Good morning, everyone, and happy feast day, happy feast of St. Nicomias. Certainly very important in our life. Made me think of a book by Gerald O'Collins, who taught theology in Australian Jesuit, who taught many years at the Gregorian in Rome. He has a little book called Trinity and Self-Giving. And he says there are four moments of Christian life He sees them as sort of sequential, but I think they're interactive, and I'm leading up to a story about Pocomius. Those four moments of the Christian life are first conversion, that moves into kenosis or self-emptying, and then it flowers into diakonia and koinonia, service and community. And there's a wonderful story about Acomius that he was, you know, a young Coptic peasant who was captured by the Roman army.

[01:01]

And he was put in a cage with some other prisoners aboard ship. And when they were traveling on the Nile, they had to stop. at night and unload the cages and I think they gave her bread and water, just minimal food. But the local Christians came around in that village and fed the prisoners. And that so touched Pachomius that it was the beginning of his conversion to Christ. So I think that's a very good example of how it may be the service of Christians, the extension of love, and the koinonia, that means the deeper conversion. So they're interactive things in the Christian life. My topic for this morning is wisdom, and Benedictine wisdom. Proverbs chapter 4 says, love wisdom and it will embrace you. I think monks historically have been devoted to wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible.

[02:08]

In fact, one old Benedictine sister said to me one time, I would keep the wisdom literature and the Gospel of Saint John, everything else can go. Well, that's a radical thought, but it shows her preference, you know, it showed her preference. And I had a chance to go to Tanzania a number of years ago, to the Komobolese house in Tanzania, and I decided, you know, to take just a minimum of books, so I took a small Bible And I decided for my Lectio, I would simply concentrate on wisdom literature. And it was a wonderful way to deepen my appreciation. There's parts of wisdom literature that can be very easily prayed. For example, when Solomon became king, he felt very inadequate. And so he prayed, and he knew he needed wisdom for the mission that he had been given.

[03:10]

But what he prayed for was a listening heart. Give me, O Lord, a listening heart. And in Hebrew, that's the Leb Shemaya. The Leb Shemaya. The listening heart. Very Benedictine. You know, listen, my son, my daughter, to your master's precepts. So the listening heart is central to Benedictine life, as you know. So let me just read that passage from Wisdom, Chapter 7. Solomon's respect for wisdom, and so I prayed, and understanding was given me. I entreated, and the spirit of wisdom came to me. I esteemed her more than scepters and thrones. Compared with her, I held riches as nothing. I reckoned no priceless stone to be her peer, for compared with her, all gold is a pinch of sand, and beside her, silver ranks as mud. I loved wisdom more than health or beauty, referred her to the light, since her radiance never sleeps.

[04:17]

In her company all good things came to me, and at her hands riches not to be numbered. All these I delighted in since wisdom brings them, but as yet I did not know she was their mother. See all these feminine images about wisdom. Wisdom is, you know, salientia in Latin and sophia in Greek. Every language I've looked into, wisdom is feminine. What I learned without self-interest, I pass on without reserve. I do not intend to hide her riches, for she is an inexhaustible treasure to men, and those who acquire it win God's friendship, commended as they are to Him by the benefits of her teaching. When I was in Tanzania and I didn't speak Swahili and I didn't speak Italian, there was only one sister who knew some English, so I had a lot of solitude. And I was concentrating on wisdom literature, but what occurred to me as I continued to pray and reflect on wisdom literature is that how practical wisdom is and how earthly, you know, and how it's a fundament, a foundation.

[05:36]

And I thought to myself, I'm going to, when I read these passages, substitute the word contemplation for wisdom. And that really gave me a different side to contemplation. You know, we in the West have made contemplation sort of the top of the ascetical mountain, you know, the last flag on the top, and if you struggle up, you know, you'll finally get to contemplation. But contemplation is a human thing, and perhaps it's right from the beginning. That's, I think, how Benedictines look upon contemplation. Our whole life is contemplative. Our way of life is contemplative. So wisdom is one way of looking at that. Wisdom is certainly a gift of the Holy Spirit in our tradition. Very quickly, in early Christianity, Christ is identified as wisdom because the intertestamental period of Judaism was very interested in wisdom as it was reaching out to the wider Hellenistic world of the time.

[06:45]

And so, for example, Matthew's Gospel is presenting Christ as wisdom. The Beatitudes are the new covenant, the new teaching on the mount. We have a friend, a sister of Zion, who comes every year to make retreat with us for over 10 years now, Sister Celia Deutsch, and she has a book titled The Lady is Wisdom, which is Christ as Wisdom in the Gospel of Matthew. Wonderful book, wonderful book. In our tradition, we've always identified Mary as the Seat of Wisdom, the Seat of Sapientiae, and I believe it was St. Alpha, the great Benedictine, who wrote the office for Mary as Seat of Wisdom. So wisdom is not abstract, you know, like we make sort of abstract and remote, very rare.

[07:47]

But wisdom is not abstract, it's not conceptual, not complicated. It's not about knowing a mass of things and then it reaches a critical mass and then it becomes wisdom. Actually, wisdom is very concrete, very practical, very birthy, and wise people have moxie. That old word, moxie, they know how to do things, they know how to live. They have practical wisdom. That's one of the reasons that people sought out Saint Seraphim of Seraph, is that he gave them practical wisdom. I happen to do quite a bit of spiritual direction. I always say I don't believe in it, but people come and want help, so I end up talking to them. Frequently they just need advice about practical things in their life, challenges they have, and so on. So wisdom is about knowing how to live.

[08:48]

It's about knowing how to live. And that's why I think Benedictines are frequently described as having wisdom. Because the rhythm of life that is Benedictine life are very practical. Wise ones, elders, sages, for example, the wise persons in Native American tribes, interestingly, are not the medicine men, who have a great deal of knowledge and so forth, and are leaders, but the real wisdom figures in Native American tribes are the grandmothers, the grandmothers, because they have collected the wisdom. They are the people who share wisdom. So we, I think, as Benedictines, need a deeper regard for wisdom, for the sapiential instinct in the human heart, so that we need to appreciate wisdom wherever it can be found. For example, I was talking about humility last night, and I forgot to mention that one of my favorite commentaries on the chapter on wisdom in the Holy Rule

[09:57]

is from China, it's the Tao Te Ching, the Way and its Power by Lao Tzu, which you ought to read sometime. I'm sure you must have it in the library. It's about lowliness, you know, and water as an image of taking the low places. A wonderful meditation about receptivity of heart. The Tao is feminine and receptive and so forth. So I think we need to form people with a taste for sapiential theology and sapiential spirituality. Not only an initial formation, but also an ongoing formation. There's a Benedictine sister I know who, over the years, has been struck by the readings and mantas from patristic and monastic writers. And so she has gone more and more into patristic and monastic sources. You know, maybe there's a second doctrine reading from St.

[11:04]

Andrews or whatever. And she has gone on to do her own reading in these sources and kind of self-educate in that whole area. So this is the kind of thing we're exposed to in monastic life, and we need to deepen it. Another Benedictine sister told me one time, I went to communion, and this was before Vatican II, I guess, and I knelt down, and in a split second, it's almost as if I saw the whole of Scripture, the meaning of all of Scripture at once, but I can't describe it. and that it was beyond speaking. I believe that's genuine. So wisdom is a powerful force in our lives as benedictines. To give people a taste for the sapiential, I think, for example, we have to look back to Fr. Sean McClare's famous book, The Love of Learning and Desire for God. His chapter

[12:08]

maybe not the whole book, but particularly the chapter on monastic culture or monastic theology compared to the new theology that was arising in the 12th century, the scholastic, more technical, conceptual, analytic kind of theology. I think that's still a live question in our day. Some theology has gotten so complicated in the way I like reading it, you know, but I can see how it can be a kind of ivory tower diversion in itself. And some of theology nowadays, the postmodern theology and so forth, is As the 12th century monastic writers were saying, St. Bernard, William, St. Julian, and so forth, it's iconoclastic. It kind of destroys faith. A young woman who came on retreat, this was maybe five or six years ago, she had gone to a theological school for her masters on the East Coast.

[13:09]

And she said, the problem is that I got a master's in theology and now I have no faith. I said, well, I suggest that you think about being a missionary. A missionary in this country or a missionary abroad, you know, get into practical Christian service, you know, and see if you can rebuild your faith. One of the Commodolese prior generals, Emanuele Barcellini, spoke to the Congress of Abbots, this was probably 15 years ago, I'd say, and he said, I challenged the theological school at San Ginselmo to teach more sapiential theology. Now, one of the professors came up to me a couple months after that and said, I think we do teach it. He felt sort of challenged by that whole thing. But we ought to emphasize it. We ought to teach people a taste of it. Sapere, to taste, is the root of the word sapiential.

[14:12]

So to give people a taste of it. I'd like to share a story as kind of an old-timer in monastic life. It's humbling to say that, an old-timer in monastic life. But back in 1980, I was at Collegeville and I was having a conversation with Fr. Michael Marks, the liturgist at Collegeville. And we were talking, we got talking about the book called The Doctrine of Spiritual Perfection by Anselm Stoltz. You may not know it. I encourage you to dip into it. But let me tell you how Anselm Stoltz, a German Benedictine monk, was inspired to write this book. It was written perhaps in the late 30s, I would say. At any rate, he was a teacher of theology at St. Anselmo, and he was the teacher of Aquinas to mystic theology. He was a fanatic about St.

[15:13]

Thomas, and quite a regalist about St. Thomas, and so very challenging. But one summer, he had the summer off, and he thought, what I'm going to do is I'm going to spend my summer reading St. Thomas Aquinas' works beginning to end, Okay. He had never read the sermons of Thomas Aquinas. And what he found in the sermons of Thomas Aquinas, and of course he would read everything that was recommended in the footnotes also, was the more monastic, patristic tradition. Okay. And so the doctrine of spiritual perfection is rooted in that. And it goes back to, you know, the earliest senses of mysticism. For the Eastern Church, for example, all Christian life is mystical. You know, it's not just a rare experience, okay? So it's a wonderful book, and it was out of print for a long time. About five years ago, it was reprinted, and it should have been reprinted, because there's a comparable book by Pullen, the Jesuit, called The Graces of Interior Prayer.

[16:18]

I think some of the older monks may know that. Maybe as Benedictines you'd have saved it, but anyhow, it's all about the phenomenon of mysticism and the rare, you know, exceptions of mystical life and so forth. So Stoltz's book is really a wonderful linking with the pre-Thomistic tradition. One of the greatest writers about wisdom nowadays is Father Bruno Barnhart, an eternifier at Luxor in California. Those books, I have to admit, are not easy to read. His first book on wisdom is called Second Simplicity, and his argument is that in early Christianity, we had a first simplicity, that there was an integration in early Christianity, but eventually it was lost. And I think it's very interesting to understand why it was lost. At any rate, another book that he wrote is a commentary on John's gospel called The Good Wine.

[17:23]

And if you've never dipped into that, I suggest you try it. Again, it's a bit complicated, but the insights are very, very rich. Sister Sheila, who's at our monastery, is a student of both. She's a great Latinist and also knows Greek, and happened to be reading The Good Wine a number of years ago. And so she has in her hermitage a great big 10-foot chart of all of Bruno Bartholdt's book, The Good Wine. She could easily give several presentations on Bruno's insights from The Good Wine. And just another source that I'll point to, a more recent source, a few years ago Christopher Pramuk, P-R-A-M-U-K, a scholar of Thomas Merton, wrote a book called Sophia, The Monastic Wisdom of Thomas Merton. a very exceptional book, and Patrick Hart, who was Thomas Merton's secretary, said this is the best book on Merton that was ever written, and I have the same opinion of it.

[18:34]

It's a wonderful book, not only about Merton's contribution, but about the recovery of wisdom in our day and age. So the Benedictine way is seen as a way of wisdom. because of its scriptural liturgical foundation, always part of monastic culture, and a great wisdom about living in community. After all, the way of life has survived for 15 centuries and been passed on generation to generation in different cultures and so forth, which is absolutely remarkable. When I was studying next door to him, I was walking down Lexington Avenue one day, And I had a message in my pocket. I forgot to call the secretary at the theology office. I thought it was just about usual business, you know, something I had to take care of. So I pulled it out of my pocket and I went to a telethon booth and I called the secretary at Horton and she says, you've got to call this woman.

[19:41]

Here's the number. She wants to give a million dollars to the Benedictine Order. I thought, here I am, Lord. So, well, I knew it wasn't my business to accept a million dollars on behalf of the Benedictine Order, so I contacted the head of the congregation out in Minnesota with the sisters, and I said, well, I called the woman. She had an apartment in New York City. She was a secretary for the Franklin Mint in New York City. Philadelphia, Franklin Mint makes commemorative medals. This was 1974 or so, and she said, we know that there's an anniversary coming up for Saint Benedict. That was still six years ahead, so show us how far ahead they've come. And we've never done a commemorative medal that old. for 1,500 years. We really want to do it, and we're willing to give a million dollars to the Benedictines if we can do it."

[20:41]

And I said, well, it's not my decision to make. So I put her in contact with the head of one congregation, and I guess when the presidents of the congregations got together, they talked about it, decided not to do it because there were already plans by various Benedictine groups to do their own commemorative medal. It's too bad that they turned down the million dollars. All right, maybe there were strains attached, I don't know. At any rate, Peter Warren, the founder of the Catholic Worker, wrote a series of easy essays And he was very much indebted to the Benedictine tradition and he has one easy essay that's about the Benedictine tradition. And he summarizes three elements in the Benedictine tradition that he feels are essential to Benedictine wisdom. Here's what they are. Cult, culture, and cultivation.

[21:43]

Cult meaning liturgy. Culture meaning the whole aspect of study, lexio, you know, love of learning, all of that sort of thing, at least in an informal sense. And then cultivation, historically in the sense of agriculture. But maybe nowadays we did stretch it to the whole concept of right livelihood and sustainability and ecological living and so forth. I picked up an old copy of St. John's Abbey magazine, the banner, a couple days ago. They have the largest solar farm in the state of Minnesota. It covers acres. I think it's four acres or something like that. Our house, we're trying to figure out how to buy one to put on the roof. Here's St. John's with four acres of solar panels. But, you know, it all fits into that sense of integration that Peter Morin saw in the Benedictine tradition.

[22:46]

Cult, culture, cultivation. And all three words are basically coming out of the word cult. Liturgy, spiritual development, culture, and cultivation. There's a quote that I often a view from James Deshaint, who eventually has founded a Orthodox monastery in Canada, I think, in Montreal. He says, you go to a monastery expecting to see otherworldly men and women, and you will be disappointed and possibly scandalized by the time spent there in such mundane tasks as milking cows, manuring fields, pitching hay, baking bread, keeping bees, making jelly. Yet the secret of holiness, wholeness, and health is there, where the life is a carefully, even artistically constructed dialogue of spirit with creation.

[23:47]

Out of that dialogue grows true humanness. That was probably written over 30 years ago, but, you know, I think we also have to see, you know, the whole impact of the cyber world on monastic life and selling things through the internet and so forth. These are also weights of right livelihood that are being cultivated in our day. I have over The last 25 years or more, every summer, I've given Benedictine experience retreats, which were founded by Esther de Waal. And they're meant for laypeople, but sometimes clergy and priests attend them. And so I've given Benedictine experience retreats in Washington, DC, and Dallas, and California, and Canada, all over New England. And the general response that lay people have after living the pattern of Benedictine life, for example, in California, which is a one-week retreat, there's a great deal of emphasis there on liturgy, and they have a wonderful choir director that trains everybody in chant and chanting the Psalms and so forth.

[25:10]

So it's a one-week experience of really experiencing something of Benedictine rhythm. So when I ask the participants, what do you find most helpful for your own life in what you experience here at the Benedictine retreats? And the answer is almost unanimously, it's the element of moderation and balance. That contemporary life is so out of whack, so pressured, so off center, so much into multitasking that the rhythm of the life and the silence. The fostered interiority of that week is so special to them. In California, we have people that have come back for almost 25 years. Every year, it's their yearly retreat, you know, because they find it so helpful. Many have become Benedictine objects, for example. So that's the wisdom of Benedictine life.

[26:13]

It's a wisdom of knowing how to live and that's the wisdom of Benedict. It's a tested pattern of living in community and his knowledge of human nature and his sensitivity to the weak and the sick and the poor and the old and so forth. It's a masterful presentation of a wisdom of living, and that's one reason it's lasted for so long. I'm going to talk before the end of the week about hospitality, one conference on hospitality, because that's also a very important aspect of wisdom for contemporary people. I'd like to share some insights from Hildegard of Wengen, great 12th century Benedictine nun who was finally officially declared a saint within the last year. A remarkable person, an abbess, a writer, a visionary.

[27:14]

She wrote music, and not only did she write her own music, but she created the notations for the music, and wrote plays. And a prophetic figure had the courage to stand up against the local bishop, and he put the whole community, her and the whole community, under interdict. Quite a feminist before the age of feminism. but a really profound person and very gifted. And in the medieval world, they imagined wisdom as an angel, a symbol. That's the angel of wisdom. We talk about the gift of wisdom, but they also imagined an angel of wisdom. And she has a little elephant of wisdom that is, I think, packed with insight. In some of the recordings of Hildegard's music, this is frequently included.

[28:16]

It's called O Virtu Sapientiae, O Virtue of Wisdom, O Virtu Sapientiae. It's in a book called The Symphonia, which is a collection of some of her liturgical writings. At any rate, here's how it goes. I'm going to read it in Latin first. I apologize for those of you who may not know Latin that well, but then I'll give you a translation. O Virtu Sapientiae, O Virtue of Wisdom. And this is the line that I just absolutely love. Quae circulans circulisti, you circle and circling. that this wisdom... I imagine that angel as a spinning psychedelic angel. You know, the colors in the Divine Mercy card and pastels. And I see that whirling around the angel of wisdom. But this sense that there's a dynamism, you know. Quaichurquan's Chirquhwisti. I'd love to make sweatshirts with Quaichurquan's Chirquhwisti. I don't think many people would understand, but...

[29:18]

I love that phrase, you know, it's an infinitive. Circling and circle, you circle and circling. In una via habit abhita, you quicken the world in your clasp. Tris alas habens, you have three wings. One wing lifts to heaven, Hvaram, Uta, Una, and Baltam, Volat. And Baltram, Tara, Sudha. The other one goes to the earth. One wing goes to heaven, the other goes to the earth. And the third goes all around. So it's really a six-winged angel. You know, the Seraphim are six wings. So two wings go to heaven, two wings go to earth, third flies all around. So this is imagery and this is metaphor, but there is, I think, a deep wisdom in this, an infant wisdom. Loves to be sith, seeketh to danger it, gosabientia. Praise to Sophia, let all the earth praise her.

[30:21]

This is another translation, now energy of wisdom you who circled and circling encompassing all in one path that possesses life having three wings and which one flies on high and the second distills from the earth and the third flies everywhere. Praise be to you as befits you, oh wisdom. It flies everywhere. It's inclusive, which is a characteristic of the feminine. It's embracive. It integrates. It keeps bringing more in. Now, the Iroquois Indians here in New York State had a longhouse governance. And so if they were going to include more people, you simply put more rafters on the longhouse. But widening and accepting and embracing and then integrating Okay. Now, what's so significant about this anaphytic wisdom? It's all dimensions.

[31:25]

It's heaven to earth. Okay. Just like the ladder of humility is heaven to earth. It's the access of all reality. In a sense, it's Christ. Okay. Heaven to earth. It's the incarnation. Okay. And then it's the power of coming out of that, okay? And the third flies all around, heaven, earth, and all reality, okay? So it's about integration and the dynamism of wisdom and ongoing integration. And so that getting to a plateau in our life, you know, thinking we have all the answers and got it all figured out and so forth, that's dead, you know. Wisdom, the Holy Spirit, will not just forward, find the light wherever it's bubbling, you know, out in secular culture, but it will make us discerning also, not just, you know, everything, but discerning about what needs to be valued and included.

[32:28]

some of the Cistercian fathers in the 12th century, when they were writing commentaries on the Song of Songs, they came across a passage that says, Wisdom cries in the streets. And it's very interesting how they interpreted that. Wisdom does cry in the streets, and so Garak Vigni, I think it is, I forget which one, but one of the Cistercian fathers says, That means we have to go out to see where wisdom's yeasting new life, okay? In the secular world of our time and so forth. So here you imagine these first assertions off in a swamp, right? That's where Cito was, you know, closed away from the world and they're talking, look at the way Bernard went out and got involved in politics and preached the crusade, God bless him. So, you know, I mean, They have this impulse that the spirit has to reach out. It has to find where the spirit is even in the so-called secular world and so forth.

[33:32]

So one wing goes to heaven, one wing goes to the earth, third goes all around. Now I'd like to relate this to something in the Sufi tradition. The Sufis, as you know, are the mystical branch of Islam. And there's something about the Sufis that I think, well, first of all, they wear white robes. And some of the scholars believe that the white robes are influenced by Christian monks that they were in contact with. But there is an intensity and dedication in the Sufi path that I think is very similar to Christian monastic dedication intensity. But the Sufis are frequently just lay people in small villages, you know, who get together. And there's a group of Sufis called the whirling dervishes. Whirling dervishes, they actually whirl and twirl as they dance. I've seen them at St. John the Divine in New York.

[34:34]

Maybe you've seen films or pictures of them. It's very beautiful because as they wear a red vest and have white boobs and as they twirl, and whirl. Their white ropes go out with centrifugal force. Very, very meditative. And they chant the name of God when they do this whirling dance. But this is how they're trained to do it. They go to a meditation hall and their right foot They usually wear sandals. They put a nail between the big toe and the next toe. They really nail your foot right to the floor, meaning you can never escape the earth. You can't escape the concrete. You've got to remain in contact. But it's not so tight that you can't twirl, okay? And so then you begin to pivot. Well, first you start in deep interiority and recollection. It's sort of like Stacio, you know, or just sitting in recollection in chapel. And then you open your arms, but the right arm goes to heaven, like Hilary Leonard.

[35:39]

And you've got in that axis, you know, of the connection between heaven and earth. And then you begin to tilt your head towards that sacred axis. We look upon it, I think, as Christ, you know, connecting heaven and earth, the incarnation. And then you begin to twirl with the left hand going out to bless all of creation. So the right hand is open to heaven to receive the blessing of heaven. And by the way, the word for that is Baraka, which means similar to Barak. Barakay is the word behind Eucharist, okay? So to receive the blessing of heaven, to be empowered, okay? Filled with the Spirit, and then the blessing to all creation. And you just, you know, go around like this. And so that the spiritual receptivity is not for private bliss, you know? It's about becoming empowered at the center so that this blessing goes out to all creation.

[36:47]

The Buddhists, when they meditate, sometimes do something they call Metta meditation, which is consciously meditating, centering, becoming quiet, but extending blessing to all creation. And I think we do that too. Maybe, yes, certainly not in a systematic way, but in the universal prayers at the liturgy and so forth. everything must be included. It's in Hildegard's pattern, lifting one hand to heaven, one to earth, and a third to us all around. And so the Hildegard's angel is that same dynamism. There's something similar, I think, in China. The sage is indicated by three bars. One is heaven, the middle one is the human, and the third is the earth.

[37:51]

But the sage connects them all with a vertical line. And so, uniting heaven and earth and fostering the human, that's how the Confucians would talk about it, is the spiritual path. The sage in the East, and I think there's a great, great future for Benedictine life in the Far East, that the sage is the person that would recognize Benedict as a sage personality, uniting heaven and earth and enriching the human. So this is wisdom, and that's the kind of sapiential instinct and life that we ought to live, one that integrates heaven and earth and the human, okay? Not just up there in the clouds, you know, up and away, up, up, and away transcendence, but bringing all of those realms together, heaven, the human, and the earth, okay?

[38:57]

And what I like about Hildegard's Anophent Wisdom is that it's a generative thing. It's an ongoing intensity and dynamism and further and further inclusion by Chirico and Chiricalisty. I'd like to end with a reading from Father Bruno Barnhart. about the new wisdom that he would like to see emerging in our time. And I really think it is emerging. There are some wonderful things happening in theology. And Bruno says this about the new wisdom. He says the new wisdom is the Holy Spirit. He simply identifies the new wisdom as the Holy Spirit. It is feminine, but not only feminine. And by the way, the language here is kind of, I was going to say excessive, but it's effusive. And he's a poet and he loves poetry, so this is kind of a poetic thing breaking forth.

[39:59]

It flees definition by exceeding definition, by flying rings and ellipses, ovals and spheroids around definition. You know, it amplifies what I was talking about last night about humility. Amplify it, break it open. It is more than wisdom or any other term. It exceeds every concept and word. It is the fullness that is seething in each moment, that is swelling within the now. It is neither head nor center. It has no center, and yet it is nothing but center. Paradox, okay? It is center everywhere, full possibility at every point, now and it is all here now. Your life is a body that is at every point on its surface in contact with infinity and is developing a sense for this new reality. The reality is new because it is absolute newness and comprehensible by none of your senses while pouring in through all of your senses.

[41:02]

The new wisdom is not a wisdom, not an elite tenure track, not any track anyway. It is always and no way. Here you begin every moment at zero and quickly arrive at the speed of light. It is necessary to be always beginning, always coming from zero, and therefore always coming into the maximum, into totality. The central axis, you know, in a sense, is zero, you know. But then it moves out into totality and integration and so forth. There's a new book on the Holy Spirit by Dierbert or Mushu, kind of, I'll try to read the whole theological world. Irish theologian kind of breaks out on the frontiers in theology, but a new book on the Holy Spirit integrates the theology of the Holy Spirit with insights from indigenous cultures and contemporary science, such as quantum physics.

[42:09]

Not an easy book to read, but some wonderful insights in it. You ought to take a look at it. It would take a year to really conquer this book. But when I read that quotation from Father Bruno, all I could say was, wow. And then you say, well, what did he mean? It's hard to say what he meant, except that he's talking about The energy. It's not a definition, it's not a concept, it's an energy. And that's what the Holy Spirit is. You know, when Placide, you say, is talking about the Holy Spirit in chapter 7 of the Rule of Benedict, he says, the word is denomous, which is, in Greek, it's a power, it's an energy. And that energy of the Spirit is yeasting all of creation growth and our heart's growth too. And so wisdom is an important concept for us. And I think we need to be very conscious of the integration that's happening within the world nowadays.

[43:13]

Who are the people who are the pointers, the weathervanes pointing to the new wisdom? And how are we as communities opening up to that? It's hard, we only have three in winter, it's hard when you've got so much work to do to do the kind of reading that you would want to do. There's so much that's new and creative and insightful and we just don't have time to read it. So, anyhow. So, wisdom. Let me conclude with something by the Suffusion Fathers, which is a prayer to Christ as wisdom. When you have found Christ, when you have found wisdom, when you have found justice, holiness, and redemption, when you have found all these, hold them by affection and attention. What you have found by understanding, hold by diligence, and keep holding.

[44:16]

Hang on to the virtues until they hold on to you. Hold fast. To hold fast to Christ is also to be held by him, for he is the excellence and wisdom of God. Love wisdom, says the Proverbs, and it will embrace you.

[44:36]

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