Less than one and a half years. Remember, we moved from an ascending to a descending direction. And we live no longer from outside but from inside. At least largely, at least there's a revolution like that you can see in the New Testament. But people live from an interior principle. And so, instead of having just to receive, it's to take and to give. And so, the pattern... This is a completely independent person, totally at the mercy of the universe, and daddy and mommy, so everything has to come in. But with this conversion, there's an interior source, which is the invisible source, which is the spirit of God, or the Father, or the Light. And so, the organism begins to function outwards. It begins to bear fruit, as it were. You can even see it in a plant.

[01:02]

There's a theoretical analyst, Owen Barfield, who says that we move from one kind of participation to another kind of participation. And he talks about how participation means how you kind of interact or interrelate, or receive or give life, or how you somehow fuse with the universe, with what you're around. And he says that we begin with what he calls original participation, in which you are like the pupil of the universe, where you are dependent upon the universe in every way. So your consciousness will come from the mythology that you inherit. And it tends to be a passive mythology, OK? You're receiving, and you believe it, you accept it in faith, you don't question it, probably. And you go along with it and live inside that container of that consciousness, of that myth. But then he says, with the Christ event, with Jesus, something new happens. He brings into the world a creative spark, or you could say a spark of freedom, in which you become an origin within the world. You become a beginning in the world.

[02:06]

You discover a creativity within yourself which is able to create something new, and also assumes a new relationship towards the universe, especially towards the material creation principle. Now, we've been talking about something like that in yourself and other people, from dependence to a giving position, a relationship. But it also happens in the universe. Just picture Copernicus waking up one fine morning and deciding that, no, the sun doesn't revolve around the earth, the earth revolves around the sun. Imagine that. As if that were the awakening of a human being to a truth which goes beyond appearance. So, awakening to that solar reality, and the magnificence of it, that the center of illumination is also the center of gravity. To discover the true center, to discover the true source. Now, when he discovers that, when Copernicus, let's say, on this fine morning, wakes up and discovers that truth beyond appearance, which defies appearance,

[03:09]

it's counterintuitive, you could say, in today's geography, he's also discovering a center of illumination within himself. As he discovers the reality of the sun, let's say, the royalty of our own god, of our own solar system, he discovers the divinity within himself, and that he has a relationship to the universe, which in some way is godlike. In other words, there's an intelligence, there's a spirit in him, that somehow is able to pierce through the appearances of the universe, and to grasp what is true. And that's the story of the West, this Copernican awakening, this Copernican revolution, of which the human person wakes up in this world with a power to transform this world, or a power to penetrate it, to understand this world. It's a tremendous thing. So, I can't go along with B. Griffiths and say he's just a tragedy. Because it's like there's an exchange, but it's a temporary exchange. And the problem is, that instead of integrating, we emigrate. Now, you've got to do it. If you're a born scientist, you've got to go and do it.

[04:12]

You've got to do your experiments and your calculations. You have to forget eternalism for a while. But, by and large, our consciousness has to integrate those two, rather than emigrating from one to the other. In the way that we've done in the West. And I suppose the way of Peter is as a way of walking is also a way of emigrating. Moving from one thing to another. But the job of Christianity, and especially of a wisdom Christianity, ultimately is to integrate. You can see the whole picture. Science along with wisdom. But that new relationship that we have to the world, to the universe, you can see it in science, but you can also see it in art. You can see it in modern art. Modern art, where the human subject begins to assume a liberty with respect to external things. Begins to rearrange them. You may not like it very well, but it symbolizes the human person waking up in the world. The human person waking up to a transcendent freedom in the world, by which, in a sense, it can recreate the universe. On a canvas.

[05:13]

Something like that. The scientist does it in another way. Science and technology. But it's a marvelous thing. And it's not just the science, it's not just the technology, it's not just the art, it's not just culture. It's the human person waking up. But not like in the East, where you wake up, as it were, to the source, and your personality sort of recedes back into its birth, back into the undifferentiated ground, the divine ground. Brahman or Atman. Or non-duality. It's the human person waking up in this world, with the power to live in this world and humanize this world. To personalize in some way this world. And you could say it's a divine faculty of creation, which the person has discovered within himself or himself. If we think of the image of God in a classical Christian way, as being like a transcendent core within us, a unitive place within us, the center, the ground, in which we are one with the...

[06:14]

and reflect the unity of God. Say, the contemplative core in ourselves. There's also another way of thinking of the image of God, isn't there? God is creator. And the human person is put in this world also as creator. So at a certain moment we wake up to that faculty, to that power in this world. Which can go bad or can go good. It can go mighty good, too. It's not only the faculty of changing nature, let's say, with technology. It's the faculty of changing human society. The faculty of changing the structures of society, instead of just accepting and carrying on and putting on a character. So you can say that Karl Marx is an offshoot of that awakening of the human person, as are so many other things in our modern Western world which don't recognize Christianity at all. They rejected Christianity because Christianity stayed inside a certain area, a container, and did not open with the opening and the awakening of the human person in the West. That's not entirely true, but it's largely true. The church couldn't handle a new wine very often, and so the wineskin breaks.

[07:15]

The wine pours out. And that wine that pours out begins to liberate humanity. And for a long while it scares the daylights out of the church. And then the Vatican, too, the Catholic Church, begins to be able to recognize it and accept it. And gets an inkling that the secret of that is within itself. The secret of that is in the wisdom of the wine that breaks. So a lot of what I want to say about a new wisdom is related to that. Is related to what's really inside the West. Because if you read spiritual writers, sometimes they sound like they're sitting on top of a pile of garbage in the West. That the whole of Western history is nothing but pride, arrogance, exploitation, oppression, and robbery. And the rape of the environment. There's a lot more to it than that. That's the immature West. That's the West which hasn't learned where the second half is like. But what's really in the West is the waking up of the human person in this world with the ability to create a human world, which is also a divine world.

[08:18]

Because the human person is somehow in between God and the material creation. The material creation waiting somehow to be redeemed in the human person. Paul says that in Romans 8 in one way. Where he says, the world is waiting, the creation is groaning until now, waiting for the redemption, the liberation of our body. Because our body is the world in some way. But even short of that final resurrection, there's a transformation, liberation of the creation through human work, through human understanding, through the humanizing of the world which happens when the human person wakes up. We also wake up to the fact that we're one beings in some way. Humanity wakes up to its unity after all this time. Very significant fact that in our time humanity awakens as a single being. You know, you've got a guy, a hypothesis, and so on. Very different ideas about the earth as a single organism, and humanity as a single human being. From the Christian point of view, that's as it were the body of Christ

[09:20]

awakening to itself as a reality. It would be so silly for us to be wandering around, how many billions of people, six billion now, walking around, each locked in its own little person. Each locked in its own little body with no communication. We're obviously all one thing in some way. And at this point we wake up to it. We begin to wake up to it once again. Which is a great challenge and a great liberation for Christianity. And a demand for a whole kind of new way of thinking. That's getting a little ahead of us. I wanted to bring out that point about the revolution also being a revolution into creativity. Into the discovery of a new freedom within yourself, a new source, which is a divine source. Otherwise somehow the world can be recreated. That may sound like an exaggeration, but we can recreate the world in our own little circle. Make a tremendous difference just by doing small things. There's a lot of texts in the New Testament about this reversal of flows

[10:20]

from inward to outward, that is from taking to giving. There's a strange one here where it's both in Luke and it's Matthew, where they challenge Jesus because his disciples are not washing their hands before they eat. And he says, well, there's nothing that comes from the outside that can defile a person. What defiles a person comes from the inside, right? Remember he says, all those evil thoughts and all those sins, they come from the inside and go out. But nothing that comes into you from the outside can defile. See how that represents that same revolution? Not only are you independent of the source from outside, relatively speaking, because your major source, your principal source is in your heart. It's the divine spirit in your heart which flows outwards. But also, nothing can, what would you call it, overcome the power of that which is within you in terms of defiling. He'll say that to the Pharisees in Luke's Gospel, and then he'll say, but give alms from what is within and everything is pure for you.

[11:22]

Do you feel a revolution there? What is inside you has the power to make everything clean. There's no such thing as clean food and unclean food anymore. None of these religious distinctions that held up in the past hold anymore. Why? Because the spirit has been given to the human person. And the Holy Spirit within you, the spirit of God, is, what would you call it, sovereign over all those things. Paul will say, circumcision or uncircumcision don't matter anymore. What matters is the new creation. Wow, that's exciting. Especially when we realize that new creation is in ourselves, the power of that new creation is in us. And somehow it's given to us. We have to learn what we can give them. So that's about Lesson 1.5. There's a lot of the paradoxes in the Gospels that relate to this. In the Sermon on the Mount, especially, where, let me quote a couple of lines. You've heard that it was said,

[12:27]

you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Same revolution there, okay? Before, you had to give tit for tat, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That was the game then. Now something new has come inside you, an inexhaustible source in which you can give without having to be protected or without having to take. It sounds extreme for us. It is extreme. Certain heroic Christians have been able to do it. But the principle is inside us. That's the point. He couldn't command this unless he was going to give you the power to do it. And it's the same power. It's this fontality we're talking about, which is faith, hope and love all in one movement, which is the flow of life through you that moves outwards and doesn't turn back. So he says, give with your right hand. Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. What does that mean? Give without taking. Give without taking back. Give without demanding a thank you. Give without demanding recognition. It's that movement that moves forward just like it's light, that doesn't turn back on itself.

[13:29]

That's what he's teaching because that's what he's giving. But before the gift, they can't do it. You can imagine what those crowds felt when they heard him talking like that. Maybe there was already some kind of anticipation in the spirit to try that out and put it away. But it was only after a hundred classes that they could do it. Another example, clearer. I'll go straight into this. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? And so on. You, therefore, must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. That's Matthew. And Luke will say you must be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful. But the point is, with this revolution, something is given to you that moves forward and doesn't turn back. So you have the freedom to accept that, to appropriate that, and to move with it and let your life move with it.

[14:33]

And there are a lot of other things like that in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. But you see that movement that moves in one direction doesn't move back. Left hand, right hand, and all of that. It's a new ballgame because God has come into the world and is inside of him, of course. And that's changing everything. Theresa? I was wondering whether Eucharist and charity had a common root in Charis, in that gift? Yes. And whether the Eucharist might be that miracle that you're talking about of giving without worrying about having something left over for yourself and then finding out that after everyone has their fill, there's more left over than you started with. Yeah, I think so. The Eucharist is the symbol of that. And it's the symbol of the incarnation of that in some way. I think the Eucharist is two things. It's our food. It's many things. It's our food. It's the reiterated sacrifice of Jesus. And that kind of opening up once again of the vertical, from having the vertical. Somebody was speaking about that earlier. But it's also the lesson of the shape that our life should take.

[15:35]

Remember that sermon of Augustine about that. If you eat at that table, be prepared to go for a meal. So it is. And the fact that if you give, that's the promise in a way. There'll be more left overs. I don't know how that fits into your economic philosophy. So, so much about that revolution. Barfield's book is called Saving the Appearance. It's the one where this is clearest, I think. Most completely expressed. More about the creative faculty coming into dramatic at that point. Now, creativity means also the generation of a new history. You can speak of it as freedom. You can speak of it as creativity. You can speak of it as a certain kind of consciousness. But something happens when you move from east to west. Or something happens when Christ comes into the world. And history takes off with a new momentum. With a new acceleration, as well, as we feel in our time. But suppose that Christ the Benedict is the center and the engine of history.

[16:39]

Suppose that's what turns a rotating movement into some kind of linear movement. It moves forward and creates something that wasn't there before. I would propose that that is true. And we'll try to follow that more developmentally tomorrow. What about this second lesson? The first lesson is awakening to what we've been given. The second lesson is the lesson of how to live it. Or how to give it away, in a sense, how to let it disappear. First of all, listen to the life of faith. I mentioned I was trying to define the life of faith as living non-dual consciousness in the body. But if you're going to live non-dual consciousness in the body, you also have to awaken to what it is, don't you? You may not feel it all the time. You may not feel that freedom and that expansiveness, that unlimited luminosity in your spirit, in your consciousness. But you have to understand what it is that you have. And that means tearing down a lot of the barriers that were there before.

[17:40]

The barriers that Paul talks about when he says, Well, you know, you were slaves before to the elemental spirits of the universe. So you kept days and months and you kept all these rituals and all these things that you conformed to, which were principles outside yourself. But now you've become children of God. So the spirit has come into you. So the principle of life and of intelligence is within you. And you are master of all these things. You can do them if you want to. You can have your peace days. You can have your rituals and so on. But do them freely. That is, recreate them as the spirit of God teaches you to. Rather than just conforming to some law outside yourself. That's the great principle of the movement from law to spirit. That the spirit of God which is in you is greater than all of those laws and ordinances. The prison has been sprung. You are no longer a slave but a child of God. To be a child of God means to have divinity within you. Not only as a center, not only as a ground, as a place to go. Not only as unity, but also as creative power.

[18:43]

So we are still on the positive side. The darkness has descended a bit. But it follows upon us. This is all part of the process of the life of faith. Faith implies a certain darkness, even when we are in the light. But then I think the journey of faith. That's what John of the Cross is writing about. The journey of faith, basically. And it's all of it. His books are a great delicatessen of spiritual delights. But continually he tells you to renounce them. Okay, this isn't important. Don't get stuck on this. Don't get attached to that. The only thing that counts is faith. Because faith directly unites us with God. That's a pretty strong statement. Someone else would probably love it. And he will, but I don't. But the bottom line is faith. The bottom line is somehow finding in us the root in that which we have been given. So that we continually act from it. And the gospel gives you the shape of the life that emerges from that. Which is a very simple shape anyway, isn't it? It's this shape of him. And it's the shape of, I don't know, avoiding the things that will contaminate or suffocate

[19:47]

from one way or another poison that life. So, but the gospel gives you the words, the shape, the structure somehow. And then the spirits that you've been given gives you the faculty to live that way. The power to live that way. But the experience is going to disappear into the ground. I don't think we ever get to a plateau of contempt at the beginning. I don't. I think that's a kind of... Maybe it's a paradox for the first half of life, for the first half of history, but it doesn't seem to work anymore. Either personally, individually, or collectively. People have spoken about a societal dark night of the soul in the West in our time. That was in the 20th century with the two world wars and all of that. Maybe we feel a little more optimistic now. But I think just to say that a society, at least a Western society, which has a particular vocation, and which is basically, essentially, Christian, does go through a darkness like people go through a darkness. And it's a darkness which demands faith. So Karl Rahner would say, if somebody wants to be a Christian in the future, they have to be a mystic.

[20:49]

What would he mean? Does that mean they have to be experiencing God all the time? Or does it mean that they have to be living from inside with an interior connection with God, rather than a cultural connection with God? What he calls folkloristic Christianity. What you inherited, but never made your own. If you want to be a Christian in the future, you would say, you've got to be living your Christianity from the center of yourself, through that spirit that has been given to you. The new birth that's been given to you. It has to be personalized. That's what I think he means by mystic. And the second lesson goes further than the life of faith itself, because it's the way of Jesus which becomes the way of the cross. Here we can have our reading maybe from Eliot. Here we go. From T.S. Eliot, T. Stanford. Oh, dark, dark, dark.

[21:50]

They all go into the dark. The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant. The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters. The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers. Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees. Industrial lords and petty contractors. All go into the dark. And dark the sun and moon, and the almanac de gota, and the stock exchange gazette, the directory of directors. And cold the sense and loss, the motive of action. And we all go with them into the silent funeral, nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury. I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you, which shall be the darkness of God. As in a theater, the lights are extinguished

[22:53]

for the scene to be changed. With a hollow rumble of wings, and the movement of darkness on darkness. And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama, and the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away. Or as when an underground train in the tube stops too long between stations, and the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence. And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen, leaving only the growing terror of nothing to talk about. Or when under ether, the mind is conscious, but conscious of nothing. I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be the love of the wrong thing. There is yet faith,

[23:56]

but the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen, and the wild strawberry. The laughter in the garden echoed ecstasy not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony of death and birth. You say I am repeating something I've said before. I shall say it again. Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, in order to arrive where you are to get from where you are not, you must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know,

[24:57]

you must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know. And what you own is what you do not own. And where you are is where you are not. Thank you. I like that in the beginning, it was dark, dark, dark, and it opened the dark. If you're watching the news from Washington and they give you on television, you can make that your mantra. Matthias Elliot ended up with St. John of the Cross as a place which leads into this darkness. One change we might make nowadays

[25:59]

to what he wrote. The darkness of God, but is the darkness not also the darkness of ourselves? In other words, the darkness of the world. Especially the darkness of those who live in the dark really because they're in poverty and affliction. Moral question. The darkness I think is horizontal as well as vertical. That is incarnate as well as spiritual. So the walk of faith as it goes into deepening darkness I think also opens itself horizontally, laterally to other people. It should. There's nothing that unites us with God that unites us with everybody else. And that's when also it becomes a communal thing for us because we go through it together. So the church I think goes through a kind of darkness and opening itself up to every human being. It's a darkness because all of our containers and our structures seem to shake and seem to be compromised, maybe to collapse. But that's when Christianity finds itself through. When it's starting back at zero again it's got no resources,

[27:01]

nothing in the bank again. That's when it finds itself once again. Again and again and again through history. But it causes darkness which is difficult for us. I want to go back to Mark. In Mark chapters like 8.27 to 10.57 it's between, strange, it's between the healing of two blind men. And that's very significant. It's as if the disciples are blind. And Jesus is hammering away at their blindness with his light. But the light that he's hammering away is this truth of the second half. As he's moving from Galilee where he did all his wonders and where he was so popular, towards Jerusalem where he'll be refused and then arrested and then killed. So he's trying to teach them that turn in the road and they're not getting there at all. So the whole of that section, the middle section in Mark is about that teaching. But other things kind of come again but that's the main line. Other than the beginning and the end. Remember we were hearing about Jesus' question to the disciples. Good people say that I am.

[28:02]

And then Peter's response was a wonderful answer. You are the Christ. In Matthew he says you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Then let's go and read what follows. And he began to teach them immediately after that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples he rebuked Peter and said get behind me Satan for you're not on the side of God but of man. See Peter has passed the first lesson of applying colors. The second lesson he's utterly failed. He can't follow that turn in the road. If Jesus is the Christ if he's the anointed one if he's the son of God then we're going into Jerusalem in triumph. We're going into power. Just like James and John are the left and right hand when he goes into Jerusalem. That's not the story is it?

[29:05]

He corrects James and John at the end of that section just before entering Jerusalem and he rebukes Peter here as if Peter had become the one who tempted him in the desert to abandon the way which God has destined for him and take this other way of power. Now it's the way of the cross. And then he makes clear that this is not just for him but for anybody who wants to follow. This is Mark 8, 34-38. And he called to him the multitude of his disciples and said to them if anyone would come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save their life will lose it and whoever loses their life for my sake in the gospel will save it. But what does it profit someone to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? And what can one give in return for their life? And so on. Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words and of this adulterous and sinful generation of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father.

[30:06]

The lesson is very clear there. The second lesson. Clear and sharp and discouraging. How does it matter how we want to approach that wall that the Lord brought us? Well, we can only go through it with the gift of tenure which disappears into the ground so that you don't experience it but that it's there when you need it. Like what they'll say later on when they take you into the synagogue and question you. They don't think about what you're going to say. The spirit that is in you will give you wisdom in that time. God will give you the words that you need. God will give you what you need. If you're in the situation that God has put you in then you'll have what you need coming from inside. But it may be mighty dark when you go out to do it. I like to use the example of Paul here. There's a wonderful wonderful section in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 where Paul talks about the light and then he talks about the darkness. And it's wonderful because exactly the same thing is being reproduced in him. And he's so eloquent about it. Remember he talked about the veil of Moses

[31:07]

being removed from the face of the scriptures as it were when someone who leads in Christ. When a person turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. And we all with one veil of face beholding the glory of the Lord and being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another. Now this comes from the Lord who is the spirit. It's all light. It's all the divine light. And a little later he'll say for it is the God who said let light shine out of darkness who was shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. The veil has been removed so you don't see Moses anymore you see Christ. But when you see Christ you also as it were see in the light which has been given to you from which is one with yourself. You have become the light just as Christ is the light. And it's not Moses and it's not an external Christ anymore. It's yourself. It's the Copernican revolution where you wake up to the fact

[32:08]

that the sun is your own identity the sun is your own core. And that it's the sovereign in this world. But then he continues immediately. This is 2 Corinthians 4, 7-17. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels. First lesson, the light that you are. The second lesson, the light is in earthen vessels. Now, read what that means to him. When he talks about weaknesses he's usually talking about being beaten up or something like that. He's not talking about something that's inside of him or personal or maybe. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed. Perplexed but not driven to despair. Persecuted but not forsaken. Struck down but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. If there's a gift given to us we know there's a struggle coming in some way, don't we? What's a gift unless we make it our own? How do we make a gift our own? In a struggle of some kind, don't we?

[33:09]

Somehow we have to exert ourselves we have to put ourselves forward in order to be one with the gift which is given to us. And the shape of the gift is the shape of the life and the death of Jesus in this case. It's the shape of God's life in this human world. While we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us. He jumps now. Death is at work in us but life in you. I think what he means is that this is the way that life is communicated to others. That somehow your going into the dark in faith is a way in which light appears inside the heart of somebody else. Your going into the dark is as if you were buried into the mass into the ground of humanity in some way. And while everything seems totally dark to you but you're following somehow the word everything seems totally dark to you but you are light you are a seed of light. A seed of light planted in the darkness

[34:10]

of the earth of humanity which somehow sprouts into light and illuminates that humanity from inside. I think he's saying that's the way it works. It is all for your sake so that His grace extends to more and more people that may increase thanksgiving to the glory of God. So he says he's coming to life on the inside and dying on the outside. And you get the picture of a burning bush here like Moses' story. A burning bush which is sustained with flame and that flame is giving life even while it seems to be burning away life on the outside. I haven't put it very well. But the image of the burning bush of that which is sustained rather than destroyed by that which transcended it. The divine fire which in transcending us and seeming to take us into darkness and take us into death is really burning intensely at the center of that with a light. With a light which is able to fertilize and give life to that which is around us. Peter is always

[35:13]

in the middle of our story. We've moved over to Paul for a moment. Remember the transfiguration and they're up on the mountain and they have the vision of Jesus and Moses and Elijah hear the voice from heaven. Once again we're at this point. And after the Moses and Elijah have disappeared Peter says Lord it's good for us to be here. Let's make three chances. A typical Peter he loves that light. He loves that first blessing. But no. Jesus leads them down the mountain and they go to Jerusalem to his death. So that light of the Trinity somehow has to disappear into the ground and come out. As if those three are not enough because there's been an incarnation. They have to go down and get the fourth. And that completes the cross. They've got to go back down to the ground and he has to go to his death and he's buried there. Remember also

[36:13]

the parable of the treasure hidden in the field. It's a very short parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which someone found and covered up and then in their joys they go and sell all that they have and buy that field. I've very carefully put an inclusive line in there so you don't worry about it. Like a treasure hidden in a field which someone finds and covers up. You'd expect when you buy a treasure in a field you go get a bag and put it in the bag and run off with it and take it home. But apparently the law of this game is that you can't do that when you have to buy the field. You can't get the treasure without the field. It's like a parable of what we're talking about, isn't it? The parable of that second lesson. He's got to go and sell all that he's got and buy the field and perhaps he's married to the field at that point. Perhaps he has to work that field until the end of his life. But in any case you can't get the treasure without the field. The treasure is buried in the field

[37:14]

and that field is automatically. But to have the treasure buried in the field of your humanity is to have it buried in the field of everybody's humanity. But in the process you're getting buried in the treasure. Let's be imprudent about it. It's a marvelous parable. Just one line. But there's so much in it about the sort of the principle of the way the whole thing works and about the incarnation itself. Is it good? Jesus had had the treasure and then buried it in the field of all of us as well. The field of all of us. Here's a text from Augustine in the homily about the meal. Remember? He said, quoting a book of Proverbs, If you sit down to eat at the table of a ruler, observe carefully what is set before you, then stretch out your hand, knowing that you must provide the same kind of meal yourself. What does it mean to stretch out one's hand, knowing that one must provide the same kind of meal oneself if not what I have just said? As Christ laid down

[38:14]

his life for us, so we in our turn ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. This is what the martyrs did with such burning love. If we are to give true meaning to our celebration of their memorials, that is to the memorials of the martyrs of the Eucharist, to our approaching the Lord's table and the very banquet at which they were fed, we must, like them, provide the same kind of meal. So that's profound, but it's so simple that we can miss it and ride right over. It sounds like you have to go out and be martyred every day, but I think service, there are all ways of laying down your life, and the slightest giving of oneself to another, the slightest forsaking one's own self-indulgence and self-reliance and self-love for somebody else's sake is doing that, is on that path of laying down one's life. So service is already providing that same kind of meal. Remember Jesus says somewhere, the Son of Man has come, not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life

[39:15]

as a ransom for many. Notice how the two are in one line. To give his life as a ransom for many is martyrdom, not sacrificial death. But to serve, instead of being served, is directly doing the same thing, it's just not doing it in the final definitive way, it's doing it along the road. So there's a Eucharistic life as well as a Eucharistic human life, and the Eucharistic life basically is giving, serving, whatever we have. I'd like to move to another angle on this, and that is the paradoxical nature of Christian wisdom. This is a in 1 Corinthians 1, chapter 1 and then chapter 2. There's some marvelous things that Paul says here. And here, the light seems to turn into darkness, and the darkness turns into light. First of all, he disowns

[40:16]

baptizing people because he doesn't want them to think, I believe, that he's responsible for what they experience in baptism. He doesn't want them to think that he's some charismatic person who can somehow imagine what's that, to be seen as coming from God. So he says, God did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. And not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Notice, that's the key, the cross of Christ. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. And the cleverness of the clever, I will thwart. How can we talk about Christian wisdom? It turns right over on us. It turns around on an axle at this point. Where is the wise person? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, its wisdom

[41:16]

didn't lead it to God in some way, even the best of it. Not in this way. It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those in need. For Jews demand signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified as stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Wow. Jews seek signs and the Greeks seek wisdom. Remember our two columns? Now the Greeks here could stand, in a sense, for Asia, if you like. And the Greeks could stand for all of the philosophies, all of the wisdom of the world in some sense. Not that they're bad, but that they don't get there all the way. They don't arrive somehow at this point. Why do the Jews seek signs? Because signs, remember, wisdom and history, the two columns, signs are assurances of God's power

[42:17]

working for you in history. The signs are the signals that God gives his people and the signs that he's on their side, basically. Opening the Red Sea so that they could walk through and the seven plagues and all, the ten plagues. Those are the great signs that God gives that he's on our side. And that's in history. That's the power of God in history. That's what the Jews want. And it's really something too in the Old Testament. But then, at a certain point, it seems to pale out and disappear as it were a man, it seems. Whereas the Greeks or all the other wise people of the world seek wisdom. That is, to penetrate through the surface of things and the surface of their own being to the core, to the center, to the ground, to the beginning, to the uncaused block, to the absolute, to non-duality, to the undifferentiated source. You see the difference between those two? Now notice what he says. We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and probably to Gentiles,

[43:18]

but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. That's the cross where wisdom and science as it were or wisdom and history or the wisdom and the power crossed. And he's both of those. But he's both of those in this complete paradox of turning everything on its head, turning everything upside down. That's that great lesson of grace, that somehow we're saved by grace and not by our own efforts. Anything we build somehow has to be as it were reduced and dissolved into the power of God. It sounds very Protestant at that moment. Rightly so, and that's the Protestant intuition of faith and the grace of God. The intuition of Augustine in the first place. So, there's a terrific paradox when we talk about wisdom Christianity because anything that we know is going to disappear. Any insight we have is probably going to go into the darkness.

[44:19]

And it's going to become embodied. It's going to become incarnate in some way because that's the law. So I would contend that even the wisdom of Christianity and the light of Christianity disappears into the ground to turn into something greater. It becomes embodied. It becomes incarnate. And if we have a secular world in the modern West, I think that's an embodiment of the light of Christianity which has forgotten where it comes from. You can say that the gift of Jesus actually is the gift of freedom and falsehood as a collection of relations, doesn't it? Think about that for a moment. If what Jesus brings in his death and the beginning of his spirit is freedom, maybe it's complete freedom. Maybe it's a complete setting of freedom in a person so that the young person is even free to forget God, even free to forget Christ, even free to forget where it came from. Is that possible? I think that's what's happened

[45:20]

in the West. I think the secular world is a world in which human freedom has been realized, human autonomy has been realized more perfectly, more completely than ever before, but has forgotten or not yet remembered where it comes from. And it's so powerful for that reason that the gift which has flowed through the West is the gift of autonomy. A human person is set free as Paul would say, which is set free 360 degrees around. So once you get it's a matter of learning how to integrate instead of emigrate. The West has done the emigration, now it needs to do the integration. And I would contend that a wisdom Christian is able to have that perspective which would bring the two together, which would understand the continuity between the two. That's for tomorrow. Maybe we should wind up. Let me go to John 21 again. In John chapter 1 of chapter 21

[46:20]

that's the end of John and it was probably tacked on to the original text a little bit late by somebody in the Johannine commission. You have several phases there which I think follow a beautiful continuity. Now Jesus has breakfast prepared for the disciples in November and they have their meal and then Jesus questions Peter three times. He says, Peter do you love me? There were three denials by Peter remember. And he said, Peter do you love me? And he said, yes I do. And in three different ways, the subtle juggling of the words, words for love and so on. And he said, each time he said, feed my sheep or feed my lambs. Now what is that feeding going to be? Well, we think right away that's the epistolic ministry that's preaching and teaching and that's giving the sacraments and so on. But ultimately I think it means to give his life for the faithful. In other words, he's going to be the food for the faithful because it's tied immediately to the death of Peter, the end of Peter's life.

[47:21]

So here we have another Eucharistic image. Not only in that breakfast of bread and fish, but then what follows he's teaching Peter the second lesson, the second half of life. After that, he says, when you were young you girded yourself in one way you wanted to remember. When you're old you'll stretch out your hand and somebody else will lead you where you don't want to go. And John immediately says that he said to indicate the death that Peter would die which is death by crucifixion. The same way that Jesus did. So the feeding of the sheep and the second half of Peter's life it's this part of the curve it's this descending part of the curve which Peter cannot accept. He's denied it. Denied it at first at that challenge of Jesus in John 8 and then in John when he refuses to let his sheep be washed and then when he denies Jesus in the garden. He can't accept it until this point

[48:21]

after the resurrection until Pentecost actually. The second half of life which is this descent. Somebody else will gird you bind you and lead you where you don't want to go. And then finally you have that middle ground between Jesus and Peter and the beloved disciple. Let me read this to you. Peter turned and saw following him a disciple whom Jesus loved who lay close to his breast at the supper and said Lord who is it that's going to betray you? That's the beloved disciple whom we identified with John. The gospel wants you to identify with the disciple of John. When Peter saw him he said to Jesus Lord what about this man? And Jesus said to him if it is my will that he remain until I come what is up to you following? This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things and who has written these things and we know that his testimony is true. And that's the gospel of John just about the

[49:22]

end of it. Now I said that those two ways of Peter and of John somehow represent the way of the east and the way of the west. The way of the east which is as it were without history which remains at the beginning point remains at the place of baptism the water of the lake and remains at the place of the fire of the breakfast on the beach. Remains at the place of the baptism of Eucharist but especially that of baptism and elimination. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. That's the title of the book by Lasky which sort of expresses it in a way. The way of the west is that walk and the walk is not only the life journey of Peter or of a western individual but also of the western general the west which almost invented history in a way. It invents a new kind of history because that's its destiny to walk to go to move ahead to travel across the earth to follow the track of the sun from dawn to noon day to decline and sunset. We can picture a kind of sunset in the west

[50:22]

in our own time. Maybe the age of the west, the western domination is over and we arrive at the threshold of a global age which is the sunset of the west. You know they were writing about the decline of the west 80, 90 years ago maybe before that but something like that seems to be going on which is at the same time a great liberation from Christianity because it's emancipated from being in one form stuck in one form stuck in one container and when it gets poorer in that way it really is rich because it's able to be reborn in a hundred ways. So, but these two ways now we all share both of these ways personally okay. We're to live as it were a contemplative life and an active life at the same time. There's something in us which doesn't move doesn't roll which is a divine life at the centre and there's something in us which does have to move and grow old and finish its course okay and die. When Augustine writes about Martha and Mary he writes about that in the same way but it's not that

[51:23]

there's a more perfect location which is the feet of Jesus all the time and never to weigh on table never to work in the kitchen nor is the active way more perfect nor is it inferior but we both we all have to have both of those lives in ourselves and so it goes with the life of the way of Peter and the way of the beloved disciple of John. It's interesting the masculine is there and the feminine is there and they seem immediately quite perfectly parallel. The beloved disciple of the contemplative who leans on Jesus' breast whereas Mary sits with Jesus same thing an intimacy with Jesus and then the one who must walk and work and travel or the one who must labor and serve on table I think it's the same the same expression a few different expressions of the same duality in our lives the duality of Peter and John or the duality of east and west everyone of us has an east in our life as a kind of monastery

[52:23]

within us and everyone of us has a west too as an exterior that requires a spot that means living in a changing situation that means doing something for others and so on so the kind of picture of life that's left to us I don't want to carry on any longer this afternoon but the way this plays out in the world there was a there was a fellow named Gioachino Fiori some of you have heard about him around 1200 who devised a scheme for history which is one of the most magnificent failures you might imagine and yet there's a truth in it people are always inventing these humanitarian schemes of history this is the first one I know I'm sure there was some earlier he said that the age of the father extends until the coming of Christ the age of the son extends from then until 1260 which would be a little after his own death so he was saved from Christmas

[53:23]

and then the age of the spirit commences which would then extend forever after now the age of the father was to ordinary folks everybody got married in the Old Testament so that was fine the age of the son was the age by God of clerics and of the institutional church but that would come to the end at the end of 1260 and have this wonderful new age of contemplative because he was a monk of course so that was the best of all so that's the end 13 century is when the monastic life begins to fade out to go into Eclipse you have the scholastic philosophy and theology and pretty soon you have the scientific revolution and the consciousness of the west doesn't go up it comes down you go from theology to metaphysics with the scholastics, to science, to Newton and Galileo.

[54:29]

And you end up with like Marx and Freud and so on. So the epistemology, the consciousness, is moving downwards. And it looks like a complete decline from this wonderful press of Christians by the Christian society in the 12th or 13th century. What is it? It's the same law operating, the same two lessons, I think. It's the law of incarnation operating. Whatever illumination comes, then has somehow to go into the crowd. And instead of remaining in possession of a few speck of people, OK, it descends into the dough, like leaven, and fertilizes the whole mass. So those peaks of civilization and those peaks of contemporary consciousness have to disappear because they have to sink into the dough. They have to sink into humanity and transform it from inside. And they have to sink into each of us, transform us from inside. Because otherwise, in some way, we'll be living on the outside still, even as contemplative. If you're bathed always in the divine light, there's a certain sense in which you're exterior.

[55:30]

Because it's not processing through. It doesn't demand that fontal movement. It doesn't demand that struggle of bringing forth from within you, through faith and love, the divine gift that's been given to you. So it can't be a gift unless we appropriate it. And it seems we only appropriate it by how? By giving it. And we seem to give the light best in the darkness in some way. So that same principle of incarnation which I'll carry out a little more tomorrow. But it plays out not only in the individual life, the life of Jesus and our own life, but it also plays out in history. Not only the history of the church, but I think the history of the Western world, which is inseparable from Christianity. The history of the West cannot be separated from the Christian history. They're one. They're like twins, or like parents and children that I don't know of. So, any questions? Thank you for your patience. Thank you.

[56:29]

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