September 8, 2019
This Self,
which is dearer to us than anything else,
Is dearer
indeed than a child, dear than wealth,
dearer than
all beside.
Let one
worship the Self alone as dear,
for if one
worships the Self alone as dear
the object
of one’s love will never perish. (Briharanyaka
Upanishad)
I’m in Phoenix now, actually Paradise Valley, staying at the
Franciscan Renewal Center (better known as “the Casa”), and spending as much
time as possible with family and also a few friends. Will try now to finish up
the conference if not the rest of the time in Sicily.
I knew Fausto, S.J. from our mutual love for and study of India.
His own connection there led to him having a close friendship with an Indian
Jesuit named Ravi, and Ravi in turn has a close connection with a group of
classical Indian dancers––Bharatanatyam, a very stylized symbolic type of
sacred dance that originated in the temples, particularly in the south, in
Tamil Nadu. (It was banned by the English colonialist missionaries for a time in
the 19th century, accusing it of being harlotry, etc., typical
dualistic anti-incarnational prudery (“he said, dismissively”).) Talk about
sparing no expense: somehow Fausto and Eraldo managed to bring five dancers
from a troupe called the Kala Darshini Dancers from Andhra Pradesh in south
India. These dancers are a cultural center there that was established by the
Jesuits of the Andhra Loyola Institute. We were back at the Palazzo Branciforte
for this mesmerizing performance, which was ticketed and open to the public. The
local commune had definitely helped with getting these six young women there. Besides
the classic Indian dances, they have also choreographed some modern dances
based on Gospel stories. When Fausto introduced this event he pointed this out
as a prime example of inculturation, taking what is already there in the native
spiritual and cultural genius, and employing it as means of expressing the
gospel.
One anecdote from that afternoon… I wasn’t getting much exercise
outside of sweating and walking, so I took to going on foot to the conferences
with the student participants as often as possible instead of driving with the
Jesuits. That day they all wanted to stop at a BAR for a cold drink on the way,
and I sidled in and asked just for a glass of acqua frizzante, which I find very satisfying and thirst quenching.
When the barista gave it to me I started reaching for my wallet, and he said to
me, loud enough for all to hear, “Non
siamo nel Nord, Signore, siamo nel Sud adesso. Non si paga per acqua qui––We’re
not in the north, sir, we’re in the south. You don’t pay for water here.” I
clapped my hands and laughed out loud as did the kids.
We were all quite wiped out after that performance and the
concomitant trek across town and back by the time got back to our residence.
The Capella delle Dame was not
available to us that evening for our evening prayer, so we were supposed to use
the sanctuary of the huge Jesuit church at the Casa Professa instead. That was also closed and no one could be
found who had a key, so we were scrambling around searching for a place to hold
evening prayer. I was advocating for us to do something simple and informal,
and it was conceded to me, perhaps somewhat grudgingly, by my Jesuit
colleagues. We finally found a bland little hall upstairs in the dorm building,
and it seemed as if Fausto and Eraldo just turned the thing totally over to me,
presiding from my chair with the guitar. I had brought some of the charming
music from South Africa that I had fallen in love with some years back, some of
which is featured in GIA’s Gather. That
was the music and culture I was featuring that day. I don’t have the references
with me here but I believe it was compiled and recorded by a Swedish group
named Ultryck, based on the transcriptions of a white South African Catholic
priest named David Dargie. One of the more popular pieces is called “Thuma
Mina,” translated into English as “Send Me, Lord.” I in turn had translated it
into Italian. It’s very simple with a single lower harmony. That in addition to
a simply chanted psalm, a short reading (read twice) and some intercessory
prayers, wound up being for me the most memorable of our prayer services.
Part of the scope of this conference is to introduce the young
people into liturgical spirituality. Yet for all my love for our liturgical
tradition, I am no big advocate of always doing things exactly as they are laid
out in our official books. There is a time to be creative, and that time is
whenever we are not compelled to do something official. I always advocate this
as well when trying to introduce folks into the Liturgy of the Hours, that the main
purpose is not to pray these exact psalms and read these specific reading at
this exact hour of the day, as the Church obliges religious and priests. The
purpose is actually and above all to pray without ceasing. But “because we are
not given to pray as we ought,” (John Cassian) we stop at certain times to
renew prayer. And the best thing to do with that pause is to spend some time
with the Word, scripture. And pride of place is given to the psalms as it has
been from the beginning. But that leaves us lots of room. I think most young
people are pre-catechetical and even pre-liturgical. It would be better to form
them into the larger spirit of this, and toward that end to “pray as they can,
not as they can’t.” If I do work for this conference again, as the Jesuits have
asked of me, I think I will push toward something a little lighter for our
liturgies of the hours.
I must confess I was once again wiped out and dehydrated by the
end of all that on Satruday, and took the evening off again as the participants
went for yet another major conference back at the palazzo, entitled ‘Sconfinare
nello Spazio e nel Tempo’ offered by a highly acclaimed composer named
Roberto Cacciapaglia––roughly translated “Crossing the Frontiers of Space and
Time.” But I did go to the last talk on Sunday morning, offered by a professor
of Musicology and Music Education from Rome named Raffaele Pozzi. He and I had
spoken briefly at dinner the night before, and it seemed to me that he was
going to be the bookend to my own opening presentation. And so it was in his talk
entitled “Music and Spirituality in the Global World.” He decried how the
Church has eschewed great sources of music in favor a banality in modern
liturgical music. I was afraid at one point we were going to get an Italian
version of “Why Catholics Can’t Sing” (Thomas Day), but he was much more
nuanced.
Prof. Pozzi was annoyed that the great modern day Italian
composers had not been asked to contribute to the new musical repertoire, and
he gave us an example of an Our Father by Stravinsky, which was indeed simple
and sturdy, in 4-part harmony. But he also gave us examples of music from
Africa, some he had filmed and recorded himself, including the fascinating
practice of ululating, which he found fascinating. Interestingly he thought we
had not availed ourselves of pre-recorded music enough––something which I have
been very much against––saying that recorded music “would be better than four
out-of-tune guitarists.” He was dismayed at the Church’s reluctance to use
purely instrumental music, and chalked it up to the fact that is escapes the
control of the rite (and the censors). He thought that there was too much of an
avoidance of expressing the ugly and the dark in our modern liturgical music
when 187,000,000 people were killed in wars in the 20th century
alone, which needs to be expressed and grieved. One word that he coined I will
certainly use again: just as there is pornografia–pornography,
so there is pornofonia–porno-phony,
ugly, abusive, lewd, exploitative sounds. It was all pretty heady and I thought
out of range for these students, not because of their limited musical abilities
or intelligence, but because of their limited liturgical experience and
post-conciliar history. But they stepped up to the plate with very incisive
questions again at the end, though I must say two or three looked a little
worse for the wear. I know for a fact that several of them had been up all
night, being typical college-aged young people on holiday, because when I got up
at 4:30 AM I overheard and them talking on the balcony below mine. And I am
pretty sure it wasn’t because they had gotten up for Vigils.
We parted ways there, bidding our goodbyes and thanks in the
foyer. I was quite touched when one of the young guys came up and hugged me and
held on, and then someone called out (in English) “group hug” and the bunch of
them surrounded me and held me for a good minute.
That’s all for the conference, except for this: Eraldo and Fausto
and I had a little time together on Sunday afternoon finally, de-briefing and
celebrating. First we had Mass at the Jesuit residence and liceo where Eraldo lives and teaches, joined by three other
scholastics and a deacon. Fausto asked me to preside and preach. And then they
took me to Eraldo’s favorite local restaurant, a little family owned place
called simply Pizza e Pasta, where
Eraldo knew everybody and everybody knew him. They ordered up three delicious antipasti, one of which was the kind of caponata that Grandma Luci used to make
all the time and I simply have to learn to make. The waitress came by to
collect our little plates but I said, “No,
voglio pulire il mio piatto prima––No, I want to clean my plate first” and reached
for a piece of bread, as my Dad would have taught me. They burst out laughing.
Then at the end we ate granita, which
I also remember as a child; we used to call it Italian ice. This one was with
fresh anguria–watermelon. After
eating it all I picked up the glass and drank what remained and said, “Non voglio perdere neanche una goccia––I
don’t want to miss even a drop!” And they burst out laughing again. I finally
asked Fausto what was so funny, and he said that there couldn’t have been a
greater compliment to the restaurant than that a foreigner would say something
like that. By that time I was laughing too, with delight at the whole ambience.
I’ll pick up with the rest of my Sicilian adventure later. Non voglio perderne neanche una goccia!
