An Abandoned Child

A bishop from a town immersed in the interior of a large country courageously spoke words of truth on Christmas Eve. Certainly, he spoke about his truths and cradled them in his beliefs, his religious faith. Yet, what he said came with an almost universal breeze, which reached beyond demarcated wire fences and religions. He spoke about tenderness and caresses; about consumerism and the superfluous; about always wanting to have fun without suffering; of anesthetizing thought and, unsurprisingly, about falling in existential anguish, that dreaded companion of one thousand nights, dawns and heads.An Abandoned Child [[Feelings inspired in the article Un niño llora en la noche de Belén, by Jorge Eduardo Lozano, bishop of Gualeguaychú, Entre Ríos, Argentina, published in La Nación, December 24, 2010.]]

When the TV presenter introduced that sweaty, bearded fat man clad in red, holding colorful packages as Christmas’s central figure, he was ready to burst. He spoke like a person, believer or non-believer, should speak. I put my words to his ideas as I write that too much compulsive pleasure entails nothing; we push and press only to be left with emptiness. From bewildered and alienated selfishness there emerges an irresponsible consumerism that shreds the planet’s fiber; it is uncontrollable gluttony driven by anxiety and fear; it is the reverse side of muzzled quests and questions that, simple as they are, end up being essential, such as, why do I live and what for?; what do I feel for others and for the abandoned child?

Forceful words are scary because they are open strong-folds we could access; better hollow them out and feel they belong to others, somehow strange: peace, justice, freedom, love, plenitude.

It is hard to recognize paths in immense prairies because, said the poet, you make your path as you walk and, when we turn to look behind, our footsteps are only foam trails on the sea. How can we explain a centuries-old journey with so many compasses with piles of norths? Perhaps there is nothing to explain; it may all be about seeking inspiration and inspiring; building with seeds, and a back to bear burdens.

We have moved, said the bishop, from “I think, then I exist” to “I consume, then I exist”. And, instead, when the dead leaves fall (though that might as well happen before the final baring), he speaks of ” As I love and am loved, then, I exist”.

Does this mean that the millions who hate from the guts are there, lost in non-existence? But the thing is, those hatreds hurt all across a range of 360 degrees. I wondered, is love or firmness our protection? I thought time and again, and I could only imagine that firmness is the shield and love, the construction.

He spoke much more about Christmas, yet that did not dampen like the drizzle does to the dawning fields. What kept me thinking was the abandoned child who cries in the night, and I asked myself whether it was the child from Bethlehem or, rather, the one from the slums, the shanty town, the favela. Was it the child who lives in poverty or the one who lives in abundance? I do not recall who heard me, but I do remember that he said that the abandoned child who cries in any night of the daily Christmases is just us. With that, I curled up and ended my day.

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