30 september 2024, feast of St Jerome, from Röderhof, Eremo di Sankt Romuald
The last few hours at Bieniszew were very funny. I went to 6 AM Mass as usual and was expecting to simply return to my cell and eat my breakfast, pack up my backpack and wait for my 10 AM ride to Poznan to catch the train, as promised. But after Mass, in the sacristy, the young priest, Pyotr, who was going to be driving me to the city negotiated a conversation between the prior and I, asking if I wanted to join them for breakfast. I wasn’t sure who “them” were, but I said sure, as a matter of fact I was hoping to visit with Prior Stan before I left anyway. So I was to wait for them in the church while they sang morning prayer (I assume), and sure enough Mattia, the Jesuit who spoke some Italian, Pytor, and Prior Stanisłav and I went over to the dining room in the main building that is seldom used by the monks (four times a year, but the prior receives guests there), and a whole array of food started appearing: salty cheesy scrambled eggs, two kinds of cheese, a jar of homemade pickles that were a little too strong for me, pickled peppers , yogurt, bread, coffee, tea, the whole nine yards. And then we started a very humorous exchange, sometimes Mattia translating into Italian, but every now and then when he was at a loss for words Pytor translating into English. It didn’t slow Prior Stan at all and he was looking very satisfied throughout.
I found out then that they had had a big celebration, for the anniversary of the dedication of the church if I understood correctly, about 10 days back for which 150 cars showed up; they hadn’t counted the people. They still allow locals to come for Sunday Mass since it served as a parish church at one time. And (this sounds familiar) they were so wiped out by that event that Prior Stan had allowed the community 8 days of reclusion. I am not sure what would have changed if there hadn’t been reclusion since they were still doing liturgies together, but that was the reason, I was told, that I had not visited with anyone, gotten a tour of the place, did not get a hermitage, just a cell in the guest wing, and that there no other guests. The reclusion was over now.
So Mattia (aided by his cell phone with Google translate speaking to me in British English) accompanied Prior Stan and I on a tour of the back cloister, the cells, the chapter room and the reliquary. They actually do not have much in the way of relics there, just a piece in a monstrance-style reliquary. I got to see the inside of two of the cells, one of them occupied by a 92-year old brother who was just delightful, and we exchanged blessings.
We then bustled into a truck––and this was to answer my question, “Was this the place that the brothers were actually murdered?”––and drove off through the woods. I had been walking about four miles a day, but Prior Stan was taking us even deeper into the woods on a road that goes directly to the next town––Kazimierz Biskupi. It was there then that I discovered, or was affirmed in the knowledge that, the area really was swamp land that had been filled in a lot by now. On the way he also explained to me (via Mattia and Google) that the monks’ cells were there in what is now the town, separated from each other by a good distance, and that chapels had been built up over them, though one, the cell of Isaac, had a large church over it. That church was modern, simple and very nicely adorned with contemporary art, in honor of the Five Brothers of course. There had at one point been a monastery there as well. I was very pleased to see all that and have history become a little more real. I snapped lots of pictures.
Then by the time we got back to the hermitage I had to bustle to pack my backpack because we were supposed to leave by 10 to get me to the train in plenty of time. But Prior Stan was not done with me yet. He then started bringing me books that he wanted me to take with me, big table-sized picture books! I was trying to explain that I was only carrying a backpack and it was already full, but he looked sad and so I agreed to take one. He then came back five minutes later with another that, he was delighted to let me know, was in English. So I stuffed that one in too, trying to figure out how I could mail them back to Rome from my next stop.
The ride to Poznan took about an hour. It might have taken less if we hadn’t been going 160 km an hour (that’s 99.4194 mph in English). Pytor and I chatted amiably, he very anxious to try out his rusty English with the help of, you guessed it, Google translate on his phone. (There is some kind of Google app that they have that actually reads the translation out loud. Probably everybody in the world knows about it but me.) Along the way I was picking his brain for politics, etc., having heard that the government in Poland now is a bit on the conservative side. Not for Pytor. Too liberal, not the kind that supports church and patriotism. I asked him about Ukraine too. Not the most supportive responses, which I was surprised to hear from someone in a country that was occupied by Russia. I didn’t go much farther with the discussion…
I am not sure how we were supposed to have found out, but there was a change in our train that was supposed to have gone directly to Berlin. There is a second Frankfort, Frankfort (Oder), right on the border of Poland. And there we had two choices, either to take a bus directly to Berlin or to take two trains, switching at a town called Erkner. I was going to follow the nice elderly lady in my cabin who spoke some English who was going to take the bus, but it turned out that the gentleman who was also sharing the cabin was an Irishman working in Germany who knew the train system well. He told me it was easy to make the transfers and recommended it. You know what Mr. Rogers says, “Look for the helpers!” So, he allowed me to tag along behind him to find the next train. I lost him in the crowd at Erkner but just then my friend Alfred who was coming from Lidner, Holland to meet me sent a text and told me that our rental was actually close to Erkner and so why don’t I wait there for him. Which I did.
It was actually a bit of a wait, over an hour, but luckily there was a pizzeria next door and a pretty good one at that, and I was by that point hungry. So I sat in the pizzeria and the stood for a bit a time outside (his estimation of how long it would take was short by about an hour, alas) and got a taste of the ‘burbs of Berlin. It was kind of a grimy area. As I stood outside waiting for Alfred, I got a good look at the folks. There was a lot of smoking going on (actually there was a lot in Poland too). They looked rather hard, a lot of working-class folks, not commuting businessmen and -women.
Alfred arrived about an hour and a half later.
We have known each other for about 30 years from the Four Winds Council that the Hermitage has been involved in––less so in recent years. Alfred has been a part of all three of the other communities, he has done practice period and work periods at Tassajara, been on the maintenance crew and in fund-raising for Esalen and has been an active member of the Esselen tribe. He remembers meeting me when I was still Daniel (!) and that we had had a conversation about Aretha Franklin back then. I mostly remember him from sweat lodge at Little Bear’s. We were never close friends, just acquaintances, but we ran into each other at Esalen around Christmas 2019 and greeted each other with such glee, as if we were old friends. He had since married a woman from Holland, moved there with her and they have had two children. He’s a very devoted house husband and stay-home Dad (and basketball coach). A very interesting combination: a Taiwanese born Chinese who grew up speaking Chinese in Carmel, Carmel Valley and on the Big Sur coast (where he knows everybody), now living in Holland speaking Dutch. We had some hit and miss communication for a while but then started conversing over the internet and sending miscellaneous trivia to each other for the past year, a lot of it about classic rock. But our conversations range pretty broadly––he has a very synthetic mind––from arts and literature to politics and philosophy. He picks my brain a lot about the Bible and my views on religion. As a matter of fact, among the car full of stuff he brought with him for our short weekend together––including two guitars that he wanted me to tune and give him lessons on that he could pass on to his son––he had a huge Dutch Bible illustrated with copies of Rembrandt etchings and paintings of biblical scenes. At one point we did indeed get that out as he coerced me into pointing out how I could justify the “silence of the 1st Person” in the Old Testament, as I do in Rediscovering the Divine via Bruno and Panikkar, and how that can be a bridge to Buddhism, Taoism and Advaita Vedanta. That is a snapshot of what the whole weekend was like conversation-wise. Pretty entertaining and often stimulating.
Friday was the day we had slotted for a tour of Berlin. I had made a list and we pretty much made our way through it. We had debated about whether or not to drive in or take public transportation, but Alfred said we should risk it and, as a matter of fact, we had no problem with traffic and no trouble at all finding parking. We happened to wind up parked next to youth hostel that is also a mock beach with volleyball courts. Go figger. Lots of helpful English-speaking people, and bathrooms.
On the list: we first went to the Berlin Wall memorial. I never understood the configuration of the wall and how it functioned. Maybe you do but if not, this was the big revelation: it’s a circle. (I know, I know: everyone knew this but me...) West Berlin was the part of the city that was surrounded by East Germany. There is a section of the wall still standing along a strip of land that has been turned into a large beautiful memorial (I posted pictures on my Facebook page) that includes sections of the wall, rebar where the wall once was, a wall of windows that have photos inside them of people who were killed trying to escape to West Berlin, a stunning simple chapel of reconciliation that was built on the spot of a church that was razed in order to make the broad alley in between the barbed wire and the wall (it kept expanding) and lots of signs full of historical descriptions and explanations.
From there we made our way across the Spee River, watching for traces of Speer architecture along the way as I had been advised, to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie, which stands as an icon of the Cold War 1960s. Again a whole wall full of explanatory notes about the whole history––and also lots of shops with tchotkes and postcards. It all seemed so light-hearted and touristy––there’s even a Starbucks!––but I found it ponderous and chilling, especially the sign warning that “You are now entering the American sector…” on one side and “You are now leaving the American sector…” on the other, which still stands. I texted my brother-in-law Steve from there, as I knew he would appreciate it, and he urged me to now watch President Kennedy’s speech at the wall in 1963, which I did. But what also kept echoing in my head was President Reagan’s 1987 declaration, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” I kept thinking of Br. Joshua, who was such a buff of history and had spent time in Germany in the Army, and how I wish I could have sent him some postcards.
We then did the next big things––the Brandenburg Gate, festooned with decorations for the upcoming Berlin Marathon (indeed there were people doing warm-up runs all over the city), and the famous Reichstag with its storied history, (I found the inscription over the front very striking––Dem Deutshcen Volke) and a long walk back to the car by the beach.
I had one more thing on my list that I was bound and determined to see, and we saved that for last as it was outside of town and, kind of, on the way back to our rental. Once on a plane, years ago, I fell in love with a postage stamp-sized reproduction of one of Max Pechstein’s woodcuts from a series he did on the Our Father, Das Vater Unser. I loved black and white woodcuts anyway, but this had just a streak of color on it, and it was the color that got me. I did a bunch of research and found out that Pechstein was part of a small movement of German Expressionists in the early years of the 20th century that called themselves Die Brucke—“the Bridge” because they saw themselves as a bridge to the next phase of art. They were related to the French Fauvists in painting, but it was their woodcuts that really entranced me. And there is a little museum dedicated to them on the outskirts of Berlin, and Alfred was kind enough to indulge me a visit. It was somewhat disappointing: there were not actually a lot of the paintings or woodcuts on display. It was mostly an homage to the six Jewish art collectors who saved their art, or tried to, through the era of National Socialism. But still, I did my part.
I didn’t want to admit it, but Alfred did: we were both a little underwhelmed by Berlin. I appreciated seeing the 20thcentury historical sites, but I guess I was hoping/expecting to get a feel for the soul of the place which I did not. Alfred had the idea that we ought to drive home via surface streets instead of taking the highway and so we did, getting kind of lost a few times, looking for hip neighborhoods. We didn’t find much. At one point we drove a few miles down Karl Marx Strasse and it was about what you might expect of a Communist region––block after block of huge concrete apartment and office buildings and nothing else. That was memorable.
We had a nice rental apartment that Alfred had booked, a spacious apartment under a house in the suburbs that gave way to a beach, and after hemming and hawing we wound up spending the whole next day there, each of us gave each other space to do our own thing for the morning. We went to a grocery store and loaded up on pretty good snacks, salad stuff and cheeses and bread and fruit, and then spent the rest of the day chillin’ and talking, guitar lessons and Bible study, and it was a great fun day, really.
Sunday Alfred offered to drive me up here to Hildesheim instead of me taking the train since this was on his way home to Liden, and so we had another long visit in the car. And now I am here with my German Camaldolese brothers in this charming pristine little place, where I have been once before. They greeted me warmly and then let me know that today (Monday) is their weekly Desert Day (everybody is imitating New Camaldoli now!), “which we really appreciate” said Jeremias, and we are totally on our own all day, which I really appreciate. Finally did my laundry and slept well and abundantly. Feeling more “at home” than I have in weeks.
