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VOLUME XV, Number 2 July - December 2025
Late Spring and Early Summer Intra- and Interreligious Activities of the Secretary General
Pentecost Sunday, June 8, 2025:
"… each one heard them speaking in their own language." (Acts 2:6)
I am ending my extended time in the US at Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, in the company of Father William Skudlarek, my predecessor and current executive director of the American branch of MID, and two members of the MID Board of Directors, Father Michael Peterson also of Saint John’s and Father Lawrence Morey of Gethsemani Abbey. Several other board members joined us online from around the country. It was a fitting way to end this sojourn since it was exactly a year ago that I was here giving the monastic community their retreat when Father William asked me if I would be willing to step in as his successor. And the rest of is history, ongoing history. . . .
Of course, a good part of this trip was to spend some time with my home community in Big Sur, California, which I did over Holy Week and the Easter Octave, and with my beloved family, besides taking care of medical appointments and official business. I also had several commitments that blended easily into my role of promoting and engaging in interreligious dialogue.
The work portion of the trip began with a weekend retreat at the Jesuit Retreat House in Los Altos, California, in late April. I have been a frequent guest there over the years, but this was the first time I offered something for their retreat program. It was on integral spirituality, one of my favorite topics, and it confirmed what I have been saying all along: almost everything I do flows in and out of dialogue since I almost always teach from the perspective of what Bede Griffiths called Universal Wisdom,
Buddhist teacher Tenzin Chogyi leading a metta meditation at the end of the interreligious gathering in Santa Cruz CA called “the Tent”
I also had three events in my “old turf,” Santa Cruz, California, where this work began for me two decades ago. In 2005 I there founded an interreligious group for study and practice called Sangha Shantivanam (after our ashram in India), and that group, now without me, is now celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Our sangha had been instrumental in a movement called The Tent of Abraham, which brought together Jews, Christians, and Muslims for shared prayer and fellowship. It had been inactive for some years, but, using my visit as an excuse, it was reconvened and now simply uses the name “The Tent,” because other traditions have also become involved, particularly our Buddhist friends who are highly active in that city. I gave a talk entitled “Let Us Come to a Common Word,” which was centered on Nostra ætate. The opening benediction was offered by a local rabbi, and then a Buddhist teacher formed in the Tibetan tradition led us in a metta meditation, as dedication of merit.
The next night I performed a concert that featured songs from various traditions as well as some new liturgical pieces. Earlier in the day I had the chance to visit Redwood Vihara, a small community in the Chinese Ch’an Buddhist tradition founded from the Land of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, California. There are currently two young monks living there. Their main teacher is our long-time friend, the Reverend Heng Sure. Although he now lives on the Gold Coast of Australia, he also happened to be in California at the time, so we had a glorious reunion. I had met the two young monks, Jin Chuan and Jin Wei, online with Heng Sure back in the fall when we were discussing some music issues they are working on, so we kind of knew each other. I was staying at Villa Maria Del Mar retreat house in Santa Cruz and the two drove down to pick me up. We started talking the moment they arrived and talked non-stop for the next five hours except for a brief meditation time together.
A visit with the Rev. Heng Sure and the two Ch’an Buddhist monks at Redwood Vihara in Boulder Creek, CA.
They brought me to the vihara, where Heng Sure and another luminous soul, Nipun Mehta, were awaiting our arrival. Nipus founded and runs an amazing creative initiative called Service Space. I cannot begin to describe it: check it out here: https://www.servicespace.org. Nipun is originally from Gurjarat but works out of Santa Cruz now. During our conversation, I mentioned my friend and member of my Peace Council advisory board, the pandit from Rishikesh, Siddhartha Krishna, and to my surprise Nipun said, “Oh yes, I know him well.” The world gets smaller and smaller––and more and more beautiful.
The next day, my third event for the time in Santa Cruz was a retreat day just with members of the Sangha celebrating our anniversary.
The next week brought me to Albuquerque where I was a guest of Richard Rohr’s Center for Contemplation and Action. Father Richard is an old friend by now from his time at the Hermitage and my time on retreat with him in 1998, and I have also gotten to know some of the “millennials,” as he calls them, who now run the center. I gave a presentation in person and online for the staff of CAC the first morning and then had a series of meetings, mainly with Michael Poffenberger, the executive director, and Paul Swanson and Mike Petrow, who are responsible for faculty of the very successful Living School and content for its formation program. I was tired at the end of my three days but that was only because there was simply one stimulating conversation after another. They are hoping that we can collaborate with DIM·MID as an organization or with me personally. I also got to spend quality time with Richard himself, one long morning visit and a dinner that evening. He has survived five bouts of cancer and is still full of life and whimsy, though he has been weakened by the ordeal, which he acknowledges gracefully and humbly.
My last big commitment was a retreat at the beautiful Redemptorist Renewal Center in an area of Tucson called Painted Rock, surrounded by cacti and petroglyphs and the vast desert sky. The retreat was organized by my close friend, the well-known musician Tom Booth, and was attended for the most part by seasoned mature people of faith I have known for
With Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, in Albuquerque, New Mexico
And now I wind up where it all started, here with the welcoming community at Saint John’s. The board members and I have had good discussions about how to revive the work of MID in America, a similar discussion that I have had and will be having with other directors around the world in the coming months. I feel as if we need to remind people that, just as Vatican II was not a passing fad, so the work of interreligious dialogue is going to be an ongoing perennial ministry in the church and the world. Even if it is hard to build up steam again post-Covid (and with our aging communities sometimes being in survival mode), we monks still have a mandate from the Vatican to take a leading role in interreligious dialogue. As Cardinal Pignedoli said back in 1974, “The presence of monasticism in the Catholic Church is in itself a bridge spanning all religions. If we were to present ourselves to Buddhism and Hinduism, not to mention other religions, without the monastic religious experience, we would hardly be credible as religious persons.”
The key words that have been on my mind these weeks are the two verbs used to describe my role: to promote and engage in interreligious dialogue. I see the first, to promote, as intrareligious, that is, within our own tradition, especially within monasticism, emphasizing the ongoing importance of dialogue; whereas the second, to engage in, is extra-ecclesial, going to folks outside of our tradition, hopefully on their turf, an activity that I find stimulating and refreshing––and vitally important. I do think that two months is too long to be away from home base, but I am also incredibly grateful for the encounters I have had and the work we get to do for Christ and the Church.
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