On Retreat in Bali

Just returned from an amazing week in the mountains of Bali, complete with a visit to the village of Batubulan where fellow Fulbrighter, Richard Fox, lives with his family amidst a Bali family.  As we drove from the airport up higher into the mountains, accompanied by Fr. Yoseph, whom we were going to know and love during this week, all images of resorts and beaches dropped away.  Instead, we saw much natural beauty, green rice paddies, small villages with family "sanghas," beautiful little shrines for offerings of fruit and flowers right in the family compounds, and of course the mountains. 

Over the course of the next week, we were taken on "tour" to the lake temple, the "botanical gardens," lovely forests which stretched for miles, lush green rice fields, and even to Ubud for art gallery shopping and sightseeing.  In between, we had time to join the Carmelite priests and brothers twice each day for morning and evening prayer and for Mass.  The retreat house itself, built entirely with donations and with great beauty and simplicity, was like a hotel.  We couldn't have felt more welcomed.  In fact, Fr. Yoseph was so sad that we might leave after three days that he invited us back after our visit to Batubulan to see Richard (more about that in the next blog).  So we returned and had a chance to join a group of retreatants from Denpasar who were attending talks by a well-known priest-scholar from Malang who has invited me to his school of philosophy and theology.  Making these connections with the Catholic community has been very helpful to me as I hope somehow to link the Catholics of Malang with the Muslims I will be teaching and working with.  All that will be challenging, I suspect, but I am more hopeful now that I know these ties have been created before.  Just sitting face to face can undo so much distrust and suspicion, all too common I am learning in parts of Indonesia.  I have a feeling I will be back to this healing space before I leave Indonesia.