Melbourne wrap-up

 18 November

 

My last day in Melbourne, flying to Perth tonight. It has been a pretty full period here, lots of wonderful encounters for sure and also lots of moving around. Let me just list it all quickly…

I stayed at the Corpus Christi College, which is the seminary for Victoria and Tasmania, Wednesday and Thursday nights. As I mentioned, our oblate Deacon Jim Curtain, who had organized my trip and is the head of the oblates down here, is on staff there. He stays four nights a week. (It actually was his last week there as he is moving on to a new ministry next year.)

 That was very comfortable, a nice quiet private room with the small community of seminarians and staff. I had prayers and meals with them, of course. Thursday I spent most of the day with my friend (and advisor) and our oblate Mark Hansen from Singapore, who was in AU for the retreat too. I needed to do some errands and we found a great healthy lunch. Friday we were off right away for the oblate retreat at a retreat house outside of town. We were only 12 in number, but it went well. Sunday night we stayed at Jim’s house a half a block from the Port Phillip Bay. There is a super promenade along the beach and, knowing I was coming back there on the following weekend, I did some recon to find running paths and coffee shops. Then back to the seminary, and a full week began, a little something every day. Monday, I had an interview with ABC radio for a program called Soul Search, that will be released as a podcast as well as broadcast soon. That was so much fun. Not sure why that is a perfect vehicle for me. I did bring along my guitar. The interviewer was very knowledgeable and asked all the right questions, about my own background and about interreligious dialogue. I kept saying, “Put a nickel in my jukebox and I might never shut up.” Tuesday, I did a talk at a local parish. I thought it was supposed to be about dialogue too, but it was actually supposed to be about contemplative prayer and meditation. I also presided and preached at the evening Mass first. The deacon there, Hubert, is another of our oblates. The talk went fine but during the Q&A most of the questions were about interreligious dialogue! (One of them was, with a little edge to it, “How many converts to Catholicism have there been among Buddhists and Hindus?” I simply explained that I did not know but that conversion was not the purpose of dialogue.) The parish, but for the accent, could have been in America, as a matter of fact it reminded me in many ways of the place across the street from my Mom, Resurrection in Tempe. A nice modern church, semi-circular, originally plain brick, but now loaded with lots of devotional stuff. I think the same phenomenon is going on in Australia as in the US, a return to a more devotional spirituality instead of a liturgical one. I wonder why that is? Maybe for the same factors that led to Donald Trump being elected president again? (I’m not kidding.) Wednesday was a fuller day yet. One of our oblates who has a blog wanted to interview me for that. And then a fascinating man who runs a spiritual center in the Yarro Valley, along with is wife and a benefactor, wanted to visit with me. Mainly it was because they had hosted Bede Griffiths in 1992, I believe, and had had a great experience with him. They brought me a transcript of the talk he gave which is super. Not surprisingly, Bede spoke about the tripartite anthropology and meditation. I shall borrow from it abundantly. It’s good to know all these years later that even though I don’t go back to Bede’s writing constantly, I am correct about my understanding of his emphases and have not strayed far from the path. And then that evening I did a talk for the Center for Contemplative Studies at Melbourne University. That was most interesting. I had been in touch with several of the staff several times in the past months, once via video call and then quite a few emails. They did seem a little nervous about my presentation, partly because they are hesitant to associate too much with Christianity, partially because they didn’t know me at all, perhaps. They were even sending me all kinds of ideas about how I should lead the meditation. I prepared my talk according to the topics they asked me to cover:

 

Cyprian Consiglio - Christian Monastic Wisdom Today

-       Christian spirituality through lens of Christian monasticism and Camaldolese and Benedictine contemplative practices

-       Contemplative practice/personal experience

-       How inter-faith dialogue influences contemporary appreciation of and supports

the research and practice of different contemplative practice traditions

-       Talk (20 – 30 mins.)

Audience Q&A (15 mins)

 

20-30 minutes to cover all of that?! I used five books as a framing device to describe my own spirituality: Bede Griffiths’ (or really Bruno Barnhart’s compilation of Bede’s writing) The One Light, the Bible, the Roman Missal (and Liturgy of the Hours) to establish myself in the liturgical tradition of Catholicism, the Rule of Benedict, and the Camaldolese Constitutions. I also described myself as “an eccentric among eccentrics,” a monk, from one of the smallest congregations in the Benedictine world, who specialized in East-West dialogue, and a guitar player on top of that, now Secretary General of DIMMID. With the disclaimer that I don’t claim to speak for all Catholic Christian Camaldolese monks, so “do not take me as an examplar, for better or for worse.” Again, a nickel in my juke box... I went over my allotted time, but not by much and no one seemed to mind. I had the guitar of course (but for nearly the first time in my life did not have a guitar pick!) and began and ended with song, and also led a meditation after the Q&A. It was held in a nice theatre with lights and a sound tech. Super professional, and again, I was totally at my ease. One of those nights when I came away saying, “I love what I get to do with my life.”

 

Thursday I had nothing at all to do! I told Jim that he would not see me all day. He said I was welcome to come to prayers and meals. I repeated, “You will not see me all day.” It was a great day. A morning at my desk, then a long walk (seven miles that day) exploring Melbourne on my own. Main points of interest were a good long sit at St Paul’s Cathedral, which I had already visited with Hans in 2016, and a long visit to the Art Museum of Victoria. They had a stupendous Asian section, mostly ancient art from India, Japan, and China. And also were pretty well-stocked with late 19th, early 20th century pieces––Pissaro, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Dalì––and some very modern pieces like Calder, Chagall. I think I prefer visiting art museums alone. A nice lunch downtown along the banks of the Yarro River and an early evening of hermit time.

 

Friday was a fine day. Jim had asked me to do a retreat day for the seminarians. It was their last day there; exams were over and the summer break was beginning. I was only too happy to do it. I based it all on the kenosis theme, talks I have done many times now, and also preached on Albert the Great. I think Jim was a little concerned that I might be too progressive for them, especially with all my interfaith stuff, but I told him, “Don’t worry. I’m just gonna preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” I really love speaking to guys at that stage of formation, remembering how I enjoyed hearing new voices when I was there. And I really just love the gospel of Jesus. Period. I wait all day to say the line, “Brothers, there are no hidden messages here. Jesus really meant exactly what he said, ‘The greatest among you will be the one who serves.’ No way around it.” With so many young guys up by the shiny objects of clericalism––cassocks and places of honor––it is so important to point this out.

Then the work was done, and we headed back to Jim’s place at the coast for the weekend. I again had all Saturday to myself and tramped around with my backpack at the beach and a coffee shop all day, got a little sun-burned (it was good and hot), read a lot and napped. Sunday we went out to the Cistercian monastery Tarrawarra. We celebrated Mass with the monks, then the abbot, Fr. Steele, had us in for a private lunch in his guest dining room. (I thought we were going to eat with the rest of the monks.) Another old friend, Fr. John Dupuche, joined us as well. He is an expert in Kashmir Shivaism, and I know him since the Abhishiktananda Centenary at Shantivanam in 2009. I also visited his place here in Victoria in 2016. He has for some years run an inter-faith monastic house, where he has housed monks from various religions and traditions. Between the four of us, it was a very lively conversation, though am afraid John and I left the other two in the dark at times as I probed John about some of the subtler aspects of Tantra and other areas of his expertise. After that I had the great grace of an hour with Fr. Michael Casey who is an internationally known author in the monastic world. I wanted to ask him his opinion about the influence of East-West dialogue on monasticism. (He narrowed it down to specifically “Benedictine” monasticism.) I can’t recount all of what he said here. In a word, “not much” outside of a few guys doing yoga once in a while. I was thinking sadly of the lack of interest in the Christian ashram movement in India. It speaks so strongly to me! Is it only outside of Benedictine monasticism that a new way of being monk has evolved from out of the Asian influence? I was impressed by the fact that Fr. Michael was even more world-traveled, connected, better-educated, and experienced than I knew, having spent time with such other monastic luminaries as Jean le Clerq, and also having been with Bede Griffiths and Raimondo Panikkar in 1973 at the follow up to the Asian meeting at which Thomas Merton died. So, it was a real honor to spend time with him and I am still chewing on his insights.

 

I was telling Jim this morning a thought I have had several times in the past weeks. Concerning the two things I love, music and east-west dialogue: they tend to be side projects or hobbies for most monks if at all. Only a few of us are crazy enough to pursue either (or both) of them full time, to actually make a life out of them.

 

I am waiting for my ride to the airport and thus begins another week of ministry Down Under.

Fides et ratio!

For my last commitment here in Melbourne, I gave a retreat day for the seminarians at Corpus Christi College yesterday, where I had been staying this past week. Deacon Jim Curtain, the head of our oblates down here who is my host, is on staff there. It was a great place to stay, nice quiet bedroom in the small guesthouse, where I was the only guest all week. It was a great day. I gave the conferences from my kenosis retreat (the material that made up “The God Who Gave You Birth”). I also preached for Mass, Even though it was only an optional memorial, I decided to preach on Saint Albert the Great because there are a few things about him that strike me as salient still in our day and age. And what an opportunity to convey this message to guys preparing for ministry in the Church in this crazy world.

First of all, Saint Albert is credited with being the thinker who really separated theology from philosophy. Now, there can be a downside to that, in the sense that this is the crossover period into Scholasticism. And so this is the beginning of the slow decline of the sapiential learning that was more common in the patristic era and especially beloved in monastic circles. But the upside of it is the fact that the separation between philosophy and theology shows that there is no conflict between faith and reason; they are in a sense two different kinds of intelligences. Saint Albert referred to theology as “emotional knowledge,” whereas philosophy is more rational knowledge. They need each other. (Ironically, just that morning I watched a video that someone sent of a priest in a homily railing against following your emotions in the spiritual life. I think it is very dangerous to leave the emotions out completely and has led to a lot of problems. Just acknowledge them and let them be part of the decision-making process.)

 

The inheritors of this tradition, of course, were Popes John Paul II and Benedict.  John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio is one of the foundational texts of my work in interreligious dialogue. (If I had started talking about it, I’d have never stopped but I did urge you to read it some time.) This is also the argument that Pope Benedict tried to make so often (often falling on deaf ears to the right and the left), that reason lets us figure out such things as that terrorism, for example, is not true religion, even that fundamentalism is not authentic religion. There are so many examples in our day and age of religion being used to condone all kinds of crazy behavior, among extreme right Christians as well as Jews and Muslims. So, this is a salient argument and culpable ignorance. As I like to say regarding my own country, when somebody says something stupid on our end, about Palestine, for instance, someone gets killed for it on the other end.

 

The second thing concerning Saint Albert and philosophy that gets pointed to often folds right into that. Albert, like his famous student Thomas Aquinas after him, accomplished this separation of theology from philosophy by using Aristotle. That may not seem shocking to us except for the fact that Aristotle had two things going against him. First of all, he, like Plato, was a pagan! Secondly, his philosophy was being translated and diffused around Europe by Arab Muslims. This was a shock to people of Albert’s time, especially church people. “How could you use a pagan philosopher translated by who-were-thought-to-be-heretics to explain Christian theology?” I’ve been doing some study recently about the history of Islamic thought recently, since my time at Oxford, and I don’t think people realize or remember how dependent Christian theologians were at one time on Arabic translators.

 

Robert Barron points out in his essay on St. Thomas how this beautifully exemplifies the truly catholic mind, “open to every and any influence, willing to embrace the truth wherever [they] found it.” Not only as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, but also Jewish thinkers such as the Rabbi Moses Maimonides and the Andalusian poet and philosopher Avicebron, and Muslim scholars such as Averroes and Avicenna. Equally important, even when they disagreed with a thinker, they “always did so with respect and without polemics.” (Remember, Aquinas was disagreeing with Augustine on this as well as St Bonaventure.) And Barron says this is “a wonderful model for our time, when the religious conversation is sadly marked by rancor and vituperation.”

 

The third thing, right in the same line, is that Saint Albert was named the doctor universalis­–the universal doctor (could we say, the “catholic doctor”?) because of his fascination with and writings on botany, zoology, physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Again, this shows us not only that there is no conflict between faith and reason; there also ought to be no conflict between faith and science, even though there has been historically. Note the culture wars still going on over these issues, regarding global warming to name just one issue. A few years ago, Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, then chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, was interviewed concerning the Church’s approach to evolution and science in general. He himself is a philosopher and a scholar of Saint Thomas Aquinas. And he said that he is absolutely comfortable with both the spiritual message of a reasonable church and the evidence-based lessons of science, such as evolution. They exist on different planes, he said, and “If we don’t accept science, we don’t accept reason, and reason was created by God.”

 

I ended by saying, “The world needs us to be holy right now. It also needs us to be intelligent, measured, it needs us to be the voice of reason as well as the voice of faith. So let’s let St Albert be our intercessor and our guide in this, as he was for Thomas Aquinas, so that we too could be light for the world, salt in the earth.”

I’m staying with Jim and his wife Vickie out in Bayside this weekend. It’s beautiful, right on the bay, and the weather is going to be in the 90s! It feels like California in July. I’ll try to catch up on the blog soon.

what will we tell our children?

I was flying from Singapore to Australia as the results of the election were coming in and, perhaps unfortunately, there was CNN International live on the plane. I switched to a wonderful PBS documentary on the jazz bassist Ron Carter (highly recommended) but kept switching back to check how things were going. All the while I was remembering how I was driving from California to Arizona on January 6, 2021 when the attack on the Capital was taking place, listening live on SirusXM and then with my iPhone perched up on the dashboard, listening and watching in horror.

 

I certainly don’t want to get into any polemical battles. By now we have all hardened into our positions and it is not the time even to try to change anyone else’s mind. The thing is done. There is little to debate anymore, just wait to see how it unfolds. This is what the majority of American people want. That is how democracy works.

 

It’s not that I wanted Kamala Harris to win so much as I, along with many conservative Republican Christians, just wanted Donald Trump and MAGA to be defeated so that America could be rid of the poison that Donald Trump has brought to our great country. So we could get back to the great debate about policy differences. I am so so sad that most of my fellow Americans did not want that.

 

What Jimmy Kimmel said on Wednesday, November 6 during his monologue, spoke for me. He was roundly pilloried for it on social media afterward because he was fighting back tears, which I suppose a real man would never do.

 

“It was a terrible night for women, for children,” he said,

“for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go,

for health care, for our climate, for science, for journalism, for justice, for free speech.

It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class,

for seniors who rely on Social Security,

for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO and democracy and decency.

And it was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him.

And guess what? It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him too.

You just don’t realize it yet.”

 

I keep thinking three things.

 

First of all, the Bully won. The bullies won. As bullies usually win, at least in the short term.

 

And second, how can we ever preach the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, with a straight face again, let alone call ourselves a Christian nation?

 

Third, and this is the one that makes me really sad: What do we tell our children?

 

That Jesus was apparently wrong? If you want to make it in this world, do not follow Jesus! You need to imitate the bullies, imitate the ones who spew hatred, who spread falsehoods, threaten violence, demean those who are weaker than you, and demonize their enemies. You can also align yourself with racists and riot against your country and ignore its judicial system if things don’t go your way. Imitate people who do that. That’s how you win. You can also lie, cheat, abuse women, and break the law. We used to choose our leaders based on character, but character does not matter anymore (at least this side of the grave). That, apparently, is the American way now.

 

For the rest of us—including we followers of the poor man of Galilee who hung on a cross and preached the power of love and self-surrender, and all people of good will—we had better stick together and protect each other from here on out because the bullies are running things now and make no mistake about it—they are out to humiliate us. They are already doing it. A woman acquaintance of mine recently got these responses to her posts against Donald Trump.

 

Go f-ck yourself.

Get f-cked.

Your body, my choice.

Get back in the kitchen and spread your legs.

Die libtard.

Trump will f’ing destroy you.

This is why women shouldn’t vote.

Never move your commie ass to NH!

 

And yes, that is what Donald Trump has unleashed and given permission to because that’s the way he speaks, as he did at the Al Smith dinner last month with the Roman Catholic cardinal (shame on him) laughing at his side. Just as he gave permission to the Proud Boys, and to the white nationalists in Charlottesville in 2017. These are mean people who are armed and dangerous and will not hesitate to harm us if we get in their way. They’ve said so, beginning with their leader.

 

We just might face persecution. So, let’s take care of each other, protect each other, but let’s not meet violence and hatred with violence and hatred. Look to the freedom fighters on Edmund Pettus Bridge for inspiration. Non-violent resistance in the name of God or however you call the Power-Greater-Than-Yourself who sustains you is what is called for now. Shame them with your love, mock their way of acting with your sincere kindness.

 

And please don’t let your children admire them so that they grow up to be like them. Let’s quietly build something different.

 

And please do not give up believing that they are wrong. That love is stronger than hate. That kindness is more enduring than bitterness. That is where our hope is based. And try to convert Mr. Trump’s followers to the actual Gospel of Jesus instead of the anti-gospel of folks who have often twisted Christianity into an aberration of its true spirit and use it as a political, cultural cudgel.

 

Read the Beatitudes every day. Memorize them. Read Dr King and Dorothy Day, read Cesar Chavez and Gandhi. Read Jim Wallis and John Dear. That may be the kind of heroism that will be called for in the days ahead.

 

As Vaclav Havel said, “Hope is a dimension of the soul, an orientation of the spirit.” However, he says “it is not the same thing as joy that things are going well,” at least not in the short term, “but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. ... Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless how it turns out.”

 

Even though the bullies won, let’s not stop doing the right thing, even if it doesn’t look like it will succeed. Let’s pray for the strength to speak the truth, with love, to power. Because the arc of the moral universe is long—but it bends toward justice, God’s saving justice, who raises the lowly from the dust and casts down the mighty from their thrones.

I say that as a monk and a priest. But I echo this as an troubadour, the words of Toni Morrison:

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no time for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

 

Along with Cornell West, I am a prisoner of hope, even if things don’t look too good right now. There is a light that can overcome the darkness. But there is no darkness that can overcome the light.

 

an ambush of grace

 30 October 24, last day in Oxford.

Aaron and I had a pretty relaxed weekend last week, I did laundry, we had a meal from the open market in front of his apartment. We talked about going to evensong at Christ Church, but I begged out, I was so happy to stay home. I caught up on a lot of emails and writing and took a couple of gourmet naps. Sunday, we had Mass at the Catholic chaplaincy again and went back to Somerville in the evening. As I mentioned, they have been an interfaith chapel from the beginning, and instead of doing evensong, they do something called Choral Contemplation. Theirs is an auditioned choir led by a very fine director. The theme was ‘Love Conquers All’ and the guest speaker was Dr. JC Niala, who is a Kenyan by birth but now works for the Science Museum here at Oxford, her specialty being chemistry. She is also known as a “guerrilla gardener.” The choir was both more informal than the other places singing evensong and more refined. There was also a fine organist wearing a kippa, so I assume Jewish. The choir sang Gustav Holst’s setting of “I Love My Love,” which was followed by a reading from the Bahái writings in both Swahili (Dr Niala’s native tongue) and English. Then the choir did a modern setting of George Herbert’s “Love Bade Me Welcome” followed by a reading of Dr Martin Luther King’s Sermon in Atlanta––“I have decided to stick to love…” The Dr Nialia read one of her poems, about gardening (but not really) and gave a fine sermon. They ended by singing a marvelous rendition of Thomas Tallis’ “If They Love Me.” All so so fine. I was left thinking, I think that I would rather be a part of a beautiful artistic service like this, which exuded spirit (Spirit), than at an evensong sung by people singing it for aesthetic reasons instead of as prayer.

 

Monday we only had an evening commitment together, but I had the opportunity to hang out with Lucas Tse again. He had offered to give us a tour of All Souls’, but Aaron had class, so I got him all to myself. Wonderful lunch, as has been the norm, and then a long conversation, first in the garden and then in Lucas’ office. That evening Aaron and I went for Vespers, the “real thing,” because this time it was with an Anglican contemplative community of nuns called the Sisters of the Love of God. They knew Aaron a bit because he has frequented their Vepsers before and had written ahead to get us an invitation. They also had us in for “recreation dinner,” as they called it. The Mother Superior gave us a tour of the rather modern facilities and told us all about them. They’ve been there since 1916, they run a small press, they were the home of the famous (at least to us monks) Sr Benedicta Ward who did the collections of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The Lives of the Desert Fathers and the Lives of the Desert Mothers. (I had actually stayed there before some years ago and was housed in her former rooms.) We had a great conversation with them, especially with one sister, Helene, who was from Massachusetts and knows our Sr Sheila in Windsor. We parted like old friends with invitations and promised to come back again.

Tuesday was a full day. We were back on that same part of town, this time to meet with Martin Whittingham and Richard McCallum, who run the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies (CMCS). It’s not officially part of the university though both of these gentlemen are also on faculty there. Their mission, since 2008, has been “teaching Christians honestly about Islam, teaching Muslims honestly about Christianity, and supporting high quality research on the Christian-Muslim interface.” And their team includes both Christian and Muslim research fellows for up to 3 years, scholars and other associates as well as the permanent staff. They have a regular Bible-Quran study and they also sponsor a fascinating residential Summer School for Christian and Muslim young people each year, billed as “not your usual inter-faith encounter!” where they engage in some what we call “difficult conversations” in trying to understand each other’s faiths. I again asked loads of questions and also checked in with them about some of the authors I have read to see if they took them seriously, which was amusing. They were very diplomatic but honest. 

We had one more lunch then with yet another chaplain, Rev Andrew Gregory, this time at University College. That was a whole different conversation. Rev Gregory told us more about what it means to be a chaplain in an environment that is mostly proudly secular and rather anti-religion, in spite of its history, where most of the colleges were founded as religious houses. He tends to see his role more as a counselor, a “wellness officer,” which of course is a pretty fine ministry as well. Sometimes it’s better to be the presence of Christ rather than try to proselytize. (I’m sure the Holy Father would agree.) But I must admit that I was a little surprised at how often I heard that the environment at Oxford is so highly rational that it can be a little antagonistic to spirituality. I have to think that there is a great craving out there for spirituality as well. It was then that I realized that we had had no real interaction with or conversations about Hinduism or Buddhism, which suddenly struck me as a surprise since there seem to be a lot of Indians and certainly a lot of other Asians from China, Korea and Japan.

 

Saturday, 2 november, back “home” in Rome

 

Tuesday evening was kind of the capstone of the week. We had a semi-formal dinner with Baroness Jan Royall, the principal of Somerville College at her beautiful private residence inside the walls of Somerville. The home and garden made a sharp contrast with its surroundings, and would have fit in nicely in Santa Barbara, smart and modern. I knew this meal was coming but hadn’t realized that Aaron had actually staged the whole thing himself. He’s good friends with Jan (she has no airs about being a baroness or a member of Parliament, which she is, and wore canvas gym shoes under her slacks) and asked her to host this soiree. She agreed and allowed him to invite seven others besides the two of us and her. It was quite a group, several of whom I had met before, all part of the Oxford family and a kind of recap of the week: Rev Josh from Trinity, Arziah from Somerville Chapel, Jyotvir, the Sikh gentleman I had met at the concert, Aaron’s good friend Arzoo, who runs the largest health care information center in the UK and whom I had met a few times before in California. And then two people I had not met before, Prof Harvey Whitehouse who teaches in the Sociology Department with a special interest in social cohesion, and a youngster, Matt, another Singaporean, doing his doctorate in quantum physics who is also a jazz bass player on the side, specializing in a very rarified genre of world music/jazz fusion that left me a little dazed as he explained it. The meal was catered and waited by the kitchen staff from Somerville, very elegant, and the dinner conversation around the table as well as the conversation after the meal in the living room over coffee, tea and chocolate mints from the House of Lords (seriously), was notably very down to earth and wide-ranging.

I took the train down to London on Wednesday to meet an old friend, Simon Fellows, who had lived with us at New Camaldoli off and on starting 30 years ago (hard to believe…) and is now back in the UK looking after his ailing father. I arrived at Paddington, made my way over to Charing Cross to meet Simon and then we walked the length of the Mall, past Buckingham Palace, through the park and into Mayfair, then onto Covent Garden and a bit into Soho. I was struck by how crowded London was, and it’s still some time before Christmas! 

And then one last meal back in Oxford with some young friends of Aaron’s. Just the opposite of the elegance of the evening before, but even warmer, and the conversation just as enjoyable and deep. Guanxiong is another Singaporean who is studying English at Oxford and I come to find out that, though he identifies as a “cultural Buddhist,” his specialty is the medieval English mystics, Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, etc. with which he is fascinated. He and his girlfriend Maria, from Rumania, had been at the concert and were very moved by it, and had issued the invitation then and there. We immediately launched into a fabulous conversation about spirituality East and West, with him pulling out Old Engish texts that he was studying and asking questions. So excited to be talking to a “real hermit”! That was followed by a short meditation together before our humble and delicious meal. Guanxiong had prepared olive fried rice in the tiny kitchen of their flat and Maria made what she called baked chorizo tofu. Guan had moved his desk into the middle of his room and covered it with paper to serve as our dining room table. (Maria was doing makeup for a play and was late to join us.) 

Maria, Guangxiong, and Aaron 

Aaron reminded me of a phrase that I use often as we were walking back to his flat: the whole time there had been like an “ambush of grace.” (Did I get that from Paul Ford?) I remember Bede Griffiths, himself an Oxford alum under CS Lewis, once declaring that he was “not a scholar”! I remember that when people refer to me as a scholar. I know I have my gifts and insights to offer, but if Bede wasn’t a scholar than I am certainly nowhere near one. But scholars have their place, and the folks that I met know their place without lording it over anyone (this was one of the things that Jan emphasizes with her students): to be at the service of others. I was so well served by these folks who generously let me pick their brains and were kind enough to ask for my insights from the front lines, I suppose, and appreciate my ongoing and upcoming work and my experience. There is certainly the possibility that Oxford will be a hub of collaboration for me, especially with Aaron there, who made sure that I am connected via email with all these folks.

I flew off to Rome Thursday and was really consoled by how warmly I was greeted by the few brothers that are here at San Gregorio. (Several are out these days.) It actually felt like home, and I slept like a baby in my own room the past few nights. I had agreed to do a day of recollection for the house of formation for a congregation of religious called the Rosiminiani who live nearby today, which was a fun experience. Most of the men were young Africans in simple vows, though there were two Indians, two Vietnamese and even two Italians. Tomorrow, I have an evening with Fr Markus Muff who is in charge of the Benedictine Foundation about my budget for DIMMID, and I gotta say you have to like a man who wants to meet about money over a pizza after Vespers on Sunday night. And then I fly off Monday for the last leg of this wild ride of a year––first to Australia. More on that as I go. For now, buona notte da Roma.

singers going where scholars fear to tread

29 october 24

 

Thursday last week was the day that I felt like I finally got to work and offered something instead of being totally on the receiving end. I really have only had two events where I was to present. The first was at the Blavatnik School of Government where Aaron teaches. It’s a school of public policy, very new by any standard, founded only in 2010 from huge donation from a business magnate named Len Blavatnik. After all the grand ornate old buildings of medieval Oxford with their gargoyles and facades, winding staircases and grand halls and portraits adorning the corridors, it was a bit of a shock to be in a simple handsome modern building for a change, with lots of light and clean lines. Aaron had put the word out for an 8:30 AM gathering over a semi-catered breakfast, insisting to me that people who sign up for such things usually show up––and they did. I think we were about 30 people. And what an interesting crowd, all very young (by my standards) except for one other woman faculty member, and from all over the world: two from Ukraine, Colombia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, at least three from the States, Austria, Singapore… that’s all I can remember right off the bat. And, of course, bright as can be.

 

The topic was “What governments can learn from monasteries.” Aaron was very careful to frame the topic so as not to be bringing religion into it per se, but more along the lines of monastic governance. I of course front-loaded and over-prepared (if there really is such a thing), boning up on the Rule of Benedict and its history. I offered them a handout that I have used with the monks with three sets of monastic values: one list from the oblates of St John’s in Collegeville which, as far as I know, is anonymous, one from Abbot Jeremy Driscoll, and my own. But I, of course, never got to any of that.

 

The first step of our time together was for them to introduce themselves. Perhaps it was because the first one or two did, but to my surprise each one of them not only said where they were from, they also said what their spiritual tradition was. I started out by telling them that I have done many interfaith encounters, and I never ask that question of anyone, and how struck I was by that. The main theme of my offering was to focus on servant leadership, not only my whole spiel on paedagogos (from Clement of Alexandria’s writings on Christian leadership: the leader ought to be like “the slave that the parents hire to train the children”) but also after the example of Jesus, imagining for a moment, along with some prominent scholars, that Jesus was actually setting himself as a leader in Israel––and this is how we’re going to do it: the greatest among you will be the one who serves. I talked about “culture” and how my favorite images that Jesus uses for the reign of God, salt, seed, yeast, are all things that act by disappearing, and also that act from the inside out. And I also added how changing the culture of a place or an institution is like changing the oil in a car––while you’re driving. But it’s ultimately more effective and enduring change, as the pope is trying to do at the Vatican, doing away with the culture of careerism, instilling a culture of synodality. But we as individuals have to be willing to “die” in the process for the sake of the greater good.

 

Aaron gave them plenty of time to offer comments and questions. I didn’t feel obliged to offer an answer or a solution to every issue raised, but I tried to respond. They were so engaged and so engaging! I can still see their bright eyes and attentive faces. Of course we had touched a little on contemplative practice, so Aaron wisely suggested that we could either take the last three questions or we could spend some time in silent meditation, which we did (the latter). The discussions I had with the folks afterward were very moving, and I left feeling a little more hope than I usually feel in this day and age, choosing to believe that these young people were here because they really thought they could effect change in the world in the best way possible.

 

That same day at lunchtime we were back at Pembroke College for the third time. Rev Andrew Teal, who had been our host at evensong and high table on Monday, runs an interfaith discussion group each Thursday. This particular one was led by a Scottish professor who is a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints (who we usually refer to as Mormons). These are three things I might not have ever put together: Scotland, Latter Day Saints, and Oxford. He was very erudite and entertaining. There were also several other LDS members in attendance as well, mostly Americans as it turns out, and they too were very vocal about their faith after the professor ended his talk and opened the floor for discussion. There were two moments that were a little awkward. One was a question from a retired professor who asked about doing comparative readings of the Book of Mormon against other copies of the ancient text as would be done in biblical research for instance. I’m not sure if she knew what she was asking, since there are no other copies of the gold plates that Joseph Smith is said to have found. The other was a question asked by me. I didn’t mean to be provocative, but the other LDS members there were saying that the Book of Mormon corroborates everything in the Bible. (One person asked why the Bible had to be corroborated.) I asked what the difference was between LDS’ christology and that of mainstream Protestantism or Catholicism. We didn’t get to that much, partially since we were running out of time, though Rev Teal did jump in and insist that LDS are very trinitarian. I only have faint memories of what I was told by my few Mormon friends, but I think actually it diverges quite a bit. I would have liked for that to have been said. But I did tell the good professor afterward that my experience with Mormons has been that they are some of finest people I have known, and two of the best recording engineers oddly enough, Mike at Orangewood in Mesa and Chris at Pine Forest.

 

Friday was the main event, my musical performance at Somerville Interfaith Chapel. But before that we were met for lunch at Somerville by a stellar young man named Lucas Tse, from Hong Kong. In the world of random connections this one was really extraordinary. Amil, who was staying at Aaron’s with me, had a friend here who he had studied with in Chicago and who is now a research fellow at All Souls, a very prestigious seven-year commitment on their part. (Our friend the wunderkind Fitz had been as well.) On top of that, while he was studying in California in 2013, Lucas and a friend of his had taken a pilgrimage down the coast and happened upon New Camaldoli Hermitage. A monk found them wandering around the cloister, engaged them in conversation, invited them in to lunch and then showed them his cell that had a batik of Jesus in lotus position from India hanging on his wall, named Cyprian, who turned out to be the head monk. And when Lucas saw the poster for the concert, he wrote to Aaron asking if he could meet with said monk, neither he nor Aaron knowing the Amil connection. He is one of those people who asks all the right questions and really listens to the answers, and obviously also spoke very eloquently about anything he is asked as well. My favorite part of our discussion was about the Tao te Ching and Taoism in particular. I have a little slip of paper (Matt Fisher will love this) that I have been carrying around in my wallet of three phrases\definitions that I got from David Hinton’s mind-blowing book Awakened Cosmos.

 

            wu=non-being as a generative void from which this ever-changing realm of being perpetually arises

tao=way, the generative ontological process through which all beings arise and pass away as non-being burgeons forth into the great transformation of being

 

            tzu-jan=self-ablaze, the mechanism by which being burgeons forth out of non-being.

 

I have tried to speak to a few people about these concepts, only to be met with blank stares. Not so with Lucas. Of course, Mandarin is his native tongue, and he is a philosopher. (Amil too, by the way, had at one time been working on his own translation of Tao te Ching, himself half Chinese.) We had an amazing conversation. Like with Fitz, it’s consoling to get an affirmation that one is thinking along the right lines. What I see in this (and this will be a bit of a leap, but not that big of one if you have read Rediscovering the Divine) is the three Persons of the Trinity, the mountain underneath the island.

 

We had heard from people all week long how they were sorry but they were not coming to the concert that evening. One guy actually stopped in at the chapel while we were setting up to say, “Just wanted to say hi, but I’m not coming.” It was nice of them to say so, and obviously Aaron had gotten the word out. But my expectations were very low: I was expecting nobody but Aaron, Amil, Lucas (who said he could come for the first part) and Arziah, the head of the chapel. In the end we had about 30 people, so that was a big win. I would have been happy with five and would have done pretty much the same thing. As it was, it was a great evening. I played and sang very well, I could feel myself playing the room (both the space and the attendees) quite well, and it all felt very conversational. They also sang along quite well. I did “The Drink Sent Down” (Kabir Helminski’s version of the Turkish Sufi illahi, for instance, and asked the crowd to sing alhamdullilah as a dhkr underneath the entire song as an ostinato. It was the best “performance” of that song ever. As I wrote in my Facebook post, only at a place like Oxford might you be singing a Sufi dhkr in Arabic along Islamic scholars, a Sanskrit mantra with Hindus in attendance, and a song from the Tao te Ching with two people in the audience that know the book in Mandarin. “Minstrels going where scholars fear to tread.”

 

Again, the conversations afterward were very touching. Somerville, besides being the alma mater of Margaret Thatcher, has been an interfaith college from the start, and so it was a perfect setting. One gentleman who identified as a Sikh told me that it was more like a kirtan sing at the gurdwara than a concert, and I can’t think of a better compliment. I am so adverse to what William Harmless (God bless his memory) called “cherry picking,” and saying “See, it’s all the same.” And there is that risk that someone, especially in a place like Oxford where people really know what they’re talking about, could find a hole in my cloth and tear it from top to bottom. To be appreciated by a crowd like that was very satisfying and energizing. I told Aaron later that music has to stay a part of this next phase in my life and ministry. Somehow or other. “Telling stories and singing songs.” I think by this time I do see myself fitting easily into the folk\minstrel tradition.

 

I have only one more official appointment, a rather formal dinner tonight with some folks I have met along the way with the president of Somerville College at her home. Tomorrow I am going down to London to visit with an old acquaintance, then one more informal meal with some friends of Aaron’s and then to Rome. I’ll catch up with the rest later.