Only about once in 7 years does September 10 occur on a Tuesday. This was one of those years, the 22nd anniversary of the second coming of the Zen Community of Staten Island, one of the beautiful synchronicities of my life.
The first manifestation of ZCSI had occurred in 1996, shortly after Dee and I moved into the house we’ve been living in ever since and soon after I received Tokudo, the first step on the Zen priest path, from Jishu. We thought we had the space on the third floor for a Zendo, and Jishu thought it was a wonderful offering, but as a novice priest, I wasn’t empowered to do much. No interviews, no dharma talks, no officiating at services. Instead of talks, I could read something. I read from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
When Morri was born in 1998, we moved the baby monitor speaker to the Zendo during sittings. Once Morri began crawling, she joined us, crawled around the Zendo while we sat and into my lap for my “talks.” Eventually, Morri needed more attention, and we decided we needed a hiatus from the Zendo in the home.
The Zen Community of Staten Island was reborn in one of those unplanned happenings which have shaped my life. Amazingly, the rebirth was made possible by the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. In the days immediately following 9/11, Dee, who was then the Chief of the South Beach Children’s Service got a call from the FDNY counseling center. Could she help out? So many firefighters and firefighter families had been tragically traumatized a few days earlier. The counseling service was expecting an influx of firefighter’s kids, and they had no kid competence on their team.
Dee was up to her eyeballs at work, and Morri was barely in preschool. “Try my husband,” she told them. “He’s retired.”
I had retired for the first time a year and half earlier and was then pottering around with Dharma brother Paco Lugovina trying to get a consulting practice going. In truth, I was hardly working, so when the FDNY called, I said, “Yes,” and the next day walked onto the grounds of Mt. Manresa for the first time. Mt. Manresa, a Jesuit Retreat Center, was the first lay retreat center in the US, named after the mountain in Spain where St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits made his first retreat.
I never saw any kids at Manresa, although I did meet with parents and spouses of men who had been lost. Mostly though, I met with firefighters. Many had been at ground zero. All had lost close comrades. 9/11 had cut like a knife through FDNY. I had been listening to their stories of trauma and loss -- a privilege and a profound experience – for 6 months when, the following Spring, Roshi Kennedy invited me to join him at a sesshin he was leading at the Trappist monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. The Trappist author/priest, Thomas Merton, was one of my spiritual heroes. Reading his journals, I’d often wondered if I’d ever spend a night in a Trappist Monastery. I jumped at the unexpected opportunity.
On the flight home, I sat next to Russ Ball. A generous supporter of Bob’s and of the Jesuits, Russ had been instrumental in bringing Bob to the Jesuit Retreat House in Manhasset, St. Ignatius. Although primarily based at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, Bob was also leading a weekly Zen group at St. Ignatius and sesshins there twice a year. I loved those sesshins.
Flying home, Russ told me of a recent dinner he’d had with the Jesuit Provincial, the top Jesuit in the region. The Provincial had told Russ that he would like to see a Zen group offered at every retreat house in the Province. Was this a coincidence? I had been spending at least a day a week at a Jesuit retreat house for the previous 6 months and been impressed by the grace with which the Jesuits hosted the counseling center. Manresa was manifesting what Bernie had been pointing me toward, a unity of spirituality and social action. “If you ever decide to do something at Manresa,” I told Russ, “I would be happy to help.”
Less than two months later I found myself back at Manresa – the counseling service had moved out, renting permanent space in an Island office building – at a meeting with Russ and Bob and Manresa’s new senior priest. The Provincial wanted a Zen group in every house in the province, Bob would begin a new group at Mt. Manresa, and I was happy to help. Everyone checked their schedule. We would meet on Tuesday evenings. What with summer vacations, we would begin in early September, as it turned out, on the eve of the first anniversary of 9/11. How poetic was that?
Bob gave a bravura performance that night. The Jesuits had advertised in all the parishes, and Staten Islanders were curious to see this Jesuit Zen teacher. Well, a few were merely curious. Most were skeptical. A few were downright hostile. “You know what you’re teaching is heresy, don’t you Father?” one asked.
Bob was unruffled. By the end of the evening, he had everyone sitting cross-legged on the floor getting a taste of zazen. He ended the evening by telling the group that he would be coming back to see them occasionally but that I would be leading the group. What a surprise. What was I doing leading meditation at a Jesuit retreat house?
Perhaps the Universe had been heading me in this direction. Bernie was the great advocate of interfaith Zen and had sent me to Bob, his first non-Buddhist Dharma successor to do koan study. And then Bob shoved me into interfaith practice in a way I could never have anticipated. We advertised Zen at Mt. Manresa – “You don’t have to be Catholic, and you don’t have to be Buddhist” – and we got rid of most of the Buddhist liturgy. In my talks, I avoided Zen lingo and cliches. I didn’t wear robes.
I thought that Manresa would be our permanent home, my permanent place of practice, but the Jesuit world was changing. The Jesuits who had been in residence at Manresa had moved out in the months following 9/11 to fill priest vacancies in Staten Island parishes. We continued to sit there every week and to spend one Saturday a month there meditating and gardening and policing the grounds until almost the moment when the Jesuits sold the site to a developer.
I had imagined that I would teach at Mt. Manresa for the rest of my life. I had an image with which I teased myself. In the stories of classical Chinese Zen, practice centers were usually in remote, often mountainous areas. These teachers were often known by the names of their mountains. In my fantasy, I imagined that I would one day be known as “Manresa.” Celebrating the rebirth of our Staten Island Zen Community on the eve of 9/11, I am smiling. “Call me, ‘Manresa,’” I am saying to myself.
The best laid plans of mic and men gang aft agley. God never closes one door but opens another. God bless you, friend Ken. James