Não vejo as sobrancelhas desgrenhadas nem a barba vermelha de Reuben Lance há 35 anos, mas em determinado momento elas se tornaram um símbolo para mim das características essenciais da direcção espiritual: inicialmente assustadoras, mas depois graciosamente acolhedoras, uma rejeição dos estereótipos e clichés espirituais, um desprezo às beatitudes penteadas e aos devocionalismos barbeados e, acima de tudo, um companheirismo despretensioso (às vezes tímido e sempre comum) na descoberta cautelosa da extravagância ardente de Pentecostes e Patmos.
It is this most basic human loneliness that threatens us and is so hard to face. Too often we will do everything possible to avoid the confrontation with the experience of being alone, and sometimes we are able to create the most ingenious devices to prevent ourselves from being reminded of this condition. Our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain as well. We not only bury our dead as if they were still alive, but we also bury our pains as if they were not really there. We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do ...
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