Jonah Raskin : Lay Monk Tolbert McCarroll on the Pope, the Church, and the Crisis in Catholicism

Brother Toby at Starcross Community.

Interview with Brother Toby:
Author, heretic, and spiritual 
pilgrim at Starcross Community

“The Catholic Church today is an absolute monarchy and an absolute patriarchy that puts you right back in the Medieval Ages.” -- Tolbert McCarroll

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / March 18, 2013

Tolbert McCarroll -- better known to friends and family members as Brother Toby -- would make a strange and wonderful Pope. Better yet, he’d make a passionate anti-Pope -- a one man wrecking crew to batter down orthodoxy, patriarchy, and centuries old dogma.

Born in 1931 and raised in a poor, white, Catholic family in Picayune, Mississippi, he’s been a lifelong Catholic and a soul mate to obstreperous priests such as Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and nuns such as Mary Moylan, all of whom famously burned draft cards in Catonsville, Ohio, to protest the War in Vietnam.

Ever since the 1960s, Brother Toby has aimed to beat swords and B-52s into plowshares, to serve as a gadfly to the comfortable, and to comfort those afflicted with AIDS, HIV, and PTSD. He’s adopted six children and written 10 books including Seasons, A Winter Walk, and Thinking With the Heart.

Now, at the age of 82, he’s a lay monk at Starcross, a rural California monastic order that draws its spiritual nourishment from the original teachings of Jesus Christ. Like the early Christians, Brother Toby is wedded to the simple life close to the earth and in harmony with the seasons and all living creatures.

From Starcross in California to the Vatican in Italy, it’s a long way -- some 6,270 miles. But when a new Pope is selected, it feels to Brother Toby as though geographical distances collapse. Along with the sisters at Starcross -- Marti Aggeler and Julie DeRossi -- and the billion or so Catholics around the world, he trains his eyes and ears on the Conclave – albeit with a certain skepticism. As the Cardinals began to meet, he wrote a letter to followers urging them to wear simple clothes and remain undistracted by the gaudy spectacle in Rome.


Jonah Raskin: What do you make of Pope Francis I?

Brother Toby: He’s the first Jesuit ever to be elected Pope. On matters of doctrine, he’s conservative. He fought against Argentina's liberalization of gay rights legislation and strongly condemned gays adopting children. He’s also strongly opposed to abortion and euthanasia, but he may be looking for middle ground on issues like birth control.

What’s his reputation in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he was the archbishop?

His personal lifestyle is radically different from that of the Vatican bureaucrats. He didn’t live in the archbishop’s Palace in Buenos Aires, but in a small rented apartment. Moreover, he didn’t use his chauffeured limousine, but took public transportation -- he cooks for himself, too.

What about his first appearance as Pope in St. Peter’s Square?

The scene was like the Super Bowl gone wild until he came out as a simple, and, indeed, humble man asking for the crowd’s blessing before giving his traditional blessing to the city and the world. Choosing the name “Francis” after the beloved “poor man of Assisi” fits in with his image. What does the future hold? That’s hard to say.

Would you go out on a limb and make a prediction?

I don’t think he’ll do a lot to solve the painful problems facing the Catholic Church, though the tone at the Vatican will probably be gentler.

A Jesuit friend once said that the Roman Catholic Church had been “a truant in the school of history.” Will Pope Francis I be less truant? 

I hope so. I have never heard his name connected with sexual abuse. That’s a good sign.

Is there anyone you would want for pope?

There’s Gene Robinson, an Episcopal Bishop. He’s openly gay; I’d cast a ballot for him.

How would you characterize the Catholic Church today?

It’s an absolute monarchy and an absolute patriarchy that puts you right back in the Medieval Ages. You can’t have a monarchy like it and accept global responsibility for building a good world.

How do you remember the Popes who have reigned in your own lifetime?

Pius XII shipped Jews off to concentration camps right under his own window. John XXIII was a nice fellow and so was Paul VI. You would have liked to have him over for dinner. John Paul I was Pope for 30 days; he had a heart attack, though conspiracy theorists say he was done in. John Paul II, a superstar and extremely conservative, saw the world as a fight between evil communism and good Christianity. Benedict XVI -- known as “God’s Rottweiler” -- got rid of the people who wanted to change the church and let it return to the dry, barren ground it is today.

When I think of Catholicism I think of guilt and confession. Is there more than that?

We do make a virtue of guilt, don’t we? Thomas Merton, a wonderful monastic writer, said that any spiritual book had to be autobiographical to be authentic. The confessional has an important place in spirituality. Finding the sacred in nature -- that’s a vital part of Catholicism, too.

Has the Catholic Church in America made positive contributions to our society?

It has always been at its best in times of persecution and at its worst when it has had the upper hand. When I was a boy in Mississippi the Ku Klux Klan broke into the chapel we attended and smashed the furniture. Catholics were on the KKK hate list after blacks and Jews. Everyone I knew was left leaning and a Roosevelt democrat.

Brother Toby and friend.

Your parents were church-going Catholics?

My mother was French Catholic. My father was from Arkansas. When he first came to Mississippi he saw a crowd of white men shooting into the corpse of a black man. He asked them why? No one had an answer for him. In the 1930s, a major concern of his was justice for the nine African-American men known as “the Scottsboro Boys” who were charged with raping two white women.

Where did your mother stand on racial issues?

When a black family moved into our neighborhood -- after we moved to Oregon -- white neighbors assumed she would be afraid of black people and would want them out. Instead, she befriended them.

What happened to Catholics like them?

After World War II and the economic boom, everything changed in the world of Catholicism. It wasn’t just a church for the poor and for immigrants anymore. Catholics moved up in the world and forgot their humble origins. We even had a Catholic president.

I have friends who stopped attending church after they lost a mother, a father, a close friend.

That’s a common phenomenon. One of my colleagues never got over the death of a three-year old child. We’ve had kids with AIDS here at Starcross who died terrible deaths. If there’s a God and he’s good -- why does he allow evil? That’s a tough question to answer. And why do bad things happen to good people? That’s another one. Buddhists say that the only sure thing is suffering. I think that’s a helpful way to look at the world.

You’re a Buddhist Catholic, aren’t you?

I’m writing a piece now about Palm Sunday and I’m starting with a quotation from the Dalai Lama who said, “Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. If you can’t help at least don’t hurt.”

These same friends of mine who were born Catholic often attend church on Easter Sunday, but not on any regular basis. The Pope doesn’t own the Church. It’s their church, too, and they have as much of a right to be there as anyone else. Maybe they like the incense or the singing of the psalms. If it’s their heritage they shouldn’t give it up.

You started Starcross in 1968 in San Francisco, didn’t you?

We couldn’t have picked a better year to begin. We knew we were in a period of radical change. It became a crazy environment and I’m glad we came through it. I remember a discussion with a nun who wanted to bring a camel into Grace Cathedral. That was typical of the atmosphere at the time. Finally, she agreed to bring in kids with balloons rather than a camel and have them release the balloons. Predictably, the balloons stayed under the ceiling for a long time.

Why the name Starcross?

It’s from the I Ching: or Book of Changes; there’s a pictogram that looks like a cross and a star. The cross represents suffering and the star represents hope. There has to be balance.

I’ve been to mass at St. Mary Cathedral in San Francisco for Easter Sunday. I’m always surprised when I see women taking a leading role in the ritual itself. I thought that women weren’t allowed to do that.

Women can be lectors. They’re allowed to read from the Bible and they can perform the Eucharist if no men are available.

Are there any women who are Catholic priests anywhere in the world?

A small number of women claimed they were ordained in secret in Poland in a concentration camp. The Vatican has never recognized them.

The Church is so very intensely male.

If there’s a break from the past it will be around the issue of women who, after thousands of years, still don’t have a full voice in the church.

Catholicism is in an acute crisis now isn’t it? I’m thinking of the scandals and cover-ups of sexual abuse.

Sexual abuse goes on and on, though there is less now than there used to be. There is no real transparency in the Church. The underlying principle is “protect the institution.” When the Cardinals gather in Rome it’s like a meeting of the board of directors of a major corporation, say, U.S. Steel.

It’s still bizarre to me -- especially with sexually transmitted diseases -- that the Church is against birth control.

It’s crazy. We combat AIDS at Starcross and the Church says we can’t use condoms. There are priests who don’t even know what a condom is.

You were once married and had a sex life. You have an advantage over most priests.

I’m a celibate now; I have been since my wife died. Celibacy has to be voluntary. You can’t force it on people. Becoming a priest is a very lonely process. Other priests are supposed to be one’s family, but they don’t meet the emotional needs that a real family provides.

Priests hear the most intimate confessions; they’re inextricably connected to parishioners, but they’re also often ill-equipped to meet the needs of their communities.

Priests are underdeveloped in many basic human ways. They don’t understand a lot of things. Like the priest who complained not long ago to a mother whose kids came to mass with dirty fingernails. She had six kids; he might have praised her for getting them to church, not berated her about a little dirt.

What other trends do you see in the church today?

I see a lot of people, including gays, who want to be Catholics, but who are profoundly dissatisfied with the Church and with its priests. It’s difficult for them to find a spiritual home. There’s mass defection all over Europe and across America, too. At Starcross, we made a total break. We’re separate from the Church and receive no financial support whatsoever from it.

How does Starcross survive financially?

We grow olives that we make into excellent olive oil. A tractor is at work in the orchard right now. It’s the time of year to add manure. At Christmas, we make and sell wreaths.

Do you have any final words of wisdom?

Never let the Church interfere with your religion.

[Jonah Raskin, a professor emeritus at Sonoma State University and a frequent contributor to The Rag Blog, is the author of Rock ‘n’ Roll Women: Portraits of a Generation and Storm City: Ten Prayerful Poems. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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Jim Rigby : Religion is No Longer Adequate

The Dalai Lama. Image from Nulla dies sine linea.
Dalai Lama:
Religion is no longer adequate

There is a growing realization that something is being born in between what we call “religion” and what we call “atheism.”

By Jim Rigby / The Rag Blog / September 19, 2012

Last Monday the Dalai Lama posted on his Facebook blog:

All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.

Religion has always been the lamp, it has never been the flame. Religion is whatever skillful means we use to remember we are all interconnected. It is whatever practice we use to stay grateful and alert. Unfortunately those who do not fall asleep into religion are rare.

I doubt the Dalai Lama was actually calling for the end to those disiplines that brought him to this clarity, but I do think he was realizing that religion that does not die into compassion, becomes a hindrance. He is calling for a new way of speaking about ethics.

I began this blog in part because I believe we are living at the death of an old worldview and the birth of a new. After Galileo, Darwin, and Einstein, much of what we once called ”religion” lies in ashes. But it is the nature of human understanding to die and then rise from the ashes.

There is a growing realization that something is being born in between what we call “religion” and what we call “atheism.” It is a Colossus with the clarity of a scientist and the reverence of a mystic. We do not yet have words for it, but I personally find it a thrilling time to be alive.

[Rev. Jim Rigby, a human rights activist, is pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. Jim Rigby blogs at jimrigby.org. He can be reached at jrigby0000@aol.com, and videos of his sermons are available online here. Read more articles by Jim Rigby on The Rag Blog.]

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Paul Krassner : My Lesson in Mindfulness

Satirist Paul Krassner performs at a 2010 benefit for the Peace and Freedom Party.
My Lesson in Mindfulness

By Paul Krassner / The Rag Blog / June 30, 2011

In 1979, my life changed while I was covering the trial of Dan White for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Former police officer White had confessed to killing the progressive Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, who was becoming the gay equivalent of Martin Luther King. Now psychiatrist Martin Blinder was testifying that, on the night before the murders, White “just sat there in front of the TV set, binging on Twinkies.” Another psychiatrist stated, “If not for the aggravating fact of junk food, the homicides might not have taken place.”

In my notebook, I scribbled “the Twinkie defense” and wrote about it in my next report. On the 25th anniversary of those murders, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that, “During the trial, no one but well-known satirist Paul Krassner -- who may have coined the phrase ‘Twinkie defense’ -- played up that angle.”

The Twinkie defense rested comfortably between a severely bungled prosecution and a shrewdly manipulated defense. One juror remarked after the trial, “It sounded like Dan White had hypoglycemia.” The “diminished capacity” ploy had worked. And so it came to pass that a double political assassination was transmuted into simple voluntary manslaughter. White would be sentenced to serve only seven years behind bars. No wonder there was a post-verdict riot in front of City Hall.

A dozen police cars had been set on fire, which in turn set off their alarms, underscoring the angry shouts from a mob of five thousand understandably outraged gays. The police were running amuck in an orgy of indiscriminate sadism, swinging their clubs wildly and screaming profanity-laden homophobic epithets.

I was struck with a nightstick on the outside of my right knee and I fell to the ground. Another cop came charging at me and made a threatening gesture with his billy club. When I tried to protect my head, he jabbed me viciously on the exposed right side of my chest. Oh, God, the pain! It felt like an electric cattle prod was stuck between my ribs.

I had a fractured rib and a punctured lung. The injuries affected my posture, and I began to develop an increasingly unbalanced body -- twisted and in constant pain. I limped the gamut of therapists: from an orthodox orthopedic surgeon who gave me a shot of cortisone to ease the pain; to a specialist in neuromuscular massage who wondered if the cop had gone to medical school because “he knew exactly where to hit” me with his billy club; to a New Age healer who put one hand on my stomach, held the receptionist's hand with the other, and asked her whether I should wear a brace. The answer was yes.

But I decided to get a second opinion -- perhaps from another receptionist.

In 1987, I went to a chiropractor, who referred me to a podiatrist, who referred me to a physiatrist, who wanted me to get an MRI -- a CAT scan -- in order to rule out the possibility of cervical stenosis. But the MRI ruled it in. X-rays indicated that my spinal cord was being squeezed by spurring on the inside of several discs in my neck.

The physiatrist told me that I needed surgery. I panicked. I had always taken my good health for granted. I went into heavy denial, confident that I could completely cure my problem by walking barefoot on the beach every day for three weeks.

“You're a walking time bomb,” the podiatrist warned me. He said that if I were in a rear-end collision, or just out strolling and I tripped, my spinal cord could be severed, and I would be paralyzed from the chin down. I began to be conscious of every move I made. I was living, not one day at a time, not one hour at a time, not one minute at a time -- I was living one second at a time.

The head of orthopedics at UCLA assured me that I really had no choice but to have the operation. I asked if I could have avoided this whole situation with a different diet or by exercising more. He shook his head no. “Wrong parents,” he said, referring to hereditary arthritis.

My condition had been totally exacerbated by the police beating. I was one of 37 million Americans who didn't have insurance, nor did I have any savings. Fortunately, I had an extended family and friends all over the country who came to my financial rescue. The operation was scheduled to take place at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in New York.

A walking time bomb! I was still in a state of shock, but since I perceived the world through a filter of absurdity, now I would have to apply that perception to my own situation. The breakthrough for me came when I learned that my neurosurgeon moonlighted as a clown at the circus. “All right, I surrender, I surrender.”

I met him the night before the operation. He sat on my bed wearing a trench coat and called me Mr. Krassner. I thought that if he was going to cut me open and file through five discs in my upper spinal column, he could certainly be informal enough to call me Paul. He was busy filling out a chart.

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Krassner?”

“I'm a writer and a comedian.”

“How do you spell comedian?”

Rationally, I knew that you don't have to be a good speller to be a fine surgeon, but his question made me uneasy. At least his hands weren't shaking while he wrote. Then he told me about how simple the operation was and he mentioned almost in passing that there was always the possibility I could end up staying in the hospital for the rest of my life. Huh? There was a time when physicians practiced positive thinking to help their patients, but now it was a requirement of malpractice prevention to provide the worst-case scenario in advance.

The next morning, under the influence of Valium and Demerol, I could see that my neurosurgeon had just come from the circus, because he was wearing a clown costume, with a big round red nose over his surgical mask. He couldn't get close to the operating table because his shoes were so large, and when he had to cleanse my wound he asked the nurse to please pass the seltzer bottle...

“Wake up, Paul," the anesthesiologist, said, “Surgery's over. Wiggle your toes.”

My wife Nancy was waiting in the hall, and I was never so glad to see her smile. That evening, at a benefit in Berkeley, my friend, novelist and Merry Pranksters leader Ken Kesey, told the audience, “I spoke with Krassner today, and the operation was successful, but he says he's not taking any painkillers because he never does any legal drugs.”

Then Kesey led the crowd in a chant: “Get well, Paul! Get well, Paul!” And it worked. The following month I was performing again, wearing a neck brace at a theater in Seattle.

But, over the years, I gradually got gimpier and gimpier. My hip was so out of kilter that my right foot turned inward when I walked, and my left foot continuously was tripping on my right foot. More and more often, I found myself falling all over the place. Dozens of times. Finally, after I started inadvertently knocking down other people like dominoes at a book festival in Australia, I realized that I would definitely need to start walking with a cane.

Since then, at any airport, I have to put my cane on the conveyor belt, along with my carry-on bag and my shoes. And then the security guy hands me a different cane -- a wooden one, painted orange -- to help me walk through the metal detector without falling.

One time, in a restaurant, I tripped on my own cane and fell flat on my face -- bruising myself badly, yet grateful that I hadn’t broken any teeth. That’s my nature -- to perceive a blessing in disguise as soon as I stop bleeding. However, this time I was left with a dark, square-shaped scab between my nose and my lips. It looked like a Hitler mustache, and I became very self-conscious about it.

I will be 80 years old in April 2012, and now I really am a walking time bomb. I cannot afford to fall again. I must be careful when I walk. I have to be fully conscious of every step. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Any fall could injure me. It might even be fatal. I have surrendered to a process that is truly an ongoing lesson in mindfulness. I’m learning that when you are mindful in one aspect of your life, you’ll strengthen mindfulness in other aspects.

I am, after all, a Zen Bastard -- a title bestowed upon me when Kesey and I co-edited The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog -- and I certainly have no desire to trip while hobbling along my particular path.

[Paul Krassner published the satirical magazine, The Realist (1958-2001). His latest book is an expanded edition of his memoir, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, available at paulkrassner.com. In 2010, the writers’ organization PEN honored him with their Lifetime Achievement Award. “I’m very happy to receive this award,” he announced, “and I’m even happier that it’s not posthumous.” Read more articles by Paul Krassner on The Rag Blog.]

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Ven. Sevan Ross : A Buddhist's View of Wage Theft

Ven. Sevan Ross, on right, with Unitarian Universalist minister James Ford. Photo from Monkey Mind.
A Buddhist’s view of wage theft
Right Livelihood and paying people what’s right

As long as we regard each other not as humans but as the "other," we will suffer profound abuses in the workplace.

By Ven. Sevan Ross / November 14, 2009

When I was a boy and asked my coal miner father one time too many for money, he got me a job as a "myrtle plugger." I sat all day in a field of ground cover with a special tool and "plugged" one plant at a time from the ground into a "flat" -- a large wooden box. Each plant took up a four-square-inch space. I saw immediately that I could fit between 50 and 60 plants into the box. Upon filling a flat I was to take it to the Yard Boss who was to "count" it and give me a fresh one to fill. I was to be paid five cents per flat. This was child labor, and it was in the early 1960s in Pennsylvania.

When I took up my first flat, the Yard Boss reached into the box and used his hand to squeeze my plants together to one side. They now filled 40 percent of the flat. He smiled, winked, grunted, and handed it back to me.

This was wage theft, and although I was only 10 years old, I knew it. I quit that "job" at the end of my first week. My father simply said, "Now you know what a union is for."

I was too young to understand what my father meant, but I was developed enough to see that the yard boss did not see me as human in some important way. He regarded me as the "other" -- as a tool like any other tool, to be used as needed for as long I held up to his purpose.

Many years later I heard a talk given during my priest training in which Yasutani Roshi, a well-known Japanese Zen Master, said these words: "The fundamental problem for all humanity is that you believe that you are there and I am here." This sums up how Buddhism casts a critical eye on the behavior of people -- especially in commercial enterprises.

As long as we regard each other not as humans but as the "other," we will suffer profound abuses in the workplace. Employers will steal their workers' wages, either overtly or covertly. And all the while they will deny both to themselves and others that this is the case. After all, they are only employees. I -- or we -- happen to be management, and as such are responsible for the survival and the thriving of the organization. Except that the workers are the organization and a theft against them is one against the group -- and me too.

I'm sure that the Yard Boss was being stolen from in some way by his betters back in that myrtle field. He could not have invented the workplace abuse of a child all on his own. I'll bet it went all the way to the top. After all, what happens at the top flows directly to the bottom in organizations. If "the other" is how we see individuals, we will guarantee they will see us this way also.

So from a Buddhist perspective it is not quite enough to say that we each are our brother's keeper. We need to feel instead that we actually are our brother. And from this, fair treatment flows naturally. There is then what we Buddhists call Right Livelihood -- mutually productive work, with everyone being treated fairly, everyone being treated Right.

[Ven. Sevan Ross was ordained in 1992 as a Zen Buddhist priest by Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, director of the Rochester Zen Center. Sevan has been training in Zen since 1976 and has served on the resident staff of the Rochester Zen Center for eight years where he served as both administrator of the Center and as Head of Zendo (head priest in charge of training under the Roshi).]

Source / Interfaith Worker Justice

Thanks to Danny Postel / The Rag Blog

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Monks, not Junta, Providing Relief in Myanmar

A monk organized relief donations this week for people left homeless by the cyclone. This monastery, outside of Yangon, has become a temporary shelter. Photo by AP.
In desperate times, Burmese turn to their monks

KUN WAN, Myanmar / May 30, 2008 -- It is a scene Myanmar's ruling generals are unlikely to see played out for themselves: As a convoy of trucks carrying relief supplies, led by Buddhist monks, passed through storm-devastated villages, hungry children and homeless mothers bowed in supplication and respect.

Since the cyclone, the Burmese have become even closer to the monks while their alienation from the junta grows.

"When I see those people, I want to cry," said Sitagu Sayadaw, 71, one of Myanmar's most respected senior monks.

At his makeshift clinic in this village near Bogalay, an Irrawaddy Delta town 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, southwest of Yangon, hundreds of villagers left destitute by Cyclone Nargis arrive each day seeking the assistance they have not received from the junta or international aid workers.

They paddle for hours on the stormy river, or carry their sick parents on their backs through the mud and rain - all traveling from kilometers around to reach the one source of help they know they can always depend on: Buddhist monks.

The May 3 cyclone left more than 134,000 dead or missing and 2.4 million survivors grappling with hunger and homelessness. Recently, people who had taken shelter at monasteries or gathered on roadsides waiting for aid to arrive were being displaced again, this time by the junta, which wants them to stop being an embarrassment to the government and return to their villages "for reconstruction." UN officials said Friday that refugees were also being evicted from government-run camps.

But they have little left of their homes and find themselves almost as exposed to the elements there as their mud-coated water buffaloes. Meanwhile, outside aid is slow to arrive, with foreign aid agencies gaining only incremental access to the hard-hit Irrawaddy Delta and the government impounding cars of some private Burmese donors.

"In my entire life, I have never seen a hospital. I don't know where the government office is. I can't buy anything in the market because I lost everything to the cyclone," said Thi Dar. "So I came to the monk."

With tears welling in her eyes, the 45-year-old woman pressed her hands together in respect before the first monk she saw at Sitagu's clinic and told her story. The other eight members of her family were killed in the cyclone. She now felt suicidal but no longer had anyone to talk with. The other day, word reached her village that a monk had opened a clinic 10 kilometers upriver. So on Thursday, she got up early and caught the first boat going upstream.

Nay Lin, 36, a volunteer doctor at the Kun Wan clinic, one of the six emergency clinic shelters Sitagu has opened in the delta, said: "Our patients suffer from infected wounds, abdominal pains and vomiting. They also need counseling for mental trauma, anxiety and depression."

Since the cyclone, the Burmese have become even closer to the monks while their alienation from the junta grows. This bodes ill for the government, which brutally cracked down on thousands of monks when they took to the streets last September appealing to the generals to improve conditions for the people.

Village after storm-hit village, it is clear who has won people's hearts.

Some monks died with people in the storm. Now, others console the survivors while sharing their muddy squalor.

While the government has been criticized for obstructing the relief effort, the Buddhist monastery, the traditional center of moral authority in most villages here, proved to be the one institution people could rely on for help.

Monasteries in the delta - those still standing after the storm - were clogged with refugees. People went there with donations or as volunteers. Monasteries that served as religious centers, orphanages and homes for the elderly were now also shelters for the homeless.

"The monks' role is more important than ever," said Ar Sein Na, 46, a monk in the delta village of That Kyar. "In a time of immense suffering like this, people have nowhere to go except to monks."

Kyi Than, 38, said she had traveled 25 kilometers by boat to Sitagu's camp.

"Our village monk died during the storm. I felt so good today having my first chance to talk to a monk since the storm. Monks are like parents to us," she said. "The government wants us to shut up, but monks listen to us."

Faced with the country's deadliest natural disaster in recent memory, senior monks have organized their own relief campaigns.

Every day, their convoys head down delta roads. A leading figure in these efforts is Sitagu, whose name invariably draws words of reverence or a thumbs-up sign here.

"Meditation cannot remove this disaster. Material support is very important now," Sitagu said. "Now in our country, spiritual and material support are unbalanced."

Trucks of rice, beans, onions, clothes, tarpaulins and cooking utensils, donated from all over Myanmar, pulled into Sitagu's International Buddhist Missionary Center in Yangon from early morning on. Each day, shortly after dawn, a convoy of trucks or a barge on the Yangon River departs for the delta, loaded with relief supplies and volunteers.

Among villagers here, Sitagu appeared to command as much authority as the pope among Roman Catholics. As he sat on a wooden bench in his field headquarters, people lined up to pay their respects. Villagers came to present lists of their most urgent needs. Monks from outlying villages came asking for help to repair their temples. Rich families from towns knelt before him and donated bundles of cash.

However, like other senior monks here he must strike a careful balance. He has the moral duty to speak out on behalf of his suffering people but he must also protect his social programs and hospitals, which provide free medical care to the destitute in a country whose government views such private undertakings as a reproof.

But, speaking at his shelter as an afternoon monsoon rain drummed against the roof, Sitagu sounded frustrated with the government.

"In my country, I cannot see a real political leader. General Than Shwe's 'Burmese way to democracy?"' he said, referring to the junta's top leader. "What is it?"

He defended the monks' uprising last September, saying the government's failures to provide "material stability" for the people undermined the monks' ability to provide "spiritual stability."

Among monks interviewed in the delta and Yangon, there was no sign of imminent organized protests.

Still, a 40-year-old monk at Sitagu's camp said that "monks are very angry" about the government's recent move to evict refugees from monasteries, roadside huts and other temporary shelters, even while the state-run media are filled with stories of government relief efforts. "The government doesn't want to show the truth."

A young monk in the Chaukhtatgyi Paya monastery district in Yangon predicted trouble ahead. "You will see it again because everyone is angry and everyone is jobless," said the monk, who said he joined the September "saffron revolution" and had a large gash over his right eye from a soldier's beating to show for it.

A monk from Mon State in southern Myanmar, who was visiting the delta to assess the damage and arrange an aid shipment, said: "For the government, these people are no more than dead animals in the fields."

The simmering confrontation between the two pillars of Myanmar life today - the military and the Buddhist clergy - was evident at the village level after the cyclone.

Shortly after the storm, a monk in Myo Thit, a village 30 kilometers from Yangon, walked around with a loudspeaker inviting victims to his monastery and asking people to donate. The monk had to stop, villagers said, after a township leader affiliated with the government threatened to confiscate the loudspeaker.

The interdependence between monks and lay people is age-old. Monks receive alms - food, medicine, clothes, cash to buy books - from the laity. In return, they offer spiritual comfort. In villages without government schools, a monastic education is often the only one available for children.

"There is a relationship of reciprocity between monks and the lay people," said Desmond Chou, a Burmese-born scholar of comparative religion in New Delhi. "If a fire breaks out in a Myanmar village, it is usually the monks, not firefighters, who arrive first to rescue the people."

Source. / International Herald Tribune

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