For me to be back here at Bishop's Ranch, and this is the eighth year, and I've been a Benedictine 33 years, but I find this particular retreat very special. It always is a moment of renewal for me, year after year in a very special way. And more and more people are discovering the Benedictine heritage as something they want to tap into. People from all kinds of denominational backgrounds, and we had a paper in our folder from a Quaker and Roman Catholic and Anglican papers, of course, but it's now more and more an ecumenical source for many of us, I think. It could still seem to some a fairly exotic topic. Perhaps you also have some friends who raise an eyebrow when you say you're going off for a week or to listen to some tapes on Benedictine experience.

[01:04]

Isn't it something like getting into Pakistani camel herders' experience or Tanzanian basket weavers' experience, or something very remote and exotic and maybe pleasant for a moment of escape, but what does it have to do with the dramatic problems that we know are out there in the cities and inside, in the hearts of each one of us? There aren't many Benedictines here, it could be argued, in Vow, so is this kind of a moment of alienation, trying to relate to something that isn't precisely at the heart of your own vocation or charism? But the Benedictine is simply one instance of the monastic, and I think it can very convincingly be argued that there are many monastics here, many monks. We're all monks in one way or another, at one level or another.

[02:08]

Monk, monastic, these have an archetypical significance for each one of us. By the way, this is just a footnote, but monk is a gender-inclusive term, it's not gender-exclusive, and so many of our women monastics prefer that designation to nun or sister. Anyway, I'll leave that to that particular debate, but it's not at all a sexist term, but indeed is seen by women living the life as the more inclusive term. So the monk as universal archetype. There's a lovely collection of essays out, edited by Raimundo Panicar, called Blessed Simplicity, The Monk as Universal Archetype, and the title says it all, I think. He is an interesting writer. His mother is Spanish-Roman Catholic, and his father is Hindu-Indian, so he's very much

[03:14]

a bridge person, and he's taught for years at Harvard in the area of comparative religion, then for years at the University of California at Santa Barbara. So he's into all kinds of exotic experiences in Asia, in Europe, and in the United States. So he has that wider horizon that gives legitimacy to this kind of claim of universal archetypical significance. Well, he starts out his essay, The Archetype of the Monk, and he says, By monk I understand that person who aspires to reach the ultimate goal of life with all one's being, by concentrating on this one single and unique goal. So the monk is the person who focuses, who is after that one pearl of great price, who is after the one thing necessary.

[04:15]

Then he goes on to say, Well, that's all of us. The monk is simply someone who does that in such a focused and in some ways exclusive way that that person is a kind of a sacramental sign, an outward and visible sign of this grace and charism in all of us. So he goes on, page 11 of this, The thesis I am defending is that the monk is the expression of an archetype which is a constitutive dimension of all of human life. This archetype is a unique quality of each person. So I think Jack said rightly yesterday that we don't want to play games that we're all monks or nuns and vows or something like that. But we are at this level, at this deepest level, indeed monks and nuns. We're discovering this dimension of our yearning of our life.

[05:16]

He then goes on that there's a non-monastic dimension or pole in each one of us. He terms this, that pole of creative complexity. So you have on the one hand a blessed simplicity, the seeking after the ultimate, the absolute God, the one thing necessary. But then you have this other pole of all kinds of things that give expression to all those gifts and interests and abilities in each one of us. And the trick is not to just suppress one of these and go with the other, but to find some kind of creative interaction of these two. The blessed simplicity goal and pole finds an outward expression in the monk. The creative complexity pole finds a classical expression in the marriage vocation. And there again, that is archetypical.

[06:17]

It's as reasonable for married people to come for a week on Benedictine or monastic spirituality as it would be for a monk, such as myself, or someone single in the world, to go to a week that would explore the marriage archetype. Carl Stern says that all being is spousal. I think it's a lovely phrase. And Carl Jung says that we ignore that marriage archetype to our own peril. Not that we should all rush out and marry, but that we all have to come to terms with that yearning within us, within each one of us, for a happy conjunction of the feminine and the masculine within. So as according to, as I understand it, all of Jungian doctrine, it's not again an either-or, either the creative complexity or the blessed simplicity, either the classically monastic

[07:18]

or the classically spousal, but both-and in some kind of creative interplay. And the life vocation adventure is simply sorting out which of these is to take the lead, which of these is to be dominant, and then, having found that and having lived that thoroughly, not to repress, not to ignore that other group of us monks. Some years ago we were at a dinner party given by the dean of Grace Cathedral, Dean Jones. He's married and kids, and they were all there, and we were chatting about these two archetypical vocations, monastic and marital. And just to stir the pot a little, I said, don't you think that monastic celibacy is against nature? And he grinned and shot back immediately, if there's anything that's against nature, it's marriage.

[08:19]

And there was his wife and kids, and they grinned too, and they agreed also. But what do we mean by nature there? If we mean by what is classically called fallen nature, when each of us gets into our own little ego space and wants to be the center of the world and wants everything else to be simply in function to me, myself, and I, well then certainly marriage is against nature, and certainly the monastic charism is against nature. But if we mean nature the way the good Lord created us, then again, we're all of us. Monk, we're all of us called to that nuptial fulfillment. Merton goes on again and again, as do the fathers and the mothers of the Church, about that essentially contemplative vocation of Adam and Eve, to be with God in that immediacy and trust that paradise, that nakedness, expresses.

[09:25]

But also, man and woman, God created them. This is the image of God in its fullness. So right back at the origin of it all, we have these two archetypes in a fruitful play. And redemption, what the Lord brings us, is to restore those two in their creative interplay and to bring them to a new fecundity in Christ. So we're all here, and we're all listening to this tape, hopefully thousands of us, simply because this is about all of us. This has universal significance. And about each one of us, also in a very personal way, as Jack was saying this morning, as we claim this archetype and incarnate it in our own personal story. But to talk about the archetypical significance of this theme is a liberating thing, because

[10:27]

it gets us beyond simply the egocentric focus. It's not just me wanting to be a big monk, or me wanting to have the best wife on the block or something. This is something deeper. This is about that most profound yearning in my heart, in your heart, in all of us. And then we want to, again, integrate that in our personal story, make it individuated, so that it is my way of being monk, and your way of being monk, my way of living the nuptial calling and your way. Augustine says, you have made us for yourself, oh Lord, and we are restless till we rest in you. This is about just the ultimate yearning of our flesh and bones, and it's at that level that we want to be monk, at that level that we want also to live out that nuptial again.

[11:30]

Because we are talking about something at this level, there's also the shadow side, if we want to be good classical Jungians. Every archetype has its shadow side, and we want to be aware of that. Even in its lightsome side, an archetype can become so intoxicating, and I can relate to it in a very unhealthy way, so that the whole thing does become alienating. I simply, forgetting my own very concrete humanity, my own very personal story and limits and woundedness, etc., want to become monk archetype. And we get a bit of that with the people who come to us at our monastery and want to become monks. In what sense? They want to become monks sometimes, and that can be very dangerous. And so we want to ask how we're relating to this archetype, and it can't be in too obsessed,

[12:31]

addictive a way. It wants to be with that freedom and with that rationality and just that common sense, and some deep sense of humility that keeps us healthy here. And then the archetype itself, however healthy a way we relate to it, it can be alienating. It can have its dark side. It can get into a kind of a spiritual pride elitism kind of thing. Well, those people are just lay people, or just diocesan priests, but I'm a monk. This is postgraduate religiosity. And that, of course, is the pits. That's the ultimate temptation is spiritual arrogance, spiritual pride. And so this is a very tricky business. As we're quite aware, there's the classic icon of the monks ascending Jacob's Ladder.

[13:36]

Well, the farther you get up, the more dangerous the fall, and this is expressed very vividly in a wonderful icon of Mount Sinai. And the higher you get up, then when you fall, you can break every bone in your body. So that, as St. Benedict wisely says, it's only by descending into more profound humility every day that we can more securely walk in this monastic way, or indeed in the way of marriage, I think. The person who's single in the world, I think, can creatively relate to both of these in a very interesting way. I think one can argue, convincingly, that Jesus was single in the world, and Jesus was monk. Pelican has a wonderful book out about Christ through the centuries, and one of the archetypical ways of seeing Christ is Christ the monk, but Christ is also the spouse. Well, Christ, as a single person in the world, who literally, it would seem, was neither

[14:39]

a Qumran monk or married to Mary Magdalene or anyone else, he can relate to these in a way that challenges each of us in our own particular location to relate to both of them. But it can be also a dark and constricted way of living our Christian life, if you get into the monastic in an unhealthy way. I don't know how many of you have seen that film, Name of the Rose, or read the huge, pretentious novel, but the author there, in a delightful Italian way, explores all the sinister alleys and dark corners of this kind of thing, and it can get very sick indeed. I think seeing the Name of the Rose should be part of the agenda of the monastic archetype, so that one doesn't get too ethereal and triumphalistic about it all. It can get Manichean, the body is bad, creation is bad, all that kind of thing.

[15:47]

It can get Manichean, I'm blocking on the word, it's masochistic, that's it, I've got to hurt myself to really grow in God's love. Apparently a true story of that Sunday school teacher who asks the kids, what does Jesus want most? And one of them waves his hand and says, I know, pain. So this is the way some of us were brought up, and so we have to be careful. I wasn't, I was brought up a mellow Anglican, and Jesus wants most that we enjoy, but for some of us it can get into that. And so I think this doesn't mean don't explore this mysterious dimension of all this, but it means explore very carefully, because if it is a universal archetype, we're not living this dimension validly unless we can live it in every moment, not just when we're

[16:52]

in the sanctuary, not just, John, when we're chanting Gregorian, not just when we're kneeling before the lovely Varian icon, or whatever way we particularly focus on the monastic, but it should be available to us in every moment, also in the irritating moments, moments when things don't quite go right, in the moments that don't have much significance, really. They should have significance through a kind of monastic mindfulness and presence to that moment. Somehow God is there at the heart of it, and that's the key, and sometimes God is there in those unexpected and less significant moments in a deeper way than in the sublime moments. So to be open to the universality of this reality, meaning in every culture, in every time, but also in every nook and corner of my own life.

[17:53]

I don't have to be monk only when I'm in a particularly pious and exalted, when I'm angry, when I'm depressed, when I'm just blah, or when I'm happily mellow. Those are also appropriately monastic moments to claim and to relate to this heart of the matter. There's this lovely book out by Father Brian Taylor, an Episcopal priest, who is also a husband and father of Benedictine oblate. His book, Spirituality for Everyday Living, an Adaptation of the Rule of Saint Benedict. This is published by Liturgical Press, so this is another one of those lovely ecumenical ventures. Just in this introduction he says, balance, zeal, and moderation are the qualities of the rule of Saint Benedict that make it a humane approach for imperfect human beings who seek the perfection of God in their lives.

[18:55]

In this sense, Benedict's rule is incarnational. It works with people as they are in this world, calling them to what they can become in Christ. The Benedictine way is a force from within that acts as leaven in the loaf. To become fully human in this life as it has been given to us is to allow the sacredness of the ordinary to become manifest. I think that's a lovely phrase, it could be kind of our motto, to allow the sacredness of the ordinary to become manifest. This is the Benedictine. To seek God in work, in cooking, prayer, community, greeting strangers, dealing with possessions. This is to enter into the mystery of the incarnation. Benedict did not add to the gospel of Jesus Christ, he simply provided a way of seeing Christ's continual incarnation in this world. So this is a particularly demanding challenge.

[19:58]

We could all compartmentalize our spirituality, and the very term is ambiguous, spirituality. It's not a biblical term, and some good traditions of the Reformed are rather hesitant about it. I taught some seven years up in Berkeley a course on history of Christian spirituality. I would ask the Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians to come in to talk about Lutheran approach to spirituality, Presbyterian, etc. And first they had to work through all this skepticism, because maybe there is no such thing as a Lutheran approach to spirituality, because the term itself suggests that we get into some exquisite, sublime spirituality level of our being, and Luther, if he was anything, he was earthy, even bawdy in his more delightful moments. And that's the way he wants Christianity to be lived, and so is Wingley, etc.

[20:59]

I think they challenge us to be careful not to compartmentalize what we're talking about. So, one good monastic practice is just to be aware of where I am, just geographically. It might be in this lovely space that does suggest the monastic, but it might also be on a bus, or I'm caught in a traffic jam, or in the line in the grocery store, or whatever. That is a monastic space. And then to be aware of where I am within, really. It might be a space of anger, depression, fear, sadness, whatever. That is a monastic space, and claim that if we really want to achieve an integration. So, our homework assignment, if we're really going to take seriously this monastic claim on us, this challenge of the rule for us, is to universalize it, to see that it is applicable

[22:04]

for everything, and if it isn't, then we're not applying it right. Also for sin, there's that lovely text of Paul, I think it's Romans 8, for those who love God, all things work to the good. Augustine has this powerful footnote, all things, even sin, if sin is the occasion for compunction, for independence, for a deeper opening out to God. So, yes, the Benedictine, we can be for all of us, and indeed the Benedictine life, because it wants to be encountered at this deepest level of monasticism of the heart, and not just at the level of scapulars, and smells, and bells, and things. And, of course, in talking about the monastic, we're talking about something that even Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on.

[23:05]

If one thinks about it at all, of course there are Buddhist monks, there are Hindu monks, there is some kind of counterpart to the monastic in any and every religious tradition. I was back east giving this Benedictine Experience Week at the lovely Episcopal Holy Cross Motherhouse at West Park, and one of the monks took me up to see this shaker village, and a very moving powerful place and witness of these people, but it's classically monastic, including the commitment to celibacy, to shared goods, to obedience, to a life of balance and seriousness, and focus on the gospel, etc. Right here in the far left of the Protestant Reform is this classically monastic form of life that gets expressed even in the chairs they build. This is an exhilarating aspect of getting in touch with the monastic, is getting in touch

[24:10]

with the universal yearning for God, and this is the way, perhaps, to encounter Hinduism at its deeper level, or Buddhism. The Vatican got involved in the East-West Dialogue rather late, but they did it with a great enthusiasm, so the Vatican phoned up all these great spiritual leaders of Hinduism and invited them to Rome for a dialogue, and many of them said yes, and so they started the Vatican thinking, well, now what do we do? They discovered, to their astonishment, that all these people who were coming were monks in one way or another. So they got the Benedictine Monastery and our own Canalese Monastery in Rome on the phone and said, hey, there's some monks coming, what does this mean? So they housed these monks with us, and of course there was an immediate harmony and synchronicity there, because the basic goal was the same, blessed simplicity, whether one

[25:13]

is Christian or Jewish or Hindu or Buddhist or Sufi or whatever. So one of the things this does is open up a very exciting horizon. It's kind of like the firmament in the heavens. Tim here said that he's been studying monasticism for years and only got up to the rule of St. Benedict, and this, I assume, is in the Christian tradition only. You can spend a lifetime on Proconius, on the Desert Fathers and Mothers, on Basil, and just in the Christian tradition, never get to Benedict. Or you can spend a lifetime on 8th-century English monasticism or 14th-century monasticism of the Sinai or of Mount Athos, or of this particular current of Buddhist tradition, Zen Buddhist monasticism. We at Luca Mali have this bond of friendship with the Tassajara Zen Buddhist monks, and

[26:21]

then with the Zen Center in San Francisco, etc. And we're very aware that's a very different type of Buddhist monasticism than Tibetan Buddhist monasticism, so it's an extremely rich theme. So getting into it, it's not that we'll exhaust it with these tapes or with this week, or with a lifetime. We'll simply explore a little into the mystery, all the stories throughout history and in prehistory of how people have lived out this archetype, to challenge us to live it out in a more expansive, inclusive way. So the conclusion is that this can be a lifetime challenge, and hopefully it will be seen as this in the best possible sense. One of the ways of living the monastic that immediately precedes Jesus and is the same

[27:28]

time as Jesus and John the Baptist and the Apostles is the Essene-Qumran tradition, right within the Jewish heritage. We've classically known about the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the high priests, these currents of Jewish spirituality of the time, but it's more recently that we've been learning about this fascinating proto-monastic, monastic way of living the Jewish story, which is the Essene, which is Qumran. And if one looks closely at the life of Qumran, at the literature of the Essenes, what was involved, for instance, was a vow of celibacy for at least a core group, and then apparently there were married couples on the periphery of the experience, as in our monastery we have a married couple, obelisks, living also on our grounds. And this group of monks also had their vow of obedience to the spiritual leader, they

[28:34]

also had the sharing of goods, they had a three-year novitiate, they have all those kind of components that are characteristic of monastic life. And what makes it interesting is just the location of Qumran was within sight of where John the Baptist carried out his great ministry there of baptism there at the Jordan. So more and more biblical scholars, Anglican and of the Reformed and Roman Catholic, are exploring this fascinating, these echoes in the message of John the Baptist. And remember that John and Andrew, for instance, were disciples of John the Baptist, and then they switched, they went over to Jesus, bringing that experience, as the Zealots who went over to Jesus, or the Pharisees who went over to Jesus, inevitably brought that whole experience. Paul brings his whole experience. He might then react against it, but it's very much

[29:34]

there in his message and his way of experiencing and presenting Christ. So, we're starting to realize that here's something that from the beginning was in the apostolic community, and Raymond Brown has written some interesting things on the Qumran echoes in the Johannine literature, all those stark contrasts between life and death, truth and the lie, all this calling to this decisive moment. And in the synoptics, all those classic texts from Isaiah that are classic texts for the Essene literature, all this eschatological expectation, the moment of the arrival of the Messiah, etc. So, there was a time when it was thought that, at least in the Reform, that monasticism was kind of at a later contamination. There was your authentic, pure gospel way of living Christianity,

[30:40]

which was particularly Pauline. And then as the centuries come and go, this is diluted with all kinds of contaminations, and the worst of these is this monastic thing that comes from God knows where, and it certainly involves works of righteousness and the betrayal of the central Pauline insight of salvation by faith alone, etc. So, the monastic is the enemy, really, and so if you want to really live the gospel, you live in a real sense the anti-monastic. But I think more and more also the Reform is seeing that this isn't precisely the way it is, that this monastic, again, is part of the foundational and part of the nurturing and molding force of the self-understanding of the early Christian community. So as we get into our monastic archetype, we get into simply the primordial sources

[31:43]

of the Judeo-Christian experience that we encounter in John, that we encounter also in Paul, as Raymond Brown says. The Letter to the Hebrews is a classic Christian text with Essene echoes. So, one of the benefits, one of the perks of this kind of week and the listening of this tape, is to get into the origins also of the Christian experience. And some spiritual, some biblical experts, scholars, argue that Jesus was in his first period very much a disciple of John the Baptist. Well, this means he was doing something like a monastic novitiate. And some think that John the Baptist might even have spent a period at Qumran. I'm thumbing through my pages here to find that quote from Raymond Brown. But

[32:46]

here's a few quotes from his article on Qumran scrolls and the Johannine Gospels and Gospels and Epistles. The argument for the interrelation between the Johannine writings and the Qumran literature is indeed strong. Then he says after the Johannine there's the Pauline, there's also a Letter to the Hebrews. Virtually everyone who has studied the Qumran texts in the light of the New Testament has recognized the startling Qumran parallels in their narratives concerning John the Baptist. Almost every detail of his life and preaching has a Qumran affinity. From this it would seem likely that the Baptist, before his contact with the Christ, was in relationship with Qumran or other Essenes. Perhaps he was raised by the community or in contact with the community or the head of a quasi-Essene group. If this is true and if John, son of Zebedee, was his disciple, we can explain very well the Qumran impact

[33:48]

on the fourth Gospel. So hopefully what we're doing is seeming a little less exotic. And then as we go up to the sixth century, as we start to come to terms specifically with this one incarnation of the monastic, which is the rule of St. Benedict, there again we are coming to terms with a document that isn't marginal and exotic and curious, but then becomes extremely important and foundational for the rest of Western Christian spirituality. So if you're anti-Jung and you don't want to hear anything about archetypes and if you don't believe in the connection between the Johannine literature and Qumran, if you're Western, if you're a Christian in the Western tradition, there's monastic in you simply

[34:49]

through the historical influence of the rule of St. Benedict. Whether you are Episcopal or Roman Catholic or of the Reform, it's interesting now, the birthing forth of monastic experiences in the Reform, the Lutheran Benedictine communities in Europe and the United States and that splendid flourishing ecumenical monastic experience of Taizé, etc. So more and more the various traditions are claiming this heritage that's just there objectively. So if one's going to do spirituality in a serious way, part of this means get back to the roots, find out where we come from so we can understand in some more enlightened way where we are now and where we can go. Well, if we want to get to where we come from, the rule of St. Benedict is one of the classics, again, for all of the Christian traditions in the

[35:50]

West, certainly for the Roman Catholic tradition. For Roman Catholics, St. Benedict is officially the patron saint of Europe and patriarch of Western monasticism, so patriarch of this Western way of living this archetypical experience. And there's thousands and thousands of monks, nuns, sisters in the Roman Catholic tradition now, of Trappists and Black Benedictines and White Benedictines, and with quite an influence through colleges and retreat houses and parishes, if nothing else. But if you look at the literature in spirituality now, we have a whole table back there. I hope you think also of your Christmas shopping. It's interesting, so many are reading about Benedictine spirituality, and it's amazing to me how many Anglicans are doing this. Whether it be Esther de Waal, who in a certain way started all this discovery, reclaiming of the Benedictine

[36:56]

heritage for everyone, or it could be someone like Brian Taylor or Doreen Vest. There's a whole literature that's also Anglican, a whole literature that's Roman Catholic, but also more and more, again, the Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians are, and said, I'm not so superstitious as to believe in chance. So this is simply historical influence. The Benedictine centuries that so shaped England, all up and down England, it was a Benedictine way of living the gospel that was witnessed to the people in the towns and villages and also in the cities, through the cathedrals, through the parishes, so that the basic components of Benedictine life, liturgy, community, spiritual reading, personal prayer, these are the basic components of the Benedictine ethos. Martin

[37:57]

Thornton, in his classic English Spirituality, goes on and on about this Benedictine shape and concludes that the modern English Church is still thoroughly Benedictine, and he notes this parallel between the Book of Common Prayer on the one hand and the Rule of St. Benedict on the other, just the basic building blocks of spirituality. Esther de Waal, before she got into this thing of spirituality for the laity and for everyone, she was a medieval scholar, and she, in her introduction to a marvelous book, Seeking God the Way of St. Benedict, she mentions just this historical foundation to it all, and she has some statistics, I think, that are fascinating. By the beginning of the 13th century in England and Wales alone, the number of houses of black monks had grown to 300, and the white monks, the Cistercians, had some 70 houses. This is just the monks, and I

[39:00]

asked her, she said she doesn't mean the nuns there, so this is 370 houses just in England in the 1200s, England and Wales. Well, I got out my atlas and pocket calculator, there are 58,000 square miles in England and Wales. I bet you didn't even know that constant. Now, California is almost three times as big as that, so if there were 370 Benedictine houses, you see where I'm getting? That is the equivalent of something like a thousand Benedictine abbeys and priories, cathedral houses, up and down just California. You can imagine what kind of impact that would have on the shape of Christianity as it would be lived in California. And as Esther mentions, there's this amazing phenomenon, more in England than also the nations on the continents, of the

[40:05]

cathedral priory, of the monastics who would staff the cathedral so that the bishop would be a monk, as classics Dunstan or Anselm, the monastic choir would be monastics, the choir of the cathedral would be monastics, and the outreach, the catechism, the schools. One can make a case that the cradle of our schools and universities, as we know them in the West, are the Benedictine schools. So she's arguing, if you're Anglican, you've got to get into the Benedictine just to know what it means, what it really means in a deeper level to be Anglican. I think the same thing can certainly be said of the Roman Catholic, and this opens up all kinds of ecumenical resources. This is what Vatican II calls spiritual ecumenism at a level that's more profound than simply exploring the

[41:07]

doctrinal parallels or problems or disciplinary problems in our churches, but how, by spirituality, if we mean life in the Spirit, how we, in the Spirit, open our heart to the Father in Christ, then this is the very deepest level to explore our uniqueness, our diversity, and how Christ is also calling us to be one. So all that is just a big kind of commercial for, let's do what you already want to do, but hopefully this will be an ongoing motivation. We need this motivation. It takes focus and commitment to come back to this center, to come back to the still point of the world, which is this blessed simplicity, this cleaving to God alone. And so all of this hopefully will keep us on the way. Another final motive is, thank God, the rule of Saint Benedict is a good

[42:11]

rule. All of this could be true, and it could be a bad rule. There's all kinds of bad monastic rules out there, but in fact it's a rule that is filled with humanity, with a sense of balance, realism. It starts from where we are in our brokenness and limits, but it calls us to the perfection of the gospel. I think Brian Cater caught that dialectic very nicely. Benedict says that the abbot should propose monastic life that the weak don't fall into utter panic, and the strongest have still something to strive for. So it's that both-and origin says that the Word of God is very mysterious, such that the elephants can swim in it, and the gnats can wade in it. It should be the same for Benedictine spirituality, and it speaks to us wherever we are, in our darkest and most broken

[43:15]

moments, and also in our highest moments of communion with God. The great Anglican scholar Owen Shadwick writes of the rule, the spiritual teaching of Saint Benedict has now for more than 1,500 years influenced the religious life of Western Europe. It is as fresh and living today as it was in the days of St. Gregory the Great. Clear, simple, and wise. And the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that the rule of Saint Benedict is alone among the rules. It is a classic in the strict theological sense that it is this document that has generated a whole tradition, including, in a real sense, the Anglican and the Roman Catholic of subsequently. And that that tradition in key moments of renewal goes back to the original document to find the life and the force and the inspiration for renewal. It so transcends its own time that it can speak with a very

[44:22]

mysterious immediacy to us here in California, in this place, or back east in New York, or in England, or hopefully wherever. So for all of these reasons, let's with courage set out on this journey into the rule of Saint Benedict. Amen.

[44:43]

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