Father Francis Tiso Part 1: Becoming a Rainbow and Other Transcendent Encounters

Elizabeth Rovere:

Hello, and welcome to Wonderstruck. I am your host, Elizabeth Rovere. I’m a clinical psychologist, a yoga teacher, and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. I’m really curious about our experiences of wonder and awe and how they transform us.

My guest on this episode is Father Francis Tiso. He’s a Catholic priest and renowned scholar of Tibetan Buddhism. He reads in 12 languages, ministers to migrants, is a maker of plant medicines, and advocates staunchly for interfaith dialogue. Notably, Father Tiso is the author of Rainbow Body and Resurrection: Spiritual Attainment, the Dissolution of the Material Body, and the Case of Khenpo A Chö. The book tells the incredible story of a Tibetan monk, Khenpo A Chö, who prepared his body to turn into radiant light through retreat, prayer, and meditation. When Khenpo A Chö died, he achieved this phenomenon. It’s called the Rainbow Body. And in the year 2000, Father Tiso went to Tibet to report on the profound significance of this event and to learn how it connects to resurrection across other religions, including the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Father Tiso and I met up last summer at Wonderstruck’s first ever symposium in Buonconvento, Italy, held in partnership with Five Books and Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions.

Since talking about transcending the bodily state and meditating yourself into a rainbow is no small topic, this is the first installment of a two-part conversation.

I really would love to get into this fascinating matter about the Rainbow Body. Why does it matter? What you have encountered pursuing it? And I want to ask you about making the decision to write a book about it. The idea, or the phenomenon of the Rainbow Body, is that the body dissolves and turns into the rainbow light in a way that spreads across the universe. The person, the spirit, in a way that is beneficial and healing and helpful to other people.

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah, of course, the fundamental intent is always for the benefit of all beings. The body, and in the case of our friend the great Khenpo, who I’m sorry I never actually met him personally.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, I know, right?

Father Francis Tiso:

He died in 1998, and we went there in 2000. But this man was a man of immense compassion. He had a number of disciples, and it was that variety of persons, from the nuns in Kandze to the villagers, his own relatives. But he was one of those people, he could calm wild animals, calm thieves, and brigands and bandits and all of that, and calm people who were mad at him and also flow skillfully under the circumstances of the Chinese invasion of Eastern Tibet. You see?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah.

Father Francis Tiso:

That’s challenging too. How many of us have had to deal with that?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Exactly.

Father Francis Tiso:

Where you’re a criminal because of your profession of faith. And he managed to do that too. And then at the end of his life, his body is transformed into light, and it’s already manifesting signs before he dies. Then the day of his death, he’s saying the mantra of compassion. He’s not doing some complicated tantric practice. He’s doing the simple repetition of the mantra, ‘Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ’ the mantra of the bodhisattva of compassion. And he was very devoted to his holiness the Dalai Lama and that… who is an emanation of that bodhisattva. And that was expression of his wholeness.

So then he breathes his last, and the disciples begin to notice a change. So the 82-year-olds skin becomes pink and supple like that of a child. And then they cover the body with his yellow monastic robe, and they go quickly to go talk to his friend about 100 kilometers away to ask what to do next, because they knew that something was about to happen because there had already been rainbows in the sky.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right before he died?

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah. So now you get rainbows, you get music, you get perfumes, you get-

Elizabeth Rovere:

Like a light show.

Father Francis Tiso:

… a mysterious light rain coming down, and this explosion of light that was seen from hundreds of kilometers away. All right? And that went on for eight days. And then when they lifted the cloth, there was nothing there. Nothing. There is a report that was published saying that there were hair and nails, but there were not. That was just somebody, you know, boilerplate. That was just because that often it is said that hair and nails are left behind, but in this case, there was no… none of that.

Elizabeth Rovere:

As you’re telling the story, I was having this experience of, I’m just sort of feeling this sense of awe and kind of amazement. And I’m wondering, what was it like for you to be talking to these people that were firsthand accounts? How did you handle it? How do you deal with it? Were you just sitting back going, okay, listening.

Father Francis Tiso:

Right. Yeah. But listening with an open heart.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right. Yes.

Father Francis Tiso:

Because when we, well take for example, of course, just getting there was not so easy. There are plenty of tales to tell about that. But then the approach to his monastery in the town of Kandze, I didn’t know where I was going. I knew that there were monks there that knew him, that were close to him, but I didn’t even have their names. I mean, we had the names of the Rinpoches connected with that monastery, but as we found out later, they don’t actually live in the monastery. So the team is behind me, and I’m marching forward, I’m saying, “I’m sure we’ll figure something out.” And so this monastery is huge. It’s like an Italian village on top of a hill with many different little buildings and dwellings and temples and all of that. And so we get to what looked like a doorway and who was standing in the doorway, but a young layman with a big cowboy hat on his head as the Kappas like to wear.

And it’s as if he’s waiting for us. We didn’t know who he was. But very quickly, my translator spoke with him in Lhasa dialect. He understood Lhasa dialect and he understood what we were all about and took us immediately to the elderly monks who had eight chapters of the biography of Khenpo A Chö. And we had a lovely conversation with them, and they said, if you want chapter nine, you have to go across the river to the nuns who have the ninth chapter. So we did that later and met the nuns. And when we are sitting there reading the ninth chapter together with the nuns, it was about a monastery of about 20, 25 wonderful women. And we get to the line, faith and devotion. And so I read it aloud in Tibetan, and I said, in English, “This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?” And one after another, the tears start to come.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh my God.

Father Francis Tiso:

And it was awesome. And the team, of course, was completely overwhelmed. And then in the following days that we actually went out to the village where the Hermitage was, where all this took place. And as we’re approaching the Hermitage, your heart is pounding, and the young nuns and monks were gathering yellow and red flowers to put on the altar in the shrine, in the Hermitage. And we’re all doing prostrations as we go up the hill. And we get there and we circumambulate. Let’s see, a Catholic priest does circumambulation this way, the Buddhist’s do it this way.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh, really?

Father Francis Tiso:

Clockwise. We do an anti-clockwise.

Elizabeth Rovere:

I didn’t know that.

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s interesting.

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

The ying and the yang.

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Were they like when you were said, okay, the faith and devotion, that’s what this is about. And they are tearing up, and here you are a Catholic priest, and here they are Buddhist monks. And none of that mattered. It was just all about the same thing.

Father Francis Tiso:

In every experience I’ve had with dialogue with the Tibetans and Nepalis, I’ve never encountered a barrier based on the fact that I was a Catholic priest. On the contrary, there was an appreciation and a welcome. They really liked the idea of that being in dialogue with a priest. And remember also that even some very important Rinpoches, like the venerable Khandro Rinpoche, who is the head of Mindrolling Monastery, you have a woman head of a male monastery, a remarkable woman, one of my important teachers. She was trained by the nuns in the schools in North India.

So they know the Catholic Church with its clinics and with the schools and all of that. And they have a great deal of respect for the presence of the church in India, the Himalayas, Sikkim and so on. So they know there’s something there. One of the most delightful memories I have of my research in Dolpo, which is northern Nepal, just on the Tibet border, where I’m there with these Lamas for several weeks studying, photographing and making notes about their collection of sacred paintings, and meeting with them and asking them questions about how they paint and how they make their colors and all that.

Elizabeth Rovere:

You’re a painter too.

Father Francis Tiso:

And then I do my mass, I celebrate the mass and all of that, and they’re doing the ceremonies in the temple, and they invite me to come because they know I can read Tibetan. So I join in and chant with them, and then afterwards I go up on the roof and set up an altar and celebrate mass. And one time there were two rainbows in the sky after we did this. One for the ceremony we did down below, and one when I was done, and everybody knew it. It was not a big surprise or anything like that.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It was just kind of like a yes.

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah. That’s the way things work.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s the way things go.

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah. And so they started calling me the Jesus Lama. Yesu Lama.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yesu Lama. That’s brilliant. So what do they think of Jesus? Do they think of Jesus actually as a monk?

Father Francis Tiso:

Like a Buddha.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Like a Buddha.

Father Francis Tiso:

As a kind of manifestation on earth of Buddha nature. And I mean, I had a conversation with two monks, I think it was at Drepung Monastery in Tibet, right inside Tibet about the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. And they completely understood what that meant.

Elizabeth Rovere:

They did?

Father Francis Tiso:

Yes. Because a bodhisattva gives his life for everyone. So Jesus on the cross to them made perfect sense. I think the confusion they had was that they had been told by somebody that communism, as in Chinese Communist Party, came from the West. It was a Western philosophy. And so they asked me, so was Jesus the source of this philosophy? You see? Right. Because a great bodhisattva is the source of a great world philosophy, always. So was he the source of this? And I had to do some explaining.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That’s really funny.

Father Francis Tiso:

And then we get to the question of redemption on the cross and self-giving, and perfect, selfless love. And that makes perfect sense to someone who’s trained in bodhisattva practices. Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right. And what about the reciprocal as far as in Catholicism or other priests or communities with Catholics?

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah, I think here we have a very interesting problem. We have our missionary priests in Nepal, Japan. Many that I’ve known in China and Taiwan, who were really great scholars of the religions of the peoples among whom they worked. And not only scholars, but even some cases practicing. Some of those who have become Zen Roshi’s, for example. Yves Raguin for example, was a French Jesuit in Taiwan who knew Buddhism thoroughly and was also practicing meditation. Great man, really great man. And we have Assal in Japan and so forth. So those who actually know from the inside the greatness of these cultures would see all of these religions as manifesting the intentions of God. The word comes forth from the Father, and then the word becomes flesh.

And we recognize that in Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes forth to bring life to the creation that has been generated through the Son, through the word of God. So the word and the spirit work together in the cosmos to bring everyone back to the Father. So when we see Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam and the archaic religions of the world, we see manifestations of the primordial seeds of truth in the word. Okay. What we’re running into today is a very noisy group of people. All right? I don’t want to-

Elizabeth Rovere:

It’s more of a superficial level.

Father Francis Tiso:

There are some people making a lot of noise. I mean even about the Pope and his openness to the Amazon native people and now to the Canadian native people. And so they’ll make a lot of protestations that somehow these are false religions invented by the devil to deceive mankind. That kind of thing. But this is not the official position of the church. And even before the second Vatican Council in the 1960s, it was a teaching of the church that there are ways of salvation outside the church. And that to say you had to be physically a member of the church in order to attain eternal life was not taught. I mean, it was taught, but it was not the official teaching.

Elizabeth Rovere:

So the Pope doesn’t think that.

Father Francis Tiso:

Right. And so even Pius the 12th in the 1940s excommunicated several people because they taught that only if you became a Catholic Christian could you be saved.

Elizabeth Rovere:

So why is this not clear? Because it’s like-

Father Francis Tiso:

I don’t know, because in California, when I was out there working in the parishes, there were many people who told me, we were taught that everybody else is damned.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of almost like the, when you get to, you were saying about the Catholic mystical theology or the deeper kinds of truths or seeds, that it’s similar across cultural tradition and that it’s not, I mean, you can’t split it up and divide it in all these different ways because there’s so many, there are these commonalities, which is a kind of unpopular thing, I think to say.

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah, it seems that we have… alas, the people who make a lot of noise, of course, tend to attract a lot of attention. All right? And that’s a strategy, all right? Let’s be honest. It’s a strategy. And it’s very much contrary to the gut instincts of a true mystic. A true mystic almost would prefer to be in the forest or in the cave and not get involved in these arguments. Even my Jewish friend, I won’t even say who this person is, because during our dialogue with several Rabbis and scholars in Israel online a couple of days ago, she listened, answered a few questions, and then quietly left the room when things got controversial.

But she really lives the Jewish mystical tradition. She doesn’t want to just argue about it and it was very interesting. And so the instinct of a person who has been given a certain kind of a gift is that, oh, this is too beautiful and too sacred to run through the mill of this push and pull of a dialectic. Well, what about this? And what about that? And what about this and what contradiction is here and what contradiction is there?

Elizabeth Rovere:

So it makes me think of that again, being in the intellect or an analytic thinking process and dividing versus being more in the contemplative. And then it makes me wonder about from your own experience, your own contemplative tradition and experience of, I don’t want to split them into two worlds because they’re integrated, but how that then informs, which I think you’re already describing how you live your life, and then it reminds me of this, again where I had heard you interviewed about this, from Luke 12-13, where “What is said in the dark shall be said in the light.”

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

And is that related to what you’re talking about?

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah, sure. Because then Jesus is saying in that passage that things that were considered mystical teachings may be handed on only from master to disciple. The disciples would announce, all right, openly. All right. And of course Jesus was aware that this was going to cause controversy. But these are things that had to be broken open. And this is why even in the letter to the Ephesians, there’s the passage about things that were hidden in past ages, but now are revealed, that are openly proclaimed and discussed. Okay.

Elizabeth Rovere:

And this is about mysticism.

Father Francis Tiso:

Exactly. Yeah. But the mysticism in the sense of a mystical awareness about the intentions of God from all eternity. And that’s why the first chapter of Colossians and the first chapter of Ephesians, the first chapter of John, those chapter 1. In those three texts, you have those great hymns which describe this, that especially that hymn in Ephesians, which says, “Before the world was created, we were known in Christ.” Right? So there is a way in which conscious beings were already known to God and abiding in God before there was a material creation. This is why a person like Evagrius of Pontus is so interesting because he brings out the meaning of that in his teachings in the fourth century. He shows you how that primordial union of all beings with God. All right then-

Elizabeth Rovere:

And that’s very Buddhist.

Father Francis Tiso:

Right it certainly sounds very Dzogchen. It might not even be Buddhist, but it is very close to the Dzogchen idea of primordial light pulsating, the whole of creation, incessantly moment by moment. All right? So that every moment of perception is direct contact with primordial reality. Okay? This is ka dag pure from the beginning, which is a dynamic process. It’s not a static process. Pure from the beginning means everything that has ever emanated into the world of perception is pure from the beginning. All right? So that this is what Ephesians are saying, all right? It’s saying it in terms of the narrative of a savior. The story of the savior, but it’s saying, who is the savior saving? The savior is saving the entities that from before the world began, were already created to be oriented toward that primordial reality.

Elizabeth Rovere:

So bringing them back…

Father Francis Tiso:

Bringing them back.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Is that when you were talking, my association was, is that kind of when you had that vision in the church, is that kind of what you saw? That kind of light, you said…

Father Francis Tiso:

When I had the experience of Christ coming out of the tabernacle?

Elizabeth Rovere:

Okay. Not that, well, you had that, but I thought you had also said, you sort of saw the evolution of the creation and the evolution of humanity.

Father Francis Tiso:

Then now that one wasn’t so much about this primordial pulsation, but it was about what is, in other words, there is this creation, all right? And this unfolding in time of creation, but then what is your place in it? Where do you belong? And you belong in it as the priest of it, that is to offer it back to its source. So this is the priest from all eternity according to the order of Melchizedek. All right. So that symbol over here, is from the 1968 vision.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh. Wow.

Father Francis Tiso:

You see?

Elizabeth Rovere:

So that’s what you saw?

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah. Something like, well, this is a way of summing it up, but I actually saw the stars and the planets and the animals and minerals and all of that of the things, of course that had fascinated me as a child then becoming full-blown in their cosmic implications. That was…

Elizabeth Rovere:

So you as a child, you were being almost, in a way, seeing-

Father Francis Tiso:

Prepped.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, prepped and seeing vestiges of it.

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Where are you now?

Father Francis Tiso:

Where are we now in this thing? Because, well, what happens is the evolution of these visionary guidance experiences goes toward the priesthood of all things visible and invisible. So that’s the integration not only of creation, but also of the sacred ways of humanity, which include, of course, the Eucharist and all of the other religions insofar as they are in harmony with that primordial purity.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Which is that vibrating pulsation of energy of life, the life force. But what do you think about the practices of Rainbow Body or body of light meditation? You mentioned recently the connection of meditation to the awakening of the heart. All of these things seem very good practices, but do you see things like the book that you’ve written in a way to influence the populate? People are like, oh, that’s really interesting. It seems so unbelievable. But now we’re talking about of course, you have the Rainbow Body, just like, but it’s still to most people, it’s very out there. How do we connect this to, I don’t know, my cousin, for example?

Father Francis Tiso:

Sure. I mean, there are of course the relic tour where they went around and presented many different kinds of Buddhist relics, including the very shrunken body of Lama A Chö, who was the friend of Khenpo A Chö, all right.

Elizabeth Rovere:

They brought, they carried it around…

Father Francis Tiso:

He was the fellow who showed us the photos of himself radiating light in the dark.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Oh, yes.

Father Francis Tiso:

And he’s the one who said, I will manifest at death. And he did. You see? So there are these evidences that something…

Elizabeth Rovere:

He manifested, he did not rainbow, but light?

Father Francis Tiso:

Well, yeah. The two photos showed his body in the dark, radiating light. Then after he died in 2008, his body shrank down to about the size of your fingers. And that relic is preserved, and that’s part of the relic Tour. And then they also have the famous ring cell, the colored spheres that are found after cremation and other things like that. So there are these phenomena which suggest that something physical really happens. Okay? All right. So then of course, our interviews also would tend to support that something physical actually happened. All right?

Now, but apart from that is the question of what is the meaning of this for our friends, our times? And that’s why the retreat with the Bonpo was so meaningful to me. Because if you do those practices and there are 15 practices that are connected with that particular sequence of yogic meditation practices, you do those practices, you will get to what I consider to be the turning point. All right? And that is the tummo, the yogic heat practice. And the tummo or yogic heat practice brings the energy of the body, the five winds as they’re called, into the central channel of the subtle body at the heart. And as you do this practice, you will notice a kind of luminosity with your eyes closed. Now, as you keep doing this and you do it, and it’s supposed to be done in a 100-day retreat, you do a 100-day retreat with that practice with breath control and the proper posture and so on and so forth, you can detect the stabilization of this light that you see, so that you can actually work with it. It becomes a workable feature of your consciousness. Right?

Now, we apply that to other discoveries that we came up with the interviews of the [inaudible 00:29:14]… people and other Lamas, other yogis, and so on and so forth. And you begin to realize that that inner light is the prana, it is the life energy. All right? And you will be able to work with and perfect your control over that energy in your body-mind complex. And you will be able to spread it out into your whole body and in fact, into your whole environment. All right? And this means that there are methods that are accessible even to the average person that can make available a degree of control and integration with some very profound spiritual truths about ourselves as human beings.

Two friends of mine were down from Denmark a few weeks ago, and they’re both Dzogchen practitioners. She is also a priest in the church of Denmark and has a parish, and her husband is a descendant of some very distinguished clergy and hymn writers in the Danish church. And they told a story of a woman in Denmark who had been brought up a materialist, an atheist, and had this remarkable experience of light and herself began to radiate light visible to other people. So they told me this story, and apparently she’s written a couple of books and had some both tragic and remarkable experiences in her life and how this experience made her what she is today, which is a compassionate and loving person. But what’s interesting here is that you have phenomena like this popping up from here, here and there. And this is something that we hear about in the Himalayas from yogis, healers in the Philippines, healers in Latin America, and so on and so forth. The light phenomena. And even light coming from your hands in various healing processes.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Reiki, or just any kind of a healing practice.

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah. See, so all of these things turn out to even be useful.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right. Well, it’s in our common lexicon too. The inner light, I want to see your inner light or work on developing the inner light. I feel like I’ve heard that in so many contexts  during my life, without really thinking, oh, it actually means something.

Father Francis Tiso:

There’s really light. It’s not just…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah, there’s really light.

Father Francis Tiso:

… a metaphor.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. It’s not just a metaphor. And if it was a metaphor, why that metaphor?

Father Francis Tiso:

Right.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Because what is it a metaphor for?

Father Francis Tiso:

Yeah. This is… why do we study? Right. We don’t really study to get there. We study to get the vocabulary so that we have the tools to get there.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Right. The last question I’m just going to ask you if you feel, and I think you’re probably just going, you’re going to say, I think so, yes. But this kind of study or these practices or retreats that you’re talking about will be of benefit to people to develop more compassion and greater companionship and fellowship.

Father Francis Tiso:

Well, clearly the two pages in Richard Davidson’s book, in Altered Traits that describe the altered traits and describe the settings in which altered traits are supported and lived are magnificent. Because he’s basically saying that to belong to a community, to be part of a community, to be in service of others, and all of that is all part of this. It’s not just living in a cave in the dark. You go into the cave in the dark for a while to find out more about who and what you are so that you can share it with others.

But we share it with others, not in a way to beat people over the head or to say, I’m better than you or to say, we have to straighten the whole world out tomorrow. No, it’s the planting of seeds that will grow in many different ways. And so we’ve been given this gift. We are astonished. While your wonderstruck expression is very much to the point. We are wonderstruck by the fact that every moment is a revelation of divine love. And then we share that with others through what we do. So this morning I delivered a passport to our Nigerian friend who lives a few miles away from here and is working…

Elizabeth Rovere:

The restaurant?

Father Francis Tiso:

… In the restaurant. So the little gestures of companionship. “I’m with you. I’m with you.” When we go to visit the sick, just the fact that you’re there makes a difference. Okay.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Absolutely.

Father Francis Tiso:

I know I’ve known people, amazing people. There was a woman in Eureka, California where she was pretty much 90% bedridden, and yet she had hundreds of people that she was helping, if not thousands, through emails, through mailing them films and books. She was in touch with all these people. I said, you’re doing more than I’m doing as a priest from your bed. This kind of thing. Gestures of kindness, gestures of caring, being there for someone. It’s wonderful.

Elizabeth Rovere:

It is wonderful.

Father Francis Tiso:

And it cannot be the… it’s almost like if you have that long lever, you can move the world. Because even if you are doing it in a tiny community it has that effect.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Yeah. I think it makes me feel, it’s like sublime joy. It’s that it’s just sort of radiates and there’s a calming aspect to it. It’s okay. It takes you out of that rushing around having to do, or I don’t know, improve or whatever you’re supposed to be doing.

Father Francis Tiso:

Or worse yet to compete or to…

Elizabeth Rovere:

Compete or…

Father Francis Tiso:

… put down others. No, we don’t want to do that.

Elizabeth Rovere:

The other thing too, when you’re talking about the light, so I love yoga, but the whole namaste, the light in me bows to the light in you. It’s everywhere. It’s in our language, it’s just kind of everywhere. And the fact that these things, like our scientists, as far as you’re aware, or maybe they are at the mind life, are they interested to look at these kinds of emanations and?

Father Francis Tiso:

Absolutely, yes. Yeah. Compassion is a big theme for mind and life. Yeah. Because it is the practical application. And then Tibetan tantra, the scepter, the d’orjay represents skillful means. And skillful means is grounded in the realization of compassion so that the plethora, the vast spectrum of possible things one can do for the good of others is all in that. All right. The bell represents the realization of emptiness, of openness, better translation, the openness of all phenomena. The possibility that this could transform into that is all there. And then this is the skillful means that makes it available to people where they are moment to moment.

Elizabeth Rovere:

Well, I mean, I can see that you practice what you say, you walk your talk, and I guess I can’t help… I have to end with one last question, and I already said that before, but I can’t help it. Do you practice these types of meditations?

Father Francis Tiso:

Sure.

Elizabeth Rovere:

The one that, because you had actually sent me a writeup where you imagine with the light and so forth it, and so you practice that, and then you have also your prayers and mass, and you combine them and not combine them, but you’re doing both.

Father Francis Tiso:

Well, one feeds into the other because you know have mass and the liturgy of the hours, which all of which involve intense mindful awareness and aesthetic awareness. And then in private prayer, which may be very, very simple. I think one of the most important forms of personal prayer for me is the self forgetfulness that occurs when one simply sits in quiet in nature and allows everything to say what it has to say. It is remarkable, especially in hiking. If you go hiking and sometimes, I forgot who I am because I’m surrounded by all of this, which has so much to tell, right? This self forgetfulness, or if I’m sitting in my meditation cabin and there’s the cat, and there are the birds and there are the insects and all kinds of things going on all around. And that stillness, this is the Wendell Berry poem, (correction) The Peace Of Wild Things. It kind of grabs you.

Elizabeth Rovere:

That was Father Francis Tiso. Thank you so much, Father Tiso. Please come back next time on Wonderstruck for the second part of our conversation when we’ll discuss mortality and ritual, mourning and love, meditation and illness, and some of Father Tiso’s own experiences of wonder. From visions of Christ, to communicating with the dead through his dreams.

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Wonderstruck is produced by Wonderstruck Productions, along with the teams at Baillie Newman and FreeTime Media. Special thanks to Brian O’Kelley, Eliana Eleftheriou, and Travis Reece. Thank you for listening. And remember, be open to the wonder in your own life.