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!

Melbourne wrap-up

 18 November

 

My last day in Melbourne, flying to Perth tonight. It has been a pretty full period here, lots of wonderful encounters for sure and also lots of moving around. Let me just list it all quickly…

I stayed at the Corpus Christi College, which is the seminary for Victoria and Tasmania, Wednesday and Thursday nights. As I mentioned, our oblate Deacon Jim Curtain, who had organized my trip and is the head of the oblates down here, is on staff there. He stays four nights a week. (It actually was his last week there as he is moving on to a new ministry next year.)

 That was very comfortable, a nice quiet private room with the small community of seminarians and staff. I had prayers and meals with them, of course. Thursday I spent most of the day with my friend (and advisor) and our oblate Mark Hansen from Singapore, who was in AU for the retreat too. I needed to do some errands and we found a great healthy lunch. Friday we were off right away for the oblate retreat at a retreat house outside of town. We were only 12 in number, but it went well. Sunday night we stayed at Jim’s house a half a block from the Port Phillip Bay. There is a super promenade along the beach and, knowing I was coming back there on the following weekend, I did some recon to find running paths and coffee shops. Then back to the seminary, and a full week began, a little something every day. Monday, I had an interview with ABC radio for a program called Soul Search, that will be released as a podcast as well as broadcast soon. That was so much fun. Not sure why that is a perfect vehicle for me. I did bring along my guitar. The interviewer was very knowledgeable and asked all the right questions, about my own background and about interreligious dialogue. I kept saying, “Put a nickel in my jukebox and I might never shut up.” Tuesday, I did a talk at a local parish. I thought it was supposed to be about dialogue too, but it was actually supposed to be about contemplative prayer and meditation. I also presided and preached at the evening Mass first. The deacon there, Hubert, is another of our oblates. The talk went fine but during the Q&A most of the questions were about interreligious dialogue! (One of them was, with a little edge to it, “How many converts to Catholicism have there been among Buddhists and Hindus?” I simply explained that I did not know but that conversion was not the purpose of dialogue.) The parish, but for the accent, could have been in America, as a matter of fact it reminded me in many ways of the place across the street from my Mom, Resurrection in Tempe. A nice modern church, semi-circular, originally plain brick, but now loaded with lots of devotional stuff. I think the same phenomenon is going on in Australia as in the US, a return to a more devotional spirituality instead of a liturgical one. I wonder why that is? Maybe for the same factors that led to Donald Trump being elected president again? (I’m not kidding.) Wednesday was a fuller day yet. One of our oblates who has a blog wanted to interview me for that. And then a fascinating man who runs a spiritual center in the Yarro Valley, along with is wife and a benefactor, wanted to visit with me. Mainly it was because they had hosted Bede Griffiths in 1992, I believe, and had had a great experience with him. They brought me a transcript of the talk he gave which is super. Not surprisingly, Bede spoke about the tripartite anthropology and meditation. I shall borrow from it abundantly. It’s good to know all these years later that even though I don’t go back to Bede’s writing constantly, I am correct about my understanding of his emphases and have not strayed far from the path. And then that evening I did a talk for the Center for Contemplative Studies at Melbourne University. That was most interesting. I had been in touch with several of the staff several times in the past months, once via video call and then quite a few emails. They did seem a little nervous about my presentation, partly because they are hesitant to associate too much with Christianity, partially because they didn’t know me at all, perhaps. They were even sending me all kinds of ideas about how I should lead the meditation. I prepared my talk according to the topics they asked me to cover:

 

Cyprian Consiglio - Christian Monastic Wisdom Today

-       Christian spirituality through lens of Christian monasticism and Camaldolese and Benedictine contemplative practices

-       Contemplative practice/personal experience

-       How inter-faith dialogue influences contemporary appreciation of and supports

the research and practice of different contemplative practice traditions

-       Talk (20 – 30 mins.)

Audience Q&A (15 mins)

 

20-30 minutes to cover all of that?! I used five books as a framing device to describe my own spirituality: Bede Griffiths’ (or really Bruno Barnhart’s compilation of Bede’s writing) The One Light, the Bible, the Roman Missal (and Liturgy of the Hours) to establish myself in the liturgical tradition of Catholicism, the Rule of Benedict, and the Camaldolese Constitutions. I also described myself as “an eccentric among eccentrics,” a monk, from one of the smallest congregations in the Benedictine world, who specialized in East-West dialogue, and a guitar player on top of that, now Secretary General of DIMMID. With the disclaimer that I don’t claim to speak for all Catholic Christian Camaldolese monks, so “do not take me as an examplar, for better or for worse.” Again, a nickel in my juke box... I went over my allotted time, but not by much and no one seemed to mind. I had the guitar of course (but for nearly the first time in my life did not have a guitar pick!) and began and ended with song, and also led a meditation after the Q&A. It was held in a nice theatre with lights and a sound tech. Super professional, and again, I was totally at my ease. One of those nights when I came away saying, “I love what I get to do with my life.”

 

Thursday I had nothing at all to do! I told Jim that he would not see me all day. He said I was welcome to come to prayers and meals. I repeated, “You will not see me all day.” It was a great day. A morning at my desk, then a long walk (seven miles that day) exploring Melbourne on my own. Main points of interest were a good long sit at St Paul’s Cathedral, which I had already visited with Hans in 2016, and a long visit to the Art Museum of Victoria. They had a stupendous Asian section, mostly ancient art from India, Japan, and China. And also were pretty well-stocked with late 19th, early 20th century pieces––Pissaro, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Dalì––and some very modern pieces like Calder, Chagall. I think I prefer visiting art museums alone. A nice lunch downtown along the banks of the Yarro River and an early evening of hermit time.

 

Friday was a fine day. Jim had asked me to do a retreat day for the seminarians. It was their last day there; exams were over and the summer break was beginning. I was only too happy to do it. I based it all on the kenosis theme, talks I have done many times now, and also preached on Albert the Great. I think Jim was a little concerned that I might be too progressive for them, especially with all my interfaith stuff, but I told him, “Don’t worry. I’m just gonna preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I really love speaking to guys at that stage of formation, remembering how I enjoyed hearing new voices when I was there. And I really just love the gospel of Jesus. Period. I wait all day to say the line, “Brothers, there are no hidden messages here. Jesus really meant exactly what he said, ‘The greatest among you will be the one who serves.’ No way around it.” With so many young guys up by the shiny objects of clericalism––cassocks and places of honor––it is so important to point this out.

Then the work was done, and we headed back to Jim’s place at the coast for the weekend. I again had all Saturday to myself and tramped around with my backpack at the beach and a coffee shop all day, got a little sun-burned (it was good and hot), read a lot and napped. Sunday we went out to the Cistercian monastery Tarrawarra. We celebrated Mass with the monks, then the abbot, Fr. Steele, had us in for a private lunch in his guest dining room. (I thought we were going to eat with the rest of the monks.) Another old friend, Fr. John Dupuche, joined us as well. He is an expert in Kashmir Shivaism, and I know him since the Abhishiktananda Centenary at Shantivanam in 2009. I also visited his place here in Victoria in 2016. He has for some years run an inter-faith monastic house, where he has housed monks from various religions and traditions. Between the four of us, it was a very lively conversation, though am afraid John and I left the other two in the dark at times as I probed John about some of the subtler aspects of Tantra and other areas of his expertise. After that I had the great grace of an hour with Fr. Michael Casey who is an internationally known author in the monastic world. I wanted to ask him his opinion about the influence of East-West dialogue on monasticism. (He narrowed it down to specifically “Benedictine” monasticism.) I can’t recount all of what he said here. In a word, “not much” outside of a few guys doing yoga once in a while. I was thinking sadly of the lack of interest in the Christian ashram movement in India. It speaks so strongly to me! Is it only outside of Benedictine monasticism that a new way of being monk has evolved from out of the Asian influence? I was impressed by the fact that Fr. Michael was even more world-traveled, connected, better-educated, and experienced than I knew, having spent time with such other monastic luminaries as Jean le Clerq, and also having been with Bede Griffiths and Raimondo Panikkar in 1973 at the follow up to the Asian meeting at which Thomas Merton died. So, it was a real honor to spend time with him and I am still chewing on his insights.

 

I was telling Jim this morning a thought I have had several times in the past weeks. Concerning the two things I love, music and east-west dialogue: they tend to be side projects or hobbies for most monks if at all. Only a few of us are crazy enough to pursue either (or both) of them full time, to actually make a life out of them.

 

I am waiting for my ride to the airport and thus begins another week of ministry Down Under.

Fides et ratio!

For my last commitment here in Melbourne, I gave a retreat day for the seminarians at Corpus Christi College yesterday, where I had been staying this past week. Deacon Jim Curtain, the head of our oblates down here who is my host, is on staff there. It was a great place to stay, nice quiet bedroom in the small guesthouse, where I was the only guest all week. It was a great day. I gave the conferences from my kenosis retreat (the material that made up “The God Who Gave You Birth”). I also preached for Mass, Even though it was only an optional memorial, I decided to preach on Saint Albert the Great because there are a few things about him that strike me as salient still in our day and age. And what an opportunity to convey this message to guys preparing for ministry in the Church in this crazy world.

First of all, Saint Albert is credited with being the thinker who really separated theology from philosophy. Now, there can be a downside to that, in the sense that this is the crossover period into Scholasticism. And so this is the beginning of the slow decline of the sapiential learning that was more common in the patristic era and especially beloved in monastic circles. But the upside of it is the fact that the separation between philosophy and theology shows that there is no conflict between faith and reason; they are in a sense two different kinds of intelligences. Saint Albert referred to theology as “emotional knowledge,” whereas philosophy is more rational knowledge. They need each other. (Ironically, just that morning I watched a video that someone sent of a priest in a homily railing against following your emotions in the spiritual life. I think it is very dangerous to leave the emotions out completely and has led to a lot of problems. Just acknowledge them and let them be part of the decision-making process.)

 

The inheritors of this tradition, of course, were Popes John Paul II and Benedict.  John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio is one of the foundational texts of my work in interreligious dialogue. (If I had started talking about it, I’d have never stopped but I did urge you to read it some time.) This is also the argument that Pope Benedict tried to make so often (often falling on deaf ears to the right and the left), that reason lets us figure out such things as that terrorism, for example, is not true religion, even that fundamentalism is not authentic religion. There are so many examples in our day and age of religion being used to condone all kinds of crazy behavior, among extreme right Christians as well as Jews and Muslims. So, this is a salient argument and culpable ignorance. As I like to say regarding my own country, when somebody says something stupid on our end, about Palestine, for instance, someone gets killed for it on the other end.

 

The second thing concerning Saint Albert and philosophy that gets pointed to often folds right into that. Albert, like his famous student Thomas Aquinas after him, accomplished this separation of theology from philosophy by using Aristotle. That may not seem shocking to us except for the fact that Aristotle had two things going against him. First of all, he, like Plato, was a pagan! Secondly, his philosophy was being translated and diffused around Europe by Arab Muslims. This was a shock to people of Albert’s time, especially church people. “How could you use a pagan philosopher translated by who-were-thought-to-be-heretics to explain Christian theology?” I’ve been doing some study recently about the history of Islamic thought recently, since my time at Oxford, and I don’t think people realize or remember how dependent Christian theologians were at one time on Arabic translators.

 

Robert Barron points out in his essay on St. Thomas how this beautifully exemplifies the truly catholic mind, “open to every and any influence, willing to embrace the truth wherever [they] found it.” Not only as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, but also Jewish thinkers such as the Rabbi Moses Maimonides and the Andalusian poet and philosopher Avicebron, and Muslim scholars such as Averroes and Avicenna. Equally important, even when they disagreed with a thinker, they “always did so with respect and without polemics.” (Remember, Aquinas was disagreeing with Augustine on this as well as St Bonaventure.) And Barron says this is “a wonderful model for our time, when the religious conversation is sadly marked by rancor and vituperation.”

 

The third thing, right in the same line, is that Saint Albert was named the doctor universalis­–the universal doctor (could we say, the “catholic doctor”?) because of his fascination with and writings on botany, zoology, physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Again, this shows us not only that there is no conflict between faith and reason; there also ought to be no conflict between faith and science, even though there has been historically. Note the culture wars still going on over these issues, regarding global warming to name just one issue. A few years ago, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, then chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, was interviewed concerning the Church’s approach to evolution and science in general. He himself is a philosopher and a scholar of Saint Thomas Aquinas. And he said that he is absolutely comfortable with both the spiritual message of a reasonable church and the evidence-based lessons of science, such as evolution. They exist on different planes, he said, and “If we don’t accept science, we don’t accept reason, and reason was created by God.”

 

I ended by saying, “The world needs us to be holy right now. It also needs us to be intelligent, measured, it needs us to be the voice of reason as well as the voice of faith. So let’s let St Albert be our intercessor and our guide in this, as he was for Thomas Aquinas, so that we too could be light for the world, salt in the earth.”

I’m staying with Jim and his wife Vickie out in Bayside this weekend. It’s beautiful, right on the bay, and the weather is going to be in the 90s! It feels like California in July. I’ll try to catch up on the blog soon.

what will we tell our children?

I was flying from Singapore to Australia as the results of the election were coming in and, perhaps unfortunately, there was CNN International live on the plane. I switched to a wonderful PBS documentary on the jazz bassist Ron Carter (highly recommended) but kept switching back to check how things were going. All the while I was remembering how I was driving from California to Arizona on January 6, 2021 when the attack on the Capital was taking place, listening live on SirusXM and then with my iPhone perched up on the dashboard, listening and watching in horror.

 

I certainly don’t want to get into any polemical battles. By now we have all hardened into our positions and it is not the time even to try to change anyone else’s mind. The thing is done. There is little to debate anymore, just wait to see how it unfolds. This is what the majority of American people want. That is how democracy works.

 

It’s not that I wanted Kamala Harris to win so much as I, along with many conservative Republican Christians, just wanted Donald Trump and MAGA to be defeated so that America could be rid of the poison that Donald Trump has brought to our great country. So we could get back to the great debate about policy differences. I am so so sad that most of my fellow Americans did not want that.

 

What Jimmy Kimmel said on Wednesday, November 6 during his monologue, spoke for me. He was roundly pilloried for it on social media afterward because he was fighting back tears, which I suppose a real man would never do.

 

“It was a terrible night for women, for children,” he said,

“for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go,

for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech.

It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class,

for seniors who rely on Social Security,

for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO and democracy and decency.

And it was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him.

And guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too.

You just don’t realize it yet.”

 

I keep thinking three things.

 

First of all, the Bully won. The bullies won. As bullies usually win, at least in the short term.

 

And second, how can we ever preach the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, with a straight face again, let alone call ourselves a Christian nation?

 

Third, and this is the one that makes me really sad: What do we tell our children?

 

That Jesus was apparently wrong? If you want to make it in this world, do not follow Jesus! You need to imitate the bullies, imitate the ones who spew hatred, who spread falsehoods, threaten violence, demean those who are weaker than you, and demonize their enemies. You can also align yourself with racists and riot against your country and ignore its judicial system if things don’t go your way. Imitate people who do that. That’s how you win. You can also lie, cheat, abuse women, and break the law. We used to choose our leaders based on character, but character does not matter anymore (at least this side of the grave). That, apparently, is the American way now.

 

For the rest of us—including we followers of the poor man of Galilee who hung on a cross and preached the power of love and self-surrender, and all people of good will—we had better stick together and protect each other from here on out because the bullies are running things now and make no mistake about it—they are out to humiliate us. They are already doing it. A woman acquaintance of mine recently got these responses to her posts against Donald Trump.

 

Go f-ck yourself.

Get f-cked.

Your body, my choice.

Get back in the kitchen and spread your legs.

Die libtard.

Trump will f’ing destroy you.

This is why women shouldn’t vote.

Never move your commie ass to NH!

 

And yes, that is what Donald Trump has unleashed and given permission to because that’s the way he speaks, as he did at the Al Smith dinner last month with the Roman Catholic cardinal (shame on him) laughing at his side. Just as he gave permission to the Proud Boys, and to the white nationalists in Charlottesville in 2017. These are mean people who are armed and dangerous and will not hesitate to harm us if we get in their way. They’ve said so, beginning with their leader.

 

We just might face persecution. So, let’s take care of each other, protect each other, but let’s not meet violence and hatred with violence and hatred. Look to the freedom fighters on Edmund Pettus Bridge for inspiration. Non-violent resistance in the name of God or however you call the Power-Greater-Than-Yourself who sustains you is what is called for now. Shame them with your love, mock their way of acting with your sincere kindness.

 

And please don’t let your children admire them so that they grow up to be like them. Let’s quietly build something different.

 

And please do not give up believing that they are wrong. That love is stronger than hate. That kindness is more enduring than bitterness. That is where our hope is based. And try to convert Mr. Trump’s followers to the actual Gospel of Jesus instead of the anti-gospel of folks who have often twisted Christianity into an aberration of its true spirit and use it as a political, cultural cudgel.

 

Read the Beatitudes every day. Memorize them. Read Dr King and Dorothy Day, read Cesar Chavez and Gandhi. Read Jim Wallis and John Dear. That may be the kind of heroism that will be called for in the days ahead.

 

As Vaclav Havel said, “Hope is a dimension of the soul, an orientation of the spirit.” However, he says “it is not the same thing as joy that things are going well,” at least not in the short term, “but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. ... Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless how it turns out.”

 

Even though the bullies won, let’s not stop doing the right thing, even if it doesn’t look like it will succeed. Let’s pray for the strength to speak the truth, with love, to power. Because the arc of the moral universe is long—but it bends toward justice, God’s saving justice, who raises the lowly from the dust and casts down the mighty from their thrones.

I say that as a monk and a priest. But I echo this as an troubadour, the words of Toni Morrison:

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no time for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

 

Along with Cornell West, I am a prisoner of hope, even if things don’t look too good right now. There is a light that can overcome the darkness. But there is no darkness that can overcome the light.