prodigal god

We are drunken ecstatics who have let our hearts
Go to the wild. We are musty scholars
Of love, and old friends of the wine cup.

People have aimed the arrow of guilt a hundred times
In our direction. With the help of our Darling’s eyebrow,
Blame has been a blessing, and has opened all our work.

Oh, dark-spotted flower, you endured pain all night,
Waiting for the wine of dawn; I am that poppy
That was born with the burning spot of suffering.
(Hafiz)

Today we read that great parable of the prodigal son at church. It’s one of those stories where you almost don’t want to say anything at all so as not to ruin what’s already there! Or else you have to talk for hours because it has so many facets to it. Proof yet again that whatever else he was, Jesus was certainly a master storyteller. But it actually wound up making me think about something else: the relationship between Jews, Christians and Muslims.

This is a particularly powerful time in the history of our world, and even these days specifically here in the middle of September 2010. Just the other day our Jewish brothers and sisters marked the feast of Rosh Ha–Shanah, the Jewish New Year, which is also the celebration of the anniversary of the creation of the world 5771 years ago. And in just a few days, following on that, they will celebrate Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. This year those feasts serendipitously coincide with the end of the month of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and penance, when our sisters and brothers of Islam spend a period trying to purify their hearts through self-restraint and good deeds, asking for forgiveness for their sins, and pray for guidance and help in avoiding evil. This was the first year I was really aware of the three-day feast called Eid al-Fitr that marks the end of Ramadan, when there is traditionally lots of food and gift-giving. That feast just ended last night, though it was curtailed considerably by many in the US due to its falling on September 11th this year. Sad to say, some Muslims were worried that there would be violence; and others were concerned that it wouldn’t even appear as if anyone was celebrating the anniversary of the terrorist attacks. That of course is the other anniversary that we just remembered yesterday, that horrendous event that changed everything in the course of history and tied our religions together in a more horrific bond than we ever thought we would have. I don’t have to tell you that this has coincided also with a string of violent acts against Muslims around the country––the stabbing of the cab driver, the desecration of the prayer rug, the fire bombing of one mosque and the protests against the Islamic center in New York, culminating with this crazy controversy around the evangelical Christian pastor in Florida threatening to desecrate some copies of the Qur’an by burning them. In this day and age of the 24 hour news cycle and the Internet, for better of for worse, this has pointed out just what an increasingly smaller web of relations we are involved in now, where the actions a virtually unknown man in Florida can foment violence all over the world––in some way we are psychically connected with nearly everyone on the planet. If there’s any good news in this it’s that virtually everyone knew that this action would have been heinously wrong, and so many people publicly condemned it, from the President to Sarah Palin, from the Pope down through members of Pastor Jones’ own denomination. So we do have some sense working even in this day and age of craziness.

So it seemed to me that this was a particularly good time to start trying to find and talk about what common ground we share.

In my study of comparative religion, I like to use the phrase “source and summit”––the beginning and the end, and what I have discovered in my studies is that while we diverge about various things, our three traditions––who we sometimes refer to as the “prophetic traditions”––definitely agree on the source and the summit of faith. What is the source? When I refer to Jews and Muslims as our brothers and sisters, I’m not just being metaphorical. We are all the spiritual children of Abraham since all three of our traditions trace their origin back to the covenant with Abraham. (I’d like to be inclusive and say Sarah too as some feminists prefer, but Muslims consider Hagar to be their mother, Sarah’s serving girl who gave birth to Abraham’s other son Ishmael.) That word “covenant” is very important: it’s a relationship. Our common source is our covenant with God. From there on the three traditions diverge on some very fundamental things: our view of the world, our understanding of Scripture and revelation, certainly at the level of doctrine (the Trinity for example), and even in our various understandings of God (and certainly the place of Jesus). But what we discover at the other end, the summit, is that the great mystics of our traditions––be they the visionaries of the Kabbalah, the Christian mystics, or the Sufis––converge again in that they speak about the end of this journey of life. They all use language about union with God, and they all teach that the life of faith becomes a longing for and a striving for union with God, so much so that an erotic love poem––the Song of Songs––was included in the canon of Jewish scriptures, some rabbis referring to it as the holiest book in the Bible; so much so that the Christian mystical tradition speaks of “mystical marriage of the soul with God”; so much so that the Sufi mystics write ecstatic love poems about the spiritual life––witness the poetry of Rumi or Hafez or Rabi’a. So it begins with union––the union of the covenant––and ends with union, the mystical marriage.

But what is equally significant about this covenantal union is it’s not simply a matter of our longing for and striving for union with God. Perhaps even more fundamental is that God is longing for union with us! What’s significant about the story of the covenant with Abraham is that it was God’s initiative! What’s significant about the Exodus event for the Jewish people is that it was God’s choosing a people to be his own. What’s significant about the Incarnation of Jesus is that “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son” not merely as an afterthought, but part of the plan to draw all things to God’s self. What significant about Islam is that Allah called out to Muhammad (peace be upon him). Our traditions all teach that the Divine One is longing for union with us!

And that brings us to today’s story of the prodigal son. You know the word “prodigal” means wasteful and extravagant, like someone who spends money freely and recklessly. This story could easily be called the story of the prodigal father. The image of God that Jesus is trying to convey to us is that God is very reckless even wasteful with love. This young man barely deserves to be let back as a servant, but there is the father with the robe and the ring and fatted calf. You gotta imagine, this is God standing in the middle of the road covered with dust longing for his child’s return, not just meting out justice, not just begrudgingly letting us sit at the table but––as Jesus says in the two previous parables––there’s more rejoicing over a repentant sinner––robes, rings, fattened calves and banquets! This is why the prophet Ezekiel says, “I do not want sinners to die; I want them to turn to me and live.” This is why every surah of the Qur'an begins with the phrase ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, the most common way to refer to Allah, “the all merciful and compassionate.” This too is our common ground: we believe that God is a prodigal parent who longs for us!

I heard a great line recently on a retreat: “When you act like God, you get to feel like God.” This parable is not only about our returning to God no matter what we have done wrong, knowing that we will be welcomed and even feted and fed. It’s also a warning! It warns us to not be like the older brother, who was not like God. In most of our dealings with the world we are looking for justice and rights. Well, if that father had been just, that kid would have been right back out in the cold. But as Jesus sees the world, mercy trumps justice! Compassion trumps rights! So while the old man is inside dancing with his son and the guests at the banquet, the older kid is out there being just and demanding his rights––bitter and cold. Well, if we act like God, we get to feel like God! We get to come in to the banquet. If we are merciful and compassionate, we get to feel divine! We get to be partakers in the divine nature.

So with our Jewish friends, let us pray for atonement (at-one-ment); with our Muslim friends let’s ask forgiveness, pray for guidance and help in refraining from evils. And this would be a good time for all of us to try to purify our hearts through self-restraint and good deeds. As Jesus taught, no matter what has happened let’s not be afraid to approach the Divine One, who is All-Merciful, All-Compassionate, who stands in the middle of the road with a robe and a ring longing for union with us.

Then, let’s act like God, and be merciful and compassionate for the sake of the world that God loves so much.

wisdom on top of confusion

We need to give up something. We can’t try to layer wisdom on top of confusion. The spiritual path is about what we give up, not what we get. We seem to always want to get something––spiritual insights or experiences––as a kind of commodity. But don’t these wisdom traditions teach us that, in essence, there’s nothing to get? We need to give up what obscures the abiding wisdom and the abiding reality that is already there.
Tim Olmstead

I ran into an interview with the Buddhist teacher Tim Olmstead recently that played right into my hand for what I wanted to teach on this weekend. He and the interviewer are discussing spirituality and the spread of spiritual practice in the West. He is talking about Buddhism, but if I were to slip in the word “Christianity” or “Christian” or really just about any religious tradition, it absolutely applies to us as well. In other words, this is some universal wisdom.

He is discussing how for an historical religious figure like the Buddha (and I was thinking too immediately of saints such as Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola or, especially, Antony of the Desert), their turn to the spiritual life begins with a certain dissatisfaction with every day life, what the Hindus and Buddhists call samsara, the endless round of birth and death to which we feel tethered. I don’t mean reincarnation when I use this phrase. What I mean by it is the hamster wheel that many people feel trapped on––death and taxes, “working for the weekend”––asking themselves, “Is there something more to life?” If religion simply becomes just another self-identifier, another cultural conditioner, another societal expectation, and if we don’t let it challenge us out of our complacency we may never experience its power. And its power is the power to transform us.

If we look at the life of Jesus or the Buddha, or the lives of the great saints or great enlightened people throughout history, we see people who were willing to give everything up, people who were willing to endure tremendous hardship to find out what more there is to life. And it is that kind of dedication and bravery that the spiritual life is founded on. And so Tim Olmstead says, “… if we approach [the spiritual life] on the basis of what is comfortable for us––what we like, what we don’t like, what fits into our lives conveniently without having to give anything up––that may be some kind of path, but I’m not sure it reflects the example” of the lives of these great saints. And, further, he says, “I wonder if it will bear fruit.”

That’s when he is asked: Do you think sacrifice is critical? And he answers, “We need to give up something. We can’t have it all.” And why can’t we have it all? I think he gives a beautiful answer. Because, “We can’t try to layer wisdom on top of confusion.” There’s a phrase that I first heard in Italy at a formation conference––

spogliamento progressivo

. It sounds so nice in Italian, but it means a “progressive stripping.” We find out along the way that the spiritual life is not about accumulating anything. It’s a progressive stripping away of things. Why? Because, “We can’t try to layer wisdom on top of confusion.” We need to progressively strip away the confusion, the falsity, the false security.

In the course of our lives, largely through no fault of our own, we accumulate layer upon layer of persona, of role-playing, or societal and cultural expectations, that may or may not have anything to do with the spiritual life or the Gospel or authentic holiness or the path to it, not to mention the psychological baggage we load up. And our real self––who St. Paul says is hidden with Christ in God––is quite often buried beneath all those layers, layers of confusion. And we can’t build wisdom on top of confusion. It’s like trying to build a house on a landslide. We need to build on bedrock, and the bedrock is our real self hidden in God, but often also hidden underneath layers of false persona.

Tim Olmstead says, “We seem to always want to get something––spiritual insights or experiences––as a kind of commodity… But don’t the wisdom traditions teach us that, in essence, there’s nothing to get?” Instead, what we need to give up is “what obscures the abiding wisdom and the abiding reality that is already there.” This is an essentially optimistic teaching, really, that there’s nothing to get. And it’s very much in keeping with Christian moral theology as I understand it, because we believe that grace builds on nature, just as St. Paul taught that “My inner self agrees with the Law of God,” which merely hearkens back to the late prophets of Judaism who taught that the new covenant is the one written on the heart. Our real self, our inner being is somehow already in union with God, if for no other reason then by the fact of our Baptism and the sacramental life of the church, through which the love of God continues to be poured into our hearts. What we need to do is give up all our possessions, as Jesus teaches. But those possessions may not be so much things, stuff, riches. Our possessions are for the most part our masks, our prestige, our opinions about the world and how it should run, and our opinions about ourselves, our safety nets of security and social position, all the things we cling to so as not to stand naked and vulnerable but real, authentic, before God, each other or the universe. Our real self is hidden under there somewhere.

I don’t think it’s either practical or advisable nor in keeping with Jesus’ essential teaching to expect householders––spouses and parents and folks living and working in the world––to live lives of poverty, chastity and obedience in the same way that religious––monks and nuns and priests––are called to (not that we always live up to those vows very well either). After all Jesus didn’t send everyone out with no extra tunic and no sandals and no walking stick, poor and homeless; he only sent his apostles out that way. But every one of us––every one of you––is challenged by those vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, what we call the evangelical councils, to ask what they mean for you. So you might ask yourself, “What is my form of poverty, of living simply so as to strip away some of the things that are not necessary but may be distracting us from the work of love and the demands of the spiritual life? What does chastity mean to me? How am I rightly ordering my relationships and keeping my mind (and my computer screen) pure? What is the way of life I have chosen and committed myself to, and am I being obedient to its demands?” Renunciation is built of mundane stuff: day to day fidelity to our daily lives and our real selves.

If we are really going to embark on the spiritual life, Jesus teaches in the Gospel we heard today, we had better know what it entails, what demands it is going to make on us, otherwise we are going to get caught like someone building a tower who didn’t sit down and count the cost, or like someone marching into battle who underestimated the strength of the enemy. And the cost is this:

We can’t try to layer wisdom on top of confusion...
The spiritual path is about what we give up, not what we get,
because in essence, there’s nothing to get.
We need to give up whatever obscures the abiding wisdom and the abiding reality that is already there…
our real selves hidden with Christ in God.

humility, the ground, the earth

Returning to the wilderness,
we become restorers of order, preservers.
We see the truth, recognize our true heirs,
honors our forebears and our heritage,
and give our blessings to our successors.
We embody the passing of human time,
living and dying with the human limits of grief and joy.
Wendall Berry

I remember once in high school the rector of our school came up to me and complimented me on something I had done. I, in reply, said something self-deprecating, trying to be humble, like “Oh, it really wasn’t that good, I really kind of messed up here or there…” And he got up on his toes (as was his way) and looked down at me and said “Domine, [he was also a Latin teacher; that was basically his way of saying, “Listen to me, Mister…”] the word ‘humble’ comes from the Latin word humus which means ‘the ground, the earth.’ And the ground is real, it’s just simply real. There is no need to put on false humility. Just be real, like the earth. You did a really good job.” I’ve never forgotten that, especially after a concert or a talk somewhere when folks come up and compliment me.

The excellent spiritual writer and teacher Ron Rolheiser, says we human beings suffer one of two kinds of soul sickness––either depression or inflation. Depression is when all of our energy is gone out of us––or has been beaten out of us!––or been stopped up like a manhole cover. And inflation is when we have no container for our energy, and we become a menace to ourselves and others because we act as if we were alone in the Universe with no one else’s needs mattering. Both of those extremes come from a wounded place, a poor regard for oneself and a mistrustful view of the world around us.

When we hear teachings about humility we have to keep that balance between depression and inflation in mind. We certainly can hear strong words against any kind of egocentric inflation in the Gospels when Jesus says, “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted,” but we shouldn’t’ confuse it with a kind of treacly and obsequious false humility either. There is a difference between humility and humiliation, just as there is between being humbled and being humiliated. As Nelson Mandela said, quoting Marianne Williams, “Your playing small does not serve the world.” No, we are called to just be real, to tread the path of self-knowledge and to be able to adequately assess our place in family, our community, our world, to know what our gifts are and our shortcomings, no more, no less.

I remember the first time I saw the Grand Canyon. It was a cold and very cloudy day in November, around Thanksgiving, up in northern Arizona, and when my friend and I arrived at the north rim of the canyon, drove all the way from California––and we couldn’t see a thing! We stood there freezing cold in this bitter wind for I don’t know how long hoping to catch a glimpse of something. We knew there was a big hole in front of us but beyond that, not much. Then just as we were about to leave this wind blew through and pushed the clouds away of a sudden and the sun broke through and suddenly we found ourselves wide eyed staring at this unbelievable gaping span in front of us that literally took my breath away. I was bowled over by the immensity in front of me, hardly being able to comprehend the size of it. It was somewhere between delight and terror––I guess you could call it awe. I remember feeling at the same time infinitesimally tiny and yet somehow exhilarated.

My friends and I have been reading an essay by Wendell Berry recently that reminded me of that experience. He writes about how even up until modern times, we love these rituals that involve some kind of dealing with nature––all the way from initiatory rites of passage and safaris to climbing K2 and space travel and the moonwalk. In these kinds of adventures you are forced to go out into the wilderness, or forced to be at the mercy of nature and measure yourself against Creation. And the ideal outcome of an experience like this is two-fold. First of all a sense of awe, a sense of myself as small within Creation; I see myself as a tiny member of a world that I cannot possibly comprehend or master or possess in any final sense. But at the same time, since we share in it and are a part of it, since we depend upon and are graced by all this of which we are a part, neither do we descend into any kind of despair of destructiveness. Rather this experience ought to leave us with a sense that we are participants, partakers, co-creators. We ought to be able to come back from these experiences having seen a new glimpse at the really real––and exhilarated by it. What these rituals and experiences really do is return us to the human condition, and make us realize that we embody “the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy.” As Psalm 8 says, “When I see the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars how you arranged them––who are we that you should keep us in mind, mere mortals that you care for us? Yet you have made us little less than gods!” If we can hold those two things together––awe and exhilaration, our smallness and out dignity––then we are in the right place, then we are in right relationship.

I guess it all comes down to right relationship, with ourselves, with others and with God. Good self-knowledge––which the monastic tradition especially teaches is the surest path to knowledge of God––to know who we really are; so as to be able to recognize how we fit in the human family, recognizing ourselves as true heirs and, as Berry writes, honoring our forbears and our heritage, and giving our blessing to our successors. And ultimately letting the overwhelming immensity of Creation remind us that there is a God and it is not us, and that that Power behind the Universe is beyond our imaginings and definitions and desires to control.

I’ve been carrying this prayer around for years, simply known as the Prayer of John Henry Newman:

God has created me to do him some definite service; God has committed some work to me that has not been committed to another. I have my mission––I may not know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connections between persons. God has not created me for naught, I shall do good, I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep God’s commandments and serve him in my calling. Therefore, I will trust him. Whatever, wherever I am. I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve him. God does nothing in vain. He knows what he is about.

seeds of the word, sparks of the resurrection

He comes to us as one unknown
a voice unseen unheard,
as though within a heart of stone,
a shriveled seed in darkness sown
and a pulse of being stirred.

(I'm down with the brothers in Big Sur, and got to preside and preach at the Easter Vigil this morning. We do it down here at 4:30 AM! It's especially beautiful down here: we begin out in the front portico in the cold and dark with a fire lit. Then we proceed into the chapel with lighted tapers and listen to the series of readings, sing psalms and pray prayers in the semi-darkness through the first half, before the bells ring and the Gloria is sung and we celebrate Eucharist around dawn. This was my homily.)

There is a moment in the evolution of human consciousness, a kind of a tipping point, that often gets overlooked and underrated––it’s the invention of the light bulb. I read an article in the Spring issue of Tricycle magazine that suggests that from prehistoric times we human beings are actually hardwired to spend a good portion of the nocturnal hours in a resting state somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, those long hours after twilight before sleeping and after sleeping waiting for the dawn. This is the realm of myths, fantasies, dreams and doubts––and the time that we might have sat around the fire and told stories, when we would have been in something like a meditative state. Now with the availability of good cheap light, instead of keeping vigil we are in a state of “jittery hyper-vigilance”––in front of TVs and behind computer screens, in all night drive-thrus and working the late shift at the factory. But our bodies remember how to keep vigil, and so we’re lucky that the church takes us back once a year to the darkness, to sit around the fire and tell the stories again, to remember the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega, how it all starts with the Word and ends with Christ, through with and in Jesus.

We sometimes refer to the Easter vigil as the “mother of all vigils.” It’s the oldest and by far the most complex in our church year. It has one unique feature, in that we listen to seven readings from the Jewish scriptures in chronological order, as if we were tracing salvation history all the way from Creation through the entire history of Israel up to the Resurrection to show, just in case we missed the point, that all of this has been leading to the Resurrection. In a sense you could say that Jesus’ rising from the dead is for us a kind of high point of evolution thus far, and everything that has taken place since then has taken place in these “latter days,” including the baptism of new candidates into this history.

But we are also bold enough to claim that the Paschal mystery––the life, death, passion and resurrection of Jesus, along with the Ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost––was a culmination not just of Judeo-Christian history, but a high water mark for all of history. In the theologies of inter-religious dialogue, even the most conservative theologians of the mainline Christian churches speak about a “fulfillment theology,” that one of the reasons we think it is not only acceptable but important to study other traditions is that we believe they all find their fulfillment in Christ. In the words of the ancients the Word of God had been scattered like seed––logos spermatikos, semine verbi–– thrown to the winds of history. And Christianity teaches that it is these seeds that come concentrated in Jesus, who is their fulfillment, in whom the fullness of God dwells bodily.

So I have this idea for another kind of Easter vigil service that embrace some of these elements outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, that perhaps could take place some day, somewhere. We might read the story of creation from the first chapter of Genesis, and then read from the Atharva Veda about the skambha–the Cosmic Pillar, On whom is firmly founded earth and sky and the air in between…, and then sing Psalm 104: You fixed the earth upon its foundations..., for example. And then we could read the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and then something from the epic of Gilgamesh; and then read the story of Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea followed by the story of Krishna and Arjuna lined up between the Pandavas and the Karuavas before going into battle in the Bhagavad Gita, and then sing about the Lord who has covered himself in glory in the canticle from the Book of Exodus. And then read from the book of the Consolation of Israel in the prophet Isaiah, and something from the Tao te Ching; and then Isaiah 55, and something from the Dhammapada; and then the prophet Baruch, and something from Nityanaimittika-pathavali of the Jains, and sing Psalm 16: Lord, you have the words of everlasting life…” And then after we read that beautiful passage from the prophet Ezekiel, maybe we could conclude by reading something of Socrates’ famous culminating speech in Plato’s Symposium, since it was specifically these Greek thinkers and writers that Justin Martyr was thinking about when he came up with his concept of the “seeds of the Word,” just as Paul was thinking of the Greeks when he addressed the Greeks at the Areopagus in Acts 17, telling then that their “unknown God” had raised someone from the dead. And then could we proclaim the story of the Resurrection and tell everyone, like Paul did, that this has all been fulfilled! Maybe then we, like Damaris and Dionysius the Areopagite, would really understand the impact of this event. All this wisdom has been so many surprising tributaries leading to the channel that is Christ.

There is another aspect of the Easter vigil though that often gets overlooked: it was originally also celebrated in expectation of Jesus’ second coming, like a little Advent. There was a strong belief among early Christians that Jesus would return in glory before their generation had passed away, and very early on the thought arose that just as Jesus had risen from the tomb during the night that preceded the first Easter, maybe his second coming would take place during the night during the same paschal season. I think it would be well for us to remember this eschatological aspect of this vigil and of Easter in general too, so that we could stay vigilant for the coming of the glorified resurrected Christ. Of course, as the disciples realized, he comes to us in the breaking of the bread, in the Eucharist, which is the body of the glorified resurrected Jesus. But where else might he come? Where else might he have already come? An Indian theologian at the Abhishiktananda seminar told a story about meeting a little Hindu girl who was a great devotee of Jesus and who, he said, showed more fervor and devotion than most Christians he had met. And he said something like, “Who’s the say Jesus couldn’t rise from the dead in the beautiful face of a little Hindu girl?” That reminded me of that beautiful hymn text by Timothy Dudley-Smith (which is the basis of my song “As One Unknown”) that takes off on a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins, alluding to the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus:

He comes to us as one unknown
a voice unseen unheard,
as though within a heart of stone,
a shriveled seed in darkness sown
and a pulse of being stirred.

So, I was wondering if we couldn’t apply the same kind of thinking that made us recognize “seeds of the Word,” and now be on the lookout for “sparks of the resurrection” that might have scattered everywhere throughout human history, if we really believe that this event was the cataclysm we claim it was? Could we not be bold enough to say that everything that followed in human history afterward has been affected in some way by Jesus’ smashing through the gates of death? Could we see the resurrected Christ in the poems of Rumi and Hafez? In the Guru Granth Sahib of Nanak and his fellow Sikhs? In Beowulf and the sonnets of Shakespeare? Could we not see the risen Christ in the great dynasties one after another in China, in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the philosophy of Shankara and Moses Maimonides? In the discoveries of science and psychology, in the birth of democracy, and Gandhi’s leading the peaceful evacuation of the British from India? Could we not see the risen Christ in the lunar landing in 1969? Or in the tumbling of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of one Communist dictatorship after another, and all the victories over tyranny? In the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Acts, and the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa? (I could barely breathe when I watched and listened to Aretha Franklin sing the national anthem at President Obama’s inauguration.) Could we not recognize all that as the stream of life giving water that flows from out of the believer’s heart which is none other than the Spirit that Jesus said he would send––to quicken the pulse of our being? Or could we see Jesus rising from the dead in the sublime beauty of Beethoven’s late string quartets, and the colors of Vincent van Gogh and the Impressionists, in John Coltrane kicking heroin and writing “A Love Supreme,” in the films of Akira Kurosawa, or in the grace of Michael Jordan floating through air in the middle of a lay-up, in the Sydney Opera House, and the Hedron Particle Collider? And, most especially, could we not see Jesus rising from the dead everywhere we see human beings break their lives open like bread in love and service for one another when disasters hit, when wars are raging, when people hand their lives over to be persecuted for the sake of justice and liberation and the end of discrimination of all kinds; and every time we see someone pour their life out like wine in service of the poor, or in fighting for the weak, in educating children, in caring for the sick. Could we not claim to see the Risen Christ present everywhere there? Is this not too that pulse of being stirred?

So, it would be well for us to try to stop being so jittery and hyper-vigilant all the time, and instead try to be a little more meditative and vigilant, and watch for where Jesus might be rising from the dead, be on the lookout for surprising flowers sprouting up in the garden of the empty tomb, in unexpected voices and faces, in other “pulses of being stirred,” and continue to celebrate with optimism, creative energy, and unbounded patience and joyful hope.

the ancient art of god symbolism

28 feb, 2010, on the way home.

On my way home now, back in Singapore for one day before flying back to California tomorrow. After the reletive retreat of the first days in KL, the last few days were kind of a blur of activity, and the weather was unrelentingly humid and hot, so I got back here pretty tired and slept the air-conditioned sleep of a worn out pilgrim last night here at the friary of St Mary of the Angels.

There were two concerts Friday. The first was in the afternoon at Pure Life Society itself, sponsored by the INSAF, the inter-religious group there. Beforehand I had sat for a few minutes with Mr PK, one of Mother's main assistants, and Dr Amir, the secretary of INSAF, whom I had met last year. Dr Amir is a devout Muslim who is also involved in all kinds of experiments with body-mind techniques and traditions, including Qi Gong. He writes a regular newpaper column about it all. He told me about a special song that is sung for Muhammad on that day, being the Prophet's birthday, and I suggested that he do it at the beginning of the event, to which he hesitantly agreed. So as we began, Mr PK introduced Dr Amir as "the only Muslim in attendance today," and he sang the chant for us, quite well, too, in spite of his diffidence.

About a third of the crowd was made up of the senior students from Pure Life, both boys and girls ranging from about 12 to 17 years old. They were not always the most attentive crowd, especially the girls who were doing a lot of talking and giggling even into the first three or four songs. I kept looking over their way while I was speaking and even while I was singing, trying to catch an eye or two directly instead of scolding them, that old teacher trick. It took a while for it to work, which of course had a negative affect on the rest of the crowd too and so I was unusually distracted and dropped a few verses and chords here and there. That makes for a lot of work. So I started leaning toward more audience participation than I had planned on because that did tend to keep their attention more. Because of the incident here last year about my poor pronunciation of an Arabic word, combined with the recent controversy over Christians and the use of the word "Allah," I had decided not to perform either "Bismillah" or "The Drink Sent Down," partly because I didn't want to seem like a smart aleck stirring up trouble, and partly as a kind of gentle protest, to be in solidarity with my Christian brothers and sisters who have not been allowed to speak their own language. Instead I was going to allude to the controversy and sing "The Ground We Share." But since Mr PK had said that Dr Amir was the only Muslim in attendance (which meant my interlocuter from last year was not there) and since I really needed more audience participation, I pulled out the "Bismillah" after all. And I'm glad I did because it was a big hit again, so much so that one of the other members of INSAF told me twice later that I simply must get them a copy of the song, both recorded and written, so that they can use it, and Mother mentioned also as I was leaving how much she loved it. "And a song like that is especially salient here in Malaysia," she told me, "where we are all living together." Another man said, "If Muslims could see with what passion you sing the name of Allah they would be convinced that there was no controversy." I also sang "The Ground We Share" and they would like that one too for their use. I tell people sometimes that I grew up in an era when I really believed that you could change the whole world with a single song, and I am feeling pretty certain of it again. (So, Pennington and Rivera: we have got some work to do...) Mother also asked if I would consider writing a theme song for Pure Life and INSAF. These comments from people after a concert are often the greatest learning experiences I have. Another woman told me pointedly, "It is so good that you are out here singing these songs and doing this work as an American" (not as a Christian monk mind you--as an American--"because we have such a poor opinion of Americans in this part of the world now after these last years." I told her about writing to Eboo Patel, the increasingly well-known Muslim speaker and author who is on the President's Council for Inter-religious Initiatives (I probably got that latter name wrong): "If you do talk to the President, please just let him know that I am out here doing my part. If it matters to him, there is one monk wandering the world singing these songs, doing his part."

The other point of that story was that my interlocuter from last year was actually there; he has slipped in late. I wish I had known and we could have spoken. I think he actually did me a great service.

After the concert at SFX that night (St Francis Xavier Church as opposed to SFA, St Francis of Assisi) there was an unusual number of folks wanting me to sign their CDs. There are always a handful but this time, even though the church was mobbed, it seemed way out of proportion. While I was singing away a group of 8 or 9 young people approached me, a little shyly, one or two of them wanting me to sign, some just wanting to stand there it seemed. They had such beautiful birght faces that I really wanted to bask in their presence, so I started a conversation with them. I could tell from looking at them that they were neither Chinese, Indian or Malay and I found out soon on that they were all from the island of Borneo, from the two states, Sabah and Sarawak, in the north quarter of the island that are known as Eastern Malaysia. The southern rest of the island belongs to Indonesia. (More and more the whole idea of borders between so-called countries seems so arbitrary, especially the ones super-imposed by the colonials.) In the course of chatting with them and asking them questions, I ascertained that they are all Catholics and that they all live together, and that turned into an arrangement for me to come to their place on Saturday for lunch and music. After a wonderful Saturday morning trek through a jungle park named Gassling Park with a friend of his, Jeff, Dr Pat's son, who has been my interpid chauffeur, running partner and dharma protector all week, drove me out to Shah Alam, an area about 20 km outside of KL. Shah Alam is home to the famous impressive Shah Allam sport stadium and also to UITM, the University of Islamic Technology and Management. This university is reserved to "bumis"--short for "bumi putras"-sons of the land, in other words, no Chinese or Indians, only ethnic Malays, who are all Muslim, but also through a kind of loop hole in the law, the indigenous peoples of Eastern Malaysia, since they are also technically "bumis." What makes the Eastern Malaysians feel twice out-of-place there is that not only are they not Malays, they are not Muslims, but mostly Christians. So one of the bishops on Borneo bought this house specifically for Eastern Malaysian Catholics to live together. Mind you, they themselves are only somewhat related geographically, but are from different states and different tribes and therefore different language groups themselves. They communicate mostly in Bahasa, but are mainly united in that they are all Catholic. These, of course, are also the main people affected by the ban on using the word "Allah," since that is the word for God in their language. It all got very concrete, and fascinating. These are little nuances about which most of us in the West would have no idea at all.

About 15 of them gathered to meet with me, soem whom I had not met yet. They all came pouring out of the house as we pulled up. One of the members of the group is a very talented artist named Kandy. He has already finished school, but while working toward making a living on his art he remains there in the house serving as the cook. I was told he was famous for "Kandy Soup," and I had asked for that specifically. They had a very nice meal of that and many other dishes laid out on the mats on the floor of the main room and we chatted through lunch, mostly us asking eachother questions. I think I had more questions for them than they for me.

Then after eating we spent most of the next hour and a half singing. They did a bunch of their songs for me, the words projected onto a screen from a computer, in a variety of languages, mostly in the "praise and worship" genre. These included at least one song in English that went like this: "Move a little bit for Jesus, you feel good (sic): bop-shoobop, bop-bop-shoobop," followed by some bahasa words: "Fewah, fewah, fewah-oh..." Then, "Twist a little bit for Jesus..." and "bump," "dance," etc., all with motions. They liked what they called "action songs." At one point they also sang a beautiful "Alleluia" in a pentatonic scale in imitation of an indigenous stringed instrument which I recored on my phone, and they also performed a dance for me. Two of the guys were pretty good guitarists, first just accompanying the group, but then I asked each of them to play a little something. The one, Zyzy, has been studying classical guitar and he did two nice pieces for us. The other, Rolland, did a Latin jazz piece, also very good. I did a little set for them too of the pieces that I thought they would like the most: "Sab Bhole" from India, "Lovingkindness" from Indonesia, and the my bluesy arrangment of the American Quaker "How Can I Keep From Singing," which Rolland played along with me. It was great fun. Jeff and I had had an agreement that he would pick me back up in two hours but if it wasn;'t going well I coul djust text him and he would come earlier. When he arrived we were singing and dancing, so he came in and we stayed another half and hour while we prayed together and they showered me with gifts, including a framed copy of one of Kandy's latest prints.

At the concert at SFA on Friday night, on the other hand, there was one young guy who was sitting to my left who even without my glasses on I could tell was riveted in attention through the whole evening. As at SFX the night before, I geared this event toward half singing/half speaking on Lenten themes. I spent a good fifteen minutes just explaining the theology behind "Streams of Living Water" and another on "This Is Who You Are," for instance. For me, when someone is paying as much attention as this guy was, it really gives me a lot of energy, so after the performance when he came up and introduced himself, I thanked him for his energy. His name was Ian, and he is the conductor of the youth choir there at that church. (They were rehearsing that very night after the concert, by the way, at 10 PM!) He introduced me to his father Patrick and his brother Julian as well, who are also both musicians, and was really keen to talk about music and spirituality. As a matter of fact, I was to be presiding at Mass there Saturday night, so we arranged to get together afterward with him and his brother and some other members of the youth choir. One of Dr Pat's friends from SFA had also arranged a dinner for us all, so we wound up a group of about 20 driving across town to a wonderful Chinese restaurant in a shopping mall (thanking God by this time for the air-conditioning), gathered at two large round tables. About a dozen of the young people showed up so we were all together at one table, Ian right to my left. He started with the first question of the evening and we, or mostly I, talked straight through the whole meal, with food continuously appearing on my plate every time I looked down. They asked great questions, some about increasing their own spiritual life and that of their music ministry, and some other questions about dealing with other religious traditions. I won't go into the whole conversation here obviously but just these two points. First, I was so grateful again to talk about a theology of the Word, and the Word as beauty-truth-goodness and the semine verbi--"seeds of the Word," and how when we really understand that, it becomes a bridge to other traditions. Secondly, as I was explaining to them some more of the inner meaning of liturgy as I understood it, again I was convinced of how powerful liturgical spirituality is, and that as Catholics that is our greatest treasure.

I've been reading the book "The Symbolism of Hindu Gods and Rituals" by Swami Parthasarathy, the father of the Sunandaji who gave those excellent classes on the Gita last week, and the introduction to the book, similar to what she herself said in one of her talks, really impressed me. It's another way of saying what I keep haranguing about to my religion teacher friends about the Bible: "Just read them the stories! Just read those great stories!" In this post-modern age of demytholigization (excuse that word), we've lost something that someone like Baba Hari Das has recovered for the folks up at Mount Madonna, for instance. Here's how Swami Parthasarathy puts it: He says that Hinduism perfected the ancient "art of God-symbolism." But, and this certainly does not apply just to Hindus, this ancient art has gone neglected, with the result that the symbols festivals and rituals "have been shorn of their philosophical significance and reduced to mere superstition," such that Hindus have either blindly accepted or rejected them. What he aims at is exposing the deeper philosophical meaning of these rituals, symbols and festivals, and I might add he does it very well. And that is what we could do with liturgical spirituality and an approach to Scripture such as lectio divina as well. Just like in that little act of mixing the water and the wine at Mass--"may we come to share the divinity of Christ who came to share in our humanity"--if we leave out little rituals and gestures like that in the name of expediency or avoiding superstition instead of evoking the deeper meaning they convey to another part of the brain through another medium of communication--the mythic mind instead of the rational mind--, we are on the course of starving our soul of its favorite language, the language of song, poetry, art, dance.

Anyway... After the meal and conversation, I wanted some of my favorite Malaysian teh tarik, so Ian offered to take me home across town to Puchong himself so that I could spend more time with them. They took me to their favorite mamak--the name for the Indian Muslim eateries that are so popular in Malaysia, especially among young people. I am told that they are the Malaysian equivalent of American junk food, but our junk food should be so good! Roti and fired noodles, all kinds of fatty meat dishes and of course, teh tarik, literally "pulled tea," made with condensed milk and swung through the air ("pulled") to aerate it and give it a rich deep taste. More talk there and then we stopped back at Ian and Julian's house, where Julian impressed me with a bit of Chopin on the electric piano. We added their mother and an aunty who the route straight to Puchong to our caravan and around midnight they delivered me safely to Pure Life for my last very warm night in the swami's hut on the hill.

Pat, Jeff and Joe drove me down to Singapore, where they were coming anyway for a housewarming party at Jeff's new apartment on Sunday. I made a brief appearance there too but was happy to find my way to "my" room here at the friary. I got a nice run around Bukit Batok Nature Park this morning, then treated myself to one more breakfast of teh, half-boiled eggs and kaya toast down at the hawkers below, and am now waiting for Leonard who will host me to hop around and have a last visit with several friends here before I head home in the morning. I'm so grateful for all the wonderful hearts and souls that I've encountered on the way, and longing to see the faces of the wonderful hearts and souls in the ground we share back in California.

In the name of the One beyond all names,
the Word made flesh
and the Spirit poured into our hearts,
in whom we live and move and have our being,
may all be happy,
may all be free from ills,
may all realize what is good.
May none be subject to misery.

parallel universes

"Let us come to an agreement on the things we hold in common..."
(Qur'an 3:64))

"This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely,
more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."
(Leonard Bernstein)

25 feb, 2010, birthday of the muhammad (peace be upon him!)

There's a story of something that happened to me some years ago that keeps recurring to me these past few days, that's sort of an snapshot of how wierd and wonderful my life these past years has been. I was on my way to Washington DC, having been invited by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to be one of a panel of musicians to consult on liturgical chant for the new Sacramentary, the offical book of prayers for the Mass. To be honest, despite my babbling on and on about Hindu bhajans and African-American spirituals at the consultation, I think it had actually already been decided that the Gregorian chant in the Roman Missal was going to be translated into and adapted slightly for English, but they did gather some of us in two different localities to discuss it, mainly who was going to do it and some of the fine points of meter and rhythm, etc. And it did feel like quite an honor to have been asked to be included on the panel, though I was never consulted again (probably because of my babbling on and on about Hindu bhajans and African-American spirituals). I remember that I was the only one in the room without either a Roman collar or a coat and tie. I was trying to be on my best behaviour, but I remember at one point jumping up and singing something for the whole crowd, perhaps even kind of dancing a little as I did it, as is my wont. The headquarters were very imposing--this is also the center of the political arm of the Bishops' Conference--security was tight. The whole proceedings were filmed and there was a microphone before each of our places at the long conference tables. It felt Very Serious, and I felt very out-of-place.

But the evening before, it just so happened that a young man named Chris, whom I had met while staying with Abbot Francis Kline (of blessed memory) at Mepkin Abbey the previous summer, was going to be passing through Washington DC the very day that I was arriving. So we arranged for he and his traveling companion, Rick, to meet me at the airport, take me to my hotel room, and spend the evening together. We managed to find each other at the airport, and I remember that as soon as I climbed into the back seat of the car, Rick, who was driving, looked at me in the rear view mirror and asked me a question about "cosmic consciousness," picking up on a conversation that Chris and I had had the previous summer--and we were off. We spent a kind of ecstatic evening together talking about spirituality and many other things. They were both part of an inter-religious spiritual group at their university in Pennsylvania and were both quite bright and articulate. Rick, it turns out, was a Muslim of Mideastern background. At one point in the conversation, Chris and I were talking about meditation and the use of a mantra, and I mentioned to Rick the 99 Beautiful Names of God that are found in the Qur'an, and what a beautiful mantra one or all of those names would make, prayed on the tasbih-prayer rope. But, to my surprise, he had never heard of the 99 Beautiful Names of God! So I remember dragging them back to my hotel room and tearing my suitcase apart (this was pre-Eagle Creek backpack days) because I just happened to have two copies of the Beautiful Names with me that I had recently photocopied. One was already in my Bible, where it still is today, near the picture of a prisoner in Abu Ghraib with his hands gripping the bars of his cell, a tasbih intertwined in his fingers; and I was sure that the reason I had made that second copy was to give it to Rick.

The first reason I've thought about this event is because during an interview for the parish newsletter last week in Singapore, when the interviewer asked me why I studied the other world religions, I thought immediately of Rick, and how glad I was that I knew enough about his tradition to be able to point him toward his own tradition and be of service to him. The second reason I thought about it was the shift in consciousness that I had to undergo from that ecstatic evening with those two young searchers talking about the evolution of consciousness and spirituality as contrasted to the necessarily, I suppose, conservative and rather staid environment of the USCCB headquarters the next morning discussing the adaptation of Gregorian chant into English with no real probability of another approach. It was like walking in two parallel universes, without the benefit of passing through any kind of de-pressurization chamber. The other reason I thought about it was because, on my way home from India and in the midst of staying here at the Pure Life Society with Mother Mangalam, Dr Pat took me to visit the Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur the other day.

I didn't know what to expect. Pat always refers to him, without any irony, as "His Grace," so I was prepared for all kinds of formality, and even asked at one point if I should kiss his ring. (She said absolutely not.) He was involved in a clergy day of recollection at the pastoral center and was going to receive us during their tea break at 5:30 PM. He was a lovely man, very gracious and articulate, dressed very casually in secular clothes, and had the real heart of a pastor. And we spent most of the time talking about liturgy. The whole conversation got started when he asked me what the popularity of the Latin Mass was in America, and I asked him in turn if he had had to sign off on the new translation of the Roman Missal in English, since Malaysia is also an English speaking country. It seemed to me that both sides of the whole foment over language is sort of lost on him, the liberals who don't like the new translation (mostly Americans, English and Australians) and the conservatives who are pushing for more and more Latin. As for the former, he had celebrated the Rite of Catachumens in four languages the other day, English, Tamil, Bahasa and Mandarin, so the accuracy of the English translation was not his main priority. As for the second, the same situation applied. Even when he had his ad limina visit with the Holy Father, the archbishop explained the same situation to him, and how he didn't have the time and resources to devote to encouraging a Latin Mass. He said the Pope understood that very well and let him know that the most important thing was that his people knew they were loved by God. He also gave a little apocryphal tidbit about Don Cipriano that I didn't know.

Side note: the good bishop was quite taken with the fact that I chose my name partly because of Don Cipriano Vagaggini, the late great liturgist of whom he was a great admirer, especially when I told him that Don Cipriano had ended his life as a Camaldolese. The archbishop knew well of Shantivanam and Fr Bede, and he said that Vagaggini thought that the Indian rite was a wonderful ritualization of the inner meaning of the eucharistic doxology, with the waving of the light and incense before the consecrated bread and wine.

Anyway, after all these weeks of everything they have been, it did feel like a bit of an abrupt shift to spend and hour talking about liturgy and liturgical music with the archbishop of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and even more to go back to Pure Life and jump right in another car and head back to the lectures on the Bhagavad Gita with Mother Mangalam. (We also went on Wednesday, so I was able to attend three out of four in all.) Aside from those two things, I have had nothing else to do all week until last night when I had my first of three concerts here. It has been steamy hot here, with no escape from the humidity and heat except to sit still or slip into an air-conditioned room somewhere. I've for the most part opted for sitting still.

Last night's concert was at the Jesuit parish, St Francis Xavier. I was told that this parish might be a little more on the traditional side, so was advised to stick to mainly Christian songs as opposed to the world music, and especially to avoid the "A" word. I thought they meant "alleluia" because it's Lent, but they meant "Allah." I think I have already written about that. Short version: the government has tried to prevent Christians from using the word "Allah" in print or in in public speaking (along with 12 other Arabic phrases) in spite of the fact that it is the word for God in the native Malay language, Bahasa, as it is in other Arabic based languages as well as Bahasa Indonesia, where it is no problem. As a matter of fact, one priest from this diocese who came to vist me here at Pure Life yesterday said that he was one of the first to provoke the wrath of the law some 19 years ago when he was actually arrested and detained for singing "Allah" in a Taize chant. And it is this very same bishop with whom I had tea the other day who has been spearheading the challenge in court. Recently the courts have ruled in favor of the Christians, but some politicians are challenging the court ruling, and there have been fire bombings of churches in protest and counter fire bombings of mosques by some fundamentalist Christians in relataliation.

It seems especially poignant that today is Muhammed's birthday, of course a public holiday here in Malaysia, and it is with a strange sadness that I listened to the beautiful chanting over the loudspeakers early this morning. Inspired by my time with Imam Naveed in Copenhagen and our plans for the upcoming trip together to the mideast, I wrote a new song last Fall called "The Ground We Share": "The holy ground is the ground that we share / like the holy city Jerusalem..." The idea for it came about like this: We were talking about going together to Lebanon and Syria, but when I got to England after my time with Naveed and Agnete in Denmark, Naveed sent an e-mail that said something like, "Cyprian, my brother, why don't we also go to Jerusalem? I want to go to the Holy City with you." Just reading that gave me goose bumps and within a day I had written a few verses for this song about Jerusalem, with two verses from the Psalms and one from the Book of Revelation. These are the psalm verses:

How my heart was glad when I heard the call,
"Let us go to God's house, let us hasten there."
And now our feet are within your walls
in the land of peace and the ground that we share. (Ps 122)

Let my tongue be mute, let my hands fall off
if I place you not over every other care.
God forbid I remember not
the land of peace and the ground that we share. (Psalm 137)

A not unrelated side note: as Fr Bruno has pointed out to me, it is not to be understated how much my background in liturgy and adapting scriptural texts for liturgical use aids me in my approach to inter-religious dialogue through universal wisdom and music... Anyway, I asked Naveed to suggest something from the Qur'an as well. He suggested the story of the Night Flight, when Muhammad was carried by horse to Jerusalem, referred to as "the Farthest House" or "the Distant Mosque" late one night. Once there he was able to discern what was in the hearts of its residents.

God's servant carried by the Holy One
to the Farthest House, late at night, through the air,
saw all the good and the evil done
in the Land of Peace and the ground that we share.

I had had no cause to perform yet so it was still in embryonic form until I got to India, where we had the idea to use it for the biblical drama with Agnete and Elle down in Madurai. It just kind of came together in a nice arrangement when I needed it to, like something just waiting to be born. But even as I was writing it, I had had in my mind this situation here in Malaysia with which I have been famliar for three years now. The ethnic Malays, who are Muslims by birth and by law, consider themselves to be the "bumi putra," "sons of the land." So the use of the word Allah is symbolic to them of their heritage. Many of my ethnic Chinese and Indian friends are quite saddened by that distinction since their Malaysian roots go back many generations as well; and certainly the people of Borneo, who do speak Bahasa Malaysia and many of whom are Christian, are children of that land for countless generations. So the lines in the refrain, "...the prophets' land and my parents' land, the land of peace and the ground that we share" has an emotional meaning here as well.

So, sadly I didn't feel as if I could sing either "Bismillah" or "The Drink Sent Down" there last night, but decided to sing "The Ground We Share" in its place. They had an overhead projector that they use for displaying song lyrics there so we were able to project the words and so the assembly was able sing along as well, beautifully as they did for all the evening's songs. I hadn't noticed so much before how much like a lament the melody is, but I invited to audience, who probably didn't need any prompting, to experience it in that way, and to carry the ache of separation and the sin of division, and let the lament become a longing and the longing be the voice of hope that we can overcome our differences and find the ground that we share. Between Naveed's email and the ache here, I feel as if I am beginning to understand just a little of the apocalyptic urgency and hope of the Book of Revelation:

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem,
coming down from heaven like a bride prepared.
God will dwell in the midst of them
in the land of peace and the ground that we share.

the vedanta of prosperity

"We have to do violence to ourselves to keep from laboring uselessly for what is bitter and without joy, and we have to compel ourselves to take what is easy and full of happiness as though it were against our interests, because for us the line of least resistance leads in the way of greatest hardship and sometimes for us to do what is, in itself, most easy, can be the hardest thing in the world." (Thomas Merton, New Seeds)

23 feb, 2010

Jaya, a simple woman who works for Mother here at Pure Life, just came through to give my cell its dusting and freshening up. I was still in the middle of asanas when she showed up and did the outer room, and she had waited patiently until I finished and then said something gentle and partly undecipherable to me that made it clear to me that I was to excuse myself for a while. After she swept, she replenished the oil lamp that burns in this room as well as the big room all day, and then she lit a stick of incense and held it up to her forehead, making a nod of reverence to each of the portraits that hang around the room. It's like living in a shrine room or a temple, not a bad feeling. She had come up earlier with a small thermos of an herbal brew from Mother that I was to drink. I've had just the slightest cold since Sri Ram that is more annoying than anything, but Mother was right on it in spite of my protestations. I have learned in this part of the world that resistance to Asian hospitality is absolutely futile. Here's a typical conversation between Mother and I, last night as I was on my way to bed:

Mother: Did you have a proper meal?
Cyprian: Yes, I had the brown rice with the beans and coconut chutney.
M: I've just baked some fresh bread. Shall I give you a few slices?
C: No, Mother, really, thanks, I'm fine.
M: I'll get you two slices.
C: Yes, Mother, thanks very much.

As I mentioned, it is Chinese New Year, the lunar new year feast which goes on for a week or so. Today, for instance, is the tenth day. Though I've been in and out of this region often around this time, I've managed to miss most of the parades and festivities. A lot of eating goes on, and a lot of gift giving, and a lot of giving of other people food, especially oranges, which are a symbol of prosperity, and sweets. Also little red envelopes are given out, mainly to umarried people, filled with money. I think priests and other religious get a lot of them. I got three just for standing there. This is also a time when it is all but mandatory to visit relatives, especially one's parents. John Wong is from up here in Kuala Lumpur and had no plans to visit his folks during the festivities, but got brow beaten enough by the other old folks in the parish that he changed his mind. It's a long drive from Singapore--nearly five hours--so he offered to bring me up with him to spend an evening and morning with his folks before delivering me to Dr Pat and Pure Life. We had a great visit and conversation in the car on the way up. We see each other about once a year now, and it's fun to check in where each other is at in terms of vocation and relation to our respective greater orders/congregations. He's a bright guy, speaks at least three languages fluently and competent in a few more, and is very theologically astute, besides having a refined sense of culture and aesthetics.

His parents were wonderfully friendly people and welcomed me to their airy 19th floor apartment without the slightest hesitation. John's father is a lively 81 year old, ex-military, very talkative and intellectually curious. They took me to a wonderful vegetarian restaurant for dinner Sunday night. Then John assumed that he and I would be sharing the small guest room, with one of us on a matress on the floor, but the Colonel had other plans. John was to sleep in the master bedroom, I was to use the guestroom, he himself was going to sleep on a cot in the living room, and Mom was going to stay the night with a friend in an apartment downstairs who was feeling a little low. I think that was a ruse: when I got up in the morning, Mom was curled up on the loveseat in the living room. It being New Year's, there are lots of fireworks. At one point (it might have been right at midnight) I woke up to some very loud noises. At first I was pretty startled: I couldn't figure out what they were, and I couldn't figure out where I was, so I sat up in bed and looked out the window of the bedroom, 19 floors up, to see the fireworks going off what seemed like right beside my head. I think I laughed out loud.

In the morning Colonel Wong was regaling me with stories about his days in the military, when he led teams into the Malaysian jungle to monitor the movements of terrorists and Communists rebels. It's a complicated history (this is during the '50s and 60's mainly), and he doesn't hold a grudge against those over whom he was keeping an eye. As a matter of fact he said a number of times, "They just had a different ideology than I did" and "We were young. It was great fun." They would get dropped off by helicopter in the middle of the jungle, and have to bushwak and bivouac for days at a time, with just enough dry rations to get by. Sometimes during droughts they had to slice open jungle creepers to find water, and at times they were forced to kill some game or find jungle fruits to eat. If the helicopter crashed, he told me, you had better hope that you would die in the crash because it would be impossible to find your way out of the jungle on your own and you'd almost certainly get torn to bits by wild animals. "It was all great fun!"

Once word got out that John, Favorite Son-Nephew, was in town, our plan for a simple morning meal quickly, effortlessly morphed into a family gathering with six other people at the home of Mrs Wong's sister. The table was loaded with all kinds of delicious Chinese and Indian specialites. Everything was different--the food, the accents, the skin complexion--but for all the world it felt just like when we were in Bellusco up near Milano at Christmas time in 2003. I would not have been surprised if pannatone and vin santo had been served. And then I sang for my supper, just a few songs before I got delivered here.

There is a lecture series on the Bhagavad Gita going on near here for the next four nights sponsored by the Malaysian Vedanta Cultural Foundation. Mother Mangalam is an invited VIP and extended the invitation to me to join her, which I did last night for the first of the series. Indeed, as she walked in everyone seemed to know her and bowed to her, often touching her feet or the floor in front of her. Her right hand man Mr Krishnamurthi had driven us over and as she was led to her seat in the front row he and I were finding some seats about halfway back. Someone came back from the front row and motioned to me, saying, "Mr Cyprian? Please come." And I was planted next to Mother, front row second seat in, with all the dignitaries and officials of the Foundation.

The talk was given by Sunandaji who is the daugher and disciple of well known philosopher and guru Swami Parthasarathy. I felt like the only person in the world who had never heard of him. He pioneered a concept called Self-Management, a "technique that combines dynamic action with mental peace." His CV in the pamphlet that was handed out said that he counsels sports, film, political and corporate celebrities, and TIME magazine says that he "adds new meaning to the phrase business guru." He is also the founder of Vedanta Academy and author of best selling books. I found it kind of humorous the way it was phrased, but it's actually pretty impressive: his CV says that at age 82 (he's 83 now) he "has maintained the same weight and waist for 61 years" and he "continues to play cricket and wins most MVP award competing alongside players less than one third his age"! (Tell that to Tom Moore!) His approach, as I understand it, is that life is a skill that must be learned, and Vedanta is a practical wisdom to acquire that skill. It even teaches techniques for "drawing the wealth from the world" so as to have material prosperity.

His daughter-disciple is a chip off the old block. She was a wonderful speaker, dynamic and demonstrative in that way that the best Indian teachers are, very funny and very lucid, big gestures with her hands, lively facial expressions and some pretty funny side comments. She is teaching on Chapter 10 of the Bhagavad Gita, which they have translated as "The Yoga of Supreme Manifestation." Two young women sitting stage right of Sunandaji led us in chanting the Sanskrit of each verse, and then Sunandaji held forth on each. There was some introductory material as we began, since this was the first of four nights and she wasn't sure how much everyone in the audience knew the basics of Vedanta. At one point she sort of scolded the adults in the audience for not knowing the basics of Vedanta. "You will wait until you are retired to learn all this, I suppose?" This organization makes a big deal about the fact that Vedanta is not for old folks, but is exactly what young people need, some practical skills and a framework of reference to look at the world.

There were two things that stuck out for me in that first talk, that are salient to what I was writing about yesterday. (I hope to go tonight and tomorrow too, but Thursday I am working...). The first is this: as she was explaining the Bhagavad Gita in the context of the epic Mahabharata, Sunandaji pointed out that in the midst of all that symbolic language in the Gita, the Vedanta is there, but it needs to be interpreted. Even things like the "seven great seers, their four elders and the fourteen Manus" are all symbolic of objective realities. (She rattled off the list so fast, I couldn't get them all down.) There is a practical science of life and living hidden in there, but a teacher must point it out to you or you will never see the Gita as more than an historical novel. I was thinking of that in relation to the Bible and to the Qur'an. How much does one take literally, and how much is symbolic language, and who do we trust to point that out?

The second thing was her explanation of Krishna saying of himself in verse 8, "I am the source of all creation and everything in the world moves because of me. Knowing thus, the wise, full of devotion, constantly worship me." She taught that whenever any of the great masters (her word) refer to themselves as "I"--including the Lord Christ and the Lord Buddha, she said--it is the truth who is speaking, or rather Truth itself. These are people who are so identified with the truth that Truth is speaking through them. Of course that gets us around "I am the way, the truth and the life, says the Lord; no one comes to the Father except through me" which is similar to Krishna saying, "Those who know me as unborn and without beginning, and as the supreme Lord of the Universe, are purged from all sin" (BG 10:3). Two things came up for me with that. First: it's interesting that I never hear people express discomfort with Krishna saying he is Lord of the Universe, and yet I remember specifically getting all kinds of grief about using the beautiful passage from John's Gospel when Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches" at Boulder Integral. I guess most people assume about Krishna that this mythic figure in the Gita is really Ultimate Reality Itself speaking? But, secondly: I wonder if that's what Jesus thought about himself, that it was Truth Itself speaking. I remember Monsignor (now Archbishop) Niederauer at St John's Seminary railing at us about his pet peeve in homiletics; he hated it when guys would say, "What our Lord was really trying to say was..." "How do you know what Jesus was really trying to say?!?!" he scolded. (After one such harangue, the president of the student body got up and said slyly, "What Monsignor Neiderauer was really trying to say was...") This is something that has fascinated scripture scholars and theologians for centuries obviously, Jesus' own self-knowledge. Maybe he really did think he was the unique only Messiah-Christ, savior of the world, outside of whom no one can enter into union with this God whom he called Father. This is back to Wm Harmless' argument about mysticism. There is always the danger of filtering someone else's words about their experience through our words about our experience. So, if he did think he was the unique universal Savior, would Sunandaji say he was wrong?

I loved this little tidbit too. It's another image I use often myself and she gave it added depth. I like to point out that even Thomas Aquinas thought that plants and animals shared in soul, just not eternal souls, and so it's not a far stretch to say that they also share in consciousness. But the human person is the one creature, so we believe, that doesn't just know: we know that we know (that we know that we know that we know...) Self-reflexive consciousness. This was very much in keeping with what Sunandaji taught last night. "So you know my name. 'Are you sure you know my name?' I ask you. And you answer me, 'Yes, I know that I know.' That's it!" she said; "Find that which knows that it knows. You are that knowing behind the knowing behind the knowing..."

I was smiling a little to myself, conjuring up other, humbler images of studying the Gita. I had my own little now-crumpled up copy with me, the one that Joseph bought me in Rishikesh in 2007 with all my pen and pencil marking in it from Babaji's Thursday morning classes at PCC in Santa Cruz. I've heard the "Gospel of Prosperity" preached many times, but I've never heard the "Vedanta of Prosperity" preached before, at least not that openly. It's fascinating. Still, I think it is undeniable that the Gita as well as the Gospels are calling us to a certain death of self first, before we yield whatever rich harvest we are meant to yield. I'm reminded of the teaching about Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu. She is the goddess of wealth, power and glory, but she sits at Vishnu's feet. This is meant to symbolize that when we seek the higher truth we'll grow disinterested in the world, but when we do the world of sense objects seeks us--when Vishnu is sought, Lakshmi necessarily follows the seeker. But the opposite does not abide, according to Vedanta: if we run after wealth first, when we are slaves to our cravings, the objects of our desire escape us. Strangely close to the teaching of St John of the Cross: "Now that I no longer desire them they are all mine." That is what Yoga is about to me, that discipline, that denial of short term gains for long term ones, building the house on rock rather than on sand. And sometimes it seems as if we do "have to do violence to ourselves to keep from laboring uselessly for what is bitter and without joy," and that we have to "compel ourselves to take what is easy and full of happiness as though it were against our interests, because for us the line of least resistance leads in the way of greatest hardship" and sometimes "for us to do what is, in itself, most easy, can be the hardest thing in the world."