I have tried to summarize the experiences of the past three weeks into a few words, but I've let go of so many things - that I don't know where to collect these words. I hope I found something in my attempt at disregard. At living. Everyday I woke up trying to find how I felt in words. The ones that came to mind were mainly numb, lost, impulsive. I was a sinner in trance. Mean and lazy... I felt asleep, but I knew I was awake.
In all this confusion, I watched the film 'Night train to Lisbon', which is based on the best selling book of the same name. There is a lengthy passage from the book, which said everything...and meant everything to me when I read it. Has that ever happened to you? You hear or read or meet someone and they say something exactly when and where you needed to hear it. So, it was this passage which made me feel alive... and I realized, that maybe the only word I need to use right now is Alive.
"I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals. I need their beauty and grandeur I need them against the vulgarity of the world. I want to look up at the illuminated church windows and let myself be blinded by the unearthly colors. I need their luster. I need it against the dirty color of the uniforms.
I want to let myself be wrapped in the austere coolness of the churches. I need their imperious silence. I need it against the witless bellowing of the barracks yard and the witty chatter of the yes-man. I want to hear the rustling of the organ, this deluge of ethereal tones.
I need it against the shrill farce of marches. I love praying people. I need the sight of them. I need it against the malicious poison of the superficial and the thoughtless.
I want to read the powerful words of the Bible (Quran). I need the unreal force of their poetry. I need it against the dilapidation of the language and the dictatorship of slogans. A word without these things would be a world I would not like to live in.
But there is also another world I don’t want to live in: the world where the body and independent thought are disparaged, and the best things we can experience are denounced as sins.
In all this confusion, I watched the film 'Night train to Lisbon', which is based on the best selling book of the same name. There is a lengthy passage from the book, which said everything...and meant everything to me when I read it. Has that ever happened to you? You hear or read or meet someone and they say something exactly when and where you needed to hear it. So, it was this passage which made me feel alive... and I realized, that maybe the only word I need to use right now is Alive.
"I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals. I need their beauty and grandeur I need them against the vulgarity of the world. I want to look up at the illuminated church windows and let myself be blinded by the unearthly colors. I need their luster. I need it against the dirty color of the uniforms.
I want to let myself be wrapped in the austere coolness of the churches. I need their imperious silence. I need it against the witless bellowing of the barracks yard and the witty chatter of the yes-man. I want to hear the rustling of the organ, this deluge of ethereal tones.
I need it against the shrill farce of marches. I love praying people. I need the sight of them. I need it against the malicious poison of the superficial and the thoughtless.
I want to read the powerful words of the Bible (Quran). I need the unreal force of their poetry. I need it against the dilapidation of the language and the dictatorship of slogans. A word without these things would be a world I would not like to live in.
But there is also another world I don’t want to live in: the world where the body and independent thought are disparaged, and the best things we can experience are denounced as sins.
How are we to be happy without curiosity, without questions, doubts and arguments? Without joy of thinking? The two words like a sword stroke cutting off your head, they mean nothing less than a demand to live our feelings and act against our thinking, they are the summons to a complete split, the order to sacrifice what is the core of our happiness: the internal unity and coherence of our life.
In His omnipresence, the Lord observes us day and night, every hour, every minute, every second, he keeps a ledger of our acts and thoughts, He never lets us alone, never spares us a moment completely to ourselves. What is man without secrets? Without thoughts and wishes that only he, he alone, knows?
Who could in all seriousness want to be immortal? Who would like to live for all eternity? How boring and stale it must be to know that what happens today, this month, this year, doesn’t matter: endless more days, months, years will come. Endless, literally.
If that was how it was, would anything count? We would no longer need to calculate time, nothing could be missed, we wouldn’t have to rush; It would be the same if we did something today or tomorrow, all the same. A million omissions would become nothing before eternity, and it would make no sense to regret something for there would always be time to make up for it.
Nor could we live for the day, for this happiness lives on the awareness of passing time, the idler is an adventurer in the face of death, a crusader against the dictate of haste. When there is always and everywhere time for all and everything. How should there still be room for the joy of wasting time?
A feeling is no longer the same when it comes the second time. It dies through the awareness of its return. We become tired and weary of our feelings when they come too often and last too long. In the immortal soul, a gigantic weariness and a flagrant despair must grow in view of the certainty that it will never end, never.
Feelings want to develop and we through them. They are what they are because they retreat from what they used to be and because they flow toward a future where they will diverge. If this stream flowed into infinity: thousands of feelings must emerge in us that we, used to a foreseeable time, cannot even imagine. So that we really don’t know what is promised us when we hear of the eternal life. How would it be to be us in eternity, devoid of the consolation of being someday released from the need to be us? We don’t know, and it is a blessing that we never will. For one thing we do know: it would be hell, this paradise of immortality.
It is death that gives the moment its beauty and its horror: Only through death is time a living time. Why does the Lord, the omniscient God, not know that? Why does He threaten us with an endlessness that must mean unbearable desolation?
I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals. I need the luster of their windows, their cool stillness, their imperious silence. I need the deluge of the organ and the sacred devotion of praying people. I need the holiness of words, the grandeur of great poetry.
All this I need. But just as much I need the freedom and hostility against everything cruel. For the one is nothing without the other. And no one may force me to choose".
In His omnipresence, the Lord observes us day and night, every hour, every minute, every second, he keeps a ledger of our acts and thoughts, He never lets us alone, never spares us a moment completely to ourselves. What is man without secrets? Without thoughts and wishes that only he, he alone, knows?
Who could in all seriousness want to be immortal? Who would like to live for all eternity? How boring and stale it must be to know that what happens today, this month, this year, doesn’t matter: endless more days, months, years will come. Endless, literally.
If that was how it was, would anything count? We would no longer need to calculate time, nothing could be missed, we wouldn’t have to rush; It would be the same if we did something today or tomorrow, all the same. A million omissions would become nothing before eternity, and it would make no sense to regret something for there would always be time to make up for it.
Nor could we live for the day, for this happiness lives on the awareness of passing time, the idler is an adventurer in the face of death, a crusader against the dictate of haste. When there is always and everywhere time for all and everything. How should there still be room for the joy of wasting time?
A feeling is no longer the same when it comes the second time. It dies through the awareness of its return. We become tired and weary of our feelings when they come too often and last too long. In the immortal soul, a gigantic weariness and a flagrant despair must grow in view of the certainty that it will never end, never.
Feelings want to develop and we through them. They are what they are because they retreat from what they used to be and because they flow toward a future where they will diverge. If this stream flowed into infinity: thousands of feelings must emerge in us that we, used to a foreseeable time, cannot even imagine. So that we really don’t know what is promised us when we hear of the eternal life. How would it be to be us in eternity, devoid of the consolation of being someday released from the need to be us? We don’t know, and it is a blessing that we never will. For one thing we do know: it would be hell, this paradise of immortality.
It is death that gives the moment its beauty and its horror: Only through death is time a living time. Why does the Lord, the omniscient God, not know that? Why does He threaten us with an endlessness that must mean unbearable desolation?
I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals. I need the luster of their windows, their cool stillness, their imperious silence. I need the deluge of the organ and the sacred devotion of praying people. I need the holiness of words, the grandeur of great poetry.
All this I need. But just as much I need the freedom and hostility against everything cruel. For the one is nothing without the other. And no one may force me to choose".
