New Camaldoli

The Camaldolese are a Benedictine order founded a thousand years ago by St. Romuald, named for their mother house at Camaldoli, in Tuscany.

(Pope Benedict invited Archbishop Williams to preach at their anniversary celebrations in Rome.) New Camaldoli Hermitage (Immaculate Heart of Mary Abbey) overlooks the Pacific, high above Route 1, south of Big Sur. 

The simplicity of the church is Cistercian. The only image is the crucifix. The floor-plan is key-shaped: altar at the center of the round part – called the rotunda – and the monks facing each other, choir-style in the rectangular room adjoining. 

Rotunda, with the choir beyond

The rotunda has raised platforms in two stages around the circumference. The monks stand on floor at altar level, the guests behind them on the platforms. The acoustics flatter the singers. The Lady Chapel and the Sacrament Chapel are off the ambulatory on either side of the rotunda. The former consists merely of a large ikon of the Vladimir Mother of God. The narthex also displays an excellent reproduction of the Rublyev Trinity. This is fitting, since the Camaldolese approach to prayer is similar to the hesychasm of the Greeks, contemporary with their founding.

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes (February 11), so the celebrant wore a deep blue chasuble. The other priests concelebrate by extending their hands at the verba. Everyone assumes ther orans position for the Our Father, and also at the incense rite at solemn vespers, when incense is offered in a stationary thurible, during the antiphon “Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as incense, the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice”.

Here, the rule is standard Benedictine: Vigils at 5:30am, Lauds at 7:00. Mass at midday and Vespers at 6:00.  St. Romuald made a simple addition: just sit in your cell and listen. The cell is like paradise. Forget the world completely and sing the psalms. The psalms are your path. The monks are cœnobitic, but they appear to live in separate hermitages. In Italy, some of them live in strict solitude, seeing the Abbot once a month and emerging only once a year, for the Easter Mass.

My hermitage ("Hesychia")

Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish.The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.

If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind.

And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.

Realize above all that you are in God's presence, and stand there with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.

Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.

It is easy to take this almost literally, here at New Camaldoli, where the view is nearly 180 degrees of ocean, flanked by steep mountains. 

From my hermitage

One is reminded of Italy – an impression encouraged by numerous Italian cypress trees near the church. The silence is profound. As Meister Eckhardt observed, “There is nothing in the world so like God as silence.”  The stars are exceptionally brilliant, because of zero pollution, I suppose,.

Guests are offered self-service meals in the guesthouse, which can be taken to their cells or to nearby picnic tables. The cooking is superb: Italian vegetarian – everything homemade, simple, and fresh.

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Today’s prophecy and Gospel were the Creation and the account of our Lord’s healings in Galilee: everyone who touched Him was healed. It is God’s intention to repair the world through Jesus Christ. Lourdes reminds us of the concrete nature of this intention. It reminds us also of Baptism, by which the world is healed. The miraculous spring, which our Lady showed to St. Bernadette, is a type of our Baptism, as the preacher pointed out. He also emphasized the water and the wind of the Genesis story. Water and the Spirit.  To be born from above is to experience the mystical import of these natural necessities (water and air). They are communal we all breathe the same air and drink the same water. IN THIS SENSE, We ARE one another, in our physical nature. Air transfigured is Spirit. Water transfigured is the means of redemption and healing, as at Lourdes.

Obedience, Stability, Conversion – the three are pretty much the same – all references to attention to God.

Obedience = listening

Conversion = “”TURNING-WITH” or turning unto God.

Stability may refer not merely to stating in one physical place (one’s monastic home) but to overcoming the habit of mind that constantly looks forward to the next thing. In other words, stability =  be-here-now

The individual hermitages are given Greek names: Sophia, kairos, &c. Mine is hesychia, which I was able to choose. It was a fortunate choice, not only because of the view, but because of the theme of my self-guided retreat: stillness, which is the meaning of the name. By “accident”, I picked up two books just prior to my little retreat: New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton, and The Cloud of Unknowing, in the Paulist Press edition. I found Merton at the Henry Miller Library down the road, and the Cloud here in the monastic bookstore.

On the theme of stillness, the annotation mentions a reference in the Cloud is to the Psalm: Be still and know that I am God. In Latin, the word is vacate. Vacatio = heschia; the emptiness of kenosis, which is the mind of Christ. Emptiness of mind is the aim of The Exercise, taught in the Cloud. So, the whole aim of the contemplative life is to try to go on vacation!

Merton points out that the solitary is never alone for himself, but in company with others. The Cloud insists that whatever progress any contemplative soul may make benefits the whole Church, and reduces the suffering of the soul in purgatory! Contemplation is, in the end, communal, even though all thought of any being other than God is beaten down into the “cloud of forgetting.” Merton goes on to observe that the saint is one who is dazzled by the reflection of God that he sees in everyone around him. Back to Irenæus and the reciprocity between the Life of Man and the Vision of God’s glory.

One might also ask about the proof-texts: “the second is like it” (Love of neighbor and love of God are alike, identical), and John’s observation that one who does not love neighbor cannot love God. Surely this is more than an observation that love of neighbor is a consequence of the love of God and a proof of it. To behold the neighbor, in Ross’s sense, is to love God. Therefore, the Kingdom of God IS among us – in our relationship of love – and not within us, severally, as individuals.

Merton argues that it must be so, because contemplation is granted only to those who do God’s will, and God’s will is that we love one another. So, it is in fact impossible to love God without compassion for all others. Without compassion, we love something other than God.

Merton insists on the distinction – indeed the opposition – between individual and person. (I wonder whether Starets Sophrony ever read Merton. Or maybe this distinction has another source – Heidegger perhaps? Or Kant?  

Sunny LA

After a terrific (but short), overnight visit with Eric and Karine and 3.5-year-old Liam in Montreal, I flew via Toronto to LAX. I checked in to a motel to get a good night's sleep. (I knew for sure I was in LA when, looking for something to read, I found a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in place of Gideon's Bible!).

The next day, my friend, Lev Rukhin, welcomed me to his loft and then left for New York. I am on my own for the weekend. Fine with me: Lever has a great library, wi-fi, and Netflix!

Lev Evgenievich Rukhin & daughter Evgenia Lvovna Rukhina

Lever, a fine cook,  also left directions to Fresh & Easy, his local grocer, which he described as the British version of Trader Joe's. The neighborhood is LA's version of Soho or our warehouse district - lots of converted space for lofts. But still lots of trucks and warehouses. lever's place is a big compound of conversions just for artists. Very cool.

Lever is a photographer:

His signature style is these big murals composed of smaller prints, which he calls "contextual photography." More on his website: check out the Galleries and Portraits menus for more fine pix, including several shot on his motorcycle tour through Russia, after which I met him by accident in 1999. 

We were both dumbfounded when we met at a cafe in Rome and discovered that we had met before in Leningrad! Lever's father, a noted Soviet Russian non-conformist painter, had invited the Yale Russian Chorus to a soiree at his apartment on the riverbank. Zhenia invited me back to meet a few friends the next day. Lever (short for Lev Evgenievich Rukhin) was six months old!

Lever and dad in Leningrad

Martinique, January, 2013

You wouldn't call Ste. Anne a “sleepy beach-front town”. There is nothing sleepy about it, except possibly in the mid-afternoon heat. The rest of the time the dozens of restaurants and tourist boutiques are going strong. And at night there is usually a live band somewhere around the square. It is a thoroughgoing tourist scene, even if most of the tourists are from the same country – France – or Quebec. Everyone speaks French and the euro is the currency, because Martinique is part of France, just like Hawaii is part of the United States.

“The Kingdom of the Banana” (la royaume du banane), and that is about it. There is still some sugar-cane, too – enough to support a dozen or so distilleries – but the Banana is King, for sure. 

The people are mostly poor (50% unemployment), but not miserable, due to the French socialist safety-net. This includes free universal health care and education, subsidized housing, and enough assistance so no one starves. The roads also get a lot of attention, which means work for a lot of people. In general, the Martiniquaises are doing a whole lot better than the Hatiians,  who freed themselves from French colonial control in the 19^th Century. Makes you wonder.

You also have to wonder about the Christmas decorations – still on the lampposts, not because they are laid-back, but because, I suppose, the custom is to observe the season right through Epiphany (La Fête des Rois). What is to wonder about is the shimmering, white, electric snowflakes! No one here has ever seen snow. What do you suppose people think when they see them? My favorite seaside restaurant also has a nice little artificial Christmas tree.

Among things not found in Martinique, in addition to snow, are trains, irrigation, cut flowers, and hotels. There are lots of small buses on all the roads; it rains almost every day or night, at least this time of year; there are so many brilliant blossoms growing everywhere wild that I suppose no one bothers to cut flowers that would wilt pretty fast in the heat, anyway. Of course there are tourist accommodations, but none that advertize or make themselves known along the road. I discovered this on my foray to the volcanic North, 

Mt. Pelée ~ active volcano

where I intended to find one and stay the night. I didn’t. Even towns marked “H” for hotel on the map kept them well-hidden. I suppose they are mostly resort-style facilities booked through agents or, now, online. Anyway, no motels or Holiday Inns. And no roadsigns inviting customers. Lots of signs for restaurants, but nothing about hotels. Not one. There is a Club Med right across the street from my rented studio, but no high-rise glamour-destinations. This ain’t Cabo or Cancun. I suspect the French have decided to keep it that way – low-key and under everybody-else’s radar. Still, it’s kind of odd. Every little town and suburb in metropolitan France, after all, has plenty of small hotels. I guess people here don’t get in their cars and drive around much, or if they do, they are never more than an hour or so from home. So, no motels.

The cuisine is pretty typically French: steak and fries, grilled chicken and fish, salads at the better places. Their local specialties are mainlyboudin noir (blood pudding), fluffy, light and mild, and acras, 



which are little fritters made of cod or shrimp. They seem to be a staple, sold at all restaurants and also by the side of the road, alongside BBQ brochettes and ribs. Bananas, of course, are to-die-for. I swear I have never had one as good. Could they be tree-ripened?