Categoria: Idiomas

Tenderness: the life-blood of love

Leonardo Boff7 Comentários


The paths that connect the heart of a man to the heart of a woman are mysterious. Equally mysterious are the paths between the hearts of two men and similarly between the hearts of two women who find each other and declare their mutual love. From those connections is born the falling in love, love; and finally marriage or permanent union. Since we deal with liberties, the couples are exposed to imponderable events.

Existence itself is never established once and for always. It exists in permanent dialogue with the environment. That exchange leaves no one immune. Everyone lives exposed. Mutual loyalties are tested. In a marriage, passion is followed by daily life with its dull routine. In their lives together the two experience separations, volcanic passions erupt with fascination for another person. It is not uncommon that the ecstasy is followed by deception. There are twists, forgiveness, renewal of promises and reconciliation. But the wounds always remain, such that even when healed, scars remain as a reminder that once they bled.

Love is a living flame that burns, but that can diminish and slowly be covered with ashes, until it is extinguished. It is not that the persons come to hate each other, rather, they become indifferent to each other.  That is the death of love. The 11th verse of the Spiritual Canticle of the mystic Saint John of the Cross, which are songs of love between the soul and God, says with acute observation: «the pain of love is only healed with presence and closeness». Platonic, virtual love, or love at a distance are not enough. Love demands presence. Love needs the concrete closeness that, more than just the physical, is the face-to-face, and the heart feeling the throb of the heart of the other.

The mystic poet puts it well: love is an ache that, in my words, is only cured with what I would call essential tenderness. Tenderness is the life-blood of love. If you want to guard, fortify, and give sustainability to love, be tender with your companion. Without the balm of tenderness the sacred flame of love is not nourished.  It burns out.

What is tenderness? To begin with, let us set aside psychological and superficial concepts that identify tenderness as a mere emotion and the excitement of feeling the other’s presence. To concentrate only on feelings creates sentimentalism. Sentimentalism is a product of insufficiently integrated subjectivity. It bends in on itself and celebrates the sensations provoked by the other. It does not reach beyond itself.

Tenderness, by contrast, arises when one is not centered only in oneself, but reaches out in the direction of the other, feeling the other as other, participating in the existence of the other, and allowing oneself be touched by the history of the other’s life. The other marks the subject, by its lingering in the other, not for the sensations that it evokes in one, but for love, for the appreciation of the other and the value of that person’s life and struggle. “I love you not because you are beautiful; you are beautiful because I love you”.

Tenderness is the affection we give to others for themselves. Tenderness is caring without obsession. Tenderness is neither effeminacy nor renouncing of rigor. It is an affection that, in its own way, opens us to the knowledge of the other.  Speaking with the bishops in Rio de Janeiro, Pope Francis asked them for “the revolution of tenderness,” as a condition for a true pastoral encounter.

In reality we only know each other well when we have affection and feel involved with the person with whom we want to establish communion. Tenderness can and should coexist with extreme undertakings for a cause, as was truly exemplified by the absolute revolutionist Ernesto Che Guevara (1928-1968). We hold dear his inspiring sentence: “we must be hardened but without losing tenderness” . Tenderness includes the creativity and self-realization of the person next to us and through the person we love.

A relationship of tenderness does not involve anguish, because it is free from the search for advantage and domination. Tenderness is the heart’s own strength, it is the profound desire to share paths. The anguish of the other is my anguish, their success is my success and their salvation or perdition is my salvation and, in deep down, not only mine but of all.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662),  XVII century French philosopher and mathematician, made an important distinction that helps us understand tenderness: he distinguished the esprit de finesse from the esprit de géometrie. The esprit de finesse is the spirit of purity, of sensibility, of caring and of tenderness. The spirit does not only think and reason. The spirit goes beyond: to reason it adds sensibility, intuition and the capacity of feeling in depth.  From the spirit of purity is born the world of excellencies, of the great dreams, of the values and commitments to which it is worth dedicating one’s time and energy.

The esprit de géometrie is the spirit of calculus and work, interested in efficacy and power. But where power is concentrated there is neither tenderness nor love. This is why authoritarian persons are hard and without tenderness and, sometimes, without pity.  But this is the mode of being that has dominated all modernity. It has cornered, and placed under great suspicion, all that is related to affection and tenderness.

From here also comes the terrifying vacuum of our “geometric” culture, with its plethora of sensations but without deep experiences; with fantastic accumulation of knowledge but with scant wisdom, with too much muscular vigor, too much sexualizing, too many artifacts of destruction, as shown by the serial killers, but without tenderness or the caring for one another, for the Earth, and her sons and daughters, for the common future of all.

Love and life are fragile. Their invincible strength comes from the tenderness with which we envelope and nourish them forever.

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

The ultimate cause of the ecological crisis: the destruction of the universal relationship

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários

There are many causes of the ecological crisis. Here we address the most basic: the permanent rupture with the ultimate connectivity of the universe and its Creator that humans have introduced, nourished and perpetuated.

There is a profoundly mysterious and tragic dimension to the history of humanity and the universe. The Judeo-Christian tradition calls that fundamental frustration the sin of the world, and theology, following Saint Augustine, who invented the expression, calls it the original sin or original fall. Original here has nothing to do with the historical origins of this anti-phenomenon, or consequently, with the past. Rather, it relates to that which is original in the human being, which affects the fundamental and radical reason for human existence, and therefore, the present human condition.

This sin can neither be reduced to a mere moral dimension, or to an unsuccessful action by the human being. It refers to a globalized attitude, and thus, to a subversion of all human relations. It is about an ontological dimension to the human being, understood as a web of relationships. That web is distorted and corrupted, damaging all types of relationships.

It is important to emphasize that original sin is an interpretation of a fundamental experience, an answer to a challenging enigma. For example, the splendor of a blooming cherry tree in Japan exists simultaneously with a tsunami in Fukushima that devastates everything. There is a Mother Teresa of Calcutta who rescues desperate street people, and a Hitler who sends six million Jews to the gas chambers. Why this contradiction? Philosophers and theologians have long sought an answer. So far, without success.

Without going into the many possible interpretations, we accept one that is gaining ever greater consensus among religious thinkers: that is imperfection seen as a moment in the process of evolution. God did not create a universe that was instantaneously finished, a past event, totally perfect. Rather, God unleashed an open-ended and perfectible process that tends towards forms that are ever more complex, subtle and perfect. We hope that one day it will reach its Omega point.

Imperfection is not a defect, but a process of evolution. It does not express God’s final design for His creation, but a moment within an immense process. The earthly paradise does not mean nostalgia for a lost golden age, but the promise of a future yet to come. The first page of the Bible is actually the last. It comes at the beginning as a kind of scaled down model of the future, so that the readers are filled with hope for a happy ending to all of creation.

Saint Paul saw the sad condition of creation as a submission “to vanity” (mataiótes), not because of the human being, but because of God Himself. The exegetic sense of “vanity” points to the process of maturity.  Nature has not yet reached maturity. That is why in the present phase it is still far from the final goal. Because of that “all of creation still groans and suffers with labor pains” (Rm 8,22). The human being participates in this process of maturation, and also groans (Rm 8,23). All of creation anxiously awaits the full maturity of the sons and daughters of God, because between them and the rest of creation there exists a profound interdependency and connection. When that occurs, creation will also reach maturity, because, as Saint Paul says, “it will participate in the glorious freedom of the sons and daughters of God” (cf Rm 8,20).

Then the final design of God will be realized. Only then will God be able to speak the longed for words: “and He saw that all was good”. Now, these words are prophesies and promises for the future, because not all is good. Ernst Bloch, the philosopher of the hope principle put it well: «genesis is at the end, not the beginning». The human being’s delay in maturing implies a delay in creation. Human advances imply an advance of the whole. Humanity can be an instrument of liberation or an obstacle to the process of evolution.

And here is where the drama lies: when evolution reached the level of humanity, it attained a state of consciousness and liberty. The human being was created as a creator. Humans can intervene in nature for good, caring for her, or for bad, devastating her. It began, perhaps with the appearance of the homo habilis, 2.7 million years ago, when the instruments were created with which humans could intervene in nature, without respecting her rhythms. At the beginning it could have been a single act. But its repetition created an attitude of lack of caring. Instead of being together with everything, living together, humans set themselves above things, dominating them. And so it has been in crescendo, up to our times.

With this humans broke from the natural solidarity among all beings. They contravened the design of the Creator who wanted the human being as co-creator, whose genius would complete the imperfect creation. But instead, the human being assumed the place of God. The strength of human intelligence and will enabled humanity to feel like a small “god” and to behave as if in fact it were God.

This is the great separation from nature and the Creator that underlies the ecological crisis. The problem is in the type of human being that developed through history, more a «geophysical force of destruction» (E. Wilson) than a force for caring and preservation.

The remedy lies in re-connecting with all things. It is not necessary to be more religious, but more humble, more a part of nature, responsible for her sustainability, and more careful in all human activity.  Humanity must return to the Earth, from which it has exiled itself, and become her guardian. Then the natural contract will be remade. And by also opening up to the Creator, humanity’s infinite thirst would be satiated, and the reward would be peace.

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

What is the place of the religious in the world?

Leonardo Boff7 Comentários

As worldly and apparently materialistic as society has become, we cannot deny that recently there has been a strong turn towards the religious, towards mysticism and the esoteric.  It seems that excessive rationalization and the functioning of our complex societies is becoming tiresome. The return to the religious just shows that the human being seeks something greater. There is an invisible side to the visible that we would like to uncover. Perhaps therein lies a secret meaning that fulfills our tireless search for something that we cannot identify. In that non-confessional horizon perhaps it makes sense to talk of the religious or the spiritual. It has endured all forms of attack but managed to survive. The early moderns saw it as something pre-modern, a fantastic knowledge that had to give way to positive and critical knowledge (Auguste Comte). Then it was read as a disease: an opiate, alienation and false consciousness for the one who has not yet found himself, or if he did find himself, has gotten lost again (Karl Marx). Afterwards, it was interpreted as an illusion of the neurotic mind that seeks to pacify the desire for protection and to make bearable our contradictory world (Sigmund Freud). Later on, it was interpreted as a reality that, due to the process of rationalization and the disenchantment of the world, tends to disappear (Max Weber). Finally, some had it as something meaningless, since it can neither be proven nor disprove, (Karl Popper and Rudolf Carnap).

I believe the great mistake of these diverse interpretations lies in the fact that the religious has been assigned  an incorrect location: within reason. The reasons for this begin with reason. Reason itself is not a fact of reason. It is an unknown. The Upanishad already prayed wisely: «that for which all thought thinks, cannot be thought». Perhaps the cradle of the religious lies in this «not thought», that is, in those matters exorcised by modern rationality: fantasy, the imaginary, that background of desire from which arise all the dreams and the utopias that populate our minds, fill our hearts with enthusiasm, and light the fuse of the great transformations of history. Its place is in what philosopher Ernst Bloch called, the hope principle.

It is characteristic of these matters –of the utopic, of fantasy and the imaginary– not to be satisfied with concrete, rational data. More accurately, they dispute this data, because they suspect that data are always facts; the data and the facts as well are not all that is real. The real is even greater. To the real also belongs the potential, what is not yet, but could be. Because of that, utopia does not contradict reality; it reveals the potential and ideal dimension of that reality. As the wise Emile Durkheim said at the conclusion of his famous book, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: «the ideal society is not outside of the real society; it is part of it». And he ended: «only the human being has the faculty of conceiving the ideal and of adding it to the real». I would say, of detecting it within the real, ensuring that this real within which is the ideal, is always greater than the data we have at hand.

It is within this experience of the potential, of the utopic, that the religious arises. This is why Rubem Alves, who has best studied in Brazil “the enigma of religion”  (the title of his book), would say: «The intention of religion is not to explain the world. Religion is born precisely from the protest against this world that can be described and explained by science. Scientific description, by rigorously maintaining itself within the limits of the given reality, consecrates the established order of things. Religion, by contrast, is the voice of a conscience that finds no rest in the world as it is, and seeks to transcend it».

For this reason, the religious is the oldest and most systematic organization of the utopic dimension, which is inherent to the human being. As Bloch put it well: «where there is religion, there is hope» that not all is lost. This hope is love for that which still is not, “the conviction of realities that are not seen,”  as the Epistle to the Hebrews, (11,1), says, but that are the fundation of what is hoped for.

It was the philosopher and mathematician Ludwig Wittgenstein who saw with lucidity this singular characteristic of the religious, and said: in the human being does not only exist the rational and scientific attitude that always questions how things are and seeks an answer for everything. There also exists the capacity to be entranced: «to be entranced cannot be expressed by a question; because of that, neither does an answer exist». The mystical exists: «the mystical does not reside in how the world is, but in the fact that it exists». The limitation of reason and of the scientific spirit lie in the fact that there is nothing about which they must remain silent.

The religious and mystical always end up in noble silence, because in no dictionary is there a word that can define it.

Up to now we have spoken of the religious in its good, sane nature. But it can become sick, and then is born the disease of fundamentalism, dogmatism and the exclusivity of truth. As any disease references health, the religious must be analyzed starting from its healthy state, and not from its disease. Consequently the healthy religious makes us more sensible and human. Its healthy return is urgent now, because it helps us love the invisible and to make real that which still is not, but can be.

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

Now, revolution means activating the emergency brake

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

The following pertinent phrase is attributed to Karl Marx: «the only revolutions that are made are those that happen». That is, a revolution does not occur as a subjective and voluntary act. When that happens, it is soon defeated, for being immature and inconsistent.  A revolution takes place when conditions are objectively mature, and the people simultaneously have the subjective desire for it. Then, it bursts forth, with the possibility, not always secure, of triumph and consolidation.

We may presently have all the objective conditions for a revolution. Revolution is thought of here in its classic meaning, as a change in the overall goals of a society, that creates the means necessary to attain them, which implies a change in the social, judicial, economic and spiritual structure of that society.

Today the general degradation of almost every aspect, especially in the natural infrastructure that sustains life, is so profound that, by itself, it requires a radical revolution. Otherwise, we could be too late and witness ecological-social catastrophes of magnitudes never before experienced in human history.

But there does not yet exist in the “holders of power”  a subjective consciousness of this urgency. They do not want it. They prefer to maintain their power, even at the risk that they themselves may succumb to an eventual Armageddon. The Titanic is sinking, but their obsession with profit is so great that they continue buying and selling jewels as if nothing were happening.

The “revolutions” are generally created by the powerful, who act before the oppressed do, saying, as is usually done in Brazil: «let us make a revolution before the people do». Of course it is not a revolution but a coup de class, using the armed forces for this purpose, as in the case of the “revolution of 1964”. The winners have their acolytes who sing their praise, erect monuments, and name streets, bridges and squares after those who led the coup, as it still occurs in Brazil.

The history of the defeated is rarely written. Their memory is erased. But sometimes this memory comes back as a force of dangerous denunciation. Mexican historian Miguel Leon-Portilla has had the merit of narrating The Other Side of the Conquest of Latin America by the Iberians. There he gathers the dramatic and hurtful testimonies of Aztec, Maya and Inca victims. It has been translated into Portuguese as, The Conquest of Latin America as seen by the Indians (Vozes 1987). Let us look at just one Indigenous testimony about the fall of Tlatelolco (near the capital Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City). It simply makes one cry:

«On the roads there are broken arrows, pieces of dispersed heads of hair; roofless houses, walls in flames, worms abound in the streets and in the squares and the walls are spattered with blown-up brains; the waters run red, as if they had been painted; we have chewed on salty herbs, pieces of adobe bricks, lizards, rats and the dusty earth, besides the worms» (Leon-Portilla, p. 41).

Such tragedies pose the never satisfactorily answered question: Does history have meaning? Meaning for whom? There are all types of interpretations, from the most pessimistic, that sees history as a series of wars, murders and genocides, to the more optimistic, such as that of the enlightened, who thought of history as the growth of endless progress, towards ever more civilized societies.

The two World Wars, of 1914 and 1939, and the wars that were came later, killed nearly 200 million people and have pulverized optimism. Now no one can tell us which way we are going: not even the wise and holy Dalai Lama and Pope Francis.  Events happen, in all their ambiguity, some filled with hope, others frightening.

I join in the Judeo-Christian tradition, that holds that history can only be thought of starting from two principles: the principle of the negation of the negative and that of the fulfillment of the promises. The negation of the negative means that the criminal will never triumph over the victim. The weight of the negative in history will not be its definitive meaning. To the contrary, the Creator  “will wipe all the tears from the eyes, death will no longer exist and there will no longer be either mourning or tears, or pain, because all of that has already passed” (Apocalypse 21,4).

The principle of the fulfillment of the promises affirms: “Behold I make all things anew; there will be a new heaven and a new Earth; God will live among us and all the peoples will be peoples of God” (Apocalypse 21, 5; 1 and 3). That is the immortal hope of the Biblical tradition that did not vanish when the Jews were taken to the Nazi death chambers.

Regarding the present situation, I refer to a phrase of Walter Benjamin, quoted by one of his scholars, Michael Löwy: «Marx said that revolutions are the engine of world history. But things perhaps present themselves in a completely different manner now. It is possible that revolutions are, for those of humanity who travel in that train, the act of pulling the emergency brake» (Walter Benjamin: warning of fire, Boitempo 2005, p. 93-94). Our time requires putting on the brakes, before the train explodes at the end of the line.

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