sociale evolution and the spiritual fundaments of the participative approach

 

I'm afraid this may be a bit jumbled but I'll post it anyway in the interest of not getting too far behind...

September 5, 2021

I just moved into the monastery. It was a heck of a day yesterday. Our AI FORA group did meet three times, and of course three meals in the crowded and noisy refectory of the foresteria. Because we needed access to the WiFi we wound up meeting in a hall right next to the busy bar. All in all I kept being reminded just how quiet my life is normally! Even on what feels like a full day in Big Sur I have lots of time on my own and we are never surrounded by as much hustle and bustle. Of course it is summer time and there are so many guests staying here on top of all the weekend tourists who come. Yesterday was also the Day of Prayer for Creation and the monks always celebrate Vespers in the forest up near the Sacro Eremo, from both commubnities and some of the nuns from Poppi as well. So we all hoofed it up there. It was raining off and on all afternoon but three of us decided to take our chances and walk up there in between the raindrops. We made it fine and I was able to give the group a bit of a tour of the Eremo before we walked down the road and out near the little lake where Vespers was set up. Unfortunately, it started to rain again about halfway through, so they decided to cut it short. I was chilled to the bone by the time we got back down the hill (by car this time). I got semi-accosted by a lady from Sicily that Mario has introduced me to. She didn’t believe me that there was a place in Sicily called Bisaquino where my relatives live and assumed I was saying it or spelling it wrong in Italian, and kept switching back in forth from her rudimentary English to what I think was dialect flavored Sicilian. Luckily Federico saw my struggling and came to rescue me but by that time I was having trouble communicating in any language. I escaped to my favorite chapel upstrairs––the chapel of Madonna del Conforto––for a good meditation before dinner and felt much better, which was good because we still had one more closing  session with AI FORA group.

We spent all day talking about Fr Bede. Sr. Moira and Dorathick were online Zoom with us from Germany and India, respectively, which is still pretty amazing when you think about it. Though it was much harder for them to really contribute to the discussion they said they were able to listen to most of it very well. For the first two sessions Petra had done an amazing job putting together a PowerPoint that highlighted social science theories from scientists and philosophers that have influenced her––Hegel, Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas might be the best known names––comparing them to resonances in Bede’s thought “on social evolution and the spiritual fundaments of participative approaches,” as she called it. Petra would present something either from the social sciences of the humanities and then quote at length from Bede’s writings. Here’s a question about a theme that kind of sums it up: “Is the organic model of a network society evolutionary in terms of Sociology?” Of course the words that got my attention were organic and evolutionary.

 

The theme of Bede’s that I kept returning to was “union by communion,” compared with Abhishiktandanda’s “union by identity,” the former more influenced by the Bhagavad Gita and centered on love and relationship, the latter more by the Upanishads and the unquenchable drive for the experience of advaita as it is traditionally understood. This is also material that I have been exploring a lot myself revisiting Bede in the current writing I am doing anyway, so it’s all fresh in my mind. But the other thing that I kept coming back to was that the reason that we monks were involved had to be more than because the Rule allows a good environment for safe spaces, but because we supposedly explore the dimension needed for the energy to evolve consciousness, that is meditation and prayer. The other dimension that Bede keeps talking about, the spiritual, does not open up for us without that path of transformation. And the new model is not going to be born without something dying––our old way of being in the world, the lifestyles to which we have grown accustomed. And so hand in hand with meditation and prayer comes a certain asceticism, a willingness to be converted. I also brought up Cornel West’s distinction between optimism and hope a few times (again!), suggesting that sociology is optimistic; whereas spirituality is hopeful. Though, at the same time, to quote the great professor, things don’t look too good right now…

 

There was so much discussed it is impossible for me to give a summary; sorry, I can only give you some highlights of my own contributions (if it even matters!). Needless to say, it was a deep conversation. When we went around the table very last session my summary reflection was that the more we spoke the larger our vision became, as if we were trying to change the world, and the more intimidated I became. How to make this practical in our own safe spaces, the environments that we are tasked with creating for these dialogues to take place? And wondering if these methods really work. With the rise of populism and nationalism, isn’t this just what is being resisted––one world, one religion, peaceful coexistence in the name of protecting our own identity and sovereignty? There are those who want this and those who do not, and those who do not want will not take part anyway so it could be the safe space becomes a meeting of like minds instead of a place of networking and common ground. That’s the optimistic part. And yet, “I’ll die a prisoner of hope,” and I keep saying I want monasticism (and this monk) to be a part of what I refer to as “the Great Conversation,” and this is it.

 

There are plans for this group to reconvene, maybe in Germany, though they all, especially the Germans, really liked Italy. There was also a suggestion of re-convening in India at Shantivanam. Petra does have a pretty good budget, so my own cost would not be a problem, but the time would be, for sure. So we shall see what happens going forward and how much I can actually be a part of it.

 

We had Mass together on our own this morning up in the chapel of Our Lady of Comfort that I love so much. Since we were several language groups (though the meetings were in English and everybody outside of Pater Johannes from Nütschau is perfectly comfortable in English), I did not assume that anyone knew any of the responses in English, so I told them all to reply in whatever language they wanted. Don’t tell any liturgists or Church Officials (stet) but they decided that, instead of doing today’s assigned readings, they wanted to do a group lectio on John 3:1-15 today, Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night and ‘you must be born again.’ I actually wrote a reflection on that in The God Who Gave You Birth, so I was prepared! When we got to the Our Father, we sang it: I gave each language group a note forming a major chord and told them to chant recto tono on that note (with some improvisation of course). That hasn’t always worked in the past but this group was singers and willing to try new things (since we had all been dancing together and done other icebreakers together last week in Germany). It was pretty cool. Today was actually the birthday of Fr. Manel, the Spanish monk of Monteserrat, so we celebrated him by learning (kind of) a short German song that has each voice SATB singing a different text with its own melody. It was a well-intentioned car wreck, especially on my part since I couldn’t read Petra’s handwriting of the German words, but we had a laugh and a hug afterwards. Then Jeremias and I walked them to their van (he is staying on up at the Eremo for a few weeks) and waved them goodbye.

 

I’ve moved into the monastery now, and it is a much different environment to say the least, quiet and sweet. The sun came out and it has been a gorgeous cloudless Tuscan sky all day so far. The community is not eating at tables in the refectory but since the pandemic they are spaced around the room at the old-fashioned chair stall set-up, which is kind of fun. I had a brand-new kind of pasta, of which I cannot remember the name, thin light pasta square folded into a triangle stuffed with ricotta and spinach covered with a creamy mushroom sauce. I am trying hard to watch my intake because it is so easy to overeat in this environment with all the pasta, formaggi e dolci. 

 

I am also here unofficially as a visitator, and most of the community knows that. I’ve already had a couple of good talks with some of the brothers. Mario Zanotti, partner visitator, who is well known to our community at Big Sur is also here, and he and I will have a meeting with General’s Council tomorrow (though no one seems to know what time that is). I will stay here until Thursday and then spend a few days up at the Eremo, for which we are also visitators. We both think that just coming after six years, before the General Chapter in 2023 would not be enough. As I said to Giuseppe, former vice-prior here and also well-known in Big Sur, it’s good to palpare il polso della comunità–feel the pulse of the community.

 

I also had another interesting encounter this afternoon. The woman who translated my book Prayer in the Cave of the Heart into Italian was here this afternoon, Antonia Tronti. We had never officially met. So that was fun to walk and talk with her. Interesting to find out that she translates from English, beautifully, but does not speak English!

 

And now I am also doing my laundry, something one does a mother’s house. Bouna sera, tutti!

a German picnic in Emila Romana

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

 

We’re at Camaldoli now. It was a bit of a whirlwind yesterday. We all met at 5:45 AM outside the guesthouse at Nütschau, Prior Johannes and another monk meeting us with flasks of coffee, and each of us with our little takeaway bag of breakfast foods. We were driven in two vans to Hamburg, where we took our first flight to Munich, and there transferred to a flight, on Air Dolomiti, to Bologna. There Petra had rented a van and the seven us piled in and began the three hours plus drive to Camaldoli. Petra’s idea for our lunch was to stop at a supermercato and buy provisions for a picnic along the way, which we did about a half an hour into the journey. Seeing the seven of us run around the store, each grabbing something that he or she wanted was extremely funny. Sr. Mariangela wanted buffalo mozzarella, Manel wanted olives and Coca-Cola, I wanted grapes, and lemon for my salad. There were two large bottles of red wine and three loaves of the big round bread known as cembelle, three kinds of cheese, yogurt, cucumbers, big beautiful tomatoes, oil, bananas, cabbage, fruit juice and, for some reason, a large bag of peanuts (unsalted). We also had to buy a knife, napkins, bowls, spoons, etc. By the end I am not sure that it was any less expensive than panini at the Autogrill would have been, but it was a lot more fun. I had forgotten about the trip over the Mandrioli Pass from Emilia Romana to Tuscany. Luckily, we had another stop and a bathroom break in between, but I was getting a little green in the gills from Johannes’ driving on those curvy mountain roads. I was teasing him about a German driving in Italy, but he was very much in control. We wound up getting here minutes before Mass began (the Feast, for us, of St. Gregory the Great). Jeremias and I were able to greet a few monks as we walked in, but mostly we all just stayed at the back of the crowded church, masked and semi-socially distanced, most of our group standing. Then after Mass a madhouse of trying to say hello to everyone, introduce the group, then we talk to the woman at the front desk and get our keys, herded into a delicious dinner before going to our rooms, and then unloading the van and finding our rooms. I got sidelined almost immediately by the novice here named Federico, with whom I have had a lot of online contact via email and Zoom but had never met face to face, and we wound up walking and talking for about an hour before I finally got to my room well after 10, set my things in order and crashed, big time.

 

One rather humorous and typically Italian thing: the three other members of the support team at Nütschau worked for hours with us individually helping us fill out all the necessary forms online to enter Italy during these Covid times. And it was a labyrinth of details, back and forth form one site to another, flight numbers, temporary addresses, permanent addresses, vaccination proofs, etc. and in the end a sheaf of documents to carry with us to present to the Italian authorities. The only thing is we walked into Italy without anyone checking any of our documents including our passports.

 

The last day at Nütschau was very intense. Besides two or three more dance (I lost count) we actually did case studied that day. What would a safe space encounter actually look like if we were to host one? They had six prepared for us: one form each of the countries represented: Spain, Nigeria, India, Germany, China and the US. It all suddenly became very real when they told me who my team was: a social scientist and AI tech from the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica and a research fellow at, of all places, Arizona State University in Tempe, where I actually studied. And the hypothetical situation was immigration, centered in San Jose. The host country had to discuss the background and then the group had to come up with a list of the who the stakeholders were (who would need to be involved in the dialogue) and what kinds of exercises would facilitate creating the environment for a Safe Space.

 

I am staying on the third floor of the foresteria (first time staying here), a nice quiet room, but there is no phone signal nor WiFi so I may be a bit incommunicado for the next days. I am not sure if I am moving the monastery after this meeting finishes tomorrow. Today is our day to discuss Bede Griffiths. After her visit with Thomas and I at New Camaldoli Petra became convinced that he is an important voice to be in the background of our work moving forward. Of course I am excited about that, and she and I discussed it on the plane yesterday comparing notes from Thomas’ Essential Writings. Jeremias and I want to drive the whole group of the Sacro Eremo and find a place to meet up there, where it is quieter and less crowded. (The foresteria seems to be chock full.) This is our last working day. Tomorrow we will celebrate Eucharist together and the others will head out to the four winds. 

 

Love and prayers.

The AI FORA at Nütshau

31 August

Jeremias and I had a beautiful train trip up from Hildesheim to Nütschau today. It got sunnier and sunnier as we traveled north. I had all but forgotten that it was summer, it has been so chilly and cold. Of course, the upside of that is everything is so green! The very opposite of California where fires are raging out of control… The train was… actually, the three different trains were all very comfortable and Jeremias filled me in a little bit more on the history of Sankt Romuald in Rodenhof (Hildesheim) and the foundation there. I had forgotten that Benedikt was at one time Jeremias’ abbot when they were both stationed in the Holy Land together. And Jeremias was 14 years the prior of the monastery at the Sea of Galilee, over which he oversaw the building, and the church at the site of the multiplication of the loaves. After he stepped down as prior, the congregation then asked him to oversee more buildings and do fund raising, and that was when the big move began away from them and eventually to join Benedikt in this new experiment back in Germany. And then Jeremias, after having had a positive experience of us in California in 2008, suggested that the two of them affiliate with Camaldoli. I also found out further that the whole community, including the two new perspective members will be staying in Italy for two weeks, so we may get to spend some more time together. I suggested that they might want to go to Ravenna (mainly because I want to go to Ravenna, and they have a car!).

 

We are now actually in the city of Oldesloe, only about 100 km south of the border with Denmark, guests of the Benedictine monks of the Benediktiner-Kloster Nütschau, staying in the Haus Ansgar guesthouse. And the whole group is here: the young prior Johannes of this community, whom I had met in Rome in 2016, a monk from the famous monastery at Montserrat near Barcelona, two nuns from Kylemore in Ireland, and a diocesan priest from Nigeria who is studying here in Germany, along with Jeremias and I, with Fr. Dorathick from Shantivanam chiming in via Zoom for some sessions, make up the religious contingent. The other four participants are Petra, the sociologist and convener of this AI FORA project, along with her all German team, all young social scientists, one an expert in ethics, another whose major area of interest is philosophy and political science but also dabbles in theoretical physics, and an even younger undergraduate student, all associated with University of Mainz. After our introductions, our first session ended with, you’ll never guess… two line dances accompanied by music off of Petra’s computer. She is modeling some of the exercises she does as part of her space spaces projects, “ice-breakers” I suppose we would call them, interactive participatory practices. I do think it is the first time I have danced in full habit, at least in public, but I hope it will not be the last. After Mass with Vespers and then dinner, we had our official opening session in which, as part of another exercise called a “fishbowl,” more about the program was explained to us, partially through us asking questions of the four social scientists. I was happy to find out at dinner that almost none of us religious knew what it was really about, but I discovered during the fishbowl that I was actually pretty close.

 

AI FORA stands for artificial intelligence; fora is related to the Latin word forum for a gathering of people like a marketplace but also serves as an acronym for ‘AI For Assessment.’ The basic issue is that more and more decisions everywhere in the world are being made based on algorithms that Artificial Intelligence comes up with based on objective data––concerning everything from job training and incarceration to decisions concerning immigration, especially decisions based on race and age. But AI making objective decisions is coming under more and more scrutiny and criticism since some factors inevitably get left out. The aim of our team of social sciences is, first of all, to create safe spaces for vulnerable people to express their needs and fears, and then set up dialogues between them and the folks who are making these big decisions based on algorithms. Their case study already done in Germany was around migrants. The other places were chosen for the combination of cultural and religious factors: Germany for Protestant Europe, Spain for Catholic Europe, China for Confucianism (and Taoism?), Mexico for Catholic Latin America, California for, well, for being California (!), Nigeria for Africa, Iran for Islam.

 

What I still don’t quite get, and these were my questions when I took the empty chair in the fishbowl (some of you will understand that reference which I am too tired to explain): Why spirituality? Why Benedictines? And why Fr. Bede? The answer I got was, “So, you want to know everything tonight? This is what we will figure out in the days ahead.” I am glad that she doesn’t, nor does the team of social scientists, know for sure yet. They’re just being driven and drawn by an intuition and a devotion. But I already noted one small point of convergence in Bede’s writings: the gradual development since the time of Galileo and Newton of “a materialistic philosophy and a mechanical model of the universe” which has affected all of society in the social, political, and economic system of the West especially, even art, morality, and religion. Bede says, “It’s basic principle is reductionism: it is the reduction of everything to certain material principles and to its material base.” The antidote to that is something dear to my heart (and I do hate to keep saying, “I told you so,” but I did). The antidote, as far as Bede was concerned, is in the recovery of the perennial philosophy, the traditional wisdom according to which “the order of the universe is seen to be threefold, consisting not only of a physical dimension but also of a psychological and spiritual world.” These three worlds were always seen as interrelated and interdependent. And algorithms simply cannot take those other two elements into their consideration. And the more dire conclusion of that is even though the materialist, mechanistic reductionist model doesn’t recognize nor take into account the psychic or the spiritual, yet it has released psychic and spiritual powers into the worlds that it cannot control.

 

That’s enough for tonight. Tomorrow starts with Vigils and Lauds together with the monks here but I am going to opt out and do my own; it really is a terrible chore to try to follow the German. But I will show up for the Qi Gong session at 7:30 before breakfast, and then back to work.

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!