wow. This is an interesting thing that we're being You know, when you see the push for democracy, you know, that we in our society push all over the world.

[48:21]

It's really not democracy, it's the market, so that then we can infect them and get them hooked on what we produce, right, or buy. Open up your media to us. Or bring television to the people and have them here, so they don't know... I'm sure they'll buy the products that are, you know... I think the big difference that I see is, you know, with all those means, entertainment. I think the problem is entertainment. But it's seen as a tool for learning. It's not worth a book or, you know, or a storyteller, you know, somebody telling you a story. It's true. But when people see that, you know, it comes as entertainment. And people are passing through entertainment and they have those machines that laughs, you know, when there's a show and then you're supposed to laugh with the machine. And, you know, then we are so sorry.

[49:22]

But then the machine is very loud and you're supposed to join in the laughter. But at the same time, you know, I'm amazed with all the small things, you know, that just a few articles that I've looked at, that I've read from Paris, Canada, from St. Louis, a psychologist in St. Louis. You can find out answers to questions. It's amazing. Yes. And he was so grateful also to be able to read it. Boy, it's a mixed blessing. You know, it's like... And we see, we have a little home page of somebody right there. I was there on the monastery 25 years ago and it meant so much to me. I want to bring my kids. I live now in Oregon. Sure, sure. And you see that you were influenced. I'm influenced by somebody's life and they're able to communicate with you.

[50:25]

You know, in Saint Benedict we talk about the seven steps of humility. The experience of Christ is very real to him. And the personal commitment to a person, not an ideal, or anything like that, but the person of Jesus Christ. I don't want to sound like an evangelist, but how do we, maybe something I've already learned, but how do we make that experience a reality in our lives? that it's not something that we just read a lot, but really find that experience of the real living person that we can make a commitment to. And that's what changes and transforms our lives. Right. It occurs in our experience rather than in our world of ideas or in our world of order, but somehow in the experience of grace that happens to us on the course of our sacred journey. It's easier to look back, I think, for everyone over our shoulders and see grace

[51:38]

in our past. And I think that story needs to be shared in monastic life. I think that's a way of doing it. I think with people coming in, and that requires a tremendous patience to share the story of God's grace and love acting in someone's life. You know, taking one through all of these difficult steps and all of these things, of somehow being able to share, maybe not in a large group, but with a group of neophytes to the life, about how God's grace has acted in one's personal history. I think sharing that story is the way of, you know, in one's development, in one's sexual life, in one's spiritual life, in one's, the whole course of the journey. But I think that's what's healing and binding together and perhaps a way of experiencing Christ in the community.

[52:41]

Yes. That is a common experience back home. We call it a testament. In living mass, time is allowed when people come and testify. But God's actions will help. So that makes other people be happy and when they repeat, they come back. So I think it's just like what we read about in the Exodus. That's a sharing. We met that in Diego Garcia. And I stopped going to the Navy church. I started going to the church for the overseas workers or the contract workers. And it was being run by an Italian Scalabrinian father. And the parish was more or less charismatic. But when Filipinos are charismatic, they're so conservative. But, and he used to frequently invite people into the pulpit on the Sunday evening mass to share their experience.

[53:50]

So parishes do that, they do that in stewardship, and it happens, it's happening in the church. Just, and a quick comment, it is the healing process in which AA does its best stuff, not in its discussions, but in the telling of the story. that is the real healing encounter with grace in a person's life. And that's always very, very beautiful. And it's done again and again. I always think about they have, they're doing perfectly what we're struggling with, evangelizing. And it's telling their story. You know, and without, it's not forced in a way, you know, it's being freely told. That's why I think the value of older men in the community is so beautiful. You know, you'd like to put a recorder around, but you can't, you know, get all the wisdom that somebody like that has.

[54:56]

Right, right. But again, our culture is saying that the very lack of genuine encounters makes it, if it's not a secular life, it's not a religious life. And we can think it is, but it is, and it has to be a secular experience. And I think that's, there was this man, an article in America or someplace, about the number of conservative people, the conservatism of people coming into monasteries and seminaries, but he said something which is which struck me, we came out of a very stable world and we're looking for some change. Chaos, looking for stability. I mean, this is not necessarily something wrong to start with. I'm trying to get some kind of balance. And okay, to us it looks like going back to where we came from, but... Mr. Tillings, what you should do is organize for African monks to come and be missionaries for us. They were listening to stories. There's a segment of the oceans that we touched on earlier, the Nigerian news floor and others, who challenged the phenomena of the oceans to bring to reality and to a point of experiential in some way.

[56:16]

I don't know how to explain it, but his articles treated it getting at the reality of the presence of Christ in mystery in sacramental life, especially in the Eucharist celebration, which is so necessary and needed because otherwise you're conceptualizing... Right, and it's experiential in the Eucharist, right. And I think that we've touched on it in the discussion a little bit there at that point, but that might be an important answer. George has talked about it in Bibles, you know, in things of Oronts of the past, and also in Nebuchadnezzar. Was it in Proclasia? Proclasia? Was it in Proclasia? No, that's Jeremy Driscoll. Oronts is the only thing. I see them except Studia Anselmiana.

[57:18]

We came in a odd place. Yeah, they were alone. But it wasn't... We looked for something else. We built that up so that the people can experience it. We are, you know, the Son of Christ in sacrament. And we've been glorious friends there. The things are there. It's up to us to... Maybe that's like the church in Africa, which is saying, I'm not saying this because you're here. But, you know, and there's such a thriving of opinions there, but they can experience it more directly than we can. They're all familiar with it. It's connected with their life. I was noticing, you know, where's the mystery in our celebration of the Eucharist? And going to church, I was looking at visually, it's very, very nice, but the altar boys were fooling around. And not that that's, boys are going to be naughty, but I said, To them, I was wondering, well, what does this mean to them, that the mystery is gone?

[58:24]

See, and then it's almost at the point where it can be ridiculed, and then it's completely ineffective. It's losing its, and how to enhance that. But it is a problem that society has, too. The idea of continuity of the life of the original life of people, what you are going to bring them. If there is no continuity there, go to get out, they'll fall back.

[58:52]

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