a hidden wholeness

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1 October, 2016, Queenscliff, Australia

It’s an act of rebellion to show up as someone trying to be whole, and as someone who believes there is a hidden wholeness beneath the very evident brokenness of our world.

                        Parker Palmer

Aussie fish 'n chips, "flake."

I had a wonderful three more free days down on the peninsula with Hans before coming here to the oblate retreat. There are a series of towns and villages on the bay side of the peninsula, some very simple and some on the luxurious side. Hans and Ruth have kept the house near the village of Rye that they lived in when Hans served as parish priest in nearby Sorrento. Many of the homes in this area are holiday homes and theirs too had the feeling of a beach house, a cross between Santa Cruz and Live Oak. There is of course a good surfing community here, and I actually learned that billabong is more than a brand name of surfing gear; it’s an aboriginal word (actually two: billa=water + bang=a channel), for a stagnant backwater pool off a river. Fr. Michael had driven me down, a long ride from the retreat center at Warburton with lively conversation, and after lunch Hans and I had a quiet afternoon with some errands, though he indulged me in my one wish for dinner: for some reason I had a hankering for fish and chips, to see how the Australian variety stacked up as compared to the English and Canadian. Just after dark he took me to a little place called Hector’s (with a name like that for all the world I was sure that the owners were going to be Mexicans; they weren’t), and we had “flake,” which is actually shark. Hans thought we would take away and eat at home, but I wanted the whole experience and suggested that we eat in, which actually meant eating out, on a metal table on the sidewalk right off the shore with a pretty blustery wind blowing, a scene that Hans has recounted several times already…

I have my old tried and true prayer service with me that I used to use on the road and which I was planning on using for this oblate retreat, and I decided to try it out on Hans. He liked it so much that we prayed morning and evening together from Wednesday night on, reading the Tao te Ching and Katha Upanishad off of my iPhone. We even co-opted Ruth into midday prayer with us before we left yesterday, that time reading from Laudato Si which Hans is reading with great admiration. Not often that kind of treat occurs, finding someone to pray and meditate with. In the morning on Thursday after taking the border collie, Nelson, for a walk down at the beach on the ocean side of the peninsula (it narrows here so that it is only a kilometer or so distance between the ocean and the bay), Hans took me on a grand hike in the national park. We first went one direction over some hills ‘til we spotted a herd of kangaroo. It was so cool, there were so many of them though I wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t pointed them out, so well camouflaged in the bush. And they were much bigger than I would have thought and looked strong and fearsome, though they themselves are timid. We kept walking toward them; they would stand and stare at us for a time with their limpid eyes and then bounce bounce bounce boing boing boing across the bush.

Then we headed the other direction, about a 5 kilometer hike through the bush and down to the shore, where we ate spinach and cheese pasties that Hans bought at the local pasty shop, which is now owned by a young Swedish gentleman, with whom Hans had a lively conversation. (Hans is originally from Denmark, and by the way it’s not pronounced “Hahns” as one might expect; the Danish is much more like “Hanns,” short flat “a.”) Later, after prayers, Hans prepared dinner and I played guitar a bit, biding time until the rest of the family showed up, Ruth and the two boys, Markus and Enoch. The whole mood of the place changed, of course, not at all for the worst and it was delightful to be around some nice domestic bliss for a few hours.

Hans had sort of co-opted the boys into taking me for a run in the bush along the shore in the morning. I was of course up at stupid-o’clock and Enoch too was up pretty early biding his time on the couch, until we finally had to rouse Markus around 9 o’clock. And then we had a great run, about 7 km., they reckoned, again through the bush along the shore, with Enoch leading the way until the end when Markus wanted to sprint the last bit along the street. Then after a bit of cacophonous yoga on the front porch and a wonderful lunch of smoked trout and hummus on thick toast, one of our other oblates, Joe, fetched us and we headed over here to Queenscliff. To get here be car would have taken a few hours, all around the bay and through Melbourne again, so we, of course, took the fairy, a huge boat that held about thirty cars. It was only a 45-minute cruise, but it was beautiful to see the shoreline and then the mouth that leads out to the ocean and the little village of Queenscliff as we approached. It is a lovely spot, with Victorian era homes, churches and public buildings. This area is one of the first places settled by the British, and it is from nearby that the first shots were fired in both the World War I and World War II, cannon fire across the bow aimed at German tankers who were trying to escape in the former case, and the same who were unaware that war had been declared in the latter.

Sr. Nola at the Santa Casa.

The retreat center, Santa Casa, is run by the Mercy Sisters, the same congregation that runs so many retreat centers in the States. Or, I should say, is run by one sole Mercy sister, Nola, and she does a great job. The place is very clean, quiet and well appointed. The main building, where most of us are housed, too is from the Victorian era, and there is another more modern building where we are gathering for our conferences and prayers. This gathering feels a bit different from the oblate retreat on Tasmania in 2009, a few less people and not all of them are oblates (14) but “observers” (6), nonetheless very invested and attentive. I had a lively discussion with several of the folks last night during and after dinner, one of them now a yoga teacher and iconographer (great combination) that I had met back in 2009 and with whom I had stayed in touch sporadically all these years. The guys I spoke with at least seem to be as very well read as Michael and Hans, and I found myself discussing Panikkar and Abhishiktananda with no real gaps to fill in.

Monday, October 3, Church of St. Mary of the Angels, Bukit Batok, Singapore

It was so interesting to step out of the airport and smell the air here in Singapore again. I transited through here so many times between 2006 and 2013, usually on my way to and from India, that it began to feel like a second home. I got in so late that I had to stay the night at Leonard’s last night, my old friend from here who again fetched me from the airport. He had set up a separate en suite room for me in the apartment and I slept very well ‘til about 5 when a massive thunderstorm blew through. It rains here all the time, like nearly every day, but I don’t ever remember experiencing thunder and lightning like that, and it caused me to have one of those odd travel moments where I couldn’t figure out where the heck I was, but I woke up thinking that I was on the uppermost floor of a high rise somewhere in Asia. (The apartment building is only seven or eight stories and we were on the fifth.) The rest of the morning couldn’t have been nicer: I got to use the gym at the apartment complex, then Leonard arranged for me to have a massage of sorts––their favorite Chinese body worker, Helen, does a unique combination of acupressure and massage––right there in the living room. And then I accomplished another of my goals, getting a new pair of glasses here in Singapore where there is a wide selection of one-off frames and they are less expensive than in the states. Now I am firmly ensconced at the friary at the Church of St. Mary of the Angels. I have stayed here many times, but usually in the parish house instead of the friary. It is very comfortable here and I shall enjoy celebrating part of the Transitus with them tonight and tomorrow.

Our oblates Down Under; Fr. Michael is to my left; Hans is three down from him.

The retreat in Australia ended very well. This is about the fourth time now I have offered a retreat on this particular theme, drawn from Bruno’s Second Simplicity––the quaternitas of the Silence, the Word, the Music and the Dance––but filled in with my own material. Just as in almost every retreat conference he gave Bruno used to always walk and draw a cross with a circle around it, a mandala, and then fill it in, so I have been introducing these talks by saying it’s as if he left me a blank mandala and encouraged me to fill it in in my own way, and I have. I hope he would approve. It has been interesting reading Panikkar’s Rhythm of Being simultaneously, in which he is trying to show the universality of the trinity or the triune relationship of Ultimate Reality not just in Christianity but also as it is manifested in many traditions” India, Egypt, the Buddha, Lao Tzu’s heaven, human and earth, ancient Rome, through the Christian writers. Actually he is extending the “privilege of the Trinity to the whole of Reality… The Trinity is not [just] the privilge of the Godhead but the character of reality as a whole.” I have been marking in the margins “the 4^th” every time I see him pointing out Bruno’s other movement, the Dance, which is in some way included in Panikkar’s relationship already too. He does mention Jung once in relationship to this: “One might also refer to the hypothesis of the archetypes as C. G. Jung interprets them” who “tended to see the human psyche as a quarternitas because of its apparent balance.” Arcane nonsense, I know, but I love being at least in the shallow end of that particular pool, of this intellectual spiritual legacy, and our oblates Down Under sure appreciated my forays into it all.

At the last session of the retreat Sunday morning I offered my own reflections and a ferverino on the possibilities for our oblate program, how I see the oblates as the outer face of our charism, and how other religious congregations are passing on their charism to lay people and how this ties in with Fr. Bede’s vision of loose knit gatherings of lay communities (one of the main inspirations for the World Community of Christian Meditation, by the way). I told them too about our oblate mentoring program and how important it is to feel part of the larger congregation and our storied history. I also encouraged them to think outside the box, to stay content to be charismatic and outside the institution and traditional religious life, that that is where I see the real excitement happening.

Last night flying and this morning I was really feeling the beginning of the transition back to California. I think I will be ready come next Monday to empty out my backpack and sleep in my own bed again. It’s all very mysterious, the unfolding of life and our vocation, and to see the world again from these various perspectives and discern our individual and collective place in it. I feel more than ever the bond between us all, the common ground that we already share and how small the global village has become––and how symbiotic as well! I find it exhilarating and sobering at the same time. As Parker Plamer says, sometimes it's an act of rebellion just to believe that "there is a hidden wholeness beneath the very evident brokenness of our world."

love is found everywhere...

Wednesday, September 28, 2016, near Milgrove, Australia

The universe is a vast field of lovers,

a gathering where gods and goddesses––

who are reflections of the supreme couple––

intertwine. Love is found everywhere.

                                                            John Dupuche

I did wind up singing part of the song during my homily Sunday morning. It was a very interesting parish, as Hans had advised me, very high church, and yet at the same time very socially progressive and active. They are right in the heart of downtown Melbourne, and have a soup kitchen as well as a very active ministry with the LGBTIQ community. I had to be careful about my references to “tramps on the street” because there seemed to be several homeless men coming in and out of Mass. Regarding “high church”: as we walked in some folks were removing the altar from the sanctuary and lighting the candles on the high altar instead, at which the priest-presider at our Mass faced ad oriens–“the same direction as the people”; most of the acclamations were sung polyphonically in Latin by a small choir; there was an MC, lots of incense and vesture, and it was all done very well, with almost military precision. I think this may be only my second experience of an Anglican High Mass, and I was taking all kinds of mental notes.

As I was getting ready to preach, I was trying to keep in mind my experience preaching at the Uniting Church in Perth seven years ago, and how there is a kind of British reserve about church folks here in Australia too; one simply doesn’t get the kind of feedback from an assembly that one would normally get in the States. But still, prepared as I might have been, it is a bit like flying blind. Afterwards people were very gracious and Hans told me that my homily was good. I actually overheard someone quoting me later, so I guess something of it stuck. After Mass and a small reception in the parish hall I was then the guest at a regular Sunday afternoon event, an hour presentation. That was most fun and again I felt in my prime––sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of a semi-circle of folks, singing songs and telling stories. I basically used the same program I had used the last two nights in NZ, so it is as easy as breathing now, and again I thought, “I love my life.”

Another of our oblates, Ruth Harrison, then drove me up here, up on “the peninsula,” as everyone calls it. I am staying at Pallotti College, the former novitiate for the Pallottine Congregation of priests and brothers, built in the 1960s when they were booming with vocations. Now that they, like so many other religious orders and congregations, are “aging out” it functions as a retreat center. But this has a connection with us Camaldolese (besides the fact that there is a priest who lives here as a hermit with a sign pointing to his place off the road that reads “Camaldoli”). Fr. Michael Mifsud, who is the director of our oblates here, met Bede Griffiths in the early 1990s, and came back from India requesting of his bishop that he be allowed to pursue an eremitical vocation. Soon other folks who were interested in the solitary life began to gather around him and they, along with our good friend Meath Conlan in Perth, who brought Fr. Bede to Australia in 1991, decided to become oblates of Shantivanam. More folks gathered ‘round Michael, and he founded a Camaldolese ashram here on this property, in a house called Montserrat. After Fr. Bede died in 1993 they decided to affiliate with New Camaldoli in Big Sur instead. Michael has been to stay with us several times now. The ashram experiment ended and he has moved to another hermitage in nearby Warburton, but the community of Camaldolese oblates has continued to grow. What is particularly interesting to me, and why I have a special love for this part of the world, is that it all started with Fr. Bede, and only then became Camaldolese; and our oblates here for the most part are folks who are interested in meditation and solitude, have more than a passing interest in interfaith dialogue, and hold their Camaldolese identity very dearly.

I might not have been paying attention when they were writing to me making plans for this trip, but suddenly my schedule seemed to fill up more than I realized, so I had written ahead and asked that I could have some down time, on my own. So they have kindly arranged for me to have three nights here, a full desert day Monday, and only a visit with the scholar Fr. John Dupuche yesterday and a brief visit to Michael’s hermitage. I was remembering the phrase that I heard attributed to Carl Jung: by then I really needed some time for my soul to catch up with my body.

The trip yesterday to visit Fr. John Dupuche was wonderful. We had met one time before at the Abhishiktnanda centenary at Shantivanam in 2009. He is a specialist in Kashmir Shaivism and works extensively in interreligious dialogue. When I first met him he was just beginning an experiment where a Tibetan monk and a yogi were living with him in his parish house. Now that he is retired from active ministry he has an interfaith ashram on 9 acres on the banks of the Yarra River, with room for six others. Currently a Buddhist practitioner and a former Jesuit who works in Islamic studies (currently teaching in Pakistan) live with him part time. He had two of his books awaiting me, Jesus: the Mantra of God and, the one particularly of interest to me, Towards a Christian Tantra: the Interplay of Christianity and Kashmir Shaivism. I was honored to find out that he, like may others down this way, had read my Spirit, Soul, Body, and apparently approved of it, too, and we launched into a good long discussion about our common areas of interest. I feel like a total dilettante in the area of Kashmir Shaivism compared to him, but he left me feeling as if I was on the right track. He was particularly struck by the mention I made in SSB that I thought that approach of kundalini Yoga, and even its “techniques, or something similar, are something I dream of being introduced into our seminaries and houses of formation.” We both agreed first of all that everything depends on some individuals really committing to prayer and the practice so as to be guides to others; but following on that wondered and dreamed if ever anything substantive and practical could grow from that in Catholic Christianity. I still don’t even dare to dream of myself enough of an adept to be a solid guide, but as I reflect on it this morning I am still frustrated that all of this so often remains at the level of theory and scholarship. Perhaps it can only be realized in charismatic relationships, guru to disciple, or companion to companion in a real bond of trust and commitment to long term relationship, and never really be institutionalized.

I read through most of the second chapter in John’s book last night and this morning, and am once again struck by the depth of this tradition, which so often gets known only by its sexual practices. It’s really all about consciousness. I went back to my own chapter on Tantra in the “Hidden Chapters” that were left out of SSB. As I understand it the fundamental intention––the scopos––of Tantra is to pass from the gross, phenomenal world to the subtle, absolute realm, but then to permeate the gross phenomenal realm with the value and meaning of the subtle absolute. If I may quote myself (from the “Hidden Chapters”):

Quiescence is realized and the universe reaches a state of absolute oneness when these two poles of activity and passivity, the Masculine and the Feminine, consciousness and matter, merge. Furthermore, the Tantric practitioner seeks the reunification of these two opposite principles––Shiva and Shakti, the masculine and the feminine, the passive and the active––in his or her own person, through experience, through sadhana. Note well that in Samkhya the union of purusha and prakriti had been an “unfortunate marriage,” whereas Tantra seeks the union of the two! Conceptually, they could merge for the Tantric practitioner simply by the repeated declaration of their fundamental oneness, but more importantly they merge when they are experienced, by the practitioner’s experiencing this merger through sadhana, through spiritual disciplines. They merge when the body––and with it all of creation––is experienced as an instrument of spiritual perfection.

Now I am off to another two free days at Hans’ home nearby on the peninsula, and then the retreat with our oblates on the weekend.

across the tasman sea

25 September 2016, Melbourne, Australia

If Jesus should come and knock on your door

for a place to come in, or bread from your store,

would you welcome him in, or turn him away?

Then God would deny you on the great judgment day.

Just after I wrote that last entry I had a wonderful experience, a little thing that touched my heart pretty deeply. (As Br. Bede says, “It’s the little things…”) I was at the local gym, got in a good workout, and was about to leave. I asked the kind woman at the desk, who had been very welcoming as I got there, if there was any place where I could get a cup of tea. She thought for a moment, screwed up her face and said, “Well, the café is already closed…. Hmmm… Just sit down over there and I’ll make you a cuppa.” And she did, disappearing into a backroom and re-appearing a few minutes later with a good strong cuppa. I had many little instances of that during my days in NZ, not to mention that kind hospitality of my hosts Michael and Elizabeth.

My last two evenings enjoying Kiwi hospitality in New Zealand were spent doing two presentations, one at the parish in the town of Whangerei and another back down the coast in Auckland. Both were meant to be and advertised as interfaith events. The first one, in the smaller town of Whangerei, drew quite a mixed crowd. Afterwards I met some Baha’is and Vedantists and Buddhist practitioners. It was fun; as back in the day at the end of my time on the road I used to do events that were half-singing/half-speaking, so for these, since Michael had left the theme pretty open, I just picked five songs and did long introductions to them. The next night in the big city of Auckland (at least a fourth of the population of New Zealand lives there, over a million people), was mostly members of the World Community of Christian Meditation, who co-sponsored both events along with our Camaldolese oblates. I did the same program there but this time added on an extra half hour and left time at the end for a group meditation. It was a very sweet evening, and I found people enormously receptive and myself enormously satisfied.

In Auckland we were the guests of Fr. Peter Murphy who is very active with the WCCM and extremely well read in much the same area of interest as I myself have, so we had a good lively discussion about lo’ these many things. Peter had spent some years in California studying at the Center for Creation Spirituality, so that added a whole other layer to our discussion. Perhaps it is just the folks with whom I am hanging out, but I have noticed so much interest in and dedication to environmental concerns and sustainability in these parts, especially among Christians. It is inspiring and challenging. It is also so fascinating to find these common threads of dedication and enquiry at such a distant part of the globe and also heartening to realize that it is not just the tragedies in life that bind us together––global warming, the refugee crisis, warring states, Donald Trump––but we are also part of a tapestry woven together of common interest and common aspiration, common hope and energy.

Early the next morning I headed across the Tasman Sea on a four hour flight here to Melbourne. I was accompanied by our oblate Phillip Saunders, who was heading over here for family matters. It was nice to have the company, and then to be greeted by our obate here, Hans Christensen. Hans is an Anglican priest, a Camaldolese oblate and the chaplain of a large prestigious boys school here in Melbourne. We had met when I was here in 2009 for the retreat in Tasmania and had remained in contact occasionally since then. Hans is another one with whom I have so many interests in common and we began tripping over each other’s sentences almost right away. He and his wife Ruth (and their dog Nelson) took me on a good long walking tour of Melbourne that afternoon. What a beautiful city! The architecture and the large art installations all over the place are especially impressive, but the city is also very clean, diverse and seemingly loaded with culture of all kinds.

Yesterday (Saturday) I led a day retreat for members of the World Community from several places here in the state Victoria, two long sessions, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Again, it was fun to revisit old material with a new audience: the morning was on the Universal Call to Contemplation and the afternoon was on Spirit, Soul and Body. What was most interesting was to see what new material actually came up in me after a three-year hiatus from broaching these topics.

Today I am preaching at a nearby Anglican church, which I’m alternatively told is very conservative and/or very high church. Hans has recommended that I wear my “whites” and helped me get all the Roman mud off the hems (nothing allegorical intended there; it was raining my last day in Rome as I walked home from the Congress at Sant’Anselmo, all of which, by the way, seems like a world away by now––and not only geographically). I’ll post my homily below as well. If the few of you are reading who remember this: a few years ago the song “Tramp on the Street” resurfaced at a conference with SN up at Mount Madonna, a song I hadn’t sung since I was in Chicago in 1976-77. That’s the gospel today––Lazarus, and I had fun with Ruth and Hans, who also knew the song, looking up its origins (and getting the lyrics right; the quote above is one verse I had never heard before, by the way.) You should look up Hank Williams’ version of it on YouTube, but it goes back farther. I am at least going to quote it in my homily, though still unsure whether or not I am actually going to break into song at a conservative and/or high church Anglican parish on a sunny Sunday morning in Melbourne.

a tramp on the street

(Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

There is a theory about what is called the Axial Period in human history that took place about 500 years before the birth of Jesus, what we call the Common Era. It’s a period when some scholars think that a great shift in human consciousness took place in several different places on the globe at the same time. The major things that get listed are, for example, in Asia it was marked by the birth of the scriptures of India known as the Upanishads, and the period when Buddhism broke away from Hinduism, and the birth of Taoism in China. A little more to the west, it was the age of the rise of Greek philosophy; and in the Jewish tradition it was the period of the great prophets.

What is the shift in consciousness that is taking place in Judaism at this time? The Jewish tradition seems to be coming out of a period of mythology and historical accounts, and moving into a period of an accent on greater individual moral responsibility. In the earlier scriptures of Judaism the image of God that is presented to us is a little confusing at times: God seems to be a little capricious, sometimes even warlike. Sometimes God seems to be appeased by sacrifice, as if we could manipulate and coerce God into doing things, or that we could change God’s mind. But in the period of the prophets, there seems to be a shift. In the very first chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah, for instance, God asks, ‘What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls…’ And then in chapter 58 he says:

Is not this the fast I choose:

loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke,

let the oppressed go free, break every yoke,

share your bread with the hungry,

bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, cover them.

Remove the yoke from among you,

the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,

offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted.

That’s the kind of fast God wants––justice. And the prophet Amos who we hear in the 1^st reading today, stands at the very beginning of this great tradition of the prophets speaking of and calling for social justice in the name of the Lord God, teaching that concern for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, the needy is at the very heart of the Law.

We ought to see Jesus in this lineage, this prophetic lineage, always maintaining that the greatest commandment is actually two: not only ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind’ but there is a second too that is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ These two things are inextricably linked together. Twice in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus puts himself firmly in this new prophetic Axial consciousness when he quotes Hosea 6: ‘Go and learn what this means: “It is love that I desire not sacrifice; the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”’

So in some way there is no hidden message here: Our love of God must resolve itself in also caring for those around us, in ever widening circles of involvement. Our spiritual life demands of us a moral, ethical response, and urges us to build a world of justice and peace. And I think we will be judged as a society especially by how we take care of the neediest, the poorest and the weakest in our midst. ‘Anything you did for the least of these,’ Jesus says, ‘you did for me.’

That also leads us to another layer of meaning of this beautiful story. I was taught that we’re always supposed to be looking for Christ hidden in stories in the Scriptures. This is especially true when Christians read the Hebrew Scriptures, so we try to find Christ hidden in the story of Noah’s ark, to find Christ hidden in the story of the Exodus, in the story of the 40 years’ journey across the desert, even in the story of Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho. But we should also look for the Christ in Jesus’ own parables. Jesus is often speaking in veiled reference about himself. And of course in this very story of Lazarus and the rich man too, Jesus is speaking about himself. This Lazarus is a type of Christ, a Christ figure. Jesus is not afraid to be the poor one, the humble one, the one who is cast out, even the defeated one.

There was an old country gospel song that was redone by several folk singers in America, called “Tramp on the Street.” What is interesting about the song is that whoever wrote it was actually a pretty good theologian. They really got it right, not just the moral imperative that is implied in the song––that we cannot ignore the plight of the poor in our midst––but also that Lazarus himself is an image of Christ. In the first verses we sing about Lazarus:

Only a tramp was Lazarus’ sad fate,

he who lay down at the rich man's gate.

He begged for the crumbs from the rich man to eat.

He was only a tramp found dead on the street.

(I love this part…)

He was some mother’s darlin’;

he was some mother's son.

Once he was fair and once he was young.

And some mother rocked him, her darlin’ to sleep,

but they left him to die like a tramp on the street.

And then he sings about Jesus!

Jesus, he died on Calvary’s tree.

He shed his life’s blood for you and for me.

They pierced his side, his hands and his feet,

and they left him to die like a tramp on the street.

He was Mary’s own darlin’; he was God’s chosen son.

Once he was fair and once he was young.

Mary, she rocked him, her little darlin’ to sleep,

but they left him to die like a tramp on the street.

So when we encounter the poor––and Jesus was quite specific about this––we ought to see the face of Christ; we ought to see Jesus who, as St. Paul says, though he was rich he became poor so as to make us rich out of his poverty. In another place Paul calls it kenosis, the Greek word meaning “emptying.” Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. Rather he emptied himself and took the form of a slave... Jesus emptied himself, became poor, and washed his disciples’ feet. He emptied himself, and gave his life over in a ministry of bringing good news to the poor and healing bodies and supplying banquets of abundance to hungry crowds because he had compassion on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd. Ultimately he emptied himself and became poor even to the point of accepting death, death on a cross, so as to be filled with the glorious power of resurrection. As the poet Christian Wiman put it, Jesus risked “complete erasure” of himself “for the sake of something greater.”

But Paul says you too––we too!––should have this mind of Christ. What does that mean? I think it means two different things. First of all: I don’t want to romanticize poverty, obviously, but when we encounter someone who is poor we are supposed to see ourselves, recognize our own poverty in some way. Maybe that’s why the poor are at times repulsive to us: we can’t stand to think of ourselves in that condition. But there is something worse than physical poverty: there is spiritual poverty. There’s something even worse than a hungry stomach––a starving, famished, depressed, tormented soul. And that’s what I see when I walk around shopping malls and watch people’s faces as they drive by in rush hour traffic. Mother Teresa said when she visited America that the wealthy were a lot poorer than the homeless in our country.

Secondly, a deeper spiritual message: I remember visiting a monastery of Poor Clare nuns some years ago. (They are the cloistered women descendants of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare.) There was a plaque hanging on the wall next to my chair in their dining hall that had a beautiful quote from St. Clare to her sister Agnes in Italian: Ne sono sicurissima––il regno dei cieli il Signore lo promette e lo dona solo ai poveri––“Of this I am absolutely sure, that the Lord promises and grants the reign of heaven only to the poor.” A variation on that might be, the Lord promises and grants divinization only to the poor in spirit, as Jesus teaches in his beatitudes, only to those who have died in some way, those who have emptied themselves of themselves.

There is a piece of universal wisdom here, and I think that the Christian tradition articulates this as beautifully if not more beautifully than any other religious tradition, though it may be a piece of universal wisdom that is really only understood in mature spirituality in any tradition. In his famous book The Perennial Philosophy Aldous Huxley points out that in all authentic traditions Ultimate Reality is only clearly understood by those who are loving, by those who are pure in heart and poor in spirit. “[It] is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly experienced,” he says, “except by souls… who have fulfilled certain conditions.” And he goes on to point mostly to the life of Jesus and to many Christian saints, and he quotes the famous phrase of St. Augustine: Ama et fac quod vis––“Love and do what you will.” But, he says, you can only do this “when you have learnt the infinitely difficult art of loving God with all your mind and heart”; and we can only love and do what we will when we have learned that infinitely difficult art of loving our neighbor as ourselves. We can only love and do what we will when we have emptied ourselves of all other loves and attachments and desires. That is the baptismal death we have to undergo and the baptismal pledge by which we live, and the demand of our participation at the Eucharistic Table––that we ourselves agree now to be broken like the bread and passed out, crushed like the grapes and poured out for the sake of the world.

These are good questions to ask ourselves today in response to today’s gospel: Are we willing to be poor like Jesus? Are we willing to experience complete erasure for the sake of something greater than ourselves––for the sake of the reign of God? Are we willing to shed our blood for the sake of Christ? Are we willing to lay down our lives for our friends? Are we willing to suffer persecution for the sake of justice? These are all simply the demands of the gospel. In our monastic tradition we follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, and he has some very annoying, demanding chapters toward the end of his rule. It’s not a great exalted thing we’re after as Benedict teaches it; it’s on a much more mundane and immediate level: he asks if we are simply willing to support one another’s weaknesses of body or behavior with patience, in community, in our family, in our workplace; and are we earnestly willing to compete in obedience to one another, are we willing to judge not what seems best for ourselves, but always what we judge best for someone else? This too is the poverty of spirit to which the gospel calls us. It’s not enough to dress in fine robes, or have good posture or even a still mind from yoga class, or memorize and quote scripture passages and say the right prayers in the right language. We’re not going to be able to buy our way into heaven nor manipulate God. We must at some point empty ourselves completely, and sit waiting, and make ourselves totally available to the Spirit of God.

God promises and gives the reign of God––a share in divinity––only to the poor in spirit. Of this I am, and we can be, absolutely sure, sure that it is only given to the poor, but sure that it will be given to us if we empty ourselves completely as Jesus did, and wait in joyful hope for the coming of the reign of God.

Tihei mauri ora!

19-21 September, 2016, Whangerie, New Zealand

I am being hosted here in New Zealand by our Camaldolese oblate, Michael Dougherty. We had met some years ago (2005) at Gaunts House in England at the Bede Griffiths’ centenary event there that I attended with Fr. George of Shantivanam. Michael and another of our oblates here, Phillip Saunders, have been in touch numerous times over the years, and were eager to have me stop since I was going to be “in the neighborhood.” Our Fr. Daniel, who is the official oblate chaplain for this region, had been here some years ago as well, so I saw no problem with that at all. All told there are only four Camaldolese oblates here, nevertheless they seem to be a very tight knit group and it means a lot to them to have chosen to follow the Camaldolese charism in their own way. They are also in touch with our oblate community in Australia and all members of the World Community for Christian Meditation, for whom I have done a lot of work over the years.

Michael and his wife Elizabeth have a lovely place well outside of the town of Whangerei, about two hours north of Auckland on the north island. Folks in this area seem very intentional about living close to and gently on the land. Michael and Elizabeth have a well-gardened acre on a larger 60-acre parcel of land that was purchased specifically to put ecological and spiritual practices together. I find it all very inspiring. Elizabeth is a wonderful cook and the kitchen is full of all kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables, many from their own garden, and all kinds of herbs and sauces and spices and wonderful homemade things. I told Elizabeth as I was struggling with my jetlag (it’s a 10 hour difference from Rome!), that I kept waking up not knowing where I was. Sometimes I thought I was in Wales (because of the landscape), other times I thought I was with my friends Elizabeth and Gillian up at Turtle Creek in Washington State (because of the wondrous kitchen).

One of the things you notice right away in New Zealand is how much the indigenous Maori culture is present in people’s minds. Many of the signs around stores and schools are in both English and Maori. Right away, for instance, in the arrival hall at Auckland airport you pass through a carved wooden arch called a waharoa. As you pass you can hear the voice of a woman chanting something called a karanga–a call. I had been advised by one of our oblates here, Phillip Saunders, that thought I may be tired (I was!) it is worth taking a moment to understand what is happening, and so I did. A lot of what follows is drawn from what Phillip sent me.

The waharoa is not only an entryway; it’s considered to be a threshold between two distinct environments, a liminal space. In traditional terms the waharoa was a portal between the group within a fortified precinct and a visiting group that restricted and manage the flow of a visiting group, defining the perimeter of any given precinct. But more importantly for our purposes, the waharoa was seen as a point of contemplation. This information that Phillip sent me stated that if one enters through a waharoa with the correct intentions, one would be entitled to hospitality and opportunities. In customary Maori society, no negotiations happened until this process had formally taken place. So the waharoa really symbolizes a relationship pathway between the two nations, two peoples. The karanga–the “call,” on the other hand, is meant to communicate both message and emotion. It usually comes from both sides: the host calls first answered by the visitors a call and response goes on. The purpose of this call is to “weave a spiritual rope to allow the symbolic waka–canoe of the manuhiri–visitors to be pulled on. It should never be broken and the sound should be continuous, each side weaving in and out of each other.
Thus the karanga is not just a call of one person to another: it’s a spiritual call that has been heard in Aotearoa––the native name for New Zealand––for generations and generations, providing the medium by which both the living and even the dead of the visitors can cross over to unite with the living and the dead of the hosts.

This reminds us that entering into a new space is never or never ought to be just a simple act of walking. Wherever we go, there is a presence of a people, and a coming together both physically and spiritually. I was reminded of walking through the entry gate of Tassajara, or how my friends and I used to anoint ourselves with oil as we began a hike in the wilderness.

There was one other Maori practice that Phillip alerted me to, that he thought related ot the yogic notion of prana–life energy in the breath. The Maoris have custom called hongi, which is a ritual greeting done by lightly touching noses and foreheads, and inhaling and thus exchanging breath with each other, sharing life force. This goes with the legend of the creation of the first woman, Hineahuone, who was formed from clay by the creator god Tane, who then breathed life into her nostrils. (You will recall of course the second story of creation, and the Lord God doing this with and for Adam.)

Another similar Maori concept is “Tihei mauri ora,” which literally means, “Sneeze! It’s the breath of life!” I’m told that this is often used in a practical way to draw attention to a speaker at the beginning of formal speeches. I might try it some time.

I just spent three days staying at a Baptist retreat center on the coast with three of our oblates and had a wonderful retreat with them, conferences, stretching and breathing, chanting and praying and wonderful meals provided by Elizabeth. This morning I did a short presentation for some high school students at the local Catholic high school, which went really well. The kids were very interested, well prepared and articulate, and had great questions. Today my kind handlers have given me some time off for good behavior, so I am sitting in a very nice internet café in the library, and then to wander around town on my own recognizance. Tonight and tomorrow night two presentations at local churches, singing songs and telling stories. Really wonderful hospitality and reception here from these good folks. Off to Australia on Friday.

(I can't download any pictures of illustration but will try to remedy that later.)

the blessing of fragility and the transfiguring power of beauty

There is formal intellectual formation, but the accompaniment of having a deep and stable experience of a life of communion with God and the brothers and sisters, which is essential in the charism of Saint Benedict, is often missing. There is instruction, but little wisdom; there is communal habitation, but little fraternal communion, little sharing on that which is truly profound in our life and experience.[1]

                    Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, Abbot General of the Order of Cistercians

18 September, 2016, Whangerei, New Zealand

Oh, my gosh: such a long couple of days getting here. And such-wide ranging experiences the last few days. My soul has got worse jet lag than my body!

Thursday morning I had the unexpected opportunity of celebrating Mass with the sisters of the Missionaries of Charity who, as I mentioned, share San Gregorio with us, though have very much their own space. George usually has this Mass with them, in English, but asked me to take it, which I did with pleasure. There were about 30 of them gathered, in a very simple chapel, most of them sitting on the floor. There seemed to be a handful of young women in formation and one not in any habit at all. It was a bit of a relief for me to pray and preach in English, which is the common language there. The contrast from our High Masses each and every day at the Congress couldn’t have been greater. They used simple songs, mostly from America, sung out of a photocopied book of lyrics, and everything was traditional in a devotional kind of way. I had a wave of nostalgia for mornings with the Poor Clares in Corralitos, especially looking out at their beaming receptive faces. I felt humbled by them: they have a very disciplined ascetical life both in life style and in prayer time, and yet they spend most of the rest of the day in very hard hands-on work with the poor.

It was the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross. There was a quote from Adrienne von Spreyr in Give Us This Day which I used as grist for my own reflections, of the nature that real sacrifice is when we do not know what form God will give to that which we offer. I went back again to the notion of real discernment not being between good and evil but between two goods, always trying to look for the summum bonum, giving up one good for a greater or the greatest good. But there is something even beyond that, like Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac: giving up a good without any idea what lies on the other side of it, really walking on water, steping out into the dark. Somehow that’s real hope, too, as Vaclev Havel said, “an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.... Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless how it turns out.” What good could possibly come out of your son dying on a cross; and yet that becomes the seed that falls into the ground and dies and so yields a rich harvest.

I didn’t get to visit with the sisters afterwards (I was half expecting that there would be three eggs and toast waiting for me in the priest’s parlor as the Poor Ladies used to do), but headed back to Sant’Anselmo for one last session of the Congress. That morning we were to hear from the ecumenical participants. There were four from the Eastern Christian tradition––Bishop Epiphanius, of the Abbey of St. Macarius of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church, Hieromonk Melchisedec Toronen of the Ecumenical Patriachate of Constantinople, Hegumen Joseph Kryukov of the Patriachate of Moscow, and Archimandrite Atanasie Rusnak from Romania––and an Anglican Benedictine, Abbot Stuart Burns, who had been with us the whole time. Of course I had noticed the Eastern Christian participants by there headgear, but I didn’t even know that the Anglican one was Anglican, he, obviously, blended in so easily with the group.

The intervention from the young Hegumen Joseph of Moscow was my favorite. He told us about a small choir from Germany called “Harpa Dei,” that came to visit there monastery, that specializes in singing rare sacred music from the medieval Catholic liturgy as well as from the liturgical practice of Byzantium, India, Ethiopia, Armenia and other countries. And he said that through their music they were able to accomplish something, which could have been accomplished otherwise. Despite their appearance, which was more than unusual for an Orthodox setting, which would tend to be very conservative and not very open to inter-confessional conversation, and despite their confessional affiliation, they made the monks listen. Then he recalled something that Pope Benedict XVI had said after a concert of Russian sacred music that was performed at the Vatican in 2010: that somehow “music already anticipates and resolves the impact between East and West through dialogue and synergy, and likewise that between tradition and modernity.” Then he went on to say that

Of course, one performance is just that––one of many steps that we need to make walking the road towards mutual acceptance. And the appearance of a Catholic monastic choir in the heart of the Orthodox monastic traditionalism should not be a reason for drawing too far-reaching conclusions. Yet, this shows once again that it is possible to have meaningful inter-confessional dialogue above the logical arguments. In some ways the beauty of art brings people into unity; in others––it prepares the way for a total transfiguration of a person. On the other hand, the absence of beauty in human life breeds hostility. As Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and all Russia says, beauty forms the inner state of a person, while ugliness releases the instincts, which turn a person from a creator into a destroyer.

Of course there are about five things in there that I could go on and on about––especially about the transfiguring power of beauty, but I’ll leave that stand on its own merits, except to add this: How much could this also be said about inter-religious music, that it “already anticipates and resolves the impact between various traditions through dialogue and synergy”?

We had kind of a raucous pranzo at San Gregorio as the priors and assistants gathered from all parts for our afternoon meeting with Fr. Paciolla, and then we all headed over to the Casa Generalizia of the Cistercians, also on the Avventine hill, just up from Sant’Antonio and down from Sant’Anselmo, for our afternoon meeting with him, discussing some fine points of our Constitutions and institutional make up in preparation for General Chapter next year. While there I caught a glimpse of their Abbot General there who had given us a plenary session two days before at the Congress (quoted above). I thought his was the best of everything we heard during the course of those two weeks, so real, so down to earth about our situation and what to do with it. I had this in mind as we were discussing fine points of our Constitutions and institutional make up in preparation for General Chapter next year.

This sharing however requires a humility, the humility of recognizing that we need each other. Communion, before a sharing of our richness, is born and is nourished in the sharing of our fragility. In this the precariousness of our day certainly helps us. We all reached [in their order] in one way or another the blessing of fragility, of the need to recognize that no one is truly strong, and therefore it becomes ridiculous to want to be stronger than the others.[2]

It is obvious that our congregation of monks as much as ay congregation is very fragile, dealing with aging and lack of vocations. I think hope we can keep humility and the blessing of our fragility in mind and the very center of our prayer as we prepare for our Chapter next year, and have the humility too not just to chart our course, but to truly listen to the voice of the Spirit in the signs of the times and the needs of the world.

Then there were hearty goodbyes all around, and Alessandro whisked me off to Fiumicino. I was good and early for my flight; I spent my last Euros on snacks, then embarked the almost six-hour long flight through the night to Dubai. (I actually had it in my mind that I was going to Abu Dhabi, for some reason. Glad I double-checked…) Of course it got increasingly fascinating watching the changing demographic from Rome to Dubai, which is the hub for United Emirates Airline, and the mélange of folks traveling to and from points all around the world. And then of course the 16-hour flight to Auckland. The older I get, and now having been away from this kind of travel for a time, the more I think that it is simply just not normal (kata physin) for the body to do that.

My host here, Michael Doherty, met me at the airport, but even before reaching him I had my first taste of indigenous New Zealand culture, which I will write about in the next post.

(I'm at an internet cafe in the library in town, but I forgot my cell phone so I can't post any new pictures, alas. Will make up for that when I can.)

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[1] “La formazione intellettuale, formale, c'è, ma manca sovente l'accompagnamento nel fare un'esperienza profonda e stabile della vita di comunione con Dio e i fratelli e sorelle che è essenziale nel carisma di san Benedetto. C'è istruzione, ma poca sapienza; c'è un'abitazione comune, ma poca comunione fraterna, poca condivisione su ciò che è veramente profondo nella nostra vita e esperienza.”

[2] “Questa condivisione però richiede un'umiltà, l'umiltà di riconoscere che abbiamo bisogno gli uni degli altri. La comunione, prima che dalla condivisione delle nostre ricchezze, nasce e si alimenta nella condivisione delle nostre fragilità. In questo ci aiuta certamente la situazione di precarietà di oggi. … Poi è giunta per tutti, in un modo o nell'altro, la ...benedizione della fragilità, del dover riconoscere che nessuno è veramente forte, e quindi diventa ridicolo voler essere più forte degli altri.”