Vietnam and Hong Kong again

 16 October, 2025

 

I’m back in Hong Kong after a quick side trip to Vietnam. My boss, the Abbot Primate, urged me to go to the meeting that is still being held right now, of the BEAO—Benedictines of East Asia and Oceania. The countries represented at it are the Philippines, Vietnam (of course), Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China, and Thailand, as well as one nun from Australia (hence Oceania). It was a relatively short smooth flight to Ho Chi Minh City and there was a young monk from one of the several Benedictine monasteries there to meet me with a sign that said “Monk Cyprian Consiglio.” This would be a running theme: on the doors of our guest rooms and our name tags everyone else’s read Fr. This, Abbot that, or Prior So-and-so, etc., except mine which read “Monk Cyprian Consiglio.” I suppose it is that they did not know if I was ordained or not. (I kind of liked it, actually.) 

 

All the information about my handling was apparently on a need-to-know basis. I kept asking where I was going and what my schedule was, but only little pieces were revealed along the way. Neither the monk who met me nor the one driving the car spoke very good English. (I am not criticizing them for this, but I had expected more and better English, for some reason.) I thought I was going to their monastery and that their monastery was the place that the conference was being held. But no. I was taken to a women’s monastery, a very meticulous and beautiful place, where I was fed a delicious lunch (almost force fed: I have found that Asian women are a force to be reckoned with when it comes to deciding what and how much you are going to eat). Many Filipino sisters had already arrived, and I was seated in a separate space with the abbess of one of their monasteries. As we started to eat the heavens broke up in thunderous rain for a few minutes which made the landscape seem even more exotic. I was then given a very clean little guest room to rest before our journey and was told to sleep. And then I was herded into a van with seven Filipino and two Vietnamese nuns (I was in the front seat with the driver) and we headed across town to Thien Binh, the men’s monastery where the meeting was actually being held. 

 

Thien Binh is impressive place. (I posted pictures on Facebook.) One of the monks who was showing me around, from another monastery, said, with a grin, “Very much money here.” I take it that it is like the mother house of four monasteries in Vietnam, which they refer to as the “province” with its own provincial, a term used by other religious congregations but not usually used among Benedictines. They have a large and it seems new guest facility with four wings, small but very clean plain rooms with en suite bathrooms and AC, and a large gathering hall for conferences and meals. I assumed the lingua franca was going to be English since all the communication had been in English, but outside of the Filipinas I was not hearing much English. That was when I started getting nervous about my talk the next morning and how it might land… 

 

The “soul” of this event is one Br Nicholas, an 84-year-old American monk from St Vincent’s, La Trobe, PA, who has been in Taiwan, a daughter house of St Vincent’s, for 50 years. He ran a tight ship and was very clearly in charge and used to being so. We had evening prayer together, led by the same Nicholas, separate from the local monastic community and most of the other Vietnamese monks and nuns, and then dinner. And then suddenly we started in on the introductions, 20 minutes or so earlier than was scheduled. I looked around and counted really only a handful of nuns and monks and wondered if that was it! Actually, many others were still arriving, including Abbot Jeremias and the other VIPs. But again, at that moment I was wondering about my hour-long presentation the next day and if it would land at all. However, over the course of the evening the rest of the gang arrived from various points, including +Jeremias and two abbot presidents (of the Subiaco and the Sant Ottilien congregations) and Abbot Bernard of Alliance Inter-Monasteres, whose board I serve on as he does on mine, DIMMID having started out as a sub-secretariat of AIM. And then the monks and nuns from Japan and Korea and China, so that by the next morning we were in full force. 

 

The translation issue had already been taken care of. +Jeremias’ very capable and resourceful secretary, who seems to go almost everywhere with him now, the American monk Fr. Patrick, sent us all a link for something called "Cuckoo,” an app (again the necessity of the mobile phone) that listens to the speaker and then transcribes a translation in whatever language you want. It took a few minutes to work the bugs out but it eventually functioned, as long as the speaker was speaking clearly into the microphone. And thanks God for that! I was still second guessing myself (as is almost always my wont) about how to best present my conference. The way I figure it is I only have one change to “sell it” and if I flew all the way to Vietnam for an hour long conference I was not going to waste the time and money. I decided just to give what I had (editing to much would have thrown me off) but I did shorten it a bit. (I was told that the apostolic delegate was arriving at 11:30 and I would have to trim down to 45 minutes.) I was remembering India when, first of all, they kept changing the time of my conference and then shortened it and warned me not to go over. Really, people, someone flies halfway around the world, and you can’t give him the courtesy to all for a a few extra minutes? But, you see, writ large by actions rather than words, how important (or not) interreligious dialogue is. And remember in India I had had that horrible experience of the priest from Kerala giving two fiercely anti-Islamic conferences before me. So, battle-scarred already.

 

So I just launched in, trying to speak slowly and clearly. I had my PowerPoint with all the major quotes which was very helpful. I was a little worried about it being too dense for the crowd, though I had assumed from the beginning a certain level of erudition. (I was even double checking my Chinese pronunciation of a Taoist term that I reference.) It was also the first time +Jeremias would hear my whole spiel as well as Bernard and the other abbot-presidents, for whom I could assume a certain erudition, though not necessarily in this field, as Bernard confessed about himself to me later. I think it went very well. I ended by saying, as I often do at retreat conferences too, that it was not important to retain all the facts and terms, but that I hope they could at least catch some of my enthusiasm and why I think it is so vitally important for us to be involved in this arena in this day and age. And the proof of it all was afterward and for the rest of the day; I had so many nuns and monks come up and talk to me, some of them barely able to speak English but stumbling around trying to ask questions, especially among the young Vietnamese. So many of them asked for my notes that I wound up sending the whole outline to Br Nicholas, the organizer, when I got back to Hong Kong. I was very happy and that certainly made it worth the long trip.

 

I must say too that the Vietnamese, besides having the best food so far in Asia, were just lovely. I was to leave early on Wednesday morning, before everyone else had morning prayer and breakfast. I went to the dining hall at a little after 6 AM just hoping to find a cup of tea. But there were a few others milling about already, especially one monk and nun who had tried to engage me the evening before. I just wanted to grab a cup of tea and go back to my room, but they were not having it. The monk in charge of preparing the breakfast for everyone else insisted I sit down and he started bringing food to my table, fried eggs, some kind of noodles, fruit, a big bottle of honey, bread (they love their baguettes), and soon I was surrounded by a whole coterie. They wanted to sit and try to talk again, at times using Google translate on our phones. And if anyone needs to be “forgiven” for not speaking English (many of them were fluent in French), among the ones that I was speaking with the most, one is stationed at a monastery in Chang Mai Thailand and speaks Thai, another is in Taiwan and speaks Mandarin, and two others were studying Italian in preparation for going to support Monte Cassino for some years. (One of them sat next to me all the time and always wanted to speak in Italian, which didn’t go very well, but I saluted the effort.) They are eager missionaries, those Vietnamese, and I do hope I can go back and spend more time with them all. It would be great to do the whole course that I taught at Sant’Anselmo with and for them.

 

I often say when I go to a new place, “I don’t know what I was expecting but this was not what I was expecting.” With Vietnam I did kind of have some expectations, two different versions of it running in my mind. My friend Andrew had shown me some videos of his hometown, Dalat, and what stuck with me was the scene of a bunch of young folks in a very modern café and they were all speaking perfect English. On the other hand seared into my memory are gritty images from the evening news in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, and scenes from “Apocalypse Now”––napalm, the My Lai massacre, agent orange. I guess it was somewhere between the two. I was surprised at how little really good English was spoken––again, no judgement on that at all, it’s just that for so many Asian countries the level of spoken English has become so high. Also everything struck me as very low and close to the ground, as opposed to the forest of high rises in Hong Kong. Driving through the little streets on the way to the monastery I was reminded of the shops (so many of them coffee shops!) pressed in up against each other in India but it was all much more orderly than India. And the people themselves I found to be humble and eager to talk and make me feel welcome. It was odd to think of this too as a Communist country. And yet there they were, the banners marking the 80^th anniversary of the communist revolution in China hanging from light posts up and down the boulevards. I am not sure what that means anymore to be a Communist country, especially economically. I guess I was half expecting a good percentage of the population to be walking around dressed like Chairman Mao. Certainly in Hong Kong and China there is a lot of wealth around and very capitalist style business dealings. I suppose every authoritarian government needs to call itself something, like America will still call itself a “democracy” even as more and more rights are ceded to the executive branch.

 

October 28

Microsoft WORD stopped functioning on my iPad while I was in Hong Kong and I was unable to type and then I forgot that I had not finished this entry. 

I flew back to Hong Kong and embarked on the most intensive period of activity: I had a musical event every night for the last four nights. I still had a lot of most of my daytimes free and was availing myself of the gym membership each morning. Vivian Lee and her husband Daniel were perfect hosts and took me to a couple of choice places for quiet meals, including the American Club (I think that was its prosaic name) in the Financial District. I was particularly tired that day and had not slept well and I self-medicated with a delicious tuna melt with sweet potato fries open-faced on sour dough bread. And then the second to last night they took me to the Press Club, Vivian having been a journalist at one time. That place was very interesting, a big photo display, timely enough, of the most famous shots from the Vietnam war––the naked little girl covered in napalm, the villager getting shot in the head, etc.––with dark wood and leather booths, a real hangout of the press corps during the incursions into southeast Asia. It reminded me of the place my friends took me to in Bangkok, in a similar style, where there were brass placards proudly informing us that this was where the CIA used to meet to plan their invasion of Laos and Cambodia. It’s easy to forget that those countries were deeply involved in the whole horrific American military action in that region in the 1970s.

 

The musical events in Hong Kong (it would be so much easier just to call them “concerts”) were a big success. I continued to be impressed by how many people showed up, by how well they sang along, even when it was a largely Chinese speaking crowd, and how deeply they were touched by the whole thing. Whatever those events are, they are certainly wonderful vehicles for preaching the Gospel, perhaps offering a new way to understanding God and spirituality, as well as introduce the practice of contemplative prayer. I think it was especially the last two performances when the crowd did not seem to want to leave even after Vivian went up and thanked everyone for coming. There was another Chinese saying that was offered, something like, “The music kept circling around my head.” 

 

Very happy to be back home in Rome this past week. I had several days to both catch up and relax, and now in the middle of a very social time with lots of people converging on Rome for events around the anniversary of Nostra Aetate and other things. I’ll try to catch up on all that later. For now, may we continue to be a sign of unity and an instrument of peace!

Piercing heart and lung

 11 October ’25, Hong Kong

I am about halfway through my time in Asia by now. I had an overnight trip September 30 to Kuala Lumpur (KL) where I had booked myself a room in the new Holiday Inn near the airport.  This is my new practice that I just budget in: when I am traveling long distances, especially overnight flights to new time zones, find a reasonably priced hotel near the airport with a shuttle and hopefully a gym, and give myself a chance to recuperate and prepare. In Malaysia the American dollar is relatively strong and this was a great deal, with a nice gym and a super buffet for breakfast and dinner, $7 and $17 respectively. (I must admit, the prices would have been high for a Malaysian, so I was grateful to be able to avail myself of the luxury.)

My hosts sent a car for me to whisk me across KL on Friday morning to KLSentral (sic) train station where I met three women from the WCCM Malaysia, including Beth who had set the Malaysia stop up, and we headed northwest up the peninsula to the town of Taiping, where I had never been before. About three hours into the train trip, Beth was standing in the aisle talking to me when she suddenly got a phone call. She told the person on the other end that we had almost arrived at our destination when suddenly she realized that the train had stopped at our destination. So we had to make a mad dash to grab our bags––me with backpack, knapsack and guitar––and get off the train before it left for its next stop. We no sooner hit the platform when I realized that I had left my cell phone on the train. A moment of panic. As anyone who travels knows, it is now no longer a luxury; everywhere you go it is expected that you will be able to access things with your phone, fill in forms with your phone, your tickets are on your phone, etc etc etc. I leapt back onto the train as they were closing the doors and Beth put her foot on the train to let the conductors know we were not done yet and thanks be to God the phone was right there sitting in my seat. Phew!

 

As we left the station under the metal overhang it was pouring rain as hard as anything I have ever experienced in Big Sur or the monsoons in Tamil Nadu. We made our way in two taxis to the hotel. That’s right: this is not the first time that WCCM Malaysia has held their retreat in a hotel. This time there was a pretty big crowd, over 70 of us and so have a place that was easily reachable and big enough, this was the choice. We had a later conference room to ourselves plus and extra room that was used for Adoration (nice touch) and early morning “stretching and breathing” (another nice touch) led by me, as requested.

 

We had two full days, besides Friday night and Monday morning, all day Saturday and Sunday, which left me with seven conferences. We had many periods of meditation together, certainly, as is my wont, one after each conference, plus the liturgy of the hours, morning, midday, vespers and compline, and Eucharist. So it was a full schedule. I really like it when the liturgy of the Church plays a part in these retreats, especially to showcase the idea that meditation does not have to take us away from the regular spiritual life of the Church. I always describe it more as the missing mineral, like magnesium was for me. Both there and here in Hong Kong, from the options that I gave them, had chosen the kenosis theme, based on my book The God Who Gave You Birth. That is not a theme that specifically lends itself to silent meditation, but it was not hard at all to adopt a little and make the bridge. I have given this retreat several times now, twice to Benedictine sisters, once to the Trappists at Vina and then to the seminarians at St John’s in Camarillo and in Melbourne, but this is the first time to lay people. It was a little bit of a stretch theologically for them, but not too bad. I introduced it both times, there and here, by saying simply, “We need to mature in our understanding of who God is,” which is of course how I start the book, telling the story about seeing the picture of Zeus in D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths and realizing that most Christians still think of God as if God were Zeus, not as Jesus introduces God to us. The folks were marvelously attentive, and the question-and-answer periods, which I always find nerve wracking, were a very deep sharing. Of course there is music for every session as well, and I think here in Asia that is more appreciated than anywhere in the world.

 

They also loved the “stretching and breathing” sessions in the early morning and I would guess 3/4 of them came both mornings. Two things about that, again, especially in this part of the world. One is that I just avoid the word “yoga” anymore for these kinds of retreats. It doesn’t matter what you call it, and I do not stick to a pure vanyasa of Ashtanga Yoga anyway. Besides that, for some Catholics it’s a real noisy buzzword. I don’t care what you call it––just do something with your body! And your breath. Invite the rest of you to your prayer life. And secondly, I have had this ongoing trouble with my shoulder for over a year now and have had to back off a lot on the normal asanas, but instead have been doing a whole new routine each morning that is more based on Tai Chi that I am really enjoying. It in this part of the world––especially in Singapore and Malaysia––that I was so moved watching people to Tai Chi in the park in the mornings, mostly older people, I think. And so I wanted to encourage them maybe to join that or to do their own form of that as part of their meditation practice. For me those sessions went better than ever, and I don’t get to do them often anymore––basically sharing my practice––, so I was well pleased.

 

After the retreat I was shuttled over to Penang Island, where I have been several times before, famous for their hawker food. I stayed at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, though the only other clergyman there was a retired priest who was a scripture professor in the seminary who is now in residence, and the permanent deacon, who lies off campus. When I hear “cathedral,” I tend to think of some higher standard of living, the seat of the bishop and all that… That does not apply in this part of the world. The rectory was a very humble even spartan (I have used that word a lot lately) affair by Western European standards. That is not meant as a complaint, by the way, just to point out that our middle to upper middle-class ecclesial expectations do not apply universally. Even the bishops here usually dress very casually, though they are treated with great reverence. I was there to do the first of a series of musical events––we are avoiding the word “concert”––songs leading to a period of me introducing the practice of meditation. It’s good and a fine format for me. I am pretty much sticking to liturgical songs as requested and seems fitting. We had a good crowd there in Penang Tuesday night, in the parish hall. I will have six such events here in Hong Kong over the next week.

 

Due to a scheduling and communication snafu, my fight to Hong Kong was through Singapore on Wednesday, at noon, which meant I needed to get from Penang to Singapore ASAP, which meant they picked me up at 3 AM to drive me to the airport for my 5:30 AM flight. Through various means they were hoping that my bag (I just check the backpack) could be checked all the way to Hong Kong (same company), but no… The young girl at the counter would listen to no argument for such an eventuality. And so, it was quite an adventure. For one of only two times that I can remember they would not let me bring the mini-Taylor on board, staying the Malaysian Airlines’ overhead bins are not big enough (they actually are). So I had to check the guitar in Penang which they told me would be at the gate in KL. It was not. So I had to go down to baggage claim and thanks be to God a nice young man found it in some corner with odd-sized baggage (maybe that means they hand carried it), none worse for the wear. I got it on the next flight no problem, but at Singapore I had to go to baggage claim to get my backpack which meant I had to go through immigration which meant I had to fill out the temporary visa forms––on my phone, of course. Which I did, and it went very quickly and smoothly. And then take the train to terminal 4 for my next flight and go through the whole thing again. But terminal 4, thanks God, was very sparsely populated and it went very smoothly, with enough time left for me to have two half-boiled eggs (with soy sauce and white pepper) and a soft bun. But the next thing was even more entertaining. At the Cathay Pacific gate as they saw me walking up with the guitar, two very polite young women came up to me and said, very concerned, “Sir, what is that?” A guitar. “You cannot take that on board.” Again I explained very carefully that it was a small sized guitar and I had traveled with it all over the world without any problem (a little fudging of the truth). Well then, they said, “we will let you go on with the early boarding but if they turn the guitar away on the plane, there is nothing we can do about it.” Fair enough. But not only did they have me go in with early boarding, they called me to come up and board before everyone! All by myself walking down the galley way! I was afraid to look up at the other passengers who must have thought I was some kind of celebrity with my little guitar boarding before everyone. I got a good giggle out of that, and of course I got a prime space for my guitar in the overhead––in row 73, not exactly first class, if there were any doubt.

 

And now I am in Hong Kong. I wish I could remember what year it was, but I was here once before, on my way back from India I stopped to spend a weekend with Ricky Manalo when he was here studying Chinese. I remember having a great time, we basically ate our way across the city and saw so much. I also remember being impressed by the size of the place, like a forest of giant buildings. But I must have only seen a small part of the city. This time I am seeing a lot more. It is the WCCM who has brought me here as well, but this time I am doing mostly musical events, as I did with Pat Por several times up and down the peninsula of Malaysia. I am staying again at the cathedral, that is actually part of a greater complex of Caritas and the diocesan offices, etc. The building I am in is 16 stories high, floors 13 to 16 are the Priests’ Quarters. There are retired priests, with an infirmary wing, chancery officials, some professors as well as the parish priests of the cathedral themselves, I am not sure how many. It seems to function more like an apartment building with a canteen and laundry service. (It actually reminds me of the old Jesuit residence in downtown Saint Louis, the birthplace of you-know-who.) It is not exactly spartan, but it is a bit ramshackle, at least my room is. My guess is that it is an extra room where they keep stuff that others have left behind. My host, Vivian, and I both were a little shocked to open the door and see furniture stacked up and piles of old things in the corner covered with a blanket. She later wrote me and said she wanted to find me a nicer place, but by that time I had made a little nest for myself here amidst the rubble and didn’t feel like moving. The view out my window is more skyscrapers, right here in the middle of the financial district. I will be busy and not here a lot and it is working out fine. Someone from WCCM got me a guest membership at a very nice gym and yoga club about a 15-minute walk from here, a very classy place, so that is a real luxury, and I have been three times already. To get there I have to walk past a whole block of bars, one after the other, and then just down the street it is teeming with life, restaurants and bars and clothing stores with high-tech screens and flashing lights all over. It is kind of fun to walk down there and back, but I do tend to scurry right back to my little nest here ASAP.

 

Yesterday I did two musical performances, without guided meditations, at St. Francis University, an old trade school started by a former bishop that has just been upgraded to university status with a handsome new campus. It was set up, with a very nice sound system and IT guy, in a common area in the main building, and the idea was to sing for the crowd on their way to 1:00 Mass and then sing for the students who were assumed to be hanging around after the 1:00 PM Mass. I imagined I would be singing and talking to myself trying to get people’s attention while they were rushing off to lunch. But no, a really nice crowd showed up––Vivian really did her foot work of advertising. I did my 50-minute set of the liturgical songs, but I had suggested to Vivian that perhaps I could do something a little livelier and more attractive for the young people who we expected to show up for the second set. Well, lucky I did, because almost no students came (as a matter of fact some were playing the guitar on the floor above me while I was singing!) but much of the first crowd stayed for the second set. And I really had fun. For as much as I am proud of my liturgical songs, especially the new ones, for concertizing the other stuff is more enjoyable to play. So I did “Awakening” and “Circle Song,” and “Walk in Beauty” and “I Will Lead You Into the Desert” from the new album, “Lead Me From Death Into Life” and “Compassionate and Wise.” But the piece they really loved, when I realized that I needed to fill in another seven minutes or so, was He Prabhu, really the first of the Indian bhajans that I adopted back in the mid 2000s. It was so fun to play and the mini-Taylor loves it. Vivian liked it so much she asked me to end the day with it again today at the retreat.

There is a certain way that people in Asia appreciate music, it’s almost as if they hear it in another part of their bodies, and I am always very moved by the reaction. Vivian told me that someone told her afterward that she liked the music so much that it “pierced her heart and lung,” which is apparently a common expression in Cantonese.

 

Today was the only teaching day, a one-day retreat for WCCM at a parish hall on the other side of Hong Kong Island, over Victoria Peak. A very nice sized crowd again, about 60 people, three conferences and meditation time. I must admit that sometimes I have wondered to myself if doing these retreats really makes any kind of lasting impact, even if a small one. But the feedback that I have gotten from both Malaysia and here has been so positive, even struggling a little with my American English and my “speculative theology,” as one of our monks used to call it. Apparently yesterday the crowd stayed with Vivian after I left and she went over with them some of the points that were a little harder to grasp (like, “Who was the Second Person of the Trinity before Jesus was born?”) but then she bought out Amazon’s stock of The God Who Gave You Birth.

 

I had two interesting little moments here. For background: Hong Kong, as you probably know, is now a “special administrative region” of China since it was handed back over by England in 1997. There are pro-democracy folks here (their color is yellow) and pro-China (blue). I was told by a reliable source that these days more and more formerly yellow folks are leaning toward blue, pro-China, because they are so disgusted with the Trump Administration’s policies and they think that Xi Jinping is doing a much better job of managing China, including the advances in alternative energy and technology.

 

After the pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019 there has been more pressure from Beijing and folks are more cautious than ever about what they say, especially in public. Vivian told me a couple of anecdotes to illustrate that. At one point while I was singing the new song, “A Candle in the Darkness” (I’ve snuck that in with my liturgical pieces at the end of the meditation) I sing, using Mahmoud Darwish’s words, “As you free yourself in metaphors / think of others (who have lost the right to speak).” And as I was singing I glanced quickly at Vivian, wondering if I could get her in trouble for a line like that. And then yesterday, when I was teaching about Prometheus stealing fire from heaven, I got to the section where I say how moderns and post-moderns have been captivated by this image of Prometheus stealing the fire from heaven, and have used it as a symbol of our grabbing power away from any kind of hierarchy and demagoguery. Quoting from my script…

 

There is certainly something valid about that instinct and that energy, and many of the modern movements seem to be about this––feeling cheated out of the promise of liberation, and no one is going to give it to us if we don’t own it and demand it and grab it. …  Is this not at the core of American values, enshrined in our Constitution, that we are “endowed by our Creator with the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? The most obvious and perhaps purest example, of course, is the civil rights movement, rooted so deeply in the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures.

 

And again I froze for a moment, worried mainly if I would get anyone here in trouble for saying that. I will have to ask Vivian later. It is one thing to put one’s own reputation on the line, it is a whole other thing to endanger someone else.

 

It’s Sunday now. I had the morning gloriously to myself and wound up “saying a private Mass” in the chapel here, as was recommended to me. It was the first day that I showed up in the canteen for lunch––and there was no lunch. Apparently I didn’t get that memo. I have a musical event this afternoon and then tonight I am meeting one of my collaborators from World Meditation Day, who teaches in Chicago but is back here in her hometown for some business. We have never met face-to-face before, so this will be interesting. I have another such meeting later in the week. Tomorrow morning I fly to Vietnam to present on DIMMID for the meeting of Benedictines of East Asia and Oceana, another new experience, and then back here until the 20th.

 

With every blessing, counting on your prayers and assuring you of mine, Cyprian