from bengaluru

 

15 feb 2025

 

Well, it’s time to start the new travelogue. First real trip of 2025 begins today. There have been a few little things in Italy (Bologna and Assisi), but they felt more like day trips. I had wanted to stay in Italy for a full three months and immerse myself in the language, settle into a routine and get to know the community at San Gregorio and the neighborhood, which I have been doing with a lot of pleasure. They have been full wonderful days, lots of “appointments” (though I try to never have more than one a day), and I usually walk to them to get to know the city better. (Clocking in about 5-7 miles a day.) A nice daily routine for meals and prayers with the brothers, who have been super. Lots of work at my desk, and my room winds up being a very fine office. Always something to do.

 

But my “boss” (I need to find another term for him), Abbot Primate Jeremias, suggested I come to India for this meeting and since it was the first thing he asked me to do and I am very devoted to  my Indian brothers and sisters, here I am on my way to the 50th anniversary meeting of the Indo-Sri Lankan Benedictine Confederation near Bengaluru, India. I just need to make an appearance on Monday, but Friday I am presiding and preaching at morning Mass, and then giving a full presentation on “Our Role and Response to Interreligious Dialogue.” I’ve worked really hard on the talk, hoping to use it for other gatherings, and of course writing always helps me clarify my own thoughts. But doing this in India is totally like preaching to the choir, though I hear that it is not foremost in a lot of people’s minds any more. I shall find out! I will make the talk available after I deliver it Friday. At least Dorathick and Pinto will be there from Shantivanam as well, and we are going to slip out on Thursday for a day visit with our old friend Jyoti Sahi.

 

I can now say that I have been to Saudi Arabia. The most economic ticket I could find was with Saudia Air, through Jeddah. I didn’t realize that Jeddah is so close to Mecca and is actually the arrival point for the hajj. I was very moved by the PA system and screens on the back of our seats playing an invocation before we took off, a prayer that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said before every journey. And the entertainment offerings were interrupted regularly by announcements for the time for the next salat. About three hours into the four and a half hour flight I suddenly started to notice men dressed in white and sandals, and then I realized that there was a whole line of guys going to the bathroom in street clothes and then emerging a few minutes later draped in white. That included a rather sullen looking young man, maybe 18 years old max, sitting right across the aisle from me up one row, who disappeared into the bathroom with a shopping bag and then didn’t come out for like a half an hour. I was actually getting nervous. Later, as we were taking the transit bus from the plane to the terminal, I noticed him checking his reflection out satisfyingly in the window of the bus. I remembered Ram Dass’ reading of the Kabir poem, “I started wearing burlap \ but I still toss it elegantly over my shoulder” which I think of every time I put on the khavi robes in India.

 

Feb 17, from Asirvanam, Bengaluru

 

The second leg of the flight was a little rougher. I had a great seat in the bulkhead, with only two seats in the row and no one to my left. At first. But then, about an hour into the flight a very large man came and sat in the seat to my left, though “violating my air space” by a good bit with his legs and arms. I was trying to be polite and I think for the most part I succeeded. We took off at 2 AM, and for some reason they decided to serve a meal at about 4 AM. Negotiating balancing a meal on a little tray while squeezed into ¾ of my own seat was a little uncomfortable. And there was a lot of turbulence. The large gentleman also tried sitting on the floor in the bulkhead and got corrected by the steward. Then he sat in the steward’s own jump seat, and got corrected again. Eventually he got really lucky, and the steward, taking pity either on him or on himself, put him in a seat in business class. We landed a little early and everyone rushed to the front ASAP. Hard to describe it, but I was trying to negotiate a little space to get my things out of the overhead and I wound up cracking my head against the underside of the bins, which got several of my fellow passengers and the kindly steward very worried (I was bleeding from the scalp). He dug into his own carry-on a pulled a sanitary wipe out for me. Very sweet. I was rarely so relieved to get off a plane.

 

Another monk from Rome, an Indian who I had met two weeks back named Fr. Shoriaih, was arriving around the same time as I and was to arrange a taxi for us to Asirvanam. I got in about a half hour before him, and with all the passport check and baggage etc. he had to go through, I had about an hour to myself before he arrived. There was a nice little café and I treated myself to a masala chai, fresh squeezed orange juice and a big yummy granola bar, which was a nice respite. And then the long drive across town. I was just here a year ago and had already been shocked at how much growth there had been in the intervening 12 years or so since I had last come to Bangalore, but this time we drove from one end of the city to the extreme other side and it took us well over an hour. And I was in for another shock. I had been here to Asirvanam monastery some years ago (maybe 2006?) with George when he was prior of Shantivanam, but now I hardly recognized the place and was beginning doubt if I ever had been here after all. But I was assured it was the same place, but under the present prior, Fr Jerome, it has expanded exponentially. He apparently spent seven years at St John’s in Minnesota and I don’t think they were just kidding when the other monks said that he came home wanting to turn this place into  another Collegeville, and he has done it in the last decade. There is a school, the Benedictine Academy––and if I got this right it goes from grade school all the way to college. There as also two boys’ and girls’ hostels. I didn’t catch everything, but suffice it say it is thriving little town now.

 

As I mentioned this is a meeting of the Indo-Sri Lankan Benedictine Federation, as a matter of fact their 50th anniversary. It is mainly for the superiors but the first day was open to any and all comers. Our first event was over on the campus of the school. If you know anything about an Indian wedding––a huge production usually with a stage and lots of lights and music and ceremony––that was what the scene was like. It was also the annual cultural day for the academy, and we were the guests of honor. We sat in the front row of hundreds of people and those of us who were guests of honor were first called to stage by name to receive the traditional shawl and a large necklace. And then the show began. It was recorded music and live dance, highlighting various countries in the world, all performed by what looked to be for the most part grade school kids. Elaborate costumes and lots of choreography. They must have put in an enormous amount of work. The only problem was it was so loud. I know that Indians always have the music playing loud, often not even noticing that it is distorted in the speakers, but this was the loudest I have ever heard music––and I mean ever. And that includes many high powered rock concerts. I could barely hear out of my left ear afterward.

 

I am among the guests of honor, to my slight discomfort, as Secretary General of DIMMID, along with the abbot primate, the head of ISBF, the two abbot presidents who are here, Sr. Lynn who is the head of the women’s Benedictine confederation, the local prior, and Abbot Bernard of Belgium who is the head of AIM. That means I am often getting whisked up to places of honor (the head table in the refectory where one gets served), up on the dias at that event and then again this morning at our opening ceremony where more shawls and necklaces were given out, this time with the addition of a head piece and a commemorative desk piece (with my picture on it from 25 years ago). I am nowhere near tracking the names of all the nuns and monks and the various communities let alone the various congregations represented here. But almost everyone says, “You must come and visit.” They all of course know each other from this annual meeting but I am a bit of a fish out of water. After lunch there was a bus tour of some of Asirvanam’s other land holdings, and then we finally got down to business late this afternoon with a wonderful presentation by the Abbot Primate.

 

+Jeremias really is an impressive guy, with a command of languages, an ease in negotiating all kinds of public appearances he is called to make, and on top of that a clear and interesting speaker. He laid out a bit of what is going on in the confederation and then left us with something to dream about. There is going to be a jubilee year for the Benedictines in 2029, 1500 years. After his presentation he wanted us to talk a bit about it amongst ourselves––how to commemorate the anniversary but even more importantly, for my taste, to ask ourselves about what Benedictine monasticism has to offer the world. My thoughts went immediately––and I mean immediately––to “we have no idea what kind of world will be living in in three or four years.” The new administration is in the process of upending the global world order. How much more empowered will aggressive leaders be? How much more empowered will the so-called “far right” be? What will the world boundaries look like in 2029? Will there be an even greater struggle for the soul of Christianity than the one that is already heating up? (I sure hope so.) I told +Jeremias afterward that it feels like my own work in interreligious dialogue is all a part of that, tearing down walls, building bonds of friendship, educating and forming through encounters (and music).

spiegare…

2 January 25 (Got the year right on the first try!) Sadhana Mandir, Rishikesh

 

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I posted. Ah well. 

I’ve just finished a five day yoga retreat here, and have the better part of a day to my own devices before I fly out to Rome via Delhi tonight. I am gonna try to summarize and catch up.

 

After a nice long rest in Singapore at my new favorite (inexpensive) hotel in Singapore, I flew to Cochi, Kerala, India on December 8. Fr Dorathick and Shantivanam and I have both been a part of a project for our German sociologist friend Petra Ahrweiler for the past five years or so (pre-Covid) called AI Fora. It was (if I can summarize) launching conversations between people who work in AI doing up with algorithms for social services with the people who get left out of those algorithms, and using monasteries as “safe spaces” to hold those discussions. The experiments were done in China, India, Nigeria, the US, Germany and Spain. Because of all kinds of mitigating factors, we at the Hermitage never did have to actually host an event, but Petra liked Dorathick and me to stay on as advisors, especially since she is strongly influenced by Bede Griffiths. The other international meeting I attended was in 2021, in Germany and Italy, with the other monks and nuns involved. This time we were the only two monks. This was the first time I met most of the social scientists involved in the project. What a group, from the US (a prof at ASU, Tempe, AZ!), Spain, Iran, Nigeria, India (of course, who hosted), Germany, sociologists, researchers, statisticians, Computer Science professors, anthropologists. I was pretty much lost on the first day as they all gave the results of their research. It wasn’t until the second day that something clicked. That was actually the day that Dorathick and I were supposed to present from our perspective. I gave them my spiel about the evolution of consciousness and what I am now referring to as “deep practice” in environments where the words prayer and meditation may fall on rocky soil. It sparked a really fine discussion. And then that evening I gave a musical performance, which was also very well received. We were staying at a beautiful resort on a lake in Kerala, spoiled rotten with the food and comfort for three days. I got a little sick overnight the last day, low grade temperature and some stomach stuff, which lingered for a few days, but nothing serious.  I always seem to go through a bout of something like that here.

 

The best part of the stay was meeting this professor of Computer Science from Iran. We rode on the transport bus together and got to talking an about music, etc. He is officially a Muslim but really, he said, his religion is Rumi’s religion of love. He was reciting long poems for me in Persian from memory and then translating them, sometimes singing them, with his hands gesticulating in the air. Much to the amusement of the other participant passengers. We’ve stayed in touch and have been exchanging music and poems––his far more interesting than mine, as far as I am concerned.

Dorathick had driven himself and Petra from Shantivanam, about an 8 hour drive, over the Kumily Pass, which I had done 24 years ago on my first trip to India by bus with George Nellyanil and Roman, our Polish monk from Garda, by bus. It’s a beautiful drive through tea plantations, up to a high elevation and back down into Tamil Nadu. Well, Dorathick did not want to are the Kumily Pass because it had been raining heavily and he was afraid of rock slide which would have stranded us. So we took a road (trusting his GPS) that was lower in elevation but a little longer since it took us north and then dropped us back south. It didn’t work out that way. We didn’t take the Kumily Pass, but GPS still took us through the mountains at a little over elevation, through countless villages and up and down countless hills, narrow roads. We stopped about eight hours in for tea and a snack, but we didn’t get home until 3 AM. He did let me drive for a while, which I had never done on the left side of the road and the right side of the car. I did fine. I got use to the gears easily, the pedals are in the same position, it’s just that you shift with the left hand. Luckily is was very little driving in populated areas where we were at the time. He got nervous because he thought I was hugging the left side of the road too tightly––and maybe I did once in a while––but I thought I did great. And his driving makes me very nervous! So…

 

The time at Shantivanam went very quickly. I was asked to give the community a day of recollection, and to do some music, and also preach twice. There was also an old friend there who I have known for about 20 years, a former monk of St Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, though I knew him even before then and we had always had a great connection. He is now on a unique journey, working toward getting certified as a psychologist in Minnesota (he had been a school psychologist before religious life), but hoping to live a semi-eremitical life. He has now returned to his old love for India and the Vedanta. Very intelligent guy and well-schooled in both Indian and Roman theology. That led to amazing conversations, that neither one of us can often have with anybody. So that took up the first days. I also got inspired to work on a little writing project that I have been picking away at for this whole year and spent hours at the computer with that. Something about India always inspires me to write. (And, no, I will not say what it is… yet.) And having he privacy of a cell there at Shantivanam always makes me sink in really fast. I of course participated in all the community prayers, and especially the two hour-long meditations, one at 5:30 AM and the other at 6:00 PM. I had had a powerful experience with those earlier in February which kind of set me a a path for the year that stuck so I was happy to return to the place where it happened. Then came Christmas with all its crowds and festivities. Our old friend Michael Christian came down from Tiruvanamalai and we spent long hours together talking, since he could only be there one day. Along with him came Sherly, a former Camaldolese nun who I knew from when she was in Italy. She has been on her own now for quite a few years living in New Zealand, but she has been staying in Tiruvanamalai for a few months. She was hesitating about coming to Shantivanam until she found out I was going to be there, so we had a great reunion, again a few hours in conversation, comparing notes, joys and disappointments. I am very glad to be re-connected (and I have to connect her with our oblates in NZ, remind me).

 

And then I came up here. I had made a week retreat here in March, which again was a very good experience. It’s a small, clean, safe ashram right on the banks of the Ganges (right out my window). I had done a bit of their regular program when I was here last time (by requirement if it is your first time), but this time I wanted to make a private retreat, though I wanted to meet again with the Swami here, a woman sannyasi from Holland named Ma Tripura with whom I had had a good conversation last time. When I wrote ahead to see if there was a room available I also asked if she was available, and I was told that she was giving a Hatha yoga retreat the exact days that I wanted to come. I took that as a sign and signed up for the retreat too. I had no idea who demanding it was going to be, but I do not regret it. We met up to eight hours a day. There were twelve of us, half Indian and half Westerners. It was very much concentrated not on vinyasa, but on spinal alignment, all the things you can do to make sure your asanas are done safely aid in your seated posture. She kept saying that this tradition (the Himalayan Masters) was a meditative tradition, and they really do think of yoga as a science, available to all.  For my taste there was a little too much talking and focus on the body and not enough time in silence together but it may be what she sensed the crowed needed. The meditations were all guided, which I must admit was getting on my nerves. So part of my meditation was watching myself get annoyed, asking myself why, and trying to center in the midst of her speaking! Of course we could spend time on our own meditating too.

I had two other encounters here (in case I need to justify this stop for DIMMID––our write it off for taxes) besides another good long visit with Ma, who I would like to recruit as an interlocutor for us. One was through Meath in Australia who virtually introduced me to Siddhartha Radakrishna. He is the son of a very highly regarded and well known (in these parts) man named Surya Prakash, who was a Gandhian scholar and is referred to as Shri Prabhuji. Prabhuji married a Swiss woman, and they settled here. (His story goes on and on, and if I recount it here I will never stop.) She is an expert in Iyengar yoga. They established a family home on the West Bank of the Ganges right near the outskirts of town at the time, which eventually became a large yoga center. And now the whole town has grown around it. (Side note: Rishikesh is almost unrecognizable to me from the times I spent here. Very disappointing.) Meath just thought we should meet.  Siddhartha kindly drove across town a picked me at the ashram and then drove me back to their place––a 45-minute drive to go 6 kilometers through the crowded holiday traffic. Prabhuji left his body just last year. Siddhartha told me that in his whole life (he is in his mid-40s) he had only spent 14 days away from his father. His father raised him to be a pandit. He trained at the famous Kailash Ashram somewhat north of here and he has become an expert on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras. He also seems to know a lot about Buddhism and Christianity. Needless to say, we had a marvelous long conversation over a very simple lunch with his mother. We parted both very grateful for the encounter and I do expect that we will meet again and again.

And then just yesterday I had a long visit with Swami Atmananda and his monks. He is another remarkable man that is hard to describe. Though he originally made vows as an eastern Christian monk, he came to India in the late 1980s in search of his true guru.  He has been here ever since. He is very dedicated to Abhishiktananda, and as a matter of fact served as the head of the Abhishiktananda Society until its dissolution, and is still in charge of Swamiji’s literary legacy. We had first met in 2007, and have corresponded a little (and been on a few online events) so we were both pretty happy about a chance to get together again. He has for some years now been running a sarva dharma ashram––“all dharmas” and has hosted many interfaith gatherings especially with Theravadan monks. He has a good group of monks living with him, a dozen or so, some training under him, mostly Indians, and has expanded the facility from a simple building to a four story complex with a gathering place for lectures, a beautiful meditation hall and a new enclosure. That part of town, Tapovan (which means the “forest (vanam) of austerities (tapas)” used to be hills populated with monks engaging in serious spiritual practice. It is now shockingly packed with hotels and resorts, claiming to be the “yoga capital of the world.” But their compound is a breath of fresh air, quiet and orderly. They walked down in a group to meet me where the taxi had left me off, and then when I walked in the compound I was greeted with such ceremony––a grand, a tilak, an arathi, young monks touching my feet, all quite jarring for me. I had met one of the members last time and he remembered me well, and was acting as a sort of dharma protector, making sure I didn’t fall going up the narrow steps to the roof, etc. Very touching. And of course Swamiji and I had a long conversation. How many times am I going to write “long conversation” in the next years? But that is my mandate: engaging in and promoting dialogue. And Swamiji is a wealth of information, certainly about the Indian tradition and Abhishiktananda. He has a great respect for the work of DIMMID (hence the ceremonial welcome) and I expect that we will be able to collaborate in the future.

I love the Italian word spiegare. It means “to explain” but its root is piegare, “to fold,” so to spiegare is to “unfold.” You spiegare a sail on a sailboat, for instance. And I keep saying that this new mission is spiegando, unfolding in front of me, revealing how it’s going to be and what I should do. I am consoled that I can count on a lot of old acquaintances as contacts and connections.

 

One interesting note: both Siddhartha, regarding his father, and Atmananda, regarding his swami, mentioned that they had read and cherished Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ. I read it too, years ago, but I must revisit it. It’s one of those works that Bede declared are “no longer useful” because of being tinged with so much dualism and the dark side of asceticism, if I recall correctly. What is there that is so attractive to these Indian holy men?

 

That’s all I am going to write about all that. I fly to Rome via Delhi this evening\tomorrow morning. It doesn’t feel hugely momentous, but a little poignant that the sabbatical year is officially over now and my new life based in Rome officially begins. I am looking forward to being back with the brothers at San Gregorio, I am really looking forward to being in my own room again (how quickly it has seared in my mind as “my cell!), and I am very excited about all the work ahead of me. There is a ton a things, to so at my desk in the near future and a load of official encounters as well, but it’s all good. I am so grateful.

 

So, two things I have noticed, and this too is where I feel as if there is a contribution to the greater discussion I can offer. People’s vocabulary around religion is not very good, to say it simply. For one thing, it is interesting to note how often I heard folks on this retreat subtly or not so subtly put down another tradition, a Theravadan practitioner putting down the Mahayana tradition, a Hindu putting down Muslims, and an Indian telling me he was going to write a book to explain the spiritual significance of the Bible to Christians (as if…?). That is assuming I am right and you are wrong. That obviously is not dialogue. I always assume first that the other person’s is a valid approach, and also assume that I don’t know someone else’s tradition well enough to speak about it, so I have something to learn. 

And secondly, it is notable (is it particularly in India?) how often people just assume that everyone accepts their broad beliefs and speaks about them as if they are established facts for everyone and to everyone––reincarnation, the world is an illusion, you are not your body, for example. If there is a space for a response, I find a way to say, “That is not how my tradition articulates that” or “That’s not my language for this” or “Not every tradition believes that, of course.” I suppose what I am realizing is that even people who think they are on an enlightened spiritual path still need to learn the language of dialogue, and even more, the humility of it. I have used my time tested telos and scopos explanation several time this last week, i.e., we do not articulate the ultimate end in the same way in our various traditions––reincarnation, the primacy of Jesus, etc.; but we seem to agree on the proximate goal––to go beyond the phenomenal self to whatever-that-is. And because we agree on that, we can also share praxis, the practices that lead to that goal. That’s our “common word.” A lot of education needed there, and I’m just the man to do it.

 

Horrifying to here about the violence of the New Year’s holiday in America, added to the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine and, especially, in the Gaza Strip. The world needs us to be… what? Whatever that is, let’s be it! I will if you will. As a matter of fact, I will even if you won’t, but I bet you will too.

 

More later from Rome. May all beings be well.

evolving consciousness in Quezon City

1 December 2024, 1st Sunday of Advent, from Quezon City, Manila, the Philippines

Okay, this time I can honestly admit: there has been a lot of work to do these last days between the events I had already committed to and the extras that got added on with the new position.

 

Perth, as you may know, is the most isolated major city in the world, so I am told. We Americans tend to forget how big Australia is: it was a three-hour flight from Melbourne. (And the factoid is oft reported that it is closer to Jakarta, Indonesia than to any other Australian city.) The city has grown incredibly since I was last there, now up to 4 million inhabitants and growing by the day, it seems, faster that its infrastructure can keep up with.

 

My host there was Meath Conlan. He is an extraordinary guy, a retired diocesan priest from a diocese “out in the bush,” who did labor jobs while he was serving in a parish to earn enough money to buy a ticket to India and meet Bede Griffiths, and wound up becoming a disciple, you might say, as well as friend and confidante, and an original member of the Bede Griffiths Trust. He is also the one who had arranged for Bede to go to Australia twice, big events that were broadcast on the ABC, and also arranged for the elegant film “The Human Search” to be filmed before Bede died. He is also a polymath, knowledgable in so many areas, a writer and teacher himself, now immersed very deeply in the Christian Zen tradition under the tutelage of Jesuit Fr. Amasamy in Tamil Nadu. Meath had brought me there to Perth another time, back in 2009, arranging a series of well-attended events at the Uniting Church and with the WCCM.

 

One of the extras that got added on was a visit to the Abbey of New Norcia about two hours north of Perth, which we left for the day after I arrived. I had met their Abbot John Herbert at the Congress in Rome and, of course, when I mentioned that I was going to be in Australia he immediately issued an invitation that was right up my alley, to come and give a day of recollection for the community and their oblates on interreligious dialogue. I took it as an excuse to expand on what I am thinking of as my “stump speech.” (He had asked for four conferences.) I mined my notes. (Oh, thanks God for the magic silver box made by Apple and the iCloud that stores everything.) I had done a whole series of chapter talks on the topic for the brothers at the Hermitage over the course of a year and was able to purloin material from there with the addition of new material. And it turned out quite well, I’m happy to say.

 

New Norcia is quite an interesting place. It was founded by Spanish monks in 1847, how and why they chose a place so far from the developed population centers is beyond me, especially in the mid-19th century before any of the modern technology that we have. But they wound up inspiring an entire village to grow up around them instead, and are known as “the only Benedictine town in Australia.” They have olive groves and are famous for both their oil and their bakery. But they are especially famous––now unfortunately infamous––for the fact that the monks founded a mission and schools for Aboriginal children, and then a series of “colleges” (that basically means boarding schools in Australia) that became St Benedict’s College. Unfortunately the former were hit hard by the movement to redress the “lost generation” of Aboriginal children who were taken forcibly from their families, and the latter is notorious for the sexual abuse accusations from the 1960s and ‘70s. Poor Abbot John told me that since he took over 15 years ago his main occupation has been dealing with the financial aspects of all that, which led the community to selling off thousands of acres of farmland. I feel for him.

The community is now only six active members, but they have what seems to be a thriving community of oblates, several of whom drove all the way out from Perth to spend the day with us for the conferences. They were all quite receptive and, as I say, I was very glad to get a chance to do it, as well as of course buoyed up by their very warm reception of the material. It did wind up being a good mixture of facts, dates and personages, as well as a spiritual ferverino about what we can and ought to learn from the exploration of universal wisdom. I have great sympathy for teachers; four conferences in one day is a load. Imagine doing it five days a week!

 

(I’m actually preparing for something bigger as well. I have been asked to lead a program entitled “Monasticism, Catholicism and Non-Christian Religions” for the International Monastic Summer Studium at Sant’Anselmo July 14-18, which will be five hours a day for five days. I am hoping with the combination of music, lectio on non-Christian texts and maybe a few field trips, I am well on my way to being ready for it. I’m kind of excited about it. It may be the closest I ever get to actually teaching at Sant’Anselmo, being short of a doctorate.)

 

The extra added feature is that we stayed on at New Norcia for an extra day with absolutely nothing to do. Meath and the monks let me take it pretty much as a desert day in my cell. The community was very warm and welcoming and treated us like visiting royalty.

 

Then back to Perth and I had a string of things to do: a performance for a small crowd at a charming Anglican Church (I did get to try my new piece out for the first time, “People of the Book,” with the Arabic verse from the Qur’an. I’m quite happy with it.) Then I gave two retreat days at a Catholic retreat center, one day on the Trinity as a means for interreligious dialogue (à la Panikkar, Bruno and my last book) and one on kenosis as the heart of Christian spirituality (using the same conferences I have used many times now). Both again for only a handful of people, but once you get going it hardly matters: the same amount of work (maybe more with fewer people) and the same enthusiasm!

 

I then had a scrumptious visit with old friends Hans and Ruth Christiansen who live on the campus of an Anglican formation center within breathing distance of the ocean. I had stayed with them as well in 2016 when they lived in Melbourne. Hans, an ordained Anglican priest, was at the time chaplain of a boarding school there and was also the head of our oblates Down Under at the time. We’d known each other since the retreat I gave in Tasmania in 2009, and had had a very strong connection over everything spiritual, musical, and otherwise, and have kept in touch over the years. It is also one of the friendships with which you pick up right where you left off no matter how many years go by, and so it was. The three of us first took a long walk on the crowded beach––it felt like full-on summer by then––and then they treated me to fish and chips before we went home and prayed and meditated together, which we did several times over the next 36 hours. That is one of the surest marks of familiarity, to be able to “practice” together. The next day we all had a lazy day lounging ‘round the house except for a seven-mile walk through the woods and to the beach again first thing in the morning.

 

Hans is now the auxiliary bishop of that region and we mused quite a bit about the ironies of history. He and Ruth had met in India a mere 25 years ago when Hans was a wandering barefoot hippie from Denmark with a flute over his shoulder, and now he wears the royal purple to work. Of course, even the contrast of him walking with us on the beach in his shorts and tank top with that was enough to amuse. Needless to say, endless conversations ensued along with very healthy meals that would not have been out of place in Santa Cruz. We’re plotting a pilgrimage to the Gomukh together.

 

And then on Tuesday it was back to Singapore, my hub, and to the treasure of a hotel that we found near the airport. I actually had scheduled three video calls and two phone calls for Wednesday, so having a clean private room somewhere that also had a really well-equipped gym and a laundromat, plus a hawker stand and shops nearby, was like Paradise and well worth the reasonable price. I slept like a log both nights. And then the short flight to the Philippines.

 

The main impetus for coming was through my long-time friend and collaborator Joe Hebert, the ‘cellist who has played for and with me for over 30 years. His lady friend Grace wanted to bring him to encounter her home country and meet her family, and she has a sister who is a religious sister of the Mission Congregation of the Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit, an international congregation that has their provincial house for Southeast Asia here in Quezon City, which abuts Manila. And since I was going to be in the region… We were originally going to do a concert and while I was here would I do a retreat day for the sisters? That wound up getting turned inside out: there was no concert and I wound up doing two retreat days, one for the contemplative branch of the congregation, the so-called “pink sisters” (yes, they really do wear a pink habit) who are dedicated to Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in the heart of the city and another day for the active branch at another location.

 

Grace’s sister, Sr. Joy, met me at Ninoy Aquino Airport with their driver and whisked me off across Manila to Quezon City. According to my GPS it is only twelve miles from the airport in the south of Manila to Quezon City in the north, but it took us nearly two hours. For the past two days I have been saying to myself, “This is almost India.” (Which is my next stop anyway.) That evening I had a rare treat. I had been corresponding with a young former seminarian from here named Leogen for the past three years who is interested in East-West spirituality and has studied various forms of Buddhism (Rinzai, Tibetan and lately Chinese Ch’an). When we figured out that I was going to be in the area we made plans to get together that one evening that he was available. He arrived at the sisters’ residence before I did and then took me off in a taxi for a fine meal and dessert, and a good long conversation about lo’ these many things.

 

And then the day for the Pink Sisters on Friday, actually only two sessions in an air-conditioned room above the large open church, at the front of which is a grilled area where the sisters sing, pray, and adore. Lots of people coming and going in the church itself, as a matter of fact they were arranging for a Eucharistic Congress that was about to take place the following day, setting up what seemed like hundreds of chairs and watering stations. In the midst of all that the sisters live their tightly cloistered quiet life of prayer and adoration.

 

The next day was not so cloistered and quiet. Sisters from all over the region came to their large provincial house, like a grand reunion for them, 97 in all. The majority were Filipinas, but there were a quite a few Chinese and Vietnamese, a handful of sisters from Africa (mostly Togo, I think) and some Europeans. They are quite a dynamic group, a congregation that is literally all over the world, serving in every possible ministry from caring for HIV patients to education and everything in between. In a sense the two talks for the Pink Sisters were a warm-up for that main event on Saturday. I had my feathers a little ruffled when Joy had written me telling me what my theme was going to be (i.e., not asking me)––“Prayer and Compassion: Advent recollection,” but I got over that when I realized that I had three old conferences from an Advent retreat that I did years ago in Santa Cruz. Well, as these things go, once I looked closely at the conferences, I realized further that what I wrote in 2004 did not ring true in 2024. Even that in and of itself was interesting, to see how my own “voice” has changed. As I set about re-working the conferences, the writer in me got really inspired (carried away?) and I wound up basically writing three new conferences based on the primary material. The talks were based on Second and Third Isaiah, the Book of the Consolation of Israel and the vision of a new heavens and a new earth. It was notable how often references to the “last political season in America” came up, asking who and how we followers of Jesus are supposed to be in the world, and what is our message.

 

Of course in addition to the talks, since they had paid to bring Joe over too from the other side of the world, they wanted lots of music to be part of the day as well. I, being the perfectionist that I am, didn’t want to just do any old songs, but instead to do songs that really fit the subject matter. Which meant that Joe lugged half of his “Cyprian file” with him only to have me choose five out of the six songs that we did be things he had never played before. (If he were reading, John Pennington would be nodding knowingly…) But it really blended nicely into the day and the sisters loved it. I got to perform, with them, for the first time the “Olam Chesed Yibaneh” (you can look it up) that I had learned from Rabbi Paula years ago and have been wanting to add into the repertoire, but this time with the addition of the refrain in Arabic as available on YouTube with the Jerusalem Youth Choir. That was the favorite piece of the day for the sisters, and at the end while they were thanking us they kept interspersing their remarks with (“la-dai-dai, dai-dai, la-dai…”) But I also got to hear two other new pieces, “Bread for the Journey” and “New Heavens and A New Earth,” for the first time with ‘cello (or any other instrument for that matter). And Joe is such a pro and so long-suffering, he made it sound as if we had been playing them together for years. And then two other songs that I have not played for years as well, “Here Is My Servant” and “Let Us Climb the Lord’s Mountain.” That made it a lot more fun for me, and made the music an integral part of the day. We ended the day with just a gratuitous piece of beauty, Joe’s favorite of our repertoire, John and my setting of Wendell Berry’s poem that we call “Circle Song,” which never fails to soar.

 

I did not know these sisters, their level of education nor their place on the conservative-progressive scale, at all, so I had some trepidation that I might be stretching them too far, especially when I launched into the whole topic of evolution of consciousness and universal care and rights (à la Carol Jenkins and Ken Wilber) in the third conference. But not at all: they tracked the whole way and several remarked to me privately afterward that particularly the idea of transformation of consciousness was exactly what they feel they need to concentrate on in the next years. I was also concerned about leaving the elderly sisters behind, many of whom were in attendance, but they were among the most appreciative. I have always been impressed by women religious in the Church, and these women are no exception. They are the front lines of Christian compassion, in 46 countries. When I spoke about developing a sense of global citizenship, they were and are already there. It was really a marvelous day.

 

This morning I had Mass with the 20 or so sisters in formation staying at the formation house where we have been staying––for the 1st Sunday of Advent! Joe and Grace have moved on and I have had a great day to myself in my upstairs room with the fan comfortably blowing around the cool tropical air. I will move over to Our Lady of Montserrat Benedictine Abbey tomorrow for a visit with the monks and one final event before I head back to Singapore on Wednesday.

 

As always so much more to fill in on the details but that’s all for now, Happy new (liturgical) year!