mebtravelling

  
 Overnight, elaborate  RONGOLIS, drawn with brilliant colored powder, appeared  in front of village houses and shops: the  great  Harvest and Thanksgiving feast of Pongal, Day 2. 
  
  At the ashram cowshed: Pongal altar, and Shantivanam ‘s young prior, with the pujari on the left.  

  …Sister Mercy, Ananda ashram’s St Francis, performed the ritual Pongal Rice feeding. 
And afterwards,we humans enjoyed the sweet rice. Amma- Sister Mary Louise – shared hers with 6.5-yr-old Abishish.

Earlier, he had been the attentive attendant bell-ringer as his dad and the pujari  blessed the cows.  

Towards sunset, I heard him ask for Amma’s blessing.

And so it goes!   

Last night, Elizabeth, Roy, and I enjoyed one last fling, Chiang Mai’s  Night Market   

    
 
As far as I can tell, they’ve reached their next port of call. Missing them already, but the adventures continue.

 It’s Sunday, so I returned to SEVEN FOUNTAINS this morning, and a Feast of the Holy Family homily which I think only a Jesuit could give. He spoke of how M,J,&J — and other Jews — continued to make this  trip to Jerusalem because they continued to believe in freedom, even when they weren’t experiencing it themselves, at least not at that moment (those pesky Romans). It was not much of a leap from there to the Finding in the Temple, and then (in northern Thailand, where we are) from the Finding in the Temple to the situation (& incidents) in nearby Myanmar.  

So, no photos , but a great time during and after Mass. But I digress. 

 To get to the retreat center, I’d  chosen  a   Red Truck driver who became lost; then there was about a mile of bumper-to-bumper traffic on Huai  Kaeo Rd. Consequently,  I  arrived at a packed Mass as the homily was starting. I flashed my cane, and a young man in the last row – the one with  cushioned chairs – literally leapt up to give me his seat. After the homily, when  the woman next to me stood up to sing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” I stood up, too, so she shared her hymnal. It was somewhere in the 5th or 6th  verse, and the line “…and ever over Babel sounds,” that I smiled to myself, looked around…  and realized I’d landed in the choir . 

Oh, well. It was a fine seat, as I say, so I stood up and joined in for the rest of the songs, too – all Christmas Carols, all wonderful to sing. After the Recessional – a belted-out rendition of “Go, Tell It on the Mountain,” my beautiful Thai hymnal owner  leaned over to ask if I’d be there with them next week…. I said no, but I’d be back for the month of February, and she smiled: relieved she’d have a month to prepare the rest of the choir? I wasn’t quite sure.
Afterwards, in the guesthouse at Seven Fointains,  I met with a lovely Jesuit who assures me that my notion (Rosellen’s advice, really –) of reading the book by — every left wing Catholic’s second favorite Jesuit author — James  Martin, on the Spiritual Exercises, is a good way to prepare for a short retreat @ 7 Fountains, and then a February blitz on (in?) the Exercises. Well, we’ll see. 
  
I ended the morning  and began the afternoon @ the Orange Mac Cafe, a place which, even while missing from this  Chiang Mai coffee shop list, has the best iced coffee in Chiang Mai. IMHO.

–Lampang – Chiang Mai (Thailand)

 Two days before Christmas, Supon’s bamboo papermaking showroom and workshop are the launching pad for Elizabeth: a year’s worth of art. Roy and I looked on as Soupon packed her order and discussed  mulberry-bamboo percentages, fiber-length…  

Despite posted restrictions, we had a fine Christmas Eve, Riverside. 
 
  
Christmas Morning, we tried for the Lampang-Chiang Mai bus.   

   
…ended up in a taxi (no complaints).

Then Roy took charge of the Christmas meal, which was  a Progressive Dinner .  Yes, you read that right ( parked riverside). 

Even if you’re  not a Foodie, I think these plates – I didn’t bother to snap E’s salmon or my curry – give a sense of the next place he chose.   

We ended our Christmas at Anantara. The former British Consulate (it  was Roy’s evening, after all), now a sprawling luxury hotel, is a hoot: rich teak everywhere, and deep green walls in the bar — Japanese minimalist in other parts — and  attentive, early-20th c. -uniformed  wait staff. Poor photos because I was trying to be subtle.

  I gave up all pretense of subtlety for this video — 

…and to all, a goodnight!

And now it’s Boxing Day, with my Chiang Mai neighborhood (“mine” for another week) and its uber-tattooed western 65-year-old men on their Vespas. My guesthouse is across from one temple and w/in a couple blocks of others, lovely and cool spaces…and look who showed up in a Sri Lankan RC church!!

  

 
   
  

In Trivandrum, I had the honor of 94% humidity, yes, and a very budget guesthouse, true. However, I also had the honest-to-God huge and absolutely  unadulterated honor of meeting and working for too short a time with the indomitable, young (28!) founder of Jyothirgamaya, a nonprofit which empowers low-vision and blind people…Vision Loss Resources, Indian style!

 Tiffany is a machine — amazing to see her on the phone working on fundraising one minute, teaching a mobility or Voiceover lesson, the next.

 Tiffany moves fast and deftly, in the classroom and in the street (SO fast, I’ve no “outdoor” photos of her!).
Vinitha prepares incredible Kerala food every day at the hostel near the Center – and huge hugs for Tiffany.  
 

While I was there, one of the young women at the Jyothirgamaya Center got a job, packed up her belongings in the hostel, and headed out —   

To be sure, it’s a question I’ve often been asked, especially  lately, by friends – nonbelievers, former Catholics, protestants. I know some who resolve the question by being able to claim a Cultural Catholicism: it’s in their DNA, it’s the way they grew up,  so even though they can’t attend Mass or receive the sacraments, they still find that they can’t simply shake it (RC-ism) off. They can’t not be Catholic.

However, as some of my children (you know who you are) used to say about my attempts to serve things like  plain yogurt popsicles or cooked-to-dryness pork chops, That doesn’t work for me.

Recently, two pieces of news: charges brought by my hero, the Ramsey County attorney general, against my  archdiocese. At last!  And now,  the pope has approved  the creation of a Vatican tribunal “for judging bishops accused of covering up or failing to act” in cases of clerical abuse. Every news article singles out the archbishop who lives up the street here, so naturally I’ve joined  the multitude crowing and posting giddy status updates  on Facebook. Still, that doesn’t work for me, so I’m looking beyond the news – beyond Facebook, even.

With the warmer weather, I’ve been taking a morning or afternoon walk,  and as usual end up on the south side of my neighborhood church. I’ve been taking grandkids here for a couple years, and so we have a routine — more about that in minute.

This view, this photo, brought  me back to  Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, specifically to his chapter on the Renaissance, in which he writes of the decadence and the wonder of the Renaissance. True, Clark’s text is dated (he talks of Man, and he writes of only male Renaissance artists). Yet, he gets many things right, especially the part about beauty rising out of decadence. That almost works for me.

Last week, my oldest and dearest friend told me she’d wondered this same question aloud – why stay Catholic – to her spiritual director, a priest who personally knows more than he might wish to know about the vagaries and pitfalls of ecclesial politics.  His response to her? The reminder that her  archbishop “is not the Catholic Church.” It works for me.

As for the cathedral and kids:  It’s a great place, with ledges to walk, stairs to run, and  railings to shimmy– all that,  outside. Inside, on a quiet weekday, it’s always still, and in small  doses, perfect for an active little boy to slow down and wander. True, a few times I’ve had to stare down tourguides,  but not often, and as I do, my prayer just goes something like this: All Are Welcome, REMEMBER?? Or should be and must be and will be.

(click photos to enlarge)

For Uncle Matt

(“I know who this is — it’s Santa Claus.”)

Great space.

As for the future of Roman Catholicism? Following the Pew Research Results showing millenials leaving in droves,  Notre Dame’s Christian Smith argues that, despite the New Evangelization, his research proves that  the situation really is grim among young people (is there no middle ground, between Crushed Ice and  Wine?).

For CONTEXT, part of a letter (in italics) I wrote  Gloria Steinem’s handler

Keynote Address, Jaipur Literary Festival 2014

I turn 70 on Sunday, 19 April, and unlike Gloria, who, I’ve read, expects her funeral to be a fundraiser, I prefer not to wait so long.  Consequently, to celebrate my birthday, I’m  holding  a fundraiser for the school which is near to my heart, BLESS School, Tamil Nadu.