I suppose that most of us are alike. Whenever we make a speech you feel like a colossal failure. Is that common? That gives me comfort. Some people can make one of the worst speeches possible and come off feeling it was beautiful. And you know, I'm not putting them down. I envy them.

There's only two things I want to talk on these days. One is sanctification and the other was the religious house. I've been impressed this morning with your reports and also with your comments here this morning. And sitting here, I'm impressed that nothing we've done together is more important than what we've been doing here this week, and yesterday and today. And it's come to me with force that just makes me nervous all over. I can see the problem with the word function, but then you see, we live in the post modern world. I suppose there's even something that grates you using the word essence and function in the same sentence, but in the post modern world, that's what you're up against. You can change your word to dynamic if that would please you better. What is the essential dynamic relative to history of the human journey of what that reality is that we are pointing to with the verbal sign Religious House. And if we had it to do all over again we'd probably use another sign like hootin hootin so that we be sure that in our thinking here we don't try to slip back to the Middle Ages. We're trying to point back to a dynamic in history with a category.

And for the last four years you've been experiencing an experiment with that reality we're trying to point to bring it into focus for our moment in history. You know it doesn't feel like this is the most exciting moment of church renewal -which I want to come back to in a minute, but boy this is. I mean this is. Down inside it doesn't feel this way to me - the way it did 20 years ago or 10 years ago, you remember? But my God, that and those were great days in the world but nothing even in the same ball park with this.

Wouldn't you sort of like to play the game that there ain't been no such thing as church renewal and right now knowing what we know and so on, we start out as a pioneering group. I think we'd just, I'd be afraid we'd just go over into the charismatic. We'd all just get up and start dancing, I don't know what else.

Now the speech that I made while away as to why, and I intended to get back to a few days earlier than I did, why is this crucial? Now it seems almost inadequate, but I'm going to say it again, for this morning you're conversation has pushed us into a depth relative to why we have to do this that was not 1n my mind, I really believe. In spite of that word profound, the profound dynamic, the profound, the essential dynamic relative to the whole course of history.. Anyway, somebody pointed out to me, this great turn is like we weren't in a boat or on a train or on a great mobile, but we wore in an airplane, Charles Moore pointed this out to me, because I don't know we were on an airplane in which there was a cowboy up front, and one of those huge planes comes up there, well he's coming in, which frightens me more than going out. Anyway he comes around there and banks that thing till you just thought it was going to stall. One of these great big things. I thought he was crazy, you know. Well, Charles picked that up and said that's what we've done on the Great Turn. We've got a monster we're flying, you know. And another thing some pilot told me once that the danger of these big ones, that they're all electronic, or whatever, and that there's so many seconds from the time you push a button or pull the lever until the message or whatever else gets back to the gears that starts going which is something different than WWI in those dog fights, where you pull a lever, something happens somewhere back there immediately. This frightens me, you have to press a button and it takes some while for the big thing to respond. Anyway Charles was saying in this Great Turn, we did a bank and the danger of a stall. It'd like we tried to do, in three months, we've tried to do a bank that should have taken four years.

We've really no choice because the world, the airport's coming up fast. It's something like that. There's the danger of the stall, and it's not a figment of your imagination. I remember last December, there was a great time in my life to be with you then, now I don't suppose you do maybe you're not old enough but I live for these little times we have together anymore. It sort of frightens me too. I had a great time last December I remember I said this (the very remembering still eats away at me. That fall quarter is the most creative quarter of my whole life.

Anyway, I said also the last times when we were together, that we can be sure, that in these next few months or next year, many of our old colleagues are going to fall by the way. That was an intuition that was right. I think I know why. That's a killing thing to say, and so I had to drum up a picture. I'm always filled with a deep felling when I think of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You're marching and you don't know how you're able to go on but you're going on and then you pass the guys who fell, and you get one of them on your shoulders and then you've got this arm around one over here and this arm around one over here and you know you're in as bad shape as all three of those put together and you're going on. Then the guy by the side of the road says, "Help." You gotta go on but the tears flow. You've got no choice. But the tears flow. That has to do with the possibility of a stall. We ought to be in prayer about that constantly.

That doesn't paralyze me at all about the group. If all of us would be that guy that collapsed at the side of the road, that wouldn't stop anything. It wouldn't stop anything. Tomorrow out of nowhere, God would go just like that - there's another one doing the same thing, with the same awful pains and going on when others fall. Not in a moment of despair, but in some moment of sensitivity in history itself.

Richard Neibuhr pointed out to me that the church only moved when it recovered divine necessity. Whereas in our liberal training, we thought exactly the other way. When a man experiences freedom, that's when he moves. When he experiences divine necessity, or if you don't like the word divine, a logical necessity. That is when he moves. The whole concept of Calvinism in its decadent form today, but as a thrust in history, or you take the Muslims, (though I have a great antagonism toward the irrational way of pulled out those sabers and marching into history and can criticize all I want) But the thrust in the sense of divine necessity was there.

Why is what we doing absolutely necessary. On the airplane, I say to myself, are the priors going to get the job done, delineating the sociological socio-spiritual form of the Religious House? After four years of experimentation are we gonna begin now to draw it together and put it down? Maybe they have other things more urgent. Maybe they won't do it, and I say, all right, I'll do it myself. This work is necessary. Finally, nobody can do it but you.

Now the reasons, though, are really the Great Turn. There's just one thing we've done in terms of sociological invention, up to now, and that's your Religious House. The Religious House came at the end of 20 years because it's the jumping off place for the future in terms of sociological invention. You cannot even think seriously of the practical form of the guilds without a religious house, anymore than you could even think of having such a thingamajig, even if ours is wrong, experiment with the reformulation of primal community, which we call the Local Church. The time has come where we have to get clarity on that or we cannot adequately go into the summer.

The second reason is going global. I believe that if the job we're doing now had been done a year ago, and it could not have been, some problems in going global that I met would not. have been there. You understand that until the job you do is done, we'll inevitably think of a religious house as this house, and that house, and that house, rather than a historical dynamic. What makes a religious house symbolically? Now you go global. Anybody would think a religious house is thingamajig that they are living in. The troika, that would be the priors in the house - they would not have a chance in the world in Taiwan or India and other ­places. We have to get clarity on the Religious house if we are going to go global. For the very foundation of going global is the Religious House and

And - this very moment of resurgence. That Canadian guy brought me an article out of Harpers magazine on Immortality. Can you believe this? A Year go you knew you were going to run into this, but when it comes, it comes as a surprise. Some of it is crummy and some of it is on the other World, right in the midst of this word. Written by Robert J. Lifton. Unbelievable. It's just tremendous.

You are not talking about four walls with a roof. But this dynamic in history is that without which resurgence has never come off and never will come off. Your religious house is that which enables those from the given to coagulate into trends which can be woven into revolutionary forces that change the established climate. That came out of two summers ago. For our moment in history we have to have that dynamic spelled out in all of its practicality.

The fourth reason why this has to get done is obvious. It's become a spiritual necessity relative to us. What you and I have at this moment, what we are going through inside, it's the dark night of the soul. I suspect that all of us are getting clarity on the fact that the dark night of the soul is a category that has nothing whatsoever to do with justification but only with sanctification. Only with sanctification. I think it would be good to go back and read John's "The Dark Night" again and then particularly right now, you get into the section where he spells out the dark night. You remember the Church History where we teach Wesley. In that course, he spells out his dark night like being in chains you can't break and finally you find yourself gnawing on them. I a story. I've only told it about two times in my existence because I can hardly stand it. Some one, who was studying medicine, told me this story, which I have never repeated. He had heard of an intern who had a sister that was extremely close to him, great fellowship. They were always playing practical jokes on one another. One night he brought home the arm of a cadaver her was working on and stuck that in her bed - a fine practical joke. She came in and he expected a scream. No scream. He knocked on the door and no noise. He went in and she was eating the cadaver arm. That story has come to me that last quarter. From Wesley, you pull it to pieces inside and you gnaw on the chains that bind you. I'd don't think that is too dramatic for what I'm experiencing down in myself. The Lord knows what he's doing.

I remember when I was teaching at Perkins School of Theology. A student who was teaching in Louisiana, said "You've used the word trust, trust in God several times this morning. What is it you mean by trust?" Frankly I hadn't meant to use tat word because I didn't know what trust meant. He had me across the barrel. His question caught me. If he were here now, I wouldn't be good but I would be honest. Do you remember that when God dumps you in this universe, there's no way out. You rise, you struggle, you hate and there's no way out. An behold, you begin to trust God. You begin to trust the Lord. And that's what trust is.

And that's the only way any man ever comes to any knowledge of what trust is. You take justification. We've drawn too deep a line between these but its safer for a clearer analysis. Not only is pain in this experience, I tell you the upbeat is fascination. I cannot describe the wonder of my life in the midst of God awful pain at the end of WWII when I got through my skull that is the only kind of world you have, and you either have to say it was good or not good. I saw that that was the Logos, that picked me up out of the grave and set me on my feet, and however poorly, I've been there ever since.

In Sanctification, its the other pole of awe. It is primal. Dread no longer is a powerful term. The beat is on that. The beginner denies the fascination, afraid of it, the beat is on the dread. You see all the dark night people. Why hast thou forsaken me. When we were working on justification that was crucial, crucial, crucial. But in sanctification, Let this cup be taken from me. And all of the dark night people see that what it, what the dark night is: you're absolutely separated from God. I said yesterday, you forget your justification.. You forget the word that all is good. Nothing is good. You forget RS­1. It's taken from you. You're out there with this world on you shoulders and there ain't no God. So you literally have no choice whatsoever but say "God!" Lord come.

I'm not getting this said well. You see there is absolutely nothing to rest on. One of the interesting thing you have to put it this way even though it was some other community, the community is taken from you. It turns into a pile. You see at this point you've only God to trust in. Nothing. You got any sentimentality in you about your family, pray God that the experience of sanctification doesn't come along. We've been cured before, you will get cured again. Trust in the Lord. Trust in God.. I'd like to give that being lecture over again.. When you pass through the dark night of the soul of aridity, blindness, or hell, with all that centered, there's only God there. No one else. It's a funny thing. Exactly when that comes clear, there's the point of decision - everlasting - in the heart of God. I wish I had some language to get. this said. Everlasting in the arms of God. You're not drumming up poetry, it's just the way it is - The world.

Now the Religious House has to do with that. In terms of the world, in terms of me. Now I've been driven. You gotta say what I've said, and then, you become. I sometimes have called them crutches. I want to call them sanctified crutches. I've watched our people overseas drop like flies. Strong people drop like flies. You know what occurred to me? Lord knows this is true. You take my silly old illustration of on a bright and sunny day walking on the beach. Things are glorious. I'm alive, and then I see that dead seagull. How can that have happened. Instead of seeing the dead. seagull. Think of being assigned somewhere in India. And the people around here keep delaying it, delaying it. All my life I wanted to go to India and you get off the plane, the glorious sunny morning feeling tremendous. and there is India. You know for a while I thought that India only affected, Westerners like that. The trouble with the people of India is the weight of India. Down in Teheran where I was I saw people experience the same thing I saw my colleagues. There was so much weight there that they felt they couldn't do nothing. I'm not criticizing the Indian people. Now what I rather think is when we get outside of our little protected environment - get speeded up and out there - you learn to trust God. Or you soon become a zombie. I mentioned India, should I describe Majuro? Should I describe Mowanjum?

I went on this trip, I'm going to find out why our people collapse, in India and India is a symbol there. It hasn't got anything to do with India except God was using India as a pedagogue that led us to trust . For what was going on there was going on in me, going on in you. It's the sanctified power of God. It doesn't feel that way, does it? Now here's where you cherish that trust.. If you think that this trust in God just takes care of itself you're mistaken. You're fouled up on what grace means. Now these things I've said to myself. Without the religious exercises, no hope, And these are corporate and solitary. It's up to the religious house. It's got nothing to do with where your abode is or mine is finally. Without the religious exercises corporate and solitary, you haven't got the chance. You haven't got a chance. And yet isn't it funny - the goingonness of sanctification makes all those appear like termites or worse than that. You noticed that you get to literally hate them. What is there? There's something sneaky in this. Trust in God is taking hatred into yourself. Realities that you hate in. Thank God for Mr. Gogarten. In a Social Revolution you're moving from here to here. The real job in social revolution, is the trance of antiquated piety, that has to have the hell broken out of it. Or you aren't to have a social change, but in building the social order, do you know what is first? Not last. You build the new relevant piety. Why? Well you could no more stand to move out of the - Some of you historians, are going to follow through on this - What is behind building of that fantastic culture in Egypt. You're going learn something, perhaps. And maybe I'll get off the track - on a bit of a tangent.

Catholic orders. We owe them a great deal. But we are so far beyond them now. I've been telling Slicker that I don't know how a guy that went to theological school as long as I went to theological school never understood that in the orthodox of the early church, there weren't orders, there was only monasticism. That never got through my skull until last year. It was through those orders but it was also through the Christian manifestation of monasticism. We are back in theory at this dynamic without which you don't have any new social vehicle. A religious house is a dynamic of history. It has to do with this goingonness without which this does not pave the way for this and without which this does not come to be.

Now those exercises, I'm trying to think what I would do if I were a prior. Without this devastating attack on the decadent piety than holds into being dead social vehicle there is no chance for social change and the possibility of that total vision in history which we point to with the verbal sign Religious House. And then the function of a Religious House or that goingonness that we point­to with the verbal sign Religious House, I've been scared ever since we thought a Religious House could have a definition up here some way or another. God help us. The function of a going on ness is to create the new relevant piety which holds before one the great __ of humanness and without which you will not have the new social vehicle. On that thing got back to me. Unbelievable. Very seldom in history - have I've done things intentionally that were sheer sacrilegious. But I went to see Cuspert's grave in the Cathedral. In London Now the trouble is I thought nobody was watching. One of you was hiding behind a pillar over there and saw it. And not only that but it wasn't till after I said a prayer that I saw that there is a painting of Cuspert that was hanging up above his tomb so that when you really get to praying then you are faced with Cuspert, damn it. Just up above you so he was beneath you and above you and Charles was one the side, anyway that. Cuspert and Columba, an Augustine dynamic. Thank you ate the man out on these things. Well, Columba did a bit of mafiaing himself and so did Cuspert. I' m a prior. I mean those religious exercises would be there in any case. That office now I take far more seriously. than I've ever taken my life before. Fast and watch. I would take seriously. You know what I'd like for us to do? Take prayer far more seriously. I'd take prayer more seriously. I would take meditation more seriously. I would take contemplation more seriously. Right at the very time when you sense a kind of urgency. Be patient.

Know only one thing, that hatred never goes away. Whatever happens, it never goes away. The rest of your life. And I believe the one who says otherwise, lies. You know how we used to say that the only time a man's prayer is prayed is when he came in torn and battered and wounded from the front lines, from doing the mission. Well, now you need to take that and intensify it because that's what sanctification is. I sometimes say, that the reason why a great many men in World War II didn't make it was because they had lived sheltered lives and all at once every aspect of life suddenly dumped on a 19-year-old kid. I've made speeches on that subject.

Well, this is what sanctification is. It takes all of the mission that you can dream of and then millions more and all at once dumps it on you. And you are battered and beaten and scarred all at once. All over forever. That's what. makes a man of prayer out of you. And if it doesn't, zombie. That comes from God. The corporate and the solitary, I see now more clearly than ever before the self that is a self but only always in community as a fish is in water in a new depth. Secondly the structures. Without a disciplined life you haven't the slightest chance. Discipline is within and without. And that discipline is without and within. Nothing inhuman about it. It's what humanness is. Those structures are crucial. I'm thinking about what I would be doing if I were a house prior. But I don 't mean the kind of structures that go dead. We were extremely foolish starting that wo4ship service on time this morning. You walked in there, you could see something was wrong. That the bell didn't get rung adequately or you stayed up too late or whatever something was wrong. And so we should. have stood around and laughed and told jokes and sung a few songs and started 15 minutes late. And then after we saw­ how fine it went, after doing such a thing, we should of broken out in the Hallelujah chorus. I guess that doesn't communicate to you.. I mean there's got to be iron structures that don't show. I am more convinced than ever that if you cannot constantly laugh at yourself, make fun of yourself you don't know what I mean. If you can't play, my humor is poor, but don't you, take it away from me. It's my crutch. It keeps me going. Even if it isn't funny, laugh, it keeps me going. It is my corny humor.

Sometimes I think I'm fat because I don't have any will power. Other times I think: it's with great intentionality. Without an iron structure setting environment you haven' t any chance, but that discipline has to be within You get down to gimmicks. Oh boy, I don' t know what you're gimmicks are but mine are I am brutal on myself. I mean brutal on myself. I happen to think that it's a privilege. If it isn't that then you have to have yours. And I mean you and that gimmick become one.

What is internal discipline? I'm not so sure I know. I know it doesn't exist except in corporate discipline. But I know it's not corporate discipline. I know that the one who's internalized corporate discipline so that he's a disciplined person himself is that one who makes possible corporate discipline.. I'm not talking. I'm talking only about sanctification. I don't think I'm standing like a great big giant these days. But by God I'm standing.

The other one has to do with tactics. It's a funny thing, a couple of years ago a fellow and me came up with the whole concept of tactical thinking. It had a deep spiritual meaning until a year ago last summer when it began to dawn on me that something seciologica1 out there was grinding spirit that was sort of whumping us all. Now I see that the tactical posture in life is that without which you cannot endure. You understand I'm not talking about a set of goals. I'm not eve n talking about strategy, unless they are great tactical strategies, that your total being is stuck in the middle of. Without a tactical plan you cannot stand that it is really being in the arms of God. You move over into Zombie-ism.. This got clear to me when that young Spencer boy, that's not really a boy. He's a giant. When that Spencer giant, when I was talking to him about the collapse in India and was hitting hard on the discipline and the symbolism, he said, "Wait you missed maybe the most important thing. And I said, "What's that? And he said, "Being on the pavement." He didn't say that we're going to make it, that's not life. It's doing the tactics. The guys who collapsed first were not the ones who worked out. It was ones who were in. And you know as well as I know that anybody who works in can find 20 good reasons why he ought not hit the pavement, all of them legitimate. All of them legitimate. I don't know if I were a prior of a religious house what exactly I might do. But I think it would have something to do with hitting the pavement at 8 o'clock. I don't how else I would fix the timeline but I mean every day on that pavement.

To me this is extremely subtle. You talk four hours and not even get to the heart of it. That on the pavement business. There's nothing wrong with sleeping in the afternoon. But I tell you you're gone like that if you sleep in the afternoon. Now this doesn't mean that you don't sleep in the afternoon, but I mean you get yourself a month and a quarter plan. It says here on this month I shouldn't go to the movies, but I think life has been treating me so goddamned rough that I want to escape, and you throw intentionality into that escape. Here at Centrum. Some of you are sleeping. Overseas in that climate, I mean it is easy to fall asleep.

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Now the corporate side of this, "There's a corporate side and I mean if your house does not have what most of you call a battleplan but the conversion of a battleplan into a tactical system. It you do not have that, it la impossible for anybody in the house to live tactically although living tactically down inside yourself is not synonymous with corporate tactics. You got both sides of that. You got right after one, the other. Where I think we get confused is what we usually call a battle plan are tactics. Nine times out of ten the ones I've seen are not. It's the tactics that saves you not the strategies.

And then the last thing has to do with the clarity of the vision. We're going over this again and again and again. The function of a collegium is not to decide what you're going to do that day. If you've got five minutes at the end, that's fine. The function of the collegium is the rehearsing of the vision. You do not know who is really going to do that if the collegium is a good one. But I tell you the prior had better stay up two hours after everybody else has gone to bed, so he can be sure that he has a context. Usually what he comes in with doesn't do it. But how does it stimulate what happens. Come early like I am it's Just god awful to the vision again. If having to come up with another way of saying that vision out in front of us. Without it, without some way or another of getting out the Vision, you're in trouble.

Well inside yourself you develop your own discipline. I wrestled a long time with this, and at first glance it didn't seem to have a connection, at least it didn't to me. I don 't go around with a vision in my head. It took me a long time to see that. I ain't got none. Any vision has to do with the body. I'm telling you the honest to god's truth, it has to do with the body. I even believe now that individuals don't have a vision , they sometimes have visions. But a vision is a corporate thingamajig like I believe prayer is a corporate thingamajig. Now looking inside you know what I finally came up with? In terms of internal discipline in recent months I've been literally contemplating on my vocation, my calling. If I went to heaven today and told God the one great gift I've had in my lifetime. It's the gift of the vocation of the religious.

McCleskey, that man had a god-awful struggle about vocation. As a matter of fact I believe even in the darkest of his days he knows. He too is a religious. It's the uniform. What I'm trying to say is there never was a religious without uniforms. Impossible. Impossible. Also, now I'm serious. These are my checklist. Without this I could not rest in the arms of God.

One of these days I want to pull this into sanctification, but right now I do not want to. Now also, it's taken me a long time to believe, to see this, but I believe religious exercises have no meaning finally in terms of justification alone, only on sanctification. Now you and I, I don't quite know how to say this, I don't like to even say it was sanctification. But you see that's not a theological problem with me.

It's a moralistic problem with me to say it. I am going to say it. We were sanctified long before we were sanctified. And then comes that moment like we hear the word of God a long time before we heard the word of God; and then the word of God is seeded and remains in you all your life, so with sanctification. You see, when you're a little tiny baby, you experience the whole of life.. You know what my symbol is? It's this Order ring. Without something like that you're lost, but you know something? I found a certain kind of remarkable exhilaration in me when I realized all this.

I mean all of these religious exercises are nothing unless you are a person that sees the absolute necessity for them. Throughout our history they've been stated a million different ways, I suppose. That is not what I wanted to talk about at all. But I'm getting close to bottom. Let us remember that however God at the moment seems brutal and he may not seem brutal to you but he does to me. See that agony is God given. That agony that says it could not be from God, is God-given. If you were around believe we know better. We used to say in RS­I that when he takes the rug out from under you, God is a son of a bitch. We don't say that anymore I hope, but he wasn't much of a son of a bitch yanking the rug out nothing compared with how they felt, see. I'm talking about phenomenological experience if that isn't a redundant term. But you see the mercy of God. Be has thoroughly prepared us for this hour. You hear what I'm saying. Long before we knew we needed to pray, God taught us how to pray. Long before we needed meditation and contemplation, he taught us how. Long before we knew you ought to fast or not and this kind of business, he taught us how. Now the important thing, however, and I would prophesy, a year from now sitting in such a room as this, we are not going to be dealing with this area at all, we are going to be dealing with the sociological. But only because we've dealt with this area. Now that prophecy may not come true because if we have not done in our being and as a body, this today, we cannot do the other. God will not let us. Zombies cannot do this. So we have to make reasons to praise God in the midst of this complex spiritual agony.

Now I looked over your work of last week. That's tremendous. And it seemed to me that that is exactly right, that upon resurgence. We've got to get somebody on that and get them moving together. That's where you have to begin. As I look back, you had to see that you're dealing with an objective isness in this world to be the religious house. Then I don't think I'd have been bright enough to have suggested it had I been around. I think that you 're listing those almost innumerable tactics, what you did last week, is probably exactly the place to begin. Rather than what you're doing now is putting the theoretical behind it. I think that there's one other thing you've have to do or somebody else has got to do.

I think that when this whatever it is…I don't want to call it a manual any more. It's almost a manifesto. This kind of a statement that we need and certain parts of history need that right now, In the first quarter it can he done. Now there is one other thing. What you've done here is exquisite. I've gotta say here far beyond what I ever saw, and I guess that's the genius of our corporateness. Now you've done, in your kind of 4 x 4, that theoretical statement. And you've done the practical, and it probably has to be reorganized. Somebody has said you've got to put all those things once again on a cross ways and upend down ways to get rid of your overlapping and so on. Now there's an in between here. That is something to me, and these are crude words I know. The theoretical practical that we used in the past to say. and I don't know about this but if you think about it. The profound function or whatever you call that. We need some concrete spelling out of faith.

Now for the work you did last week, it doesn't need to be done again.. But you people know whether it's been done. And then discipline, this has seemed to me as something like location, facility, interior arrangement and decor spelled out as the manifestation of the profound function or the freighter of it.. And then your discipline, and you might go back to the organization of our rule. I don't know, my mind is once there is symbolic corporateness and intellectual corporateness and economic corporateness,. the temporal or the time corporateness you have it. What I'm after is how that is a manifestation and exercise of the profound function. When history bumps up against this discipline, it can't be what it was. Impossible.

And then the style and you know in my mind now and I don' t know whether this is good or bad, but it's strange. I bump up against this character, and it's a style I bump up against. Now what is the down underneath of that and has been for years. And the way I've come at this is to watch how other people are starting by coming up against people in our order. They're startled by their comprehensiveness. They're startled by it. Globality in posture, presence, but the comprehensiveness is amazing. I like to go on using that to be sure I'm right, the profundity. They're startled by the profundity. And the word means deeps. I'm after that characteristic.

And then they are startled, absolutely startled, and in some cases somewhat offended that that awe is really there. The traditionalism. You're continuity with the past. They're just shocked with that. And then the last one they're shocked with your openness and offended by it. I've even sat and watched people become offended that they called it closedness. And I don't mean that at times you don't come across as closed. But they 're so scandalized. And some of these thing are scandalous when you've been taught all your life generosity begins at home, charity begins at home, and then to bump up against somebody whose concerned broadly. Oh, these smart aleck little revolutionaries -- pseudo revolutionaries -- who try to do away with the past and go out and do some new thing in history startling to find somebody who takes seriously every dream of the past. And so on.

Anyway, now this is spirituality. Now I mean something different then in the depths, though all of these things are related, of course. And as I picture my mind, you know what I come back to on this! And I have to fight that business of feeling. Now that's what I mean when I say I'm a religious person and you're not talking about your own virtues, God help us. But I am under a self imposed mandate that has grown out of the radical indicative of life, to be a man of the mystery, a man of consciousness and a man of concern, a man. of tranquillity. That's who I am. There isn't any doctrine. here. You don't superimpose one's ideas on other people. Or force them into their lives. But you're teaching RS­1 or going down to the Peanut Barrel for a beer. You're a symbol. You just breathe that into their lives. So I'm not going all of these places. I'm not sure. I don't think I'm communicating because I'm getting off into personal level. I'm worse than some of you. This is practical.

Now here is not the catalyzer, the enabler of the movement. And here is penetration, formation, permeation. I'm not suggesting replacing but I'm trying to be very practical. There are jobs that have to be carried out. This one is frequently somewhat set aside. Because that's being a presence only. That is present in all of this. But that's practical, too, in the sense of where you put your house, what you do with it. See how you go about this.

Now the next one. Historification. I want to fool with that some place else. Demonstration concern. That might very well be it. And these two and those two are related. Every other one as I have it up here. This is your welfare. And there we have to get categories. I like this word the visits. The strange visits. The sojourns. We should get a better word. I need something like the pilgrimage. The day after tomorrow, you know that the extended order and or the movemental order is going to spend a year as a monk. I like that: spend a year as a disciplined monk. I do not think that is an exaggeration. But you got to be clear, however it's done. You noticed that you have to do this in each one of these.

That visit has different forms. This sojourn has different forms. I don't know how you will come at it. This monk for a month has different forms and the last one over here serving the local community, or the local church or whatever you put. I like in this one you come pretty close but local church experiment if you hate that it is 50 years of that stuff. You're wrong. However, within a year was prophesied that there's going to be a radical configuration in this that will be doing that. You're going to have a hard, hard year between now and then I suspect. And later we can talk more about that.

You cannot put the church here absolutely. But it has to be something concrete. I would like to see the time when you are out to see that every bishop is going to make it, every president, every superintendent, even your superintendent. They are your leader, but they are not chosen men by our standards. God ordained them to be leader of the church. With their crumminess somebody said that Saint John attended a great number of parties to get hold of the men that he thought would be stumbling blocks in the renewal of the church. And he made them comrades rather than trouble makers.

I went to see such a man in the Philippines. And he said to me, "Yes, I'm a very conservative man and I hope that you're not like some of these lay priests down in the southern part of the Philippines. But do you mean that you appointed me cardinal?" And I said, "Oh, then you have accepted my appointment? If I sound excited, I just couldn't believe my ears."

I don't know how you come out of this work. I don't know whether the mission can be here or not, and then specified research. You see all of that is service there. And then, I don' t know whether to put the guild over here or whether the guild goes here. But, after this summer we're going to figure that out.

Have a great summer. We're dealing with our whole life. The practical form of our difference will begin to emerge. And God only knows, what's going to come out of it. I thought also, of organizing either this or that around the dynamic of religious house, training institutes, and social what do we call it: an active centrum or whatever, And what I'm trying to say is what I've got here is on the board I'd have thought myself foolish, but this is a special part of whatever we do.

On getting out that booklet in which we say to ourselves what a religious house is and before you leave when you finish what this work is to do, you may even want to assign different areas of this to take different parts of this and clean it up. I don't know quite what this summer is going to look like but I could conceive that maybe the document that they put in the hand of everybody that comes and is to get here, I would hope that someone here or one of you out in the houses, could really get this grounded, I mean this dynamic grounded in history. Better than we've got it grounded. So, you've been working in different things both on religious orders and on guilds have touched in that area. And we need to get this said with a different kind of quality. Which would make the most secular of men stop and count up to ten. Which would be, maybe it would, the next step in the secular thinking, in the religious recovery, and dimension of life. You'll see the man of the World is out to recover the lost world of the religious, Sooner or later, he's going to acknowledge the function of the religious in a new way you and I couldn't dream of the tail end of the last time you let it have that kind of move, is demonstrated when you wear your cleric collars.

Joseph W. Mathews

3/20/73