20 Sept, from Olsztyn, northeast Poland, about 60 miles from the Russian border! I jokingly asked my hosts if I was safe…
It has been a pretty intense week. Fr. William, my predecessor in DIMMID, came up from Rome to Arezzo last Friday to spend the weekend with me at the Sacro Eremo of Camaldoli. Besides just treating him to a weekend there, we had our transition meetings, mostly on Saturday. I still had a series of questions, some about budget and travel, about organizational structure, etc. but it wound up being mostly about contacts. And together we put together a long list of friends and coworkers from around the world. I told William at the end of the time that those meetings were very good for me; everything went from theoretical to very practical, and I felt a little more prepared for the job.
We of course celebrated all the liturgies and had all our meals with the monks while there, but on Sunday evening I took him over to meet my ladies in Poppi. I so love that place and loved showing it off to him. And the nuns of course were as warm and hospitable as always. Sr. Regina outdid herself with a fine Indian meal; she must have intuited that I was craving hard-boiled eggs because she made her famous egg curry served with homemade square chapati (with half rice flour and half wheat flour, she boasted). I was supposed to have given a retreat there in October, but so far no one has signed up but one, and so the new prioress Patrizia and I have agreed that we can cancel for now and try again for next summer. She thinks a combination of factors has led to a lack of interest in general, whereas the last two times we gave it––Preghiera nella Grotta del Cuore (“Prayer in the Cave of the Heart”) based on Antonia Tronti’s translation of my book––it was sold out. I do not take it personally and am kind of glad for another break in my schedule. I still have an overnight train down to Arezzo already bought and paid for for that weekend, but I am more than welcome to come and spend the weekend with them. As a matter of fact, when I told Patrizia about my housing woes, she offered me a spot that I had actually dreamed of in the past myself, a little apartment at the bottom of the monastery there in Poppi that they had renovated to house a refuge family from Eritrea, and where also lived a Brazilian woman hermit for a time. Who knows? Dreams do come true.
My German confrere Axel has been there in Italy for some weeks fulfilling obligations for yoga retreats and workshops, that very weekend one on Nidra Yoga with a teacher in his lineage (the Himalayan school) from Australia named John. John happened to also be leaving from Arezzo on Monday and so the four of us had a nice visit on the way to the train station, and William and I whisked off down to Rome, he to Sant’Anselmo and I to San Gregorio.
George, the vice-prior there, had sent me a message saying that we were going out for pizza that night. Little did I know that “we” included all those who were there for the Congress of Abbots, Prior General Matteo, plus Cristiano from Fonte Avellana and dear Dorathick from Shantivanam, who I was so glad to see. Plus, there was Donbosco from Tanzania, now staying in Italy for a time, and a young boarder, a bright student named Francesco from Perugia, doing his Masters Degree in International Political Science at an English speaking faculty in Rome. And of course the pillar of San Gregorio, Innocenzo, now 80 years young and still spry. We had a lot of fun, a lot of laughter, wonderful pizza, a few liqueurs (not I), and a nice mile or so walk to and fro in the cool Roman evening. Innocenzo was in a particularly jocular mood. I sat across from him and somehow we were the perfect foils for each other and had everyone around us laughing. I’m quite relieved at how well my Italian is holding up. It’s the same as with performing: if I start thinking about what I’m doing I’m prone to make mistakes, even with my own songs that I’ve played for years! But I’ll keep at it, since, as I learned two days later, it’s going to come in very handy for my new job.
The next day, Tuesday, was not quite so fun. I had my first semi-official meetings. To make a long story short: the Venerable Maio Hai, a Chinese monk with a double lineage in the Ch’an and Theravadan tradition wants to start a World Meditation Day and an institute, in Switzerland, for the study of meditation. He tried to enlist the Holy Father, whose people passed the request onto the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, who passed it on to Fr. William at DIMMID, who passed it on to me. It does sound interesting, and I agreed to be in touch with him. Well, he flew all the way down from Switzerland to meet with me in the salon at San Gregorio. We had an hour. He showered me with gifts––I should have thought and had something for him––and we had a nice long chat.
Then I walked up to Sant’Anselmo to meet William for our meeting at the Dicastery. The Abbots Congress is going on and they were on a coffee break, everyone lounging around the outdoor covered walkways drinking coffee and juices and munching on sweets. There were several men I knew from last when I was there as prior of New Camaldoli. In the meantime, I had found out that I had misunderstood: the rector at Sant’Anselmo did not actually have the authority to grant me a room, so I wanted to speak with the prior, Maurizius, who I knew, about a possible room. I waited patiently for Maurizius and he told me that they were full this semester there at Sant’Anselmo but maybe next semester, but in any case I had better speak with Ab Primate Jeremias first. That’s when I found out that Abbot Jeremias was a bit surprised that I had been named without consulting him. I was probably more skittish than I needed to be, but suddenly not only did I still not have a place to stay, I also wondered if maybe I wouldn’t have a job at the end of the day either if Abbot Jeremias decided that he wanted to put someone of his own choosing in the position. So, the rest of the day was clouded, shall we say, by this shadow of a doubt about the whole enterprise.
But I neglected to mention the shoes… Wanting to travel as lightly as possible I only packed my black minimus running shoes and my sandals which have sufficed so far. But I thought that they would not be fitting for a visit to the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue at the Vatican. I had plans to buy a pair of shoes when I got to Rome but when I mentioned that to my friend and confrere Mario at San Gregorio he immediately offered to give me a pair. He let me choose from several pairs and I finally picked the one that seemed to fit the best. Operative word is “seemed.” They were already bugging me by the time I got the walk up the Aventine to Sant’Anselmo, but by the time we walked from the taxi to the office of the Dicastery I was squirming in them.
We had a very nice formal meeting with Sri Lankan Monsignor Indunil Janakaratne Kodithuwakku, who has the distinction of having the longest name in the Curia. The main purpose of the meeting was for him to meet me, since DIMMID works with and consults for the Dicastery from time to time, but Msgr. Indunil also wanted to fete and thank Fr. William for his many years of service. He had come nice gifts for William and then presented me with two as well. One of them was a copy of the painting commemorating Nostra Aetate that is in the entryway of the office of Paul VI surrounded by leaders of all the world’s religions, all of whom he had met except for Gandhi who was displayed. I had liked the painting so much I had already taken a photo of it so I was very happy to get a nice small framed print for my room (wherever that might be). By the time we left the office and walked to the restaurant I was very uncomfortable in the shoes. A wonderful lunch at a pretty chic little restaurant just a block away from St. Peter’s and more visiting. Msgr. Indunil and I exchanged WhatsApp info which I took as a good sign that the meeting went well, and I actually thought he would be fun to hang out with sometime after work. All through the meeting and the meal the dark clouds were gathering as I kept remembering the uncertainty of my living situation and now suspecting that the job itself was also not a sure thing. And on top of that my feet were killing me by the time we got in the taxi and headed home. As soon as I climbed the stairs to San Gregorio I untied my shoes, and as soon as I got in the door I slipped them off and sure enough as soon as I got my socks off I found blisters. It didn’t stop me from slipping into my hiking shorts and running shoes and heading off for a long walk to shake off the doubts and darkness.
It was an interesting spiritual experience, I must say, to feel that kind of poverty and to strive, shall we say, for that kind of abandonment. I walked a total of seven miles: back over to my favorite tea shop near the Pantheon to get a sack of Assam to take with me, to the big, beautiful Apple store to buy some iTags for my guitar and backpack (I think a very worthy investment), and look for a light jacket to supplement my sweatshirt for the cold climes I’ll be entering these next weeks. I had the mala the Ven Maio had given me, and my favorite prayer meant more to me than ever that afternoon: “O my God, I offer myself to you to build with me and do with me as you will…” Back home I had Mass with the brothers, made up an excuse to skip dinner (“phone call,” which I did make), got a good night’s sleep. I skipped collazione and had another long walk in the morning, the one I love, up to Termini, to buy my train ticket to Fiumicino for the next day, spent some time at the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli e Maritiri, the former Carthusian monastery across from Termini. When I got home, I packed my bags to be ready to leave in the morning, put a few more things in storage in an armadio, and by the time I was preparing to head over to Sant’Anselmo I had real sense of peace and release. If I had to go back to New Camaldoli instead of stay on in Rome with or without this job––what a luxury problem! I like the Italian version of this prayer a lot and it stays with me like a mantra: Sia fatta la tua volontà–“Thy will be done.” Is there any other real prayer than that?
As it turned out it wound up being a great day. When I got there William introduced me to Abbot Boniface from South Africa who is hosting the Shi’a-Monastic meeting this December, a delightful young guy, we had lunch with Abbot Cosmas Hoffman of Mechede, a German monastery of the Ottilien Congregation, who is the coordinator of the European commissions of DIMMID, and talked excitedly about getting all the Europeans together for a meeting in France with the excuse of me wanting to meet everyone. Then right after lunch, lo and behold, as I was speaking with someone else William walks up with Abbot Jeremias to introduce us. Abbot Jeremias shook my hand firmly, looked me directly in the eye and said, “Okay, now quickly, tell me three things about yourself.” I said, “I’m a Camaldolese Benedictine, I’m a musician by trade and…” before I could say anything else William said, “And he knows people all over the world!” I amended that by saying, “I’ve been doing this work for a long time.” We exchanged a few more pleasantries and some official stuff, and at one point he assured me that they were working on a room for me and then he asked when the appointment was official and what was the Constitutional role of the Abbot Primate. I thought that might be the moment when he might have decided he wanted to start all over again, but instead he said, “Well, so then the appointment has been made.”
A few hours later we were in the assembly with all the abbots and priors and William got up to give his final report. He is such a fine speaker and obviously well respected. He was sitting up at the front table with the Big Guns and had me sit in the assembly until he called me forward. I like to say that there are very few times in my life when I get nervous in front of a crowd. This was one of those times. My heart was beating very hard. He introduced me and called me forward, my face splashed on the overhead screen 20 times too big, and I started my short speech. About one sentence in Abbot Gregory from the front row motioned to me, kindly, to slow down, and somehow that calmed me down a little. I had treated it like a homily––you only get one chance to make a first impression––and had it practically memorized with room for improvisation. And it went very well and was very well received. Abbot Jeremias shook my hand and thanked me before I stepped down off the dais. Afterward William and I both had several conversations with guys who were interested, and I was madly trying to take down names and addresses or exchange WhatsApp numbers, the new visiting card. That continued after Mass at dinner. I was so grateful for Italian at that point! At least twice I met French speaking monks––one my counterpart in Alliance Inter-Monasteres, with whom I will coordinate, and the other the Olivetan abbot of Abu Ghosh in Israel––who asked “Parli italiano?” and apparently do not speak English, and we got on just fine. We then had dinner with Abbot Olivier Saar of Keur Moussa in Senegal, with whom I feel like I had become close friends just through email conversations and made plans to visit there, maybe as early as next March.
After a tumultuous day before, I left Sant’Anselmo about 9:30 PM and walked down the Aventine back to San Gregorio feeling very light and grateful, almost as if some kind of “ordination” had happened, and it was all very real now. And I sang right out loud as I was walking along the Circo Massimo “Lord, I want to be / an echo of your peace…” the whole song, including the Spanish version that Pedro and I put together for Uvalde Texas back in 1985. “That’s what I wanna be,” I heard Israel Houghton’s voice in my head singing, “Oh, oh, oh, ooooh Lord.”
Early morning taxi and train to Fiumicino, smooth flight to Warsaw, long beautiful train trip to northeast Poland and the charming town of Olsztyn where I was met by my hosts Andrzej and Alijia. It was on the plane, as I was trying to make a list of all the names and contact information I had gathered the night before (and remember who they were and where they were from), that I had another wave of realization: that this new phase in my life has seriously begun now. This is what I am going to be doing for the foreseen future. And it felt good and right.
The folks here are lovely, both a Benedictine oblate group and members of the WCCM, and this little retreat house is ideal. I could live in this room for the rest of my life. It is strange now to be in a country where I do not know the language at all––though I did learn the word for honey (miod) so that I could walk to the store and buy some early in the morning yesterday for my loose-leaf Assam.
Andrzej, who hired me for this, and I have worked very hard not just on the translations of my talks, but on the talks themselves. He is very knowledgeable about India and Bede and was very instructive on what and even how he wanted me to present. And as frustrating as that was––for all extents and purposes I re-wrote all three presentations in the last three weeks––they turned out very well, three conferences on the thought of Bede Griffiths. As I told Abbot Gregory, when he asked me when I could officially start, everything I am doing in the next months easily falls under the umbrella of this new position, and it feels very right to be starting out with conferences on Fr. Bede who got me started in this whole thing 33 years ago. The folks have been very engaged and really seem to be absorbing the material, in spite of the lugubriousness of having to hear everything twice, once in English once in Polish, though a good chunk of them do speak English. Andrzej and I had a good rhythm going, though I think he is working harder than I am. Though I am trying to “stick to script” and not improvise too much, there are moments when I just have to.
I did learn yesterday that in fact I will have a room at San Gregorio after all, which is the best solution for sure, to live with my Camaldolese confreres. Hopefully when I get back to Rome in mid-October for a week (to help sing for the Synod with my brothers again) I will be able to move into it and settle in a little better.
That’s all for now! Bless you all. I got my electronic ballot in via email this morning, so I am getting my vote in early. The whole world IS watching, I can assure you.
