Helligandskirken!

There are hundreds of thousands of worlds below and above ours,
and scholars grow weary of seeking for God's bounds.
The Vedas proclaim with one voice that God is boundless.
The Semitic books mention eighteen hundred worlds;
but the Reality behind all is the One Principle.
(Sikh Morning Prayer)

Wednesday 11 November, 2009

Yesterday was a particularly interesting encounter and event that I had been looking forward to. It took place at the Helligandskirken, Holy Ghost Church. Though not the cathedral, it is probably the best known Lutheran church in Copenhagen. It was formerly, before the Reformation, the home of a religious order that did hospital work, and was also the place where the famous Danish philosopher Soren Keirkegaard was baptised. (It was hardly a "leap of faith" at the time; he was baptised as an infant.) The church complex went on and on, room after room after hall and corridor and chapel.

There we met Rev Dr Shanta Premavardhana, who is the head of the dialogue department for the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Dr Shanta is a very erudite man, originally from Sri Lanka, as he says, a minority Baptist growing up among Buddhists and Hindus. That is what led him to have a passion for dialogue, and in his present position he travels all over the world engaging in interfaith dialogue and fostering programs where there is tension. Before we met he and the others were discussing a new initiative in Pakistan, for instance, where tensions are so high between Christians and Muslims. After doing his graduate work in Hinduism and Buddhism at Northwestern University in Chicago, Dr Shanta stayed on there as a pastor in Hyde Park, living about a block away from the Obamas, whom he knew. He told a story of then State Senator Obama being late for a community organizing meeting that Dr Shanta had organized. He had to call Senator Obama and scold him for being late (he had actually forgotten the meeting). He loves telling folks how he had to scold the President of the United States. He also said that they all said about Barack Obama that one day he was going to be President. He knew the infamous Reverend Wright too, and scolded Mr Obama again because he had to drive right by Dr Shanta's church on his way to Rev Wright's. "You should go to church in your own neighborhood!" he said.

It was just co-incidental that Dr Shanta was in town at the same time I was, and Agnete had the idea that we should do some kind of presentation together. We all met upstairs in one of the many meeting rooms at Helligandskirken and put together a rough outline of what we might do, that he would tell stories about his encounters with various religious groups and I would sing songs from the various traditions, but we would leave it a bit to improvisation. At the event itself we actually did pretty much as planned with little deviation from the order we had picked. He told a Jewish story about the importance of... stories! I explained and sang "Lead Me From Death into Life." He talked about the Bhagavad Gita and then I sang "The Great Mother" from the Tao te Ching. He talked about images of God as mother and I sang "When Israel Was a Child." He talked about God as merciful and the misuse of religion to beat people up, and I sang "Bismillah." He talked about the brahmaviharas of the Buddhism, accenting especially compassion and loving-kindess, and I sang, of course, "Compassionate and Wise" to end. After we finished that part we took a short break before reconvening to field some questions, great questions, I might add, and a lively discussion. There were at least two theologians in the crowd. It was very well received and folks seemed to really enjoy the interaction between the two of us. We both agreed that this would be a great way to spread the message of the World Council of Churches.

Pastor Leif had taken us all across the street for dinner before the event. It was an unexpected delight: a Moroccan restaurant owned and operated by a gentleman named Suhail who was a friend of Leif's. I won't begin to describe the menu but it was authentic Moroccan cuisine with its incredible mix of spices and flowers. Anyway, apparently Suhail was intrigued by what we were up to because I noticed him slip in the room toward the end of the first part, and we had a great conversation about many things during the break. This is the 21st century, and if proof were needed of globalization, here was an Indian Persian man, running a Moroccan restaurant in Denmark. Agnete is supposed to take me sight-seeing on Saturday and Suhail is going to try to join us for some of the day, but for sure invited us to come for dinner again that night.

Tomorrow morning I am going to the mothership of Danmission for the first time, to lead a prayer service and then meeting with the staff in a meeting billed as "seeing the beauty of the religious other and dealing with difficult theological questions." Agnete is quite invested in this particular encounter, to share me with her co-workers and shed some light for them on what it is she does by meeting someone else who does it in his own context. And then I get on a train for a three hour trip to the city of Aarhus where I have a concert tomorrow night and some other work the next day before returning here to Copenhagen on Friday

sewing ourselves together

Our faith is the needle by which we draw the thread of charity through our neighbor's soul and our own soul and sew ourselves together.
(Thomas Merton)

Tuesday, 10 November

These past two days I have had the luxury of the morning to myself. There is a series of four man-made lakes just a block away from the house where I am staying, with a nice bike and running path around them that I am told is 7 kilometres. That's almost 5 miles, so a perfect morning run, crossing over some major streets crowded with morning pedestrians and cyclists on their way to work and school, not to mention cars. (As I finish I go to a bakery around the corner for a chocolate cinnamon bun and a caffe americano, which seems appropriate.) But, speaking of cars, for a large major European city, I've noticed that there are relatively few cars here in Copenhagen. I'm told that is because there is a high tax on cars--300%--to discourage private ownership and encourage public and other alternative means of transportation. I read that 80% of people here bicycle to work each day, for instance. This may be one of the reasons that Denmark is considered one of the eco-friendliest countries in the world, with clean air and water, and why they were chosen to host the international summit on global warming this month.

Did you ever notice how if you want to disparage somebody in public in America accuse them of being either gay, a socialist or a Muslim? (Wouldn't it be hard to be all three?) It's as if somehow simply being one of those three implied that one is "objectively morally disordered," to borrow a phrase, or at least un-American. I'm mainly thinking here of "socialist," since I have heard that one getting bandied around so much this past year in the maddening debate over health care. I've never thought about it much before, but it is one of those assumptions, that socialism is somehow bad and doesn't go with being an American Christian. And yet the past two popes have been pretty harsh in their criticism of capitalism (and indeed it is not an intrinsically moral eocnomic system), and the bishops of the US were so "leftist" in their pastoral letter "Economic Justice for All" that William F Buckley, ardent traditionalist Catholic that he was, felt forced to write the headline "Mater, Si; Magister, No" in response to it--"Mother, yes; teacher, no." I'm thinking of that for two reasons. Here in Denmark they have had socialized medicine for years, and are quite proud of it, and they are a more overtly Christian nation than the USA. (As a matter of fact the Lutheran church is a state church here.) And the other reason I am thinking of this socialist epitath is that suddenly the Roman Catholic bishops' conference of America has shown a little influence in the political realm, and this time in a way that is sure not to please the social conservatives. In forcing the caveat about no public funds for abortions, they also proclaimed that they consider universal health care a right, and even urge health benefits for illegal aliens. What do you make of that? The Gospel is a burr under the saddle of every social system, and has values that transcend political expediency and nationalism. We need to be careful when we talk about preserving our "American way of life."

I had my first small event yesterday afternoon. It was at a large imposing convent-like building called the Diakonissestiftelsen. It is originally the headquarters of a womens' religious order of sorts--the diakonisse, literally "women deacons"--but also houses a loose collective of progressive social movemetns and organizations more or less religious in character. Our main contact there was Lars Mollerup who works for an organization called Areopagus. Originally Areopagus was Christian missionary group mainly concerned with Buddhists and Taoists in China and Hong Kong. They early on associated the Chinese notion of "tao" with the Greek Christian "logos." Lars gathered a group of other folks from the building that are working in the field of dialogue and spirituality. I always need to begin by asking my host what exacatly it is that they want me to do. The thing that they seem to be the most fascinated with is that I set texts from different traditions to music and sing them. So that became the bulk of my presentaiton for them, giving them some examples of songs I've written and some of the explanation behind them. They were indeed very interested. Again my new piece "Bismillah" was especially a big hit. That is the piece I wrote using the phrase "bismillah ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim" as a refrain, the phrase that opens up every surah of the Qur'an, and then worte verses based on St Francis of Assisi's Prasies of God, which are said to have been inspired by the 99 beautiful names of God that St Francis learned of from his time with the sultan al-Malik. It worked for us at the Tent of Abraham gaterhing this year (which happened to fall on the feast of St Francis) and also for the 25th anniversary of Mount RIenaeus Franciscan retreat center, for which occasion I had written it. The woman who especially liked it here asked to photocopy the music so that she could use it for gatherings of Jews, Christians and Muslims. What Lars mentioned was that the beauty of music is that it doesn't reside at the intellectual level. I had mentioned that I got the idea from the practice of lectio divina which Fr Bede expanded to include the meditating scriptures of other traditions. And indeed, in lectio divina we don't read scripture with a commentary and Greek lexicon at our side; we read scirpture as a personal encounter with the Word, a love letter from the Beloved.

The main theme that I am carrying with me these days as an explanation of my own work comes from two sources other than Fr Bede, Raimundo Panikkar and Thomas Keating. Panikkar spekas of "dialogic dialogue." That sounds like a meaningless tautology at first, but it means a conversation with those who think differently, the primary purpose of which is for me to learn from the other, for me to cross over into the world of the other and back again. In this crossing over we don't abandon our own tradition; rather, our own tradition is deepened and expanded. Teilhard writes about how these creative encounters give birth to complexified consciousness; Ilia Delio says that in this process "something new is created at the level of human and religious consciousness." What Thomas Keating adds to this is that in the light of the historcial developement of global consciousness that is now emerging, the first duty of the world's religions in our time may not be to propogate ourselves so much as to create communion. The other world religions must first of all be considered "our brothers and sisters, greatly loved by God," with something to contribute to us and the world at large. In other words, whereas Agnete keeps telling me about folks who are forever contrasting dialogue with evangelization, I keep saying this is a false dilemna. Dialogue in this day and age is evangelization, and evangelization is dialogue. Fr Thomas says, "Perhaps for the first time in history we could manifest that all of the human family are the children of God, and that each religion has its part to play in revealing the true God, and that above all it is God's will that we live together in peace."

jesus' heart

The organization of the church, with its doctrines and rituals, has no other purpose than to create a community of love, to unite all in the eternal Ground of being, which is present in the heart of every
person. This is the criterion which the church is to be judged, not by the forms of its doctrine of ritual, but by the reality off the love which it manifests.
(Bede Griffiths, Return to the Center)

I'm in Copenhagen, just beginning a short two-weeks of work here in Europe. Almost three years ago, I had met and done some work for a group of folks from Denmark who were associated with Danmission, a Lutheran missionary group. They are the main benefactors of our friend JP's work in TIruvanamalai in South India, especially his Quo Vadis interfaith center, for whom I did a couple of wonderful concerts and other events. One of the Dane's who was there at that same time was Agnete Holm. She works full time for Danmission as the head of the interfaith dialogue section. As part her job she spends considerable amount of time in India, Syria and Lebanon. We had a number of very good discusisons during that time we were together in India, and she consequently asked me to come to Denmark at some point. And so, after long prepartion, here I am. After this I will go to England where I will spend some time with the other composers with whom I have worked on the Psallite project for Liturgical Press for some years, since two of the composers live there in England and whenever I get "across the Pond" we try to meet there instead of them always having to come to us. That second half of the trip may not be worth writing about, but this week looks to be fascinating, even aside from simply having an experience of a new country.

I am staying at Jesu Hjerte Kirke, a Jesuit parish here in central Copenhagen. That name is usually translated into English as "Sacred Heart," but literally it means "Jesus' Heart." I like that better somehow. I am staying in the very large residence that was built to house the many Jesuits who were stationed here at one time manning both the parish and the non-defunct boys' school next door. At present there are only two Jesuits here, one who is the former bishop of Denmark (there are so few Catholics that the whole country is one diocese) and the other is the current rector, a German Jesuit named Gerhard Sanders. The latter has been here in Copenhagen, in this same house, for 40 years now in various capacities. There also is a Dutch priest here who is serving as the associate pastor, as well as an Indian priest from Kerala who is here on behalf of the Carmelite order to investiage opening a women's monastery here in Copenhagen, and an ex-Lutheran pastor named Wilhelm, who was a missionary in Tonga for years but after converting to Catholicism has not found a permanent place in the Catholic church again, and so lives here, helping out where he can. So, it's quite an interesting mix, throwing in a wandering musician monk from America into the mix. It's a very comfortable old house and I think I will enjoy my generous hours of down time here.

It was cold and dark when I arrived yesterday, and today that is supplemented by rain, too. I wandered around a bit in a jet-lagged daze yesterday; having gotten in pretty early in the morning, I wanted to negotiate as much of the day as possible awake so that I could get right into the time zone. There was Mass at 10. Catholics are about .08 per cent of the population here in Denmark--less than Muslims. The liturgy was sparsely attended and an interesting blend of Danish and Latin. There was a choir singing all the major parts of the Mass in Gregorian chant, with limited participation on the part of the assembly. The choir was quite brassy, their execution of the Gregorian chant more aggressive and brisk than usual. I don't mean any of those descriptors as criticism--I actually enjoyed their style. The congregation was an interesting mix, reflecting the population of the city itself, I assume. There was a good handful of Africans, and many Asian faces as well. And everyone seems to speak English, many of them as good as a native speaker. When I first heard Agnete speak I simly couldn't figure out what English speaking country she was from her accent was so good and her vocabulary to ample. I am assured that that will be the case for all the groups for whom I will be presenting.

Agnete has told me a number of times already that the main reason she brought me here is for inspiration, both for her and for others who work in interfaith dialogue. She and they often feel isolated from and unsupported by other church members, not so much out of negativity or neglect as by incomprehension. I was honored that she asked me, but wondered a bit over these past weeks as I was preparing for this trip and my work here, if I was "qualified" enough to speak to them about interfaith issues. But I realized along the way that folks don't necessarily call upon us because of our credentials, nor for the facts and figures that we have at our command, and none of those things is what they really want us to share with them anyway. They want us. They call upon us because they want us to share with them what we are doing with our lives, because they see someting in us that resonates with something in them. So I don't need to try to be more of an "expert in my field" than I am, I need to merely tell my stories, and share my experiences and how what I have learned has uniquely changed and effected me. And of course, in the course of that sharing I will be receiving as well, their insights and reflections and wisdom, mutually building each other up, learning and teaching.

When I am home in California, life is a little more mundane--the woods, the gym, yoga class, practice guitar, lots of whole grains--not that much to write about. But I've been gently nudged a number of times these past few weeks about my having neglected my blog for so long, so I am using this trip as an occasion to return to it.

innocent as children

For those who have completed the journey,
for those who are sorrowless,
for those who are wholly free from everything,
for those who have destroyed all ties,
the fever of passion exists not.

Like the earth,
a balanced and well-conducted person is not resentful;
like a pool unsullied by mud are they;
to such a one life’s wanderings are no more.

Calm are their minds,
calm is their speech,
calm are their actions
who, rightly knowing,
are wholly freed, perfectly peaceful, and equipoised.

(Dhammapada)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the cross as a universal symbol, with its vertical and horizontal axes. The vertical axis is rooted deep in the earth and stretches up into the heaven––our relationship with Absolute Reality, with God. And the horizontal axis, the cross beam, if you will, is about our relationship to one another. From as far back as the Jewish revelation, these things have always gone together, as if breathing in and breathing out. So the first three of the Ten Commandments are about our relation to God, for example, and the last seven are about our relations to one another. In Jesus we find the perfect wedding of these energies, an intense experience of God’s immediacy perfectly wedded to a sense of ethical responsibility. And so Jesus can teach that the greatest commandment is really two––love of God and loving neighbor as our self. What both of these axes have in common is that they each call for a kind of dying.

On the vertical plane, in this gospel reading that we heard from Mark today (Mk 9:3037), Jesus at this point is starting to alienate some of his own followers because they can’t seem to understand just how hard this road is really going to be. They did not understand, Mark says, the saying that “he would be handed over and killed.” Last week we heard about poor Peter, just after he had been called the Rock, being called a Satan because he is trying to talk Jesus out of the way of the cross. He didn’t see, as we find it hard to accept, that the way of freedom goes through the way of death, the way of exultation goes through the way of humiliation, the way to enlightenment goes through the way of darkness, in little ways and great. No matter what spiritual path we are on, if it is an authentic one, we are going to run into this harsh truth that in our path toward union with God, the way to our real self is the death of the self we think we are, that little self with which we usually identify and cling to so tenaciously. It is only then that we can have what Paul calls “the mind of Christ,” and the new consciousness––which is resurrection consciousness––the sure knowledge that ultimately life is not subject to death and decay because there is a higher life possible beyond the possibilities that nature and history seem to present to us.

The implication concerning our relations to the world––the horizontal axis––is just this: this experience of the immediacy of God becomes in us energy, a power. It makes us wise and compassionate, and makes us want to stand up for “the way of heaven.” But to do that we are going to have to put our life on the line; we are going to be swimming upstream against a world that doesn’t like to have its status quo challenged. There’s an old piece of conventional wisdom that whenever you’re doing something good, something bad is going to happen to try to prevent it. Evil does not go down easily. There really is a battle of dark forces versus light forces at work in the psychic realm and in the anima mundi––the soul of the world, though evil does not always appear as we might expect it would. There’s also another reason why bad things seem to crop up when good is starting to happen. And that other reason is us: there’s something in the human condition that hates to be called out of its mediocrity and complacency. We’re given a hint of that today in the reading from the book of Wisdom. “Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings…” (This reading is used again late in Lent leading up to the remembrance of Jesus’ passion and death, by the way.)

I think a good example of what we are going to face in our relations with the world––the horizontal axis––are the polemics and political polarization in this country right now, especially centered around the maddening debate about health care reform. I promise you, I don’t want to “preach politics from the pulpit.” As far as I am concerned, yes, my sympathies are with the left, but there are reasoned and convincing arguments, and reasonable plans from both sides. Everybody agrees that something has to be done. As the president keeps saying, we agree on about 80% of it. That’s the “good.” But the good is being undermined and attacked by the vitriol that is spewing out of peoples’ mouths and over the airwaves, and the ad hominem attacks by the left and the right, attacking peoples’ character and motives. I made the mistake of listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio while I was in South Dakota last week. I was shocked. I equally grimaced when President Bush was being slandered and hung in effigy here in Santa Cruz in 2003 and 2004, but I don’t recall anything as mucky as this coming from the left. I realize this is politics, and the Rush Limbaugh is show biz, but politics and show biz are the “way of the world,” and this should be absolutely unacceptable to those who are spiritual. That’s the insidious power of evil.

My own position, informed by Catholic social teaching, is simple: I want to stand up for the dignity of all life, and I want to stand on the side of the poor. That’s been the consistent teaching of the church. Something in that position is going to irritate both the left and the right. But I still have to stand up for it as “wisdom from above.” But, as Saint James reminds us in the reading we heard from him today, this wisdom from above is “pure, peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity.” In other words, I need to stand on that truth not as a self-righteous conquering warrior; I stand on that truth as “the last of all,” as the “servant of all,” as Jesus says in the Gospel today, “pure, peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity,” as James reminds us, because, he goes on to say, “the fruit of righteousness” will only be sown in peace if we cultivate peace.

I am reminded of the first and the last beatitudes as well: in relation to God, blest are the poor in spirit; in relation to the world, blessed are those who suffer for righteousness. And our righteousness, as hard as it is, is speaking the truth, but speaking that truth in love. It somehow is only true when it is spoken in love, spoken peaceably, gently, mercifully, respectfully.

I found it interesting that at the end of gospel reading we also hear about Jesus bringing a child in their midst. I think the child symbolizes here a certain innocence, the naiveté of someone who still believes that being pure, peaceable, gentle, compliant and merciful will win the day; the simplicity of someone who still believes that that any violence done in thought, word or deed will somehow not bring us the victory for which we ultimately long. As Jesus taught in the Gospel of Matthew, we are the children sent out like sheep in the midst of wolves. We’ve shown that we can be as “wise as serpents.” Now it’s time to be as “innocent as doves” (Mt 10:16), even better, as innocent as children.

nothing from the outside

Why wash your hands and mouth?
Why chant with a mouth full of fraud?
Kabir says, Search in the heart, in the heart alone.

I’ve been down at New Camaldoli for the last two and a half weeks, first on retreat with the brothers, then just hanging out––reading, hiking, eating well, enjoying the brothers’ company and the communal prayer, getting kind of re-charged from the months before and prepped for the months ahead, touching base with the “Mother Ship.” My time there ended with me giving a three-day retreat on the life and teachings of Fr. Bede and Abhishiktananda. Besides the four conferences and showing the biographical films, I was asked to preside and preach for Sunday Mass as well, as an end of the retreat and my time there

It was the Gospel from Mark 7, where Jesus and his disciples are being criticized for not purifying themselves before they ate. And Jesus says, “Nothing that enters one from the outside can defile that person; but the things that come from within are what defile.” It really turns things around for anyone who thinks he or she can climb to heaven merely by the ladder of religious observance, to hear Jesus say that. It was especially shocking for the Jews of Jesus’ times since so many things were forbidden or restricted by the Law. But Jesus, as always, is pointing out that the real issue is something deeper. The practice of ablutions or of abstaining from certain foods, like the practice of fasting or any other spiritual practice, is really about something deeper. What is that something deeper?

Maybe this one other example will give us a first hint, still in the realm of food. I had a friend who was struggling with her weight, but even more than that she knew she was struggling with compulsive over-eating. She had started working a 12-step program around her eating issues, and she said to her sponsor how she was going to feel so good when she was skinny. And her sponsor said to her, “This isn’t about being skinny. This is about freedom.” It wasn’t what was going into her that was the real problem; it was what was coming out of her––the craving, the longing, the grasping. It’s about looking for something outside of us to make us feel good inside of us.

Don’t think advertisers don’t know this, how to exploit our natural drives for sustenance, for procreation, for building. We’ve been reading a lot lately about what scientists are calling “conditioned hyper-eating,” how food companies have made an insidious science out of this. They even boast of knowing how to set up the craving in us and even tap into the addictive cycle, tap into natural pleasures and turn them into traps. So, yes, again, it’s about freedom. We could be tempted into simply diving into Joseph Campbell’s injunction to “follow your bliss” or some kind of nebulous freedom of the children of God. But I must say, from my experience it takes us quite a while actually to find that authentic bliss, just as it takes us a long time to shake off the shackles that bind us and find that freedom. How can you tell someone who is addicted to alcohol, drugs, or to fat and sugar, or caffeine or nicotine, or shopping or pornography, to follow their bliss? Our bliss, like our real self, is hidden under our compulsions, under what Evagrius calls our “passions,” the disordered drives, the accumulated layers of conditioning and habit.

There is a reading from the Katha Upanishad that Abhishiktananda and especially Fr. Bede quoted countless times, and I’d like to bring it up in this context too.

The Self-Existent One pierced the senses
and therefore we see outer things and not the inner Self.
Rare discriminating people who desire immortality
turn their eyes away and see the indwelling Self.

The Sanskrit words used here are very interesting: the word which is translated here as “pierced”––vyatrnat––actually means more like “destroyed” or “killed” or at least “injured”: the Self-Existent One (that is, God) destroyed or killed or at least injured the senses; and so we look outside of ourselves and do not see… what? The antar-atman––the inner atman, what St. Paul or St. Peter might refer to as our “spirit” or “the inner person.”

A Yoga teacher I studied with in India used a very evocative image once. He said, “We are always eating the world, even with our eyes and our noses; we are grasping and grabbing and hauling things into ourselves. We live outside of ourselves, thinking that something from the outside is going to make us happy.” And as he said that, I thought of the climax of Augustine’s Confessions, his own conversion experience, when he says to God, “You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you… On entering into myself I saw, as it were with the eye of the soul, what was beyond the eye of the soul, beyond my spirit: your immutable light.” God is within us; we are on the outside!

This is where healthy approach to asceticism and the spiritual life begins. (We are also of course in the brackish waters of the age-old dialectic between faith and works here––which the letter to James addresses head on––but healthy asceticism it seems to me is our co-operating with the movements of grace. This is what comes out of us––our response to that grace.) A first movement is somehow simply stripping away the accumulated layers that are not really us, which of course is based on a basic optimism, a belief that there’s something good about us, ¬¬created, as we are, in the image and likeness of God, and that there’s something good inside of us, so that even our “injured senses” can be conduits of the divine, and even if our nature is “fallen,” grace can and will and does build on it. As the Amritabindu Upanishad teaches,

Driven by the senses the mind becomes impure;
but when the senses are under control, the mind becomes pure.
Driven by the senses we become bound;
but with the senses mastered, we become free.

Now, by under “control” and “mastered” we don’t mean suppressed, oppressed or repressed. We mean brought into right relationship; we mean that they sacrifice their autonomy to the deepest part of us, where the Law of God is written on our hearts, the deepest part of us that, as Paul says in Romans 7, already agrees with the Law of God.

St. James teaches famously that everything we have––“every worthwhile gift, every genuine benefit––comes from above,” that is, it’s a gift; it’s all grace. But then he goes on to say that if all we do is listen to the Word that has been implanted in us without acting on that word, “we are deceiving yourselves.” So I wonder if we could also say that not only does nothing outside of us make us impure, but nothing outside of us is going to make us holy either. It’s not just the gift; it’s the affect that that gift has on us; it is how we let it transform us; it’s how we co-operate with grace; it’s how we let that become a power in our lives that makes the difference, as James adds, it’s how we “welcome that Word”––in other words, it’s what comes out of us.

A final movement, those glorious words of Moses we also heard: “What great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God, is to us whenever we call upon him? Or what great nation has statutes and decrees that are as just as this whole law which I am setting before you today?” This has to be heard also in the context again of St. James. How close? Implanted in us, that’s how close. In this context, it’s hard not to remember St. Paul quoting Deuteronomy 30 in this regard in the letter to the Romans: The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart; or Jeremiah prophesying that the days are coming when God would make a new covenant––I will write in on their hearts. On the one hand both Paul and James use this teaching to call people to faith in Jesus––if you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe with your heart that God raised him from the dead. On the other hand, Paul, similarly to James, argues that just receiving the Law will not save anyone. That’s why he can say that when unbelievers––those who do not declare with their mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe with their hearts that God raised him from the dead––do what is written in the Law, they show that the Law is written on the heart. (This, by the way, becomes the basis of the Catholic teaching on natural law.)

This also becomes in some way the foundation of the teaching of Vatican II in Nostra Aetate, the document on dealing with non-Christian religions, that the “Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in other religions”; and why we have “a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, the precepts and the doctrines which, although differing in many ways from our own teaching, nevertheless often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all people.” This is why the Church, urges us to “enter with prudence and charity into discussion and collaboration with members of other religions;” while witnessing to our own faith and way of life, we “acknowledge, preserve and [even] encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non-Christians…”

It’s this basic optimism about the human race that gives rise to such folks as Abhishiktananda and Bede Griffiths. I’m so happy to even be an acolyte in this great procession, to be part of this optimistic lineage.

creative encounters

It is generally agreed that no religious movement can come into being or develop without having contact with other established faiths or denominations which are bound to leave their impress upon the new creation of thought and emotion.
(A.J. Arberry, from Sufism; An Account of the Mystics of Islam)

I’m on retreat now with my brother monks at New Camaldoli. (If I post this I will be being slightly disobedient: the prior has asked us to not use the computer much, if at all, during retreat.) Besides getting renewed and refreshed in the extra silence and solitude that we provide each other during retreat time, and the excellent conferences given by a holy old monk from France, Père Ghislain, it has been a really good time of reflection for me about the work of this past year, and this summer especially. This summer has been a season of creative encounters, even more than usual.

It started with me attending the Four Winds meeting with our prior Raniero way out in Carmel Valley in mid-June. The Hermitage has for some 17 years now belonged to this council along with the Window to the West center of the Esselen tribe, Esalen Institute, and Tassajara Zen Mountain monastery. What unites these centers is the Ventana Wilderness, and the group comes together four times a year––at the solstices and equinoxes––to discuss advocacy issues for the wilderness as well as to share spiritual practice. I’d forgotten that that was my first instance of actual inter-faith encounters, doing sweat lodge with Little Bear and going at least once a year to Tassajara. It has been seven years since I have been involved, since I moved to Santa Cruz, but I finally made it a point to be at the last two. For me, the highlight of this one was again a sweat lodge. Some of them in the past have been brutal (one of our monks actually had blisters on his ears and shoulders after one some years ago); this one was only intense. I enjoyed it immensely, and especially enjoyed being around the energy of the people of the Esselen tribe. What I carried away from the day with me the most was this: I always try to teach about the importance of re-incarnating the spiritual life, how important it is that the body be involved in the spiritual life––sariram khalu dharma sadhana!––and I do make some mention of our relationship to the earth as well, but not nearly enough. I realized during the sweat lodge this time that we actually cannot really understand the body if we don’t understand the earth, the ground from which it comes. That taught me something valuable and left me hungry for more.

Then Br. David Steindl-Rast and I did another event for Boulder Integral Life, which was well attended and well received, and I thought we were better prepared than last year as well. Besides the marvelous hospitality of Nomali, Jeff and Ross, at the end of that time we got another nice long visit with Ken Wilber at his home in Denver. (A snippet of our visit is on YouTube, though it’s all of Ken speaking. I was reminded of Ronald Reagan’s visit with the Pope. Afterward he said, “It was a good visit. We exchanged views. And his views were, obviously, better than mine.” There is also one video of me singing a song from the concert the first night of the conference.)

After that I was for the better part of a week in Chicago. Actually I say Chicago but really I was in an air-conditioned bubble near O’Hare Airport, at a pastoral musicians’ convention. It was the polar opposite of the sweat lodge. I have a lot of friends there, and it is as always great to see them, but I have a hard time warming up to the environment of events such as that, so large and electrified, and so detached from earth. From there I scooted along the south shore of Lake Michagan over to Notre Dame and did a concert in a nice venue for the third year in a row called ND Vision, for high school students.

Then David and I did a weekend at Esalen, pretty much the same thing we did in Boulder but more relaxed. I think it went really well. I’ve been stepping out more and more, daring to talk about the universals of the spiritual life. This workshop was not designed for Christians but was specifically called “The Universal Call to Contemplation.” Though we never asked anyone’s affiliation (as is my want) I know for a fact that we had folks from many different paths, from yogis to Iranians Jews. There was at least one person, a Catholic, who did not like me using this approach, and we had a couple of very difficult exchanges about it. It is work I take very seriously and work that has to be done very carefully, but it is definitely the work I want to do, to find our common ground, to explore the universals. Overall, though I’ve not seen the official evaluations, folks were well pleased and I was too.

With some friends I attended the Chautaqua gathering up at Mount Madonna in mid-July. I may not do it justice in describing it, but it is a gathering that aims at exploring new models of education through re-negotiating the social contract of the classroom. It is led by Ward (SN) Mailliard, educator-entrepeneur of Mount Madonna School, with the legendary anthropologist Angeles Arien, and the well-known consultant (how do you describe him?) Peter Bloch, the author of “The Answer to How is Yes.” I enjoyed it a lot, especially because many of the attendees were my friends who had spoken highly of the gathering and I was happy to learn what is “working” them.

Then I led another silent retreat at San Damiano, Danville, this one definitely focused more for Catholics or other Christians, but still from the universal perspective. And then I was able to slip away for an overnight, at their invitation, to Tassajara. It was the first time I had been there in seven years as well, and I was so happy to be there. I had a couple of good conversations with the regulars and summer workers, I did a musical performance for guests and student workers I the afternoon, I had a couple of good sits in the zen-do, and of course relished the incredible cuisine. The highlight of the time though was spending the morning hiking and talking (and playing blues guitar––go figger!) with a Japanese Zen monk. His English was rudimentary but he and we did okay. I’ve been kind of fixed on Dogen-zenji lately, so it was good to talk to someone close to the source. He is also, at least up ‘til now, a celibate monk. The Japanese Zen tradition for the most part has married monks and priests. (There is a long conversation about the difference between monk and priest, and vows and ordination that I have had a number of times, but it’s too subtle for here and now…) Anyway, this does make him a but unique, dedicated mainly to meditation––not merely training in the monastery so that he can go back to a village temple and perform weddings and funerals; he, like Sunryu Suzuki, wants to teach people za-zen. It is always a surprise to Americans to find out that za-zen is more a phenomenon here than there. And so, he has been loving “American za-zen!”

Last big thing was a talk I did for the Pacifica Institute. This is a Turkish Muslim group dedicated to promoting inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue. I first met some of the folks from this group at our Tent of Abraham gathering last Fall, and they subsequently invited me to come and speak to them about my own faith journey, monastic life, and my experience of and interaction with Islam in my travels. I thought about this talk for months but, oddly for me, I wasn’t sure if I would even write anything down. They had also asked me to sing some songs, so I thought I might improvise the whole thing, sing songs and tell stories. But Saturday morning before the talk that evening, I sat down and wrote for about two hours, borrowing the title from Bro. David’s book with Philip Kapleau, about “The Ground We Share.” And I was glad I did. Perhaps I’ll post the rest of the talk later, but for now I’m just gonna include here below my opening remarks, because they sort of sum up where I am at with this theme of universality. These remarks contain in them a little bit of Boulder, Esalen, the sweat lodge, Tassajara, and all the creative encounters of this summer.

* * *

My main influence has been Fr. Bede Griffiths who taught about what he called the Universal Call to Contemplation, which means that every person is called to share in the grace of the contemplative life, mystical union with God––not just “professional religious” such as monks and nuns. This Universal Call to Contemplation also means that at the heart and at the summit of all the world’s great religions there is a contemplative-mystical core. Here is how he put it in an interview for the video “The Human Search”: “…when we get beyond the multiplicity to unity, we find a common tradition, a common wisdom that we all share.”

In the scholarly world this is known as the perennial philosophy, but it is not a notion shared by everyone. Some rather think that we start out with a problem and our religions are our way of solving that problem, the problem of death, the problem of evil. But I prefer this approach, that we start out with an experience, and our religions, our faith traditions, are our way of understanding that experience and letting that experience transform our lives; then our faith traditions are our way of passing that experience on, articulating it through language, ritual, song, dance and art. As that experience starts to get expressed one person’s version of it looks very different from another’s, and that should be no surprise. For all of his teaching about the universal call, and the universal wisdom Bede wrote in River of Compassion:

The Buddhist nirvana and the Hindu moksha are not the same, nor are they the same as the Christian vision of God. So the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Muslim and the Christian are all experiencing the ultimate Reality but experiencing it in different ways through their own love and through their own traditions of faith and knowledge. There are obviously various degrees as well. There is a tendency to say that there are no differences anymore, but I do not think that is true.

And beyond that he added, beautifully:

In a sense, the experienced of the ultimate truth is different for each person, since each person is a unique image of God, a unique reflection of the one eternal light and love.

Now, that need not negate our efforts at understanding each other and finding common ground. Our sangha in Santa Cruz has as part of its mission statement that we aim “…to understand the experience of Ultimate Reality as found in all the world’s spiritual traditions.” In order to do that, I need to really try to enter into someone else’s experience of ultimate reality as much as I can. My friends know that there are a few words that really raise my hackles, and they are, “It’s all the same.” No. We have very different experiences and I want to respect those differences, understand them as legitimate expressions of an experience of the Divine, and even uphold them as someone else’s vehicle for union with God. That’s when the real work starts, finding “unity in diversity.” To use other words of Fr. Bede from Return to the Center:

I have to be a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Parsee, a Sikh, a Muslim, and a Jew, as well as a Christian, if I am to know the Truth and to find the point of reconciliation in all religion.

And so the journey to the center... The challenge for all of us, each of our religious traditions, is to re-discover the depth of our own tradition, the original inspiration. Fr. Bede said,

That is the hope for the future: that religions will discover their own depth. As long as they remain on their surface, they will always be divided in conflict. When they discover their depth, then we converge on the unity… (A)s you go deep into any religion, you converge on the center, and everything springs from that center and converges at that center...

I find this very exciting, because I have been convinced by thinkers greater, holier and wiser than I that we are entering into a new phase in the history of the planet. Without getting into it too deeply here, some call it the second axial period. Whereas the first axial period was marked by a birth of a sense of the individual spiritual path, individual ethical responsibility, the birth of the rational mind and self-consciousness, this new period will be and is already marked by a sense of global consciousness. We are now aware that every tribe, nation and religion in some way shares a common history, and that is making us realize that we belong to humanity as a whole and not just to our specific group, be it ethnic, social or religious.

Part of the challenge of this new consciousness in this new period of history is horizontal: cultures and religions (and they often go together) meet even on a surface level and enter into what Ewert Cousins calls “creative encounters.” But those creative encounters are not going to make of us one bland world religion; we borrow the phrase from the great paleontologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin––this convergence gives birth to “complexified collective consciousness.” That’s a mouthful, eh? What it means is that true union diversifies; our union, the convergence of our centers of consciousness gives birth to more creativity. At the same time, again borrowing from Teilhard, “everything that rises will converge,” that is, everything that is reaching for spirit will eventually meet.

From a vertical perspective (and this is why the cross is a universal, archetypal symbol), this new consciousness is not only communal and global––the horizontal axis, it is also ecological and cosmic. So it is also necessary for us, all cultures and religions, to plunge our roots deep into the earth in order to provide a stable and secure base for future development. This new global consciousness has to be organically ecological, supported by structures that ensure justice and peace. So at the same time, we also need to band together to “bring about a new integration of the spiritual and the material, of sacred energy and secular energy into a total global human energy.” (Ilia Deleo, Christ in Evolution, 28) Thus the need for dialogue, community, and relationship––“well-worn paths between huts”––with a growing awareness that each person and each group is something of the whole, and is bringing a valuable part of the conversation.

Let me end my remarks with this quote from A.J. Arberry in his book on Sufism:

It has become a platitude to observe that mysticism is essentially one and the same, whatever may be the religion professed by the individual mystic: a constant yearning of the human spirit for personal communion with God. Much labour and erudition however have also been expended upon the attempt to shew how one form of mysticism has been influenced by another; while proof is often difficult or even impossible in such elusive matters, it is generally agreed that no religious movement can come into being or develop without having contact with other established faiths or denominations which are bound to leave their impress upon the new creation of thought and emotion. …While mysticism is undoubtedly a universal constant, its variations can be observed to be very clearly and characteristically shaped by the several religious systems upon which they were based.

With that in mind, we can talk about the ground we share…

tending toward god

To live toward God alone
and to hold oneself in God’s presence.
To leave all to attain peace.
To choose silence for grasping the Word.
To be that disciple ever ready
for a word, a command.

To see the universe
in its true measure,
the universe as a point of light,
a mere grain of sand transfigured by Love.
To know that each thing is in God
precious and pure.

(from a French hymn in honor of Saint Benedict)

In the Roman tradition we celebrated a great feast yesterday, the feast of the Assumption. This is actually the second time I’ve preached on it at New Camaldoli, my home monastery, and hence this will also be the second blog I’ve written on it (see August 14, 2007, if you’re so inclined). My favorite description of the feast of the Assumption apparently comes from a little kid who was asked what the feast of the Assumption was and answered, “This is the day when we assume that Mary is in heaven.” Actually that’s not a bad place to start.

I’ve been reading Ilia Delio’s new book recently, “Christ in Evolution” and, though not only for that reason, become quite taken up lately thinking about evolution––not just the evolution of the material world, but of the evolution of consciousness, and spiritual evolution. (Of course hanging out at Esalen with David Steindl-Rast will do that to you as well.) I’m especially fascinated by how evolution has affected our understanding of Christ and Christology. And I was also thinking about the Assumption in the light of this evolutionary thinking. (All the quotes to come will be taken from Ilia’s book.)

In an older world-view and in an older theology, we tended to think that the world came forth from God perfectly formed, unchangeable, just as it is now. (Some even go so far as to suggest that even the fossils were created as fossils.) Of course Darwin turned all that topsy-turvy, and the debate still rages between evolution and creationism or intelligent design. Growing up a liberal Catholic, I never once heard anyone say that there was any conflict between theism and evolution. It was something like “intelligent evolution. Nor have I heard of any conflict from the last popes. As a matter of fact when theology gets a hold of evolution, we begin to understand creation not simply as “something that happened at the beginning of time but … rather the continuing relationship of the world to its transcendent ground.” In the hands of someone like Teilhard de Chardin, suddenly evolution is not just biological ascent, not just a movement toward more complexified life forms; it’s not merely an urge to evolve new and more complex biological forms: it’s a movement toward greater consciousness, the emergence of mind in the universe, and, more importantly for our purposes, it’s a movement of matter to spirit. There is mind embedded in the physical fabric of the cosmos and that consciousness is leading the whole evolutionary process to a culmination in the human spirit. This of course is where we meet the likes of Sri Aurobindo and more currently Ken Wilber. Christians sees Jesus as the apogee of that movement, the union of matter and spirit. Matter, which is alive with energy, evolves to spirit, and the human person is matter come to consciousness. Teilhard wrote that evolution tends toward an Omega point, and Christians call that Omega point “Christ.” (I was impressed to find out that Omega Institute in New York, that progressive think tank and center for human potential was named so for Teilhard.)

In other words, for this reason we can “assume Mary is in heaven.” If Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, as St. Paul says, was only the first fruits, that means that the resurrection is the anticipation of what is intended for the whole cosmos––which is groaning and in agony while we await the redemption of our bodies––and our bodies are the second fruits. And Mary’s body is the first fruit of that second harvest.

It’s not the Mary did not die. This feast was celebrated as early as the 5th century in the East and in Rome, where it was known as the dormitio. We don’t necessarily claim that she didn't die, but that she “slept.” But by adding that she was assumed body and soul into heaven Christianity claims incredibly that her flesh was preserved immune from the corruption of the tomb. What this means of course is that another human being has shared the triumph over death, and is glorified after the pattern of Jesus; and thus she becomes the iconic image of the woman clothed with the sun in the book of Revelation, another sign pointing to Jesus who is in turn pointing the way to the Father. In other words, even death is not an annihilation. Just as “Jesus is not annihilated on the cross but lives in a radically transformed mode in the presence of God for eternity,” so what happens in Jesus also “anticipates the future of humanity and of the cosmos: not annihilation of creation but its radical transformation through the power of God’s life-giving Spirit.”

In other words, Christ having risen from the dead, we can “assume that Mary is in heaven.” We can also assume that we are meant to share this transformation, along with all creation.

The question remains, how? How do we make ourselves available to this? The readings from the vigil Mass of the feast make it very clear. First there is a reading from 1st Chronicles about the ark of the covenant, asking us to see Mary as the new “ark of the Word.” That is coupled with that shocking Gospel from Luke when Jesus says rather than blessed is the womb that bore him and the breasts that nursed him (Mary) but blessed is anyone who hears the word of God and keeps it as a treasure in the heart. Blessed are all those who are arks of the covenant, who make room in their virginal hearts for the Word. I’m on retreat with the monks right now and that tied in beautifully with what our retreat master, a beautiful old French Benedictine named Fr. Ghislain, said to us yesterday, about St. Benedict being and we monks needing to be disciples ever ready for a word, a command. (See the hymn above.) And even more, another phrase he used played right into my hand. We read the Magnificat, Mary’s canticle from the Gospel of Luke again as the Gospel. We hear that canticle over and over again, evening after evening, because we sing it for evening prayer every night in our tradition, so that we can barely hear it anymore. But suddenly it came alive again when I translated “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit finds its joy in God” to Fr. Ghislain’s phrase, “my whole being tends toward God.” This is the evolutionary movement in me, and it’s really love, it’s eros. My whole being is evolving toward spirit; my whole being is tending toward union with God if I but follow its tendency; my whole being, as St Basil wrote, is in the process of becoming God, whatever that means! This tending, this kind of evolving transforms my whole person––spirit, soul and body, and nothing is left behind, and my real self hidden with Christ in God is not annihilated, even at death, but enters ever more deeply into communion with the Divine who also leans toward me––who “looks upon his servant in her lowliness.”

This evolution is going on in us here and now, whether we are aware of it or not. And a feast like this urges us to be aware of it, to lean into our own tendency toward God who is leaning toward us, and to allow that evolution to take place in us ‘til we are assumed––spirit, soul and body––into the life Divine.

I know I wrote this before, but in this light it seems a propos to mention Aurobindo once again. As it turns out, his birthday was also August 15th, and when India finally won her independence, someone wrote to him remarking that wasn’t it wonderful that India should have won her independence on his birthday? He replied that it was even more wonderful that India would have won her independence on the feast of the Assumption when a mortal was assumed into the Life Divine, which he thought was the destiny of all humanity––that was the point of his integral yoga. He wrote:

The physical consciousness and physical being, the body itself must reach a perfection in all that it is and does which now we can hardly conceive. It may even in the end be suffused with a light and beauty and bliss from the Beyond and the life divine assume a body divine.

That’s a pretty good assumption, too.