25 September 2016, Melbourne, Australia
If Jesus should come and knock on your
door
for a place to come in, or bread from
your store,
would you welcome him in, or turn him
away?
Then God would deny you on the great
judgment day.
Just after I wrote that last entry I had
a wonderful experience, a little thing that touched my heart pretty deeply. (As
Br. Bede says, “It’s the little things…”) I was at the local gym, got in a good
workout, and was about to leave. I asked the kind woman at the desk, who had
been very welcoming as I got there, if there was any place where I could get a
cup of tea. She thought for a moment, screwed up her face and said, “Well, the
café is already closed…. Hmmm… Just sit down over there and I’ll make you a
cuppa.” And she did, disappearing into a backroom and re-appearing a few
minutes later with a good strong cuppa. I had many little instances of that
during my days in NZ, not to mention that kind hospitality of my hosts Michael
and Elizabeth.
My last two evenings enjoying Kiwi
hospitality in New Zealand were spent doing two presentations, one at the
parish in the town of Whangerei and another back down the coast in Auckland.
Both were meant to be and advertised as interfaith events. The first one, in
the smaller town of Whangerei, drew quite a mixed crowd. Afterwards I met some
Baha’is and Vedantists and Buddhist practitioners. It was fun; as back in the
day at the end of my time on the road I used to do events that were
half-singing/half-speaking, so for these, since Michael had left the theme
pretty open, I just picked five songs and did long introductions to them. The
next night in the big city of Auckland (at least a fourth of the population of
New Zealand lives there, over a million people), was mostly members of the
World Community of Christian Meditation, who co-sponsored both events along
with our Camaldolese oblates. I did the same program there but this time added
on an extra half hour and left time at the end for a group meditation. It was a
very sweet evening, and I found people enormously receptive and myself
enormously satisfied.
In Auckland we were the guests of Fr.
Peter Murphy who is very active with the WCCM and extremely well read in much
the same area of interest as I myself have, so we had a good lively discussion
about lo’ these many things. Peter had spent some years in California studying
at the Center for Creation Spirituality, so that added a whole other layer to
our discussion. Perhaps it is just the folks with whom I am hanging out, but I
have noticed so much interest in and dedication to environmental concerns and
sustainability in these parts, especially among Christians. It is inspiring and
challenging. It is also so fascinating to find these common threads of
dedication and enquiry at such a distant part of the globe and also heartening
to realize that it is not just the tragedies in life that bind us
together––global warming, the refugee crisis, warring states, Donald Trump––but
we are also part of a tapestry woven together of common interest and common
aspiration, common hope and energy.
Early the next morning I headed across
the Tasman Sea on a four hour flight here to Melbourne. I was accompanied by
our oblate Phillip Saunders, who was heading over here for family matters. It
was nice to have the company, and then to be greeted by our obate here, Hans
Christensen. Hans is an Anglican priest, a Camaldolese oblate and the chaplain
of a large prestigious boys school here in Melbourne. We had met when I was
here in 2009 for the retreat in Tasmania and had remained in contact
occasionally since then. Hans is another one with whom I have so many interests
in common and we began tripping over each other’s sentences almost right away.
He and his wife Ruth (and their dog Nelson) took me on a good long walking tour
of Melbourne that afternoon. What a beautiful city! The architecture and the
large art installations all over the place are especially impressive, but the
city is also very clean, diverse and seemingly loaded with culture of all
kinds.
Yesterday (Saturday) I led a day retreat
for members of the World Community from several places here in the state
Victoria, two long sessions, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. Again,
it was fun to revisit old material with a new audience: the morning was on the
Universal Call to Contemplation and the afternoon was on Spirit, Soul and Body.
What was most interesting was to see what new material actually came up in me
after a three-year hiatus from broaching these topics.
Today I am preaching at a nearby
Anglican church, which I’m alternatively told is very conservative and/or very
high church. Hans has recommended that I wear my “whites” and helped me get all
the Roman mud off the hems (nothing allegorical intended there; it was raining
my last day in Rome as I walked home from the Congress at Sant’Anselmo, all of
which, by the way, seems like a world away by now––and not only geographically).
I’ll post my homily below as well. If the few of you are reading who remember
this: a few years ago the song “Tramp on the Street” resurfaced at a conference
with SN up at Mount Madonna, a song I hadn’t sung since I was in Chicago in
1976-77. That’s the gospel today––Lazarus, and I had fun with Ruth and Hans,
who also knew the song, looking up its origins (and getting the lyrics right;
the quote above is one verse I had never heard before, by the way.) You should
look up Hank Williams’ version of it on YouTube, but it goes back farther. I am
at least going to quote it in my homily, though still unsure whether or not I
am actually going to break into song at a conservative and/or high church
Anglican parish on a sunny Sunday morning in Melbourne.
