Dare todo a los demas
y llorare mi pasion
como nino abandonado
en cuento que se borro.
~ Frederico Garcia Lorca, “Cancion menor”
I think that I’m changing and I don’t know if it is good or bad, but I suspect the latter. I am more often angry, more often weary, and more often apathetic than I used to be. I have less patience for other Christians, and less tolerance for spiritual language far removed from radical solidarity with the poor. And, in a way, I think I may have given up on most people. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that most people are too self-absorbed, and too self-indulgent to do anything about the suffering around them. I’ve been resigning myself to the fact that the only result of my journey with broken people may be my own brokenness. And that’s okay.
“You don’t cry?”
“No. I think it’s horrid, beastly… When you cry, all your sadness comes pourin’ out, as though your heart was meltin’ like butter — nasty! That’s to say –” She blinked her eyes again — “one ‘ud have to find another — a better way o’ cryin’, somehow — I suppose you think that’s silly?”
“No,” I said. I hesitated; the least clumsiness, I could feel, might frighten off this fierce creature for ever. “One day you’ll see that prayer is just that way of crying, the only tears that aren’t soft.”
~ George Bernanos, “The Diary of a Country Priest”
I wish I could find a way to be more humble. Less prideful, less bitter. I wish I could be more simple and learn how to love unconditionally. How does one learn to be grace-filled? How does one recapture innocence when one is surrounded on one side by suffering and on the other side by apathy?
And I too have lost my innocence, not by what I have learned but by what I have done.