A journey can become a sacred thing.
Make sure, before you go,
to take the time to bless your going forth,
to free your heart of ballast so that the compass of
your soul
might direct you toward the territories of spirit
where you will discover more of your hidden life,
and the urgencies that deserve to claim you.
John
O’Donahue
June 30
Soon after I moved back to New Camaldoli in November 2012, Fr.
Robert decided he would resign as prior if I was willing to step in––or not! I
said I assumed he would finish out the term (four and a half more years) or at
least do three years, or could he at least do another year to let me settle in
or at least six more months. It was like Abraham negotiating with God. He
settled on six months. At any rate, when I was elected, I assumed that I was
finishing Fr. Robert’s term, which would have meant until January 2018. I was however
dissuaded of that notion by the Prior General Alessandro Barban when I asked
him about it. He said, “No.” The same in both languages. Our Constitutions, he
explained to me carefully, call for the prior to serve six years, and so until
July 2019, which would have been now. I was not pleased about that. I thought
that maybe there was a slim chance I could slip out of the role in January of
2018!
Then sometime in late 2017 Alessandro wrote about his
upcoming trip to America in January of 2018, and he said among other things we
would have the election of the prior. I said, “Aspetta! Wait a minute! You said I had to serve until July 2019!”
He said, “Scherzi? Are you kidding?
All the priors resign after General Chapter” which was to be in October of 2017.
Sigh. He did give me the option of serving out until July and then doing a
re-confirmation, but he did not recommend it because he wanted New Camaldoli to
be in sync with the other communities of the congregation. And so after some (!)
soul searching, I decided to put myself up for re-confirmation last year in
January. That being said, I already had my heart set on a sabbatical for July
2019 and I decided to take it after all, a short one, three months. When I come
back it will really only be four and a half years remaining of this mandate.
I pulled off the property last Thursday, the 27th
of June. It had been a full week leading up to that, as most weeks are anyway,
just this one with a particular poignancy––making sure all the bases were
covered, setting things up Fr. Zacchaeus who is acting prior while I am gone.
Then there had been a good Financial Advisory Board meeting down in San Luis
Obispo and a brief visit with the good folks at Caltrans (the ones responsible
for the maintenance of Highway 1 and currently doing work on Paul’s Slide which
is contiguous with our poor falling entry road). That included dinner and a
night’s stay with the brothers down there at the Monastery of the Risen Christ.
On the weekend I helped lead a retreat on Abhishiktananda, mainly headed up by
Jacob Ryeff, a young professor for Milwaukee who recently published a
collection of Swamiji’s poetry called In
the Bosom of the Father. That went quite well, and I was pleased to bring
some attention to that part of our legacy again. The Bede-Bruno library-archive
(I still need to find a better name for it) was well visited and highly
appreciated that weekend. We also had a group session for the monastic
community the following Tuesday with our friend Dr. Barry Hayes. This is
becoming a regular activity for us now. Barry is leading us through various
exercises in group dynamics, communication skills, etc. I am pleased to say
that several of the brothers noted that of all the others who have come to do
this work with us, Barry has made folks feel the most at ease. Finally
Wednesday there was a Rec Day, and I went to town with several brothers. We all
did our various activities and then met for lunch and ice cream before
returning, as usual, for an evening convivium.
And I home to pack.
What was odd, having enabled my away message on both email
addresses, finished the final run-through with Zacc and Martin (the prior’s
secretary) and answered the last phone message––when I got up in the morning,
around 3:30 AM, I was startled to realize that I had nothing to do. I do not
boast of this, but I often will answer a host of emails before 5:00 AM, using
the excuse, and it is somewhat true, that we have extra data. But the truth is,
I wake up raring to go, with many things on my mind, and over my first cup of
tea in my kitchen cranny I fire away, especially personal emails that have gone
neglected in the onslaught of official stuff. I had no emails to answer, no
meetings to prepare for, no homilies to write. It felt like suddenly walking
into a silent room after being caught in a traffic jam.
Vigils, packed the car, Lauds, and then the brothers prayed
over me, as is our custom when someone takes a long trip. I asked my Domestic
Council and our staff member Jordan, who is in charge of the cars, if could
have our old Subaru Outback station wagon for the three months, since it would
be a lot less expensive than plane, bus and train tickets. Besides that I had
an Outback for eight of my years up in Santa Cruz, which served me quite well
indeed (maybe this was just a nostalgic grab). And if it gave out along the way
I could just junk it and catch a ride. But Zacc and Jordan both convinced me
instead to take the 2011 Prius that someone had donated us recently, which I
like a lot more than I thought I would (I used to say, “I don’t trust a car I
can’t hear coming.”) So that is what I have for the time, the back packed with
extra provisions for the two of the three months stateside, plus the backpack
with just the basics.
It was interesting, driving away, I often like to listen to
the news on satellite radio, but I did not this time. I wanted only my “Anjali
mix,” that is, my yoga music. Why is it that in times when I am busy with
things to do it is comforting in some way to listen to the news? Is it the same
reason a high-strung person is drawn to things that speed one up even more? Is
that a good description of society at large? More! Louder! Faster! Keep going!
Thomas Merton is patron saint of our
information-saturated age, of we who live and move and have our being in social
media, and then, desperate for peace and rest, withdraw into privacy and
silence, only to return. As we always will.[1]
Alan Jacobs
July 1
My first stop was at the meeting of the International Thomas
Merton Society being held at Santa Clara University this year. The organizers
had asked to do some kind of presentation for the opening night, pretty much
leaving it up to me to decide just what that might be. I came up with a
presentation, on which I have worked very hard over several months, called
“Hidden Manna: Dialogue with the World through Poetry and Song.” Basically it
was/is musical settings of poems that treat of spiritual or transcendental
themes with a few ancient sacred texts thrown in as well. There was a good deal
of scripted speaking in the presentation as well, telling about the poets
themselves and allusions to some themes of Merton. There were a few pieces that
I had either never or rarely performed before, which made it interesting for
me. I was accompanied by my good friend Joe Hebert, the exceptional ‘cellist
from Oakland. It was quite well received and I thought we performed very well.
I may turn the script into a separate blog post so you can see what the poems
were and why and how they tied in with the famous Trappist.
Happily, they had provided me with a room for the entirety
of the conference, so I availed myself of some of the talks and events the next
day. But I had also agreed to do a presentation at the Google headquarters in
Mountain View that Friday at noon. This was arranged by our oblate and friend
David Hallowel, who actually works for Google in Seattle but found an excuse to
come down to the California campus for this. One of the monks wrote me already
asking me if I had become a “beeg shot.” He was n doubt remembering the
well-known Bishop Robert Barron did a talk there last year that went viral.
Actually, this was not for “Google” itself; it was for a fellowship called
Catholic Googlers. I don’t know how many came or tuned in to Bishop Barron’s,
but our gathering was about a dozen gathered around a conference table. It was
also broadcast worldwide, which made me momentarily nervous, but that also
consisted in three other people logging in from Seattle. Still, crowd size
never had mattered much to me, and I launched in with a couple of songs to
begin and end, and then spoke on the Silence, the Word, the Music and the
Dance. Whenever I did a retreat or conference during most of the Santa Cruz
years on the road it was inevitably SSB:UCC––Spirit, Soul and Body: the
Universal Call to Contemplation, a theme I could riff on endlessly. I have now,
thanks to Bruno, found my new ostinato.
At the ITMS gathering itself, I was able hear a good deal of
Robert Ellsberg’s talk. He was one of two people I planned on meeting at
others’ recommendations. Bob is the son of Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon
Papers fame. I wish I could remember all the details of his story; what I do
remember is that he read Thomas Merton’s antiwar writings as a teenager and
that was an integral part of his conversion to Catholicism. In the mid-1970s he
wound up being the editor of the Catholic Worker newspaper and also a type of
literary secretary for Dorothy Day herself. He is also the biographer for her
canonization process. He went on to become the publisher for Orbis Books, the
very prestigious theological imprint that does a lot of work in interreligious
dialogue, including the Omnia Opera of Raimundo Panikkar. I was able to thank
him for that, carrying Volume 1 of it with me as my sabbatical read, Mysticism and Spirituality Part One:
Mysticism, Fullness of Life. We had a brief warm lively conversation,
having been mutually recommended to each other’s company. I also met with Jon
Sweeney, a fellow publisher of Bob’s, this time for Paraclete Press. He had
been recommended to me by three different folks before the conference, and had
written to me himself. He is a very sharp guy, formerly an evangelical from
Wheaton College and Moody Bible Institute, also now Catholic, relatively
recently. Both of these men’s insights into theology and contemporary culture
were very welcome. As David Brooks called for, a return to “Public theology.”
