I have felt something like an obligation to write (I usually journal every afternoon) but virtually no energy for it. Maybe today.
So, for a first installment, here’s my itinerary––and let me stop you right there: if you are tempted to scold me for being what you think of as “too busy” or for “traveling too much,” your admonition will be wasted on me, and I might even resent you for it. I have dreamt of this sabbatical year probably for the past ten years, ever since I took on the role of prior. I joke sometimes that it was the only reason I accepted it at all, so that I could earn a sabbatical year. Short of that, it certainly has been a carrot on the end of the stick that gave me something to look forward to. And I think I have laid it out well with a nice proportion of retreat time and creative work, the things that make me really come alive.
I am currently in Hillsborough, a beautiful affluent neighborhood just south of San Francisco, guests of Bob and Ellen Peck. Bob was only recently received as an oblate of New Camaldoli but has slowly become a friend to several of us monks and has also served on my Financial Advisory Board (FAB), offering us his expertise especially in investments. He and Ellen extended the invitation for a stay during my sabbatical, and I thought it would be an ideal place to decompress before I begin the year in earnest. And it has been so far. More on that in a moment.
From here I will go to Singapore which used to be my regular stop on the way to India. We have a handful of oblates there and I have several good friends with whom I have stayed in contact since my wandering days of interreligious events. Two other members of my FAB live there and they have put together a spread sheet (seriously) of my time there so I can both get plenty of time to relax but still spend quality time with them all. From there I will go to India, the main destination of course being Shantivanam, our ashram in Tamil Nadu. There may be a few little side trips during my stay there, but the closer I get to going the less I am excited about doing anything but sitting there with my brother and sister monks and nuns. I haven’t been there for 12 years, and I am looking forward to seeing how things are in the Forest of Peace, especially under the care of their new young shepherd/prior Dorathick.
I will be back in California by Holy Week and will celebrate the Triduum back at the Hermitage. Just four days. In exchange, the brothers are going to lend me a car for two months. I then have an entire month booked in an apartment at the Jesuit retreat house in Los Altos, the same apartment I had when I made a wonderful eight-day retreat in 2022. That’s April.
May I want to dedicate to recording, but that’s going to be a little here and there. As in many cases I have accepted work to do that gets me somewhere I want to be. Furbo! I will travel to Tucson, Arizona to help for a few days with a musicians’ songwriters’ workshop and then record with John Pennington, who will also be there, at Tom Booth studio there in Tucson. Then I will see my family in Phoenix. I am then offering a retreat for the monks of St Martin’s Abbey in Lacey, Washington, which will get me to the northwest where I will plan to record some more with my Portland friends. That’s May.
June I am offering three retreats in Minnesota, and that will get me to the Midwest, where I will spend time with family in Wisconsin at the cabin on the lake and then drop down into Illinois and see old friends that I have not seen in a long long time, some of whom are getting close to the end of their journey. I plan on being back in California by mid-July (for Devin and Prabha’s wedding on the 14th, for sure!). Not exactly sure where I’ll be staying then, maybe couch surfing in Santa Cruz?
I hope to be back in Italy by August 1, and plan on spending as much time as possible for the following six weeks at the Sacro Eremo. I have events then in Poland, Germany, back in Italy and then in England from mid-September through October. The one condition I have asked my sponsors is that I can travel by train. So much more relaxed and I can see the countryside.
November I am in Australia, mainly to offer a retreat in Melbourne for our large community of oblates there. Maybe a few other events, musical or speaking, but after that my main goal is to find some place to retreat. A few spots have been offered and it will be summer there so I hope to be by the sea. And then one more stop back in India “on my way home” for a final meeting in Kerala for a project that Dorathick and I have worked on with our friend Petra Atweiler, a German sociologist. There is actually very little for me to do for the meeting, but I am delighted to sort of begin and end the sabbatical in India. And from there head home to Big Sur for Christmas.
At least that's the plan. I feel very open to whatever the universe and the Spirit have in store.
