from singapore

Truly, those who have attained to faith in this Word,
as well as those who follow the Jewish faith,
and the Sabians and the Christians––
all who have faith in God and the Final Day and do righteous deeds––
no fear need they have, and neither shall they grieve.
Qur’an 5:69

Wed. 4 Feb, 2009

Greetings from Singapore. An uneventful 20-hour trip over, with a short stop in Seoul, Korea. My friend Leonard bravely waiting for me at 1 AM to whisk me over to the friary at St. Mary of the Angels where I have stayed so many times now.

Leonard does like to fill up my days when I am here but I managed to keep the first morning to myself. I now have made this trip enough times to remember that my body is going to be stiff and swollen from the trip, though I am never sure what causes that. My hands and feet are puffy from the change of climate, and back especially is stiff and tight, from the plane trip, I guess. Just knowing that makes me take better care of myself the first days now, lots of fluids and forcing myself to do some asanas knowing full well it will be like bending a 2 X 4.

Leonard picked me up at noon and we headed off to meet Farid. I had met him two years back at the Islamic Harmony Center here in Singapore. He has now organized an inter-faith event for this Sunday that I am participating in. Actually he organizes a series of inter-faith events such as this, every one with a different theme. This particular one is called “Music in Faith-Traditions: an alternative route to the soul, an interfaith experience.” We went to a wonderful “Chinese fusion” vegan restaurant. (Farid is a committed vegetarian, something I think is rather unusual for a Muslim.) He greeted me like an old friend, and has apparently been following my doings on our web site. I found out more about him. He started out working for “Outward Bound,” the wilderness experience for young people, which was, he says, started in England. (I thought it was founded in the States.) He now teaches at a local college about body consciousness, relaxation and health, I think he said; and he also works for the local government on the inter-faith council. They are pretty serious about that here in Singapore, which is good if not obvious: it is such a melting pot of Hindus, Muslims, Taoists, Buddhists, Christians, and Sikhs.

Farid took us over to a place called the Istana Kampong Glam, which was formerly the palace of the Sultan of Jahore, a city right across the water in Malaysia, and is currently the Malay Heritage Center complete with a museum and shops. We visited an artist who does very a modern style of batik, and then right next store a ceramicist, both of whom were very gracious and talkative about their work. (Chris and Debi, if you are reading, this would be a good place to stop on your world tour for Red Egg Gallery.)

Then we went over to the Masjid Sultan, which is considered Singapore’s premier Mosque. It’s history is like a snapshot of Singapore in the last century, tied in with Sultan Hussian Shah, the ruler of Temasek (the former name of Singapore) and Sir Stamford Raffles of the East India Company. The current building was begun in 1924. I brought with me this time a copy of The Light of Dawn, Camille Helminski’s selections and renderings of the Holy Qur’an. After the Sangha’s study of Islam this past year and my recent wonderful visit with Kabir and Camille at their Threshold Society meeting, I have grown increasingly fascinated by Islam, and this trip is going to give me a little more opportunity to interaction with Muslims. It’s a particularly sensitive interaction, I know, and southeast Asia Islam has a little different character than Arabic.

I am really excited about Farid’s event on Sunday. It is being held at the Sikh Centre, next to the Sikh Gudwara here in Singapore. I am the “headliner,” and so will sing and talk for about half an hour, and then a muzzein will sing the azan, that beautiful Muslim call to prayer, and do a recitation of a short Qur'anic Verse in Arabic. After that another Muslim group will be singing the Naat––Muslim praises to Prophet Mohammad) a capella in Urdu. (That’s interesting because the last song I wrote was “Hidden In My Silnce,” a setting of a poem on the 19th century Islamic Indian poet Ghalib, who also wrote in Urdu. Look up the video of that song on YouTube!) Then there will be some contemporary music sung in Malay language about the theme of love in Islam, followed by Baha’i recitation. The part of the program that everyone seems to be the most excited about is Taoist Prayer Chant that will be done by Master Chung Wei Yi, who is all of 25 years old. Farid said that there will be a Hindu group there as well doing some kirtans and the program will end with music by the hosts of the event, the traditional Sikh Ensemble from the Gurmat Sangeet Academy performing the traditional Sikh kirtans. There will be some Buddhists attending the event and Farid is yet hoping they will perform something as well.

I suppose my remarks will set the tone for the event––they have over-stated my reputation, I think––but I am not sure yet what I am going to say. My tendency is to let the music speak for itself. I almost wish I could go last, and sum it all up by drawing a little from each tradition. Farid is also hoping for what he called an “interfaith jam” at the end, while being sensitive to folks who would not be comfortable singing certain words or names of God. We shall see…

For now, today I am going over to give a talk (on something or other) to the Franciscan novices, and then going trekking with a couple of young friends I met here last time, Richard and Joyce Koh. Real work starts on Friday night and Saturday when I will be doing a workshop on liturgy and music for the Franciscan parish here. I haven’t done much teaching about liturgy here or at home these past few years, but John Wong, ofm, who has hosted me so many times put in a special request since he is the one in charge music here at this huge parish, so how could I refuse? Coming off a visit to the North American Academy of Liturgy in Baltimore, a week of composing with the Collegeville Composers Group and the Composers Forum in Saint Louis, I might just have something to say. I might actually have too much to say––the problem may be organizing and synthesizing it in digestible chunks.

There was so much preparation for this trip, the longest and most complicated one that I have made yet. I was groaning under the weight of it just a few weeks ago and mourning leaving my beloved kutir in Corralitos, but now that I am here I am looking forward to whatever adventures await. It does seem odd to be in Asia and not be on my way to India. The feel of the tropical air and the call of the koel bird, not to mention the many Indian faces here in Singapore, tug at my heart a little, but it was not meant to be this time. Though I must say I’m already looking forward to the trip there in 2010 for Abhishiktananda’s centenary.

hope in the new year

When your soul is in peace,
then you are in peace,
and your soul is in God.
In cold or heat,
in pleasure or pain,
you are ever in God.
With your soul in peace and all fear gone,
strong in your vows,
rest with your mind in harmony,
your soul on me.
(Bhagavad Gita)

We had our annual New Year’s Eve Meditation Vigil for Peace last night, fifth year running, in Holy Cross Hall. It was probably the most subdued and smallest crowd we have ever had, and also the coldest night. But it was good. There was Dror Sinai, the owner of the marvelous music store called rhythm fusion, who opened up representing the Jewish tradition, playing percussion and singing, leading folks in song, one of them being in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Then the Santa Cruz Heart Sangha, in the Vietnamese Zen tradition of Thich Nhat Han led a meditaion. Our friends from Chaitanya Saraswat Math, devotes of Krishna, treated us to their usual teaching and chanting of their maha-mantra: “Hare Krishna-Hare Krishna-Krishna Krishna–Hare Hare…” Then Munir a Sunni Muslim and a Sufi teacher chanted from the Quran and told stories, two folks from the Society of Friends (Quakers) led us in quiet, Ann Miller and friends from the Bahai community, Shannon Frediani did her usual beautiful aleatoric singing, and I led the last half hour with my usual thing. Then we had Mass at midnight.

I must admit, I had a hard time this year coming up with anything positive to say. I am feeling a little beat up by the world situation the situation in Palestine, both Hamas’ provocation of Israel and the seemingly disproportionate reaction of Israel. I am watching amazed and little confused about the ongoing economic crisis and the seemingly insurmountable task for putting it all back together. I am feeling saddened by many of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters who talk to me about feeling abandoned both by the state and the church this year between Proposition 8 and the Holy Father’s recent unfortunate comments. (BY the way, though I was at pains to say in my remarks nothing concerning whether or not I agreed with either the Pope or Prop 8––I would never contradict the teaching of the church publicly, especially from the pulpit––someone coming forward for communion at Mass instead of saying “Amen” said, “Yes, on Prop 8.” Very hateful for a celebration of peace.) And I’m feeling at times a little frightened about the situation of the environment, the increase of global warming and its dire consequences.

And then I remembered the chill I got up my spine as I listened to Mr. Obama deliver his acceptance speech in Chicago in Grant Park surrounded by the rainbow of hope-filled incredulous jubilant faces. He said,

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Now this is not about whether or not you think Barack Obama is the right man for the presidency or if you support his politics. But to think that only a little over 40 years ago that we still even needed legislation to prohibit discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment, that we were still reeling under the draconian weight of Jim Crow laws and segregation of the races in schools, housing, or hiring; that a mere 40 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed racial segregation in schools, public places, and employment for both African Americans and women, a woman was a viable contender for the highest office in the land and an African American man actually would be elected––even Mrs. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice had to agree that this was a significant moment in the history of our country, perhaps even in the history of the world. We can do it, we can make progress.

So I’m not without hope. Things are getting worse and better at the same time, it’s just that the worse is more apparent because it make so much noise.

I think though, as I’ve said before, that often we hope the next guy will just come in and fix things for us so that we can get back to business as usual. Well, I hope that this new administration doesn’t do that, and we need to keep reminding our new president of that as well before political expediency and pragmatism take over. I hope we do not go back to business as usual. It’s time for a new paradigm. I always like to read the Holy Father’s New year’s Day message and draw from it. In spite of the fact of his many unpopular pronouncements (and even more so his baffling lack of understanding of how popular media reduces complex philosophical arguments to sound-bytes), and often simply because I feel as if I need to be in dialogue with my own tradition––in spite of all that I still think he has an acute and privileged diagnosis of the global situation. This year the Holy Father especially called attention to the importance of fighting poverty to build peace, and to the relationship between disarmament and development. He called attention as well to the current food crisis, which is characterized not so much by a shortage of food, as by difficulty in gaining access to it––that is, unjust distribution, in other words, by a lack of political and economic structures capable of addressing needs and emergencies. He called for an attentive consideration of the complex phenomenon of globalization and global solidarity between rich and poor countries, as well as within individual countries, including and especially affluent ones. He called for “common code of ethics”: an ethical approach to economics on the part of those active in the international market, an ethical approach to politics on the part of those in public office, and an ethical approach to participation capable of harnessing the contributions of civil society at local and international levels. I think I can safely say that he too is calling for a new paradigm.

So I’m not without hope. But that new paradigm cannot come about without a new mind––“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds!” And that’s why we’re here tonight and why we gathered all evening to pray and meditate together. What is called for, what we are to be about, we spiritual warriors, along with the social and global transformation, is a transformation of human consciousness, my consciousness, your consciousness, our collective consciousness, the renewal of our minds. Bede Griffiths wrote before he died: “... the whole human race has now come to the moment when everything is at stake, when a vast shift of consciousness will have to take place on a massive scale in all societies and religions in order for the world to survive.” And Eckhart Tolle adds that this “is no longer a luxury, so to speak, available only to a few isolated individuals, but a necessity if humankind is not to destroy itself. At the present time, the dysfunction of the old consciousness [––witness the conflicts in Palestine and Africa––] and the arising of the new are both accelerating. Paradoxically, things are getting worse and better at the same time...” I feel like we’re in a race, there is an urgency. But I’m not without hope: I’ve seen the triumph of the human spirit, I’ve seen transformation of souls, and I’ve seen heroic self-donation.

So, as this new year begins, let us dedicate ourselves to fasting and penance, not only to grieve over and make reparation for our corporate sins but also so that our lives would be filled with a spirit of control of our senses so as not to be controlled by them; by a spirit of living simply so that we may be in solidarity with the poor of the world, so that we don't take more than our share of the goods of the planet, to live simply so that others may simply live. Let us re-dedicate ourselves to the corporal works of mercy, to charity, to opening our hearts to give from what we have received, so that our light may shine, so that Christ’s light may shine from out of our own hearts. And beyond that, Eckhart Tolle says, “It is inner stillness that will save and transform the world.” As the Bhagavad Gita says, “When your soul is in peace then you are in peace.” I would add, when your soul is in peace then you are peace. So above all let us dedicate ourselves to prayer and meditation, to silence, to prayerful living, so that the ears of our heart may always hear the sound of the Spirit's own song singing itself in us in sighs too deep for words, so that we may be bearers of Christ's peace to all we meet and be constantly fed by that inner stream of the Holy Spirit in all that we say and do.

you're my home

As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved,
put compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness and patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another,
if anyone has a grievance against another.
And over all these put on love, the bond of perfection,
and let the peace of Christ dwell in you richly.
Col 3:12-15

(I'm a little behind but before I head out on the road, I want to add these two writings. This was my homily for the feast of the Holy Family on Sunday down at the monastery. )

In the readings for this feast we hear so much about Abraham and his seed, from the Genesis reading, through the letter to the Hebrews and the fulfillment of the promise in Simeon and Anna, but we must be careful. There can also be something distracting about focusing too much on Abraham’s bloodline. Jesus himself (if you’ll excuse the pun) relativizes it. Concerning himself the Gospel’s are at pains to tell us that he does not have Joseph’s blood or genes. And even concerning his mother, whose blood and genes he does share, when someone yells out, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you,” he retorts, “Blessed instead are all those who hear the Word of God and keep it.” And now we are on to something.

I was thinking of another incident in the Gospel of John chapter 8, when Jesus was speaking to a certain group of Jews who he was sure were about to kill him. (I got most of these thoughts from James Alison, by the way) Jesus says to them, “I know you are descendants of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you.” Then he says a couple of verses later, “If you were Abraham’s children you would do what Abraham did.” He agrees that they, the Jews that he is speaking to, are the “seed” of Abraham, but he points out that being a descendant of Abraham is not the same thing as being a child of God or of Abraham. What’s interesting here are the Greek words. Up ‘til now the Jews had referred to themselves as the sperma–the seed of Abraham, that is, biological heirs; but Jesus switches to use the word tekna–children. If they were really children, as distinct from mere seed, if their hearts were the same as Abraham’s as opposed to their genes, then this would be evidenced by their acceptance of the Gospel that Jesus was proclaiming. And so he concludes, similar to what he had said of his own mother, “Whoever is from God hears the word of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.” (8:47)

I don’t mean to diminish the nuclear family in any way, but I don’t think that that is mainly what the feast of the Holy Family is about. How many people do we know who have had to leave their families of birth in order to escape dysfunction or abuse, if not merely to find their own true course in life? Rather I think that this feast is about making sure that all of our comings-together in communities and relationships, including our nuclear families, are as tekna–children, rather than merely sperma–seed. In this sense, water is thicker than blood: that is, the waters of Baptism, the waters of faith, mean more than our bloodlines.

And the reason why Abraham is such a poignant symbol of this for me comes from the fact of something he didn’t do, rather than from what he did. He did not in the end sacrifice his only son. This is a very powerful image in the day and age in which this story was first told, not just because it seems to be a nullification of human sacrifice; but because somehow we learn from Abraham’s being stopped from that sacrifice that God is not really about scape-goating, casting someone outside of the tribe in order to be appeased and propitiated. Is it for this reason that his descendants––his children as opposed to merely his seed––would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands on the seashore? Because, under the fulfillment of the covenant under Jesus, everybody belongs, no one gets left out. This is true family, the place the relationship is which we belong, where we never get left out.

As I was preparing my thoughts about this feast, I kept remembering something that a friend of mine wrote to me over twenty years ago. He was referring both to our friendship and to the church, if I recall correctly, and he said, “We learn along the way that we must first come in before we can go out.” Oddly enough, another friend of mine remarked to me recently something very similar, that the marvelous thing about being loved and loving someone is that you feel, maybe for the first time, as if you are at home when you are with the one or the ones you love, and at the same time you feel, because of that love, as if you can leave home. One other image that goes along with that: There is a beautiful love song called “You’re My Home.” It’s sung by a woman to a man, but I think it applies to all of our relationships, all of our communities: you’re my home. When the community was discussing what would have happened if the fire had burnt down New Camaldoli this summer, the brothers talked about where the community would go, not where individuals would go. The community was saying each to the other, “You’re my home.”

The image that has been foundational for me for some years now in my priestly ministry is what we see in the Baptism of Jesus: the reason that Jesus could head out into the desert and face the temptations, the reason that Jesus could pour his life out in service and in preaching, and ultimately surrender his life into the loving hands of his Father even on the cross, the reason he could leave home, was because he knew there were loving hands to receive him. He knew who he was, because he knew that he was what he had heard over his head in the Jordan River: “You are! You are my beloved! You are beautiful, precious, free.” And that was his strength, this knowledge that nothing could separate him from divine love, and that nothing could destroy his real self, hidden in God. Jesus had nowhere to lay his head, but he knew where his home was, because in his own being he knew his oneness with this Divine One whom he called Abba. We assume that this was all nurtured by Mary and Joseph, both of whom were somehow able to survive their own diminishment: he could go out because he had first had a place to come in.

That to me is what family is: the place where, or better the people with whom, we are home, where we first come in so that we can go out.

I still think we get it all backwards. I do not think that it is our moral behavior that earns us or makes us feel God’s love. It is that love that is the foundation on which to build and the impetus for upright living, for righteousness. We have to first come in––and be invited and welcomed in––before we can go out. I also think that any kind of moral authority that we are going to claim as a church or a spiritual tradition has to come from our first having invited people in so that they can go out, our first having provided a home, being a home for them in our hearts as well as in our communities. Before we make our moral pronouncements, we have to ask ourselves if we are making a home for the people around us. I just don’t think we can issue edicts from penthouses on Park Avenue, or princely palaces, steel girded office buildings, or white houses with classical colonnades, and expect them to carry moral authority based solely on our claim of moral authority imposed from above. That’s simply not what Jesus did. Presidents, priests, prophets––if we so-called religious or moral leaders want to think we are part of the prophetic edge of an embattled-movement while all the while living comfortably inside cocoons of like-minded people or rarified lifestyles, telling each other things we already agree with (as I heard someone else describe it) then we’re living in a kind of mythological world that merely serves as a rationale for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing a kind of doctrinal purity in an effort to maintain control––in other words, leaving people out, but that’s not really the prophetic edge. Jesus got his hands and feet dirty by making wherever he was a home. He was home to the tax collector; he was home to the woman caught in adultery; he was home to lepers and outcasts of all sorts. And the prophetic edge for us would begin by learning how to make a home wherever we are.

I have a couple of friends I wanted to talk about that I was thinking about particularly on this feast of the Holy Family that I left out of the homily itself due to time, but let me add them here. One of them is an ex-priest who now runs two houses of hospitality in a small and impoverished, Midwestern town. I was visiting him at a drop-in center that they have opened recently. He was telling me about a guy who had been living in his house but had a week before stolen a bunch of money and gone out and gotten drunk. And according to the rules of the house he had to leave. Well, this very guy stopped by that morning at the drop in center, and was making some jokes about making some money so he could go out drinking, and my friend laid into him with language that would have made a sailor blush. And the man took it, why? Because my friend had earned the right to speak to him, correct him, scold him, because he was his home. He had allowed him to come in.

The other is a diocesan priest, who is very heterosexual, it is important to point out, but was asked by his bishop to start a ministry to lesbian and gay Hispanics, and he has. I accompanied him too to one of their meetings. He’s quite traditional theologically and conservative politically, by the way, but he does not spend much time at all talking about sexual morality. What he does is a lot of hugging, and he pulls out his guitar and sings songs with them, and he eats their home cooked food, and listens to them tell their stories, and he goes to visit them in the hospital. He is their home. He told me that he is going to spend the first ten years or so just doing that with them, and then maybe start reviewing the teachings of the church, which they all know well enough and can read on their own anyway. He is their home.

I have one more example, a young man that I have known for some eight years now; we stay in touch mostly by phone conversations. He had a horrible childhood, filled with drugs and alcohol and parents in jail. I have tried to say Yes to him whenever possible, to the extent that he tells me I am too positive all the time. But every now and then he tells me about a decision that he has made, or something that he has done, and I lay into him in no uncertain terms telling him just exactly why I think he is being irresponsible or immature, and he really feels it when I do. But I feel like I have earned my right to speak to him that way by now. He can hear my No because I have said Yes to him so often. I’m his home.

I guess my message is very simple on this feast of the Holy Family; it’s the message of St Paul in his letter to the Colossians, in imitation of Jesus and Mary and Joseph: as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, let’s clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Let us find a way to bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, do everything possible to forgive each other, just as the Lord has forgiven us. And above all, let us clothe ourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony, and let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, the peace to which indeed we were called in the one body; and let’s be thankful. And if we are to admonish one another, let’s do it in all wisdom, the wisdom that can only be gained from the way of the cross, the wisdom that can only be gained from being a servant, the wisdom that can only be gained from compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, the wisdom that can only be gained from being home to someone. This is what it would mean to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly; this is what it would mean to be children and not just seed of Abraham; this is what it would mean to be the faithful family of our God.

cyprian
28 dec 08

the authority of intimacy

What was from the beginning,
what we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes,
what we have looked at and touched with our hands,
concerning the word of life––
this life was revealed,
and we have seen it and testify to it.
(1 Jn 1:1-2)

The 13th century Zen patriarch Dogen told the story about a Zen priest and master named Tokusan who was the greatest scholar of his era on the Diamond Sutra. One of the most famous teachings from the Diamond Sutra is from Chapter 18, when the Buddha said, “Mind in the past, mind in the present, mind in the future, cannot be grasped.” Well, Tokusan heard about another master in another part of Japan who had a great reputation, and he set out to go meet him loaded down with a huge bag containing his commentaries. Along the way, he sat down to take a brief rest, and he felt hungry and wanted to take a small meal. Along came an old woman who sat down beside him. He asked her who she was and she replied that she was a rice cake seller. He said, “Good, I’d like to buy some.” But before she would sell him one, she asked him what was in his great bag. He told her that he was a great scholar on the Diamond Sutra and that the bag contained all his commentaries. On hearing this the old woman said: “I have a question. If you can answer I will sell you one; if not, you must go hungry. I especially remember the verse,” she said, “‘Mind in the past, mind in the present, mind in the future, cannot be grasped.’ If you buy a rice cake from me what mind will you eat it with?” Tokusan was completely flabbergasted by this question and too surprised to say anything, so the old woman brushed herself off and went on her way leaving Tokusan empty handed––and hungry. Dogen comments that the old woman should have hit him with one of the rice cakes and shouted, “You stupid priest! Stop being an idiot!” And then he goes on to say that it is truly regrettable that such a great Buddhist scholar who had studied thousands of volumes of commentaries and explained their theories for so many years could not answer an old woman’s simple question. “There is a big difference,” he says, “between acquiring knowledge through books and acquiring knowledge through experience.”

There is a big difference between acquiring knowledge through books and acquiring knowledge through experience.

Today we celebrated the feast of Saint John, the beloved, the evangelist. More than the other apostles, I envy John this experience that gave him such knowledge, because his was definitely knowledge gained through experience, not knowledge through books. It was knowledge based on what he heard, what he saw, what he touched. Our knowledge of God is often so notional, intellectual, and abstract. John’s was knowledge based on what he learned from laying his head on Jesus’ chest.

What I find amazing about John is that while from him we have the most sublime articulations of the theology of the logos in the prologue to his Gospel, the loftiest of Christologies in the New Testament, soaring to the heights of divinity on the wings of an eagle, at the same time we have such great tenderness especially in his first letter from which we read today. Somehow we know as we read him that his teaching––as lofty as it is––is not dis-incarnate, not a philosophical flight of fancy, not speculation, not just notional: it is what he heard, what he saw with his eyes, what he looked upon, what he touched. There is almost not a phrase in this first letter that isn’t heartbreakingly beautiful with its paean to love, addressed not to friends and fellow Christians, not even to brother and sisters, but to the readers as “little children.” I think of him having the authority of intimacy.

And then, of course, there is the Book of Revelation. It’s almost as if he had to keep switching literary genres to try to express this powerful experience of his: from the high Christology of the Gospel, to these tender admonitions of his letter, to the archetypal imagery of the Apocalypse, as if he had to engage the head, the heart and the gut all to convey the depth of this mystery. But what else could we expect from someone who had learned the secret of Jesus’ heart? How many ways can you write about love and it is never adequate? What we have seen with our eyes! What we have heard! What we have touched! You can almost hear him still marveling over it all, with the firm conviction that this man was the logos made flesh, and “I laid my head on his chest!” And from experience that he draws the simple conclusion that God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God in them.

There is also something quiet about John, something humble, something that does not need to put itself first. Much is made of the fact that in the story of he and Peter running to the tomb, even though John arrives at the tomb first he lets Peter go in ahead of him, and how that is a sign of the primacy of Peter. But I like to think of it as the humility of love, that he has learned from resting on the breast of Jesus that love is like that––that it puts others first, that it does not seek the first place, that there is a kind of strength that doesn’t need to put itself forward. That too is the authority of intimacy. And it is from that vantage point that one gains access to a whole new way of knowing. His experience of the self-emptying love of Jesus taught him how to act. And so then he can teach from the authority of intimacy simply this: “love one another.”

And that experience that John had was not simply that Jesus loved him, but that John was open to that love and loved Jesus in return, in vulnerability, faithfulness and courage: vulnerability––laying his head on the chest of Christ and asking just the right question; faithfulness––even to being entrusted with the care of his mother; and courage––even to the foot of the cross. And his authority is based on that love, the authority of intimacy; it is that love that can recognize the Lord on the seashore when no one else can.

It would be truly regrettable if we who have studied volumes of commentaries and explained our theories for so many years would acquire our knowledge only through books, ideas and notions, and not through experience. How can we see, hear and touch, how can we experience Christ today? How can we gain this authority of intimacy? In the sacraments, in our prayer, in the Word, in each other, in the beauty that surrounds us. Let’s lay our heads on the breast of Jesus today, and, through the example and intercession of St John the beloved, the evangelist, pray to be vulnerable, courageous and trustworthy in love, love for Christ, love for one another, so that we too may have the authority of intimacy.

the refiner's fire

With your sacred body, O Fire,
come here and ascend my self,
bringing me great riches.
Becoming the sacrifice,
reach your birthplace, the sacrifice.
Born from the earth, O Fire,
come here with your own abode.
(Naradaparivrajaka Upanishad)

We just can’t seem to get away from this fire. Even in these last bucolic days of Advent with the gentle stories of annunciations and births, as we prepare for the silent, holy night when all is calm and all is bright, we still got treated to a reading from Malachi at Mass today warning us that “the day of his coming will be like a refiner’s fire, refining and purifying.” I’m thinking of all these fires––the burning bush, the fire that Jesus said he was coming to bring to the earth that he wished were already blazing, the flames of the Spirit on the heads of the apostles. It's all one fire and it's already here in Jesus’ birth too. And I’m thinking about the fires we’ve endured here on the central coast this year, wondering what kind of refining and purifying effect they have had on us in exile and evacuation, realizing the fragility of all that we hold precious.

I was thinking too about how important fire is in the ritual of India, among the Brahmin priests. Of course all sacrifices are offered in a sacred fire, but also the brahmacarya–students are obliged to tend the fire of their teacher, and then when they are married they are expected to tend the fires in the homes all of their lives. This is why it is such a significant thing for someone entering the sannyasa state of life––the life of the renunciant––to renounce the rituals with the fire, to be ordered to cease tending to the fires. This is a turning of one’s back on a significant ritual that binds society together. But if you read the texts that deal with this carefully you realize that it is not really an abandoning of the fire: it is an internalization of the fire, joining the sacrificial fire to the one that is already in the depth of the person, the fire of breath, the fire of digestion. The sannyasi takes the sacred fire into himself and from then on out carries it internally, which is considered more perfect and more permanent because one is never separate from them. That’s why the Naradaparivrajaka Upanishad teaches that the sannyasi should then deposit the fire in himself while saying: Becoming the sacrifice, / reach your birthplace, the sacrifice. / Born from the earth, O Fire, / come here with your own abode.

It’s wonderful metaphor for the spiritual life in general, and for the monk in particular, but it also has some strange little connection to another subtle reference that Pope Benedict made recently in his year end address to the prelates. While everyone else is upset about what he said about homosexuality being a threat to human ecology just like global warming is to natural ecology (eek!), he also slipped in a warning that the Holy Spirit cannot be separated from Christ or from the church. John Allen explains that this is because the Vatican is concerned that some theologians working in inter-religious dialogue are pressing the idea of “the Holy Spirit’s presence in non-Christian religions too far, as if the Holy Spirit acts apart from any explicit connection with Christ or the Christian church.” At the same time, it is valid to think of the waters of Baptism meeting up with that trickle of life-giving water already in us; and the breath of the Spirit meeting with that breath already breathed into the clay of the human person when formed; and the fire of the Spirit meeting up with that fire already in us, the divine spark that is our life.

Malachi says, “Suddenly there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek.” I can never hear the word “temple” in Scripture any more without thinking about the human person. That is the major relocation of God that Jesus comes to bring about: the temple is his body first, then the temple becomes our bodies, we ourselves the temples, the sanctuaries. But not only does that temple need to be cleansed of the buyers and the sellers: suddenly there will come to this temple the Lord whom we’ve been waiting for, but who will be able to endure the day of his coming? “For he is like a refiner’s fire" and "he will sit refining and purifying” this temple of our being. That’s ultimately where the Word comes to plant the blazing fire, in this sanctuary, this temple of our being, the baptism of fire that consumes all that is not God until we are all fire.

Tonight at the hermitage we have a quiet day followed by a communal penance service. As we prepare for it and prepare to celebrate the event of the Word becoming flesh, it’s been a good day to surrender to this all-consuming fire that burns away from within us all that is not God, and all that is not godly, so that we can be all fire.

the time of the end is the time of no room

Let him quit his native land
and leave the region where he is well known.
He recalls his own bliss,
which is like the thrill of recovering a forgotten object.
Like a thief released from jail,
let him forsake sons, close relatives,
and his birthplace, and live far away.
Naradaparivrajaka Upanishad

So, I gotta tell you about this gig. I’m in South Bend Indiana, yes, the home of Notre Dame. As a matter of fact I am staying at Moreau Seminary of the Holy Cross congregation, a huge architecturally rather cold building built in the late 1950’s when it was thought there were going to be a gazillion seminarians forever. I seem to have been here (South Bend, Notre Dame) quite a few times the past few years. It feels pretty comfortable.

I am here due to Mike Baxter. He’s an old friend––we know each other from Phoenix in the ‘80’s. He came as a deacon of the Order of the Holy Cross to St. Louis the King Parish in Glendale, AZ when I had just returned from my year in San Francisco and Portland, and Dale Fushek had hired me again to play for a “teen Mass” there. I was in a kind of bardo, just about to transition out my rock ‘n roll phase into what the late ‘80’s would be for me (another story), but at the time I was still a rocker doing liturgical music. It was when I wrote “Rejoice” and “Eternal,” those forays in liturgical reggae, all leading up to recording “The Message Goes Forth,” and before I had my “conversion” away from all that style for liturgy, pre-Pennington days.

Baxter also was in town to found and run Andre House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality in downtown Phoenix. He is the real deal when it comes to all that, a pacifist, well-read, totally devoted to the poor, at the time more of a proponent of liberation theology which was pretty new to us all. I myself was heading into my what I call “neo-con” phase, getting adopted into a group of guys who were force feeding me G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, the Wanderer (an extreme right wing Catholic newspaper), of course the writings of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Hitchcocks of St. Louis, even the Cardinal Mendzety Foundation, an extreme right-wing anti-Commuist group headed up by one of the Schaffley sisters. (Remind me to tell you about going to one of their meetings sometime…) When I first met Baxter I hadn’t yet completely succumbed to the right wing influence and he represented for me a real burst of inspiration.

I had spent one of the most influential years of my life in Chicago the year after high school living with some radical Franciscans who were also associated with the Catholic Worker in Chicago. I often credit them with teaching me about the spiritual life and prayer and simplicity. Nothing else I experienced after that had ever moved me enough to really grab my allegiance until I found New Camaldoli, certainly not the seminary environment at St. Meinrad, nothing really about St. Jerome’s parish for whom I worked on and off for four years, or my work with Dale and the teens, nothing really about NALR, the liturgical music company I was beginning to record and publish with. I was willing enough to work for them all, do music for them mainly, but I was never on fire. Not only that, I was nowhere near having any kind of a spirituality of my own. But Baxter re-kindled a tiny fire in me.

My favorite image of us in those days was riding around downtown Phoenix in one of Andrè House’s beat up big old pick up trucks, Bruce Springsteen blaring on the cassette player (“Born in the USA” which was Baxter’s favorite at the time), picking up supplies for the kitchen, both of us smoking. (Somehow it didn’t seem incongruous to me at the time…) I didn’t hobnob with the community at the house much but I liked being in the background, washing dishes or peeling carrots, doing fund-raising concerts and hanging out with Baxter. And I liked serving on the soup line. One of my favorite memories of Holy Week is from there. Baxter was gone but Fitz, the other Holy Cross priest who was stationed there was celebrating Holy Saturday in the back yard of Andrè House. We used the food preparation table for an altar, and Fitz told this great story about when he was a young boy, an altar server. He had to carry the new Easter fire from the church over to the convent for the nuns across the parking lot on a windy night, and make sure it didn’t blow out. And that’s us, he said, “We’re the ones who have to carry the fire, across the windy parking lots.” Baxter also got me reading Merton for the first time; he gave me “Raids on the Unspeakable,” an essay from which––“The Time of the End is the Time of No Room”––gave me an idea for perhaps the best song lyric I’ve ever written, recorded with LUKE St., called “Room for Me.” The only time I sing it now is when I do something for him, as I will tonight.

That was also the era when I put together LUKE St., by the way, my non-Christian-rock Christian rock band. I talked through a lot of the lyrics with Baxter, Flannery O’Connor-Thomas Merton-C.S. Lewis inspired lyrics, wanting to do with rock ‘n roll what Flannery O’Connor or Walker Percy did with short stories and novels. As a matter of fact the first name for the band was Wiseblood, after O’Connor’s short story of the same name, until we found out that someone already had taken that name for their band.

I also had some idea about moving in with them there at Andrè House, but I was already heading into my introverted hermit days, I guess, and all that hubbub around the place seemed like too much for me and my music and study (I was finishing by BA). I did coax my friend Gary to move in with them for a short time instead. Baxter and I had a kind of a minor falling out, mainly due to my new conservative friends. I think the friendship eventually really just slowly eroded. He and they at Andrè House were getting pretty far out there (at one point Baxter was touring Central America with Daniel Ortega!) and my friends did not approve. They had some kind of a big fight, and that was the last straw. As one priest said to me, a very conservative one, mind you, “So you stopped doing the corporal works of mercy due to an ideological disagreement?” Yes, and one I didn’t necessarily agree with on top of it.

Anyway, some years into my time at New Camaldoli we somehow got into contact again, and have remained so on and off ever since. He went on to do his doctorate under Stanley Hauerwas at Duke University (after the latter was driven out of Notre Dame by the “ruling liberal elite”…) and then came back to Notre Dame himself as a professor of ethics. His placement here was not without controversy. The same “ruling liberal elite” did not want Baxter part of the faculty because they deemed him too… hmm, I don’t know what to call it. Not exactly conservative though he is a real defender of orthodoxy. Their big issue, if I recall correctly, was that he was saying (after Hauerwas) that American religious liberalism had sold out to the left wing of the American political spectrum and had lost its prophetic edge. That didn’t go over well. When he was denied a faculty post, the president of Notre Dame, exercising his right as a Holy Cross overseer, appointed him anyway. That’s when the controversy broke. Richard McBrien, a well-known liberal writer who is on faculty here, was particularly incensed by the whole thing. It got national attention, etc. etc. It all died down some years ago, but it was right around then that Baxter and I got back in touch. He went on to become a very popular professor here, and to found a Catholic Worker house here as well.

About four years ago Baxter left Holy Cross, and has subsequently been laicized, but carries on as a professor and as head of a burgeoning Catholic Worker community, with three houses and a drop-in center, most of which are legally under his name. (It was quite an experience to go into a bank with him today.) He is a great embodiment of what I remember to be that Catholic Worker ethos, combining intellectualism with hands-on down and dirty life with the poorest of the poor. He keeps an office on campus but lives in one of the three houses. And that’s what brings me here, to do a fund-raiser for them, for him.

I have too admit (surprise, surprise) I don’t like most church environments, liberal or conservative––parish offices, religious education centers, retreat houses, liturgy or music conventions, monasteries, seminaries. I can’t really say why without being uncharitable and judgmental, and the problem is probably more mine than anyone else’s. But it’s undeniable; I don’t like hanging around church much, or at least what “church” has become in America. And yet, as I sat at the CW last night having dinner with the crowd––half community members and half guests (the latter meaning usually homeless folks who are being offered hospitality)––and as I hung out in the drop-in center this morning washing dishes and making coffee, I was perfectly at ease. That is really my kind of church like almost no other environment. How do I forget that? I was transported easily back thirty-two years ago to uptown Chicago to the Worker there and to our Wednesday night open house meals for which I used to cook stuffed cabbage and apple pie, or to the soup line downtown Phoenix twenty years ago on a rainy winter night watching the folks go by with Hefty trash bags wrapped around them to keep dry. I think that it is amazing that my own ethos is not that much different from what it was when I was 18 years old. I am still looking for the same thing in my life and my environment, simplicity, directness, a radical commitment to the Gospel, integrity, and a certain eschewing of middle class comfort, which can be stifling and sometimes mistaken and/or substituted for authentic spiritual values.

Anyway, all that to present this in context… This is the song, inspired by Baxter and the soup line that rainy night around Christmas of 1986, and that Merton essay from “Raids on the Unspeakable,” a song which I will per force sing tonight in our fund-raising concert with the Notre Dame Folk Choir right there at Our Lady of the Road Drop-in Center in South Bend.

From where I stand––my feet in mud
and my Hefty rain coat tied around me fast––
I can see a skyline stretching out
across the dusk
(the windows sparkle like stars!).
Now I don’t mean to sound bitter––
I’m just tired and confused––
but how come there’s always room for all these
buildings in the sky
and there is no room for me?

I seen the news the other night from a
sidewalk outside the pawn shop over on 3rd Street;
and I know this land is the best there is,
but there’s just one thing that keeps on bothering me:
I’m really not unpatriotic––
I’m just tired and confused––
but how come there’s always room to build more
factories for war
when there is no room for me?

I feel like that baby who,
asleep in his mother’s womb,
wandered the streets of Bethlehem
when there wasn’t any room.

Ev’ry night I lie awake
and I pray the Lord my soul to take,
but then I wake up with the dawn.
Since I do, I carry on and
wait for the day when the trumpet sounds that’s gonna
bring home all of the exiles,
‘cuz there’s a place that’s just for the poor folks
where the milk and the honey flow,
and when we get past these jaws of hell
I guess that’s where we’ll go,
and there will be room for me.

post-script: I am temporarily stuck in the South Bend airport. I (stupidly) missed my early bus to Chicago, hopefully to grab the next one, in the middle of a snowstorm. But it feels good to be with my backpack and guitar waiting for a bus right now. A fitting context for these days.

It was a great evening last night, Mass, dinner and concert at the drop in center. There was a wonderful mix of people (by the end about 200), a nice mix of sacred and secular, the ND Folk Choir were shining and the pieces we did together were quite fun and energetic, my own set went awfully well, a great blend of songs I really wanted to sing in a great setting. That combination has a subtle magic to it. I enjoyed especially the interaction with the young people whether from the choir or the community members of the Catholic Worker. They are many of them so eager to learn, hear stories and find alternative models upon which to base their spiritual searches.

One last thought: the Catholic Worker folks, not unlike "professional" religious, choose voluntary poverty, and often actually live it much more than most of us professed religious. Why would you choose to live something that other people are trying to escape, and live with the people who are trying to escape it? And, reading the Sannyasa Upanishads (one quoted above), it is that same strange symmetry, that the sannyasi has no place to call home. And so it is good to associate with the homeless, to remind us of these things. I hope Dorothy would have been pleased with us, and maybe Fr. Louie, too

"The time of the end is the time of no room."

an ample space for dialogue

O servant, where do you seek me?
Lo! I am beside you.
I am neither in temple nor in mosque:
I am neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash:
neither am I in rites and ceremonies,
nor in Yoga and renunciation.
If you are a true seeker,
you shall see Me at once:
you shall meet Me in a moment of time.

Kabir says, ‘O Sadhu! God is the breath of all breath!”

It was the most amazing thing, if ironic: I had just finished writing for the first time a full talk about what I understand to be the basis of inter-religious dialogue, based both on the official Roman Catholic teachings and on the work of Bede Griffiths et al, and then that amazing one-liner appears in the headlines: “Pope says Inter-religious Dialogue is Impossible.”

Here’s a fuller version of what he wrote. It was in an open letter serving as a preface for a book in a letter he wrote to Marcello Pera, an Italian center-right politician and scholar whose book, Why We Must Call Ourselves Christian, argues that Europe should stay true to its Christian roots. Of course this would be dear to Pope Benedict who has tried to focus attention on the Christian roots of an increasingly secular Europe:

You explain with great clarity that an inter-religious dialogue, in the strict sense of the term, is not possible, while you urge intercultural dialogue that develops the cultural consequences of the religious option which lies beneath [a given culture]. While a true dialogue is not possible about this basic option without putting one’s own faith into parentheses, it’s important, in public exchange, to explore the cultural consequences of these religious options. Here, dialogue and mutual correction and enrichment are both possible and necessary.

A better sound-bite would have been that the pope says “inter-religious dialogue no, intercultural dialogue yes.” But headlines started spinning it both ways right away, and those who wanted or were prone to be incensed or exasperated at the pope (the latter, like me), were.

But John Allen explained pretty well, that “this is not a judgment on whether religions should be talking to each other, but rather what they should be talking about. In the pope’s mind, the point of inter-faith exchange is not to seek a lowest-common-denominator shared theology, but rather to find ways that cultures shaped by strong religious commitments can nevertheless live in mutual respect…” This is consistent with the approach to inter-faith relations Benedict has taken since his election to the papacy. By naming Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran as President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, for example, "Benedict opted for a professional diplomat over a theologian––the idea being that he wanted to reorient inter-faith exchange away from speculative theology, and towards more concrete questions of co-existence and cooperation.”

Then John Allen, as many others, goes on to explain how the pope actually is exploring inter-religious dialogue, in his own way, especially with Islam and between Islam and Judaism; and you could easily see this as mainly addressed to Muslims. But he doesn’t understand this dialogue with Islam in terms of theological exploration: how the Qur’an, for example, might inform new approaches to Christology. “Rather, he’s focused on more practical questions, above all what the Vatican calls ‘reciprocity.’ The question is, if Islamic immigrants in the West can claim the protection of the rule of law and of religious freedom, shouldn’t religious minorities in majority Islamic states get the same deal? The equal-and-opposite form of that question in the West, especially Europe, is how Western societies can express respect for religious diversity without cutting themselves off from their Christian roots.”

That said, I have to agree with Allen that it’s still a perfectly fair question to ask whether the pope might find a less ambivalent way of making his point––one that’s not demoralizing for the church’s experts on inter-religious dialogue, and that doesn’t send the wrong signal to the outside world about the church’s commitment to good working relationships with other religions!? Because he certainly seems to be contradicting Vatican II, the Pontifical Council on Inter-religious Dialogue and its pronouncements, and some of his own writings. That’s what I might say, with all due respect, in an open letter to the Holy Father. I might say something even stronger, again––and I mean it––, with all due respect: Do you not realize that people don’t understand the philosophical nuances of your pronouncements and arguments, such as the ill-fated Regensburg address. They (we) hear one-liners, and we understand gestures and attitudes. How much more eloquent was that simple photo of John Paul in Assisi with all the other leaders.

At this point I feel like it’s important to be in dialogue with my own tradition too, and I want to see the positive in this. I would say that one good point in this is that he is saying, for example, to Muslims that even if we can’t agree on theological differences, we still need to talk about the cultural consequences of our beliefs. In the back of everyone’s mind, of course, is the violence in the name of religion. He says, “… a true dialogue is not possible without putting one's own faith in parentheses.” I actually think this could be taken as a positive statement. Maybe he means we actually do have to put our faith in parentheses for a moment and simply look at the cultural consequences of our religious decisions. This could apply to America just as well and our decision to invade Iraq, which some high placed Vatican officials were saying at the time was based too much on George Bush’s Calivnism. It also could apply to Israel’s Zionist movements, no?

Another hidden gem here that will perhaps get missed (as in the Regensburg address) is that in the rest of the letter, which few will probably read, he praises the author, Pera, for his defense of liberalism as the basis of human rights, only saying that it has lost (as Bruno might say) it’s metaphysical base, i.e., it’s Christianity. Hence the importance of Europe staying true to its Christian roots. That could easily be seen as a shot at America too, albeit a genteel one.

I just still don’t understand this insistence that no other dialogue is possible, is it at a theological level? Is it because Jews will never believe that Jesus is the Messiah and Muslims will never not believe that they surpass Judaism and Christianity? Or, if it’s true that he doesn’t understand dialogue with Islam in terms of theological exploration, i.e., how the Qur’an, for example, might inform new approaches to Christology, does this mean that we have nothing to learn from any other tradition either––say Hinduism or Buddhism––about God’s self-revelation that we feel is complete in and of itself and interpreted adequately already by our Greek philosophy? Is this a justification for the suspicion of the Asian theologians such as Peter Phan? This would obviously negate the work of my heroes and role models.

On the other hand, the pope himself said in his talk on Pseudo-Dionysius this past year, which I quoted at length in my own paper, that Dionysius the Areopagite, for instance, has a new relevance today: just as in his own day he was a mediator between the spirit of Greek philosophy and the Gospel, today he could be “a great mediator in the modern dialogue between Christianity and the mystical theologies of Asia," because there is “a similarity between the thought of the Areopagite and that of the Asian religions.” But, here he says we must understand “that dialogue does not accept superficiality.”

Precisely when one enters into the depths of the encounter with Christ, an ample space for dialogue also opens. When one finds the light of truth, one realizes that it is a light for everyone; polemics disappear and it is possible to understand one another, or at least, speak to one another, draw closer together. The path of dialogue consists precisely in being close to God in Christ, in the depths of the encounter with him, in the experience of the truth, which opens us to the light and helps us to go out to meet others––the light of truth, the light of love. In the end, [Dionysius] tells us: Take the path of the experience, of the humble experience of faith, every day. Then, the heart is made big and can see and also illuminate reason so that it sees the beauty of God.

In some way this is not far from our teaching about Universal Wisdom, that perhaps the only level at which we can dialogue is at the mystical level, that place beyond words, dogmas and doctrines, and forms and rituals, a level at which we will not find much agreement.

Someone sent me this quote from John O’Donohue’s book, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, which he said connects nicely with the pope’s own words on experience, that may be a good challenge to our servant/leaders: “We grow increasingly deaf to the worn platitudes of staid authority. Their forced, didactic tones no longer reach our need. Now we want the experience itself, not the analysis or the membership card to some new syndrome.” He also suggested that we go back to Raimundo Panikkar’s insights “in both Christophany where he speaks frankly of the uselessness of Christology and every other conceptual approach to inter-religious dialogue (shades of Abhishiktananda!), and his Intra-religious Dialogue, where he understands the dialogue as ‘religious ritual’ in which all are participants." In a weird sort of way he does seem to be speaking much the same language as the pope.

I guess that's it––the integrity of our lives and our personal spiritual paths. There are some things that we will never have the depth to understand without that, and there is also an authority that comes only from that depth. Otherwise we are just part of the "worn platitudes." But, of course, we can't forget those "well-worn paths between huts" too, the charismatic relationships, the friendships between us all that are really the building blocks for everything.