August 23: fly to Newark, drive to Windsor, visit with our nuns.
Hello all,
Well, the first week did not go at all as planned. I got a ride up north with our friend Andrew who was staying at the Hermitage with his parents. He and I went to visit another mutual friend who is a new disciple, as it were, of Fr. Bede and Shantivanam, and then we met Andrew’s folks for a nice Japanese seafood meal. They dropped me at my hotel but by the time I got there I knew that something was wrong with my, shall we say, "plumbing." I won’t go into the details of it, but luckily our doctor, John Clark, is also one of my close friends and I was able to text him around 10:45 that night asking his advice. He wanted me to go right to a 24 hour pharmacy and get a prescription, which was a bit of an endeavor in and of itself––taxi, the pharmacist on “lunch break” at midnight, etc. I got home at 2 AM and started postponing flights and canceling hotel rooms, etc. because there was no way I was getting on a plane at 6 AM. By midday the next day things weren’t that much better and John wanted me either to go the emergency room right away or as soon as I got to New York, or see a urologist the next day. I opted for the latter, switched my New York rental car to California and extended my hotel room another night yet. Long and short of it is by the time I got to the urologist things were better and I was given leave to fly to Europe but by that time the New York leg was kind of shot. I re-arranged my trip yet again, turned the car in at San Jose the next day. Andrew was working in San Jose that day so he picked me up and let me crash at his apartment on the air mattress his parents had just used, and offered to take me to the airport early Friday morning. Since he was gone all day working and in the evening playing tennis, I had the place to myself to re-group and work on my reading for this meeting in Germany, my report to the Prior General and his Council, and my conferences for the retreat at Poppi. It was actually a pretty relaxing time, with a gym right down the road.
I flew to Newark on Friday, which pretty much took all day. (Since my ticket to and from Europe was already scheduled in and out of Newark Liberty Airport, I still had to make it there somehow!) A night in the hotel and then I taught my monthly online class from for the Episcopal House of Prayer from my hotel room. There was much better internet than we can access at the Hermitage, so that part was nice, but there was also some serious partying going on in this less-than-first-class hotel I was in, and there was a pretty strong whiff of marijuana drifting through the walls and/or under the door. Who knows what I said during the class itself, but I did have a strong craving for brownies halfway through…
August 28: fly to Germany, two nights at Hildesheim with our monks
–then to Nütshau for AI/FORA meeting
A beautiful flight to Frankfort then, only seven hours, with a meal, two movies and a nap, it went by very quickly. Unfortunately, we were a half an hour later than scheduled so I was literally running with my backpack and guitar through the airport trying to reach my train which was to take me to Hildesheim. I normally keep my watch running a little slow (so it gives the brothers a few more seconds to get to choir on time), but I was sure that I got to the platform at exactly 8:50 AM, the time the train was supposed to leave. The Germans were a little too efficient that day. By the time I got there the train was long gone, so I had to wait for another train that wound up being an hour late. When I asked a gentleman at the gate if I had read that board right––if our train was actually an hour late––and he answered in the affirmative, I said, “I thought those kinds of things didn’t happen in Germany!” (Thanks be to God so many people in Germany speak English!) At any rate I finally made it to Hildesheim where our Fr. Benedikt of the Kloster Sankt Romuald came to fetch me from the train station.
Not only is it my first time visiting this new Camaldolese community here in Hildesheim; it’s my first time in Germany, outside of changing planes in Frankfort or Munich many times on my way to India or Italy. I was only expecting the two monks that I have met several times already, Jeremias who is well known at New Camaldoli, and his confrere from the Congregation of the Dormition, the afore-mentioned Benedikt. However this community has actually grown to six now. There is Fabian, a young diocesan priest who about to make his novitiate at Camaldoli, an older man named Bernd who is about to make his official claustral oblation, another monk of their former congregation, Fr. Joseph, who is scheduled to arrive any day now, and yet another former religious whose name and congregation I have forgotten right now, also scheduled to arrive shortly. All six of them are traveling down to Camaldoli, so we will meet there on September 8 while I am there for my fraternal visitation and when Fabian will officially begin his novitiate, on the Feast of the Birth of Mary.
Unfortunately, Fr. Dorathick, the young prior of Shantivanam, who was also supposed to be at this meeting here in Germany and have a meeting with the General Council with me afterward, could not get through the German red tape in time to get a visa. And I know he and others have been trying for weeks. So that is a real disappointment for a lot of us.
I can tell you more about this meeting––which wound up being the proximate reason for scheduling this whole trip now (in addition to the Abbots and Priors Congress which was supposed to be held starting September 13 in Rome)––later, when I understand it a little more. It has to do with a German sociologist, Artificial Intelligence, algorithms that decide the allocation of social services, safe spaces for dialogue, Benedictine monasteries, the Camaldolese, and Fr. Bede Griffiths. It got more specific as the organizer, Petra, got deeper into it and met us all through Jeremias. My main contribution, besides representing one of the communities that has been asked to be a safe space for a dialogue to take place (in affiliation with Esalen Institute), is to present on Fr. Bede. After meeting Fr. Thomas (Matus) at New Camaldoli, Petra chose his collection of Bede’s Essential Writings from Orbis as the main text for the meeting. I have used Bruno’s much more extensive anthology Bede's writings, The One Light, for years and must admit I had never read through Thomas’ selections since they are all repeats. As I started to read through this collection, I was both impressed by Thomas’ selections and moved all over again by Bede’s wise and prescient thought. I also realized, once again, just how deeply he influenced my whole way of thinking. There are things that I often say that are pretty much paraphrases of Bede’s own written words that I have no recollection of reading, but I must have. Or else I am so formed by him that my thoughts come out of the same logic. So that has been my spiritual reading for the past week and I have a well-marked copy of Bede Gritffiths Essential Writings. More on that later. For now, I’m going to try to conquer the jetlag.
September 3: fly with the AI group to Italy to continue the meeting at Camaldoli
September 6: meeting with Prior General and General Council
September 7-12: visit monastery and Sacro Eremo
September 13-17: teaching with the nuns at Poppi
September 18-23 back to Camaldoli, eventually to Rome
September 23: fly to Newark, overnight
September 24: fly to San Jose and home.
Oremus pro invicem!
