Fenton Johnson - Keeping Faith: A Skeptics Journey

Copyright 2003 by Fenton Johnson

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Johnson, Fenton, date.
Keeping faith : a skeptics journey / Fenton Johnson.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-618-00442-4 ISBN -13: 978-0-618-49237-4
1. Johnson, Fenton. 2. Spiritual biographyUnited States. I. Title.
BL 73. J 644 A3 2003
291.4'092dc2l
[B] 2002032708

e ISBN 978-0-544-10688-8
v4.1221

To S HIRLEY A BBOTT
and
B ARBARA K INGSOLVER

and to those who choose the monks path,
inside and outside the enclosure

Facing west from Californias shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, toward the house of maternity,
the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled,
For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmir,
From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,
From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,
Long having wanderd since, round the earth having wanderd,
Now I face home again, very pleasd and joyous,
(But where is what I started for so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)

F ACING W EST FROM C ALIFORNIAS S HORES , W ALT W HITMAN (1860)

I N THE COURSE of my research I interviewed several hundred monks (Christian and Buddhist), priests, theologians, rabbis, lay contemplatives, and scholars; I spoke with many of them several times. I have infrequently used pseudonyms, always identified as such, to honor the requests of those Roman Catholic monks who for a variety of reasons wished to remain anonymous. Quotations are transcribed from those conversations. The points of view contained in the accompanying analysis are mine and should not be ascribed to the monks and contemplatives I interviewed.

Common usage assumes the term monk to imply masculine, nun to imply feminine, but many sisters with whom I spoke perceive nun as carrying an implied acceptance of the persistent worldwide relegation of women contemplatives to second-class status. Accordingly, I have chosen to use monk, inclusive of both men and women, and to restrict the use of nun to those instances in which using monk would risk confusion. Monk implies not a gender but a way of life. American contemplatives, Christian and Buddhist, increasingly employ monk as a gender-neutral word, by way of acknowledging the historical contributions of women to contemplative practice.

For those unfamiliar with monastic life, possibly the greatest confusion arises over the relationship between the terms monk and priest. Monks have taken vows, the precise nature of which varies from one religious order to another. They usually choose a particular order because they perceive its vows to be most in keeping with their individual character and spiritual search. Priests also take vows but generally pursue a more rigorous education in the philosophy or theology of their tradition. Unlike monks, they are invested with the power to perform certain rites. In a Christian monastery such as Gethsemani, all priests are monks, but many of the monks have chosen not to become priests, sometimes because they lack the interest or skills for intensive study, sometimes because they reject the hierarchy implied in the creation of a priestly caste. Buddhism maintains similar though less formal distinctions.

Like all disciplines, religious practice has a specific vocabulary that includes terms not commonly encountered in daily conversation. I define those words as they appear, but for those unfamiliar with monastic practice or Buddhist terminology, the glossary at the back of the book may be helpful.

Because I write of religious and philosophical systems that are non-Western and non-Christian, I use the secular B.C.E . (before the common era) and C.E . (common era) in place of the Western custom of B.C . (before Christ) and A.D . (anno Domini, that is, in the year of the Lord). I have chosen to use the term Hebrew Bible rather than Old Testament, to avoid the implication of hierarchy or supersession implied by the latter. When abbreviating Roman Catholic Church, I have preferred Roman Church to the more common Catholic Church, since several Christian churches employ the adjective Catholic as part of their official names.

Given recent controversies surrounding the writing of nonfiction, I feel compelled to note that the events I describe happened as I describe them, as precisely as I am able to report within the limitations of time and space. Where the privacy of the individuals involved required fabrication or rearrangement of events, I indicate as much.

O N THIS PLEASANT EVENING of July 1996, the long, narrow chapter room at the rural Kentucky abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani was filled with monks. Along the right wall, under an image of the risen Christ, stood our Trappist hosts, the white monks, dressed in white robes covered with black hooded scapulars and cinched at their waists with broad leather belts. Next to them, wearing black robes, stood the Benedictines, the black monks, the more publicly engaged, apostolic of the Roman Catholic contemplative orders. Among these monks were scattered a few women, most dressed in the white blouse and below-the-knee gray skirt favored by many post-Vatican II sisters. Along the left wall, under a batik banner of the seated Buddha, stood the Buddhist monks, some wearing maroon trimmed with saffron, others wearing saffron trimmed with maroon. A single Japanese monk wore dove-gray robes trimmed in black and white; a single Taiwanese nun wore saffron, peach fuzz sprouting from her newly shaven head. Among these Asians mingled the American Buddhistssome wearing black Zen robes, some wearing street clothes. Some of the Asians were Americans, naturalized priests and monks whose Buddhist congregations include American Jews and Roman Catholics and Protestants. The Christians and the American Buddhists were almost all Caucasian; the Asians ranged from Japanese ivory to Sri Lankan browned butter. Timothy Kelly, abbot of Gethsemani, and the exiled Dalai Lama of Tibet stood at front center, focal point for this international convocation of Buddhist and Christian monks and lay contemplatives.

The assembly presented a picture postcard of institutionalized religion, East and West: a few men on the stage ran the show, while the womena clear majority of those presentlooked on. But one does not expect an embrace of gender equality from religious institutions, and I settled into the territory with a familiar interior sigh. I had been invited as a writer, which is to say as a kind of anthropologist whose job is to reserve judgment and simply observe. A significant aspect of that observation is to learn and follow local customs, and so when the time came to perform the first Buddhist bows, I followed the example of my neighbor and bentalthough not too deeply; I saw myself as a skeptic and an American, inheritor and expression of centuries of Enlightenment rationalism. All people are created equal; liberty, equality, fraternitythis was my creed and my mantra, and I was not much given to bowing to anyone, whether to the pope or the Dalai Lama. But the writer does what he must do for the sake of the story, and so when the Dalai Lama passed I imitated my neighbor, ducking my head and joining my palms.