I’m staying at the Hostal Jentoft.
A pleasant enough place. Near the bus station and the river, it’s on a quiet street within walking distance of the places I’ve been told I must see.
I was at breakfast early, alone but for the young woman in charge. Quiet, she keeps to herself behind the large window, emerging only when necessary.
This morning a most beautiful orchestral piece, Bach I think, wafted softly from her private space.
After coffee, toast with jam, and yogurt, I spoke with the gentleman at the desk.
He keeps to himself but is quite helpful when a need arises. At the risk of intruding, I inquired as to where he goes when his morning shift is over and prior to returning in the evening. “Often,” he said, in a cultured English, “I visit the Bellas Artes De Sevilla, the museum. It’s a refuge. A place of beauty.”
I was on the street by 9:00, intending to arrive at the Catedral De Sevilla well before its opening. Approaching from a side street,
I toured its perimeter.
I was raised Catholic, attending Catholic schools all the way through college. In my 7th and 8th grades, I was captain of the altar boys at St. John’s Basilica. I learned about kindness from the nuns, and Latin sufficient to make it through the Mass. And something about reverence, silence, even beauty.
Then high school came and the priests took over. Judgment and critical thinking slowly replaced the unquestioned learning of the school boy. The process accelerated at the university where the Jesuits insisted that “learning to think” is paramount. By the time I graduated I was a card carrying agnostic.
And so I entered the Catredal,
and into that space that only the architects of centuries ago knew how to create.
Their intention at the time, and for the eternity to follow, was to elevate the souls of the faithful, to create a bridge between their mundane lives and their Creator.
For most, that’s no longer possible. Nevertheless, at least for the time one remains within the space, it is possible to wind back the clock, to suspend all judgment, all critical thinking. To be reminded that there is a time for reverence,
for silence,
a time for beauty.
I was introduced in Lisbon to the writer, poet, and essayist Fernando Pessoa.
Though he lived a relatively short time, 1888 - 1935, he’s still considered the foremost Portuguese modernist. I purchased his most acclaimed work, The Book of Disquiet,
in which he writes about faith:
I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in God, for the same reason their elders had it without knowing why. And since the human spirit naturally tends to make judgements based on feeling instead of reason, most of these young people chose Humanity to replace God.
I, however, am the sort of person who is always on the fringe of what he belongs to, seeing not only the multitude he’s a part of but also the wide-open spaces around it . . .
I feel, even grieve for the many young, and not so, who nowhere in their lives are touched by reverence, silence, by beauty.
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