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Salvatore Quasimodo: Uomo del mio tempo – Man of my time
Uomo del mio tempo Man of my time Sei ancora quello della pietra e della fionda, uomo del mio tempo. Eri nella carlinga, con le ali maligne, le meridiane di morte, t’ho visto – dentro il carro di fuoco, alle forche, alle ruote di tortura. T’ho visto: eri tu, con la tua scienza esatta persuasa allo sterminio, senza amore, senza Cristo. Hai ucciso ancora, come sempre, come uccisero i padri, come uccisero gli animali che ti videro per la prima volta. Still, the stone and sling rest easily in your hand Man of my time. There you were in the cockpit, on wings of evil, casting meridians of death, I…
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We Are One – Bahá’u’lláh’s Teachings Against Violence
Human beings are not inherently violent. But that we have a problem with violence is undeniable. How many times have prophets, poets, philosophers and philanthropists of all kinds called us to love and peace? Yet how many times have human beings found (indeed continue to find) excuses for violence? In this article five aspects of Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings against violence are discussed: individual violence, religious violence, political violence, domestic violence and interstate violence. An aspect of the oneness of humanity – that human beings ought be like “one soul and one body” is that violence between human beings ought become a thing of the past. Bahá’u’lláh wrote: … it is Our purpose, through…
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Agora movie – seeing ourselves through an alien past
The movie Agora (director Alejandro Amenábar) is not history, but perhaps, it rises to allegory. It is well worth watching, despite its ‘interpretative’ approach to history. It is a movie which captures deeper truths about human relationships and its fictionalized past helps us understand the challenges of our conflicted present. The struggles of Agora’s characters are enriched by Dario Marianelli’s haunting film score and the movie’s epic intellectual and scenic setting. Agora takes us to the unfamiliar world of fourth century Alexandria. It is a world being overtaken by change. Certainties of a pagan past are fading as new Christian ways of being emerge. It is a world beset with…
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Tragedy
It is one of the saddest realities of our modern world that prejudice and hate often rear their ugly heads through acts of gross violence. Yet that is precisely what happened this month. Unfathomable bigotry took the lives of 77 innocent men, women, and youth in Norway. To dwell excessively here on the evil ideology that precipitated this tragic event would be to give undue attention to the deluded ideas of a shameless man who has, according to many accounts, perpetrated this evil for the explicit purpose of advertising his shocking racism. We cannot play into his scheme. So even as we peremptorily reject and condemn the violence and its…
