35th ANNUAL DIM/MID
MEETING - MARIENKRON, AUSTRIA:
June 5-9, 2006
[Report: Sr Lucy]
THE
DIM/MID COORDINATORS
We had our
first official DIM/MID meeting at 8.00 p.m. on Monday 5th
June, to present the new Coordinators. The commissions represented
were the Belgian, Dutch-speaking, French, German, GBI, Iberian,
Italian and Nordic – 16 people in all. The Swiss Coordinator was
unable to attend. An important member of the Belgian contingent was
P Pierre de Bethune, the General Secretary who is planning to retire
from this post, passing it on to his successors. There were two
welcome guests: Fr Peter Bowe, now of Douai, France, Coordinator of
MID-GBI for 20 years; and Fr William Skudlarek from MID-USA. We have
as yet no MID local commission in Eastern Europe.
THE
KNEIPP-KURHAUS MARIENKRON
The venue was
a most interesting place. It is a sort of health spa or heath
resort. It was founded to put into practice the ideas of Fr Kneipp,
a well-known priest and practitioner of alternative therapies. They
had all kinds of his alternative therapies on offer for guests, with
skilled therapists and practitioners coming in to offer massage,
aromatherapy and everything you can imagine. The Sisters
(Cistercians, not Trappists) in the community who had training in
these areas were involved in helping the guests, as well as in
prayer and meditation groups and nature walks. They also supervised
the general administrative staff—one was supervisor in the dining
room; one for the reception, one was the “Direktorin” (general
manager) and so on. But they were able to organize their working
time so that their monastic life continued and guests were welcome
to join in the monastic offices if they wished. The chapel adjoined
the main reception building. The grounds were extensive and
beautifully organized to include some very well kept areas, wild
areas with woodland walks and a small lake with benches on the edges
of it. The monastery itself is small, with its own garden, so the
DIM/MID group were housed in the health spa and we were together as
a group for meals in one of the two large dining rooms.
HUGO
ENOMIYA-LASALLE – PIONEER OF INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE
On
Tuesday June 6, our day was led by Dr Ursula Baatz. She is
the official biographer of Fr Lasalle, asked by the Society of Jesus
to edit his previously unpublished correspondence. This then
developed into a book recently finished in German and translated
into French and Spanish. The Society of Jesus gave her a very free
hand to write as she chose and supported her in producing a very
realistic portrayal of Lasalle. Dr Baatz is well known in Austria in
interreligious dialogue circles. She teaches at the University as
well as working for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. She gave
us a very lively and fascinating talk on her work on Fr Lasalle,
bringing his character to life. She had actually met him. Her talk
was enriched by anecdotes from his life, which made him very real to
us. As a pioneer of Christian-Buddhist dialogue and an official Zen
Roshi, he is of great interest to us in DIM/MID. In the afternoon
she spoke knowledgeably of the history and characteristics of
Buddhism in the West, pointing out the differences between that, and
Buddhism in its “native” background countries. Having spent some
years in Japan and being very familiar with Zen Buddhism there and
in the West her talk was extremely valuable for its perceptiveness,
interest and inspiration.
GROUP WORK
– June 5-9
Our first
plenary group meeting had been on Monday to introduce the whole
conference and allow us to get to know each other a little.
Thursday June 8 was given over entirely to group work, to the
reports of the local Commissions and discussion of them. We met in
language groups to discuss: What has been the most significant
experience of your commission? Various new projects for
interreligious dialogue had been undertaken by the different
commissions. Long-standing relationships with the monastic elements
in other religions were being maintained. For those of us who had
been to Japan last year that was a personal highlight (the Nordic,
Dutch and GBI
Commissions). For the GBI commission it had to be said that “most
significant” for us was the departure of Fr Peter Bowe, and our
sense of the fragility of our commission. Our local commission
reports had already been circulated and read, so we were able to
discuss issues arising from them all. Apart from the Dutch
Commission which has the kind of structure we would like for GBI
with significant support from the Curatorium (the Dutch
equivalent of UMS), most of the other countries were in a similar
position to GBI. Italy and Germany reported that not much was
happening there at large. Several Coordinators and the editor of the
European and IBI felt that things were happening that were not
filtering through to the Coordinators and Committees. Although
everyone felt the urgency of the need in the present political
situation for the Church to be in dialogue in with Muslims and Jews
there was a strong sense also that the monastic dimension of
inter-monastic and intra-monastic dialogue should not be lost.
A good deal
of time was given to the GBI report and the suggested draft
constitution, but the final result of all this was rather
inconclusive. The European committee accepted the appointment of Sr
Lucy as Coordinator for five years, and were sympathetic and
supportive of the efforts we are making to establish ourselves more
securely, but they could offer little in the way of positive advice
or help. There was discussion of the long-awaited publication of P
Bernard de Give’s thesis, and its translation into English.
Honourable mention was also made of one of our GBI Commission, Sr M
Catherine of Chester, who is doing some scholarly translation work
for Fr de Give. The French Commission shared their experience of
their three-week pilgrimage to India (and we had slides of it as our
evening session). The Dutch Commission has changed most under their
Coordinator, Br Andrew Peers of Zundert. They now have a three part
structure (a working committee which meets several times a year,
‘friends’ giving regular help, and a wider network of occasional
helpers), supported financially, and in other ways by the
Curatorium of Holland.
COMMUNITY
PRAYER
Another kind
of “group work” was the ‘work of God’ which happened each day, again
in the main language of the group. Each morning we had Lauds in
French, combined with meditation; each evening Vespers was in
English. Vespers took place in the community choir, and the home
community joined US in praying in English. Fr Peter led this,
including the psalm tones we could all join in. We joined the host
community for the Eucharist each day, in German. We had at our own
disposal in the Kurhaus a very spacious and beautifully simple
meditation room where we met for morning prayer/meditation, and
where we had Eucharist together as a group on the day we went to
Pannonhalma.
POSSIBILITIES OF INTERMONASTIC DIALOGUE IN HUNGARY:
VISIT TO
PANNONHALMA MONASTERY
Marienkron
had been chosen as a venue for the DIM/MID meeting largely because
it is only five miles from the border with Hungary. In fact, we were
told that the area of Austria where the monastery and Kurhaus is
situated used to BE Hungary. The countryside, the district
known as Burgenland was flat and open, part of the great Hungarian
plain. After our usual morning prayer, meditation and breakfast on
Wednesday 7 June we set off in two vehicles: the Francophone
group in one and the Anglo-German in the other. Arriving in Hungary,
I was amused to note that the first big building on the Hungarian
side of the border had COCA COLA in huge letters on the roof.
We enjoyed the drive through the pretty Hungarian countryside with
gentle rolling hills and fields and picturesque villages. There
seemed to be a great deal of building or re-building going on. From
quite a long distance away we could see the big monastery of
Pannonhalma on top of a mountain, silhouetted against the sky, not
unlike Monte Cassino in pictures I have seen. On arrival we had a
tour of the outer parts of the monastery with Br Gregory, who spoke
excellent English. There has been a Benedictine monastery here since
996AD. The present building(s) are the 4th lot, to
replace various destructions in different historical periods. It was
one of four monasteries allowed to continue in existence even under
the Communist regime, provided it took responsibility for nine
schools. One very highly regarded senior school still exists within
the monastic enclave. We had a simple lunch in their dining room.
Since the fall of Communism, religious congregations have received
their buildings back, but not the means to keep them going, so there
was a general sense of financial and economic pressure. They also
commented on the lack of a whole generation of religious men and
women missing from the newly arisen religious houses.
Our Buddhist
guests had arrived in time to have lunch with us (goulash—genuine
Hungarian goulash—, pasta, and cucumber salad in a sauce, with some
rather heavy white bread. For dessert, a bowl of delicious cherries
from the monastery garden. The Buddhists were four Zen monks and
three lay people. One of the laymen goes regularly, though not
often, to Amaravati, and considers Ajahn Sumedho to be his teacher.
After lunch
we went into the main church for Midday Office. It is a vast, dark
building, with three levels. The monks’ choir was on the upper level
so we could hear them but not see them. As they sang in Hungarian,
we were unable to join in, but we stood and sat when they did! After
this a young student came to join us and explain as guide, together
with the Br Gregory. We had some very interesting insights into the
different historical periods represented in the varied architectural
styles of the monastery and church. Then we were shown to a very
large room on the third floor where we had our meeting for dialogue
with the visitors. As a first meeting, it went well, but could not
go very deep. We all introduced ourselves and spoke of our
experience of dialogue with other monastic men and women in our own
countries. The Buddhists did likewise, though they had little to
report in terms of dialogue. This was the first experience for them,
of coming together with Christian monks and nuns. The Roshi with
them was actually French, and he told of how he had come into
Buddhism from a French Catholic upbringing. It seemed to be true of
all of them that they had been born into nominally, or even
practising, Christian (mainly Catholic) families. They were very
touched that RC monks and nuns should want to be in dialogue with
them, and were amazed that we had all experienced Zen Buddhism. They
felt that they were making an important beginning and that it was a
healing experience for them. It remains to be seen if the need to
survive present economic difficulties will allow the Christian monks
time and energy to follow up the interreligious dialogue that began
this day. We left Pannonhalma in time to have our evening meal at
Marienkron, after which we had a concelebrated Eucharist four our
own group, in the meditation room.
FUTURE PROJECTS
DIM/MID
ANNUAL MEETING 2007
The group
work on Thursday included plans for our meeting in 2007 and
discussion of future projects. Some investigation has been done
towards holding the meeting in Morocco, and we heard about this from
P Daniel and P Cosmas. The move to do this stems from P Christian de
Chergé, one of the martyred Trappists. He attended the DIM/MID
meeting at Montserrat shortly before his death and pleaded for
DIM/MID to move into some kind of dialogue with Muslims.
LOCAL
COMMISSION WEB SITES
One of the
future projects for all of us was urgent encouragement to set up a
web site for our local commissions. Communication between
Coordinators in preparation for the Vienna meeting had been greatly
facilitated by the fact that we could all send our reports to each
other by Email.
***********************
FINAL DAY
IN AUSTRIA
Several of us
stayed on for another day and saw a little of Vienna city, staying
at the Schottenstift Benedictine monastery, near the city centre and
not far from the great cathedral, the Stephansdom.