21 February, 2024
The feast of Saint Peter Damian, I believe Fr. Thomas Matus’ 83rd birthday and the third anniversary of my dear father’s death.
I had some hesitation about my original plan and thought about maybe simply extending my time here at Shantivanam until I need to fly up to Delhi and catch my flight back to Singapore, but in the end it felt right to stick to the original plan. So next week I will take an overnight train to Bengaluru, where I will get to meet the artist and old friend of Bede Jyothi Sahi for the first time. (More on that to come.) From there I will fly to Delhi, meet up with my intrepid right hand mad Devin, who is here with the Mount Madonna students and will be staying on to prepare for the Indian version of his upcoming wedding. We will travel together to Haridwar and then he will put me in a taxi to take me to my yoga retreat at an ashram outside of Rishikesh. Where I will hopefully meet up with Br. Axel who is doing an extended time at another branch of the same ashram, and has been several times, being trained in their school of yoga.
I mentioned the other day how I finally understood why I had appreciated the Upanishads so much, because they invite you into the experience more than explain it to you beforehand. And the same holds true for the yoga tradition in general. I’ve got my copy of How to Know God with me, Swami Prabhavananda’s commentary on the Yoga Sutras with Christopher Isherwood (how many times have I recommended or given away a copy of that?!). It’s such great practical advice, not only on asana and meditation, but on living an ethical life in general.
I preached this morning. In the gospel today (I’ve got our antiphon in mind: ‘… this evil generation is asking for a sign, none will be given but the sign of Jonah.’) tells his hearers that the Queen of the South will rise up and judge this generation. It gave me a chance to use this bit I got from Jean Cardinal Danielou’s book The Holy Pagans of the Old Testament:
Both Matthew and Luke record Jesus saying something rather remarkable concerning the Queen a Sheba (or the “queen of the South” as she is called in the gospels), who sought out Solomon because she recognized Solomon’s wisdom.* The Qur’an mentions this story as well, though there she is referred to as Bilqis, and Cardinal Danielou, in his famous book Holy Pagans of the Old Testament, says that the fact that she belongs both to the gospel and the Qur’an “may be a hidden link that gives reason to hope.” The Qur’an portrays her as an idolater, a sun worshipper,** though there is nothing in the Hebrew scriptures to tell us that. Danielou instead says that she was actually “already worshipping the true God through the medium of [God’s] revelation in the world and in her conscience.” In other words, she was already worshipping the true God through the Second Person of the Trinity, Wisdom. Even though she pays tribute to a more perfect revelation in Solomon, she stays “at the level of revelation which was hers.” Not only is she a “mystical anticipation of the entry of the Gentiles into the Church,” Jesus goes on to say that she will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. In other words, she is shown in the future, on the day of Resurrection, sharing the glory of the saints! And Cardinal Danielou concludes that through this Jesus himself “testifies to the fact that the pagans who have sought God in sincerity of heart belong to his Church, by what theology calls the baptism of desire, and form part of the elect,”*** through the Wisdom of the Second Person of the Trinity. One can only imagine what a stir those words might have caused in the Catholic Church in 1956, in the decades before Vatican II, Nostra Aetate and the Declaration on Religious Liberty.
I concluded by saying I’d rather be a holy pagan than an unregenerate believer.
23 February 2024
Who knew?
It’s hard to believe I am already preparing for my departure from here. Suddenly a bunch of little community requests have come up, everyone else also feeling the imminence of it––this one wants a guitar lesson, another Mass and/or breakfast with the sisters, a walk and talk with that one. I’ve been jealously guarding my time since I’ve been on a real nice roll with everything, yoga, writing, practicing the guitar. In addition, as I have done in the past, I’ve been teaching young Arvind English lessons each day. Of all the guys I’ve tutored in English he has been the most challenging because he knows so little. Very eager to learn, but looks at me confused and often mumbles almost inaudibly, “I don’ know…” I am realizing again what a weird language English is to pronounce. What’s the difference between “heart” and “hear”? And he can’t hear the difference between “air” “hair” and “here.” He cannot say “f” or “v” or “sh” or “r”––and I wish I had a film of me trying to show him every day how to use his teeth and/or tongue to form certain sounds. We’ve both gotten past the shyness of looking silly, at least, and both of us wind up laughing.
The thing that keeps coming back to me from my time in 2002 teaching for a month at the old Formation House, was what a holy exercise teaching English feels like to me since the common language here is English (between them they come from five different language groups now), and of course all the prayers and the Bible readings are in English (except on Sunday). It’s kind of like me doing my lectio in Italian. It’s not just a foreign language to me––it’s a sacred language because it carries our history and tradition. Tamil is given some pride of place since that is where the ashram is located––the third psalm is always sung in Tamil and the gorgeous poems of the Tamil saints are read each evening for the Universal Wisdom. Just like I used to end each class with the guys by reading the psalms, so Arvind and I spend the end of class reading the first reading for Mass of the next day.
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| Today's English lesson... |
I have thought often that a monastery, especially a hermitage (or ashram, for that matter) is not a good place to learn a new language. There’s simply not enough talking. So the other day we took a walk around the garden and I was surprised how many common words he did not know yet so we named everything we could see. We had a little argument about whether one plant was a bush or a tree, but I let him win. Then we did body parts yesterday, which was again hysterical. I again remember the guys back in 2002 were so appreciative for that. Today we are going to do adjectives.
It is good to see that Shantivanam still has so many visitors coming from the States and, especially, from Europe. It was slow for a few days but then a small group came from Italy, another from France, a group from Germany, and then the other day a large group from Poland arrived. You can see that that is the main purpose of this place––aside from allowing a place for monks themselves to cultivate the inner life, which I must admit, as is the danger in a lot of places, can sometimes get short shrift: welcoming guests. And right now it is all-hands-on-deck. Everyone seems to know his part and Dorathick glides among the guests easily, making himself available and accessible. That would be hard on me, and I absent myself from breakfast and/or dinner most days and avoid the tea circle, with impunity, I think. Old Cristudas says that Dorathick is a cross between Fr. Bede and the late Amaldas, the great yogi who died very young. Fr Paul and I have had several very nice conversations and he says they suffer here from the same thing that we suffer from in Big Sur, though he didn’t have the word for it and appreciated hearing it: frequent visitors start to get a sense of entitlement. Not realizing that the place goes on without them, expecting that they can have everything the way they want it, ordering the staff around, even sometimes ordering the monks around. The guys are very gracious about it, but I have come to recognize that certain polite smile they offer in moments like that. Anyway, I’ve lost uninterrupted exclusive use of the meditation hall next door now so have had to adjust and/or keep to my cell for guitar time and asana.
I posted photos on Facebook of the new chapel across the street at Ananda. As I explained in that post, Sr. Mary Louise, before she died, left instructions of where she wanted it built and that it ought to be an octagon. The rest she left up to Sr. Neethi, who she passed on the mantle of leadership to pretty much as soon as Neethi got here. She did a marvelous job with the help of Fr Pinto from the ashram here. The money came from a bequest of Sr. Maria Luisa, the Spanish Camaldolese nun who died suddenly at Sant’Antonio in Rome at the Easter Vigil back in 2017, three months after Mary Louise. Ignatius told me the story and Dorathick said he was standing right next to her when it happened. A beautiful poetry to the fact that she had the same name as Mary Louise. Both of their photos are enshrined in the entryway. It is more in the “western” style, as one monk told me, but very specifically in the Indian style of the Western style as far as I can see: a little hard, lots of stone and metal and sharp edges. It was fun to be with them again, and great fun getting to know Neethi, who is a fountain of anecdotes and advice. And of course way too much food, including, they were proud to tell me, real french fries, an omelette, and vegetables cooked plain, no curry. I promised to come one more time, this time for breakfast.
*1 Kgs 10; Mt 12:42, Lk 11:31.
** Qur’an Sura An-Nami, 27:22-44.
*** Jean Danielou, “Holy Pagans of the Old Testament” (Baltimore: Helion Press, 1957), 122-125.
