Categoria: Idiomas

“Beauty will save the world” – Dostoyevski tells us how

Leonardo Boff6 Comentários

We learned from the Greeks, and then it was passed down through the centuries, that all beings, no matter how different they may be, have three transcendental characteristics (they are always present, regardless of situation, place and time): they are, unum, verum et bonum, that is, the being enjoys an internal unity that maintains its existence; it is truthful, because it presents itself as it is in reality, and it is good, because it is well adapted for its role alongside other beings, helping them exist and coexist.

The Medieval Franciscan masters, such as Alexandre de Hales and especially Saint Bonaventure, were those who, carrying on a tradition that came from Dionysius Aeropagita and Saint Augustine, ascribed another transcendental characteristic to the being: pulchrum, that is, beauty. Surely based in personal experience, Saint Francis, who was a poet and a aesthetic of exceptional quality, who “in the beauty of the creatures would see the Most Beautiful,” enriched our understanding of the being through the dimension of beauty. All beings, even those that appear repugnant to us, viewed with affection, in their details and in their whole, offer, each in its own way, a unique beauty, if not in its form, in the way the whole is articulated with surprising equilibrium and harmony.

One of the greatest connoisseurs of beauty was Fyodor Dostoyevski. Beauty was so central to his life, as we are told by the Benedictine monk and great spiritualist Anselm Grün, in his last book, Beauty: a new spirituality of the joy of living, (Belleza: una nueva espiritualidad de la alegría de vivir, Vier Türme Verlag, 2014), that the great Russian novelist would go every year to Dresde to contemplate Raphael’s beautiful Madonna Sixtina. He would remain for long periods contemplating that splendid work. This fact is surprising, because his novels delved into the most obscure and even perverse areas of the human soul. But in fact what moved him was the search for beauty. He gave us this famous phrase: “Beauty will save the world”, in his novel, The Idiot.

In the The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevski deepens the question. An atheist, Ippolit, asks prince Mischkin: “How could ‘beauty save the world’?” The prince says nothing but goes to an 18 year old young man in agony. And he stays with him, filled with compassion and love, until the young man dies. With that the prince wanted to express that beauty is what takes us to love, shared with suffering; the world will be saved now and always so long as that gesture exists. And how we miss it now!

For Dostoyevski, the contemplation of Raphael’s Madonna was his personal therapy. Without it he would have despaired for mankind and for himself, with all the problems he saw. In his writings he described evil and destructive people, and others who were close to the abyss of desperation. But his vision, that rhymed love with shared suffering, managed to see beauty in the soul of the most perverse characters. For Dostoyevski, the opposite of the beautiful was not the ugly, but the utilitarian; the spirit of using others, and thereby stealing their dignity.

“We surely cannot live without bread, but it is also impossible to exist without beauty”, Dostoyevski would repeat. Beauty is more than aesthetics, it possesses an ethical and religious dimension. He saw in Jesus one who sowed beauty. “He was an example of beauty and He planted it in people’s souls, so that through beauty they all would become brothers to each other”. Dostoyevski does not refer to loving the other. To the contrary: it is beauty that elicits love and makes us see in the other someone to be loved.

Our culture, dominated by marketing, sees beauty as a bodily construction, and not as the totality of the person. Consequently plastic surgery, botox and other methods appear to make people more “beautiful”. As an artificial beauty, it has no soul. And if we look closely, this fabricated beauty results in a cold beauty, with an aura of artificiality that lacks radiance. This evokes vanity, not love, because beauty has to do with love and communication. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevski observes that a face is beautiful when one can perceive that in it, God and the Devil litigate about good and evil. When one perceives that good is victorious, there arises an expressive beauty, soft, natural and radiant. Which beauty is better: the beauty of the cold face of a top model, or the wrinkled and radiant face of Sister Dulce from Salvador de Bahia, or of Mother Teresa from Calcuta? Beauty is a radiance of the being. In the two Sisters that radiance is manifest, in the top model, it has no strength.

Pope Francis has given special importance in the transmission of the Christian faith to the via pulchritudinis (the path of beauty). That the message is good and just is not enough. It has to be beautiful, because only that way can it touch people’s hearts and elicit the love that attracts, (Exhortation The joy of the Gospel, n 167). The Church does not seek proselytizing, but the attraction that comes from beauty and the love whose characteristic is splendor.

Beauty has value in itself. It is not utilitarian. It is like the flower that flowers just to flower. It does not matter if it is seen or not, as the mystic Angelus Silesius says. But, who is not fascinated by a flower that gratuitously smiles to the universe? Thus we must live beauty in the midst of a world of interests, exchanges and merchandise. Then beauty makes real its Sanskrit origin, Bet-El-Za, meaning “the place where God shines”. It shines for everything and also makes us shine for the beautiful.

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

We Are Living the Times of Noah

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

We are living the times of Noah. Having a premonition that a flood would come, old Noah asked people to change their lives. But no one would listen to him. To the contrary, “they ate and drank, got married and gave themselves in matrimony until the Flood happened that caused everyone to perish” (Lk 17,27; Gn 6-9).

The 2000 scientists of the IPCC, who study the Earth’s climate, are our present day Noahs. Their third and last report, of April 13, 2014, carries a very grave warning: we only have 15 years to prevent Earth’s climate from rising more than 2 degrees centigrade. If we exceed that, we will experience something like the Flood. None of the 196 heads of State has said a word. The great majority continue exploiting the natural resources, carrying on business as usual, speculating and consuming without stopping, just as in the days of Noah.

I discern three grave irresponsibilities: the general and also specific and supine ignorance of the Northamerican Congress that has rejected all measures against global warming; the manifest ill will of the majority of heads of State; and the lack of creativity to start preparing for a possible rescuing Arc. As a madman in a society of “wise men” I dare propose some initiatives. If they have any merit it is to point towards a new paradigm of civilization that could change the direction of history. They are:

1. To complement the dominant instrumental-analytic-scientific reason with emotional or cordial intelligence. Without this we will be unmoved on seeing the devastation of nature. Nor will we commit ourselves to rescuing and saving her.

2. To abandon the simplistic understanding of the Earth as a warehouse of resources, in favor of a vision of the living Earth, as a super living, auto-regulating organism, called Gaia.

3. To understand that, as humans, we are that part of the Earth that feels, thinks and loves, whose mission is to care for nature.

4. To proceed from the still-current conquest-domination paradigm, to that of caring and responsibility.

5. To understand that sustainability is only guaranteed if we respect the rights of nature and of Mother Earth.

6. To articulate the natural contract with nature, that presupposes the currently absent reciprocity with the social contract, that postulates the presently insufficient collaboration and inclusion of all.

7. El medio ambiente, the half-environment, does not exist, but the whole environment. The community of life is what exists, which has the same basic genetic code that establishes a relationship among all.

8. To abandon the obsession with growth/development in favor of redistributing the accumulated wealth.

9. We should produce to fulfill human needs, but always within the limits of the Earth and of each eco-system.

10. To keep under control the voracious productivity and limitless competition, in favor of cooperation and solidarity, because we all depend on each other.

11. To overcome individualism in favor of mutual cooperation, because this is the supreme logic of the process of evolution.

12. The common good for humans and nature must have primacy over the individual and corporate common good.

13. To move from the ethic of utilitarianism and efficiency to that of caring and responsibility.

14. To abandon individualistic consumerism in favor of shared sobriety. That which is more than we need, is what others lack.

15. To move from the maximization of growth to the optimization of prosperity, starting with the most needy.

16. Instead of permanent modernization, ecologize all knowledge and processes of production, seeking to protect the natural goods and services and to allow nature and the Earth to rest.

17. To replace the anthropocentric era, where the human being is a geophysical destructive force, with the ecozoic era, that ecologizes and includes all beings in the great earthly and cosmic system.

18. To value the infinite human/spiritual capital above the finite material capital, because the former carries the criteria for responsible interventions in nature and permanently nourishes the human/spiritual values of solidarity, caring, love and compassion, the bases for a society with justice, equality and respect for nature.

19. To combat the deception and depression caused by the unfulfilled promises of general well-being made by the culture of capital, by nourishing the hope-principle, the source of creative fantasy, of new ideas and of viable utopias.

20. To believe and to witness that, in the end, good will triumph over evil, truth over lies, and love over indifference. A ray of light will overcome the immensity of darkness.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Can we still smile amidst the fear and consternation of our days

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários

In my already long theological trajectory, from the beginning in the 1960s, there have always been two central themes that represent the singularities of Christianity: the society-like conception of God, (the Trinity) and the idea of the resurrection after death. If we omitted these two themes, almost nothing would change from traditional Christianity. It fundamentally predicates monotheism (only one God), as if we were Jews or Moslems. And instead of resurrection, it prefers the Platonic theme of the immortality of the soul. This is a sad loss, because we have stopped professing something special, I would say almost exclusive to Christianity, which is charged with joviality, hope, and an innovating sense of the future.

God is not the loneliness of the one, the terror of philosophers and theologians. God is the communion of three Uniques, that because they are unique are not just numbers, but a dynamic movement between diverse, equally eternal and infinite relationships – relationships so intimate and intertwined that they preclude the existence of three gods, but only one God-love-communion-inter-retro-communication. Ours is a Trinitarian monotheism, and not a-Trinitarian or pre-Trinitarian. This is how we differ from Jews and Muslims, and other monotheist traditions.

Saying that God is relationship and communion of infinite love, and that from God all things derive, allows us to understand what quantum physics has been saying for almost a century: everything in the universe is relationship, the intertwining of all with all, creating an intricate network of connections that form the unique and only universe. God, in effect, is the image and likeness of the Creator, the source of infinite interrelations between diverse beings, that are called Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This concept removes the foundation from any and all centralism, monarchism, authoritarianism and patriarchies, that used to find in a unique God and unique Lord their justification, as some critical theologians have already observed. The society-like God, however, offers metaphysical support for all types of sociality, participation and democracy.

But since preachers generally do not refer to the Trinity, but only to God (lonely and unique), there is lost a source of criticism, creativity and social transformation in the development of democracy, and of a participation that is open and without end.

Something similar occurs with the theme of the resurrection. The resurrection constitutes the central nucleus of Christianity, its point d’honneur. It gathered again the community of the apostles after the execution of Jesus of Nazareth on the cross (they were all returning, broken hearted, to their homes). It was the testimony of the women who said: “that Jesus who was dead and buried lives and has resurrected”. The resurrection is not a kind of reanimation of a corpse, such as Lazarus, who finally died like anyone else, but the revelation of the novissimus Adam in the joyous expression of Paul: the irruption of the definitive Adam, the new human being, as if a good ending to the entire process of anthropogenesis and cosmogenisis were being forecast. Consequently; a revolution in evolution.

The Christianity of early times lived in this faith in the resurrection, summarized by Saint Paul saying: “If Christ did not resurrect our preaching is empty and our faith vain” (1Cor 15,14). In that case, it would be better to think: “let’s eat and drink because tomorrow we will die” (15,22). But if Jesus was resurrected, everything changes. We will also be resurrected, because He is the first among many brothers and sisters, “the first of those who died” (1Cor 15,20). In other words, and this is a good response to all those who say that we are beings-for-death: we die, yes, but we die to be resurrected, to leap towards the end of evolution and to anticipate it in the here and now of our temporality.

I do not know a more hope filled message than this one. Christians should announce it and live it everywhere. But Christians put it aside and were left with the Platonic pronouncement of the immortality of the soul. Others, as, ironically, Nietzsche already observed, are sad and taciturn, as if there were neither redemption nor resurrection. Pope Francis says that “they are Christians of Lent without resurrection” with “a funeral face”, they are so sad that they look as if they were going to their own funeral.

When someone dies, the end of the world arrives for that person. In that moment, the moment of death, resurrection occurs: it inaugurates time without time, the blessed eternity.

In an epoch such as ours, one of a general disintegration of social relations and of threats of devastation of life in its different forms, and even with the danger of the disappearance of our human species, it is worth standing for these two illuminations: That God is the communion of three who are a relation of love, and that life is not destined to personal and collective death, but to still more life. Christians point to a sign of this bet: The Crucified that was Transformed. He bears the signs of his painful passing among us, the marks of the torture and crucifixion, but, now transformed, the human potentialities hidden within Him were fully realized. That is why we announce Him as the new being among us.

Easter is not for celebrating anything other than this joyous reality, that helps us smile and to look to the future without fear or pessimism.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Losing oneself to find oneself: the monk, the cat and the moon

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

Modern man has lost the sense of contemplation, of marveling at his reflection in the crystalline waters of a brook, of being filled with surprise at the starry sky, and being entranced by the brilliant eyes of a child who looks questioningly at him. Modern man does not know the freshness of an autumn afternoon and is incapable of being alone, without a car, the Internet, or television; without his sound equipment. He is afraid of listening to the inner voice, the voice that never lies, that gives us counsel, that applauds us, judges us and is always with us. What is profoundly true can only be well expressed, as the ancient wise men witness, through short stories and rarely through concepts. Sometimes when we imagine that we are lost, that is when we find ourselves. This story tries to communicate that to us: it is a challenge for us all.

This short story, written by my brother Waldemar Boff, who tries to live as the monks of the desert used to live, brings us back to our lost dimension. Waldemar, one of my 10 brothers, who studied in the United States, is now a peasant and an educator of the people. Waldemar writes:
«There was a hermit who lived well beyond the Iguazaim mountains, South of the Acaman desert. Some 30 fine years had passed since he had retired to that place. A few nanny goats gave him his daily milk and a plot of the fertile valley gave him bread. Near his cabin there was a grapevine. During the year, under the ceiling of palm fronds, the bees would build their hives.

“For 30 years I have lived here…”, Porfirio, the monk, sighed. “Some good 30 years…”. And, sitting on a rock, his gaze lost in the waters of the small stream that bounded among the pebbles, he stayed with this thought for long hours. “30 good years and I still have not found myself. I became lost for everything and for everyone, in the hope of finding myself. But I have lost myself irremediably!”.

The following morning, before sunrise, after the prayer of the pilgrims, with a frugal sack on his back and half torn sandals on his feet, he began walking towards the Iguazaim mountains. He always climbed the mountains when strange forces threatened to collapse his interior world. He would go to visit Abba Tebaino, the most elderly and wise hermit, father of a whole generation of men of the desert. Abba Tebaino lived under a large boulder, from which the wheat fields of the village of Icanaum could be seen far below.

“Abba, I got lost to find myself. However, I became irremediably lost. I know not who I am, nor what for or for whom I am. I have lost the best of myself, of my very own self. I have sought peace and contemplation, but I struggle with a phalange of phantoms. I have done everything to deserve peace. Look at my body, as twisted as a root, marked by so many fasts, rough shirts and vigils… And here I am, broken and weak, defeated by the weariness of the search”.

And deep into the night, under an enormous moon illuminating the profile of the mountains, Abba Tebaino, sitting at the door of the grotto, listened with infinite tenderness to the confidences of brother Porfirio.

Later, in one of those intervals where the words fall silent and only the presence remains, a tiny cat who had lived with Abba for many years, slowly came crawling up to his bare feet. The tiny cat mewed, licked the coarse ending of the sayal, made himself comfortable and began to contemplate, with his great childlike eyes, the moon that, like the soul of the just, silently climbed to heaven.

And, after a long time had passed, Abba Tebaino began to speak, with great sweetness:

“Porfirio, my dear son, you have to be like the cat; he searches for nothing for himself, but expects everything from me. Every morning he waits by my side for a crust of bread and some milk from this old wooden bowl. Later on, he comes and spends the day very close to me, licking my swollen feet. He wants nothing, searches for nothing, expects everything. He is availability. He is surrender. He lives for living, pure and simply. He lives for the other. He is gift, grace, gratitude. Here, lying close to me, innocent and ingenuous, he contemplates, as archaic as being, the miracle of the moon that climbs, enormous and blessed. The cat does not search for himself, not even for the intimate vanity of self-purification or the satisfaction of self-realization. That was irremediably lost for me and for the moon… That is the condition for being what one is, and for finding oneself”.

And a profound silence descended on the mouth of the great boulder.

The following morning, before the sun rose, the two hermits sang the matins psalms. Their praises echoed through the mountains and made the borders of the universe tremble. Then, they gave each other a farewell kiss. Brother Porfiro, with a small bag on his shoulders and half broken sandals on his feet, returned to his valley, the South of the Acaman desert. He understood that to find himself he had to lose himself in the purest and most simple gratitude.

And the people who lived in the neighboring village say that many years later, in the profound night of a full moon, they saw in the sky a great radiance. It was Porfiro the monk who was climbing, together with the moon, to the infinite immensity of the heavens, deliriously sprinkled with stars. He did not need to lose himself now, because he had definitively found himself forever».

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.