il nuovo papa
// April 20th, 2005 // Travel
Several months ago I faced the bottom of several empty beer glasses and the fallen hopes of Manhattan on the election of the neo-conservative President. Yesterday in Italy we did away with such new fangle inventions and fell back on plain conservative. A new Pope is in town and may all liberal media be proven wrong. May he strive to bridge the gulf between religions and humankind. May he seek to raise common values and fundamental rights for all. May he help return quest for the spirit to western society beyond it’s religious institution and may he fuel faith in other societies through knowledge and discovery rather than ritual and rhetoric. Big demands I know, but the resume says he was selected by God and is infallible, so it shouldn’t be too much to ask.
Am back in beautiful Rotterdam and reading “Steppenwolf”by Herman Hesse. A year ago I read Siddhartha, a work that became more than a parallel to my journey- it formed a critical and definitive event. This speaker of the soul has once again unfolded a story that I now find written on the walls of some cavern deep within me. Here’s an excerpt that trapped me entirely.
“Humor alone, that magnificent discovery of those who are cut short in their calling to highest endeavor, those who falling short of tragedy are yet as rich in gifts as in affliction, humor alone (perhaps the most inborn and brilliant achievement of the spirit) attains to the impossible and brings every aspect of human existence within the rays of its prism. To live in the world as though it were not the world, to respect the law and yet to stand above it, to have possessions as though “one possessed nothing,” to renounce as though it were no renunciation, all these favorite and often formulated propositions of an exalted worldly wisdom, it is in the power of humor alone to make efficacious.”
Tomorrow I will blog on my Misr experience.
