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June 29th, 2003
Received by H.R.
Cuenca, Ecuador.
I also remember that once, when I was looking for the
small objects and the tiny beings of my world in the back of my
home, I found a hole in a board of the fence. I looked through the
hole and saw a lot similar to that of my home, fallow and wild.
I withdrew a few steps because, vaguely, I knew that something was
about to happen. Suddenly a hand appeared. It was the tiny hand
of a child of my age. When I came closer, the hand was gone and
in its place there was a small white sheep.
It was a sheep of faded wool. It's wheels upon which
it had rolled had been lost. I had never seen such a pretty sheep.
I went to my home and returned with a gift that I left in the same
place: a cone of a pine tree, half-open, fragrant and balsamic,
which I adored.
Never again did I see the child's hand. Never again have
I seen a sheep like that again. I lost it in a fire. And even now,
in these years, when I come by a toyshop, stealthily I look at the
shop windows. But it is in vain. Never again such a sheep like that
one has been made.
Pablo Neruda: I Confess that I Have Lived.
Memoirs.
And you remember that, being a boy, you used to spend hours lying
on your back in the grass, watching the clouds and recognizing animals,
figures, all kinds of things in them. Turning around, you saw the
flowers of the meadow, the yellow crowns of the dandelion, and the
bees sitting on them, with their tails nodding up and down, while
they gathered pollen on their legs. You saw the dragonflies cutting
through the air with supreme ability, crystalline and sharp, and
so your grandfather always called them "glass-cutters."
It was a mysterious and fascinating world, a world that got lost...
You remember that one day you were able to catch a dragonfly.
You killed it with dimethylbenzene, and you took it to your home
to try your new gift that your parents had given you on your birthday:
a microscope. With scalpel and pincers you managed to open the firm
harness of its thorax, discovering the crossed musculature in its
interior. Delicately, you made cuts, you tinted and fixed them in
Canada balsam.
Part of your curiosity was satisfied, but your curiosity did not
diminish. And worst of all, the satisfaction gained was not deep,
not even ephemeral; it left in that very instant.
The mystery and attraction of the dragonflies still existed, up
to now, but the vivid color of excitement became pale, as if the
mystery had slid out of focus. The scale models called reality gradually
replaced the child's fascination. Now, definitively, you are an
adult.
There, thousands of years ago, on the banks of the river Nile,
there was the boy Jesus, playing with scarabs, watching the grains
of sand, all of them different. In fact, he did not care to investigate.
In front of the mystery, the beauty manifest in each tiny flower
of the weeds, he opened himself up, he became filled. He conversed
- with his friend, as he recognized Him then, or with his Father,
as he used to call Him later.
He left the house telling his father Joseph:
"I am going to play and talk with my friend."
And Joseph answered:
"Ok, go ahead. But don't come back late!"
But when he observed him secretly, he did not manage to see any
friend. The boy was sitting there all alone, playing with sand or
scarabs. And Mary used to calm her husband:
"Don't worry. So are their fantasies, they
will go away. Those are children's things.
Yes, those were children's things, and fortunately, they never
disappeared from Jesus. He was right, although nobody understood
it: He was playing and conversing with his Friend, with his Father.
Conversations, exchanging love, receiving wisdom, deepening in the
mystery without destroying it. The beauty and the mystery never
lost their color for Jesus; they never shifted out of focus.
The statement, that we have to become as the children are in order
to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, has many interpretations. One of
them is simply: to see, to recognize, to observe and to inhale mystery
and beauty; to become filled with the magnificence of whatever is
surrounding us, and to open up to Him, who is hiding behind the
things.
Have a nice day,
Judas
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