There are those who claim that Spaniards tend to be very extremist and passionate: either black or white; either body or soul; either centralists or separatists; either meapilas or anticlericals; either revolutionaries or conservatives… I think they are partly right. But there are many more of us who feel a secret passion for the disjunctive conjunction “or”, rather than for the copulative “and”: either God or man; either tradition or modernity; either red or blue; either madridistas or culés; either inside or outside; either north or south; either everyone or no one; …
In all of us there beats the inclination to be dualistic, to divide the world into two irreconcilable halves. This makes us very harsh and critical of others… and of ourselves! Because when we look inward we ask ourselves, what are we: saints or sinners? What is the deepest thing in us: goodness or selfishness?
Because there is a conflict within us. Within each of us there is a saint who strives for excellence, and also another who rushes down poisoned paths. Henri Nouwen’s sincerity is captivating when he described this conflict in his own life: “I want to be a great saint,” he once confessed, “but I am reluctant to deprive myself of all the sensations that sinners experience”. This bipolar tension puts us on the ropes in our moral choices: We want the good, but also, and at the same time, many reprehensible things. Whatever we do, every choice is a costly renunciation. So what is our true personality, what are we really, saints with a big heart, or mean and spiteful? It seems we are both: saints and sinners, as goodness and pride run through us.
The challenge is to integrate the two poles, to find imaginative formulas that overcome dualism and allow us to harness the best of each part into higher units. Sometimes our stony Catholicism does not help us much to move in this direction, unless we oxygenate it with a more pneumatological spirituality; that is, one that is more open to the action of the Holy Spirit, who alone guarantees unity in diversity; who unites past, present and future; who distributes diverse gifts for the construction of the one building or for the functioning of the one body. A deep spirituality is required to live these contrasts of life not as excluding antinomies but as harmonics of a single reality. Without attitudes of openness and elasticity, it is impossible to deal with the many personal or social conflicts in our pluralistic world. Thinking in homogeneous units (mono-linguistic, mono-religious, mono-cultural, mono-racial etc.) goes against that biodiversity that the Holy Spirit creates so that we can all mature in a complex and enriching ecosystem. It is time, then, to manage more the “yes” that unite us than the “o’s” that distance and confront us.
Juan Carlos cmf
(FOTO: TJ Arnorld)
