10 sept 24
A funny thing happened on my way to the Eremo… I actually drove here because there was a Peugeot in Rome that needed to be moved back to the monastery. I was not at all looking forward to driving through Rome but was somewhat assured by the trusty GPS. (I’ve been using an Italian voice for the past few months in America to get me used to the language, but ironically I switched it to an American one here in Italy so as to be extra sure I wouldn’t get lost.) But I inadvertently had it set to “avoid tolls,” so it directed me not up the A1 freeway, which is pretty much a straight line from Rome to Arezzo, but by a bunch of backroads, the SS2 and the SS71 if I recall correctly. It took me about halfway up to realize what I had done wrong, but I was none the worse for the wear. It actually a beautiful drive through the Umbrian countryside, passed little towns and fields of dead sunflowers all still bowing their faded crowns in the same direction.
At one point the road was very windy and as I came around a curve there was Orvieto looming to my right up on a hill in all its splendor. If the road had actually gone through Orvieto I might have stopped––I love that city––but it did not. I wanted to go to a little restaurant just north of there in a little town called Fabo that Alessandro had taken me to once, but alas, by the time I got there it was way too late. They were closed after pranzo until they open for cena at 19:00. So, I happily enjoyed a nice stop at a BAR Snack (sic), ate a panino, some croccanti, an aranciata and a café normale.
I was pleased that the woman behind the counter did not speak to me in English, that she understood me, and I understood her without hesitation. Axel and I went to Bibbiena yesterday to run some errands and I noted to him the same thing toward the end of our errands from every place we had been. I take that as a good sign. Every time I come, I have to re-learn a bunch of things, but I suppose I am building on a better base each time too.
By now I am feeling pretty good about the language, though I am working at improving it every day. That has been my biggest concern (“worry” is too strong a word) about living here semi-permanently. I really would like to be much more comfortable in most every situation. I am going to be going and coming three times between now and January but it’s never a waste to exercise that part of my brain. I’ve taken to my old exercise of walking with my phone on which is my Oxford Italian dictionary app. I listen to Italian podcasts (from Australia, of course) on my way out and make up conversations on my way back using the list of recent words. “It’s good and good for you!”
The community here at the Sacro Eremo has been very welcoming, and I feel right at home. As soon as I left the confines of Rome itself and drove into the countryside, I began to feel a wave of relief, and a love for Italy rose in me again. The weather of course has been extremely different from the forno of Rome, even downright cold, or at least cool, at times. And there is quite a crowd here now. My friend Axel is here. He has transferred to Germany from Camaldoli but is back here for a month giving yoga retreats. Prabhu from Shantivanam is here, as is Donbosco from Tanzania, who I didn’t really know at all. Also simply professed Niccolò is here during summer academic break. So, with most of the usual guys and a few claustral guests there is a pretty full choir.
As much as I loathe the rococo style, there is something about this chapel that retains its simple elegance. And of course, there is something about the very stones that make up these cells that give me a sense of solidity and timelessness. I have never stayed in this particular cell before, San Carlo. It’s smaller and very simple and I am quite settled in here. Especially Sunday afternoon I felt as if I could have been back in Big Sur. They have modified their schedule in two ways that they credit to adopting the ways of Big Sur. Not only do they have a Desert Day every Monday (that was already in place when I was here for the Visitation and Chapter), now the evening meal is taken on your own. Monks take turns serving to the guests in the evening and cleaning up from that.
It was kind of funny. There was still breakfast (colazione) served on Monday’s Desert Day for those wanted it, as well as lunch. When I came down the woman oblate named Rosanna was there putting things out. I asked her in a whisper if we observed silence on desert days, she nodded “Si” solemnly. And so, we did. Until other monks came in and started chatting. I asked Alberto, the vice-prior, if we observed silence and he just shrugged his shoulders and made some ambiguous gesture with his hands as if to say, “If you want to be silent, be silent!” Also as much as I approved of the evening per conto suo, I was “worried,” shall we say, that that meant no Pizza Night on Saturday. (My buddy Zeno here always refers to it to me in English––Pizza Night!) I cryptically asked him at lunch on Friday if we didn’t have a common meal every night and he said, with that same gesture as Alberto’s, “Tranne sabato. È Pizza Night!”
So, perhaps if you’re reading this you have also followed the news announced on Facebook (and maybe the NY Times and the Osservatore Romano) that my guitar was finally delivered to San Gregorio Thursday afternoon––after being missing for five days! The thing I know is that every hour that ticks away when luggage has gone missing, the less change you are going to have of speaking to a human being. So there was a great sense of relief, as you might guess. I asked Mario to send me photos just to bring some closure, and he did. I have been advised to get some Apple tags for my bags now, which I fully intent to do when I get back to Rome. I’m also going to try as hard as possible, even if I have to pay a little more, to always get a direct flight (how much would I pay for a separate ticket anway?), though it didn’t help this time, and try to always gate check it instead. I wrestled over and over whether to bring it in the soft case-gig bag, which I can always get on board, or the heavy duty Calton travel case, which I rarely travel with anymore. And wouldn’t you know? The first time I travel with the travel case…
I’ve been picking away at some work. I am giving a music workshop in Germany along with a concert. For the last three years I was planning on perhaps transferring here to Italy anyway––if don Alessandro had been re-confirmed, he wanted me to both serve on his General Council and he really wanted me go back to my work in music. He’s a big fan. I was happy for that but kept adding when I spoke to him about it, “and also the work in dialogue.” Now that I am transferring here to do work in dialogue, I also want to make sure that there is enough time for music, even the music that has nothing to do with interreligious dialogue. (And some of my friends keep urging that, sternly, as well.) As it turns out, four out of the five events I have coming up all include a concert, and I am using the same program for all five, which does concentrate on the “world music.” But there is the other: the amazing unclassifiable work I do with John Pennington, and then straight-ahead liturgical music.
To be fair, there is very little straight-ahead about my approach to liturgical music either. The workshop I am preparing is actually the revisiting of an old one called “That A Popular Chant May Emerge: A Workshop on Essentially Vocal Music.” And if I have a unique voice in liturgical music it is this. I also realized as I am preparing it, that the same sensibility that underlies my work in dialogue underlies my approach to music, as a matter of fact the approach to music predates it. I am quoting Sacrosanctum Concilium saying that
In certain countries, especially in mission lands, there are people who have their own musical tradition, and this plays a great part in their religious and social life. For this reason, their music should be held in proper esteem and a suitable place is to be given to it, not only in forming their religious sense but also in adapting worship to their native genius...[1]
I didn’t realize that I had borrowed the phrase “native genius” from SC when I speak about the “native genius of the Indian spiritual tradition.” Also quoting the famous aphorism of St. Thomas Aquinas, firmly affirmed by Pope St. John Paul II: Gratia non tollit naturam sed perfecit––“Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.” Whatever is already good (like the music of the pre-Christian culture) there is to be recognized, encouraged and promoted as the document on relations with Non-Christians of Vatican II puts it. And it was fun to remember then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s phrase that I loved so much: that we need to listen to what’s going on in “the antechambers” of the liturgy. That was actually the inspiration for my collection “The Message Goes Forth.” My original idea for the album cover was a photo of me sitting on the entrance steps of Holy Name Cathedral in downtown Chicago. We’ll see how it plays in Hamburg.
Before I go to Hamburg I am going to Poland, and it is the first time that I am running into the issue of language. In Poland, my host, the wonderfully gifted photographer Andrzej, has guided me (to say the least! He is very thorough and knows just what he wants from me) through my preparations. I have sent him the very detailed outlines of my talks, on Fr. Bede, and he is translating them into Polish. I will give the whole conference in English and then he will read a translation of the whole thing in Polish, for each of the three conferences. I suppose if you don’t have the luxury of the mechanism to do instant translation there is not much other way except translating every sentence as I speak. We have both put a lot of work into these conferences and I must say what he has specified and asked me to amend has made the conferences better than they were.
In Hamburg, where probably more people speak and/or understand English, my host Petra (the German sociologist with whom I have done and will do some other work) and I have agreed to run my talk through a translation program and hand out copies of the outline in German, so that they can read along in their language while I deliver in mine. Of course, in that case the talk will be broken up often with singing. And in both cases I am doing a concert. I did put together a libretto with the lyrics for them to translate into Polish and German respectively, but both hosts have decided that instead of translating my remarks live they are going to put the translated lyrics and remarks in a booklet to hand out. So, we shall see! (I’ve been saying that a lot lately…) I must say, I enjoy the challenge of all these things. And luckily, as I have pointed out, I feel that both of these events, as well as the other things I have coming up for the rest of the year, fold in nicely and easily with my upcoming work for DIMMID.
One last note: it seems, for complicated reasons, that there is not a possibility of me staying either at San Gregorio or with the nuns at Sant’Antonio. My other option was staying at Sant’Anselmo itself, the beautiful Benedictine atheneum on the Aventine that house both the international school and the seat of the Abbot Primate (my future boss). I had mentioned to my predecessor Fr. William, that I was going ask for housing there. Well, he beat me to the punch. When he got there he checked with the rector right way, and I found out yesterday that I can indeed. That is a not a 100% confirmation, but it’s pretty darned close. I’ll know for sure next week when we go down to Rome together, but it looks like I won’t be homeless after all.
