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Source: 1965 Toronto International Convention – 1965 Toronto Int, Sister Mary Hartman.mp3 File: 1965-toronto-international-convention-1965-toronto-int-sister-mary-hartman.mp3 Duration: 00:37:21
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The next speaker has innumerable academic qualifications, as I see from my brochure, and properly she should be addressed as Dr. Hartman, but she holds also a higher degree, namely that of a great sister of the Immaculate Conception. So it's her sister, Hartman, that I introduce her. She does, however, have a number of degrees, including a Ph.D. in educational psychology and appointed post as lecturers and so forth.
Her chief recommendation, as you will surely see, is herself. I can disclose one secret that I managed to extract in the course of listening to the give and take at the podium before him, and that is she's wearing a new hat. Sister Hartman. Know thyself. These words were said over 200 years ago by the greatest teacher who ever lived. He never wrote a book, he never gave a public lecture, but he left us a message that every educator has found valuable in dealing with human beings. About a hundred years after that, another great teacher added to this remark something that made the picture complete.
Shakespeare put it in the mouth of Polonius when he was speaking to his son, Laertes, and sending him out into the world, the world of work, for the first time. He gave him this sound advice. To thine own self be true, and it will follow as the night, the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. Know thyself, be true to thyself. Friends in AA, I'm going to ask you three questions this morning. Who are you? Where did you come from? Where are you going? If I have in my hand here an object you've never seen before, and I say to Dr. Robeson, look, he looks at it, and what do you say, Dr. Robeson?
I don't know what that is. So your question would be? What is it? What is it? And I say, it's a gabbarig. So you say? I'm sorry, what? A gabbarig. A gabbarig? What on earth is that? This is one. Well, that doesn't help. Would you drop it there? Well, it depends. How heavy is it? Very heavy. Now I start asking you questions about its shape, size, weight, etc. I think there's a generic question you'd ask first. What would you ask?
What is it? This is one. It's a gabbarig. Would you explain it? The question that would be asked would be, what is it? And I say, it's a gabbarig. And the next question would likely be, what's it for? So I tell you what it's for. In every other aspect of social living, when we meet any object or anything, the first thing we ask about it is, where did it come from, what is its nature, and what is it for?
Now it seems to me deliciously ironic that in this age of education and study, that the subject of what is man is the last science to be taken up in academic centers. We know all about the universe around us, astronomy, the forces of physics, the science of the body, but the last science to be taken up is the science that answers the question, what is man and what is he for? The science of psychology.
So I stand here this morning to talk to you about what you are from the point of view of a psychologist. Who are you, what is your nature, and where are you going? That is, where are you coming from, what is your nature, and what is your destiny? Now can I be heard? Pardon? Well I'm not going to stay here, so you better hear me from this one. Don't let me come all the way from Ottawa without being heard, eh? If I start saying, would you raise your hands?
[00:05:09]
Now I've got three miserable minutes to answer this question. Where did I come from? I'll make this personal. Pronouns easier. Where did I come from? Now I'm going to try to start as a psychologist, and every so often I'm going to find my science inadequate, and I'm going to have to step into the realm of philosophy and theology. This isn't good science, but it's good reality. Long before time began, in the mind of God, there was a concept of someone like me. Now last night at the stadium, I was philosophizing about lots of things. There before me was a mammoth triangle.
When I lecture, the triangle for me always begins my lecture. I always start with a blackboard with a triangle on it, over in this corner. And the triangle for me represents God. Symbolism is a very good one, the three sides of the triangle. So long before time began, and certainly long before my birth, there was in the mind of God a concept of an individual just like me, whom he wanted for eternity to share his being with.
Why? I don't know. Why God wanted me and you for eternity, I don't know. The only answer is a magic word that is the answer to almost every problem in our modern 1965 decades of atomic energy and astronaut age. It is the word love, which we're going to deal with this morning. I can't define or answer my three questions without falling into this particular concept. For some reason or other then, God had in his mind a concept of a person like me, whom he wanted for eternity to share his being.
So he gave me life. And in the fullness of time, I was born in a little village in New Hamburg, near Kitchener. I listened to Dr. Lautenschlager yesterday and I thought, he must be from New Hamburg. I was given a number of years to live. I don't know how many. From recent experiences, I'm beginning to wonder how many. And during that time, I was to reproduce in my life, as closely as possible, the blueprint that God had in his mind when he created me.
And the amazing part of it is that when I was created, that blueprint was forever destroyed. I am unique. I am individual. I am irreplaceable. You are unique. You are individual. You are irreplaceable. Like the great artist he is, he destroyed the blueprint when he created one artistic being that is you. So that when you die, you will not be replaced. Your work will be done, but you will never be replaced. You are irreplaceable. You are unique. You are individual. This is the reason for the esteem that we owe you. And this is the reason for the esteem that you owe yourself.
You are an irreplaceable, unique individual made to a concept that God had in his mind for you alone. He wants one like you. And then he forever destroyed the image, the blueprint, the plan that would reproduce a second you. This is why you are terribly important. There's no one in the world more important than you are. Because you alone have a work to do. You have the privilege of an individual creation as the person that now sits with us here today. And when that seat is empty, it will never be replaced.
[00:10:03]
This is important, isn't it? Alright, what happens to you? You spend a few years, and it's in the mystery of the mind of God how long that will be, and then you go back to God and the success or failure of your life is in terms of how close this individual who goes back to God is in terms of the original blueprint for him. This is where you come from. This is where you're going. This is the nature of man, and this is his destiny. Excuse me, this is the origin of man, and this is his destiny. Now, what of his nature? What is man?
Dr. Robinson started asking me, how much does this weigh, etc., when I asked him to look at my gathering. What is the nature of man? What is it to be a human being? A human being is an individual made up of a body that you can see, plus a principle of life that makes a body actively alive, different from a cadaver in a funeral parlor. And this difference I'm going to call soul. Now, when I'm speaking in a group less spiritual than this one, you see people lowering their shoulders, and you see the chairman saying, I never should have done this, I was warned against this. This is what comes when you ask a nun. Let a nun into a place like this, she starts making converts for her community.
Now, I'd like a lot of you to be in our community, but I'm really not doing propaganda this morning. Body and soul, I'm going to dare to use that soul, and all I mean by it as a scientist, and a psychologist is a scientist, is simply the principle that keeps you alive. Now, from these two components, what does this indicate as to your nature? Because we have a body, we have a physique, and it's made up of a mysterious and wonderful system of systems. We have a nervous system, we have a digestive system, we have a blood system, we have a glandular system, and all these together make our constitution.
And the seeds of that constitution were given us through the mother and father that conceived us, so we can't determine our constitution. We may to some degree control how much we weigh, which was one of the logical questions you'd ask. I hope you don't ask me, but you might ask other people who aren't so sensitive. The physique is the mechanism of systems that we turn out to each other. We have also, because we have a body, we have the need of other people. If any of you are nurses or doctors and have been in the OB, you'll realize the team of people that are necessary to bring a child's body into the world.
We need each other, one another. You need me, and I need you. Now, I think it's laughable that I should make this statement in AA. If anybody is aware of the need of one for another, it's in Alcoholics Anonymous. But I'm saying this this morning to show you the utter scientific soundness of your movement. That from the nature of a human being, his social nature, this is imperative. And the tragedy of the 20th century is that we live like astronauts, each one of us floating in our capsule beyond the reach of interpersonal relationships of any sound and lasting nature, floating in the atmosphere, occasionally colliding with no warm personal interrelationship.
And you, groping in your tragedy, have solved your problem in a way that is scientifically sound in order to actualize your potential as a human person. And we who are non-alcoholics… Who are non-alcoholics could learn a great deal from the common sense of your movement.
[00:15:06]
I went to bed last night feeling cheated because I wasn't an alcoholic. I suggested to my host that I go out on a bender last night. He assured me that I wouldn't make it. And it was because you're not supposed to want to go on one. All right, here we have an individual who has a physique and he has a social nature. What does that mean? It means that I need, in order to be a full human being, warm personal relationships.
At breakfast this morning, I breakfasted with one of your couples. And we commented on the way AA's shake hands. I noticed last night, when the speakers were introduced, they shook hands as they passed. It wasn't just a handshake. There was a warm, lingering nature to it. Something I've never seen in the hundreds of groups that I have addressed in the last few years. There's something warm and personal and real about your relation to each other.
And this I stand in humble admiration of. This is psychologically wholesome. This is good. Across this whole universe, you people hold warm hands, one helping the other. And this is the answer to the headlines in any daily paper. Because of the very nature, psychologically, of a human being, we have concern with our systems. We have concern with the social nature that has to be developed. Now because I have a soul, a principle, above the physiology of my body, I have also two other natures.
I have an intellectual nature. I can think. No change takes place in my body when thoughts come to me. And from the data that I bring in through my senses, from the environment about me, I form concepts and make judgments and follow decisions. I have the ability that no animal has of weighing aspects of a problem and coming to a conclusion. But I also have something else. I have a volitional nature.
You know, someday you're going to read in the paper about Sister Marianne being strangled to death in a lecture, and you'll understand. I get all tied up in the electronics up here. I have a volitional nature. What does that mean? It means that I alone of all creation in this wonderful universe full of creation has the ability to make a choice. I can choose. I can put two areas of, two facts together, and I can make a decision.
And I can choose whether I will follow the wisdom of that decision or whether I will choose something else. Every man has a volitional nature or has the will to choose. Now, choosing is a tricky business. Don't think it isn't. The use of the will is an art, just as the use of the intellect is an art. But in our schools and in our educational systems, we don't develop the whole man. We develop his intellect to a great degree.
Lately, we've been getting kind of interested in developing him as a physical person. So physical fitness is now in, and people are taking exercises, and they're joining the judo clubs, and they're doing the Air Force exercises, and they're having track meets at school, and the body is beginning to be important. But the greatest power of the human being is this ability to choose. Will I do this or will I do this in the light of what is good?
And this is the aspect that we never formally, formerly, form-ally, anyway, make any effort to train. Now, let's give an example of a choice.
[00:20:01]
I did this in this very room a few weeks ago, and all I hope is that none of you were here, otherwise it's going to fall off a flat. It's spring, and Dr. Bacon finds out that his chef has really had it. So if he has a Mrs. Bacon, he says to her one day, I guess the time has come, dear, that we must do something about this rattle trap. I guess we're going to have to buy a car. And she says, good, let's get a Cadillac.
Now Dr. Bacon dults hard and says, yes, Cadillac sure gives you status, but dear, you know, the fuel, and he says, now look, why don't we get a Volkswagen? And she says, but darling, the status, you have to tie your legs in knots to get in it, and I refuse to have it parked out in front of the street, everybody around us has Cadillacs, and think how ridiculous you're going to look like at the university.
And he says, the fuel, it's so low, you know. So here we have a plus and a minus, and we have a plus and a minus. Now how do you choose? No human being can make a decision between whether he wants the status of stepping out of a Cadillac or an almost inconsequential monthly fuel bill. These are such delightfully pleasant experiences that you are not able to make a decision between these two. So what do you do?
You scrap the positives, and you have a look at the negatives. And you say to yourself, which is less worth, paying an enormous fuel bill, or crawling into that beastly little buggy. And here is where you use your will. You make a decision. I don't think it ends there. You pass that stage by kindergarten, but the training in the will comes now. You choose, we'll say, which is most probable, with the exception, I don't know Dr. Selden Bacon well enough to know whether he'd choose a Cadillac or a Volkswagen, but I know most of my friends would be forced to choose the Volkswagen.
All right. What happens? They roll in the Volkswagen from the company, and they go out, and it's one of those little blue ones that looks like a beetle. So they get in it, and they're very quiet, the Bacons, as they drive off. And Mrs. Bacon says, Betty next door was telling me that their window was rolled up when you press the thing, and they're Cadillacs. And he'll say, yes, when you shut the door here, we have to open the window to get the door to shut, because the vacuum keeps it from shutting.
So they discuss this a little while, and then he sighed very heavily, and he said, you know, Joe was telling me the comfort of traveling to the New York Fair really was lovely, traveling in a Cadillac. In other words, they can't let go. They've chosen the station wagon, but they're still hankering after the comforts that they also chose to reject. So every choice is made of two things. It's made of something you choose and something you choose to reject.
And this is the dangerous spot, that we make a choice, which is a good, logical choice, and then we spend the rest of our lives hankering after the thing that we let go. What then, knowing yourself, is good mental health? It's a will that is trained to choose, and every moment of your life, you're choosing. You're constantly choosing one thing or another, and every choice is two choices. It's a choice between two pluses, and it is a choice between two minuses.
And the healthy, well-adjusted person has educated himself to what choice is. So if you marry a beautiful girl who cannot cook, don't hanker for the plain girl who is a cordon bleu as far as cooking.
[00:25:02]
You know, in the States, when Fort McKeon speaks, you Americans provide him with an angel. We don't have angels in Canada. I have to clean my own bar. All right, what is man? Man is more than a body and a soul. He has a physique, he has a social nature, he has an intelligence, and he has this wonderful thing that is will. But man is more than that. And now I've got to tell you a love story. When man was created here, he was created by a being who is all goodness, truth, and beauty.
Everything that is bad, that is error, that is ugliness, is that way because it is outside God. So there isn't any such thing as evil. It's an absence of the good that is God. There isn't any such thing as ugliness. It's the absence of the beauty which is this being who is all beauty. So when God creates an individual, the only thing he has to create him with is truth and beauty and goodness. So when I was born there in New Hamburg, I was a little bit of truth, goodness, and beauty.
But I came in a body, and this immediately caused problems for me because this body was either attractive or repellent to my fellow men, and I, to be a full human being, need my fellow men. I need their love and esteem in order to be a whole person. So my body could be enough to stop people from penetrating into the core of me, which is truth and goodness and beauty, because my body might have been too beautiful, and then their relationship to me would be only that of love.
It would be not love. It would mean that any other body as beautiful as this body would easily replace me. And this personal relationship that has been established between my fellow man and me is one that is by its very nature impermanent. I am unable to maintain that relationship because illness is going to set in. Age is going to weather my infinite variety in spite of Cleopatra's slogan. And by the very nature of this relationship, the bond that was established between myself and this fellow man is doomed to impermanency because beauty of body does not last.
Or I, in the meantime, have developed a personality. Now what is personality? I'm going to give you the Thomistic definition of personality. This is a philosophical definition. Personality is the unique order maintained by an individual in relation to God, himself, his fellow man, and the universe around him. I am a religious. So my relationship to God is that of a religious. You are single or married people.
Your relation to God is in those terms. My relation to myself and your relation to yourself is an individual thing. My relation to people publicly is according to the final summation, which will be my personality. So you will see me as being pleasant and affable or quiet and withdrawn, being submissive or dominant. All the various adjectives that we use to describe a personality. And the particular constellation of these things, my relationship to God, myself, my fellow man, the universe around me, will make me the person I am, Dr. Bacon the person he is, and you the person you are.
In relation to the things around you, I have a vow of poverty. I couldn't buy this new hat. I used to wait until a mother general in her council voted us to change of habits. And even if I looked ridiculous in it, I had no say. I have a vow of obedience and a vow of poverty. You don't. You ladies can buy whatever hat you like. If your husband says you look ridiculous, you can laugh in his face and say, pay the bill and keep quiet.
So, I am uniquely the person that you see me, and you're going to say, she has a horrible personality or she has a nice personality. I'm going to say, she has a horrible personality, or she has a nice personality, or what a personality, or what an awful personality, according to what you read in me in these areas, and I will be uniquely me. You will never mistake me for Dr. Bacon. I hope you don't mind, Dr. Bacon.
[00:30:13]
I am uniquely me, and what's more, each one of you is uniquely you. There will never be another you. How many of you know those delightful books of Dr. Seuss? If you don't, you've got a lifetime of joy ahead of you. He writes books for children, and one of them, it's a birthday book, and he says to the little child, Today you are you. In the whole world, there is no one more you-er than you. You can say this every day. There is no one in the world that is you. And this is distinct first in personality. So in order of appearance, you see me first coming in vaguely as a body. You either are attracted or repulsed, or perhaps neutral.
Then you meet me as a personality, and you say, well, in spite of how funny she looks, you know, she's kind of a nice personality, or she's a terrible personality. Her mother general didn't do much for her when she changed her appearance. All right. But none of you know me, because if you stop at the personality, you are simply establishing a relationship to me that is only infatuation, or the opposite, rejection.
Because my personality will change. Sickness will ravish me, and if I am gay, I'm going to become depressed. If I am extroversive, as we progress in years, we become more and more introversive. That's why old people become more and more silent as they prepare for communion with God to go back where they came from. So that perhaps the very things in the personality that you found attractive will be the very first things that will go. And so our relationship is again established on unstable, impermanent factors.
But if you penetrate for me to the core of goodness and truth and beauty that was my heritage when I was created from the God who made me, you will find the real me. And then your relationship will be one of the most beautiful things in the world, because you will love me. Now, love is a very much abused word. It's a word that we mistake for lust. It's a word that we mistake for infatuation. It's a word that we mistake for joy and pleasure.
But the real word love is the most beautiful word in the English or any other language, because love is what God is. God is love. And this little bit of me that you have penetrated through a lovely or unlovely body, a lovely or unlovely personality, is not the real me. Now, why are you important? Why should you first love yourself and love everyone else? Because deep inside every human being, without exception, who has been created by God, is this truth, beauty, and…
…truth, beauty, and goodness that has to be penetrated by his fellow human beings before he himself can become aware of it. Now, the yellow light's on. I've got about two minutes. Is that right, Dr. Doyle? All right. I'm going to say another word. And if love is the most beautiful word in the language, its closest competitor is this word, the word friend. What is it to be a friend? If you have one friend in your life, you're rich. If you have two friends in your life, you're living in luxury. Because a friend is a person who stands outside you, who has penetrated to the core of truth and goodness and beauty that is in you by an arrow penetrating into your deepest psychological secrets.
And he loves you. But to be a friend, you return that arrow, and you have penetrated through that same opening that he made into you, into the core of the truth and beauty and goodness that is in your friend. It is not body to body, nor the attraction of personality to personality, but it is two people who have found deep within themselves the truth, the goodness, and the beauty that makes that person the image and likeness of God, his creator.
[00:35:08]
I'm deeply humbled and overwhelmed by this experience of being with you these last 48 hours. I nearly missed it. And I would have been the poorer the rest of my life, because I have never seen in any group wherever I was, including religious groups, the depth of friendship that I've seen the last few hours. Where people who never saw each other before penetrate automatically through the body and the personality of strangers to the real person within. Why? Because there's openings there. There has been penetration. There is a passage from heart to heart.
And I consider that this experience has been greater to me than the biggest experience annually for me, my religious retreat. I sat here yesterday within an hour of arriving and heard Father Barney stand up there and in the deepest humility tell his story. And I watched 1,500 people go out to him in these arrows that penetrated past his little bald-headed body, past his delightful personality, into the courage that comes from truth and goodness and beauty.
And all I can do in gratitude for this opportunity is to promise you that every morning of my life, when I attend Mass in our chapel, I will be mindful of AA and all those associated with it. And all I ask from you is that you do likewise for me. Thank you.