CHAPTER 10
Our traveler was now in the third airplane of his outbound journey. He barely had enough time to do a little qigong and yoga in the airport between planes. Fortunately his spiritual practices teach him to transcend what other people think about him. He could do his “moving meditations” just about anywhere at this point in his life.
He sometimes joked to his students that when you start to look like you need to be carted off to a hospital for psychological treatment you are probably on the verge of becoming a qigong master. The master under discussion actually did slow down while power walking past an ice cream parlor on his way to the gate for the third plane but time did not allow him to stop. His tastes were not always in the transcendent category!
In actuality, Brother Francis knew that one must move beyond the opinions of others to find the true self, and doing some simple movements that others didn’t quite understand was one way of moving beyond the ego need for approval. Such was also the case for not eating meat out of respect for other living creatures, though most people supposed he refrained for health reasons. If that was his motivation, he would do better by refraining from dessert now and again.
He was captivated by recent studies which suggest that while toxins from the environment, smoking, and the like are very unhealthy, it’s actually eating meat that really ignites cancer. Thus, toxins are the seeds, and meat is what makes them grow. Probably the hormones and toxins in the meat, he reasoned.
Sleep mixed with snippets of the in-flight movies accompanied him all the way to Kauai. When they landed and Brother Francis exited the plane, he immediately was overtaken by the aroma of flowers. There was a light mist of rain in the air and the hint of a rainbow painted the sky. Dusk was approaching. The whole experience was like healing balm for the weary traveler.
He found the car rental agency with ease and felt very grown up as he picked up the car he had reserved. He had asked for a small one but the agency gave him a larger one, thinking that they were doing the monk a favor. Brother Francis let his taste in the matter go and accepted the car in the spirit of one of the Salesian maxims: “Ask for nothing, refuse nothing.” He wondered once again why most people left the third phrase off of that famous French quote when saying it in English: “desire nothing.” Maybe that really wasn’t too much of a mystery.
The son of a bus driver, but someone who had not inherited his father’s sense of direction, Abbot Francis followed the directions to Lily and Dominic’s retreat house. They assured him, like many before them, that “you can’t miss it.” Little did they know!
Would darkness fall before he got to his destination? Maybe he really did need to get a cell phone—he had been holding out on that concession. The ocean surged to his right and green mountains rose majestically to his left. So far so good. He made the left turn off the highway as directed and knew that he was not too far from the retreat house.
The sun was sinking fast and the roads were smaller and not well marked at this point. Finally he did what any self-respecting male would do—he pulled in behind a FedEx truck parked on the side of the road and asked the driver for directions. A Hawaiian gentleman with a bright smile and large belly suggested he follow, adding that he “couldn’t miss it.” This time it worked.
Brother Francis recognized the red-roofed octagonal building in which retreat meetings and conferences were held. He parked the car near the main house. No one was home. Within five minutes Lily and Dominic drove up in their gas guzzler of a truck—their other vehicle was a motorbike—one extreme or the other they had told him.
Lily greeted him with a radiant smile and placed a lai of vibrantly colored orchids mixed with other flowers around his neck. She explained that an old Hawaiian lady made it specifically for him. After hugs all around, they entered the apartment on the lower level of the main house. Fresh flowers graced the table in the kitchen. A newspaper also sat on the table, opened to a story, complete with photo, about a monk from Pennsylvania coming to the island to give a workshop and to speak at the ecumenical Martin Luther King celebration later in the month.
Lily handed him a pink phone message slip. Wonder if Brother Benedict is okay. Maybe it’s those CIA guys again. Neither was the case.
“Two old friends from Lehigh University called you,” Lily explained. “Vick and Ellen said that they had not seen you in about thirty years and then saw your photo in the paper. They are here vacationing. It almost caused some marital discord.”
“How so?”
“Ellen was reading the paper and told her husband that she went to Lehigh with the person in the photo. He grabbed the newspaper and told her that she did not, but that he went to Lehigh with the person in the photo. They finally figured out that each of them was in class with you but that they didn’t know each other in those days. You were a sort of missing link.”
“The story of my life!”
Dominic and Lilly roared with laughter.
“I was originally in a research and teaching doctoral program at Lehigh and studied and taught undergrads with Ellen. I transferred to another program at Lehigh because I wanted a more clinical education and that’s where I met up with Vick. The slip says that they want to take me to lunch. That will be a delight.”
“It’s a delight having you here,” Dominic said. “We’d better let you get some sleep.” Stop up in the morning for breakfast and we can organize ourselves a bit.” The hypnotic aroma of the flower-filled mist intensified as they opened and closed the door upon leaving.
The visiting monk put the tea kettle on and went into the bedroom to unpack while the water heated. Like a thunderclap it came to him that this was the room where a friend of his had stayed and had an almost constant sense of ghosts being present. She told him that the person who lived in the room before her, a visiting monk from China, had a similar experience. Brother Francis wanted to have a little fun with ghosts but nothing was happening yet. Maybe things will start popping around the witching hour, midnight.
It was actually about three hours after the witching hour when Brother Francis woke from the sleep of the dead with a start. Strange sounds alerted him to something unusual in his environment. It took several moments before he remembered that he was in Hawaii. It took several more before he realized, with disappointment, that the sound which woke him was the crowing of roosters. He had seen chickens and roosters all over the place during his car ride from the airport. No ghosts had yet appeared in his room, nor did he have any sense of them in his gut—his usual barometer for intuitive information.
Returning to sleep did not seem like it was going to happen so the monk rose, washed up, and began to pray the Office of Vigils from the Liturgy of the Hours. This was a perfect time for this prayer service since it was created centuries ago to keep watch for the God who is with us throughout the night. He followed Vigils with an hour and a half of meditation out on a peaceful back patio. The meditation turned into sleep and when he awoke it was dawn. His Office book still at hand, the traveling monk then celebrated the Office of Morning Prayer, the Latin name for this part of the Office being “Lauds” or “Praise”.
He climbed the outer wooden stairs to the upper residence and saw through the window that Lily was hard at work in the kitchen. She saw him and beckoned him in.
“I’m making up some meals to take over to the lovely older lady who made your lai. She’s not as spry as she used to be so I just put them in her freezer and it holds her over for a week or two.”
Lily’s family had moved from China to Canada many years ago. People were not always friendly to them, which can happen anywhere people live, but she always remained friendly to others.
The pair discussed the crowing of roosters as they shared a simple meal of oatmeal, dried fruit, and tea. Lily explained the some years before, a violent hurricane had roared through the island. In its wake came the freedom of all sorts of caged animals, including roosters, hens, and their little ones.
Once the foul had attained their freedom, they were not going back into cages. So they populate the island, adding color and sound from one end of it to the other. Brightly colored feathers can be found just about anywhere and the largest Easter egg hunt in history is a perpetual opportunity if you are so inclined. You would need to dye them yourself, however.
That freedom the fowl claimed, they both agreed, is a reflection of the freedom all humankind longs for, and the very goal of spirituality. The monk psychologist thought about the late Victor Frankel, a Jewish psychiatrist who was held in a concentration camp during the Second World War. He wrote a famous little book entitled Man’s Search for Meaning wherein Frankel outlined his thoughts as to why some people lived and others died in the camps, all experiencing about the same level of cruel conditions. Those who kept a hope or believe beyond the concentration camps alive were also the ones who kept themselves alive.
Frankel developed an entire system of psychotherapy based on his experience and observations, which he called “Logotherapy.” The point of this treatment is to instill, or perhaps unearth, hope in the patient. Such is the purpose, as Lily and Brother Francis saw things, of the Gospel, the Torah, the Koran, and Daoist and Buddhist writings too. Most writings drawn from a good heart, and sometimes in an altered state of consciousness, led the reader back to inner freedom. The lives of the two friends breakfasting together exemplified this.
“Dominic is in town, trying to hire some workers to help him put the final touches on the Watsu pool. Are you familiar with that technique?”
“A little Lily, can you tell me more?”
“Certainly. Watsu is a combination word from the words for water and shiatsu, or Japanese finger pressure massage. The treatment is done in water which is heated to about ninety-five degrees and the client is always physically supported by the massage therapist. It allows the person to relax and stretch in a way not physically possible on land, so to speak.”
“Sounds great. Do you do that treatment?”
“Not me. I do have a bodywork studio not far from the meeting hall. It’s a little hut and quite comfortable. Folks can choose either type of treatment. Dominic does the Watsu and loves it. I think he actually benefits by giving the treatments too.”
“My bodywork teacher often said that to give a good treatment is to receive a treatment in the process,” the Chinese medicine doctor responded.
“So many traditions take us back to a similar place. Yet your Christian and my Buddhist philosophies differ also. Our mutual respect and openness to learning has helped us both, I believe, to deepen our own belief systems. Do you agree?”
Brother Francis reached for a piece of dried banana. “Completely my dear friend, completely.”