Teaching an Alternative Orthodoxy — Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, James Finley

Added: 2026-06-05

[00:00:02]Thank you all for joining us, those of you right here. And I want to thank the faculty. We've had a wonderful day of meetings already. We're still going to meet more tomorrow, but it makes this issue very fresh because we've been basically talking about the living school all day and how we could make it better. We're almost two years into the process. We hope some of our students are online right here. But uh I want to talk a little about what is our unique niche and what is our unique opportunity uh because I have to pinch myself many times to recognize and realize that we've been put in a most unique and wonderful place. I I hope and trust by the Holy Spirit because sometimes it comes so easily.

[00:00:51]You know, there's two kinds of freedom.

[00:00:53]Well, I'm sure there's more than that, but teachers always say there's two and then they distinguish, which is dualistic thinking actually. But but uh the two kinds I want to talk about, there's personal inner freedom. Now, that's what our school hopes to teach.

[00:01:09]How do you attain a kind of mental freedom, emotional freedom, uh intellectual freedom? That is work.

[00:01:18]It's the work of a lifetime. And I wouldn't say it characterizes most religion. I think an awful lot of religion lives in a very small pond of prefabricated answers. And they're never sent on a real journey to find those answers. But that's not really what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the second kind of freedom, which I'm going to call structural freedom. And there's a unique structural freedom that we find ourselves in here. the living school finds itself in by grace, by accident, by gift, I'm not sure, but uh let me describe it.

[00:01:59]Structural freedom is the freedom you enjoy by the groups you're a part of or not a part of, by who's paying your bills or who isn't paying your bills, what institutions you're beholding to.

[00:02:15]uh what organizations tell you uh what pool you can think inside of or even what kind of family you have. We all have varying degrees of structural freedom by reason of our job, our career, who's paying our bills that determines what you can say and what you can't say. But even more than that determines what you can think and what you can't think. So, it's usually not some wicked person taking away our freedom. It's it's contracts we've entered into. Now, I was lucky that I entered into a contract as a very young man with the Franciscans. Little did I think when I did that that they would be an arena of protection my whole life really that has allowed me to live in a very big pond maybe a lake maybe an ocean that's taught me first of all my own Catholic Franciscan uh spirituality but they never limited it to uh just give us answers that'll immediately make us happy.

[00:03:30]Uh, for example, if you're trained in maybe a a Lutheran seminary, well, you have to be taught, and you should be, the theology of Martin Luther. So, if you'd come in the first week and quote Calvin or Thomas Aquinas, you'd probably be looked at with suspicion. That's not that that's a bad seminary. It's just a fairly small pond. And we all have to begin there to learn our own tradition, to learn our own uh authorities, and you got to get those down. You got to know the rules before you move beyond the rules. So, I don't disrespect that at all. But what we have the freedom to do here, I was given it, I think, and Cynthia and Jim were trained in the same by a a little different path, but we all came to the same conclusions. In many ways, in what we'd like to call the perennial tradition, it includes the Catholic, the Franciscan, the Episcopalian, the Calvinist, the Lutheran, but even recognizes that some Hindus and some Jews and some Buddhists are saying some pretty good things, too.

[00:04:49]In fact, if we'd be honest about it, very often they're saying some of the same identical things that we are saying. So that ability to honor truth, authority, wherever it comes from, if it's true, it's true. And the first question isn't who said it? Did a Catholic say it? Did a Hindu say it? Did a Methodist say it? I don't really care.

[00:05:15]But that's not the way most of the world thinks. You've got to know that. And the kind of politics we have today, the kind of uh cultural wars, the kind of religious wars we have are helping us recognize that most people live inside of their tribe.

[00:05:36]And you have to talk tribal religion or tribal culture to be accepted. And we're all in those tribes whether we recognize it or not.

[00:05:48]So uh we were just given some good tribes that gave us some doorways in and some doorways out. Now uh that uh Franciscan tradition that I was first formed in had a an in-house bit of language uh and we didn't use it outside because we were pretty sure at least the Catholic authorities uh would mistrust it. And that was we recognized we were sort of sort of an alternative inside of Catholicism and we called it an alternative orthodoxy. We knew we'd been trained in the great Christian tradition and yet we recognized that our father Francis and Clare emphasized different things and paid attention to different things. It doesn't mean you throw out those things, but you put your effort and your energy on different things. Actually, I think we all do that. But there was something honest about my own Franciscan experience that named that and recognized that. And one of the big pieces of that was that we noticed Francis didn't bother questioning any of the mainline doctrines or dogmas of the church. It's fine, but he went over here and lived differently. It's sort of like Pope Francis is doing right now. And in that we all think Pope Francis is actually a Franciscan. He's not a Jesuit. uh because he's emphasizing different things and he's paying attention to different things without meddling with the mainline doctrines. But what you emphasize is where your passion is. And I think the whole world has picked up that this pope has a very different passion for different elements of the gospel. And I guess that's my way of opening this conversation on our living school that we are in a position of teaching inner personal freedom but we also enjoy by reason of even if you'll excuse me even our age I mean I don't think any of the three of us are trying to build a career do you understand neone of us are looking for more money.

[00:08:25]That's we don't have to create a name or we don't have to have people like us. By the grace of God, uh those questions have been answered. Huh? Do you realize how free that makes us? Very few people enjoy that. That ministry for us is not a career. It's not something that we have to live inside of one pond as I put it. The living school has given us a platform in which we can communicate some of that without fear of bishops or seminaries or not that we're against bishops or seminaries. They're wonderful. But we're able to ask different questions that in all truth they can't they can't you you can't be ordained an Episcopal priest or any other denomination unless you learn the partyline answers of that denomination. Of course, you wouldn't expect them or respect them to do anything else.

[00:09:34]So we we were trained all in the older traditions and ironically and this is what I want to end on that being trained in the older traditions is the very thing that's given us the freedom and the space and the vocabulary to talk about it inside of bigger frames inside of ways that that maybe others can understand. So um that's the living school and why we called it maybe a somewhat pretentious name living school but we didn't want the want this to be merely academics although we give our students some rather heavy academic demands.

[00:10:22]I think any of you who are students would admit to that. But we recognize that that verbal orthodoxy being trained in the great tradition in fact is the doorway into this alternative orthodoxy that you have the freedom to recognize, you know, other people are saying some of the same things. They just use different vocabulary, different metaphors, different symbols. Maybe they're 16th century symbols. Maybe they're 7th century symbols. But they all, it seems to us, are again recognized to be pointing to the same mystery. And it's that big mystery that we have, we hope, the personal freedom and also the structural freedom to talk about. So with that, I think I'm going to hand it over to Jim first. Is that right? Yeah.

[00:11:21]>> And uh I hope I haven't created any difficulties for you to talk. Uh I hope something to build on. Thank you.

[00:11:28]>> No difficulties. No, >> you've helped me.

[00:11:34]Um, you know, I the reason I I like this phrase alternative orthodoxy because it invites us to understand the word orthodoxy in an alternative way.

[00:11:50]And how we tend to understand the word orthodoxy is that a it's orthodox this a statement is orth orthodox if it's stating beliefs that conform to traditional Catholic teachings according to the creed according to the councils of the church and so on. As Richard was saying that's important.

[00:12:12]Alternative orthodoxy is a phrase that refers to another uh it's another frame of reference for our lives.

[00:12:22]And I'd like to and I think it's a frame of reference that we immediately recognize in a story or a parable.

[00:12:31]And I'd like to share then a few parables of the alternative orthodoxy.

[00:12:37]The point being the fact we get the point of the story is that we already know the alternative orthodoxy which is why we recognize the point of the story.

[00:12:46]So a few stories I I heard this from sister Mary Luke Tobin who is leading a retreat great person since passed away. Uh there was a hermit, Christian hermit one that living in the desert and someone knocked at his door and when he opened the door it was a mother and father with their daughter and um they said we we we apologize for intruding on your solitude, but as you can plainly see, a wizard has turned our daughter into a donkey, and we'd like you to pray over her to release her from the spell. So the wizard said, "I see. Come on in." He asked the parents to sit down and he asked the little girl if she was hungry.

[00:13:37]She said she was. So he fixed her lunch.

[00:13:40]While she ate lunch, he talked to her.

[00:13:43]And as the parents saw how lovingly he prepared the lunch and how lovingly he talked to her, they realized the wizard had not cast the spell on the daughter.

[00:13:54]The wizard cast a spell on them into thinking their daughter was a donkey, actually.

[00:14:00]And once they saw that, they were so amazed and grateful. The little girl was grateful cuz it's hard to live in a house and your parents think you're a donkey.

[00:14:12]And they all laughed. And that's the alternative orthodoxy.

[00:14:16]I want to give another story.

[00:14:18]Story I share on my Thomas Merin retreats.

[00:14:22]There's a a woman who marries a psychologist and uh on their 25th wedding anniversary uh he gives her a book he's been secretly writing about her for 25 years.

[00:14:33]When she opens the present, it's a book he's been secretly writing about her titled You.

[00:14:40]And so she lifts the heavy tome from the box. He says with pride in his voice, "If you look in the back there, you'll see you're completely indexed. Anything you want to know about yourself, you can look yourself up. See, and tears come to her eyes. She's so upset about this. And he's crestfallen that she doesn't like the gift cuz he's already secretly begun work on their golden anniversary present, which is a three volume work called us, cross referenced with the U volume.

[00:15:12]Once he realizes what he's done to her, tears come to his eyes. And when the tears come to his eyes, he's living in the alternative orthodoxy. The alternative orthodoxy is the orthodoxy of the intimacy of love that breaks our heart open to see how unexplainably precious we all are.

[00:15:34]Martin Buber, the Jewish uh scholar and mystic said uh one morning he had a mystical experience and he went to his place at the university still in the aura of this mystical experience and a student came to talk to him and he um uh uh listened to the student and so the student left and the student went up to this dorm room and committed suicide and left a suicide note and said, "I came to speak to Dr. Booer, but I could tell he was preoccupied." See, and killed himself.

[00:16:12]And Martin Bubber realized when he was preoccupied by his ecstasy, he says, "I have given up on the God that delivers me from the incarnate preciousness of life or that God has given up on me that I recognize God in the concreteness of the human person."

[00:16:30]Now we could go on and on with stories like this and we all get the point of the story because we all know this alternative orthodoxy in our heart. And so the alternative orthodoxy is actually the original orthodoxy that got lost because in the gospels everyone who met Jesus was affected in this way. They came away different because their heart was broken open in the realization of unexpectedly precious they were in their fragility and in an all their wayward ways and Jesus says you have eyes to see and you do not see.

[00:17:08]And so the alternative orthodoxy is only alternative because we've strayed from the original orthodoxy into some other alternative orthodoxy, namely the definitions and all the toms that define dogmatic truths and people scanning those to see if your latest statement is orthodox or not. Not a good situation.

[00:17:27]See, and so Meister Echart says, to paraphrase Meister Echart, u Uncle Finley's translation, Meister Echart, find that act, find that person, find that community, which when you give yourself over to it with your whole heart. It unravels your petty preoccupation with your self-absorbed self and strangely brings you home to yourself. Thomas Merin once said, "We should all get down on our knees right now and thank God we can't live the way we want to. God doesn't let us get away with it." See, but we try so hard by the dogmatic assertions of the supposed rightness, which was the very Phariseism that countered Christ in the light of this primal orthodoxy, which is Pentecost, which is the mystery of the cross, which is the mystery of anything that makes any sense really. Now, the thing about this orthodoxy is that it's elusive.

[00:18:27]We all know it's true, but we all kind of spin out toward the circumference of the circle, and it's hard to stay at the center of this. And therefore, part of original orthodoxy is fidelity to your own awakened heart. You spend some quiet time each day in a kind a rendevous with God to get reggrounded in the one thing that's always happening which is God loving us through and through and through and through just as we are always unexplainably. See, and to read those teachings that touch our heart and inspire us to live this way. See, and to find a community, a kindred group of kindred spirits that we nurture each other in a contemplative church, sa asham, see to bear witness in the world like leaven in the dough. Now, all that dogmatic orthodoxy, which from this standpoint is now the alternative orthodoxy, um all of that's still there and no disrespect meant because it is really the mystery of grace reflected in thought. That is it arises from the original purity of the awakened heart.

[00:19:44]uh Thomas Merren once called it communal wisdom and we can reflect upon it.

[00:19:49]Christologology, ecclesiology, morality and so on. But it arises from this original primal love to be reflected upon. Why? So that by reflecting on it, we not get lost in the definitions of it, but rather let this reflection lead us back to prayer, lead us back to openness, lead us back to vulnerability.

[00:20:11]So I think really the alternative orthodoxy is a is like an ancient cry uh to return back to kind of the original grounding reality which is the essence of the gospel. It's the essence of all world religions. It's the essence of anything that makes any sense.

[00:20:33]>> Thank you Jim. Thank you. You always give such a beautiful Absolutely. the view from the center of the heart. And I'm sitting here just bathing in this wonderful teaching. I'm going to try to say that basically I think I'm going to be saying the same thing but from the perspective of my own kind of more leftbrain mind centered extroverted way of going at things. But in in the work I've done the ministry I've really been blessed to do. I keep saying people say where's your parish? Who who who's you who do you minister to? Do you have a parish? I say, "My parish is really more and more what I call heartbroken Christians."

[00:21:16]And there's a profile. They come up to see me again and again and again in the lectures and the talks and the they they seem to be attracted by the books I write. But there's a there's a profile there that these were the most idealistic, precocious, curious young uh people who somewhere along the way received a rebuff or a dismissive question or gave up and figured that Christianity was simply a monolith that you couldn't enter and left very often to other paths or no paths. at all. And so there's a lot of there's a lot of folks out there in exile and and often with many many decades even of of excellent good practice on other paths or no paths but with this hole in their heart and as soon as you give the slightest little opening of permission there's a wish to be back. And so with so many of those sensing and feeling people that are living the kind of life that Jim and Richard have both talked about in exile, so much of what the world knows as Christianity has been supported entirely by one particular voice in Christianity that claims itself as orthodox and holding the truth, but that tends to represent things according to a a take on the world and also a way of doing business that is uh runs out of an atonement theology, an emphasis on blame, guilt, suffering, a tendency to judgmental, uh a tendency to exclusivism.

[00:23:10]And it's that kind of Christianity that so many people feel harsh. when when people stand up again and again to say that this is the only Christianity, the heartbroken Christians just go farther and farther underground.

[00:23:26]So I've been very very blessed by the time I live in and the people that have come with me that this idea that there was an alternative orthodoxy and still is has surfaced again big time. So that what we know in our heart what Jim has described so beautifully also begins to meet confirmation in history uh with the recovery of ancient texts we've forgotten with a window that come to us from our brothers and sisters in other traditions and from the looking at what St. Francis and others have lived uh not only where they put their emphasis but really what allowed them to put their emphasis there. So I think the alternative orthodoxy really consists of a right view and a right practice. And I borrow the word right view from the Buddhists that say basically you have to have some map and you better it's it's better off to have a map that serves you than one that doesn't. So the the right view that I think that most of us have in what we would call alternative orthodoxy and which really grew up and was so well articulated within the the Franciscan stream starts with the idea that that that Christ and the love that Christ brings and incarnates and models for the world isn't just an afterthought that came because humans screwed up. uh it didn't come Jesus didn't come in response to original sin. Jesus was from the beginning of the world the consummation God's monuopus that was there all along so that we could see the doca the glory it was intended from the start to be revealed in the fullness of time and the goal is to lead us to the recognition of what's has been called in tradition the osus or divonization which is not about you know divonization of the ego. It's about the full emergence of the glory of the mind of Christ in Christianity. The alternative orthodoxy begins in a view that God is not opposed to us. God is for us. How is God served by people who fail to germinate? That that God is rapturously delighted in every human being whose heart breaks open and blooms and that as human beings come to their glory, the world comes to its glory. So that's the view and it's a view which is inclusive recognizing that human beings on all paths are called to glorification to the full emergence of the human being. It's evolutionary.

[00:26:19]It understands that we human beings are a work in progress both individually and collectively. You know the first birth that got us on the planet is only the beginning of the second birth which is done here in the womb of the planet with each other collectively towards the expression of something else. And so it's evolutionary. It understands that the whole thing is moving on and the the creation itself is not static but dynamic. It's a work in process flowing out now from that centerpiece in Christ to the full articulation of the the glory and the wonder as we become God's realized soul as a human species. So these are some of the ideas in the view that allow us to move forward to a Christianity which is evolutionary inclusive and heart-c centered. So I'd say that's what kind of is the alternative the other way from the cognitive point. From the practis side we have the very real insistence that comes through all the great wisdom traditions of all the religious traditions. This is the perennial part that this kind of consciousness and holding on to this kind of realization which was there in the beginning because it is the mind of Christ but that's a fragile realization and it's in a way state dependent that your being needs to be at a certain place at a certain level and that if you fall out of practice you go back into that gre reading, hoarding, uh, you know, reptilian brain competitive kind of doctrinire device of expression that we thought was orthodoxy. It's not a function of of of doctrine. It's a function of where we can hold our being. And the the great wisdom traditions of the world have insisted the contemplative practice, silence, the reading, the living in the presence of the sacred scripture, the the the living in the field of compassion and extending it to neighbors in a simple exchange. Uh these aren't just private practices to get us our individual salvation, which is an oxymoron anyway. They're practices that fundamentally change the state of the brain and there's a lot of neuroscience now that supports that. So that as we do the meditation, as we do the sitting, as we do the reading from this deep heart place, a brain emerges which is an evolutionary brain capable of holding paradox, of thinking from the whole to the part, of thinking as a human species rather than as tribes, and of moving forward into this evolutionary leap on which our planet begins. Uh so the ability to really get into this dance is is based on orthopraxis as you call it the maintaining of the hard wiring of perception in a state that it can catch the mystery the mercy and and when you take that part out what follows just like sand silting into a riverbed is doctrine divisive rigid you know just what you referred to the cross reference book that's what happens when we run out of the energy of being. So the living school represents a alternative orthodoxy which is grounded and rooted in the heart opening practices and the transformation consciousness transforming practices.

[00:30:16]So it's what we're about. Uh I I love to keep coming back to the to the quote and my friends listening in from LA Aspen will will know full well that we used a lot GK Chesterton's quote Christianity isn't a failure. It just hasn't been tried yet because Jesus was the evolutionary masterpiece of our age and we're still catching up. But as we do so, what we begin to discover is, you know, these these great families of world religions, our Buddhist and and Jewish and Islamic and and Hindu friends are not competitors.

[00:31:00]That that Christianity religion is not a survival of the fittest. There's a deep understanding that we all swim together or or we all sink together. And we have received support. I know this personally because I work in inner spiritual paths.

[00:31:18]We receive support and prayers and well-wishes from our brothers and sisters in all the traditions because each religious tradition contributes a color of the heart of God that's precious. And when Christianity is on with its tenderness, with its compassion, with its love, with its forgiveness, oh, it's so sweet.

[00:31:49]>> Thank you.

[00:31:51]>> Perfect.

[00:31:53]You know, we were together at morning prayer and I'm I only thought of this as we were sitting here that today's gospel in the lectionary that we read was the story of the two sons. It almost perfectly illustrates our point. If you remember the story, he says, "The first son said the right words but didn't do it. The second one said the wrong words but did it."

[00:32:19]And and he says, "Which one was pleasing to the father?" The second one making this very point. It isn't a matter of having the right words. and and we've put so much emphasis upon formulations as if the truth of love that you both talked about so well could ever be a formula of words. Uh we're talking about a transmission of life, a transmission of energy that we call the Holy Spirit.

[00:32:48]Now, we're not against good words, and I don't think Jesus in telling this little parable was against saying the right thing. But what why would he tell such a story to have one say it right, do it wrong, the other say it wrong and do it right and say the one who pleased him was the one who did it, who did the work of love, of life, of creativity, whatever it might be. I was also thinking while you both were talking how I don't think I was ever more sure of my answers than my first year out of seminary.

[00:33:29]I was absolutely I had an answer for everything. Well, I still sound like I do but but when when you're it's actually a false shity and I ask you to apply this to your own field. If you're an engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor, you've got to talk. And it's all pretend.

[00:33:50]This talking with such absoluteness.

[00:33:53]You overstate your case. And you get so used to overstating your case that you stop struggling with the the deep intuitions and the deep mystery that's behind it. So here we older people often find ourselves struggling for words.

[00:34:12]uh because we know whatever word we say it isn't going to exactly touch upon it.

[00:34:20]It's it's always bigger. It's always more. Uh the words always fall short.

[00:34:27]And that's the mystery. The three of us are trying to communicate by every way we can. And we just thank God that God has brought us together so we can sort of tell one another we're not crazy and and and that our intuitions are merely intuitions and that's okay. And our formulations are merely formulations.

[00:34:52]That's not to dismiss their importance.

[00:34:54]That's all we can do. And that's all the church can do. I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, who made all things. Okay, we agree to that. Now, what does that mean?

[00:35:06]We're still struggling about creationism and evolution and the creator of all things. What does that mean? As soon as you give subtlety to it, a lot of people get scared. Huh? They just want you to keep repeating the formula. Repeat the formula. And then we know you're in our tribe and you're in our club. Whether you believe it, understand it, even minimally doesn't seem to be important sometimes.

[00:35:37]And uh that's what we're struggling with. That's what we're trying to bring to life. And I want to say once more if I didn't say it in the first part. I think all three of us, Jim and Cynthy would say it's precisely because we were trained in orthodoxy that we have the freedom to go beyond it.

[00:36:02]You have to know the rules to know how to break the rules faithfully.

[00:36:08]And I think we're all deeply concerned with being faithful to the great tradition, the perennial tradition, tradition with a big T instead of just the little recent customs that we call tradition. So I guess I'm just saying the same thing. But any further thoughts from either of you or u you know it's funny Richard that uh I can't remember all the specifics of it but there was one little Facebook exchange that went on sometime where that was about uh Jimmy Carter receiving an award because at you know at 90 years old he was working. He was still out there. There's a picture of him with his t-shirt on and a hammer building a house and habit hat for humanity and someone wrote in um he's a good man. It's too bad he doesn't know the gospel, you know, and and well, well, well, apparently this person thought he had the wrong attitudes about, you know, >> and here he is giving to the hungry, feeding the poor, but are the sickness in our age nowadays to favor these correct rigid formulas over actually seeing someone doing the work of love in whatever untidy, you know, and incorrect ways. I was thinking of that as you told the story of the the one who didn't have the right words but did the will. You know, >> I think a lot of us who are initially attracted to ministry and a religious life are attracted to churchiness. We and and then when someone is just building a house, you know, there's no candlesticks, there's no there's nothing that says this is churchy. And it's it's actually a disappointment to a lot of ministers because you're not in my tribe. You're not donating to my tribe.

[00:38:10]In fact, you're donating to these poor people who don't have a house. So, it doesn't feed into my system. Uh so, if you don't move beyond career to vocation to ministry, uh I don't I don't know that you can know the gospel. Uh career has to do with church.

[00:38:32]uh gospel recognition, it seems to me, is what leads you to real ministry or service.

[00:38:42]I'm sure something else here that strikes me about this is um about orthodoxy and scripture and revelation and so on.

[00:38:53]Good.

[00:38:55]um when I was in the monastery um and uh studied philosophy studied Thomas Aquinus philosophy and and so on you know so we take something in scripture such as creation in the beginning God said and we read that as said at a conceptual level but in the monastery like they studying um Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and so on uh and in silence living in the monastery see starting to reflect on what Richard was saying see what's that mean see what's that what is creation like really mean if I sit and ponder it see so that if creation means one way of saying it would be that creation is the mystery that God that who is infinite reality itself self is giving reality to all that is real and that the giving of reality is absolute and perpetual.

[00:40:04]So that if if uh God so right at this moment in the light of creation, we're all sitting here right now being loved by God into our chair. And if at the count of 10, God would stop loving us into our chair, at the count of 10, our chair would be empty. If God would stop loving the universe into existence at the count of 10, at the count of 10, there'd be no universe. It isn't I can say, I sure hope God's helping me share these reflections because if God wasn't helping me, the reflections wouldn't go as well. If God wasn't helping me, I wouldn't be here to say it. And and so uh if if creation is then to be meditated upon as a revelation of every breath and heartbeat like I take revelation to heart and ponder it in my heart. I don't get stuck at the dogmatic surface level of a definition. I can remember I used to sit in silence in the monastery. The idea I had was could I sit so silent that I could hear God speaking me into being.

[00:41:10]See, could I uh sit could I stay up in the darkness of the night and listen so quietly I could hear God speaking the darkness into existence.

[00:41:20]So to hear the word of God like the logos of God is to hear that every word of scripture is an invitation to ponder something that transcends thought. You know goes right to the depth of our heart. And so the real issue is skimming over the surface of the depths of everything. and grasping conceptual answers as absolutes that actually betray the essence of what it is that's being revealed, which is the abysslike nature of this love that's uh manifesting and giving itself away as our life.

[00:41:59]Yeah, I think that's exactly what I what I was alluding to when I say that this real wisdom is state dependent and my own spiritual practice and being able to put things together really came when I when I washed up on the doorsteps of the monasteries, you know, St. Benedict's monasteries, the great Benedicting monasteries, and discovered a place where silence and the depths still are a part of the whole perceptual mechanism. You know that that that things are savored. The old word for how the monks work with scripture is they don't study it, they ingest it, they chew it, it becomes food. and this great silent dimension in which some other faculties of the heart emerge uh allow the space in which this deeper listening is possible. And one of the one of the problems is that in our own culture, we're so geared towards content. And we're geared to thinking that the cognitive line is the only thing there is. And that religion, like everything else, is information uh which simply can be mastered and packaged. I've been to so many many seminars and workshops where the idea is well, we've got 15 hours we can be with people. Can we fill it full filled with 14 hours and uh you know 30 minutes of uh of of cognition of of teaching the human being can't absorb that way not spiritual matters. And the more we favor the mind alone the more we lose the very mechanisms which would unlock the only thing that could understand what we're yearning for which is the heart.

[00:43:46]So even in the wisdom in the living school we wrestle with this balance because there's always the temptation to follow the world that it's so breathless you know we have so much information to impart so little time. How do you stand true to the slow incubation that can only happen as we put practice first?

[00:44:09]You know, I started uh quoting the creed a few minutes ago uh created in the 4th century, a nine creed. I believe in God the Father Almighty. I just just someone pointed out to me just within this year.

[00:44:24]They said, "Father, why is the word love not in the whole creed?" I said, "It isn't."

[00:44:31]And I went back and read it and I realized the word love is not in the whole creed.

[00:44:36]So you see it wasn't coming from the heart space even why did we emphasize father which seemed to assume God was masculine nothing against the masculine but we got to know that's a metaphor and God is beyond that God could also equally be called mother now does that make me a heretic no it just means as you I've chewed the text a little bit and struggled with the mystery and why did we say father almighty well if you look at the evolution of consciousness in the 4th century. We're at what spiral dynamics would call the purple or the red level where the obsession is power. Who's got the power? We're preoccupied with kings and queens and heads of state and and wars. Uh power is truth. So what's what do we pay attention to in God?

[00:45:30]Almightiness. Omnipotens in Latin. Uh, I would like to think that if we were able to write that same creed today, not being unorthodox, but in fact being truer to the deeper intuition, we would have to say God, father, mother, lover, mystery or something like that. Now, that gets complex, I admit. So, it's easier to just say father, but I bet a lot of us would be much more healed and much more freed if we'd say mother allloving instead of father all powerful. All I'm saying is it's paying attention to different things. I'm not throwing out omnipotent father. That's a piece, too.

[00:46:27]But we've got to recognize that's the piece we were paying attention to in the 4th century. That's what fascinated and had authority in our hearts and in our minds. Now, the mystics and the people of prayer who really went on the journey, they didn't throw that out. And we're not throwing anything out either, but we're saying, "Let's chew on it.

[00:46:51]Let's taste it. and let's get all the flavor that is in this uh delicious chew. Huh? And that's the work I think of the people of prayer and the pe the mystics of the church. That's the perennial tradition that we're trying to draw upon.

[00:47:12]Greetings everyone. Greetings to all of you um from around the world. My name is uh Tom Everly and I am the director of the living school and we'll jump into some questions here right away. So to begin with, Jeff asked this question.

[00:47:28]Is there a growing movement for the alternative orthodoxy to become the mainstream orthodoxy?

[00:47:35]And would that be a good thing? So for any of you or all of you to respond to >> uh I could only say that I've had the privilege of working in this past uh couple of years uh with four four young uh young emerging people. We call them the kids because they're 30 or under.

[00:48:00]And what I see from this group of people just gives me such hope for the future.

[00:48:06]These kids are beyond postmodern. Uh they they talk teard they belong to evolution. They belong to uh the planet.

[00:48:14]They think from the point of view of humankind as one body. And uh one of them just this past week wrote a magnificent service of lessons and carols that starts creation at the moment of the big bang rather than Adam with with liturgy to go. In other words, I I think we have in my lifetime begun to go over a critical turn where the the old orthodoxy is dying away and the new generation that's coming back is just seeing something different and that that our job is really to be a bridge, some of us, so that there's not a need to to throw out uh the whole cart just because the tires are flat. Uh so but I I have tremendous hope that yes that the that the what we've called the alternative orthodoxy will be the the new orthodoxy because I think it's the only one that's compatible with the long-term survival of our of our uh of our species and with the god-given yearning to emerge and fully disclose a reality whose essence is love.

[00:49:30]Um, you know, my sense would be one way I put it sometimes is that, you know, at the last supper, uh, there was a traitor at the table and things run off to a good start really.

[00:49:44]And, um, the crucifixion's hardly a way to spend an afternoon really.

[00:49:53]And uh I I I think see the question is what if we all lived in the alternative orthodoxy? Like what if at the count of five we could all be on alternative orthodoxy all over the world? We'd be in heaven. We'd all be walking around amazed about how precious we all are and how amazing it all is and what a gift this is. We'd all go around grateful. We'd go around humble. Go around awake. how can I be helpful? And uh that'd be pretty good. So I think there's always going to be the rise and fall of the creative tension between the two orthodoxies because what happens as soon as the ferment of the awakening arises, the wounded aspects of the ego claims it for itself.

[00:50:45]Thomas Merin once said he said he said uh he said it is as if we tell God when it comes to mystical awakening and liberation and so on it is as if we tell God we really really really want this with all our heart really under one condition. See the condition is that when we cross the finish line into mystical union our ego will remain intact >> and so we get to be a mystical ego and get the respect we deserve. And so I think the respect like in our own homes, in the church, in the world, you can literally watch this creative tension going on. So how to be watchful, vigilant, and how to be wise as a serpent and simple as a dove. Jesus says, see, how to be simple as a dove, meaning it not to be jaded, not to be cynical, be cleareyed. See the one thing that's ultimately always happening everywhere which is infinite love giving itself away forever. And don't be naive.

[00:51:45]Do not be naive. And to be wise as a serpent and simple as a dove is the ongoing kind of earthy wisdom of um I think people on the spiritual path.

[00:51:59]You know, I was told that um in 1950 98% of Central and Latin America would have called itself Roman Catholic.

[00:52:10]Uh the prediction is that 2030 years from now, it will be almost entirely Pentecostal.

[00:52:20]uh because the Latin people in particular it seems to me have this beautiful openness to the heart space and whatever you think about Pentecostalism it opens up that heart space and and people can speak from that level it's it's a kind of many mysticism where people's heart space is is touched and so I just I hate to use statistics but it it's written in plain sight organized religion mainline Protestant is losing numbers every year at a rather amazing rate because it's all too much in the head. It just it doesn't awaken or heal the heart. And if if the gospel does not awaken the heart and heal the heart where most of our hurts lie, uh that's the orthodoxy we're talking about. That that is not really orthodoxy. It isn't really working.

[00:53:18]And of course the statistics in Europe are even worse. But uh it's there they haven't left for warmhearted Pentecostalism but mostly for agnosticism or materialism or it all doesn't mean anything postmodernism.

[00:53:35]So we've lost the two continents or we are losing that Catholicism for example thought it had in the bag. you know, we were in control in Europe and Latin America. Read the statistics now. Uh that many people are not rebels or iconoclass or heretics or terrible sinners. They're God's children. And they're God's children who who when the pain came, when the suffering came, the gospel, as it was preached to them, did not heal their hearts or did not support them in their suffering. So people, as we say, are speaking with their feet.

[00:54:22]And it's to that church in recovery, as Cynthia said, that we we also hope to be speaking.

[00:54:31]>> Okay. Thank you. Uh, next question comes to us from Rachel and deals with academics and non-dualistic thinking.

[00:54:38]How do you advise one to approach academic theological studies, balancing both the dualistic thinking that's necessary for doctrinal formation and the non-dualistic approach that allows us to operate out of this alternative orthodoxy >> in practice?

[00:55:02]You know, there's one of these terms. It would almost be lovely to put a moratorum on the word non-duel because everybody's using it in so many different ways now. And in always on one side, non-duel is used to mean something like the equivalent of a of a good marijuana trip. You know, any thinking, man, that's dual. Any any use of the cognitive mind and non-dual, it's all one. But the the really deepest and most lively understandings of the non-duel is it's not one not two but one and two.

[00:55:39]And we are able to use this wonderful brain that can separate that can make distinctions that can see nuances but we use it in connection with our heart and in connection with the sil with the silence. So the what's really exciting is to is to be introduced to the people that are deep passionate visionary contemplative thinkers like Meister Echart like Tar Desardan like Ramon Panekar Beatus Bruto these people are stunning and I I think that if if we just encourage people to maintain the practice uh very often if you if you maintain your science your silence your contemplation You can entrain with the mystics and you can understand them in ways that you can never understand them if you're just trying to figure them out as intellectual puzzles. So it's learning the modalities that unlock the treasures without fear that using the mind means you're losing the heart. That's only true if you fail to practice.

[00:56:48]>> You know uh a little apocryphal story first and make a point about academics.

[00:56:54]um apocryal story of St. Augustine when he was writing day trinitate his work on the trinity and um he was really having a hard time with the trinity kind of struggling with the trinity and the apocalong the beach and he sees a little boy um going down to the edge of the water with a teaspoon ocean water he's very carefully carrying it up pouring it in a little hole in the beach he goes down gets some more ocean water he brings up he keeps pouring it in he does this over and over. So Augustine asked him what he's doing. He said, "I'm putting the ocean in this hole." And Augustine laughed said, "Well, you'll never do it." He said, "Well, either will you ever figure out the Trinity." And disappeared.

[00:57:39]Now, here's the answer with academics.

[00:57:42]By the middle ages, the two great schools, the the Neoplatonic Augustinian Franciscan school and the Dominican aricilian school are actually profound and subtle clarifications of the nonduel duel. really it's it only is only problematic in kind of certain power structures that have a kind of a superficial approach to the depth of the of the academic tradition and I I was just reading a book recently on apologetics and the eclipse of mystery on Carl Roner on mystaggy on how with through apologetics by explaining everything away you lose mystaggy that is you lose the essence the intimacy of the unexplainable. That no idea of God is God. Every idea of God is infinitely less than God. And the only way to know God is the willingness to pass beyond all ideas of God. That no idea of God is God and created in the image and likeness of God. And no idea of you is you. That you're you're ultimately unthinkable.

[00:58:52]This is why those we know are those we love. So I think academics whether it's depth psychology or metaphysics or depth theology itself is a very carefully worked out and refined responsibility for this. It's only superficial approaches to it that make it difficult I think.

[00:59:13]Okay next question. Max um asks a question on atonement.

[00:59:18]Cynthia mentioned the atonement in her statement. I see so much traditional atonement theology everywhere and I struggle to explain to people a different kind of way of looking at atonement. Can you give us some place to hang our hats regarding a new alternative orthodoxy of the atonement?

[00:59:41]This always comes up.

[00:59:44]It's almost like it it's the conundrum that needs to break open our old logic and see how how unsatisfying it really is. Uh I write about this in the book things hidden.

[01:00:00]There's couple chapters there because it was uh the Franciscan school that first became dissatisfied in the 13th century with the traditional answer. Cynthia already named it that Jesus could not be plan B. Jesus had to be plan A in Christian theology. That what was personified and held together in Jesus is what is true everywhere. Jesus didn't come to solve a problem, but he came to reveal the nature of the human. So that that gets us off on a positive foundation. there's there's atonement language that emerges largely from our Jewish heritage that that was the language of the temple. So the New Testament which is written by Jews and initially mostly for Jews that language made sense that always an animal sacrifice had to be offered to change the mind of God. And so it worked. And so the words are there. Ransom, sacrifice, atonement, reparation.

[01:01:12]I can't deny that those words are in the New Testament. But again, once you chew on them, you realize that it's still in what I call transactional theology. that there has to be a metaphysical transaction between God and Jesus for God to decide to love us. This is this is unworkable that either God is organically in love with what God created or we don't have an organic universe.

[01:01:46]So, uh most of us in the Franciscan tradition never accepted and we weren't considered heretics. That was almost the prime example of our alternative orthodoxy. We held what was called the minority position.

[01:02:03]And we weren't called sinners or unbelievers or unorthodox.

[01:02:09]But it almost is as if the church was more broad-minded in the 13th century than it has been in recent centuries because there we could have a majority position. the atonement theory that most evangelicals would believe to this day that Jesus had to spill blood to save the world.

[01:02:30]It's ironic that Protestantism thinking it was reforming Catholicism and and it was on many levels. I'm not trying to dismiss the Protestant Reformation, but what they don't recognize and this is very humiliating when they recognize it.

[01:02:48]They usually accepted the mainline Catholic positions and never understood the alternative orthodoxy. Maybe groups uh like the Amish or the Menanites or the Quakers went in that direction, but most of your mainline Protestant churches accepted mainline Catholic theology. So, thanks for asking the question because it gives me a chance to illustrate in a very concrete way an alternative orthodoxy.

[01:03:20]Let me sum it up in two sentences.

[01:03:22]Forgive me for taking so long. All right. Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity. It didn't need changing. God has organically, intuitively, not intuitively, inherently loved what God created from the moment God created it.

[01:03:42]Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God. Can you make that switch? That's an alternative orthodoxy.

[01:03:52]A perfect example of the very point we're we're trying to make. If I could, you know, at the risk of prolonging the question, one other little window in it, I know that that atonement can very quickly become the whipping boy nowadays, but there is one uh silver lining in this cloud. And and I learned it when when I began to realize how strongly so many of the other traditions said that really we carry our own responsibility. I I had a Sufi teacher who once son of a butcher. He said every mutton hangs by its own leg.

[01:04:31]And the idea that barraa or or or shaky pot spiritual energy from a teacher to a student can change their their state.

[01:04:41]But nothing could take away your your wound. Nothing could carry your sin in the old way. You're on your own, baby.

[01:04:51]And I think that what what is so brilliantly and potentially liberating in atonement is the understanding that one person and not just Jesus I don't but that every person who in a deep way lays down their life in love for another carries that burden in the way that the other person is released into freedom and that are in finally that our love for another uh can wipe out those burdens of the individual responsibility and carry us all to a new place. I think there's still traction in there. We simply have to go back and reclaim it uh as morphagenetic fields rather than as sin offerings.

[01:05:43]>> Next question comes to us from Jenny and the subject is on loneliness.

[01:05:49]How does one endure the loneliness of the alternative consciousness when one lives in a community where there are absolutely no kindred spirits?

[01:06:05]>> That's very real.

[01:06:07]You know that final talk that Thomas Merin gave that's on the video in Bangkok, isn't that where he says, "You know what? We're all on our own now."

[01:06:16]Something to that effect. And I think he was seeing this very phenomenon.

[01:06:21]>> Yes.

[01:06:22]>> He's quoting the Dalai Lama that that everyone stands on their own two feet.

[01:06:26]>> And he says I think this is pertinent statement for every monk and over but I also think that I mean aside from the fact that be see what you can't do to find another community u in which is not so lonely and sometimes you can't sometimes you can't. So sometimes what's helped me with this and working with people in therapy with this uh several things.

[01:06:51]one that this loneliness participates in the loneliness of Jesus because Jesus who was unexplainably one with everyone was alone in that he was he was he was he went by so unseen you know he he's and so therefore like Platinus never less alone than one alone never less alone than one alone and our loneliness another way of looking at it is that God's lonely for us. And when we're lonely, we're participating in the loneliness of God because God's God misses us. God's lonely for us. There's that. There's another approach to it, I think, which is through prayer, whether it be the Jesus prayer or bakti love, devotional love that uh we can intimately experience the intimacy of God with us in and actual intimacy and actual intimacy. And I think another way to look at it is the fact that your own faith community is not able to reciprocate this affinity of vision is a kind of an aloneeness out of which it can kind of purify your awareness to deepen your sense of interconnectedness with everyone that you meet that every person you meet is your brother and sister. Uh the original alone together. We're all alone together and loneliness is psychological level.

[01:08:21]You go deeper and it's solitude and uh solitude is a kind of mysterious kind of intimacy in which we're all united with one another. And I also think you can find teachers and even though you're not with them physically through the through the reassurance of the teacher you know you're not alone because it rings true like this is this is true. I'm one with this person even though it's a mystical teacher. Maybe they've been dead for centuries and and the deathless nature of the awakened teacher. Uh the the the body of Christ, the mystical body. And um so it's it's difficult sometimes.

[01:09:02]I wonder if we didn't give people uh maybe two easy consolation by giving them a quick answers and collective uh belief systems where we didn't have to struggle with it because I believe it because the church believes it. And uh the struggle ended. And so they were alone but didn't have to suffer the anxiety of aloneeness because they could take this this false comfort from I'm just quoting the bishop. I'm just quoting the pope.

[01:09:38]That does take away all your anxiety.

[01:09:40]And Catholicism has built on that. I I'm not trying to say that in a negative way, but it's kept an awful lot of Catholics at least. That's the only group I can primarily talk about at a very superficial level with almost no curiosity, almost no spiritual searching because their loneliness was taken away before they suffered it. Yeah. And you've got to suffer it. And I think it's what John of the Cross means by the dark knight of the soul. That that God can sometimes providentially wean us off our dependency on finite modes of connectedness in order to open ourselves to go deeper to experience how God's unexplainably one with us in this alone.

[01:10:26]Thomas Merin once said, "In the hour of your death, you can get all the people in the room with you that you want. They can climb up in bed with you if you want, but you're dying alone." He said you're that alone right now and you will never find the intimacy you're seeking by avoiding that aloneeness. So sometimes the aloneeness though not easy is actually a gift. You know it forms character. We despair or we go deeper.

[01:10:50]We despair or we go deeper.

[01:10:53]>> Of course on to go from the sublime to the utilitarian.

[01:10:58]you know that what's happening in our own culture with a with the access of internet technology is that groups are forming everywhere. you know, like-minded spirits are getting together in the profusion of ecourse online courses that that people are just shuffling to find networks of the heart and identifying community more and more not with buildings and places but with people that are working on a wavelength.

[01:11:28]>> Thank you. Next question. Brian um asked us on the subject of responding to fear.

[01:11:35]When you begin to respond to people with greater inclusivity and openness and find those in your tri in your tribe question and fear your posture, how might one continue to live into this posture without dividing the tribe?

[01:12:01]First thing comes to mind is is our common confusion of unity with uniformity.

[01:12:08]We almost all think uniformity is the unity of the spirit. Actually the unity of the spirit is the honoring of differences which the spirit allows. And Paul makes that very clear in Corinthians. But most of us want uniformity. That takes away that loneliness, that fear of standing alone.

[01:12:28]But I don't know that it does us a favor in the long run. Because in the long run, we have to recognize every one of us in this room, we've got a different background, a different education, a different intellect, a different body.

[01:12:43]If we don't learn to honor pluroformity, uh, I don't know how you survive in this world. And yet, we have to find a unity that isn't based on everybody being the same. And I think low-level consciousness wants that. It wants us all to march like you see armies march, you know, and it's very comforting, I'm told, to march with a group. very comforting uh even physically to march with a group to know that you're in sync, you're in step takes away this very loneliness we're talking about. But I I I don't think that's the way God created humanity to all march in armies.

[01:13:31]There's no evidence that's true. That's a human creation.

[01:13:38]>> Yeah. You know, something else I think about this is that if if we're if we're in a group who the tribal consciousness is so strong, there's a suggestion that we should, for example, respect other traditions as deeply as we respect our own. And they take offense at that. I think it's important to have empathy with the sensitivity they have around that and um the vulnerability around that for them and not to um be kind of be in their face with something that they're trying to actually the reason they resist that is they're convinced they're trying to be faithful to something that God wants them to be faithful to and have sensitivity to that. Then at the same time I think there's a way to there's a way to gently open up the question. So for example to say I think as much as we can all appreciate what we have here I think it can be so helpful to see how mysterious it is that God works in the minds and hearts of everyone. And then if they if they re object then you say back something like I well I understand I know it's so difficult uh but even so I do think it is mysterious and so you're just quiet in a non-confrontive way you neither back down nor do you get confronted you just quietly hold your own in a respectful stance toward where they're at because that's where they're at. And then in the kind of the alchemy of that you can possibly be a a catalyst for change to some degree.

[01:15:17]Final question comes to us from David talks about transformation in the church with the dogma and baggage of the institutional church. Should we search for new wine skins and approaches by starting new contemplative churches or stay in the institution and change it from within?

[01:15:43]>> Who wants to start?

[01:15:47]>> Well, I could I could start with a little bit of a map. uh that in some of the classic teachings of the inner tradition. It's always been said that a path works on three levels and they're all necessary. The exoteric is the doorway that you go in that you walk in that door, you learn fundamental ethics, morality. The mess esoteric or middle is about practice where you're doing this work and that leads to the esoteric which is the heart awakened knowledge and that all three are necessary for health and for you know what can Wilbur calls a conveyor belt a smooth growth.

[01:16:27]If we take down the old structures, we wind up rebuilding them from the start because the exoteric level is necessary.

[01:16:36]And uh so my own approach has been not so much to to decry or demonize the institution but to actually love it and just fill its pews with conscious people. So you build small communities that are complimentary that are doing the mess esoteric work but in relationship with uh the great structure and as we raise the quality and quantity of consciousness that way every part can be seen and respected for the part it has to play. But if we destroy the old, we're going to have to invent it again at that level, >> you know.

[01:17:20]>> Um, well, of course, it's a personal question. I mean, it's a matter of discernment based on the situation that you're in.

[01:17:30]Um, I think there was a time after I left the monastery, I left the church for a while. I just got what it was. I I just couldn't see how God could buy into an outfit like this. That's what I saw.

[01:17:43]Like, give me a give me a break. Gy Christmas.

[01:17:48]>> Yeah.

[01:17:49]>> Have to make God off and sit on a stone somewhere and weep when you look at it.

[01:17:53]And then I came back in a kind of a kind of the mystical contemplative uh aesthetic of you know the depth dimension of the Christian tradition.

[01:18:04]But I kind of came back in a way where I found my own way. So I have a contemplative prayer group at the parish. It's an ongoing thing like 50 to 100 people come and we sit together.

[01:18:15]Everyone's welcome. We end with the Lord's prayer and Mary mother of contemplatives pray for us and two saints and I spend a year on one mystic and then we take it next year we go to another mystic. But I'm very much at the edge of things. So I'm not a part of the parish. I don't go to Sunday mass. I'm not part of the scene at all. It just isn't me. I'm just not there. I just don't care to do it.

[01:18:37]So I think to follow your own drummer, each of us has to find our way with this on the ways and the modalities in which we're involved in the mystery of church and the mystery of Christ. And I think it's a discernment, spiritual direction question, matter of conscience. I think >> you know, you know what I'm going to say? It's the typical yes and thing. uh if you react against them that what Cynthia was saying then you're going to rebuild your own thing with making the same mistakes and too many have made that mistake. Uh when you react you have to keep justifying your overreaction and proving why your stance is the truth. So don't don't put that on yourself. Don't go there. honor what is good, what is holy, what is enduring, what is lasting inside your your congregation or parish church and find ways that you can show that respect.

[01:19:38]Maybe that's just on various occasions throughout the year. But what we mean by emerging church or paraurch is that more and more people are saying but I need something else. Now I remind people that's what the Benedictans were.

[01:19:56]That's what the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits were. We went to the side of the organized church. So this is very orthodox that you you emphasize different things in a different way and with a different manner while not cutting all your ties to the center.

[01:20:14]So you honor unity and the spirit always creates unity, not rebelliousness.

[01:20:21]But yet you have to honor as as Jim was saying this personal at this period of my life. That's not what I need. And I need to be fed or freed or healed or liberated or I need to serve through this organization or this group. My sadness is when people really do neither.

[01:20:43]They neither show respect to the tradition and that many people can't be totally wrong and you totally right and neither create anything better.

[01:20:55]They just go to movies or well that could be good too I guess >> but I I just mean you know there what we call the totally secular mentality that it's not leaving the Christianity because you want to serve the poor or you want to do something better. you just leave out of this attitude of uh I'm totally beyond this and superior to this and I don't really do anything noticeably better with my life. So if you're going to build parurch, build it on some real values and and somehow make it beyond meeting my needs. Am I meeting some other people's needs? And that's been the the main criticism of the the so-called green level or the liberal pluralistic level that it tends to be rather totally individualistic. And as long as I can honor that I'm being true to myself, uh, I can throw out the whole tradition. Uh, so I just use as a corrective, is there any kind of inclination toward serving others or healing the world in my righteous standing apart? And that that if you look for that, I think you can trust it. I think too this very webinar we're having now in the center for action contemplation like to be a contemplative prophetic presence within the institutional church and um you know and and we're doing that it's happening right now as we talk that's what's happening >> right now and it's a very freeing um kind of a leaven in the dough uh that you don't have to leave you can be prophetically and lovingly present right in the center of it where would the church be if everyone left.

[01:22:52]>> Okay, good. Thank you. So, is there any closing comments from all three of you before we um wrap this up here this evening?

[01:23:00]>> I think I've talked too much. So, anything from either of you that you'd like to say?

[01:23:06]>> I would just say to pick up where we are. I was telling Richard and Cynthia earlier, I just feel so grateful to be part of the living school and part of this gathering because it's such a spiritual home for me. You know, it's it's the Catholic church that I so transformed my life in the monastery.

[01:23:25]It's like the perennial mystical Catholic richness of life in Christ and uh to experiencing it here together and then almost kind of you know the mysticism of cyberspace. There's people all over the There's people all over the world right now in this nonspatial love dimension who are one with us like this.

[01:23:45]It's just a it's a beautiful grace thing. I'm very very grateful for it.

[01:23:51]>> I guess I'd just say that one of the things that I've learned is that in any move of social or evolutionary change, it's all done in a kind of failank in which people rightfully occupy different roles. There are those that are the the ones that are out on the barricades, you know, hammering. There are those that fill in with a little bit more grace and harmony behind that. There are those that sit right in the middle. There are those that drag and there are those that stonewall. and to see them not as oppositional but all part of the the process that any great movement must take to make sure that change is integrated and to honor and respect people wherever they are along that failance of change and to also honor your own vocation and your own place around it which is given to you as you sit in your heart in prayer.

[01:24:52]Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you all for being with us. We hope this is healing and helpful and true and life for our suffering world. God bless you all.

[01:25:03]Thank you. Good night.

[01:25:04]>> Good night.

[01:25:05]>> Good night.

[01:25:13]Most of you came back.