phase IV: the nostalgia tour

 29 June 2024, Solemnity of Ss. Peter and Paul

 

I’ve been thinking of this sabbatical year in phases. After my decompression weeks with Bob and Ellen in Hillsborough, there was Phase I in Asia, India sandwiched in between Singapore and Malaysia. Then there was the fantastic month retreat in Los Altos at the Jesuit retreat house, Phase II. Then Phase III, an intense period of work and travel May through mid-June––Tucson, Washington, recording in Portland, and the three retreats in Minnesota. I’m now in Phase IV––visiting family and friends.

 

I met my older sister who flew in Minneapolis Monday June 17, and we whisked our way through the night to Spooner, Wisconsin, where my brother-in-law owns and has beautifully renovated a couple of cabins on the shore of Lake Trego, a property that has been in his family for some 60 years now and where he spent his summers growing up with his cousins from Racine. My younger sister had flown in from Arizona in time for Father’s Day with her 12 year-old son Aeson and our Mom (a welcome last minute addition to the plan), and everyone waited to greet us as we arrived a little after 11 PM. And then we had three full days together, doing what families do: we were out on the motorboat on the lake a few times, Aeson was fishing a lot with his Dad and Auntie PJ, Mom and I went to Mass twice in town, we all went out for pizza one night and breakfast at the local EconoMart one morning (Aeson, who loves the place, convinced us by stating that it would be “under $10!”), movies on NetFlix. I sat in the corner and played the guitar a lot while other things were going on and got in a couple of nice runs. My birthday was Wednesday, and they treated me like a king all day, special breakfast and little gifts, carrot cake, etc. I don’t remember the last time or ever spending my birthday with my family. It was great fun and just long enough. Everyone but Steve left together on Friday. 

 

We first stopped in Edina, outside of Minneapolis, to see Mom’s brother and sister-in-law for breakfast at the Original Pancake House and a quick visit. They have been going through a lot of trauma due to illness in their family lately so it was good to catch up with them. Even though they are not blood relatives of PJ and I, we did spend some significant time with them when we were in high school but have not had much contact with any of them in the last 40 years or so.

 

And then began my Amtrak Rail Pass adventure. I used some of my air miles to book a night in a hotel right across the street from the train station in Saint Paul. That felt like a real luxury. As much as I love my family, it was nice to have an afternoon, evening and morning to myself, with a gym and free breakfast! The first leg of my journey was from Minneapolis-Saint Paul to Chicago. Saturday night I was the guest of. Rory Cooney and Teresa Donahoo, my old friends through music as far back as 1981 in Arizona.  Rory is a very successful composer of liturgical music and has now been at St. Anne’s Parish in Barrington, IL, for over 25 years. When I told him that I was coming to the Chicago area and that I wanted to see him and Teresa, he invited me to preach and preside at Mass there that Sunday. And so, I did. Both Rory and I find it very moving, to celebrate Eucharist together in that way, with him doing music and me preaching. It rings all kind of bells, emotions, and memories. And the people were very appreciative.

 

Then, my oldest friend in the world at this point, Fr. Tony Taschetta, picked me up from Barrington and whisked me off to Wheaton IL where he lives. Tony was my spiritual director in high school and has remained a friend ever since 1973. He is now retired and living in the house he grew up in, in Wheaton. He also has legally adopted one man, who has a wife and three children of his own now; and informally adopted the wife of another one of our high school classmates, and their kids as well. So, unusually for a priest, he is luxuriating in his grandfather years. He has also semi-adopted two young priests of the diocese, one of whom he brought up from Mexico several years ago. He and I basically had one big activity for each day. Monday we had lunch with those two priests at the house of the one, named Scott, who had actually made retreat at New Camaldoli, where we had met some years back. They laid out quite a spread and we spent a good many hours there with them. Tuesday we met two schoolmates of mine from high school, at a nursing home in Naperville, IL, one of whom is a priest of the Diocese of Joliet and the other one pretty much retired and in very frail in health. The occasion was to visit with our former rector, 91 year-old Fr. Dan Stempora, who had a stroke recently and is now in that nursing home. I seldom engage in nostalgia, really. But when we were all together, we did what people do who haven’t seen each other much in 40 years or so––we talked about the past, particularly our high school years. It was fun and kind of funny at the same time. Oddly enough, they didn’t ask me much about what has been going on with me these years. Not sure they would have understood it much anyway.

 

On Wednesday, Tony loaned me his car and I did indulge in quite a bit of nostalgia. I plotted it out carefully and did my research on the map, since the whole area has changed so much. I first went to Plainfield, IL, where we lived after dad got remarried from 1972 to 1976. That’s where we lived when Dina was born. And then I went by Plainfield High School, where I only spent one horrible year, 1972-73, but my older sister spent three full years. It took me quite a while to admit the fact that I got bullied pretty bad that year. I guess I was afraid of how weak it would make me look. I also stopped at our old parish, which got destroyed by a tornado some years ago. (It was an ugly church anyway! But thanks be to God, no one got hurt.) All this while I was texting my mom and my sisters and sending them photos.

 

Then I drove from Plainfield down into Romeoville, where we had lived from 1960 to 1972. That’s where I lived all throughout grade school. So many things happen in those years, the 1960s––President Kennedy’s assassination, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in 1968, the moon landing, baseball games every summer morning after my paper route. And of course, that's where my mother died in 1970, an event that changed the whole trajectory of my life, and that of everyone around me too. In the old days you had to drive through miles and miles of cornfields to get from Plainfield to Romeoville. Now they are separated only by about a mile. I didn’t recognize anything of the outskirts of Romeoville, but it was very touching as soon as I turned on to 135th Ave and then turned left on Belmont and saw the old Westview Junior High––everything just looked like it did in 1967. I drove past our little tiny house on Glen Ave., up and around the neighborhood, down past Saint Andrew’s School and Parish where it all got started––where I started playing guitar at Mass at 10 years old, where my current stepmother was Sr. Angelo (and then Sr. Sandra, the first “nun” we saw with a modified habit) who lived in the convent there; and Fr. Frank Hughes lived in the rectory there, who became a very close friend of our family and was also my inspiration for just about everything when I was 10 years old, so much so that they called me “Little Frank.” (I also saw the 7 Eleven where I had my first Slurpee, if that’s of any interest to anyone.) 

 

From there, of course, I went up to the cemetery, just outside of the village, to visit our mother’s grave. In the weeks after she first died, when I was 12 years old, I used to walk up there and slip under the chain link fence to sit at her graveside, when all the flowers were still rotting on top of the grave. (Earlier I had also driven past the spot where Dad and Frank let my sister and I know that “Mommy’s not coming home anymore.”) I was remembering more than grief or sadness, I was just overwhelmed by the whole thing, something like a mixture of awe and fear, or that place where awe and fear are the same thing. As Tony used to say, “I had no categories for that” at that tender age. 

 

One thing was surprising and very moving. Frank left the priesthood and married a woman named Cathy, who we were also very close to in the intervening years, my teenage years. As a matter of fact, I sang with Cathy and Frank a lot. Cathy died of lupus in 1977 and I had forgotten (or never knew) that since Dad re-married and moved to Florida with Mom he had given his plot next to my mother to Frank so that Cathy could be buried there. So I had a long talk with the two of them, wished them well, and asked for their prayers for this next phase of my life. I can hardly believe that I am now 40 years older than either one of them ever achieved.

 

The highlight of that little trip, then, was going to Saint Charles Borromeo College Preparatory Seminary High school, just down the road from Romeoville, which I attended the last three years of high school. That phase really did set the trajectory for the rest of my life. It ceased being a seminary some 40 years ago, and then it was taken over by the diocese as their Chancery office. Then it was bought from the diocese by Lewis University, which is basically the same property, or else to say we were a little corner on their property. I have to say, in spite of having some hard years in high school, like everyone, I absolutely loved my experience at Saint Charles and have absolutely no regrets of going there. So that was a very tender visit. I am happy to say that Lewis University has done a very good job of adapting the place to their needs. It's their Business School now. They even left the Chapel pretty much intact, though they use it more as a hall now. They just removed the big altar and put in lots of acoustic panels. The pews with their kneelers, the organ, everything’s still there! I was remembering the spot where I was trying to read The Divine Milieu at 15 years old. It’s a great space, and I was very happy to be there again with all kinds of tender memories. I really want to do a concert there someday. The acoustic is amazing.

 

Then I stopped at Saint Procopius Abbey in Lisle, IL. I had been in their beautiful, austere modern church several times when I was in high school because we sang there for big diocesan events. But I didn't remember much about the place, and I of course had never seen the cloister. I consequently a few years back met Brother Gregory Perron when we served on the board of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue together, and we’ve kept in touch ever since. He gave me a full tour. I did remember the church pretty well, but I was so impressed by the rest of the architecture of the place. It’s just beautiful, austere but warm. Like many monastic communities, that community is really struggling right now. Of course, they’re aging like all of us, and there are very few vocations, but in addition to that they’re very young abbot suddenly resigned recently. That day happened to be the day when he drove off the property. Not surprisingly, Gregory and I had a very good conversation about the future of monasticism, as well as about inter religious dialogue.

 

That night Tony hosted his adopted son and his family for dinner, as he does most Wednesday nights. It was so interesting to see Tony in grandfather mode! And the next day he and I took the commuter train into Chicago for a day of sightseeing. We didn’t stay long at any one place, but we did walk many miles. It’s a great walking city. Right along the Chicago River to see all the great architecture that lines it, into Millennium Park to see the Gehry Bandshell and “the Bean,” and then through the Art Institute just for a brief moment. And finally uptown a bit for a brief pause at Holy Name Cathedral, and finally to a late lunch at Pizzeria Uno. Those latter two were the two destinations I really had my heart set on, so I was content. Tony knows the city very well and was a great guide. I was recalling how often my natural mother used to bring us into the city when I was a kid. We went many times to the Field Museum of Natural History as well as to the Museum of Science and Industry. We seemed to also have gone pretty regularly to Chinatown to our favorite restaurant there, Chiam. And of course I lived in uptown with the Gospel Brothers 1976-77 and attended De Paul University, a year that had a profound influence on my life.

 

That whole little spell in Illinois was very moving for me––I could go on and on about it, but shan’t––and I think I am still processing it. Something about, as common as it sounds, re-connecting with my roots, feeling in my guts how all that led to all that I am now, even though all that I am and do now is so very different from all that. No regrets, no bitterness, only gratitude and wonder. (Lots of photos on my Facebook page if anyone is interested.)

 

And then yesterday I took the train down from Chicago to Saint Louis. I am here to visit my old friend and mentor, Father John Foley, SJ. A year and a half ago he was moved here to this beautiful new retirement home outside of Saint Louis. It’s hard to see him as frail as he is (he has to use a walker all the time now), but he seems to have adjusted to the new place, and we already spent yesterday evening rapt in conversation, first here in the eating hall and then at a nearby Applebees. We’ll have tonight and tomorrow together and then I head off for an overnight on the Amtrak to see my sister and her family in Grand Junction Colorado. After these first two legs of the train trip, I can say without a doubt how much I prefer train travel to airplane travel. For many reasons. The overnights may test that a bit, one to Grand Junction and another from there to San Francisco (Emeryville). I will have to sleep in my coach chair, though it does recline a bit, and John and Mary Pennington gave me a super neck pillow. The food also is going to be a bit of a challenge. I don’t have a lot of extra room in my backpack to carry my own provisions with me, and the selection in the dining car is pretty meager (to say the least), especially for a vegetarian. My guess is there will be a lot of trail mix and coffee. But not a problem! 

 

Bless you all.

P.S. Just after posting this I opened Facebook and ran into this quote: "You've grown into someone who would have protected you as a child. That's the most powerful decision you made."

stilling the troubled waters of the mind

(I had the great pleasure of presiding and preaching and St. Anne's Parish in Barrington, IL today, where Rory Cooney is musician and liturgist, an overnight guest of him and Terry Donahoo. It was so great to be with them again. Here's my homily.) 

There’s something a friend of mine pointed out to me when he and I went to see the film “Ordinary People” with Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hersh and Timothy Hutton, in his breakout role––forty years ago! (It’s poignant that the great actor Donald Sutherland just died this past week.) There is a scene just before the climax of the story when Donald Sutherland, who plays the father of a family, is walking along the shore of Lake Michigan with a friend of his discussing the major trauma that has taken place in the life of the family. And my companion pointed out to me how often at a turning point in a script, when someone needs is facing a big decision or a turning point in their life, characters are shone walking by a body of water, as if water itself were a cinematic symbol for the mind or a device to represent the unconscious. 

Ever since then, whenever I read scenes of Jesus by or on a body of water, walking on the water, for example, or today, sleeping in the boat in the middle of a storm (Mk 4:35-41), I mentally translate it as a symbol of Jesus calming the raging, troubled waters of the unconscious.

There’s a phrase from India, the second aphorism of the Yoga Sutras, that means a great deal to me: “stilling the thought waves of the mind.” Now, what would be the purpose of that––stilling the thoughts waves of the mind? Modern teachers of meditation or mindfulness in the secular realm will sometimes point out that it’s for better concentration, for calming anxiety, or greater performance. All of that’s fine, but a little too utilitarian for me. We believers want to still the thoughts waves of our minds for something else, for another reason: to be available to the voice of God, the call of the Spirit that often comes to us in “still small voice.” Unfortunately, often that still small voice gets drowned out by all the clamor around us and, even worse, by all the clamor within us.

Now I have practiced meditation––and I emphasize the word practice––for decades, and I have tried to teach or lead others in the art of contemplative prayer as well. So I guarantee I know that it’s a very difficult thing to do––to still the mind. And why is that? Why is it so hard to still our troubled minds?

Well, at least one reason is this: because we don’t trust. Or as Jesus says in today’s gospel, we still have no faith. We do not trust Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, telling us not to be anxious about our life, what we will eat or what we will drink, nor about our body, what to put on. We don’t have faith in Jesus’ message that we should not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself (Mt 6:25-34.). We do not have minds still enough to listen to the voice of God because as soon as we have a moment of quiet we start re-hashing old arguments and fighting past battles in our head that we think are still a clear and present danger. Or else we’re planning the future because we do not trust that the universe and its God are benevolent and that it’s all going somewhere good. We do not have still minds because we think we can change people around us and make the world what we want it to be. We cannot still our minds because we think we are in charge. We do not have still minds because we think we can manipulate God into doing what we think should be done and because we cannot really say to God “Thy will be done” and actually mean it.

It is poignant that alongside this gospel today we hear the beginning of God’s long response to Job (Job 38:1, 8-11). I imagine it was chosen mainly for its reference to waves (‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’), but there’s something more going on too. Basically what God is saying throughout this whole long section––it goes on for four chapters!––is “You do not know the whole story. You do not have perspective to see where this ends. You do not yet believe that this all, and history itself, is heading toward the day when God will be all in all. You still do not have enough faith.” This is what we sometimes call the holy darkness of God.

The late famous Vietnamese Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hahn used to talk often about the boat people who would leave Vietnam crossing the Gulf of Siam. Often the boats would get caught in rough seas or storms, and the people would start to panic and boats would start to sink. But, he said, if even one person aboard could remain calm and lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, that person could help the boat survive. Their expression, their face and voice communicated clarity and calmness, and people would trust them and listen to what he or she said. In that way one person could save the lives of many others. In his book Being Peace he writes that

The world is something like a small boat. Compared with the cosmos, our planet is a very small boat. We are about to panic because our situation is no better than the situation of the small boat in the sea. … we have [thousands of] nuclear weapons. Humankind has become a very dangerous species. We need people who can sit still and be able to smile, who can walk peacefully. We need people like that in order to save us. 

Then, of course he adds, “… you are that person … each of you is that person.”

The prophetic voice of the followers of Jesus, or at least a good part of it, beside our advocating for justice and caring for the least in our society, is to be those who––in spite of all around us seeming to going to hell in a handbasket, in spite of deforestation and global warming, in spite of ever-increasing gun violence across our own country, in spite of the chaos of the political arena in our country in this election cycle, and the real threat of political violence, in spite of there seeming to be no global moral authority able to stop the tyrants and bullies––the prophetic voice of the followers of Jesus, or at least a good part of it, could be that we are the ones who convey trust in the benevolence of God and God’s plan. Not that those problems aren’t serious and certainly not to deny that they need to be addressed, even urgently, but we are the ones who could and should face them and address them lucidly, with calmness and clarity, as one of my confreres says, to be “reflective rather than reactive,” knowing what to do and what not to do and when to do it. We could be the people who know how and when to sit still, the people who are able to smile and walk peacefully, because we have faith. 

The world needs people like that in order to save it. We could be, are called to be, those persons.

And that’s what I see in Jesus modeling in today’s gospel. In the midst of the storm saying to his frightened disciples, ‘Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.’ How many times does he say this in the gospels, ‘Do not be afraid’?  How many times does Jesus calm the troubled waters of people’s minds and hearts? How many times is he the only self-possessed peaceful one in the room––including even when he faced the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate before his death?

When someone like that says, ‘Take courage! Be not afraid!’ we should sit up and take notice.

After we’ve done all we can do and said all we can say––and maybe even before we’ve done all we can do and said all we can say––let’s remember to ask God, through Jesus, to still the troubled waters of our minds. That’s what the world needs from us right now. Let’s do it, in the name of Jesus.

last thoughts from minnesota

 Sunday 16 June, 2024

 

I just completed my third retreat in a row––and fortunately I was able to do this one live––at the Episcopal House of Prayer here on the grounds of St. John’s Abbey. After I finished the retreat for the monks online last Friday, I still had the retreat for the nuns down in Maplewood, MN to do, but it was discerned (mutually) that I not come to them. They are an elderly community and quite nervous about catching Covid, and the sisters themselves too kept insisting that it would be better for me not to have to move to a new place so I could continue to heal. I was actually relieved by that. The monks offered for me to stay where I was, in the Bishop’s Suite in the cloister, which was comfortable enough, or to move over the Abbey Guest House next door. But it was also suggested that if I stayed in the monastery that I only go and get my supplies, wearing a mask, when the monks were in prayer or asleep, which was fair enough. To be honest it got to feel a bit creepy, and kind of awkward to be there and not be there at the same time––and I was ready for a change of atmosphere after being cooped up in the room for five days. And I love the Abbey Guest House where I had stayed twice before, and so I did move on Monday. And it was the right move. I’ve had such a lovely, relaxed week. I still easily kept my distance from other guests for the first day or two at meals, the monks let me use a conference room to do my retreat talks online, I had access to the university gym, and from my room on the bottom floor I have a gorgeous view of Lake Sagatagan and nothing else. I already told the monks who work here that if I ever come again, please remember that I want room 16.

 

So back to the travelogue… they were really great days in the studio in Portland. The last day we recorded some “choir” tracks, which was actually only four of us, doubled and then switching voices. One song for this collection, “We Knew the World Backward and Forward,” I had written for choir, though I have often performed it solo, and John and I thought, “Why not?” It was great fun and again has a whole new character with the full contingent of voices. John also had a great idea for adding four-part voices as accents on another piece, “Walk In Beauty,” which I think is going to be the stand-out piece on the album, and that was a perfect intuition. That is the great thing about working with a collaborator that you learn to trust after this many years. At first I thought, “Nah, a waste of time” but I checked that thought and followed the second one instead––“Let’s try it!” John has certainly allowed me the benefit of the doubt countless times.

 

That was a short day in the studio, good ol’ Gus uploaded everything every from his hard drive to mine, and I took off in the early afternoon. I am getting good at finding inexpensive hotel rooms, and I am certainly earning enough money to give myself that “luxury.” In the old days I might have driven through to San Francisco that night! But instead, I drove as far as Grants Pass, which put the worst of the mountain climbs behind me, had a good night’s sleep and set out for the longest part of the leg in the early morning. Grants Pass, by the way, is the city that has been in the news for trying to outlaw homelessness, if I remember correctly. There were a lot of signs in support of Trump ’24, and big loud trucks there. Not that those three elements necessarily go together, but maybe…

 

The next day I made it back to Bob and Ellen’s house in Hillsborough, and what they now call the “Cyprian Suite,” which, due to their graciousness, has become my anchorage for the year. I was able to repack my bags and leave some things behind, because from then on out I was not going to have the luxury of a car, which can become a kind of rolling suitcase, ever more stuffed with “just one more thing.” As fortune would have it, our friend Mark Hansen was in town from Singapore for all kinds of business in California and staying right there in the Bay Area. He and Bob know each other virtually only, from both of them serving on my Financial Advisory Board, but had never met in person. So Mark came over and we had a wonderful meal and evening together. The two of them still feel like my Advisory Board, and we all have so many common interests, there was no shortage of topics for conversation. Another one of those occasions where I am feeling so blessed, spoiled even, to be surrounded by such luminous souls and fine fine people. 

 

A great night’s sleep and then a relaxed day driving south, with enough time to hit the gym for a good workout and sauna; I met John Dear, who was driving north while I was driving south, for a nice lunch and enjoyable visit as always, then my next cheap hotel room was in Morro Bay, with a light dinner from the local health food store. And the next morning I dropped the Mighty Prius off at the Monastery of the Risen Christ (without waking the brothers––or them even knowing I was there…), and Kim Parisi, one of our business folks, kindly gave me a ride to the airport in the wee hours of the morning and I was off to Minnesota, on a thankfully smooth uneventful flight. (The recent accounts of two airplanes hitting sudden severe turbulence, one of the dropping 6000 feet in a few seconds, that left passengers injured, have dampened my already ambivalent attitude toward air flight.) And the rest is backstory.

 

It has been a really good experience to be here for over two full weeks, to get to know the rhythm of the monastery itself, but also the rhythm of the land and the whole campus. I am going to miss the song of the loon which I have heard several times a day. 

This last retreat was very low impact on me. I stayed at the Guesthouse still and walked over to the House of Prayer each day for my talks. It is material that I know very well and so required very little prep. I even had a PowerPoint all ready to go that I had forgotten I had put together for the recorded presentations I did for Louise last year. I have gotten very hooked on having the visual of the quotes, etc. with me, to engage in more than one sense and to aid people in writing things down, not to mention save on paper. It’s a great little place, the food as always was exquisite, very healthy and carefully prepared. And the space is in such good taste. It was a small group (the place only holds 10) and that made in very intimate, and of course gave me the opportunity not only to “practice” but to share my practice as well as my meandering thoughts. As the retreat ended I went over an joined statio with the monks so as to celebrate Eucharist with them and stayed on for Sunday brunch as well. This gave me a chance to see them all one more time and bring some closure to my ill-fated time with them. They were so gracious and warm, and we left each other with hopes to see each other again.

 

One other little serendipitous moment I didn’t mention: last Sunday I had a few hours with Adam Bucko and John Gribowich. Adam had several members of his virtual community here as is there norm, for a retreat. John, the priest from New York who tried his vocation with us and is now teaching high school in San Francisco, is a member of that community and has become a good friend to Adam. Another occasion where there was not a moment of lapse in the conversation except to catch our breath. As I wrote on Facebook, two men who ask all the right questions and give great responses too, real kindred spirits. For being in central Minnesota in the middle of nowhere, Collegeville is quite a crossroads.

Oh yes, and one more thing. Sr Delores Dufner, OSB, the well-known hymn writer who I have known for some years, searched me out when she found out I was going to be nearby––she's at St. Ben's women's monastery just down the road. She offered to drive over (at 85 years old) and pick me up to bring me over there for Vespers and dinner and a visit. Which she did and I did. We were also joined at dinner by Sr Helene Mercier who I know from Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, and we had a lively conversation, before Delores and I slipped into the rehearsal room and spent the last minutes together nerding out over hymn texts and melodies.  

 

My younger sister and Mom along with nephew Aeson are supposed to arrive in Minneapolis today, in time for Father’s Day. They will head right out to Steve’s cabin on the lake in Spooner. My big sister, PJ, arrives tomorrow evening from Colorado. I am getting a ride into St Paul in the morning. I will pick up a rental car for PJ and I, go visit the good sisters in Maplewood (the ones I gave the online retreat for), maybe hit a gym and Whole Foods, and then PJ and I will head over to Spooner for the week, for a unique way to spend out family time together this year. I am really looking forward to it. My birthday is Wednesday (the feast, or rather the solemnity, of St Romuald). What a precious gift to be able spend it with my immediate family. And then blissfully nothing to do––at least no “work”–– until September, except some days in the studio back in CA (if you can call hanging out in the Magic Kingdom “work”).

 

Wishing you all peace this Father’s Day, thinking about my beloved Babbo, gone these three years now, and all of the young (and not so young) fathers who have taught me so much these past decades. Until then… may God grant us joy of heart and may peace abide among us.

Covid Blues in Minnesota

 June 6, 2024, Feast of St Norbert, 26^th anniversary of my ordination.

Now where was I? Or better yet, where am I? This has been the period of intense travel and work. After the retreat at St. Martin’s, I drove up to Auburn, WA and spent the weekend with an old friend, former Korean Buddhist monk, current acupuncturist and Chinese herbal medicine doctor, Ian Sok, and also got to hang out with good friend Lisa Benner who was in Washington on personal time. Then I drove down to Vancouver, WA, right across the river from Portland, OR, stayed at John and Mary Pennington’s house while they were on vacation, and while there spent several days in the recording studio. Then I drove all the way down to San Luis Obispo, dropped off the mighty Prius at Monastery of the Risen Christ in the wee small hours of the morning last Saturday and flew here to Minnesota, where I am currently giving a retreat for the community of St John’s Abbey in Collegeville. 

 

To be more specific, currently I am holed up in my room here in the cloister, having tested positive for Covid yesterday. I was feeling poorly, sore throat, temperature, aches, etc. and decided to test. Br. Ken, the infirmarian, administered and pronounced me positive, even though I thought the lines were very faint. (We did it twice to confirm.) I had already given four out of eight conferences; alas the remaining four will be all on Zoom, while the brothers are in the Chapter House just 100 yards away down the cloister walk around the corner from my room. It was going so well! I was so well prepared for this retreat. I was also singing Psallitè antiphons with them before each session with they and I were both enjoying greatly, since this is the place that they were invented. That does not work so well over Zoom, though I am going to try to pull one off tomorrow for the last conference. They are being rather strict with me––or at least Br Ken is. I was slipping out wearing a mask when the monks were at prayer to get tea and some food, but he told me that they would prefer I not leave quarters. So, I am totally at the mercy of my brothers. I assume they will not let me starve (or go un-caffeinated). Fr. Abbot Doug himself has brought me soup the last two days. I’m sorry not to have the one-on-one time with the monks; I was enjoying the interactions at table and in the corridors, immensely, as well as celebrating liturgy with them, even more than I thought I would. Ah well…

 

Now to backtrack… The time giving the retreat at St Martin’s was really fine; the monks were very warm and welcoming, and they seemed to really appreciate the retreat conferences. Abbot Marian and I had a couple of nice visits, and he was trying to load me down with all kinds of goodies before I drove off, including a little ice chest. I have learned about Vietnamese people that it is better to just accept than to argue. 

 

My time with Dr. Ian Sok up in Auburn was very good. We were young monks together. He had been sent over to America by his monastery in Korea to found a Zen center in Hayward, and he happened upon New Camaldoli, I think brought down there by a friend, and if I recall correctly we met because I was working in the bookstore. He walked in wearing his grey monastic habit––not really robes, more like pantaloons and a jacket, and we got to talking and became fast friends. We had a lot of interaction even up until my Santa Cruz years, but he went back to his monastery in Korea in 2005 for a three-year retreat at the end of which he, as they say in Buddhism, “gave back his vows” to his teacher, left the monastic life and moved to Seattle where he established himself as an acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practitioner. (He had gotten his master’s degree in that while in California.) We last spoke in 2008, I believe, just before he moved up north. I somehow still had his mobile number and when I found out how close I was going to be to Seattle I texted him and lo and behold we were back in touch. After a very few pleasantries I started receiving long text messages like this:

 

What do you think about Monophysitism, Dyophysitism of the Chalcedonian creed, or Miaphysitism of the Eastern Orthodox Church? I have been pondering deeply on this since my morning prayer until now. This issue is also very important among Buddhist scholars throughout the centuries and in many schools of Buddhist sects. Zen seems to lean more towards Miaphysitism, while Amita faith is closer to dyophysitism. 

 

At the same time, how we look at new religions close to Monophysitism, for example, Universalist Unitarian, Quaker, Shakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. I do respect whatever opinions you have on Monophysitism, Dyophysitism, and Miaphysitism. I just want to hear your own opinion on this subject. I also understand that this argument is ongoing among spiritual practitioners in centuries.

 

And the whole weekend was pretty much like that too. He had gotten his Master’s in Western

and Eastern philosophy in Seoul and is very interested in Christianity, and I would even say he is very devoted to Jesus, does his chanting the Amida Buddha every morning and then reads the Bible. He asks some of the most penetrating questions, cutting right through the trivia. It was so refreshing, consoling to talk about our real beliefs about Absolute Reality with each other and not have to worry about being too speculative or scandalizing someone with your doubts or shocking someone with a new way of expressing ancient fundamental truths. He treated me to several great meals, an afternoon in a spa and a lovely hike behind Mount Ranier.

 

As I mentioned, Lisa was in town on vacation and we drove up to meet her in Seattle, the three of us going to Sunday Mass at St. Joseph’s Church, the Jesuit parish on Capitol Hill, a very tony beautiful neighborhood. It was a very well planned and executed liturgy in a wonderful space. (Ian was agog at the colors and images from all the stained-glass windows.) It included fine music, mostly in the popular style, led by a musician I had met before at the Composers’ Forum in St. Louis years ago, Laura Ash, with a fine ensemble. There were also liturgical dancers who led the procession in with streamers and a dove hung from a pole, and sign language for the deaf that was taught to everyone for the responsorial psalm, so it became a kind of dance from the pews too. This is the parish that Lisa had attended when she lived up there and she was very proud to share it with us, as she should be. Afterward we asked Ian what he thought of the whole thing, and he said he loved it. He felt like a little kid and he wanted to get up and dance too. Then Lisa led us to a fine Thai restaurant, and then a long leisurely stroll through the famous Volunteer Park (which abuts the cemetery where Bruce Lee and his son are buried). A really pleasant day with wonderful people. After that I drove down to Vancouver.

 

Not only did I have John and Mary’s place to myself for the first week (they were in Iceland with Mary’s elderly parents), I also had absolutely nothing to do for the first two days I was there, and that was pure bliss. I had gotten a month-long membership for LA Fitness on my way up (which I was also able to slip out and use every early morning from St Martin’s) and so I had a great couple of days getting myself ready for the studio and catching up on exercise and solitude and silence. 

 

Friday, Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

 

At the recommendation of the monks, I got Dr. John Clark back in California to call in a prescription for Paxlovid. Good Br. Ken went and fetched it for me (along with a tin of salted mixed nuts, which I was craving) and I started it last night. It doesn’t cure Covid, but it is supposed to protect against more severe illness. Many people first report feeling worse after taking it, and I did have a weird night, not sure if that’s why. They warn about all kinds of possible side-effects but the only one I seem to have is a strange medicinal taste in my mouth. I have lost my sense of smell this time I realized this morning. We’re going to decide tomorrow whether I go to Maplewood and do the retreat via Zoom from the sisters’ place itself or stay here and do it via Zoom. Almost doesn’t matter, but it does feel a little awkward being here at St. John’s and not being here at the same time. And having to depend on someone to bring me food. They are pretty serious about me keeping quarantine. Don’t know for how long. I think I am on the mend.

 

So, the week in the studio in Portland was very good. I have to say after my two days getting everything ready and organized, I was like a little kid ready for the first day of school. It feels like so long since I have been able to spend quality time in the “magic kingdom.” Thinking back, in the Santa Cruz years I was almost always in the studio working on something and I think I did over a dozen albums on my own or collaboratively: John and I finished “Awakening” and then did “Compassionate and Wise,” I sang on and produced four CDs with the Collegeville Composers Group (Psallitè), I did “Lord Open My Lips” and “Awake at Last,” liturgical music for OCP, Gitanjali and I did “Hare Yeshu” and “The Ground We Share”, plus I did “My Soul’s Companion” and the guitar instrumental album “ecstasis.” Oh yeah, and somewhere in there I did a meditation collection with Laurence Freeman called “Wait My Soul in Silence.” But the month in Los Altos and that week in Portland both confirmed for me that at least the way I work I can’t work on an album and do something else at the same time. I need the leisure to dance around it, and really focus psychologically. That’s why I didn’t accomplish any recording of lasting value during the years as prior at the Hermitage.

 

I was working at Thelma’s (full name “Dead Aunt Thelma’s”) where I had worked several times before, one of my all-time favorite studios. I did all of “As One Unknown” there back in 1999, my first album for OCP. There is a new young manager named Gus, and he and I hit it off right away. He’s a graduate of Berklee School of Music in Boston, and we figured out that he crossed over with Devin’s years there, though they don’t know each other. We bonded over guitars (he’s the only person I know who owned a Collings, the exact model that I have, though he just sold his) and obsession with the production Steely Dan albums. I’m working on two things simultaneously. The most important one is a new Animas Ensemble album, my project with John Pennington. We haven’t done anything together since Compassionate and Wise in 2007 (?), though he did play a lot on my solo CD “My Soul’s Companion.” I’ve written most of the pieces for this one and had prepared all my reference guitar and vocals in Los Altos in April. John has a few pieces to add and is going to lay down his tracks and I will finish them remotely. We’ve been sending tracks and lead sheets back and forth across the ether for months. 

 

The second thing I am working on is my long-awaited Christmas album (not sure who is waiting for it but me!), for which I had also laid down my guitar tracks as well. I started a version of that album back in 2012 but was never able to get back to it. We tried again in 2016 to do oboe and ‘cello tracks but that was a disaster. The first day I worked with a wonderful ‘cellist named Marilyn from Brazil. John thankfully arranged for all these studio musicians through his connections as executive producer now for OCP, and he has high standards and exquisite taste. I found that I had to adjust my mentality though. I was so relaxed walking in the studio that first day after two days on my own humming to myself and exercising and working at my own pace and feeling ever so leisurely. John had told me I had Marilyn from 1 to 3, but I was thinking that if we go over time a little, I didn’t mind paying a little more for her and the studio as long as we finally get quality tracks. And she was a great player, so expressive and easy to work with. However, at 3:00 she was on her way out the door and on to the next thing! And Gus had an engagement and had to leave by 3:30, so I was somewhat deflated on my first big day back in the studio. 

 

Not to worry… the next day I was for many relaxed hours with the masterful Rick Modlin on piano. He was just making these songs come alive. I realize that we have been playing together since 1999, 25 years! And I am honored that for all he is in demand he really seems to like making music with me too. I told him recently that I think of him as much a part of the Animas Ensemble as John and me. I feel the same way about the ‘cellist Joe Hebert who I hope to work with back in CA in July. I thought about all three of them, especially John, as I was writing these pieces and recording my parts, and what a thrill to hear them bring the songs to life. Then Friday that week I had Marilyn again and a fine oboe player named Alan. That day we did work on the Christmas music. That was also a bit of a thrill, especially after the disastrous sessions in 2016. I had re-recorded my guitar parts, making them as clean and in-time as possible, and checked my arrangements––but it’s all in your head until you hear it on the actual instruments and not just on my tinny little computer playing it back to me. That is one of the marvels of being a composer: you have some sounds in your imagination, you make little dots and squiggly lines on a piece of paper, you put that piece of paper in front of somebody else––and they make sounds that sound even better than what you heard in your head. And I do love love love that combination: oboe, ‘cello and guitar with the addition of percussion, kind of medieval with a bit of an Mideastern flair. Anyway, I was thrilled with how that turned out, and I have got the “sound” for the Christmas album now and hope that I might actually finish it one day!

 

John and Mary go home Saturday night, and John and I had an intense workday in his home studio on Monday (Memorial Day), finally going through all the pieces face-to-face instead of over email. And then we were in the studio together on Tuesday. The first thing we did was actually with Rick again on a piece called “We Are Waiting for Peace to Break Out.” It’s a poem I have been carrying around for maybe 15 years or so from a collection called “Poets Against the War” edited by the late Sam Hamill (who by the way did my favorite translation of the Tao te Ching for Shambala). The inspiration for this piece was actually the rather controversial spoken word piece “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by Gil Scot Heron, which, to my surprise, none of them had ever heard of, not Rick not John, not even Gus! I turned the first lines of the poems into a refrain, and then divided the rest of the poem up into four verses that I started speaking right off of the sung refrain. But I wanted the whole thing to be improvised as well, John and Rick’s part. It might have been a little frustrating for both of them at first because no one knew when to come in or out or when to go back to the refrain, but they soon caught the spirit of it and the more we did it the more we listened to each other. I told John, “All the music we do is important, but this piece feels really important” as Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas face off while the innocent civilians continue to die in Rafah, as Vladmir Putin continues his assault on Ukraine, and as Donald Trump and his allies all but overtly threaten violence if things don’t go their way. Meanwhile, “We are waiting for peace to break out. We are waiting for flowers to bloom. We are waiting for the moon to come / from behind the black clouds of war.” It turned out great. I was remembering, I think it was “Instant Karma,” John Lennon had the idea, went in the studio one night and had 45s on the street the next morning. Never have a felt so strongly that I wanted a piece of music I had written to get out there.

 

I’ll post this much a get back to the rest later. Time for Covid nap. Unfortunately, my temperature is back up to 99. Looks like I’ll be confined to quarters for a little while more… Oh well, I was raised in the hermit tradition, and it’s a lovely quiet comfortable room.