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big sur
August 2009 
Update on Big Sur, Ashram Diary book
Posted on Dec 2nd, 2008
by 
ashramdiarist
ashramdiarist
Of course the community soon returned to the Big Sur hermitage, unscathed by the flames, which however did blacken the hills that you see while approaching the hermitage bookstore (after the last curve in the entrance road). It is sad to see the land so disfigured; and yet we know by experience how resilient the Big Sur ecosystem is, and we hope that after seasonal rains, green will again overtake the charred terrain.
Ashram Diary: In India with Bede Griffiths is now in page proofs. I have corrected these, and soon will begin posting videos and passages both from the published diaries and even some diary entries — stories and scenes of India and elsewhere — that I had to cut. The book is due out in February, and if you like these postings, please order Ashram Diary (London: O Books, 2009; ISBN 978-1-84694-161-0) online or at your local bookseller.
On the web site of the Jesuit magazine America, a recent blog entitled “National Security and the Quran,” contained the following passage, to which I add a comment. Tell me what you think:
“If we wish to be seen as champions of freedom, including religious freedom, desecrating anyone else’s sacred texts or symbols is counter-productive.”
In my opinion, this purely political reasoning is totally inadequate. The acts of desecrating the Quran, part of the torture program in Iraq and at Guantánamo, are immoral and inadmissable from the standpoint of the Second Vatican Council, which exhorted Catholics to “acknowledge, preserve, and promote [promoveant] the spiritual and moral goods found among [the followers of other religions], as well as the values in their society and culture” (Nostra Ætate n. 2). It is not enough to “be seen”; we must be persons who seek religious freedom — not only, or primarily, for ourselves, but for all. And as the Council would have it, Christians must promote the Islam of Muslims, and see their life of faith, prayer, pilgrimage, and charity as part of what Christians believe to be God’s plan for the happiness of humankind.
Ashram Diary: In India with Bede Griffiths is now in page proofs. I have corrected these, and soon will begin posting videos and passages both from the published diaries and even some diary entries — stories and scenes of India and elsewhere — that I had to cut. The book is due out in February, and if you like these postings, please order Ashram Diary (London: O Books, 2009; ISBN 978-1-84694-161-0) online or at your local bookseller.
On the web site of the Jesuit magazine America, a recent blog entitled “National Security and the Quran,” contained the following passage, to which I add a comment. Tell me what you think:
“If we wish to be seen as champions of freedom, including religious freedom, desecrating anyone else’s sacred texts or symbols is counter-productive.”
In my opinion, this purely political reasoning is totally inadequate. The acts of desecrating the Quran, part of the torture program in Iraq and at Guantánamo, are immoral and inadmissable from the standpoint of the Second Vatican Council, which exhorted Catholics to “acknowledge, preserve, and promote [promoveant] the spiritual and moral goods found among [the followers of other religions], as well as the values in their society and culture” (Nostra Ætate n. 2). It is not enough to “be seen”; we must be persons who seek religious freedom — not only, or primarily, for ourselves, but for all. And as the Council would have it, Christians must promote the Islam of Muslims, and see their life of faith, prayer, pilgrimage, and charity as part of what Christians believe to be God’s plan for the happiness of humankind.
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