Most all of us are pulling someone up with one hand while we ourselves are being pulled up by the other.

Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

I have hardly exhausted the the list of things that individuals may need to give up in order to form themselves into a community. I routinely ask the members of a group to reflect in silence, during a break period or overnight, on what they as individuals most need to empty themselves of in their own unique lives. When they return, their reports are as varied as the topography of our glove: "I need to give up my need for my parents' approval," "my need to be liked," "my resentment of my son," "my preoccupation with money," "my anger at God," "my dislike of homosexuals," "my concern about neatness," and so on, and so on. Such giving up is a sacrificial process. Consequently the stage of emptiness in community development is a time of sacrifice. And sacrifice hurt. "Do I have to give up everything?" a group member once wailed during this stage. "No," I replied, "just everything that stands in your way." Such sacrifice hurts because it is a kind of death, the kind of death that is necessary for rebirth.

It is not easy to be crucified - even figuratively. Yet it is usually necessary. Crucifixion is not simply some dynamic that happened to a uniquely great leader two thosuand years ago. It is a strange kind of law. In the training of community-building leaders I tell them over and again, "You must be willing and able to die for the group." But there are no words that can prepare them for the agonizing experience of the vilification a group may heap upon a leader who refused to be a "Big Daddy." The issue calls into question our very definitions of "strength" and "weakness" in leadership. To lead people into community a true leader must discourage their dependency, and there may be now way to do this except to refuse to lead. Paradoxically, the strong leader in these instances is she or he who is willing to risk - even welcome - the accusation of failing to lead. The accusation is always made. Sometimes it is mild. Sometimes it is almost murderous.

At one such time a rabbinical story came to the mind of a colleague. It has been added to our compendium for use during that dreadful period when groups, refusing emtpiness, founder in chaos and blame the leader for their condition. "A rabbi was lost in the woods," my colleague told his workshop. "For three months he searched and searched but could not find his way out. Finally, one day in his searching he encountered a group from his synagogue who had also become lost in the forest. Overjoyed, they exclaimed, 'Rabbi, how wonderful we have found you. now you can lead us out of th ewoods!' 'I am sorry, I cannot do that,' the rabbie replied, 'for I am as lost as you. What I can do, because I have had more experience being lost, is to tell you a thousand ways you cannot get out of the woods. With this poor help, working with each other, perhaps we shall be able to find our way out together.'"

The moral is hardly obscure. yet it is amazing how little the story helps. As likely as not the group will use it to add one more to their list of charges: "Besides which," they will inform their leader, "you tell stupid stories."

Still, the hardest part for the leader is not the nails driven in by others; it is the self-crucifixion. It is refusing the temptation to be the leader the group clamors for. Those of us who gravitate to such positions are quite accustomed to lead. It is far easier for us to teach and preach than to not speak. Continually we must empty ourselves of our need to control. More often than not a group will become a community only after I have given up, when I have decided, This is the time it will be a failure

"There is only one major rule. You can't drop out." since some people need an escape route, I am careful to add that I have no guns, whips, chains, or shackles to enforce this commitment. "But each one of us is responsible for the success of this group," I continue. "If you are unhappy with the way things are going - and you will be - it is your responsibility to speak up and voice your dissatisfaction rather than simply pick up your marbles and quitely leave. The expectation is that we will hang in together through periods of doubt, anxiety, anger, depression, and even despair."

For those who have experienced community it can be very lonely to return to a society where there is precious little, if any, community. "And those people back home are not only going to misunderstand you; they are not even going to want to hear about it. While you have been here they have been keeping the home together, they have been making the money, they have been minding the children, mowing the lawn, cooking the meals. Instead they are going to want to talk about what they have been doing, the problems that they have had, the sacrifices that they have made. It is important that you be prepared as you leave here to love those people at home." The only other antidote is the creation of more community.

Two monks, Busho and Tanko, were traveling from one monastery to another on a rainy day. Halfway in their journey they came to a crossroad that had become a gigantic mud puddle. A young woman in a lovely kimono was standing at one corner looking forlorn. Busho went up to her and asked if she needed help getting across the road. She said she did. "Well, then," Busho exclaimed, "jump up on my back," She jumped on his back, and Busho waded across the road and gently put her down on the other side. Then he and Tanko continued their journey through the mud and rain.

They arrived at their destination just before nightfall, tired and hungry. They washed and then were fed a good meal by the other monks. After dinner Tanko said, "Busho, how could you? How could you have carried that woman? You know that we monks are not supposed to have anything to do with women. Yet you invited one to actually jump on you, and not only that, but a young and beautiful one. What might people have said if they had seen you? You disgraced your vows and our order. How could you?"

Busho looked at him. "Tanko, you are still carrying around that young woman?" he asked. "Why, I put her down over five hours ago."

"The Spirit stands for progress, and evil then, by definition is that which refused progress."

The Church likes to refer to itself as the "Body of Christ." But it behaves as if it thought it could be the Body of Christ painlessly, as if it could be the Body without having to be stretched, almost torn apart, as if it could be the Body of Christ without having to carry its own cross, without having to hang up on that cross in agony of conflict. In thinking that it could be thus painlessly the Church has made a lie out of the expression the "Body of Christ."

What, then, must happen? The answer is not painless, but it is clear. One of the characteristics of a true community is that it is a body that can fight gracefully. The Church will not be able to fight out the issue of the arms race until it becomes a community. Currently the Church is not only not the Body of Christ, it is not even a body, a community. It must become a community before it can serve as the Body of Christ.

The process of community-building begins with a commitment - a commitment of the members not to drop out, a commitment to hang in there through thick and thin, through the pain of chaos and emptiness. Such commitment has not generally been required by the Church. Now the time has come to require it. For without that commitment community is impossible.

Life is difficult.
This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult, once we truly understand and accept it, then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life SHOULD be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species, and not upon others. I know about this moaning because I have done my share.

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about the or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?

Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline we can solve all problems.

What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us all that we call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy.

Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grom mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is through pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Those things that hurt, instruct." It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.

Most of us are not so wise. Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate, hoping that they will go away. We ignore them, forget the, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them, so that by deadening ourselves to the pain we can forget the problems that cause the pain. We attempt to skirt around problems rather than meet them head on. We attempt to get out of them rather than suffer through them.

This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. Since most of us have this tendency to a greater or lesser degree, most of us are mentally ill to a greater or lesser degree, lacking complete mental health. Some of us will go to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid our problems and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that is clearly good and sensible in order to try to find an easy way out, building the most elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometime to the total exclusion of reality. In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung, "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."

But the substitute itself ultimately becomes more painful than the legitimate suffering it was designed to avoid. the neurosis itself becomes the biggest problem. True to form, many will then attempt to avoid this pain and this problem in turn, building layer upon layer of neurosis. Fortunately, however, some possess the courage to face their neuroses and begin, usually with the help of psychotherapy, to learn how to experience legitimate suffering. In any case, when we avoid the legitimate suffering that results from dealing with problems, we also avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental illness we stop growing, we become stuck. And without healing, the human spirit begins to shrivel.

Therefore let us inculcate in ourselves and in our children the means of achieving mental and spiritual health. By this I mean let us teach ourselves and our children the necessity for suffering and the value thereof, the need to face problems directly and to experience the pain involved. I have stated that discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems. It will become clear that these tools are techniques of suffering, means by which we experience the pain of problems in such a way as to work them through and solve them successfully, learning and growing in the process. When we teach ourselves and our children discipline, we are teaching them and ourselves how to suffer and also how to grow.

What are these tools, these techniques of suffering, these means of experiencing the pain of problems constructively that I call discipline? There are four: delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing. As will be evident, these are not complex tools whose application demands extensive training. To the contrary, they are simple tools, and almost all children are adept in their us by the age of ten. Yet presidents and kinds will often forget to use them, to their own downfall. The problem lies not in the complexity of these tools but in the will to use them. For they are tools with which pain is confronted rather than avoided, and if one seeks to avoid legitimate suffering, then one will avoid the use of these tools. Therefore, after analyzing each of these tools, we shall in the next section examine the will to use them, which is love.