Categoria: Idiomas

The Ethical and Humanitarian Communism of Oscar Niemeyer

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

I did not have many encounters with Oscar Niemeyer, but those I had were long and intense. What would an architect and a theologian talk about, if not of God, religion, injustice against the poor, and the meaning of life?

In our conversations, I sensed someone with a profound saudade of God. He envied me because, even though he considered me an intelligent person, I still believed in God, something he could not do. But I would calm him down by saying: what is important is not to believe or not to believe in God, but to live ethically, with love, solidarity and compassion for those who suffer most. Because at the dusk of life, that is what counts. And in this respect he was very solid. His gaze would be lost in the distance, with a soft glow.

He was once very impressed when I told him this phrase from a medieval theologian: «If God exists as things exists, then God does not exist». And he asked: «what does that mean?» I replied: «God is not an object that can be found anywhere; if it were so, God would be part of the world and not God». But then he would ask: «and what is that God?» And almost in a whisper, I told him: «God is like a species of powerful and loving Energy that creates the conditions so that things may exist; God is more or less like the eye: that sees all but cannot see Itself; or like the thought: the strength through which the thought thinks, can not be thought». He remained thoughtful, but continued: «Christian theology says that?» And I replied: «Christian theology says that, but it is ashamed of saying it, because then it should be silent instead of talking; and it is always talking, especially the popes». But I comforted him with a line attributed to the great Argentinean, Jorge Luis Borges: «Theology is a curious science: in her all is true because all is invented». Niemeyer was amused by that. And he found very graceful the beautiful trouvaille of a sweeper of Rio de Janeiro, the famous Gari Sorriso: «God is the wind and the moon; the dynamic of growing, applause for the one who climbs up and help for the one who is descending». I suspect Oscar would have no difficulty accepting that God, who is so humane and so near us.

He smiled softly and I took the opportunity to say: «Is it not the same with your architecture? In architecture all is simple and beautiful, not because it is rational, but because all is invented and the fruit of the imagination». He agreed with that, adding that he found more inspiration for architecture by reading poetry, novels, and fiction, than by giving himself to intellectual elucidation. I said to him: «in religion it is more or less like that: the greatness of religion is fantasy, the utopic capacity of projecting kingdoms of justice and heavens of happiness. And great modern religious thinkers such as Bloch, Goldman, Durkheim, Rubem Alves and others do not say anything different: our error was to place religion within reason, when its natural niche is found in the imagination and the principle of hope. There religion reveals its truths and can inspire in us the meaning of life».

To me, the greatness of Oscar Niemeyer is not only his genius, which is recognized and praised around the world, but his conception of life and in the depth of his communism. To him, «life is a gust of wind», light and fleeting, but one to be lived with total integrity. Above all, life to him was not pure enjoyment, but creativity and work. He worked up to the end, like Picasso, producing more than 600 works. And, since he was a complete being, he cultivated the arts, literature and sciences. He had began to study cosmology and quantum physics late in life. He was filled with admiration and amazement at the immensity of the universe.

But above all, he cultivated friendship, solidarity and the esteem of everyone. «Architecture is not what is important» he repeated many times, «what is important is life». But not just any life; a life lived in search of the necessary transformation to overcome injustice against the poor, one that improves this perverse world, a life that translates into solidarity and friendship. In the Jornal do Brasil, 21/04/2007, he confessed: «The fundamental is to recognize that life is unjust, and that only by lending each other a hand, as brothers and sisters, can we live life better».

His communism is very close to the communism of the early Christians, as written about in The Acts of the Apostles, chapters 2 and 4. There is said that, “Christians put everything in common and there were no poor among them”. Consequently, it was not an ideologic communism, but ethical and humanitarian one: to share, to live with sobriety, as he always lived, to divest oneself of money, and help those who need it. Everything should be in common. To a journalist who asked him if he would take a pill to have eternal youth, he coherently replied: «I would accept it if it were for all the world; I do not want immortality only for myself».

A moment that stayed with me, occurred at the beginning of the 1980s. Oscar was in Petropolis, and invited me to have lunch with him. I had returned that day from Cuba, where, at the request of Fidel Castro, with Frei Betto, we had dialogued for several years with different echelons of government, (always watched over by the SNI) to see if we could extract them from their dogmatic and rigid conceptions of Soviet Marxism. Those were tranquil times in Cuba. With the support of the Soviet Union, it could carry out its splendid projects of health, education and culture. I shared with him the fact that, no matter where I had gone in Cuba, I never found favela-like shanty towns, but a dignified and industrious poverty. I told him a thousand things about Cuba that, according to Frei Betto, was at that time, «a Bahia that had flourished». His eyes would shine. He almost did not eat. He was filled with enthusiasm, at seeing that, somewhere in the world, his dream of communism could, at least in part, become embodied and be good for the majorities.

It was great my surprise when, two days later, an article by him appeared in the Folha de São Paulo, with a beautiful drawing of three mountains with a cross above. Above it, it said: «Coming down the highland of Petropolis to Rio, I, who am an atheist, prayed to the God of Brother Boff that the situation of the Cuban people may one day be a reality in Brazil». That was the warm, soft and radically human generosity of Oscar Niemeyer.

I have an everlasting remembrance from him. From Darcy Ribeiro, who was a friend-brother of Oscar, I acquired a small apartment in the Alto de Boa-Vista neighborhood, in the Enchanted Valley. From there, the entire Barra de Tijuca can be seen, up to the end of the Recreio de los Bandeirantes. Oscar remade that apartment for his friend, in such a way that, Darcy (who was small in stature) could always see the sea. He made a platform about 50 centimeters high, and, since it could not be otherwise, with a beautiful curve for a corner, as a sea wave on the body of a beloved woman. There I retire when I want to write or meditate a little, because a theologian also must take care to save his soul.

On two occasions, he offered to design a model of a small church for the place where I live, Araras in Petropolis. I declined because I considered it unjust to revalue my property with the work of such a genius as Niemeyer. After all, God is neither in heaven nor on Earth, but there where the doors are open.

Life is not destined to disappear with death, but to be transfigured alchemically through death. Oscar Niemeyer has only passed to the other side of life, to the invisible side. But the invisible forms part of the visible. Because of that, he is not absent, but present, if invisible. But always with the same sweetness, softness, friendship, solidarity and love that always characterized him. And wherever he is, he will be fantasizing, projecting and creating worlds that are beautiful, curved and filled with lightness.

Translation:
Melina Alfaro, volar@fibertel.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

The Path as Archetype

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

I have a special fascination for paths, especially for the country roads that climb painfully up the mountain and disappear into the jungle curves. Or the paths in the Alps of Southern Germany, covered by multicolor leaves, that I walked on gray autumn afternoons in my student days. These paths are within us. We must ask the paths why there are such distances, why they are sometimes difficult to follow, or so tortuous that they tire us out. They hold the secrets of the walkers’ feet, the weight of their sadness or the lightness of their joy at having found their beloved.

The path constitutes one of the most ancestral archetypes of the human psyche. Humans keep the memory of all the paths followed throughout the 13.7 billion years of the evolutionary process. It especially keeps the memory of when our ancestors appeared: a branch of the vertebrates, class of the mammals, order of the primates, family of the hominids, the genre homo, the present sapiens/demens species.

Given this incommensurable memory, the human path appears very complex and often indecipherable. In each person’s path, the millions and millions of experiences of long gone paths, walked by countless generations, are still at work. Each person is tasked with lengthening this path, doing so in a way that improves and deepens the path that was received, straightens what was twisted and leaves to future travelers a path enriched by their footsteps.

The path has always been and still is an experience in direction, that indicates the goal and simultaneously the way that goal is reached. Without a path we feel lost, inward and outwardly. We become filled of darkness and confusion. As today, humanity is without direction, and in blind flight, with neither compass nor stars for orientation in the gloomiest nights.

Each human being is a homo viator, a walker through the paths of life. As Argentinean Native poet and singer Atahualpa Yupanqui says: «the human being is the Earth who walks». We do not receive our existence ready made. We must build it. And to that end, we must open the path, starting with and going beyond the paths that preceded ours, and have already been walked. Even so, our personal path is never completely given. It must be built with creativity and without fear. As the Spanish poet Antonio Machado says: «walker, there is no path; the path is made by walking».

In effect, we are always on the way to our own selves. At bottom, either we realize ourselves, or we are lost. Therefore, there are basically two paths, as the First Psalm of the Bible says: the path of the just or the path of the impious, the path of light or the path of darkness, the path of selfishness or the path of solidarity, the path of love or the path of indifference, the path of peace or the path of conflict. In a word: the path that leads to a good end or the path that leads to the abyss.

But let’s pay attention: in the concrete human condition the two paths always coexist, and sometimes cross each other. Within the good path is also hidden the bad, and in the bad, the good. Both cross our hearts. This is our drama that could be transformed into crisis, and even into tragedy.

Since it is difficult to fully separate the chaff from the wheat, the good path from the bad, we are obliged to make a fundamental option in favor of one of them: for the good path, even though it may cost us renunciations or bring us disadvantages, but at least it gives us peace of conscience and the perception that we are correct. And there are those who opt for the path of evil: this is the easier path, it imposes no limitations, because all is fair so long as it is beneficial. But there is a price: the accusation of the conscience, the risk of punishment, and even of being eliminated.

This fundamental option confers an ethical quality on the human path. If we opt for the good path, the small mistaken steps or blunders will not destroy the path and its direction. What really counts to the conscience and to The One who with justice judges all, is the fundamental option we make.

For this reason, the dominant tendency in Christian moral theology is to substitute the language of minor or mortal sins with another, more in keeping with this unity of the human path: fidelity or infidelity to the fundamental option. One’s actions must not be isolated and judged apart from the fundamental option. It is a question of capturing the basic attitude and the fundamental project that is reflected in actions, and unifies life’s direction. If one opts for the good, with constancy and fidelity, it will confer more or less goodness to the actions, in spite of the ups and downs that always occur but which will not destroy a good path. They will certainly pass through the severe clinic of God if they find pity for their wickedness.

There is no escape: we have to choose the path to build and how to follow it, knowing that «living is dangerous» (Guimarães Rosa). But we never do it alone. Multitudes walk with us, solidarians in the same destiny, accompanied by Someone named: “Emmanuel, God with us”.
Leonardo Boff

Translation by Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar

The Path as Archetype

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

I have a special fascination for paths, especially for the country roads that climb painfully up the mountain and disappear into the jungle curves. Or the paths in the Alps of Southern Germany, covered by multicolor leaves, that I walked on gray autumn afternoons in my student days. These paths are within us. We must ask the paths why there are such distances, why they are sometimes difficult to follow, or so tortuous that they tire us out. They hold the secrets of the walkers’ feet, the weight of their sadness or the lightness of their joy at having found their beloved.

The path constitutes one of the most ancestral archetypes of the human psyche. Humans keep the memory of all the paths followed throughout the 13.7 billion years of the evolutionary process. It especially keeps the memory of when our ancestors appeared: a branch of the vertebrates, class of the mammals, order of the primates, family of the hominids, the genre homo, the present sapiens/demens species.

Given this incommensurable memory, the human path appears very complex and often indecipherable. In each person’s path, the millions and millions of experiences of long gone paths, walked by countless generations, are still at work. Each person is tasked with lengthening this path, doing so in a way that improves and deepens the path that was received, straightens what was twisted and leaves to future travelers a path enriched by their footsteps.

The path has always been and still is an experience in direction, that indicates the goal and simultaneously the way that goal is reached. Without a path we feel lost, inward and outwardly. We become filled of darkness and confusion. As today, humanity is without direction, and in blind flight, with neither compass nor stars for orientation in the gloomiest nights.

Each human being is a homo viator, a walker through the paths of life. As Argentinean Native poet and singer Atahualpa Yupanqui says: «the human being is the Earth who walks». We do not receive our existence ready made. We must build it. And to that end, we must open the path, starting with and going beyond the paths that preceded ours, and have already been walked. Even so, our personal path is never completely given. It must be built with creativity and without fear. As the Spanish poet Antonio Machado says: «walker, there is no path; the path is made by walking».

In effect, we are always on the way to our own selves. At bottom, either we realize ourselves, or we are lost. Therefore, there are basically two paths, as the First Psalm of the Bible says: the path of the just or the path of the impious, the path of light or the path of darkness, the path of selfishness or the path of solidarity, the path of love or the path of indifference, the path of peace or the path of conflict. In a word: the path that leads to a good end or the path that leads to the abyss.

But let’s pay attention: in the concrete human condition the two paths always coexist, and sometimes cross each other. Within the good path is also hidden the bad, and in the bad, the good. Both cross our hearts. This is our drama that could be transformed into crisis, and even into tragedy.

Since it is difficult to fully separate the chaff from the wheat, the good path from the bad, we are obliged to make a fundamental option in favor of one of them: for the good path, even though it may cost us renunciations or bring us disadvantages, but at least it gives us peace of conscience and the perception that we are correct. And there are those who opt for the path of evil: this is the easier path, it imposes no limitations, because all is fair so long as it is beneficial. But there is a price: the accusation of the conscience, the risk of punishment, and even of being eliminated.

This fundamental option confers an ethical quality on the human path. If we opt for the good path, the small mistaken steps or blunders will not destroy the path and its direction. What really counts to the conscience and to The One who with justice judges all, is the fundamental option we make.

For this reason, the dominant tendency in Christian moral theology is to substitute the language of minor or mortal sins with another, more in keeping with this unity of the human path: fidelity or infidelity to the fundamental option. One’s actions must not be isolated and judged apart from the fundamental option. It is a question of capturing the basic attitude and the fundamental project that is reflected in actions, and unifies life’s direction. If one opts for the good, with constancy and fidelity, it will confer more or less goodness to the actions, in spite of the ups and downs that always occur but which will not destroy a good path. They will certainly pass through the severe clinic of God if they find pity for their wickedness.

There is no escape: we have to choose the path to build and how to follow it, knowing that «living is dangerous» (Guimarães Rosa). But we never do it alone. Multitudes walk with us, solidarians in the same destiny, accompanied by Someone named: “Emmanuel, God with us”.

The Sensation of Seeing the Earth fromthe Outside

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

The last centuries have witnessed countless discoveries: of continents, original peoples, species of living beings, galaxies, stars, the subatomic world, the original energies and recently, the Higgs particles, a kind of subtle fluid that fills the universe; the virtual particles that when touched, take on mass, and become stable. But we had not yet discovered the Earth as a planet, as our Common Home. We had to go beyond the Earth so as to see her from the outside, and then discover her and confirm the unity that is Earth-humanity.

That is the great legacy of the astronauts who were first able to see the Earth from outer space. They produce in us what has been called the Overview Effect, that is, «the effect of the vision from above». Frank White gathered very beautiful testimonies of the astronauts in his book Overview Effect (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1987). Reading those testimonies impact us tremendously, and produce a feeling of great reverence, a true spiritual experience. Let’s read some.

Astronaut James Irwin said: «The Earth looks like a Christmas tree hung on the black backdrop of the universe; the further we go from her, the more she diminishes in size, until she is reduced to a small ball, more beautiful than anyone could imagine. That a living object so beautiful and so warm appears so fragile and delicate changes those who contemplate that beauty, because one starts to appreciate the creation of God and to discover the love of God». Another, Eugene Cernan, confessed: «I was the last man to set foot on the Moon, in December of 1972. From the lunar surface, I looked with reverential fear towards Earth, against a very dark background. What I saw was too beautiful to be grasped, too ordered and filled with intention to be the result of mere cosmic accident; one felt, deep inside, moved to praise God. God must exist, for having created that which I had the privilege to contemplate; the veneration and thankfulness surged spontaneously; for that the universe exists».

With fine intuition Joseph P. Allen, another astronaut, observed: «There was much discussion of the pros and cons of going to the Moon, but I heard no one say that we should go to the Moon in order to see the Earth from there, from the outside; that, after all, should have been the true reason for going to the Moon».

Through this singular experience, the human being awakens to the understanding that the human being and the Earth form a unity, and that this unity is part of a greater one, the solar unity, and this of another, still larger one, the galactic. This sends us to the whole universe, and the whole universe to the Mystery and from the Mystery to the Creator.

«From above», astronaut Cernan observed, «the barriers of skin color, religion and politics that divide the world here below cannot be seen». Everything is unified in one single planet, the Earth. Astronaut Salman al-Saud commented: «the first and the second day, we would point out our countries, on the third and fourth, our continents, and after the fifth day we were aware only of the Earth as a whole».

These testimonies convince us that in reality, Earth and Humanity form an indivisible whole. This is exactly what Isaac Asimov wrote in his New York Times article of October 9, 1982, on the 25th anniversary of the launching of Sputnik, which was the first to fly around the Earth. The title of the article was “Globalism:The Legacy of Sputnik”. And Asimov said: «into our reluctant minds, the vision that the Earth and Humanity form a unique entity is imposed». Russian Anatoly Berezovoy, who spent 211 days in space, affirmed the same thing. Effectively, we cannot put the Earth on one side, and humanity on the other. We form an organic and living whole. We humans are the part of the Earth that feels, thinks, loves, cares, and venerates.

From almost anywhere, contemplating the Earthly globe, the thought arises spontaneously that in spite of all the threats of destruction that we mount against Gaia, a good and beneficial future is somehow guaranteed. So much beauty and splendor cannot be destroyed. As the Christians would say: This Earth is penetrated by the Spirit and by the Cosmic Christ. Part of our humanity has already been made eternal by Jesus, and is in the heart of the Trinity. It will not be on the ruins of the Earth that God will complete the divine work. The Resurrected and His Spirit are pushing evolution towards its culmination.

A modern legend gives substance to this belief: «Once upon a time there was a Christian Greenpeace militant, who was visited in his dreams by resurrected Jesus, who invited him to walk in the garden. The militant accepted with enthusiasm. After walking for a long while, admiring the biodiversity in that little space, the militant asked: “Lord, when you walked the paths of Palestine, you once said that you would return one day in all your pomp and glory. Your return is being delayed too much! When will you in fact return at last, Lord?” After some moments of silence that seemed like an eternity, the Lord answered: “My dear brother, when my presence in the universe and in nature are as evident as the light that illuminates this garden; when my presence under your skin and in your heart are as real as my presence here now, when this presence of mine becomes flesh and blood in yourself, to the point that you will not need to think about it anymore, when you are so imbued with this truth that you will not need to ask insistently, as you are doing now… then, dear brother, those will be the signs that I have returned with all my pomp and glory.”»

Translation Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.