the depth and the breadth

I walk lightly so as not to crush my cheerfulness.
I walk heavily so as not to fly.
In both cases the ground protects me
from disappearing into adjectives
that cannot be used to describe it.
(Mahmoud Darwish, "From Now on You Are You")

19 oct, 2011 cardiff, wales

I traveled by train here to Cardiff from Swindon yesterday. Sunday night Janet, the priest who had invited me for the events in Cirencester, had Patrick and I along with another of her friends who is an Interfaith minister over for dinner at her place in a village not far from Cirencester. Driving through the ever narrower roads into the village where she lived and then down her lane, for all the world I thought I was in a Ken Follet novel about medieval England. We had a great dinner and visit, and a lively conversation. Janet was originally in business, but before that had done her post-graduate degree in theology (patristics) at Oxford. A stint working in Japan led to her seriously studying Zen under a teacher there, and when she returned to England and decided to pursue her doctorate, she wrote on "Denying Divinity," a comparison of the negative language (the via negativa) in Dogen-zenji and that of Maximus the Confessor and Pseudo-Dionysius. She then went on to ordination in the Anglican church as well as teaching comparative religion (among other theological and philosophical subjects) at the college level. She has a particular interest in inter-religious dialogue, obviously, and this was the main topic of our conversation.

At one point Janet asked me what I thought we were really trying to accomplish in our work. My answer was, "Friendship." She asked me if I thought we were preaching to the already-converted or if we were doing something more besides. That was a good question. I said that it seemed to me that there was both a depth and breadth involved: the more I get to know someone and another tradition, the deeper my knowledge goes; that in turn allows me, inadvertently perhaps, to disseminate some understanding about others and their tradition to folks who may not necessarily have any interaction with people of different traditions, my own relatives and friends, other religious, etc. I think the depth is more important than the breadth, but it cannot help but spread, like love itself.

The next day Patrick took me for a long drive down into Sussex county to visit a wondrous place called the Ammerdown Centre. It is mainly housed in the converted stables on the estate of Lord Hylton, whose family still live in the manor house. Ammerdown was started by a group of progressive Roman Catholics shortly after Vatican II as a Conference and Retreat Center "nestling in woods next to a Stately Home, surrounded by beautiful landscape gardens and parkland, with an exquisitely beautiful chapel in its midst." So says the handout advertising the place. It really is a wonderful space, the chapel, a converted granary, I believe, with symbols of other faiths displayed prominently as well as the reserved Eucharist in a corner tabernacle. It is "run as an open Christian community dedicated to hospitality, spirituality and growth." The courses are wide ranging, everything from arts to spirituality. A sampling of earlier this year: Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Understanding Islam, Chrisitan Arts, Artisitic Influences of World Faiths, Gregorian Chant, Jewish Spirituality, Desert Mothers, the Enneagram... We had a good long visit and lunch with Mrs Benedicte Scholfield, the French born current director. She was keen, and this was the purpose of Patrick bringing me there, on me coming to do something for them in the future.

The event went well at Cirencester Monday night. I am avoiding the word "concert" because for most of these events the organizers want a talk as much as they want music, and most of them have wanted me to add a period of meditation in as well. It works out well for me. I bring my notes with me but I generally never consult them anymore and I just sit there and sing songs and tell stories. I've got a bunch of new stuff to talk about now that has been gluing together with more current reading and practice, so it seems fresh to me. The only downside is that I don't get to sing as many songs as I'd like and I am itching just to do a concert without all the talking, but this is a luxury problem. The next day, I was up early with Patrick to go and sit za-zen with a couple of his students at a local house in the village. He is now an official dharma heir in the White Plum lineage and runs a group here called the Wild Goose Sangha, the wild goose being an ancient Celtic symbol for the Holy Spirit. Patrick has been a very serious student of Zen ever since I've known him. Janet says that he is the only one she knows who combines these three elements: a former married Angican priest who became one of the rare married Roman Catholic priests, and then went on to be come a Zen teacher. The room where I always stay is filled with his books, many on Buddhism. He is also always a great resource for new reads in general and I wind up wanting to tuck two or three books into my backpack as I leave... but I resist.

Patrick got me to the train headed for Cardiff later that morning, and I was met there by my very enterprising host, Brigid Bowen. She is a journalist by profession, now involved in several different projects, and also a long time spiritual seeker, interested greatly in inter-religious issues. Though a Catholic from birth, she is a student also of Thich Nhat Hahn, having been to Plum VIllage in France several times. She has had several things lined up for me this week. Tuesday night I was at St Michael's College, which is basically a training school for Anglican priests. mostly for the Church in Wales. I had a wonderful visit and tea with the acting director, a youngish man named Steven Baker. He had been to Shantivanam and was well read in many of the current thinkers on comparative religion The evening event was super. We were in an upper room in the library, which could hold only about 50 people. By 7:25 there was still only one person there, a kind elderly retired Roman priest with whom I had a wonderful conversation. He was 87 years old, and had seen a lot of life, including having been a conscientious objector during World War II. (That was mighty brave in its own way back then, maybe even moreso here in Britain where the bombs were actually falling.) I thought that I might be spending the evening with just him when suddenly the place filled up, every seat. I suppose it might have had something to do with a semi-academic setting, though not everyone was from the seminary. Several folks whom I met afterward had read or heard about it elsewhere, a Yogi, a few musicians, etc. It was the best evening I have had thus far; the crowd was so attentive, and that was certainly encouraging for me, especially knowing that there were several folks in the audience who were well read and sympathetic already. I found myself talking about Gregory of Nyssa during the introduction to "The Great Mother" from the Tao te Ching, and all about fana and baqa and the belief in the abiding self in the prophetic traditions during the introduction to Kabir's "Drink Sent Down."

god is one (pt 2)

A word of hope, encouragement and good news
a remembrance of humble saving power
a burning bush of unquencahble fire
a tnagible sign of hidden salvation
a window open towards heaven
a bridge of peace
a house of friendship
a noah's ark, a ship of fools
a shelter from the storm
a blessing on our life's journey
(Lord Hylton, vision statement of Ammerdown Centre)

(This is a continuation of the previous blog, a long version of a sermon I gave at in Cirencester...)

... Now, unfortunately, this breakthrough, this revelation and belief in monotheism in actual practical application, is often what gets blamed for (and is the cause of) religious wars. I'll give you one example, that Karen Armstrong writes about. When these same exiles (known as the golah) returned from captivity in Babylon, they immediately turned that revelation of God's inclusivity into a reason for exclusivity instead. Not only were the goyim--the gentile nations to be excluded, but even some of their own people. When the people of the old northern kingdom of Israel, known as Samerina, offered to help in the rebuilding of the Temple after the exile, they were rejected by the returning exiles! They were called the am ha-aretz, the "people of the land," members of the ten northern tribes and other Judeans, the children of those who had stayed behind. And in spite of the fact that prophets such as Ezekiel saw all twelve tribes as members of Israel and worthy of holiness, Zerubbabel the governor and Joshua his priest and their followers deemed that only the golah--the exiles constituted the true Israel, and even these Samarians were seen as enemies. Later, after the Torah became the official law code of Jerusalem under Nehemiah and Ezra, at one point even among the returned exiles men were commanded to send their foreign wives and children away to join the am ha-aretz. "Membership in Israel was now confined to the descendants of those who had been exiled to Babylon and to those who were prepared to submit to the Torah," Armstrong writes, and goes on to point out that from then on this "ruthless tendency" to exclude other people would henceforth become a characteristic of the history of Jerusalem. But doesn't this seem to be the tendency of religion in general when it is in search of a kind of cultic purity? Some of the actions and attitudes of Roman Catholics seem to have a tendency this way these days too. I have heard more than one person say how they wouldn't mind a "smaller more faithful church," and how many discussions I have heard about who should be denied the Eucharist!

That same situation with the golah and the am ha-aretz played itself out in Jesus' time. The Gospel of Luke tells the story of Jesus on his way to Jerusalem passing through Samaritan land. And the people of the region won't offer him hospitality because he was on his way to Jerusalem. Those who had been excluded now become the excluders! The violent cycle of exclusion keeps churning. So the apostles offer to call down fire from heaven, but Jesus will not allow it. Jesus is bringing a new understanding of the law and it is this: concomitant to love the Lord your God is that nobody gets left out, not the blind, not the lame, the lepers, the tax collectors and prostitutes. And who is my neighbor? Specifically the one who had been excluded: the Samaritan. What may not be obvious at first is also that Jesus is a Galilean, and the Galileans had a special appreciation for the Israelite traditions of the north where Galilee was located. The gospels quote the northern prophets (Elijah, Elisha, Jonah) but the rarely mention the kings and priests who were typical of Jerusalem and Judea. "They speak of the Isrealites as 'children of Abraham' and avoid the theology of Zion and the holy city." Furthermore--and doesn't this add an interesting element to understanding Jesus?--the Galileans "were probably accusmtomed to a more relaxed interpretation of the law, and were less strict about certain purity laws than were the Judeans." (Pagola, 50)

(An aside, that story of Jesus heading to Jerusalem always reminds me on not being able to get to Israel last year when we were in the Mideast, but we couldn't go because Syria would not give a visa to anyone who was on their way there, nor let someone back in the country if they had been. Chilling.)

So, somehow the way it gets interpreted and manifested, it seem as if it were built into the very structure of the Abrahamic faiths to be in competition with each other and with other religions and with other gods, and even within one's own ranks in search of cultic purity. And the Abrahamic faiths often get accused of intolerance because they manifest themselves not as a unity but as a kind of triumphant exclusivism. And so folks will contrast monotheism to the paganism of, say, the ancient Sumerians or Canaanites, or the polytheism of the Greeks and Romans, or Hinduism's henotheism, which are all seen as somehow more benign and tolerant because they accept a variety of gods. This applies not just to back then, mind you, but also now. This is a very current argument. I'm using "pagan" in the modern sense here, not in any pejorative sense. There are many people nowadays who proudly refer to themselves as "neo-pagans," and their tolerance of the worship of many gods gets contrasted with monotheism's rejection of all that in the name of this one God. In some way this is a valid critique, because how many times and ways throughout history has monotheism become a kind of supremacism, simply a claim to the possession of the absolute truth as opposed to others who possess only illusions?

But actually this revelation of and understanding of God's Oneness (at least as James Carroll argues it) is supposed to serve as an antidote to violence and a repudiation of any kind of exclusivism, because this is not a god who is opposed to any creature or people--this is the God of all creatures and people. It's a fundamentally positive message. And this is certainly not a god who is opposed to creation in general, because this is the God who is the ground of all being, and with whom, so Jesus shows us, we are meant to be in intimate relationship.

And relationship is somehow the key: our relationship with God is only exclusive in the same sense that any love relationship is exclusive. As in a marriage, where the exclusivity of the love of one partner for the other is pro-creative, the relationship gives birth and opens itself up to inclusivity, to children, to relatives, and hopefully eventually to an ever wider circle, to neighbors, to the tribe, the nation, and finally opening up to strangers and foreigners, to universality. In Israel's case there was a certain what we call "scandal of particularity," this One God having chosen one particular people. But even here it's meant to move "through exclusiveness to inclusiveness," as a marriage would, from one people opening to all people. That's why Isaiah says they will be "a light to the nations." This is what Peter and Paul come to realize as they began their mission to the Gentiles, that nobody gets left out. This is the genius of the idea of election in the prophetic traditions, that it doesn't involve "the oneness of total union in which the individual is lost," and it's not about simple uniformity. Again, like a marriage, why the mystics of all three tradition resort to the language of marriage and bridal mysticism. Election is a union of communion, the union of a relationship in which separate beings, while remaining separate, neverlesstheless come together, a union in which fear of and opposition to each other gives way to friendship. Of course, we Christians believe that that is exactly what occured in the Jesus' new way, and he even says to his disicples, "I no longer call you servants, but my friends."

The problem is not in the tradition, not in the religion; the problem is in us. We get it wrong. When we reduce God's oneness to an excluding monotheism, we get it wrong. When we think and act as if God's Oneness means that God is at war with other gods, we get it wrong. When we act as if union means the destruction of all difference, we get it wrong. No, union means E pluribus unum--from many to one. Bad religion is totalitarianism; good religion is union in diversity. The theme that stretches throughout the Bible going back to Abraham, Moses, David, indeed to the very story of creation, is God's oneness, a "oneness that unites rather than destroys."

Thus the genius of Genesis, and of the religions that follow from it, is the insight that all that exists was and is created by the same God. More: all that exists was and is created in that God's image. Oneness, not cosmic war, is the ground of existence. God is One, and each of God's creatures participates in that Oneness, with humans as the creatures who know it, even if, having a genius for evil as well as good, [we] tend to imagine it otherwise. (Carrol, 303)

And so the response that Jesus gives when he is asked about the coin in the Gospel of Matthew??--"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's," he says, since Caesar's head is not it, "and give to God what belongs to God"??--really begs the question, "What does not belong to God?" The Lord's are the earth and its fullness. God is one.

So what is the antidote to monotheism (or any spiritual tradition) being exclusivist and triumphalistic? Only a real conversion, an experience of God not being the God only of Christians (or Jews and Muslims or anyone), but God who is the God of all people who are struggling to understand the fullness of divinity in their own (and our own) sometimes feeble and immature stabs at worship; to see the oneness of God not being about a quantity but as a quality, to understand God as the ground of being itself, as the ground of awareness itself; and to see the image of God manifesting wherever we see beauty, truth or goodness manifesting, be it in a great work of art, the budding of an apple tree, a work of scientific genius, in another religion; to recognize it in any kind of self-donation from a simple act of kindness to world-changing social reforms. And to make of our hearts and our homes and our spiritual communities little places of this unity, unity in diversity where union means not a bland comformity and uniformity, but a celebration of the panolpoly of unity in its beautiful diversity.

God is One.

god is one (pt 1)

A garden of joy and delight
a spirit of living water
a tent of welcome
a door of acceptance
a shared table of bread and wine
a meal to satisfy our common needs
a precious jar of healing ointment
a holy psace open to all
an invitation to the dance...
(Lord Hylton, vision statement of Ammerdown Centre)

(Much of the following is based on James Carroll's book "Jerusalem, Jerusalem" (all unattributed quotes will be from there, mainly pages 58-64, and 302-302) where he introduced me to a deeper understanding of the oneness of God, and on Karen Armstrong's book "Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths." These are the two books we've been studying in preparation for our trip to Palestine. Plus my host and old friend here in Cricklade, Patrick Eastman, loaned me a controversial book by the Spanish theologian Jose Pagola called "Jesus: An Historical Approximation," that added a few insights as well. What I'm posting here is about three times as long as the sermon I gave Oct. 16 at the Anglican Parish Church in Cirencester.)

Something very interesting happened to the Jewish mindset and understanding of God during the Babylonian exile and captivity. At first the Hebrews weren't really monotheists; they didn't necessarily believe that there was only one god. I ran into this term only recently: at first they were actually what we call "monolators"??; they worshipped only one god, their god, but they didn't necessarily deny the existence of other gods. But as time went on the Jewish people understood more and more about the character of this god that they worshipped, and their experience of God eventually made them question the very existence of any of other gods, and especially all the tribal deities that surrounded them, the local gods who seemed to be so limited and narrow. The god of Israel--lower case "g"--eventually became for them God--upper case "G." And so when they were in Babylon, the Jews not only refused to worship the local gods, they even refused so much as to acknowledge that these local gods existed at all. In other words, they became monotheists, meaning that they began to believe that not only was this the only God to be worshipped, but that only this God-as-they-understood-God was real. There was only one God. So the psalms say over and over, The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have eyes but cannot see, hands but cannot feel..., etc. And of course we see so many allusions to this also in the prophet Isaiah: I am the Lord and there is no other, there is no God besides me (Is 45).

It is after that period in their history when editors and redactors really starting compiling the book that we know of now as the Old Testament (though of course it is not "old" to a Jew--it is simply the Torah, or the Jewish Bible). These redactors and editors started reading this monotheism back into their own history, and perhaps they even added it in at times as they interpreted the ancient stories that had been passed down to them. It might not be obvious at first, but even if we look at that first story of creation in Genesis there's evidence of this new understanding of God that's different from other religions of the ancient world. Even though the creation story in Genesis has a lot in common with other creation stories of that region, what makes the Jewish story unique is that it shows God not only creating this particular tribe or that particular kingdom; it shows God as the creator of the entire cosmos, God as the origin of all that is. God is One.

But I was interested to learn that the term "monotheism" wasn't actually coined until the seventeenth century, and our understanding of what the oneness of God means is actually very modern. In our scientific age, inadvertently perhaps, we think of "one" as a number, and so God is thought to be some kind of a solitary entity who stands apart from everything else, standing apart from all other creatures as well as all other gods, and therefore God can be seen as antagonistic to everything else as well. If we understand "oneness" in that way, then God can easily be a source of conflict and competition, our god against all the other gods, as if God had some kind of ego to defend or territory to protect. But we shouldn't understand the Oneness of God mathematically or scientifically or even philosophically. It has to be understood spiritually, meaning not to think of "oneness" as a matter of quantity; God's oneness is a quality. What the Oneness of God is affirming is a unity. God's Oneness does not mean a being who stands apart from creation, God's Oneness does not mean a being who is radically different and superior to creation. It means the being who is present to creation, "as the reconciliation of all oppositions," Carroll says, echoing the theme of the mystic Nicholas of Cuxa. God is unity, God is the One who unites, God is oneness itself.

Now if we go back for a moment to the story of Moses' meeting God in the burning bush, we see God who is revealed as "I am who am" or (what is the best translation of the tetragrammaton?) perhaps, as I've read it translated, "I am who causes to be." God is being itself. God is not just a Being over and against all other beings: God is being itself. Deus es ens, says Thomas Aquinas, the very ground of being. (We are, you may note, pretty close to the Indian understanding of brahman, not to mention the Rhineland mystics' and Paul Tillich's notion of God as grunt.) God isn't just associated with Israel nor with any other particular clan or tribe; God is related to all that is. The Oneness of God isn't a number: it's a quality. Even more, it's a relationship, a relationship with all that exists.

And this revelation that God is one also means, again as the prophet Isaiah especially saw, that the God of this people, Israel, is actually the God of all people. God is not the god "of the tribe but of the cosmos--of all creation." So if God is jealous, God is jealous of everyone's love, "and offers himself, through the... promise made to Abraham, not to a single people, but to 'a multitude of nations.'" And of course Jerusalem, and Mount Zion with it, becomes the symbol for this, again as we see often in Isaiah: In the days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be raised above the hills and every nation shall come streaming, many poeples come and say, 'Let us climb the mountain to the house of God..." (Is 2) And so in Isaiah 45, in what may have seemed like a shock to the people of Israel, the prophet Isaiah calls Cyrus, the king of Persians, God's anointed one!??--"though you know me not." And it is Cyrus who is mandated to rebuild the Temple in the ruins of the ancient city. God is one! The God of all people, "though they know me not!" I was reminded too of Paul in the Areopogus as reported in the Acts of the Apostles, claiming at the shrine to the unknown of god, that this is the God revealed by Jesus.

So after the Babylonian exile, Israel starts to perceive God in a whole new way, a way in which competition from or comparison to other deities was simply inconceivable. This belief in God is not merely in opposition to other gods; it's totally different from the belief in other gods; it's an entirely different way of knowing. James Carrol has the beautiful phrase: "God is present in this world as meaning is present in knowledge." To affirm the Oneness of God is to affirm a God who is closer to us, as St Augustine wrote, than we are to ourselves, or as it is written in the Qur'an, "closer than our jugular vein." We might say God is closer to us than our own awareness is, or as the very ground of our awareness, "as meaning is present in knowledge." That's the Oneness that counts, and monotheism is identitfying the awareness of this God with the very ground of awareness. (We are now awfully close to the Indian notion of Atman-ground of consciousness.) It's a "magnificent breakthrough in the religious imagination," Carroll says, and it's the core of the religious vision of the Bible.

In this day and age I look for any occasion when I can refer to Judaism, Christianity and Islam together, the three religions that stem from Abraham, the Abrahamic faiths. Sometimes we also refer to the three of them as the prophetic traditions, those that believe that God intervenes in human history, as compared to the mystical traditions of the Far East, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, for instance, that are much more focused on the interior. (This is not to say that each aspect isn't present, perhaps in a quieter and more hidden way, in the other.) All three of these Abrahamic faiths are based on this oneness of God. So the Shema, the most famous of all Jewish prayers, that still defines Israel to this day, from Deuteronomy (6:4-9): Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad--"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one." This is a declaration of faith, a pledge of allegiance to one God, the first prayer a Jewish child is taught and the last words a Jew says prior to death??--an affirmation of God's Oneness. James Carroll suggests that it may be that Jesus' embodiment of God's Oneness, his sense of intimacy with the Father, saying things like "The Father and I are one," is the very reason that his followers recognized that he was divine. (And also the very thing that got him killed.) And so the Christian creed which begins with, Credo in unum Deo--"I believe in one God...". And so the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), influenced by Jews and Christians, clears the kabah in Mecca of all the other deities and declares what is known in Islam as the shahada--la illa ha illaha--"There is no god but God..." Some suggest that it is this sense of and feeling for the Oneness of God that sparked the rapid spread of Islam. Certainly Muhammad himself thought he was merely recovering the ancient faith of Abraham, not founding a new religion. The great ideal of the Qur'an was tawhid, which literally means "making one." So, as Karen Armstrong explains it, individual Muslims were called "to order their lives so as to make God their chief priority: [and] when they had achieved this personal integration, they would experience within that unity which was God." Ah, what does that mean? "To experience within the unity that is God"? But not only individuals, the whole human society "also had to achieve this unity and balance and all its activities under the aegis of the sacred." (Armstrong, 220) And so, as well, holiness "was thus seen as inclusive rather than exclusive." And since Muslims were engaged in a struggle (jihad) to restore all things in the human and natural world, the line between sacred and secular gets blurred. Furthermore there ought to be no divisiveness or sectarianism in religion. Muhammad believed that Jews and Christians belonged to the same ancient faith. For example, the Christians of Medina were allowed to worship in the mosque "as an expression of the continuity of the Islamic tradition with the gospel." Muhammad did not expect Jews or Christians to convert unless they wanted to because he believed they had valid revelations of their own. (Armstrong, 226-227)

God is One. (continued...)

playing in the dust

Children run out of the temple and play in the dust.
God watches them and forgets the priests.
(Rabindranth Tagore)

16 oct, 2011, cricklade

Matt Rees of the Stillpoint Center picked me up at the Abbey yesterday afternoon. We had met briefly last year when I was doing the program at the Abbey and so we barely knew each other. We had a good conversation on the way to Oxford, in which I found out that he was actually an Anglican priest. He gave me a lot more background about Stillpoint too, and told me that they had also Richard Rohr and Martin Laird (author of that wondeful book "Into the Silent Land" that Sr Barbara introduced us to) here in the past year. Pretty good company! They don't actually have a center; events are held at various locations, including the Abbey. When we got to Oxford, Matt walked me over to the convent of the Sisters of the Love of God, an Anglican contemplative community, where I was to stay the night, right around the corner from Matt's house and St Alban's where the evenint event was to take place. The prioress, Sr Catherine, met us and led us over to a separate building where there was a "flat" that where I was to stay. She explained that their Sr Benedicta had lived there for some time, but had recently moved back to the convent with the rest of the community. As we walked in I immediately noticed a nameplate on the wall: Sr Benedicta Ward. I said, "What?! Is that THE Sr Benedicta Ward?!" Now, that may not be a familiar name to many of you, but she is one of the world's experts on the desert monastic tradition, and is famous in the monastic circles for having compiled the authoratative collections of the sayings and lives of the desert fathers and mothers. I've read many of her works. She had been a lecturer at Oxford for years and I believe also did work with Bishop Kallistos Ware. Really the flat was like a little urban hermitage, very simple (at least now; "Sr Benedicta had so many books!" Sr Catherine said.) So I was pretty honored and happy to be staying there. It's actually a bustling little neighborhood, surrounded by student housing. I was told there are more than 30,000 students in Oxford during the term. As a matter of fact there was a crowd of loud Oxfordians right outside my window until quite late last night. I was wondering how patient Sr Benedicta was with that.

I got myself out for a little walk of the neighborhood, down to the Thames and winding up at a pub on the corner called the Magdalen Arms. Now, again, this may not mean much to you, but we were on Magdalen Road right down the street from Magdalen College (pronounced "maudlin," by the way), the college where CS Lewis and Bede met and tutored. As I sat at the Magdalen Arms and had afternoon tea, I imagined the two of them knocking back a pint right there discussing some of the finer points of Greek tragedy. Matt picked me up accompanied by Ian, another Anglican priest and his partner in Stillpoint. I swear, if I hadn't known better I would have taken the two of them to be just two working class guys, maybe a bass player and guitarist for a rock band after a hard day's night, not as two Anglican priests. My own prejudice, I'm sure, (I hope they won't mind this characterization, if they are reading...) but they've got more the faded jeans-rumpled hair look than the stiff-collared image I had of Anglican clergy. We were met also by Ian's wife, Gail, and they took me back for a light dinner before the evening event. And of course we swapped all kinds of stories. Both Ian and Matt have been involved with experimental communities; that's how they first hooked up. When they started Stillpoint they simply decided to invite anyone they themselves would want to spend an evening with. It's worked so far. They both have a great love for the arts, and Matt has a great fondness for the Beat poets, with a picture of Alan Ginsberg on the wallpaper of his mobile phone. Ian also has been deeply involved in the "new monastic" movement, which also of course got us into another deep discussion. Needless to say, I was pretty fired up by the time we got to the evening event.

It went quite well, I thought. I used the regular prayer service as the format, with the addition of a bit more music than usual. As a matter of fact, I sat down to play some music as people were came in, as I would normally do in the States as well, to quiet people down as they gathered. The difference between here and there is, last night they actually did quiet down! They were listening very attentively, so much so that I finally spoke to them and explained the piece I was going to play and sang a bit too. It was a great setting in the nave of the church and a sweet acoustic. And folks were very responsive and kind afterward.

This morning was the whole other end of the spectrum. Beth, one of the parishioners of St Alban's, kindly drove me from Oxford across the Cotswold to the town of Cirencester, where I was to preach at the Cirencster Parish Center. It is a grand old church, the largest parish in Gloucester county, I was told. Really it's a combination of three churches/congregations. There are six priests, but I once I got to the vestry I couldn't tell who was clergy and who wasn't because there were so many people in clerical blacks, cassocks, and surplices. Three ordained besides me were part of the service, Rev Janet Williams, who had invited me, another woman priest and the vicar himself who had a red sash around his cassock. I thought perhaps a cardnial had slipped in (!) but he put on a dalmatic and served as deacon. I had to laugh at myself. I'm used to being a wandering preacher, but it is rare that I actually show up at a the door of a church carrying my backpack and guitar, not to mention highly underdressed. Anyway, after asking several people how long one preaches at an Anglican service, I had scrupulously timed my homily at 15 minutes and told the congregation that I had and that they could check their watches. This was to break the spell of my own nervousness and to let them get used to my American accent. I think it went pretty well. Folks here are not at all as responsive as we are in the States, and I've gotten used to that. Afterward that I had several good conversations with folks who had obviously been very attentive. One guy, who had been one of the liturgical ministers, surprised me by asking me afterward, "Fancy going out for a pint later on?" I stammered that I didn't actually drink and I wasn't sure if where I was staying was anywhere close, but if we could work something out. It didn't, but I appreciated the offer to see a little local color.

Anyway, I'm gonna post the homily in a few parts upcoming... It's mostly based on James Carroll's book "Jerusalem, Jerusalem" (all unattributed quotes will be from there, mainly pages 58-64, and 302-302) where he introduced me to a deeper understanding of the oneness of God, and on Karen Armstrong's book "Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths." These are the two books we've been studying in prepartion for our trip to Palestine. Plus my host and old friend here in Cricklade, Patrick Eastman, loaned me a controversial book by the Spanish theologian Jose Pagola called "Jesus: An Historical Approximation," that added a few insights as well. What I'm posting here is about three times as long as the sermon; I got so caught up in the topic I couldn't stop writing while I was at the Abbey.

the holy fire of imagination

Only the art that comes from within,
out of the creative personality,
will be interesting, impressive, constructive.
(Edwin Fischer)

11 Oct, the Abbey, Sutton Courtenay

I'm lucky to have a few days of r&r to let me soul catch up with my body, as they say. I love this place. I was here for the first time last year. The name, the Abbey, I'm told, is a Victorian pretension, but the place does have the look and feel of an old monastery. It's a 13th-14th century manor house, once owned by the Astor family, a quadrangle with a Great Hall (which has a minstrel gallery), and a vast array of rooms in various states of renovation and decoration. The kitchen is like a warm underground hearth, the little meditation room is a sunny sitting room, my bedroom reminds me of a cell at old Camaldoli, complete with the sweet smell of centuries-old wood and a stone fireplace. There are four live-in people on staff now, Brad, my host and pretty much the public face of the Abbey, Hillary who just moved in six months ago and does a lot of the office work, and Dylan and Charlotte who do the wonderful cooking. (Today for lunch there was a potato and onion lemon pepper soup.) They try to live ecologically sensitively and eat organic (the household is vegetarian though none of them are). Christianity is only one of the streams flowing in and out this place, though it was started as a Christian experiment in the evolution of consciousness by a German Ghandian and a progressive Anglican bishop. There is qi-gong, yoga, literature and music, lots of music. Dylan and Charlotte are aficionados and big supporters of chamber music, and often sponsor performances here. The addition of that fine art element makes for a fascinating parade of personalities in and out of the door. Just for one example, when I arrived a German cellist and his wife, who is a poet, were here at the counter having a discussion about the poetry of Wallace Stevens; Gustavo, a Brazilian pianist was here as well, with his wife who is a Russian born philologist. They are touring Europe as Gustavo plays a series of concerts. At one point there were four languages going on at once, though everyone speaks near flawless English. (I asked Gustavo how many languages he speaks; he said, "Seven, and my wife speaks six.") Brad's lady friend Beata has just arrived from Germany as well. She is a psychologist and teacher, and we just had a wonderful conversation over dinner about Ken Wilber. Not to mention the folks that come to attend the events. It is really inspiring to be in an environment such as this, where the level of culture meets the spiritual search, where the transcendent is as recognized in a string quartet as much it is in the Upanishads.

I flew in from Chicago overnight Monday, and got in so early Tueday morning (5:45) that I thought it best (and kind of fun) to kill some time before calling up my hosts let alone arriving here. So I had a little sandwich and a cappuccino at the airport (I couldn't figure out if I was hungry for breakfast or dinner), and then took the train up to Paddington Station in London. I didn't need to kill time there; I spent most of my time trying to figure out which train to take, trying to buy a ticket, and trying to get the phone card I had just bought to work. I finally got through to Brad here at the Abbey by sending him a text message on my own phone, and hopped on a train out to Didcot Parkway, where he met me. I have had two small informal things to do for them here--last night music and tonight a new series that Brad has started called "Living the life..." in which he simply invites a guest in for conversation with a group of people, asks a range of questions about the how and why of their lives, and hopes for a topic of conversation to arise. I have found that I am an easy interviewee--just put a nickel in me and I never shut up, though it does have to be the right nickel. He started out asking me about monastic life, my particular living out of it, some questions about music and then the real spark question: what was the single most important event of your life? Oddly enough, the thing that stuck out the most for me was my decision to move in with the Franciscans in uptown Chicago my senior year in high school (that era very much on my mind since I have been through Chicago and seen several folks from that era these past weeks) because that was the time when I decided to "walk the other way," as the song goes, and I suppose I have continued to walk the other way ever since. It sort of set a theme. That set off a great conversation among the other participants about the moment of decision, the moment of discovering one's own voice, the moment of stepping out on one's own. I was quite impressed by their sharing, and Brad was a fine animator and facilitator. He'd make an excellent TV host.

The other thing that came up for me was how there has always been these two paths running parallel in me, music and spirituality, that are somehow inseparable. If I find myself too involved in music I start to miss the spiritual life. But the spiritual life for me without music, art, beauty is so dry. They don't always feel like the same path, but in this phase in my life they do more than ever, when practicing the guitar seems like a spiritual practice and working in the recording studio at times feels like an extension of my meditation. That's the ideal. Dylan and I are were talking about this the other day, how often art reveals the transcendent when religious language leaves off or becomes hackneyed and a hindrance rather than a vehicle. Afterward he gave me a copy of this wonderful speech that Edwin Fischer gave at the opening of a summer school for pianists in 1937. He had gathered them all in a "quiet house... far from the bustle of the big city," an "austere place which you can only reach after a good quarter of an hour's walk. Without artificial light, without cars and telephones [pre-cell phones obviously...] surrounded only by Nature" so that "thus in tune with trees and clouds and winds you may approach those musical works with receptive minds." I quoted one small sentence above, and here's another little section I loved:

Like an explorer you must, then, gently go down into the dark depths of your being where you were as a child, and there you must listen to the surge of your desires and your longings and become like a child again, like a tree or a flower, genuine and unsullied, giving yourself up to the fullness of life. And when you are quiet enough, in awe of the divine within you, with your ear pressed against the ground to listen to the secret tune which vibrates through the universe--then He will light in you that holy fire of imagination which draws strength from the very depths of your being.

If our art, if our everything were to come from that place...

Other than those two little things I have been enjoying the quiet and the days have passed very quickly. I have been working very hard on my sermon for Sunday. Before I offer a concert at the Anglican church in Cirencester on Monday, the priest there has asked that I do the Sunday sermon, maybe also in hopes of stirring up a little buzz for the concert. I don't know why exactly but I am a little nervous about preaching in an Anglican church, with no idea what the hearers will be like. I have some faces in my mind, but they are not based on any known reality. I do know that the priest, Janet WIlliams, recently published her doctoral dissertation through Oxford on a comparison of Dogen-zenji and the apophatic tradition of Christianity, and that may have set the bar a little artificially high. At any rate, the scriptures that are assigned for that day played right into my hand, something I have been reading about, fascinated with and eager to write about. I'll post it after I've delivered it (just in case they're peeking in Cirencester). I've also of course been practicing, putting together a nice set for the upcoming six concerts, and getting a good walk or run in every day. This village, Sutton Courtenay, is three miles from the town of Abingdon, which is best arrived at by traveling the "Thames path," which is exactly that, a mostly dirt footpath that runs along the River Thames, past a small lock, through some woods and fields and lands right in town. The weather has been beautiful, partly cloudy, warm days and chilly nights, and this house is very quiet, so it is a much appreciated break before the work ahead.

a mountain of ideology

Integrity is like a sword.
You shouldn't wave it around unless you're going to use it.
(Ken Follet)

8 oct, monastery of our lady of grace, beech grove, indiana

I had an uneventful trip out to the Midwest, met at O'Hare by Rory Conney who whisked me away to suburban Lake Zurich where he and Terri and Desi live. It was a quick visit (I only got to see Terri quickly at breakfast in the morning) but well worth it. Whodathunk 30 years ago that Rory and I would spend a morning jogging together? Besides being an extraordinarily talented songwriter and, especially, lyricist, he is also one of the most well-read and articulate people I know. Those two things go together obviously; there is a wealth of study, philosophy, theology and wisdom that forms the foundation of those lyrics. So I always I am inspired by our visits. He's also got a great love for pop music too so we exchanged some goodies. Hew left me with two songs by Steven Earle, one called "John Walker Blues," about the young American jihadist and another that I really want to work into the repertoire asap simply called "Jerusalem." We met another long time musician friend, Gary Daigle, for lunch and then Rory put me on the Metra train for Chicago. An hour or so hanging out at Union Station (such a cool place) and then boarded the Greyhound Bus for Indianapolis. Two nuns from Our Lady of Grace Monastery met me when I arrived, quite concerned for me that I had traveled so long to get there, eager to feed me and get me settled when we got to the monastery which was only 20 minutes or so from the bus depot. The others had already had a preliminary business meeting Friday evening and a social so I had to play catch up pretty quickly the next morning.

We are 13 at this meeting, seven men and six women, three of the men and one woman are Trappists in their distinctive black on white habits. The rest are regular observance Benedictines with the exception of one Camaldolese. I had written ahead to one of the women asking about the protocol concerning habits and was told that it would be very informal. At Morning Prayer I discovered that I was the only man not in full habit, though all of the women were in "lay clothes" except Sr Robert, the Trappistine from Wrentham. I had my standard issue Indian jhippa that I got off the back of Fr Amasamy, SJ, which again provoked lots of conversation. (I love telling that story.) Abbot James of St Anselm, Washington DC, said he even envied having something practical like that to travel in. Never mind these lofty issues--incarnation, re-incarnation; let's get to the practical things: what to wear! Monks... I kid, but, really, like Rory's lyrics, there is a mountain of ideology beneath the choice of one's clothes. Just ask many Benedictine women who still bristle at those old habits as a sign of domination and the stifling of humanity (if I may speak for them). And why would one wear or not wear an outer sign of one's religious status? These are actually not little questions.

The first part of the meetings on Saturday were all business: approval of minutes of the last meeting, election of new advisers and directors, review of the fiscal year, and then a long discussion about the future of the MID website. Here again, this was not just a discussion about the website; this was a discussion about the North American branch of MID's relationship with the international DIM/MID, and about the future vision for the organization. I sat out most of the early discussions, asking pertinent questions, still trying to figure out the whole structure and purpose of the organization. (I, for example, didn't even know how long my term was going to be.) If I understand correctly now: there is the Vatican Secretariat for Dialogue with non-Christians, and under that comes the DIM/MID, headed up by William Skudlarek, OSB, now working out of San Anselmo, the Benedictine University in Rome. And then there are the local conferences, We are officially the North American Commission for Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. We are made up of a board (no more than 20), with an executive director (a paid position) and a president, treasurer, secretary; plus there are advisers, most of whom are non-Christians. Currently Br Gregory Perron is serving as president. He is a monk of St Procopius Abbey in Lisle, IL, where he serves as sub-prior, and is already an acquaintance of mine. He attended the retreat that Bro David Steidl Rast and I did for Boulder Integral Life. He is a big student of Ken Wilber's writings and as a matter of fact accompanied David and I to meet with Ken.

I started popping into the discussion more when we got the future of the website. Not that I am any great techie, but because here we were discussing something about the energy and vision of the board for the future. During that discussion I discovered that the Americans have been seen as something like mavericks in the greater organization and (if you read the last blog this will make sense) partially because of the involvement of lay people on the board, such as our old friend Wayne Teasdale. I brought up the discussion about the "new monastics/emerging communities" right away, as an example of the dynamic use of a Website (Julian's) that is getting lots of traffic. This issue came up again later as well when we were discussing the next gathering of Monks in the West (MITW), a Buddhist/Christian encounter that will be held for the second time up at the Land of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, CA, hosted by Heng Sure. Of the various possible themes that surfaced, three seemed to go together: the monastic ideal, formation of lay people, and meditation. So we ended picking as a theme for the next MITW the "Universal Call to Contemplation" (I swear, that title did not come from me!) to focus in on two things: how contemplative practice has become so important outside of monastic circles; and the exchange between the emerging communities and older institutions. Several folks at the meeting had had good encounters with this same movement, and we agreed that it wasn't just what monasticism had to offer them, but what they also had to offer us in terms of creativity and commitment.

The other thing that came up several times in various discussions was the relation with Islam. Sr Helene of Atchison KS spoke about being involved in a Christian-Muslim event that had included some prayer but was mostly scholarly discussions, and wondered out loud what her/our place was at something like that, especially since Islam, like Judaism, has no monastic tradition per se. I was reflecting on our wonderful encounters with our friends in Santa Cruz, especially the Tent of Abraham (which to our disappointment is not going to happen this year), but also remembering attending a conference at Santa Clara in the Spring and wondering the same thing. I was even a little annoyed at the scholarly conference, feeling as if I was getting too far adrift of my own vocation, whereas I would go a long way out of my way to pray, converse and eat (or do yoga!) with our friends from Pacifica Institute. The topic of relations with Islam and what our role should/could be came up several other times, most pointedly on Sunday afternoon when we watched the film "Of Gods and Men" together. That of course is the story of the seven Trappists of Tibhirine in Algeria who were killed in Algeria in 1996. Seeing that movie for the second time I was no less moved by it, especially to view it with Trappists several of whom knew one or the other of the monks killed and had other knowledge about the events surrounding their deaths. The film is so well done, and really does show Christianity, Catholicism, religious life, and monasticism at its absolute best. I remember thinking it was like a conversion experience for me the first time I saw it, it filled me such hope. I was even more moved by the scenes of Frere Christian, the prior, quoting the Qur'an both in writing and in speech, and even writing in Arabic in his letters. That's why we study--so as to speak another's language (Literally and metaphorically), to understand another's tradition, to find the good in it, to honor the other. I was reminded of so many things: discussing the Bhagavad Gita with the young guys from the Krishna Consciousness Center in Laguna Beach, talking about the Tao te Ching late one night in New Camaldoli's library with a visitor, discussing the practice of the tasbih with Mohammad, the owner of that delicious Moroccan restaurant in Copenhagen, how people just light up when they find out that you have spent some time to learn something about their tradition. Especially in this day and age so many irresponsible, ignorant and downright stupid things get said in public by politicians and preachers about other traditions, which is not just unfortunate, it's downright dangerous. It's how wars get started and keep going. Of course the other thing I was thinking about this time as the first time I saw the film was the Five Holy Brothers and Saint Bruno Boniface, the first generation Camaldolese monks who were martyred in Poland and Hungary. Especially the former came to mind as we discussed what we call the "dialogue of presence." The brothers went to Poland not to preach, but just to be there as contemplative monks among some of the most savage tribes, just as the Trappists in Algeria did not proselytize, but were woven into the life of the Muslim community around them. I thought of Charles de Foucauld as well, and of shopping at Corralitos market and running along Browns Valley Road.

It was all the more enjoyable then last night when some of the folks asked me to share some music with them at our last gathering, a social, and I sang "Bismillah," "The Drink Sent Down" and "The Ground We Share." I also sang "Compassionate and Wise" for them, and was about to launch into the whole story of how Heng Sure had written that piece after the terrorist attacks in 2001 for... when I realized that he had written it here for this very gathering ten years ago! Some of them remembered.

It's Monday morning now, I got a grand send off this morning at 5 AM. Bro Gregory, Sr Kathy and Sr Helene (president, secretary, executive director) all got up to usher me to the train station this morning. I'm on the Amtrak Cardinal now, since 6 AM ET, heading north to Chicago to begin the trek across the sea. Wishing you peace.

an unexpectedly competent minority

Happy are those who are able to escape from the lower self and feel the gentle breeze of friendship.
Their hearts are so full of the Beloved that there is no longer room for anyone else.
The Beloved flows through their every vein and nerve.
Every atom of their body is filled with the Friend.
True lovers can no longer perceive either the scent nor the color of their own selves.
They have no interest in anything other than the Beloved. (Jami, Sufi mystic)

6 oct, denver airport

Okay, so let's start out with a shout out to the World Religions Class at SFHS. That above quote is for you. It goes along with Fr. Bede's maxim on the right side of the white board in your classroom: "The aim (goal? scopos?) of life is to go beyond the self." It's just keeps coming up over and over again, doesn't it? This first entry may be a little boring and specific, but I'll try to make it more interesting as the days go on.

I am en route now, the first leg of a long journey. Tonight, Chicago where I will stay with Rory Cooney and Therese Donahoo tonight, old musician friends from Phoenix days (old friends, not old musicians. Speaking of which, we prayed and broke bread with Tom Booth and the Paschal Mystery Band last night in the Sangha room. They're on the road doing a tri-state tour. It was like an ambush of grace.) Tomorrow Rory will put me on a suburban train into Union Station where I catch an Amtrak bus to Indianapolis and my first meeting of the Board of MID, Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, being hosted by the Benedictine nuns of Beech Grove. I was voted onto the board just this past year and am quite interested in what it means to participate. The organization has been around since 1977, founded as an offshoot of an older organization: AIM--Aide Inter-Monasteres.

As Franics Tiso explains in an excellent article (written to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Raimundo Pannikar's ground breaking book on "the monk as universal archetype"--"Blessed Simplicty"): A large number of Christian monastic foundations were made during the 1950's and 60's outside Europe and North America, where the majority had been 'til then. This suddenly raised the challenge for monks to engage in dialogue between cultures and address the issue of inculturating, that is, adapting monastic practices to the native genius of the culture in which the monks found themselves. And "AIM was founded in 1960 as a way of coordinating the efforts made in that direction." MID, on the other hand, was an attempt to institutionalize international monastic based specifically interreligious dialogue. At the time the Vatican was keen that the monastic orders continue to assume a leading role in the interreligious dialogue that was called for at Vatican II. Why monks? Cardinal Sergio Pignedoli, who was prefect for the Secretariat of Dialogue with non-Christians at the time, said it this way: because historically monks are the outstanding type of the homo religiosus (or at least they are supposed to be!) and as such monks could serve as a "reference point for both Christians and non-Christians." As a matter of fact, he says that "the existence of monasticism at the heart of the Catholic Church is in itself a bridge connecting all religions," and if we were to approach Hinduism or Buddhism for example, without the monastic experience, we should hardly even be considered religious people. Again, why? Because the real dialogue is not the dialogue of ideas and comparative theologies, but the dialogue of religious experience, and monasticism at its best is a practical life, a life of praxis. Not to say that other forms of religious life are not, but for the monk it is front and center.

Which brings up another point, the underlying point of Tiso's article. In the early days of Roman Catholicism's involvement in interreligious dialogue after Vatican II, it was often young people who were not official monastics--so-called "lay monastics"--who carried on much of the work of interreligious dialogue. It was specifically these "new monastics" that felt themselves addressed in Pannikar's book, and who were so inspired by Abhishiktananda and Bede Griffiths, the former of whose experience was especially the underlying fodder for Pannikar. According to Tiso, these "lay" or "new" monastics (NB: Julian Collette and his creative efforts with "emerging communities") often served as secretaries and assistants for, as well as being protagonists in, AIM and the organizations it spawned; they also brought a lot of practical knowledge as well as raw the data of emerging ideas about monasticism and immersion in dialogical encounter with members of other world religions. "Monastic interreligious dialogue was relying heavily on the scholarly expertise and organizational skills of lay collaborators, almost all of whom lived their lives under the aegis of the mysterious attractive force of institutional monasticism, without becoming monks." Tiso laments that these new monastics were sidelined early on because of the tension provoked by the encounter, partially, he feels, as he writes in a pretty good pithy phrase, because this is what happens when "a group feels threatened by the dynamism of an unexpectedly competent minority in its midst, something that has been observed in other institutional setting as well."

These new monks connected with monastic interreligious dialogue in the '70s and '80s ended up scattered across the landscape in a variety of marginal careers. But even Tiso admits that maybe that is as it should be, because "their very marginality corresponds to the most fundamental discovery of inner experience: that material success, name, fame and outer format count for very little in comparison to the experience of divine, ineffable wholeness..." and, as Pannikar himself noted, "the inner experience is definitely prior to the subsequent development of career and other commitments, including vows." Tiso goes on to note that the one form of life that has especially survived of all this is the hermit vocation, which tends to be a strong, even primal, monastic image. Many of these hermits find themselves in a very good position to provide a bridge "for those who have explored non-Christian religions and who now wish to return to the practice of Catholicism in depth."

I've got all of that in mind, especially having had a lot of good interaction with Julian these past weeks and examining my own vocation, as I go into this meeting with a dozen other monastic men and women this next weekend--specifically, what and how can we all, monks and non-monks, contribute to harmony among peoples and the evolution of consciousness so necessary in this day and age of polarization and fear?