Day 100u: Standing in solemn Solace … (July 23, 2019)
Emotions of reverent gratitude & humble wonderment continued to bubble up and resurface as I walked slowly toward the Santiago Square. Could this be the very same bagpipe player who greeted me at this same location those 10+ years ago? He looks exactly the same, no doubt, and yet far more importantly – my feelings were essentially repetitive thereof … And then it was that I passed through that final archway and entered the Square proper; doing so in surprisingly Bliss-full anonymity – greeted by not a single familiar face and receiving not even an ounce of fanfare. In truth, despite my obvious smock of solace and my exuberantly beaming face, I seemed almost invisible to the multitudes present there as I walked to a plaza corner and stood in solemn silence; staring long and peacefully at this majestic building that has represented so much to so many over the past many centuries …
“We have for so long lived by the errant assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was truly good even for ourselves. And we have fulfilled the danger of this hubris by making our personal certainty and all-absorbing greed the standard of our behavior toward the world – in truth to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity – our own capacity for life – that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the Creation itself is stifled thereby! … Indeed, we have been wrong, and must change our lives post haste, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And this requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the Creation is full of mystery; and that we will never entirely understand it. We must instead abandon our arrogance and stand in gentle awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it at all.” ~ via Wendell Berry
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