Going to Italy is not like Livingston at Victoria Falls - it is, rather, a mundane thing now, but we learn from every experience that is even remotely beyond habit. For me, what was learned falls into two large categories: faith and hope, and despair. Of the former I will come back to again and again, for I have not yet been able to fully process it, and writing gives that opportunity. What I can say so far about it is that something fundamental was tweaked there, and it had to do with religion, and yet was also outside religion. I can say that I may be a stronger Catholic because of it, but I am not sure: amid the manifestations of Catholicism, amid a people who are unashamed to pray or express their religion, there were also the manifestations of the power and excess of the old Church of empire. This is not something new in the least - many who hate religion often point to the excesses of the Holy Roman Empire, and it hits home. On the other hand, there was, for those open to it, a manifestation of the power of faith - of how it has moved people to tremendous bravery, to breathless acts of charity and self-sacrifice, and to miracles of the more material kind, all beyond any reasonable doubt. It is there in spirit, and in taking it in, one cannot help but feel strengthened in faith - not in the power of hierarchy, but of what lays beyond it - a truth far greater than any skepticism. It is this sense, in those who are the geniuses in the field of faith, that has saved the world and continues to save the world.
And in that comes the second part - despair. Despair at he sameness of the world; despair at the shocking and undeniable truth that the world is becoming far too small and far too uniform in its ugly display of technology, both in external structure and in the structure of the mind. This does not come from books - books cannot give that sense of doom, of closing in, of the ultimate claustrophobia of feeling trapped everywhere on Earth.
One must balance out the other. In faith is the infinite and wondrous; in the crowded, uniform brave new world, there is no wonder at all beyond the latest I pod or high speed computer. Those without faith may not understand the hell on earth they are creating; those of faith do, because they can see the contrast.
And so I am left with faith, hope and despair. Perhaps that contrast has always ruled the world - but it has become a lot clearer of late, at least to me, clearer still with world travel. And each creates its own environment: one, of immortal beauty, and the other, of its poor imitation, further and further removed from the source. And while it is true that there are enough saints to save the world, we must also pay for the "sin" of our despair. And so we are: in a world of concrete and wires and crowded, ugly cities, so we are. FK
And in that comes the second part - despair. Despair at he sameness of the world; despair at the shocking and undeniable truth that the world is becoming far too small and far too uniform in its ugly display of technology, both in external structure and in the structure of the mind. This does not come from books - books cannot give that sense of doom, of closing in, of the ultimate claustrophobia of feeling trapped everywhere on Earth.
One must balance out the other. In faith is the infinite and wondrous; in the crowded, uniform brave new world, there is no wonder at all beyond the latest I pod or high speed computer. Those without faith may not understand the hell on earth they are creating; those of faith do, because they can see the contrast.
And so I am left with faith, hope and despair. Perhaps that contrast has always ruled the world - but it has become a lot clearer of late, at least to me, clearer still with world travel. And each creates its own environment: one, of immortal beauty, and the other, of its poor imitation, further and further removed from the source. And while it is true that there are enough saints to save the world, we must also pay for the "sin" of our despair. And so we are: in a world of concrete and wires and crowded, ugly cities, so we are. FK
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