Sunday, October 16, 2011

Dag Hammarskjold and the Journey Inwards

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ


     I first “met” Dag Hammarskjold in late 1981, a few months before my graduation from San Pablo Seminary.  I am enclosing the word met in quotation marks because, to state the obvious (Mr. Hammarskjold having died on September 18, 1961, more than a year before I was born), our “encounter” was not actual but virtual.  I met him through a stationery,  half the size of a short bond paper.   

     I no longer remember exactly how that stationery got to me, but I do remember that it came from one of my seminary mentors (an Assumption nun who had become a very close friend of mine).  She must have used the stationery to write down a note for me – an unimportant one, I suppose, otherwise I would not have forgotten what she scribbled.  Anyway, what etched that stationery in my memory was the quotation that was printed on its bottom margin.  It read: 

     I don’t know Who – or what – put the question.
I don’t know when it was put.  I don’t even remember answering.
But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something –
and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and
that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
-- Dag Hammarskjold1

     I knew nothing about Dag Hammarskjold, but his words struck me as coming from someone who knew and understood quite well what I was going through at that particular point in my life.  Here was a man who seemed to be speaking directly to me about an issue I had been trying to grapple with as I neared my graduation from college:   “What do I really want to do with my life?  Do I truly want to become a priest?   Is that really my calling in life?  Will I be happy as a priest?  Or, will I be happier being something else?  Does my true calling perhaps lie elsewhere, outside the priesthood?”   I was nineteen years old, and the question of  what “path” to pursue after my graduation from college was of utmost importance to me.  And yet, here was this man suggesting to me that the real question was not “What path should I  pursue?” but “What for?”; that, in the end, it didn’t really matter what you were doing with your life but What – or Whom -- you were living it for.  He was, in effect, telling me:  Unless you find Something – or Someone – to live for, your existence will be meaningless.  Unless you “surrender” yourself to an Other much bigger than your Self (a cause, an ideal, or God, by whatever name you call Him) your life will be devoid of any true worth.

     Consequently, I wanted to know more about the man behind the words.  So, one of the first things I did when I set foot in theology school was to go to the library and see what I could find about Dag Hammarskjold. 

     I can still remember my increasing fascination as I went over the pages of Hammarskjold’s posthumously published diary, Markings.  My fascination turned to admiration as I placed his entries against the backdrop of his life history.  From W.H. Auden’s Foreword and from entries in encyclopedias, I learned that Hammarskjold was a man whose life was one of “uninterrupted success” – in the outward, worldly sense, at least.   The son of the Swedish Prime Minister during World War I, Hammarskjold was a brilliant student who finished law and a doctorate in economics at the universities of Uppsala and Stockholm.  He entered government service at the age of 25 and rapidly rose from one important post to another.  He eventually became chairman of the board of the Bank of Sweden at the age of 36, secretary-general of the Foreign Ministry at 43, deputy foreign minister at 46, and secretary-general of the United Nations at 48.   And yet – in spite of his enviable worldly success – he remained, as his spiritual journal showed, a man who was in close and constant touch with his soul.  He was a man of action.   But, unlike many so-called “men of action,” he was at the same time a “man of contemplation.”  Auden was right when he wrote that Markings should be read as an “attempt by a professional man of action to unite in one life the via activa and the via contemplativa.”2   Hammarskjold was a man who continued his spiritual search in spite of  -- nay, in the midst of -- his active engagement in the affairs of the world.   And, as C.P. Snow observed, “the really remarkable thing is that Hammarskjold was engaged in this search at all – while he was managing, in the world’s eyes, great affairs…  Great world figures have sometimes communed with their souls when they have finished acting:  but [in Hammarskjold’s case] this was done right in the thick of the active life.”3

     Not everyone, of course, admires Dag Hammarskjold’s “negotiations” with his soul in Markings.   Some say that the journal’s entries reveal too much of the man’s inner struggles, thereby giving a rather unflattering picture of Hammarskjold as a man with an overly scrupulous conscience.  They argue that such a quality is, to say the least, not an admirable one when found in a public servant.   The political theorist, Niccolo Machiavelli, pleaded for the freeing of  political action from moral considerations, arguing that the political imperative is essentially unrelated to the moral imperative.4   A politician/public servant who communes too much with his soul (the Machiavellian view contends) will surely vacillate in the face of political decisions that are laden with  serious moral considerations – and many political decisions are, unfortunately, of that nature.   Although no one has accused Hammarskjold of vacillating in his major decisions as U.N. secretary-general, one reading his diary cannot help but imagine the intense moral and spiritual ordeal he must have gone through whenever he made those decisions. 

     When one reviews other people’s recollections of Hammarskjold, however, it appears that his moral and spiritual self-negotiations in no way made him a vacillating decision-maker.  On the contrary, they made him a very courageous and determined leader – strong enough, at least, to stand up to someone like Nikita Krushchev.  I.E. Levine’s account of how Hammarskjold responded to Krushchev’s “malicious personal abuse” (as Levine describes it) in the very hall of the U.N. General Assembly during the Congo crisis5 shows the incredible inner strength of the man – the kind of strength that can only come from a solidly grounded soul. 

     But, I have run ahead of my story.  

     After borrowing Markings from the seminary library too many times, I decided to buy my own copy.   It wasn’t easy to find a copy of the book in the local bookstores then (internet bookstores were still science fiction at that time).  When I finally got my own copy (with the help of my younger sister, Maris), it became the most important book on my shelf – next only to the Holy Bible.  I took it with me wherever I went and read its pages whenever I found myself in situations where I had to “negotiate” with my own soul.  My inner journey as a young man had been guided, in no small measure, by such unforgettable passages as:

     The only value of a life is its content – for others.   Apart from
     any value it may have for others, my life is worse than death.6

     And:

     You have not done enough, you have never done enough,
     so long as it is still possible that you have something 
     of value to contribute.7

     And:

     Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding
     something to live for, great enough to die for.8

       And:

     The longest journey
     Is the journey inwards.9


     In the summer of 2002, I had the chance to visit New York City on a weekend break from Boston University where I was attending a summer seminar on a fellowship from the University’s Institute on Religion and World Affairs.  It was my first time to be in New York City,  but I could not stay too long there.  I had to go back to Boston Sunday night for the resumption of my summer seminar the following day.  So I had to “prioritize” the places I would visit.  Naturally, next to Ground Zero, the U.N. Headquarters was one of my top priorities.  I wanted to see, among others, the Meditation Room that Hammarskjold built during his term at the U.N.   Unfortunately, the Meditation Room was closed when we got there,  and so were most of the other important sites of the U.N. Headquarters.   But the hallway where one could find the portraits of former Secretaries-General of the U.N. was open.   I spent several minutes examining Hammarskjold’s portrait and wondering how it must have been like to meet him in person.

     The original Swedish title of Hammarskjold’s journal is Vagmarken.  According to W.H. Auden, a more or less literal English translation of that word would be “trail marks” or “guideposts.”  Auden settled for its present title (Markings) since, according to him, the literal translation “immediately conjures up in a British or American reader an image of a Boy Scout, or of that dreadful American college phenomenon, Spiritual Emphasis Week, at which talks are given entitled Spiritual Guideposts.”10

     I believe Hammarskjold would not have minded that mental association.  After all, his diary entries can indeed serve as helpful “trail marks” and “guideposts” for young people trying to navigate terrains and territories they have never before seen.   That’s what they were to the young man I once was.   And I know I was neither the first nor the last young man to benefit from Hammarskjold’s thoughts in that manner.

NOTES

1Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, Leif Sjoberg & W.H. Auden, trans. (New York:  Ballantine Books, 1983), 180. 
2W.H. Auden, foreword to Hammarskjold’s Markings, xx.
3C.P. Snow, Variety of Men (New York:  Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), 220, words in brackets mine.
      4See Daniel Donno’s introduction to The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, Bantam Classic edition (New York:  Bantam Books, 1981), 6.
      5I.E. Levine, Dag Hammarskjold:  Champion of World Peace (London and Glasgow:  Blackie, 1964), 158-177.
      6Hammarskjold, 144.
      7Hammarskjold, 137.
      8Hammarskjold, 72.
      9Hammarskjold, 48.
      10Auden,  xxiii.


Sunday, September 18, 2011

Diplomacy and the Art of War

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

     War has always been a part of the story of nations.   Countries that have never been engaged in war comprise a small minority in the global community.  The rest have gone to war at least once in their lifetime.  The landscape of international relations is littered with the tombstones of those who perished in the wars that nations have always waged against one another.  

     It is, therefore, a must for a diplomat to be acquainted with the art of war.  Even if he is a pacifist at heart, he still must be “war-literate.”    For, like a global soldier, he could be deployed anywhere in the world.  He could one day find himself in a country at war or on the way to war.  Or else, his own country may find itself at war, either as the aggressor or as the object of another country’s aggression.

    Of course, diplomats are generally expected to act as peacemakers in time of war.  In fact, it is the duty of diplomats to prevent war from breaking out in the first place.  But peacemaking itself requires a good knowledge of the nature of war and of the hidden principles that govern it.  Just as the Devil had to be sufficiently versed in the Scriptures to be able to use it while trying to tempt Jesus, so a peacemaker must be familiar enough with the grammar of war to be able to convince warmongers and warriors to lay down their arms. 

     But, proficiency in the art of war will give a diplomat an even more immediate and concrete advantage.

     Like all highly-competitive working environments, the foreign service is a battleground of sorts.  A foreign service officer who is knowledgeable in the art of war has a greater chance of surviving, nay, succeeding in such an environment than his less war-literate counterpart.   Ironic as it may sound, Dallas Galvin was right when she wrote that “the only way to prevent war is to know how to wage and win it better than your enemy.”1

     Fortunately, one does not have to go to a military school or a defense institute to learn the art of war.  It would, of course, be a big advantage for a diplomat to have this kind of special training.  A number of foreign service officers have, in fact, opted to undergo such a training rather than pursue a master’s degree in international relations.  But, one can educate oneself in the art of war.  It is a craft that can be self-taught.   One can learn the ropes of “war-craft” even by merely observing its veteran practitioners (in the foreign service, in politics and in the corporate world) and by immersing oneself in the pool of warfare literature. Needless to say, even his unwanted involvement in “office politics” can be transformed by a diplomat into an on-the-job training in the discipline of war.

     Reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War would be a good way to start.  This small manual written by a Chinese military adviser around 500 BC is recognized as the first military treatise in recorded history. From its pages originate most of the classic tenets of warfare such as the need to know oneself and one’s enemy thoroughly before going to war, the need to determine whether a particular war is indeed worth fighting or whether it is better not to go on with it at all, and the wisdom of taking an opponent by surprise through the use of rapidity and deception. 

     Carl Von Clausewitz’s On War (or, at least, its chapter on the nature of war3) and Niccolo Macchiavelli’s own Art of War4 (written almost two thousand years after Sun Tzu’s) would be equally helpful in a diplomat’s self-education on the subject of war.

     War, of course, need not always be overt and intense.  More often, in fact, the wars that are waged in the corridors of the foreign service are covert and subtle.   They require the kind of skill that John Lennon had in mind when he sang:

There's room at the top I'm telling you still
but first you must learn how to smile as you kill
if you want to be like the folks on the hill
(“Working Class Hero”)

     On this particular type of war, a different shelf of books would be more educative.   Niccolo Macchiavelli’s The Prince5 would be the basic textbook for this course.  Baldesar Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier6 would be required reading, as would the Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracian’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom.7 

     Closer to our time, a diplomat may wish to consult Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power8 and The 33 Strategies of War9, as well as the “updated” version of Macchiavelli’s work by erstwhile Clinton adviser Dick Morris (titled The New Prince10).

     Finally, reading the memoirs of highly-admired and hugely successful courtiers and power-players such as Dr. Henry A. Kissinger would be as useful to the student of war as reading actual legal cases is to the student of law.11  
 
     After learning the principles of war from these masters, however, the serious student of war must know when to employ them and when to turn them on their heads when the situation calls for it. For he may discover in the course of battle that his opponents are equally familiar with the work of these masters.  When he realizes that this is the case, he must forthwith exercise his imagination and try to come up with novel ways of waging war.  Otherwise, his next moves would be as predictable to his opponents as the moves of a chess-player who is evidently playing according to the tips he learned from a chess-magazine everyone else has read.

     Summers recalls that in the movie Patton, George C. Scott (playing the role of General George S. Patton), upon seeing the attacking Germans under the leadership of Rommel, shakes his fist and shouts “You S.O.B., I’ve read your book!”  (Rommel wrote a book titled Infantry Attacks, which Patton had read.)12

     This brings us to our final and most important point about the art of war:  Once one has come up with his own ideas about war, he must  keep them to himself at all costs.   He must resist the temptation of letting others know about his novel ideas with the view to getting recognized as an original thinker in the art of war.   There is no more foolish warrior than he who lets his opponents know how his mind thinks.13  

NOTES

     1Dallas Galvin, Introduction to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Lionel Giles, trans. (New York:  Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003), xxii.
     2Galvin, xvii.
     3See On the Nature of War by Carl Von Clausewitz, translated by J. Graham (London:  Penguin Books – Great Ideas, 2005).
     4Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and the Art of War (London:  Collector’s Library, 2004).
     5Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Daniel Donno, trans., Bantam Classic edition (New York:  Bantam Books, 1981).
     6Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, George Bull, trans. (London:  Penguin Books, 1967).
     7Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (Springfield, IL:  Templegate Publishers, 1996).
     8Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power (New York:  Penguin Books, 2000).
     9Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War (New York:  Viking Penguin, 2006).
     10Dick Morris, The New Prince:  Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-First Century (Los Angeles:  Renaissance Books, 1999).
     11Biographies of Henry Kissinger such as Walter Isaacson’s Kissinger:  A Biography (New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1992), Martin Kalb and Bernard Kalb’s Kissinger (Boston:  Little, Brown and Company, 1974) and David Landau’s Kissinger:  The Uses of Power (New York:  Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1972) are equally educative.  In the same vein, John Dean’s Blind AmbitionThe White House Years (New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1976) and George Stephanopoulos’ All Too Human:  A Political Education (Boston:  Little, Brown and Company, 1999) provide an insightful glimpse into how the power-game was played in the White House during the Nixon and the Clinton years, respectively.  
     12Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr., “Clausewitz:  Eastern and Western Approaches to War,”  Air University Review, March-April 1986, <http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil./airchronicles/aureview/1986/
mar-apr/summers/html> (16 December 2005).
     13After sharing his thoughts on how one can confound or deceive one’s enemy, Sun Tzu counsels:  “These military devices, leading to victory, must not be divulged beforehand”  (The Art of War, p. 92.)

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Afterthoughts on Albert Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus"

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

     “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide,” thus Albert Camus opens his book The Myth of Sisyphus.  “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.  All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards.  These are games; one must first answer.”1

     To get ahead of Camus’ story, the answer he gives to his own question is:  yes -- in spite of everything -- life is worth living.   Of course, that position is by no means peculiar to Camus.  All of us who continue to live in spite of life’s difficulties share that position.   But the road by which Camus arrives at that answer constitutes this French philosopher’s unique contribution to twentieth century philosophy.

     Camus starts his inquiry by pointing out what he calls the “absurdity” of man’s condition.  Simply put, man’s condition is absurd because he wants – nay, he needs – life to have an inherent meaning, yet he soon realizes that life is totally devoid of such a meaning. Man hopelessly demands meaning from an utterly meaningless world.  The reason why man often finds it hard to understand life is that life, in fact, is without reason.  This “confrontation” between “the irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart”2 comprises man’s permanent dilemma.

     Other philosophers have offered man a way out of this dilemma by appealing to a transcendent source of meaning.  By positing the idea that there is a God who, as it were, holds everything – including man and his life – in His hands,  man is given the assurance that his life is, after all, not irrational.  How can human life be devoid of reason when it has been created and is being looked after by no less than an all-knowing and an all-powerful God?   Man may not be able to discover all the answers to his questions now.  He may not be able to understand everything now.  But, later on, he will find the answers and attain the understanding that presently elude him.   For the moment, all that is asked of him is to believe that – thanks to God -- his life is meaningful in spite of its apparent meaninglessness. 

     In truth, the very irrationality of life necessitates, for the above philosophers, this appeal to the existence of a God.  They maintain that the logical alternative to belief is, after all, suicide.  Either one believes in God or one eventually finds life so intolerable, so meaningless, the only reasonable thing to do is to stop living.

     And it is in this context that the novelty of Camus thought shines forth.   Camus proposes that there is, in fact, one more alternative to belief – and it is exemplified by the mythological figure named Sisyphus.   According to the myth, Sisyphus was punished by the gods for an offence he had committed.   His punishment was rather unique:  he had to roll to the top of a mountain a rock that inevitably rolled down, of its own weight, as soon as it got to the top.  Sisyphus’ punishment was to do this task over and over:  to roll the rock to the top of the mountain and to do it again once it rolled down.  

    The fact that Sisyphus was aware of the incurable futility of his efforts made his punishment a real torture.  But this same awareness was the key to his eventual victory.  For Sisyphus could, then, choose his attitude toward his punishment.  He could choose to embrace the permanent fruitlessness of his efforts – nay, to be happy about his apparently hopeless condition.   He could rebel against his fate by choosing to accept and even enjoy it.   Hence, Camus writes:  “The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory.  There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.... If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.”3

     Camus teaches that all of us can follow the example of Sisyphus.  We can choose to rebel against our fate by embracing the inherent meaninglessness of our life and even rejoicing in it.   We do not have to make an appeal to any transcendent source of meaning.  We do not have to ask God to come into the picture.  In fact, in Camus’ view, we would actually be better off if we evacuated God from the landscape of our life altogether.  For if there is no God, then you and I are totally free.   If there is no God, then you and I are absolutely free to construct our own meaning out of the meaningless bits and pieces that constitute our life. 

     I have heard many people express how Camus’ philosophy has kept them from ruining themselves.  It has been a saving hand to many men and women who have reached a point in their life when suicide seemed to be the most logical step to take. In particular, Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus has been a wellspring of courage for those who have lost heart but who, for some reason, cannot bring themselves to turn to God for solace.   Camus, in short, has made it possible for people to find sense in living without having to believe in God.  

     Ironically, however, the strength of Camus’ book constitutes its very weakness.   Note that Camus does not offer any arguments for God’s non-existence.  His atheism is a decision, not a conclusion.   He has chosen not to have faith in God in the belief that by doing so he would do man a great service:  henceforth, man will be freer to construct his own meaning in the midst of this universe bereft of meaning.   Yet, by ejecting God from human affairs, Camus has actually cut off man’s lifeline to his one and only source of true meaning.   By negating God, Camus has not really freed man.  He has, on the contrary, bound him further.

     As he neared his fifties, the Russian writer Leo Tolstoi experienced a spiritual crisis that almost made him decide to take his own life.  In his long essay, “A Confession,” Tolstoi recalled:  “My question, the one that brought me to the point of suicide when I was fifty years old, was a most simple one that lies in the soul of every person, from a silly child to a wise old man.  It is the question without which life is impossible, as I had learnt from experience.  It is this:  what will come of what I do today or tomorrow?  What will come of my entire life?  Expressed another way the question can be put like this:  why do I live?  Why do I wish for anything, or do anything?  Or expressed another way:  is there any meaning in my life that will not be annihilated by the inevitability of death which awaits me?”4

     Unlike Camus, however, Tolstoi’s questionings eventually led him to a reaffirmation of his belief in God.   “Faith,” he later confessed, “remained as irrational to me as before, but I could not fail to recognize that it alone provides mankind with the answers to the question of life, and consequently with the possibility of life....  For me, as for others, faith provided the meaning of life and the possibility of living.”5

     Whether we like it or not, the meaning of human life is inextricably linked with God.  God is, in fact, the fountainhead of such a meaning.  No wonder, our search for life’s meaning is almost indistinguishable from our search for God. Tolstoi (and the other thinkers like Soren Kierkegaard whom Camus criticizes for making a leap of faith after coming face to face with the apparent irrationality and senselessness of human life) saw this clearly.   Camus, I guess, saw it too.  But he opted to turn his eyes away.

     In Camus' most famous work, The Stranger, a painful encounter transpires between the novel’s hero Meursault and a priest.  Camus describes the encounter thus:

     The priest gazed around my cell and answered in a voice that sounded very weary to me:    “Every stone here sweats with suffering.  I know that.  I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish.  But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness.  That is the face you are asked to see.

     This perked me up a little.  I said I had been looking at the stones in these walls for months.  There wasn’t anything or anyone in the world I knew better.  Maybe at one time, way back, I had searched for a face in them.  But the face I was looking for was as bright as the sun and the flame of desire – and it belonged to Marie.  I had searched for it in vain.  Now it was all over.  And in any case, I’d never seen anything emerge from any sweating stones.6      

     There is indeed a divine face embedded in the walls of human existence.  Unfortunately, it is only with the eyes of faith that anyone can ever discern it.     

    
NOTES

     1Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, Justin O’Brien, trans., with an introduction by James Wood (London:  Penguin Books, 2000), 11.
      2Ibid., 26.
      3Ibid., 109.
      4Leo Tolstoi, A Confession and Other Religious Writings, Jane Kentish, trans. (London:  Penguin Books, 1987), 34-35.
      5Ibid., 53.
      6Albert Camus, The Stranger (New York:  Vintage International, 1989), pp. 118-119 (italics mine).

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Habemus Papam!

By EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

     With only a handful of exceptions,  every “vaticanista” (the Italian term for an “expert” in Vatican affairs) was saying that the new Pope would be elected on the third day of the Conclave (20 April 2005) -- at the earliest.  The reasoning was simple and logically persuasive:   if the Cardinals elected a Pope earlier than that, it would give the world the impression that the Cardinals did not deliberate long and deep enough before making a decision on such a serious matter.  On the other hand, if they took longer than that, the watching world might think the divisions within their ranks were really quite serious.

     So, after making sure that I was at St. Peter’s Square when the first-ever “papal smoke” of the third millennium rose from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel on the first day of the Conclave (18 April 2005), I surmised that I did not have to come back the following day since, most likely, the smoke from the chimney would still be black (meaning, no Pope would have been elected yet).   I would resume my “papal watch” on the third day, the day on which the experts predicted a new Pope would finally be chosen.

     But shortly before lunch on the second day (19 April 2005, a Tuesday), the secretary of the Philippine Ambassador to the Holy See called me up and requested me to drop by their Embassy later that day to notarize some documents.  The Philippine Embassy to the Holy See is literally just a dozen steps away, or even less, from St. Peter’s Square.  So, since I had no appointment later that day anyway, I said yes to the secretary’s request, with the thought of taking the opportunity to take a leisurely walk from their Embassy to St. Peter’s Square afterwards.

     At 5:45 PM that Tuesday, I finished my paper work at “the other  Embassy” (the Philippine Embassy to the Italian Republic) and prepared to leave for my appointment.  I was in no rush whatsoever since I did not set a specific time with the Ambassador’s secretary.  Besides, when I went to St. Peter’s Square the day before, the smoke from the chimney came out way past 8:00 PM.  So I figured that if a white smoke were to come out later that day (which, I thought, was a very remote possibility), I still had more than a couple of hours to catch sight of it. 
                                                                                
     But at around 6:00 PM, my own Ambassador instructed his secretary to call me up and ask if I would like to join him in watching the TV coverage of the new Pope’s first appearance at St. Peter’s Square.   “Why?”  I asked unbelievingly.  “Has a new Pope been elected yet?”  “Yes,” came the secretary’s reply.   “White smoke came out of the chimney just a few minutes ago.  The new Pope is expected to make his first appearance a few minutes from now.   We’re watching the proceedings on TV.”   “Oh, no!” I told her.  “Tell the Ambassador, thanks, but I’m leaving for the Square right now.  I’d rather witness the event with my own eyes!”

     I am normally a “slow-moving animal” (I have always believed that life is too short to be rushed), but that Tuesday afternoon, I suddenly moved with the speed of a high-powered athlete.   Before I knew it, I was frantically stepping on the accelerator of my car along Viale delle Medaglie d’Oro, determined to make it to the Square on time for the new Pope’s first appearance.   But I had barely moved a kilometer when I suddenly got stuck in traffic.  I realized that practically everyone in Rome was on the way to the Square.  People and cars alike were moving towards it like paper clips gravitating towards a magnet.   The difference was that those who were trying to get there on foot were making more  progress than those who made the mistake of trying to get there on wheels.   So I decided to do what, in hindsight, proved to be one of the best on-the-spot decisions I have ever made in my life:   park my car on the only free space I could find along the road – which happened to be the end of a pedestrian lane! – get off the car, and join those who were literally speeding on foot towards Saint Peter’s Square.  I knew for sure that I would get a ticket when I came back, but then I thought:   “What the heck!  This is one event I wouldn’t want to miss for the world!”*

     My recklessness paid off.  Soon, after wading through what seemed like a deepening sea of people, I finally found myself standing in the right colonnade of St. Peter’s Square, where I had a distant but fairly clear view of the façade of St. Peter’s Basilica.   From where I stood, the faces of the people on the balcony were hardly recognizable.  But, thanks to modern technology, the big screens that were put up on the Square gave us their close-up shots.  

     My feet had barely warmed the ground on which they stood when the Proto-Deacon proclaimed:  “Annuntio vobis gaudium magno:  Habemus Papam!”     

     As soon as the Proto-Deacon announced the first name of the new Pope -- even before he mentioned his surname -- the crowd instantly knew that the new Pope was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the former Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the consistent “bet” of many a Conclave watcher.  Warm applause rose from the crowd as the new Pope, with a broad smile on his face and with his hands waving generously, appeared.   Then he addressed the crowd with a voice that was – to my mind – a stark contrast to the public reputation that had been built around him as the Catholic Church’s “doctrinal watchdog.”   It was a very gentle voice, a bit timid in fact.  I could hardly follow what he was saying during that first public address of his.  But the voice with which he spoke – with its gentleness, its touch of timidity and, yes, the surprising compassionateness that it revealed about its source -- somehow told me that there was something about the man which had been unfairly overlooked by those who were saying that a “Ratzinger papacy” would be an ultra-conservative and compassionless pontificate.   

     When I was still a seminarian, some of my theology professors spoke of Cardinal Ratzinger as an inflexible dogmatist who did not tolerate any form of dissent from Catholic orthodoxy, no matter how reasonable and relevant it was.  He was often pictured as theology’s version of George Orwell’s “Big Brother,” and as someone who stood in the way of the healthy growth of Catholic doctrine.  He was said to have frowned upon Liberation Theology and the other theologies that were trying to make Catholic doctrine more conversant with and more responsive to the new realities of the church and of the world in which it lived.  He was, in short, the last person a “progressive” seminarian would want to see at the helm of the Catholic Church.

     Yet, that Tuesday afternoon, in some strange way, Cardinal Ratzinger’s voice turned my prejudices on their heads.  There was something about it which assured me that the shape of the man’s heart was vastly different from the unflattering public picture that those who did not like his theological stands had painted of him.  I had the sense that he was, in fact, a warm-hearted man who was only doing his best to fulfill what he thought were his God-given tasks as the Church’s doctrinal guardian.  Now that his role and his tasks had changed, his mode of leadership was certainly going to change accordingly.

     We, Catholics, believe that, in the final analysis, it is not really the Cardinals who make the decision in a Conclave but the Holy Spirit.  The Cardinals are, after all, just the instruments by which the Holy Spirit Himself chooses the man who will be the next Shepherd of God’s Sheep.

      I, therefore, went home from St. Peter’s Square that unforgettable day,  confident that -- thanks to the guidance of the Holy Spirit   -- the College of Cardinals had elected just the kind of Pope that the Catholic Church needed at this time.


NOTE

     *I must add, of course, that one other thing enhanced my boldness that Tuesday afternoon.  Part of the privileges accorded to the members of Italy’s diplomatic corps is the waiver of penalties for traffic violations.  It is a great privilege, considering the enormity of the amount of such penalties (which can run up to four-digit figures when converted to Philippine currency).   In the end, the only “penalty” that a diplomat in Italy (as in most parts of the world) receives for his traffic violations is a reminder from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be more cognizant of the country’s traffic rules and regulations – a reminder which is given only when the Ministry notices that one has committed too many traffic violations in a given year.  

Sunday, June 26, 2011

An Evening of Literature in a Southern Italian Town

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

“Poets today are liberated – free
From rhythm, rhyme, and structure – even sense,
Producing with their freedom an immense
Fog of unreadable obscurity.
So, at the risk of seeming orthodox
I’ll squeeze my words into the sonnet’s  box.”
           
-- Kenneth E. Boulding, “Sonnet for Sonnets”1

     The tourist book I consulted on the eve of our trip was not very enthusiastic about Reggio di Calabria.  It said there were only two reasons why anyone would wish to go to this southern Italian town:  to get a boat to the neighboring island of Sicily, and to see the Bronzi di Riace (the bronze statues of nude Greek soldiers that were discovered in the Ionian Sea near the town of Riace in 1972, more than 2000 years after the ship that was to transport them to an unknown destination sank).  “Neither of these activities will take you far from the waterfront,” the tourist book noted, “which is good news because it’s the only part of town worth seeing” (sic.).2  It also warned the tourist about the town’s problem with organized crime, which should make him understand why there would be an unusually large police presence in the area.  

     We were going to Reggio di Calabria to attend the launching of a book on the history of Philippine-Italian relations.  It was authored by Domenico Marciano, an Italian married to a Filipina from Batangas, whose desire to learn more about his spouse’s country of origin had made him, in his own right, an ardent student of Philippine history.  (He had previously written a pamphlet on Jose Rizal’s sojourn in Rome.)  

     The plane trip from Rome to Reggio di Calabria took only an hour and fifteen minutes.   We touched down before 11 o’ clock on a sunny November morning.  After a sumptuous lunch of native Calabrian recipes and a very fruitful meeting with the leaders and members of the Filipino community in the area, we were driven to the venue of the book launch:  the Salone dei Lampadari of the Palazzo San Giorgio (Reggio di Calabria’s town hall). 

     No less than the young mayor of Reggio di Calabria, Dr. Giuseppe Scopelliti, opened the book launching ceremony.  Then came the speeches of the invited guests which included a university professor, a journalist, and a couple of government officials dealing with international cooperation. They talked about the book’s merits and how its insights could help enhance Philippine-Italian relations.  As I listened to their speeches and surveyed the crowd that had gathered there for the occasion, I remembered the self-deprecating joke told by the Filipino scholar, Dr. Florentino Hornedo, during a joint book launch of the UST Publishing House about two years ago.  We were launching our respective books, along with some other authors.  When it was his turn to speak, Dr. Hornedo wondered aloud why authors like us keep writing books despite our knowledge that hardly anyone actually bothers to read them!  (Unlike novels, scholarly works and other so-called “trade books” hardly sell, much less make it to the bestseller list.)

     Indeed,  I wondered as I sat underneath the huge chandeliers of the Salone dei Lampadari, how many of those who had gathered there were actually going to read this pioneering book which took its author almost three years to produce.

     Yet, writers like him will continue to write even if they know that only a few people will actually read them.  For there are a number of reasons why writers feel the need to write, regardless of how low their prospects are of being actually read.  George Orwell, in his famous essay, “Why I Write,”  proposed that writers are driven by four major motives (putting aside the need, for professional writers at least, to earn a living):  sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.  “It can be seen,” Orwell added, “how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time.”3

     Whatever his motives were for writing the book that was being launched that evening, I found myself wishing that its author would continue to write, regardless of how many or how few his immediate readers would be. 

     After the book launch, the author and his family hosted a dinner for us in a restaurant along the shore of the Ionian Sea.  It turned out to be the most “literary” dinner I ever had.
 
     During the dinner, one of the invited speakers, Professor Pasquino Crupi (the Deputy Rector of the Universita per Stranieri Dante Alighieri in Reggio di Calabria, and a recognized expert in Calabrian history and literature) literally enchanted us with his spontaneous recitation of Italian poetry.  With a glass of wine in one hand and a cigar in the other, Professor Crupi would ask each one of those gathered around the table what his or her name was, then he would recite an appropriate poem where he could insert one’s name in perfect rhyme and rhythm with the rest of the piece.  He recited the poems with such passion and eloquence, one literally found oneself cast under the spell of his words.      

     Listening to him, I realized what a powerful art oral poetry could be.  Poetry, as everyone knows, was originally an oral art – something to be heard with one’s ears, not just read with one’s eyes.   That was probably the reason why rhyme and rhythm were very important in those earlier days of poetry.  Not only did rhyme and rhythm make poems pleasurable to hear, they also served as mnemonic devices for the poet delivering them.   A poem that only seeks to be read as a text on a page by a pair of silent eyes does not have to worry about these.  It can afford to have lines that do not rhyme, a structure that lacks an easily decipherable pattern, and words and phrases that only another poet can understand.   But, when recited, it can never have the power of the poems Professor Crupi recited that November evening in the southern Italian town of Reggio di Calabria.

NOTES

     1Kenneth E. Boulding, Sonnets from Later Life:  1981-1993 (Wallingford, Pennsylvania, 1994), 3.
     2Damien Simonis et al., Italy (Lonely Planet Books, 2004), 696.
     3George Orwell, Why I Write (London:  Penguin Books – Great Ideas, 2004), 4-6.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

A Second Life

 
(On Graham Greene’s “The Second Death”)

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

     Anyone who has been given a “second life” should read Graham Greene’s “The Second Death.”1  It will remind him of why he was given a second chance to live in the first place.

     True to his reputation as one of the twentieth century’s master story-tellers, Greene starts his story in a way that leaves the reader with no clue as to how it is going to end.   

     A dying man begs his mother to bring his best friend to his death bed.  Since this is not the first time for the friend to hear the mother say that her son is dying, he at first thinks it is another one of those times when either the mother is overestimating the seriousness of her son’s illness or the son is using his illness as an excuse for something else.   He initially hesitates to go, but later on changes his mind when he senses that his best friend’s illness may indeed be serious.

     When he faces his dying friend, the latter tells him why he has asked to see him.   “I am dying,” he says, “and I want to ask you something.  The doctor’s no good  -- he’d think me delirious.  I’m frightened, old man.  I want to be reassured.”

      The dying man then narrates to his friend that many years ago, before the two of them met, and he was not much more than a boy, he fell badly ill and was thought to be dead.  He was, in fact, going to be buried.  But on the way to the cemetery, a doctor emerged from somewhere, stopped the funeral procession and touched the stretcher on which his corpse lay. Next thing the man knew, he was out of the stretcher and was alive again.  The funeral procession resumed; but this time, the doctor had taken his place on the stretcher.

     The dying man assures his friend that the experience really happened.  He had indeed been dead.  In fact, he had seen what awaited him beyond the door of death and it scared him.  But now, ironically, he wants his friend to reassure him of the opposite:  that the experience he just narrated was only a dream, a nightmare and nothing more.  He is afraid, and he wants to be reassured.

     The best friend tries his best to convince him that, yes, of course, it was only a dream.   The truth is, he himself is starting to get scared and he needs to reassure his own self that the story was indeed just a dream.  It is at this point that Greene delivers his coup de theatre.   In a sudden shift of dimension which only a master wordsmith like Greene can pull off, the reader is made to realize that although the story appears to be happening in the twentieth century, it is actually the continuation of a story that began centuries ago, during the time of Jesus.  The dying young man Greene is talking about is actually the dead young man we read about in the Gospel of Luke (chapter 7, verses 11 to 17).   He was being carried out to burial in a town called Naim when a healer named Jesus approached and touched his stretcher, and  then commanded him to wake up.  He got up and received his second life.

     All this happened so long ago, he has forgotten all about it.  But now, everything is coming back to him.   Realizing that he did not make the most of the second life he was given, the dying young man is understandably scared of the consequences of his choice.  He confesses to his friend that after he was brought back to life, he went “straight” for a couple of years.  “I thought it might be a sort of second chance,” he says.  “Then things got fogged and somehow… It didn’t seem really possible.  It’s not possible.  Of course it’s not possible.  You know it isn’t, don’t you?”  His desperate attempt to convince himself that it was all a dream stems from his realization that he has wasted his second life -- his second chance -- and now it is too late to do anything about it.

     At the same time, Greene makes us realize that the dying man’s best friend is also a character whose own life story began during the time of Jesus.   He was the blind man who was cured by Jesus and given a chance to see.  Like his dying friend, he too has forgotten all about the gift that he received from Jesus a long, long time ago.   He has, over the years, become “blind” again – no longer in the physical sense, but in a spiritual one.  As a consequence, he has lived a life as morally reprehensible as that of his dying friend.  

     Unlike his dying friend, however, this other man is being given a chance to change the direction of his life.  Through his encounter with his dying friend, Jesus has cured him anew, this time of his spiritual blindness.  Now, he can see things clearly once more.  If he is willing enough to learn from his dying friend’s experience, he can start living a good life all over again.

     The first time I read Greene’s story, I remembered the second chance I myself was given in the wee hours of May 16, 1998.  A raging fire struck the Lung Center of the Philippines where I had been serving as resident chaplain for six years, and turned much of the building into a huge heap of ashes and useless debris.  Several people died in that fire, including our ICU patients.  I myself could have burnt to death in my room on the third floor of the building, had I not been fortunate to have my cousin-priest, Father Raymond Oligane, as my visitor on the night before it happened.  He was awakened just before the fire spread.   The first thing he did was to run to my sleeping quarters and knock on my door until I woke up.  We were able to depart the burning building before it was too late.

     If Father Raymond did not visit me that night, I would never have been awakened.  I have always been one who is not easily roused from sleep.   That, plus the fact that I had no neighbors on the third floor of the Lung Center building at that time, would have spelled my certain death.  Luckily, God sent my cousin-priest to be my visitor on the eve of the fire.

     I lost everything I had in that fire – including most of the poems, essays, spiritual reflections and academic articles I had written since I started writing many years before.  They all perished in that merciless fire.  But despite the fact that it was not easy coming to terms with the loss, it was nothing compared to what I was given that fateful day:  a second life, a second chance to live and fulfill whatever it was that God still wanted me to accomplish in this life.

     It has been many years since that tragedy happened.  I often ask myself whether I have done justice to the second life I received that day.   It was not difficult to keep in mind the obligations that the “gift” entailed when the memory of the experience was still fresh.  But, to borrow the words of the dying young man in Graham Greene’s story, “things get fogged” after a while, and you begin to lose sight of the gift you have received and what it requires of you.  Greene’s story was a timely reminder sent my way by The Giver of that gift.

     In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote:  “Take it that you have died today, and your life’s story is ended; and henceforward regard what further time  may be given you as an uncovenanted surplus, and live it out in harmony with nature.”2 

     It is unfortunate that even we who have actually been given a second life and, hence, should have no difficulty following Marcus Aurelius’ advice, often forget the priceless lessons of our own experience.  But, then, it is never too late to learn the lessons anew.

NOTES

     1Graham Greene, Twenty-One Stories (London:  Vingate, 2001), 186-191.
     2Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Maxwell Staniforth, trans.  (London:  Penguin Books, 1964), 114-115.


Sunday, May 29, 2011

A Solitary Christmas

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

     “Solo uno?” (“Just one?”) curiously asked the fish vendor when I replied that I needed just one piece out of the rows of fish at his counter.  “Si, solo uno, per favore” (“Yes, just one, please”)  I assured him, and realized why he wanted to make sure I needed just one piece.  It was seven hours before Christmas.   People were making their last-minute purchase of the food items they needed for their Christmas celebrations.  Most of them were buying food to be shared by at least two people.   And there I was buying food good for just one.

     As I left his stall, the thought that I was going to spend Christmas utterly alone began to tear at my heart.   My mind flew back to the Philippines and hovered over the faces of my loved ones there.  By this time, I surmised, the Midnight Mass would be over.  Everyone would soon be gathered around the dining table for the traditional noche buena.   Mama would pray a long Blessing, thanking God for all the graces the family had received during the year, as well as the storms it had weathered with His help.   Papa would generously compliment those who had prepared the food on how well they cooked.  Everyone would eat to his heart’s content.   Afterwards, we would all proceed to the living room for the exchange of gifts.   The grown-ups would be as excited as the kids.  But, it would be the younger ones’ thrill at the gifts they had received that would make such moments truly a time of joy. 

     My mind also hovered over the faces of my closest friends back home, and the happy moments I had shared with them at Christmastime.  As I drove from the grocery store to my apartment, I could feel a fog of loneliness slowly creeping into my heart.

     Luckily, a thought soon fell on me like a warm blanket out of nowhere.  It dawned on me that, in just a few years after I left the ministry, I had fallen into the very trap I had often warned people against in my erstwhile preaching:   I had unwittingly begun to mistake the “wrappings” of Christmas for the “gift” itself.  I had begun to associate Christmas more with being in the company of friends and loved ones, with having fun and exchanging gifts…  I had somehow lost sight of what Christmas was truly all about:  a time to thank God for loving us so much that He decided to become a man like us so He could be a part of our life in the deepest sense imaginable.

     I realized that God probably meant me to be absolutely alone that particular Christmas so I could be “rid” of the people and things that had somehow hidden the real meaning of this event from my eyes.  He had temporarily taken them away from me so I could experience what the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore once described in a poem as “the bare infinity of [God’s] uncrowded presence.”

     Shortly after I got home at around 6:15, my loved ones and closest friends called me from the Philippines, as they promised they would.  I had the chance to spend a few minutes talking with each of them.  At another time, hearing their voices would have made me feel more homesick.  But, not this time.  I felt elated to be in touch with them, even if only by telephone.

     I had dinner all by myself at around 8 o’clock; and at a little past ten I left for St. Peter’s Basilica to attend the Pope’s Midnight Mass there.  The sky over St. Peter’s Square was hardly Christmassy.  Only a few stars were visible that evening.  But, as I crossed the square towards the Basilica, I had the growing feeling that, strangely enough, that particular Christmas was going to be one of my happiest.  

     “You’ll never know that God is all you need until God is all you’ve got,” wrote Rick Warren in his best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life.*   Finding myself with no one for company at Christmas except God Himself, I remembered that He was, in truth, all that I really needed for Christmas.

NOTE

     *Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Metro Manila, Philippines:  OMF Literature, Inc., 2003), 194.