photos from Kloster Marienrode

Sr. Monica, the German Expressionist nun.

 

Eremo Sankt Romuald und Kloster Marienrode

 From Eremo Sankt Romuald, outside of Hildesheim.

I am trying to piece the story of this community together. There used to be a Carthusian monastery in Hildesheim, a Charterhouse. And this place was originally the farm and granary for it. The monks live in four buildings that make up kind of a cloister quad, the main house, the guest house (which now houses two of the members), the refectory, and the chapel. Next to these buildings are the bigger farm buildings. A family lives there and runs the farm now. One side of the property is bordered by a deep dark forest, and the other is large fields with dirt roads running through them.

 

Benedikt was the first one here. He and Jeremias both belonged to the Ottilian Missionary Congregation at one time, then they both joined the congregation in Jerusalem. Benedikt left that congregation first and was offered this place by the bishop of Hildesheim. And shortly thereafter Jeremias too left that congregation. I met Jeremias for the first time when he was discerning that move. He came and stayed with us for a good long time, led there by Michael Fish, I believe. The two of them were accepted into our congregation only four years ago, and it is great to see that they are already growing, so it is not just a vanity project for the two of them. 

Both Benedikt and Jeremias are deeply influenced by Asian spirituality, particularly India, and especially great lovers of Abhishiktananda, and consequently Ramana Maharshi. (This whole place smells like Nag Chapma!) 

 

Speaking of which, we had a bit of a debate at lunch today about everyone preferring Abhishiktananda over Fr. Bede and I found myself in the delicate position of having to defend Bede(!) whilst proving my bona fides by saying I had read everything of Abhishiktananda too, including his diaries and journals, and had read The Further Shore ten times. I don’t want to have to choose between the two of them––does everything have to turn into a contest?––so I said simply that Bede was the more systematic of the two, but Abhishiktananda had the fire. (Maybe the energy and the container?) It was an interesting discussion and afterward Bernd thanked me for giving him a new perspective on Bede. This was all brand new for young Fabian, on the other hand, who asked us what he should read to get acquainted with Asian spirituality. The others recommended the Bhagavad Gita. I recommended the Tao te Ching as well.

 

Bernd does not speak very good English so I have not been able to get his story yet. He has been here with Benedikt for some time now, I take it, and has helped put together the beautiful liturgical books that they use, so he seems to know his way around the Roman liturgy very well. He too is also very influenced by India. I hope to get more of the whole story from Jeremias on our long train ride tomorrow.

 

A nice confluence is happening next week: we will all be at Camaldoli at the same time. Bernd will be making his official oblation there on the same day that Fabian will begins his novitiate. The other two members who are arriving any day now will also be making the pilgrimage to Italy as well, so the whole community will be there. Their connection to and affection for the Camaldolese is palpable and strong. Fabian this afternoon spoke movingly about all of them going to visit Saint Romuald’s tomb in Fabiano, saying Mass there in the crypt, and then all of them laying hands on the tomb together and weeping.

 

Fabian and I spent a good couple of hours together this afternoon. He first took me to a huge supermarket where I needed to pick up a few things. And then we drove to the Kloster Marienrode, a Benedictine women’s monastery right outside of Hildesheim. He was pointing out all kinds of points of interest along the way. He is actually a local boy and, at 32 years old, is already ordained a priest for this diocese. His bishop was both pleased and sad that he was leaving parish ministry for the monastic life. As a matter of fact, the church of Kloster Marienrode was his parish church growing up, and all of the nuns there greeted him like a favorite son. That place has a rather storied history. It is about 1000 years old, built around the time of the reign of Otto III (the very same friend of Saint Romuald). It was first an Augustinian monastery, mixed both monks and nuns; then for many years a Cistercian abbey. The present community of nuns came from one of Hildegard of Bingen’s monasteries in the south of Germany only in 1988. The church is only 700 years old or so, Fabian told me, but it is definitely pre-Baroque and beautiful in its simplicity. 

 

We met several of the nuns and I must say I was somewhat pleased that the majority of them did notspeak English well. I feel rather intimidated by how well so many Germans speak English, when a second language is still rather rare for Americans. On the other hand, one of the nuns we met told me that her English wasn’t so good because she had learned Russian instead as her second language. One wonders how it would change American culture and the American parochial mentality if it was assumed that from childhood you would be learning a second useful language. (Let’s say, for instance, Spanish?)

 

These women were a pretty impressive lot. Sr. Cecelia (the Russian speaker) only joined the monastery in her 50s after spending thirty years working as a medical doctor, for instance. The main feature of the visit was to meet Sr. Monica. Apparently, every time an American, especially a Californian, visits, the monks bring him or her to meet Sr. Monica. Her degree is in German Expressionist literature, which was a dominant literary movement during and immediately after World War I. She held a teaching position at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she met and later married a scientist from Stanford, consequently living for several years and raising two sons in the Bay Area. She only entered monastic life when she too was well into her middle age, the first novice for this kloster, she proudly told us. We had a great wide-ranging conversation, and all too short.

 

Today was a communal desert day here. We only met for lunch and Compline. They normally sing Gregorian chant in German from a book put together by the German Benedictines––and they do it very well––in their quaint chapel. But for Compline they use the meditation room upstairs here in the guesthouse where I am staying. There they sit on zabutans on the floor in a room that looks very much like a zendo (I’ll try to catch a photo before I leave), where the Blessed Sacrament is as well, and begin Compline chanting the Sanskrit mantras that are used at Shantivanam before singing the Gregorian office. They each also make a full prostration as one does in the samadhi halls in India before the Blessed Sacrament as they enter and exit. It was very beautiful.

 

Tomorrow Jeremias and I leave for the meeting at Nütschau, a long train ride from Hildesheim.

some photos from Hildesheim

 Here is the compound of the Eremo Sankt Romuald in Hildesheim from the back road.

Here is the chapel––not a straight wall in the entire building!

The inside of the chapel with Bernd, the claustral oblate, who seems to practically run the place.

 Cyprian’s itinerary

August 23: fly to Newark, drive to Windsor, visit with our nuns.

 

Hello all,

 

Well, the first week did not go at all as planned. I got a ride up north with our friend Andrew who was staying at the Hermitage with his parents. He and I went to visit another mutual friend who is a new disciple, as it were, of Fr. Bede and Shantivanam, and then we met Andrew’s folks for a nice Japanese seafood meal. They dropped me at my hotel but by the time I got there I knew that something was wrong with my, shall we say, "plumbing." I won’t go into the details of it, but luckily our doctor, John Clark, is also one of my close friends and I was able to text him around 10:45 that night asking his advice. He wanted me to go right to a 24 hour pharmacy and get a prescription, which was a bit of an endeavor in and of itself––taxi, the pharmacist on “lunch break” at midnight, etc. I got home at 2 AM and started postponing flights and canceling hotel rooms, etc. because there was no way I was getting on a plane at 6 AM. By midday the next day things weren’t that much better and John wanted me either to go the emergency room right away or as soon as I got to New York, or see a urologist the next day. I opted for the latter, switched my New York rental car to California and extended my hotel room another night yet. Long and short of it is by the time I got to the urologist things were better and I was given leave to fly to Europe but by that time the New York leg was kind of shot. I re-arranged my trip yet again, turned the car in at San Jose the next day. Andrew was working in San Jose that day so he picked me up and let me crash at his apartment on the air mattress his parents had just used, and offered to take me to the airport early Friday morning. Since he was gone all day working and in the evening playing tennis, I had the place to myself to re-group and work on my reading for this meeting in Germany, my report to the Prior General and his Council, and my conferences for the retreat at Poppi. It was actually a pretty relaxing time, with a gym right down the road.

I flew to Newark on Friday, which pretty much took all day. (Since my ticket to and from Europe was already scheduled in and out of Newark Liberty Airport, I still had to make it there somehow!) A night in the hotel and then I taught my monthly online class from for the Episcopal House of Prayer from my hotel room. There was much better internet than we can access at the Hermitage, so that part was nice, but there was also some serious partying going on in this less-than-first-class hotel I was in, and there was a pretty strong whiff of marijuana drifting through the walls and/or under the door. Who knows what I said during the class itself, but I did have a strong craving for brownies halfway through…

 

August 28: fly to Germany, two nights at Hildesheim with our monks

                  –then to Nütshau for AI/FORA meeting

A beautiful flight to Frankfort then, only seven hours, with a meal, two movies and a nap, it went by very quickly. Unfortunately, we were a half an hour later than scheduled so I was literally running with my backpack and guitar through the airport trying to reach my train which was to take me to Hildesheim. I normally keep my watch running a little slow (so it gives the brothers a few more seconds to get to choir on time), but I was sure that I got to the platform at exactly 8:50 AM, the time the train was supposed to leave. The Germans were a little too efficient that day. By the time I got there the train was long gone, so I had to wait for another train that wound up being an hour late. When I asked a gentleman at the gate if I had read that board right––if our train was actually an hour late––and he answered in the affirmative, I said, “I thought those kinds of things didn’t happen in Germany!” (Thanks be to God so many people in Germany speak English!) At any rate I finally made it to Hildesheim where our Fr. Benedikt of the Kloster Sankt Romuald came to fetch me from the train station.

 

Not only is it my first time visiting this new Camaldolese community here in Hildesheim; it’s my first time in Germany, outside of changing planes in Frankfort or Munich many times on my way to India or Italy. I was only expecting the two monks that I have met several times already, Jeremias who is well known at New Camaldoli, and his confrere from the Congregation of the Dormition, the afore-mentioned Benedikt. However this community has actually grown to six now. There is Fabian, a young diocesan priest who about to make his novitiate at Camaldoli, an older man named Bernd who is about to make his official claustral oblation, another monk of their former congregation, Fr. Joseph, who is scheduled to arrive any day now, and yet another former religious whose name and congregation I have forgotten right now, also scheduled to arrive shortly. All six of them are traveling down to Camaldoli, so we will meet there on September 8 while I am there for my fraternal visitation and when Fabian will officially begin his novitiate, on the Feast of the Birth of Mary.

 

Unfortunately, Fr. Dorathick, the young prior of Shantivanam, who was also supposed to be at this meeting here in Germany and have a meeting with the General Council with me afterward, could not get through the German red tape in time to get a visa. And I know he and others have been trying for weeks. So that is a real disappointment for a lot of us. 

 

I can tell you more about this meeting––which wound up being the proximate reason for scheduling this whole trip now (in addition to the Abbots and Priors Congress which was supposed to be held starting September 13 in Rome)––later, when I understand it a little more. It has to do with a German sociologist, Artificial Intelligence, algorithms that decide the allocation of social services, safe spaces for dialogue, Benedictine monasteries, the Camaldolese, and Fr. Bede Griffiths. It got more specific as the organizer, Petra, got deeper into it and met us all through Jeremias. My main contribution, besides representing one of the communities that has been asked to be a safe space for a dialogue to take place (in affiliation with Esalen Institute), is to present on Fr. Bede. After meeting Fr. Thomas (Matus) at New Camaldoli, Petra chose his collection of Bede’s Essential Writings from Orbis as the main text for the meeting. I have used Bruno’s much more extensive anthology Bede's writings, The One Light, for years and must admit I had never read through Thomas’ selections since they are all repeats. As I started to read through this collection, I was both impressed by Thomas’ selections and moved all over again by Bede’s wise and prescient thought. I also realized, once again, just how deeply he influenced my whole way of thinking. There are things that I often say that are pretty much paraphrases of Bede’s own written words that I have no recollection of reading, but I must have. Or else I am so formed by him that my thoughts come out of the same logic. So that has been my spiritual reading for the past week and I have a well-marked copy of Bede Gritffiths Essential Writings. More on that later. For now, I’m going to try to conquer the jetlag.

 

September 3: fly with the AI group to Italy to continue the meeting at Camaldoli

September 6: meeting with Prior General and General Council

September 7-12: visit monastery and Sacro Eremo

September 13-17: teaching with the nuns at Poppi

September 18-23 back to Camaldoli, eventually to Rome

September 23: fly to Newark, overnight

September 24: fly to San Jose and home.

 

Oremus pro invicem!

when nature is sick, we're sick

Today in the National Geographic Daily Newsletter, by Rachael Bale, ANIMALS Executive Editor

One year ago, a landmark global report announced a shocking finding: One million species are at risk of extinction. Over the past 50 years, it found, populations of land-based species have fallen 40 percent, freshwater species more than 80 percent, and marine species 35 percent. The evidence was overwhelming: It’s our fault.

It can be hard to contemplate putting energy into environmental protection when global COVID-19 cases have surpassed 3.7 million. But the pandemic is a result of humankind’s destruction of the planet. “Rampant deforestation, uncontrolled expansion of agriculture, intensive farming, mining and infrastructure development, as well as the exploitation of wild species have created a ‘perfect storm’ for the spillover of diseases from wildlife to people,” the reports’ authors wrote a few weeks ago. (Pictured above, an endangered baby Bornean orangutan with her adoptive mother.)

The authors issue a stark warning: Future pandemics will happen more frequently, will kill more people, and will cause greater economic damage unless we start recognizing the inextricable links between human health and the health of the planet, its ecosystems, and its nonhuman living creatures. This is not a radical concept. The framework of OneHealth, recognized by the CDC, the World Health Organization, and governments and organizations around the world, does just that. 

It’s easy to think—especially for those of us who live in urban areas—that ecosystems are something separate from us. But the coronavirus crisis has shown that even people in the most advanced, developed cities around the world are vulnerable when ecosystems are degraded.

The bottom line: When nature is sick, we’re sick. 

lockdown

I've simmered down a little, but not much. The image of the Holy Father alone in St. Peter's Square really pacified me.

 

A friend wrote:

“I have to confess I am dumbstruck at the seeming credulity many Americans have for President Trump and the right-wing anti-life pro-mammon ideology. I am outraged that no one is outraged that we are now discussing explicitly choosing money over lives. The fact that this is abetted by self-described Christians is galling––but this has been a long-time coming.[1]

No wonder young people are increasingly “spiritual but not religious”. Who would countenance the thinking, let alone the company, of such people?  These time call for prophetic voices.

I then see Pope Francis, as someone wrote on an internet meme- "an 81 year old man with only one lung and limping with sciatica, standing alone in a vast piazza under a cold rain, imploring God on behalf of everyone, and reminding us to care for each other.  An image of hope.”

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/coronavirus-trump-evangelicals.html

__________

It feels a little skewed to be celebrating the silver lining of the cloud when it is overhead and terrifying people, given that the wave is just starting to crash on our shores. But I found this more sobering that celebrating the clean canals and clear skies at the cost of human misery. It's called “An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans” by Kristin Flyntz

Stop. Just stop.

It is no longer a request. It is a mandate.

We will help you.

We will bring the supersonic, high-speed merry-go-round to a halt

We will stop

the planes

the trains

the schools

the malls

the meetings

the frenetic, furied rush of illusions and “obligations”

that keep you from hearing our single and shared beating heart,

the way we breathe together, in unison.

Our obligation is to each other,

As it has always been, even if, even though, you have forgotten.

We will interrupt this broadcast, the endless cacophonous broadcast of divisions and distractions,

to bring you this long-breaking news:

We are not well.

None of us; all of us are suffering.

Last year, the firestorms that scorched the lungs of the earth

did not give you pause.

Nor the typhoons in Africa, China, Japan.

Nor the fevered climates in Japan and India.

You have not been listening.

It is hard to listen when you are so busy all the time,

hustling to uphold the comforts and conveniences that scaffold your lives.

But the foundation is giving way,

buckling under the weight of your needs and desires.

We will help you.

We will bring the firestorms to your body

We will bring the fever to your body

We will bring the burning, searing, and flooding to your lungs

that you might hear:

We are not well.

Despite what you might think or feel,

we are not the enemy.

We are Messenger.

We are Ally.

We are a balancing force.

We are asking you:

To stop, to be still, to listen;

To move beyond your individual concerns

and consider the concerns of all;

To be with your ignorance, to find your humility,

to relinquish your thinking minds

and travel deep into the mind of the heart;

To look up into the sky, streaked with fewer planes,

and see it, to notice its condition: clear, smoky, smoggy, rainy?

How much do you need it to be healthy so that you may also be healthy?

To look at a tree, and see it, to notice its condition:

how does its health contribute to the health of the sky,

to the air you need to be healthy?

To visit a river, and see it, to notice its condition:

clear, clean, murky, polluted?

How much do you need it to be healthy

so that you may also be healthy?

How does its health contribute to the health of the tree,

who contributes to the health of the sky,

so that you may also be healthy?

Many are afraid now.

Do not demonize your fear, and also, do not let it rule you. 

Instead, let it speak to you—in your stillness,

listen for its wisdom.

What might it be telling you about what is at work, at issue, at risk, 

beyond the threats of personal inconvenience and illness?

As the health of a tree, a river, the sky tells you about the quality of your own health, 

what might the quality of your health tell you about the health of the rivers, the trees, the sky, 

and all of us who share this planet with you?

Stop.

Notice if you are resisting.

Notice what you are resisting.

Ask why.

Stop. Just stop.

Be still.

Listen.

Ask us what we might teach you about illness and healing,

about what might be required so that all may be well.

We will help you if you listen.

* * *

the Earth is the Lord's!

Ralph Drollinger (the so-called "cabinet pastor") wrote that the U.S. is “experiencing the consequential wrath of God” because the “forsaken,” which includes environmentalists and members of the LGBTQIA+ community, have “given over” to their “degrading passions.” Betsy DeVos, Mike Pompeo, Ben Carson, and Rick Perry all regularly attend Drollinger’s bible study sessions, with Perry describing him as a “brilliant, knowledgeable bible instructor.” (NBC News / Independent)

Somebody should tell these culpably ignorant people that they got it wrong: it’s more likely their/our wanton allowance of the destruction of God’s creation, the beautiful gift of Mother Earth, that has ruptured human beings’ relationship with it and God’s perfect plan for it. As Jim Robbins wrote back in 2012: “If we fail to understand and take care of the natural world, it can cause a breakdown of these systems and come back to haunt us in ways we know little about. A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics—AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades—don’t just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature.”[1] 

On the other hand, just see how the skies over Beijing and Los Angeles are clear, and the canals of Venice clean and full of fish and algae for the first time in decades. In only two weeks! We can do this, people. The Earth can survive without us. We cannot survive without her.

And while we’re at it let's tell that fox in the White House (cf. Herod, Luke 13:33) that today we are casting out demons, the ones who are bowing before Mammon (Mt 6:24/Lk 16:13), the supposed Right-to-Lifers who are willing to sacrifice their elderly on the altar of the economy. And you know what Jesus does with demons, right? (Mt 8:32.)

I would not say that the president of the U.S. is the Antichrist. It would only go to his head. But all this that the president and his henchmen from the swamp are up to is anti-Christ. I can hardly believe that anyone with any intelligence could read the gospels of Jesus––let alone the social teaching of the Catholic Church––and still support this man and his ilk in any way. Let’s send them into the sea with the swine, and for sure vote them all out of office in 2020.

Stay close to Tony Fauci instead, the marvelous Italian immigrant; and to the Holy Father, that Argentinian immigrant; and to Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, who recognizes that this is a time for us to put down our arms and work together as a world, across the world, for the whole world and all its people.

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,

the world, and those who live in it;

for he has founded it on the seas,

and established it on the rivers.

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?

And who shall stand in his holy place?

Those who have clean hands and pure hearts,

who do not lift up their souls to what is false,

and do not swear deceitfully.

Be well, everybody. Stay safe, stretch and breathe, say your prayers, and Restiamo distanti per oggi per abbracciarci domani––"Let's keep away from each other for now so we can hug each other tomorrow (Giuseppe Conte)."

[The opinions expressed here are those of a private citizen and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the monks of New Camaldoli Hermitage.]

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[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/the-ecology-of-disease.html.