Rubem Alves: A liberating, reconstructing and poetic word

RUBEM ALVES

A liberating, reconstructing and poetic word 20 English texts

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Selected by Leopoldo Cervantes-Ortiz

MĂŠxico-Princeton 2014

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Contents 1. Theses for a reconstruction of theology (1970) 2. Is there any future for Protestantism in Latin America? (1970) 3. Protestantism in Latin America: its ideological and utopian possibilities (1970) 4. Magic and theory (1971) 5. Some thoughts on a program for Ethics (1971) 6. The hermeneutics of the symbol (1972) 7. Christian realism: ideology of the establishment (1973) 8. Confessions: on theology and life (1974) 9. Bringing about love (On The transfiguration of politics, of Paul Lehmann) (1976) 10. Personal wholeness and political creativity: the theology of liberation and pastoral care (1977) 11. The Protestant Principle and its denial (1982) 12. Sometimes… (1985) 13. An invitation to dream (1986) 14. The poet, the warrior, the prophet (1990) 15. Theopoetics: longing and liberation (1992) 16. From liberation theologian to poet (1993) 17. Mev Puleo, “Rubem Alves” (1994) 18. Through the eyes of Dick Shaull (2002, 2006) 19. Transparencies of eternity (2002, 2010) 20. The reasons for love (2002)

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VOLUME 56(3), SEPTEMBER, 2006

Through the eyes of Dick Shaull Rubem Alves

He writes stories for children. He pioneered the Protestant contribution to the emergence of Latin American liberation theology. He is known in his country as a writer, psychoanalyst, and educator. He was for many years a Presbyterian pastor and remains a Protestant theologian. In his evocative style, Alves tells the story of his decisive encounter with the North American Presbyterian missionary and theologian Richard Shaull: “I was young and treading a smooth and secure road. (…)

Alas! The unexpected happened. A man showed up on my road, going in the opposite direction…”

This brief yet intense tribute to Shaull was translated into English by Jovelino Ramos and Joan Ramos. Forced into exile in 1968 by the Brazilian military dictatorship on the grounds of political subversion, the Presbyterian Jovelino Ramos – and other Reformed lay leaders and pastors such as Jether Ramalho, Rubem Cesar Fernandes, Charles Harper, James Wright, and the martyr Paulo Wright – helped to draw support for human rights issues in Latin America and isolate US-backed dictatorships in the region.

I was young and treading a smooth and

Prohibitions, in their turn, tell us what

secure road. I had been informed about all of its details. The road was full of signs to

we should not do. Knowing what should not be done means that we are freed from the

guide me so that I would not get lost. Some of them displayed the word “certainties” and

terrible need to decide. Decisions are needed when we arrive at a crossroad, a fork in the

others the word “prohibitions”.

Certainties and prohibitions convey

road, presenting two ways ahead of us. We may take the one on the right, or the one

important psychological functions.

Certainties tell us that we have already

on the left. But there is no sign showing which one leads to the desired destination.

found the truth. And whoever has already found the truth ceases to look for it.

Every crossroad puts us in a situation of uncertainty. And uncertainty produces

Certainties shroud the mind and put it to sleep. Knowing oneself to possess the truth

anxiety: one must decide, without knowing what is right. If only we had a sign with the

is quite tranquillizing. I led a tranquil life.

word “prohibited” there would not be any 265

doubt. The prohibition makes the decision

doubt. For isn’t it true that this is what

for us, thus freeing us from our terrible condition as moral beings, which is precisely

mountain climbers feel when they climb the Aconcágua? The risk of death is worth

the condition of having to make decisions in the absence of prohibitions that make

the exhilaration of the challenges! Those who cannot afford to doubt never climb up

the decisions for us.

That was my case. I had no moral

to the peaks. They rather stay on the plains, strolling through known and secure

conflicts because all the decisions had been made for me. I was nineteen years old,

pathways.

I experienced the joy and suffering of

following, tranquilly, the road of certainties and prohibitions, which would lead me to

having to make decisions without anyone giving me orders or prohibitions, having only

heaven. For, after all, isn’t it true that heaven is the destination of human beings? So

my heart as advisor. I exchanged the way that leads to heaven for the many ways

convinced was I of my way that I sent myself to a school which taught certainties and

that lead to the world. Thus I have gone through life, without certainties and without

prohibitions, indeed a seminary, for my desire was to bring souls to that same way.

prohibitions… All due to that man’s gaze…

That stranger lived here in Campinas.

Alas! The unexpected happened. A man showed up on my road, going in the opposite

And I can say that my life is divided into two periods: before and after meeting him.

direction. Startled, I wondered if he was aware that he was going the wrong way.

Richard Shaull. I remember it quite well: we met for the first time on Avenida Brasil,

As we came closer to each other I looked deeply into his eyes and there I saw, reflected

near the crossing with Frei Antonio de Pádua. The year was 1953. Not many houses,

as in a mirror, a world I had never seen before, a world which was behind me, a

at the time, but many eucalyptus trees.

He didn’t speak Portuguese; he spoke

world from which I was running in my pursuit of heaven.

Spanish. He had been expelled from Colombia, as ordered by the Roman Catholic

Looking deeper I saw no roads in that world. “Wanderer, there are no roads! Roads

hierarchy. A church built upon truths and prohibitions cannot stand the presence of

are made as one walks!” Neither did I see certainties and prohibitions. What I saw

someone who teaches doubts and freedom.

He then came to Brazil to teach at the

were horizons, directions, possibilities and liberty. And the world was beautiful. It invited

Presbyterian Seminary on 1200 Avenida Brasil.

me…

The stranger said nothing. But his eyes

If you ask me, “What did you learn from him?”, the answer will be simple: “Dick Shaull

gazed outwards. And my eyes opened up.

Then I experienced the fears and risks of

taught me to think.” I remember an exam I took for one of his courses. I was sure I would

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get the highest mark, a 10, because I had

With that problem solved we are free to

provided perfect answers. But I got a 9.

I complained. I argued that my answers

care about the world, which is indeed our destiny…”

were exactly what he had taught in the classroom. He answered, “That’s why. You

Dick Shaull had visions of a different kind of world. He was the first person to tell me

simply repeated my thoughts. There was nothing for me to learn from your answers.

about the social responsibility of Christians.

If for the traditional church the world was a

In your answers I expected to find your thoughts…”

place of perdition, from which Christians should flee (as the monks used to do), for

Prophets are not visionaries who announce a future that is coming. Prophets

Dick Shaull the world was the place of our vocation. One needs to be present in the

are poets who design a future that may happen. Poets suggest a way. Richard Shaull

world so that it may be renewed, he said.

“Presence”: how important it was for his

talked about a future we had never dreamed about. He saw what nobody else was seeing.

thinking! That accounted for a fresh new project: a group of seminarians, spending

After six months, he knew more about Brazil than I did. He was the one who introduced

their summer vacation as industrial workers in a factory in Vila Anastácio, São Paulo.

me to an enlightened Catholicism. He recommended that I read A Descoberta do

The experience was inspired by the worker priests in France who stopped expecting that

Outro [The Discovery of the Other] and Lições do Abismo [Lessons from the Abyss],

factory workers would come to church, and decided to meet them where they lived and

produced in the years of lucidity of the author, Gustavo Corção. It was through Dick

worked. Without being aware of it, Dick Shaull was sowing the seeds of “liberation

Shaull that I learned about the silent biblical and liturgical renewal movements

theology”.

Ten years before Vatican II, he was

fermenting inside the Catholic Church, of the kind that would deeply influence Pope

dreaming about ecumenism. Ecumenism, this cursed word both for Protestants and

John 23rd – oh how we miss him – and the Council of Vatican II.

Catholics. For Catholics, owners of the truth, because Protestants were apostates. For

A thinker deeply anchored in the Sixteenth Century Protestant Reformation

Protestants, owners of the truth, because Catholics were idolaters. Irreconcilable

(celebrated on 31 October, the day Martin Luther nailed his “95 Theses” on the door

enemies, how could Catholics and Protestants sit together and share a

of Wittenberg Cathedral), he taught us the fundamental lesson of theology: “Heaven’s

common faith and a common Eucharistic ritual? Dick Shaull, going in the opposite

problem has already been resolved for us by God. There is nothing for us to do about it.

direction as befits a prophet, decided to transgress, to do the forbidden: he organized 267

secret meetings with the Dominicans, in

expect impunity. Prophets are cursed beings.

São Paulo, and invited a small group of us seminarians to participate in that

Nietzsche, another man who went in the opposite direction, knew the price that one

conspiracy. We knew that if the conspiracy were discovered, there would be

pays for seeing what others do not see. He said, “The Pharisees have to crucify those

punishment: we would be expelled from the seminary. Thus, with fear and joy, we went

who invent their own virtue.” Those who do not see, hate those who do. Richard Shaull

there with Dick Shaull, for an experience we had never dreamed about. It was great

was crucified. The churches couldn’t cope with him: he was expelled from Colombia

to find out that Catholics could be enlightened, lovers of the Bible, and

by the Catholics, and expelled from Brazil by the Protestants…

fraternal… Up until then we weren’t aware of that.

Now he is enchanted. He departed. Of course, I will plant a tree in his honour in

I don’t know any other who in so short a time cast abroad so many seeds. It is

my lonely little orchard, on a mountain top, at the side of a volcano, near the trees of

impossible to narrate all that he accomplished. But let me say that no one

other conspirators… In their silence, when no one is around, the trees will talk to each

who follows the opposite direction can

other.

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THE REASONS FOR LOVE (2002) The mystical and passionate agree that love does not have reasons. Angelus mystical medieval Silesius said he is like the Rose: “Rose does not have whys”. It blossoms because blossoms.

Drummond, repeated the same thing in his poem “The without-reasons for love”.

It’s possible he has inspired these verses even without never have read, because love things moving with the wind. “I love because I love …”-without reasons … “Don’t be a lover, and not always know.”

My love is independent from you do. Not grow because you give something. If so it would change the taste of your gestures. It would have reasons and explanations. If one day your gestures of lover tasted, he would die as a flower pulled out from the Earth.

“Love is a State of Grace and with love has not been paid.” Nothing further from the truth than the proverb that asserts that “love” with love is paid. Love is not governed by the logic of trade market. I don’t owe something to you. Nothing I should. As the rose blooming because blooming, I love you because I love you.

Love is given free of charge, it is sown in the wind, in eclipse, falls. Love carries multiple dictionaries and regulations… Love is not exchange… Because love is love to nothing, happy and strong by itself…

Drummond had to be intoxicated when writing these verses. Only lovers believe that love is so without reasons. But I, maybe for not be in love (which is a shame...), suspect that the heart has regulations and dictionaries, and Pascal would help me, because he who said that “the heart has reasons unknown for reason itself”. It is not that heart failure in the management of reasons, but that its reasons are written in a language that we do not know.

About these reasons written in a strange language Drummond itself knew, and asked: “How to decipher pictograms there are 10 thousand years if I crack my written inside? The essential truth is the unknown that inhabits me and each dawn gives me a punch”.

Is love this?: a punch that an unknown gives me?

To the passionate to decipher this language is prohibited, because if he understands, love will go. As in the history of Bluebeard: if the port is open, happiness will be lost. It was thus the paradise lost: when the love —fragile bubble of soap— not happy with its happiness unconscious, it left to bite by a desire to know. Love did not know that its happiness can only exist in ignorance of their reasons. Kierkegaard commented the absurd of asking owls explanations for his love. To answer this question they only have one answer: silence. But unless they ask simply talk about his love —without explain. And they speak for days, without stopping …

But I have already said —I am not passionate. I see love with eyes of suspicion, curious. I want to crack your unknown language. Unlike Drummond, I’m looking for hundred reasons of love …

I am going to Saint Augustine, seeking its wisdom. Re-reading the Confessions, text of an old that meditates on passionate love without being. Possibly there is more penetrating analysis of the reasons of love ever written. And I confront with the question no passionate could never do: “What I love when I love my God? “ Imagine that a passionate did this question to his beloved: “What I love when I love you?”. It would be, maybe, the end of a love story. Because this question reveals a secret that no lover can support: that love loved the lover hunks something else that isn’t it. In the words of Hermann Hesse: “What we love is always a symbol”. Hence, he concludes, the inability to fix his love in anything on Earth.

Variations about the impossible question: I love you, yes, but it is not so much that I love. I love another mysterious thing that I do not know, but that seems to see touch on your face. I love you because in your body another object reveals. Your body is the enchanted lagoon where reflections swim as fish escaping … As Narciso, I am on it… “At the bottom of your light swim my eyes, looking for…” (Cecília Meireles). For this I love you, by enchanted fishes…

But they are slippery, fish. Fleeing. Escape. Hidden. Swing between my fingers. I hug you to hug things that escape. When I possess you, have I rejoice in the illusion of the possession. You are the place where I meet with this another thing, by pure grace, without reasons, fell about it, like the wind fell on the Blessed Virgin. But, being grace, without reasons, similarly how can descended can go away again. If this happens I will not love you anymore. And my searching will start again…

This is the pain that no passionate supports. The passion refuses to know that the person’s face (this beloved) only suggests the obscure object of desire (missing). The beloved person is metaphor of another thing. “Love begins with a metaphor,” says Milan Kundera. “Or better: love starts when a woman falls with a word in our poetic memory.”

We have now the key to understand the reasons of love: love is born, live and die by the power —sensitive— of a poetic image that the lover thought to see in the face of the beloved …