Unless anybody has any further questions connected with the other subject, the conversion of life, or the Last Christ. First of all, references. In Roberts, page 65, you'll find a number of books listed. And there are all kinds of things. This is a big subject, and I would divide the reference material, chiefly, into two lines. One is the theological, and the other is what I call the practical or the psychological, the practical side of celibacy. And of course, there's a lot of psychological development in the past 50 years, ever since Freud, particularly in this subject. And we can remember that when Freud introduced contemporary psychology, he did it from the angle of sexuality. So, our psychiatry, our psychoanalysis, our modern, contemporary psychotherapy has had a sexual orientation right from the beginning.

[01:07]

And this is not without reason, because the repression from which it erupted was largely in that direction, too. So we're in a kind of tumultuous era in that regard. We're far from being in a tranquil period when we can look at these things with a certain balance and a certain, what do you say, integration. And it's a time also when the theology of sexuality and the theology of marriage and of celibacy is not at all in a stable state and is developing very rapidly. And a lot of attitudes are being reconsidered in the Church. Consider the whole problem of women, the feminine priesthood. That's one of the cutting edges of the problem. The place of women, and the place of sexuality at the same time, and also the relationship of celibacy and marriage. So, it's a very interesting subject, for one thing because it's developing so rapidly, and also because it is much more central than perhaps we would feel it to our own lives.

[02:22]

And something that has to be considered in a positive way, rather than that color of repression with which all of sexuality has been treated for some time. And it has been said that Christian theology has never been able, really, to handle sexuality. In other words, this is something that maybe is just to come in our time. It's had to hold it off for the very long run, not been able to really integrate it. Now, we don't know why these things are true. Positively, we don't know why. We can see a lot of contingent historical reasons. So, I've asked Rick to try and find as many as he can of these reference books and put them on the shelf. But they're not of equal value. Some of them have to be handled with a great deal of caution. Especially Gergen, The Sexualist Heretic, which has been criticized very severely. It's got a very liberal attitude on a lot of social economics, so that one has to be handled with care.

[03:24]

I don't know whether you can put it on the shelf, but you can find it. A couple of them I would single out particularly to recommend. One of them is Ruth Teaches to Pray. There's a book on prayer, but in that short section, which many of you are probably familiar with, you've got a chapter called Praying with the Body, and he's got a section on celibacy, which begins on page 63. He's got 59 to 68 there, but the immediate section on celibacy begins on page 63. That which precedes the earlier pages are helpful to see the contents. But in there, he's got a whole monastic theology of celibacy in those few pages. He's got the foundation of prayer, even though this is a book on prayer. It's typical of Ruth's book. There's a great deal of theology concentrated in this book. The other one, again, Celibacy for Our Times, is a good treatment of the changing point of view of celibacy in our times.

[04:32]

It is, unlike Gergen, for instance, cautious, sufficiently cautious. It's also written from a somewhat contemplative point of view, because remember, Ron is somebody who's interested in a contemplative life. He's the one who wrote the Depths of God. He's got two book titles confused in one way. The Depths of God and Paths of Concentration, those two books. And he's into Chinese Buddhism, which is Christianity and Buddhism. Regan, R-A-G-U-I-N. I remember seeing him at the Vinus Symposium in 1977. Quite a good man. And then I haven't read all of these, of course. So, my own background, first time I went in, so we'll do what we can. We need to compliment Roberts a bit, because in treating each of the vows, he has to move quickly. We have to move quickly, too. But we want to get some of the theological foundation for what we're talking about,

[05:36]

so that you can get the roots of it, and so that you can study the depths of it and not just see it as a commitment or a renunciation or an aggravation, or even just as a vow, either under the legal aspect or even just under the practical aspect, but see the theological depth and richness of it. That's especially true with this far-tasted Chinese. So we'll try to compliment Roberts' treatment a bit. A few things to add to the references given in Roberts. First of all, the Dictionary of Biblical Theology is kind of a standard reference for these subjects of ours. The article on virginity. Possibly also the articles on marriage and on women, but the article on virginity. Now, Piper covers a lot of the same ground, if you read history, but Roberts doesn't cover it. He doesn't really give you the biblical doctrine of virginity. Secondly, that Merton collection by Father Jacob,

[06:42]

and Victor Xeroxed some of those pages for you, also on the vow, and there it's from very much a down-to-earth experience point of view, Merton is writing. He's not writing a theology of virginity, he does that somewhere else. I think he does it in the article on mystics and Zen masters, to which we refer, but I haven't looked at that recently. Then, I'd like to refer you to the Orthodox writers, especially of Documont and Clermont, because they're the ones who've really made a contribution in this area. Not so much on the practical level, but on the theological level. The theology of monastic celibacy, and also the theology of marriage. Over in the Orthodox Church you have some theologians who are not priests, they're married men, and this makes a difference in the way that they write. There's been a special, also, development in that area, in the last hundred years, in Russian Orthodox theology, which is brought out by these two men. Now, Documont is the one who really represents the breakthrough,

[07:45]

and he's a little wild in places, and then Clermont, I would say, is more selective and takes the best of Documont's thought and synthesizes it. So, I'll be quoting a couple of those people, or those two, I don't know. Would you like me to read the whole essay? Well, the trouble is that most of this stuff is in French. There's this book, The Struggle with God, by Documont, which you can look in there and see what he has to say about the Bible, in contrast to Documont, The Struggle with God, that's in English. Then you have an article of Clermont, which was in Cistercian Studies last year, wasn't it, 1979, called The Holy Spirit and Monasticism. Remember, we used it. The Holy Spirit and Monasticism today. So, Cistercian Studies, 1979, Part 4. So, that's the last issue of 1979. And I'll give you a couple of page numbers there, as a matter of fact.

[08:49]

I'll refer to these specifically later on. Pages 316, 327, 328, 329. He gives you some real insights there, regarding... Now, monastic celibacy is related to sort of the whole of theology. How you can fit it into this beautiful theological complex which the Orthodox make, you know, where they see things, the whole of the Cosmos and whatnot. How are we going to fit our monastic celibacy into this, at the same time as the... I have a document, E.V. I'll write it on the board. This board has to be good for something. You need some new chalk for the ladder. But you know what it is. I've got a couple of books directly on these subjects that are in French.

[09:59]

One is called Woman and the Salvation of the World, and the other is about the Sacrament of Marriage, which embody his personal theology of his monastery. I say personal theology. Actually, it's a singular term for the Christic people, but with some particular insights that have come from the last... developments of the last century. Now, these are things that you sort of... sow a few seeds of these ideas in your mind, in your heart, and then they develop through the years. It's a subject that needs to develop in order for you. It needs time to develop, too. Not only from your experience of living celibacy, that's more on a practical level, but from your, what do you call it, your gradual assimilation of the Word, of the Word of God and of theology. You'll find it's a pretty simple thread, I think. Which runs right through the center of your own life as well, even though it's one that's difficult for us to talk about. So, we only have a few classes to treat this,

[11:06]

and it's a big subject, so we'll sort of... Theologically, we can only skim the surface, and then try to make the commitment, the vow, as Roberts has done. And at another time, perhaps we'll be able to treat it more fully. I've never been able to get it all together anyway. I've only got sort of these straight notions and insights, especially from the Orthodox. Which themselves, however, because they're a unitive notion, they do tend to pull things together fully. Now, the theological... Let's just say a few things about the theological foundation of the commitment to celibacy before we enter into the more detailed treatment of the commitment which Roberts gives us. Usually, in monastic literature and in the literature of the religious life, if you look for the foundation, it will be limited to the treatment of virginity itself. That is, to the value of virginity in the Old Testament

[12:08]

and the New Testament, and the superiority of virginity to Mary Poppins. Which... Remember Cassian? Remember how Cassian treats the Muslims? The monks... I forget which conference it is, but the monks are the people who give the whole of their... What do you call it? Their yield. They give the whole tree to the Lord, they give the whole of their harvest to the Lord. Whereas, married people are the people who give a tithe. And so, for him, they're still under the law. In some way, they're still under the Old Testament. And the monks are those who really live in the gospel. That's a very slanted notion, isn't it? It's a kind of... What Clement calls, in a certain place, a monastic totalitarianism. A theological totalitarianism, a monasticism, which would hardly be acceptable to Bill and could only really have been written from inside by a monk.

[13:09]

You find a lot of that also in the Western medieval literature of the superiority of the Master Father. And how everybody else seems to be on sort of the second rank level. And that's simply not acceptable for us today. But even in the time of the Desert Fathers, there are always these stories, among the stories of the Desert Fathers, where the father, an angel appears to him and says, Well, you think you're pretty good, but go into Alexandria and you'll find somebody who's on a higher level than you are. And he goes in, and it's a person living an ordinary life. So, this is true in Piper. He treats the theological foundation of Chastity from the point of view of the biblical value of virginity, not so much in the context of marriage. He's been forced to go back to the creation, however,

[14:22]

and man's creation in the image of God. If you go back to Genesis. Chapter 1, verse 26 and the following. Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, etc. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed him and God said to him, Be fruitful, etc. So man is created in the image and likeness of God and created male and female at the same time. This is one account of the creation of man. In the other one, you don't get the distinction. Is it possible? Now, people have not usually said this until recently. Is it possible that the very creation of man, the very creation of man in the image of God, means this male-female distinction, this male-female polarity?

[15:28]

That is significant for man's image in the image of God. That the maleness, the femaleness, the sexuality itself, in some way, reflects God's nature, reflects God. Louvre suggests that it does. In this little section on chastity and prayer, that I referred you to. Man and woman are indeed, according to the Bible, created in the image of God. This in their specific being as man, the hyphenated being as man, and being as woman. The man is the image of God in his masculinity. He reflects the love of God insofar as that is strength, stalwartness and fidelity. The Bible expresses that aspect of God's love with the word emeth, the Hebrew word emeth, veritas in Latin, truth and faithfulness. The man is the image of the veritas, the truth of the Creator. The woman too in her femininity is an image of God's love, but she reflects more its goodness, its tenderness. She is an image of God's solicitude,

[16:32]

hesed, it's usually spelled in English, the Hebrew word for the mercy, the sort of outpouring abundant love of God, misericordia. God is both together, misericordia and veritas in Latin, mercy and fidelity. He is so in a single nature in which the power of his graciousness and that of his strength coincide in a manner beyond our understanding. To our way of feeling, tenderness and toughness are opposites. This results from the fact, toughness maybe isn't the best translation. I don't know what the word was in the original. This results from the fact that we can only know the love of God in terms of the duality of the human sexes into which it is, as it were, bifurcated. For since God represents himself in man, he requires a twofold image, the one aspect complementing the other, man and woman, father and mother. Remember that our first images of God, our first notions of God really come from our parents, that they are the image of God for us, and we get our notions of God from them. So that somebody who has a bad experience with his father has a very hard time relating to God through the word,

[17:34]

the concept, the image of father. Not such a problem with a mother because we don't have biblically God coming across in the image of mother, very rarely, largely it's a masculine. It's been pointed out that the Bible is very masculine. Of course, all the feminists are up in arms about this. They want to have a new translation of the Bible today in which the masculine pronouns are all replaced by a neuter pronoun. There's a scheme to do this. The Bible and the Jewish religion itself is very masculine, and God himself comes across as very masculine. And we can talk about why this is later on. It's just to be recognized. And remember that thing about our parents. In some way, they are God's force, they're God as we first know God. They're ultimate reality for us. Authority and love as we first know, truth and love as we first know. It may be a long while before we can really get beyond them.

[18:37]

So much of our growth, in fact, is getting beyond our initial notion or impressions of our mother and father. We can spend our whole life doing that. There's a fellow who wrote a book on the stages of life who contends that we spend most of our life trying to get out of the Oedipus situation. The fullness of God's love is normally portrayed and lived out in the two together. A woman cannot do without man, says Paul, neither can man do without woman in the Lord. So as to reflect on the one side God's mighty love and on the other side He solicits His concern, it is necessary for man and woman to come together and be fruitful on earth as God is fruitful in His love. Okay, now, Luke seems carefully to avoid another way of relating that image of male and female to God. Did you notice? He talked about the fidelity and the love of God, but what could he have said? He could have said the word in the spirit, couldn't he?

[19:40]

Now, that's risky because the spirit is not simply feminine. The Holy Spirit is not simply the feminine dimension of God, or something like that, and there isn't any sexuality in God ultimately, you have to be careful of that. And yet it really does seem like, and Abdukimov is the one who brings this up, that the creation of the human person as male and female reflects the word and the spirit. In other words, it has a Trinitarian foundation, which is about as far as you can go in finding a theological foundation for sexuality. So there's a foundation in the Holy Trinity to the distinction between male and female. Man reflecting the word, woman reflecting the spirit. The word has sharp outlines, the word represents, in the Bible it represents power as well, and so does the spirit. The word is that which is explicit, whereas the spirit is that which is hidden.

[20:43]

The word is that which tends to address the mind, tends to address the intellect, and this too is a masculine thing, whereas the spirit is more interior, the spirit is concealed, the spirit is hidden. And there are a whole lot of things we can get through in that way. There are sort of two columns that you can make of attributes, of qualities, that refer to word and spirit, to male and female as well. But I think something like exteriority and interiority are a good way to start. A document also has a couple of other archetypes. He talks about that icon called the diocese in which you have Jesus in the middle, Christ in the middle, John the Baptist on one side, on the left of Jesus, and Mary on the other side, the mother of Christ. And he sees that as representing the archetypes,

[21:46]

our first archetype of the Church, on the level of the Trinity. The second archetype for him is on the level of the Incarnation, what he calls the Christological level, and that is John the Baptist as the masculine type, Mary as the feminine type, and Jesus somehow, the risen Christ, as the integration of the two. This too is a fascinating idea. You can also ask yourself whether there is a relationship between those two levels, between the Trinitarian level and the Christological level, so that John the Baptist in the desert is like the sterility of man himself, of mere... It's funny that the word man means both masculine and means the human race. The sterility of the desert, of man without God, of only masculinity in some way. Mary represents not only, how should we say,

[22:47]

not only woman, femininity, but also the spirit, as we move from the human level to the other level, so that Mary represents in some way the gift, which is... She's an image in some way of the gift which is needed by this kind of dry and helpless masculinity. There's a kind of a note of futility and of emptiness and of poverty which runs throughout the life of John the Baptist, right up to his death, which is a kind of absurdity on a physical level. That poverty, which somehow, that the fullness which that's waiting for, which that desert is waiting for, is represented somehow by Mary, who is not only the bride as the woman who becomes the symbol of Israel as the bride of God, but also in some way symbolizes the spirit. So woman and the spirit are very much related in that way. John the Baptist himself is filled with the spirit

[23:50]

in his mother's womb, but not in that way, not in the same way. And it's as if this emptiness of masculinity awaits the reign of the spirit, which fills it. Jesus is not only the friend of the bridegroom, he's the bridegroom. And he's the one who comes to take the bride, which is the church, which is mankind, to receive the bride, which is mankind, represented by Mary. But also in some way, he's the one as the risen Christ who comes to bring the bride of mankind, the bride of mankind, which is wisdom, which is the Holy Spirit. So the thing is really involved, as you can see. But I think that we've too much ignored that feminine image of the spirit, of wisdom, of Sophia, which actually is the bride of man, if you read in the book of Ecclesiastes. And so we've got a kind of a, sometimes a kind of inappropriate imagery for the monk in his celibate life being portrayed as the bride.

[24:50]

And of course he is. But there's this alternative imagery of God himself in his spirit, his wisdom, his Sophia, as being a bride which comes to man to fill his emptiness, to fill that, to what would you call it, make fertile that desert, which is our human nature without the water of God. Is that sufficiently confusing? It's confusing, but it's rich. You see, there's a whole lot in there. And this is why the commitment to celibacy cuts right through the center of our life, of our nature. Now there's a third level of symbolism here, which is on the level of creation itself, or of the cosmos. And here we see God coming down, as it were, to wed his creation. Spirit coming down to marry matter, as it were. And this too is portrayed in man and woman. So our images keep fluctuating a bit

[25:52]

because at one moment we'll be seeing John the Baptist as the image of masculinity, kind of empty, waiting masculinity. And at the other moment, another moment, we'll see the creation as being feminine and awaiting the fullness which comes from God, the bridegroom. It's okay if things fluctuate a bit. So three levels, a Trinitarian level, a Christological level, and then that sort of cosmic level, or level of the union of God and the cosmos and the universe through spirit and matter, which is in man, which is in Christ. A little more from Luke before we jump into letters. The normal way for a man and woman to reach God,

[26:53]

he suggests, is through one another. That isn't a married way. But Jesus didn't do that. Jesus was unmarried, celibate, virgin. Something analogous occurs, though on a narrower front, when somebody freely embraces celibacy for Jesus' sake and on behalf of prayer. In his body and in his sexual dynamics, something then occurs that both restructures his whole person and intensifies prayer and his bond with Jesus. If this were not to happen, celibacy would be a desperate hazard and in many cases could only make for a stunted, affected life. Well, sometimes it does, if we blame it on celibacy. This is why our celibacy would not be feasible apart from that of Jesus. Even then, it is so only because he makes it our very special vocation. For our celibacy must be a sign that the new creation is beginning to dawn and that God has drawn close to man. Celibacy is an eschatological sign. It's a sign that the end has come.

[27:54]

And I think the Fathers very often saw it in that way. So, it's not a time to beget more children and to keep sort of spinning around the circle of human generation and death. The coming of the last time, the resurrection and celibacy are all tied in together. Do you remember that passage in the Gospel? I don't remember where it is now. Jesus is asked about the woman who has had seven husbands. Remember, they're all brothers and they all die and leave her childless. And he's asked, who's wife is she going to be in the resurrection? And Jesus says, well, in the resurrection they don't marry. They don't take in marriages. They're like angels. But then he goes on to use that image of the burning bush just by allusion, as it were. And you get the connection of celibacy with this halting of the wheel of death

[28:56]

and that idea of the seven husbands that died without leaving any children. You get the relationship between death and generation. And then he's saying, no, in heaven it isn't this way. In the resurrection it isn't this way. In other words, if you go beyond generation, marriage, because you go beyond death at the same moment. And then the image of the burning bush, which is merely suggested here, as the image of chastity and also the resurrection at the same moment. Remember what Elisabeth Rudolph in the first chapter of the Book of Death has constituted. She says that the burning bush is used as, the one that Moses saw in the desert in Exodus 3, used as an image for the virginity of Mary and also for the heart of the monk.

[29:58]

And it's creation which is carried up into a life greater than its own. It's the fire which is in it. The fire is God himself. So it's creation which has been married to God. And so it doesn't have to be married to anything on the created level in order to reproduce itself. It doesn't have to perpetuate its life through this cycle of physical generation and death because its life comes from the fire that it bears within it. That is from God. That's a good image for celibacy, this whole thing of burning bush, because it retains the positivity and power of it. Excuse me for digressing a bit. And then he gets... Louf continues and he goes on to how this thing happens, how it can work that celibacy, if it deprives you of that other half of the image of God, through which presumably you're supposed to go to God as your heart becomes enlarged,

[31:06]

as you learn how to love. How this can happen if you don't have that other half of the image. If man doesn't have woman, if woman doesn't have man. Sexual abstinence also in largeness. Our celibacy is a call upon our complete sexual dynamic as man or woman. And adoption... Virginity creates the possibility of entering into a love relationship with all human beings. The unmarried person's family is the whole of mankind. The good as well as the bad. We're cherished and preserved by the Father. This first enlargement is an obvious one, calling for no further explication. But the other one is not so easy to see.

[32:07]

Sexual abstinence also enlarges the scope of our love inwardly, towards the deep interiority of our heart. Here we come back again to prayer, and celibacy becomes a technique of prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit. How is this? When somebody stops looking for the other sex to satisfy his need for love, then he has to find his inner equilibrium in a new way and settle with the opposite sexual pole which unconsciously he carries within him. They talk about the animus and the anima, Jungian depth psychology, that both man and woman have both poles of sexuality within them. So man has a feminine entity within himself, a feminine pole, which he has to come into relationship with. If this process is properly directed, it can be very productive even on the human level. It means that the unconscious antipole comes more into the foreground within the psyche and its affinity develops in a positive way. Thus a celibate man could in the long run be much more sensitive to certain aspects of love. When the same thing happens from love of Christ

[33:09]

and the power of the Holy Spirit, the process penetrates much deeper into the human heart, to the point where the sexual antipole is the other half of God's image in him. Remember? Now we were talking about God's image as being in man and woman, complete in the two, but now we're talking about it also as being deep down within each of the two, the whole of the image, but the other half having to be found interiorly before it can be activated in someone. This renouncing of the opposite pole encountered outwardly in marriage, if it is correctly done, releases in our interior being the spiritual value which that antipole symbolizes and which is unconsciously concealed within us. Here we penetrate to the very heart and center of our human mode of being, to where our psyche is still unconsciously sexually structured after the image of God, but also to where God is already present with his spirit in his super-sexual duality, beyond man and woman, tenderness and strength, misery, cruelty and apartheid, beyond duality. So celibacy throws us back onto the inner antipole

[34:11]

of our sexual and affective life and finally onto God himself with all the male and female components of his life, of his love. Thus celibacy can open up a path to prayer. So it sounds kind of simple, but it's not all that clear and may require a lifetime of experience really to understand, because to talk about these things is one thing, to talk about them from experience is something else. Any questions or comments about that? Yes. That's right. When Saint Paul says that I think he's obviously not saying the whole truth in a sense.

[35:12]

Obviously, male and female remain even in heaven. I can't conceive of the saints, for instance, losing their sexual distinction so that Saint Paul isn't a man anymore and Mary Magdalene isn't a woman. It's inconceivable. They lose their tentative. And so on. But there's neither man nor woman. On that other level, there are two levels. And on this other level, what does he mean? For one thing, he's stating that the human person in a way transcends the sexual difference so that they're equal. They're one because they're equal. He's saying at least that. So one is not superior to the other, as was often thought. Well, it seems like the only reason that we feel like we're so distinctly male and female here is because it's a race question. Yes. As far as that one has to understand. And yet, if we... Now, if we take... If we take this thing about man being the image of God

[36:14]

and his sexuality reflecting the Trinity seriously, then beyond that purpose of reproduction, there may be another, you could say, purpose for the difference between man and woman. And that is just something like the richness, to manifest the richness of God's own nature. Which is inexplicable in the end. I mean, we haven't got any justification, any reason, any cause that we can give for it simply beyond the way that God is and the way that God works. But it's as if he were not content to make things too simple. As if he wanted to manifest the richness of himself in this world. And also to manifest an image of duality and of unity once again. Duality and unity at once, which is Trinity. Now, this in the species,

[37:16]

just as he does with the other creatures, the other animals, but this also within each one, the two-fold within each one. And in some way, also by the dynamic between male and female in the creation, this is supposed to be, I think, also a thing of beauty. Not merely functional. Not merely for the reproduction of the species. It used to be taught, for instance, that the purpose of marriage was simply for procreation. The purpose of marriage was just to generate children. There are a lot of theologians now who are saying, no, it's got a purpose in itself. Just the value of human love in itself, in some way, justifies marriage. Even though you don't have to say that it involves integrals between men, physical integrals between men. Do you think there will still be something about creating that takes place between male and female? I think so. I think there will be something

[38:17]

that could relate to creating. But what would it be? For me, it would be something more like discovery. Creating, anything that we create in this earth, is a discovery, in a sense. Just like a child is a discovery. Because man and woman may beget a child, but that child is complete newness and mystery and unknown to them, even whether it's going to be a boy or a girl. And the total personality of that child is a discovery, not something they put together. So creation for us is a finding. And it seems to me that in heaven, probably, there will be a kind of creation of that kind which will be a discovery. In other words, when one and one, in some way, interact, there will be a manifestation of a third, which is God himself, bringing this other being. It's like music. The best comparison is music. Where, between one line of melody and another, a third comes in, which sort of gives the whole a new reality, a new richness.

[39:17]

And in that third, as it were, you hear something beyond. It's like polyphony. Because in the relationship between the two lines of polyphony, you don't just hear a third, but the whole thing explodes, sort of, between the two melodic lines. Something new, which is a presence, which encloses the whole. I think it'll be something like that. In other words, it'll be a discovery of God and also the coming forth of something new. Maybe a coming forth of something new on a human level, which, analogously to the child, is a manifestation of God and a presence of God. But the things that we see on this earth are all sort of scattered around. But that'll be relative evidence. Dante, I don't know whether Dante's got anything on this. Because he has an explicit sense for it. Of course he does. For the way that

[40:21]

beauty runs in the person that we're relating to. No, I just don't know about my personal experience. I just think that there's some complexity here. I mean, so, I think it all starts with chastity. I understand you. And I'm thankful that it was part of your experience rather than just saying, I'm yours. That's right. So I'm thankful. It's a switching over to God whom you only know, as you say, in an impulse at that moment. Which doesn't mean, though, that in the end all of this richness can't be involved. As you experience it, it's a very, it's a very simple thing. And as you say, it's an impulse of the spirit which doesn't get analyzed.

[41:23]

It's an impulse of the spirit which is interior so that it pushes you, impels you, almost forces you, makes other attractions drop away, and yet is not subject to analysis. You can't take it apart. You can't get outside of it and look at it either. Like Jesus says, the spirit blows but you don't know where it comes from. You don't know where it goes. You hear the sound. It's talking about the wind and the wind of the spirit. There are a lot of other ramifications on this. The doctrine of Evdokimov has developed more but also can be criticized. He likes to put marriage and celibacy side by side and see them both as eschatological witnesses. Because if you look at St. Paul in Ephesians 6, he says, remember when he talks about Christ and church? He's talking about marriage. And then immediately he goes to an archetype of marriage and Christ and church.

[42:25]

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord. This is in Ephesians 5. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body. Now this is on the other level from the one where there's neither man nor woman. You see? St. Paul plays both sides. Because on one level that headship still has a symbolic value. On the other side they're equal. There's neither man nor woman. Symbolic level and then the level of communion in Christ. One is like the outside, the symbolic representation. Another is the reality of the person, Christ. The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle of any such thing, that she might be holy

[43:32]

and without blemish. Even so, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it as Christ does the church because we are members of his body. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, sacramentum monum, but it would be mysterion, mysterion, agreed. And I mean in reference to Christ and the church. So, he's saying that not just virginity is an eschatological thing, it represents the last, the end time, the final things, eternity, the resurrection, but also marriage doesn't. He's saying that the eternal, the permanent relationship with Christ and the church is somehow an inch forth in marriage. So, we're wrong to place virginity simply and too quickly above marriage. Of course, we know that. You don't say that anybody is in a state

[44:33]

which makes him automatically better than anybody else. If that's the passage you have to pick up as compared to the sacrament, would it be the same? Well, that's a good question. It could be. Although, it could be. I don't know anything about the history of the sacrament. Because that's exactly the word that's used. You see, in the Greek it's mysterion and in the Latin it's sacramentum, which doesn't, in the beginning, mean sacrament in our sense. But that word mysterion, from mysteria the plural, was used for the Eucharist first of all. And then for the mystery of Christ as a whole. It's a very fascinating term. It's a very global thing. And also here, for marriage. That's a good question. Father Larry might know something about the history of the sacrament. We could ask him some day. Of course.

[45:35]

Whether they had a problem about it in the beginning or whether it was more or less instinctive and they just immediately made it a sacrament. I don't know. I don't think they did. I think it took a while before it was... It wasn't automatic that marriage would be considered a Christian sacrament in particular. Okay. Then we can go back to Roberts. Are there any questions just on the general theology of the Eucharist and so on before we go to Roberts? I'm just wondering if the woman's relationship with Christ makes it easier for her to integrate her masculine rather than her masculine. Try to integrate this feminine. I think a man has a problem.

[46:37]

Let's see. Except for Christ. I see the problem with a man who doesn't have an adequate feminine symbol in Christianity except for a lady. A lady is not a bridal symbol but a symbol of motherhood and for some people maybe very hard to relate to her. Whereas a woman does have in Christ a masculine which makes it very easy in a sense for her to integrate the masculine into her spiritual life or to call it sublimate the masculine style into Christ. But I wish I knew more about the psychology of these things. I don't really know much about it. If you look at the for instance you look concretely and critically at the way that people have developed in religious communities then there would be other things to say. Because obviously there are a lot

[47:48]

of cases of underdevelopment a lot of people who don't I'm sure and they don't arrive at this kind of balance. You have to ask why? It's far from automatic. Usually the climate and often the structure of the community affect these things a lot and often hinder that kind of development. It's the kind of model that's presented to people the kind of ideal that's presented to people. If it's too much the ideal of the child and of the completely sexless individual that can be there. Instead of integrating their sexuality into the other pole in some way they just repress it they set it aside and so they remain little kids for all of their life. I think there are lots of contexts like this still and enough monasteries too. It's strange that all of the masculine writers

[48:48]

and the writers are men almost exclusively you find in Christian tradition you find this imagery of the bridegroom Christ and the soul being the bride. So there's something to that that we can't get away from. The other one of wisdom is being the spouse of man has never really caught on that much in Christian traditions I wonder if it will another thing I should mention of course is behind all of this is the biblical doctrine of the covenant as conceived in terms of the bridegroom we talked about that before I talked about the covenant before you find it in especially in Hosea and in Jeremiah God the bridegroom it's clearest in Hosea Hosea is a

[49:48]

short book if you read the whole thing you'll find very numerous references to that as Israel as being the unfaithful wife and God the husband and it's the image of that is Hosea himself and he marries Arlet and his relation to Israel and this is fundamental and it's in the Song of Songs too and then it comes right into Christian spiritual theology right from origin on if not earlier and for origin the soul is the bride of the Lord remember the word with a capital 11 the word who is Christ and it goes right on through there from him to Gregory of Nyssa and that's through the whole rest down to St. Bernard with his homilies on the canicle and all of his assertions probably William of St. Thierry too and then finally St. John of the Cross and all this time you're talking about both men and women but

[50:48]

they're all conceived as being feminine with regard to the Lord and the word actually is being in fact the word of Christ and obviously there was a tension with the sexuality of men and it's a thing which is much more easy than it may be that the other side will develop now it's like we're going around the race course the real place of femininity as well as the real place of the Holy Spirit is sort of emerging into the life of Eastern and Western Church and the development of the Eastern Church is not completely even though they have some insights that we don't have

[51:51]

but they really do and they can understand it can understand it and Yeah, the anima is ordinarily represented in green by the animal figures, yes, the anima is the feminine pole, and this language comes from Jung, okay, the anima is the feminine pole in a man, anima in Latin is soul, the soul in a feminine gender, whereas the animus

[52:59]

is the masculine sexual pole in a woman, okay, there's a whole lifetime study going on about this one, and those are pretty real things. Now, Louf is depending on this, even though he doesn't mention it a lot. You find the same term much earlier in the fathers even, anima, animus, but not nearly in so clearly a way, not with such clear psychological reference. So when you have a dream of a feminine figure in a prominent role, then it may very well be symbolizing that feminine dimension of yourself, and as you relate to that feminine figure in your dream, your relation to your own anima, to that internal feminine pole may follow that relationship and be expressed in it as it changes in your dreams as you go on. Maybe a violent relationship, maybe a strong attraction, maybe a very peaceful going along together, and that can represent a kind of progress of integration of the feminine pole.

[54:01]

Your imagination, if you have a pretty unfettered imagination, and if it's really coming out of the subconscious, because a lot of our imagination is on the conscious level, it's conscious memories, you see, but when the imagery comes up from the unconscious, then it has that quality. Now, somebody who just has a lot of sexual fantasy, you don't have to call that as animus, but if the images are coming out from a place where you don't remember, they're newly created images, as it were, which is the way in dreams, right? You don't remember any figure that corresponded precisely to that, there's a new thing that's coming up out of your unconscious, and those are the ones. Yes, poetic imagination does the same thing. In fact, if you read the poets, you find these figures, and often Jung will make a comparison between mythology, poetic creation, and dreams, okay, finding the same archetypes, the same images and symbols on all three levels. Yes, painting, too.

[55:13]

Yes, see, when we say poetry in any sphere of art, and often just painting is a more immediate expression of the unconscious, something like poetry, which requires more work on the unconscious level, the words of consciousness. That's fascinating stuff. The two are, I don't see how you, what do you mean about the relation between the two? The soul is being feminine, and then the integration is feminine, but not the same thing. The soul is already feminine, the spiritual writer said, okay? It's feminine with respect to God. And the relationship between man and God, they see the soul as being entirely feminine, rather than masculine, so that in that way,

[56:19]

male and female symbolize this God-man relationship. But the integration of the feminine is something else. And they don't usually treat of it directly in that same language. I don't know if they write the two things in that way, the relationship between God and man, the integration of the feminine. They don't talk about it as integration. Somebody may, but it doesn't come to my mind. The notion of integration is a more contemporary term, it's Jung's term actually. Those are individuation, those are integration. The fathers were not so conscious, and the monastic writers were not so conscious of the existence of those two coals within man and of the necessity of integration to get into the world. There's a difference in pattern here, which is characteristic of Christianity. Christianity tends very often to get on one side

[57:22]

and talk about spiritual combat or something like that, to have a dualism which is un-reconciled, whereas Jung is a great integrator. He takes the light and the dark, he takes almost good and evil and tries to integrate them. His fundamental process is integration. It's not true of Christianity, at least historically. Christianity tends to conserve the duality until the end. And the integration in man, whatever that is, is brought about by God in his own time, from outside as it were, not eminent integration. The integration finally is in the kingdom of heaven where there is Christ, where there is neither hell nor heaven. But the process and how it's arrived at, how it's gone through in the human level, that's something that our spiritual leaders don't tell us much about. Not explicitly, implicitly they tell us a lot about it. Simply when they talk about the suffering of the heart and so on.

[58:24]

In an experiential term they tell you about the gift of tears. The whole growth of non-violence and the whole process of becoming unaggressive and loving and at the same time of becoming un-concupiscent, that is, not carnally lustful but rather with a kind of universal compassion. Now this is that integration we're talking about. But they don't talk about it in terms of integration because they don't have a human pattern of violence and non-violence. But it is an integration. We'll get to that a little bit later. There's a gift of the Holy Spirit. That's right. Because what's happening is that you're being taken up,

[59:27]

the image is being taken up in the God. The image is being taken up into the Spirit which is God so that it participates in the whole process of love and not focusing either its aggressiveness or its feelings or its love just upon one universal unself-satisfying love. Siloam is a good example of that. Siloam is compassion, the love of animals which is the quintessence of that. See love of animals is really the two poles together. Your love, your affective nature is crucified onto this thing of threat, this fear of the enemy. So it's a kind of crucifixion which turns out to be an integration. In the end you're not going to have the crucifixion, you're going to have the integration. In Christianity there's no integration without a crucifixion. Integration of course is the resurrection of Christ

[60:29]

and the experience of his Spirit in Siloam as president. And from start to finish when Siloam is writing, that's where he's writing from. It's that integration. It's like Santana. I guess we're over time. So that's good for today. Next time we'll barge into Robert's momentum, dedication, resolution.

[60:52]

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