New Camaldoli Hermitage FALL 2016 LISTEN! If we’re to “listen” as Saint Benedict urges, we must seek silence. And we must distinguish silence that leads to wholeness from silence that does not. In this issue, poetry, images, and articles—by Prior Cyprian, Pico Iyer, and Matt Fisher—encourage us to hear God’s voice and share God’s silence. page 2-7 IN THIS ISSUE 2 The Art of Stillness 4 But What Kind of Silence Are We Keeping? 6 Beautiful Noise 8 Towards The Rebirth of Wisdom: A Christian Conversation 9 Development 10 Further Thoughts on Silence and Stillness 11 Oblate Peer Mentor Program 1 2 Vita Monastica 13 Monastery of the Risen Christ 14 Incarnation Monastery 15 Late Arrival: A Retreat at New Camaldoli 16 Activities and Visitors 62475 Highway 1, Big Sur, CA 93920 • 831 667 2456 • www.contemplation.com MESSAGE FROM THE PRIOR Three Monasteries, One Community “Though we are many, we are one body” (Romans 12:5) Though we live in different locations, we more and more think of ourselves as one community stretched up and down the coast of California. Up north, our Frs. Andrew and Arthur along with our Italian brother Ivan have a thriving ministry with our oblates at Incarnation in Berkeley. Br. Bede has moved up to be with them this fall as well. Down south in San Luis Obispo, Frs. Ray and Stephen are about to make their solemn transfer from the Olivetan Benedictine Congregation to ours this coming January; so the Monastery of the Risen Christ, with THE ART OF STILLNESS our Fr. Daniel at the helm, will be an official Pico Iyer Camaldolese monastery very soon. And of course Fr. Michael Fish continues in hermit-preacher-wanderer mode based Longtime essayist, novelist and travel writer Pico Iyer writes about his in the hills above Santa Cruz. New Camaldoli introduction to New Camaldoli and its gift of “thrumming, crystal feels more and more like a mother house silence” in his book The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere or, as one of our friends likes to say, “the (New York: TEDBooks, Simon & Schuster, 2014). Mothership.” At some point all the horizontal trips in the world cannot compen- sate for the need to go deep, into somewhere challenging and unex- pected. Movement makes richest sense when set within a frame of stillness. So I got into my car and followed a road along the California coast from my mother’s house, and then drove up an even narrower path to a Benedictine retreat house a friend had told me about. When I got out of my worn and dust-streaked white Plymouth Horizon, it was to step into a thrumming, crystal silence. And when I walked into the little room where I was to spend three nights, I couldn’t begin to remember any of the arguments I’d been thrash- ing out in my head on the way up, the phone calls that had seemed so urgent when I left home. Instead I was nowhere but in this room, with long windows looking out upon the sea. A fox alighted on the splintered fence outside, and I couldn’t stop watching, transfixed. A deer began grazing just outside my window, and it felt like a small miracle stepping into my life. Bells tolled far above, and I thought I was listening to the “Hallelujah Chorus.” I’d have laughed at such sentiments even a day before…But what I discovered, almost instantly, was that as soon as I was in one place, undistracted, the world lit up and I was as happy as when I forgot “Very soon, stepping into stillness about myself. Heaven is the place where you think of nowhere else. became my sustaining luxury.” ~ Pico Iyer 2 ~ New Camaldoli Hermitage contemplation.com ~ 3 to change my life a little more. The year after I discov- ered what a transformation it would be to sit still, I moved to Japan for good—to a doll’s house apartment in which my wife and I have no car, no bicycle, no bed- room or TV I can understand. I still have to support my family and keep up with the world as a travel writer and journalist, but the freedom from distraction and complication means that every day, when I wake up, looks like a clear meadow with nothing ahead of me, stretching toward the mountains. This isn’t everyone’s notion of delight; maybe you have to taste quite a few alternatives to see the point in stillness. But when friends ask me for suggestions about where to go on vacation, I’ll sometimes ask if they want to try Nowhere, especially if they don’t want to have to deal with visas and injections and long lines at the airport. One of the beauties of Nowhere is that you never know where you’ll end up when you head in its direction, and though the horizon is unlimited, you may have very little sense of what you’ll see along the way. The deeper blessing—as Leonard Cohen had so movingly shown me, in his life as a monk—is that it can get you as wide-awake, exhilarated, and pumping- It was a little like being called back to somewhere I hearted as when you are in love. knew, though I’d never seen the place before. As the monks would have told me—though I never asked them—finding what feels like real life, that change- less and inarguable something behind all our shifting thoughts, is less a discovery than a recollection. I was so moved that, before I left, I made a reserva- tion to come back, and then again, for two whole weeks. Very soon, stepping into stillness became my sustaining luxury. I couldn’t stay in the hermitage forever—I wasn’t good at settling down, and I’m not part of any spiritual order—but I did feel that spend- ing time in silence gave everything else in my days fresh value and excitement. It felt as if I was slipping out of my life and ascending a small hill from which I could make out a wider landscape. It was also pure joy, often, in part because I was so fully in the room in which I sat, reading the words of every book as though I’d written them. The people I met in the retreat house—bankers and teachers and real estate salespeople—were all there for much the same reason I was, and so seemed to be my kin, as fellow travelers elsewhere did not. When I drove back into my day-to-day existence, I felt the liberation of not needing to take my thoughts, my ambitions—my self—so seriously. This small taste of silence was so radical and so un- like most of what I normally felt that I decided to try contemplation.com ~ 3 BUT WHAT KIND OF SILENCE ARE WE on silence. What relationship do they have to the KEEPING? Camaldolese charism—the “triple good”—of commu- nity, solitude, and mission? Matt Fisher, Oblate OSB Cam To all of us reading this newsletter, the quote from St. Matt, a member of the chemistry faculty at Saint Vincent Isaac of Syria mirrors our experience of time spent at College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, has been a Camaldolese the Hermitage. The silence we encounter there is oblate since 1998. He and his wife Bettie (also a chemistry welcoming, nurturing, and illuminating. That rich professor at Saint Vincent) live in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, silence allows us to take a step back from the busy- where they read and garden and cook when not grading ness of our lives, see things in a new way, and regain papers. For over 30 years Matt has studied and taught that sense of “God with and within us” (to use some the Japanese art of aikido, in which he holds the rank of of Fr. Raniero’s favorite words). 5th degree black belt. But that experience of silence in the midst of “golden “If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence, solitude” (as The Life of the Five Brothers puts it) is not like the sunlight, will illuminate you in God.” the only form of silence that many people encounter. ~ St Isaac of Syria There is another kind of silence that James Orbinski describes: one that kills. It is a life-denying silence that comes in many forms. Elsewhere in this newsletter, Fr. Cyprian describes other types of silence: passive-aggressive, fearful, lonely and despairing, not speaking in the face of evil. Given the work of Doctors Without Borders, I am pretty sure that Orbinski was primarily thinking of silence in the face of evil, the silence about (for instance) “Silence has long been confused with neutrality, poverty, war, national security, neglected diseases and has been presented as a necessary condition among the global poor, refugees, acts of genocide. As for humanitarian action…We are not sure that I started working on this essay, I found myself thinking words can always save lives, but we know that about the mass shooting in Orlando and acts of silence can certainly kill.” terrorism in Istanbul and Nice. The death of Elie Wiesel in July reminded me of how challenging it can be to ~ Dr. James Orbinski, president of Medecins Sans speak in opposition to this deadly kind of silence. Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, on accept- ing the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Over time, I’ve grown to appreciate that Orbinski’s organization.