In a polyphonic choir, are the sopranos or the baritones more important? In a hospital, does the gastroenterology department or the cardiology department have a more prominent place? And in a car, couldn’t we do without cylinders or brakes?
Stupid requests, of course.
Anyone, being asked these questions, using a good dose of patience and kindness, would reply that they are all important, that each component has equal dignity with the others and, if even one were removed, the organism or the mechanism overall he would suffer severely.
If it is true that in certain obvious situations no one can have the slightest doubt, it is equally true that in certain other circumstances our answers become much more nuanced, uncertain, if not openly contradictory or frankly wrong.
If we understood that in the world every single member of humanity has the same rights and dignity as any other – and, apparently, it has mattered little so far that the international charters of various rights have repeatedly and obsessively repeated this over time refrain – there would be no racism, sexism, violence and assorted oppression: a little boy born and raised in a very poor slum in some inhuman suburb and a CEO of a powerful multinational should receive exactly the same amount of consideration and care.
Utopian fairy tales, one might say. Neverland.
Yet, that’s not really the case.
Accepting the rule of the absolute equivalence of human beings from the point of view of rights and dignity is the first and unavoidable law that governs and makes peaceful coexistence possible. The violation of this foundation is the main cause of the conflicts that are tormenting the planet – and which have tormented it in past eras.
Wars, oppression, racism, hatred and rivalry – after all, we have given five different names to the same thing – cannot be defeated unless following the virtuous path of perfect equality between human beings. A virtuous path, but also a difficult one: in recent millennia, a large part of humanity has worked hard to give the worst of itself and to carefully keep away from such a path, which should instead be natural.
Blacks and whites, left and right, southerners and northerners, Guelphs and Ghibellines… Athenians and Spartans…
Our ability to create barriers and barriers is practically infinite and pollutes – overflowing and covering with threats, violence and death – even friendly skirmishes such as sports competitions.
The skirmishes then become even less friendly when spiritual beliefs and religious faiths end up in the dance. In the name of gods and prophets generally described as loving, merciful and compassionate, bloody wars and ruthless tortures have been unleashed for centuries, the result of opposing but identical fanaticisms which, wanting to annihilate the adversary to assimilate him into themselves, eliminate and replace every trace of human understanding , rationality and empathy.
Something which, among other things, at least partially overshadows the fruits that the spirit produces or should produce in the soul of the individual and the community: peace, cooperation, help, mutual understanding. The many practices for a good life. La Pietas. The Virtus of the classical world. And we could continue.
Instead, seeing priests and pseudo-prophets of the most varied orientations who incite hatred and division, who propagate their divinity as unique, true and possible to the detriment of all the others (My god washes whiter than yours) generates in feeling a common shiver of horror, which as a very predictable consequence simply distances people – when they can – from anything to do with the sphere of the sacred; or it throws them into the hands of sects that are often businesslike, foolishly mysterious and initiatory or, even worse, openly suffocating, corrupt and illegal.
What should produce light often ends up generating darkness.
As always – given the absolute identity between holiness and simplicity – the shortest way to reach a healthy and mature attitude is the simplest and, in some way, most natural one: considering the different religious visions absolutely identical from the point of view of dignity and importance.
The sphere of the sacred – which in the past was represented as that Magnum Mysterium that surrounds and envelops human existence, and which is also perceived by secular thought – is something that evidently escapes the human mind’s ability to understand.
Man is an ant / looking for food / walking on an equation.
It takes united forces, as in a polyphonic choir of the Renaissance or the Baroque age, to perceive at least in part the global plan, the scent of the Absolute. Everyone must play their role as best as possible.
What would become of a Madrigal by Monteverdi if it were reduced to just the voice of the sopranos? There would be nothing wrong: the sopranos are one of the elements of the score, they don’t sing a single note that the author didn’t foresee. But the result would be poor, incomplete, disappointing. Try adding one voice at a time: Monteverdi’s thoughts gradually emerge, until the final explosion, the cantata in its entirety, when all the voices perform – correctly harmonized – the part that had been foreseen for them.
The part that was planned for them.
Here, this is the real effort that needs to be made when talking about religion and spirituality. The leap in quality, the change of perspective.
We must come to think that the Absolute (The Mysterium that is outside and inside me) speaks in different ways; which adapts its language to distant historical eras and populations and communicates hic et nunc – here and now! – continuously and not once and for all. A big leap, because it implies that we manage to find the courage to overturn everything we believed in, starting to bring down the castle of certainties that stands on a wrong and dangerous basis.
It’s not a joke: no one who is stubbornly stuck on his beliefs will ever want to retreat even a single millimetre. Each of us is convinced that his god (or his non-god: chance) is whiter than another’s god, to put it in the language of television advertisements. In numerous cases we are convinced that it is another god; even, that one (mine) exists and the other does not.
It may be surprising, for example, to learn that Al-Lah (Allah) is the name that Arab Christians use to designate the God of the Christian tradition: this happens simply because in Arabic Al-Lah means God, Il-God. Not only Muslims call their God Allah. Even Christians. And they are Christians like all other Christians. Full stop.
Such a speech may sound blasphemous; or it may seem the result of a relativistic mentality.
Why believe in a specific God? Why believe in the absence of any god? Anyway, one thing is as good as another, right? Indeed, even more: we take a piece from one religion, a piece from another. Do we love each other very much? Eh, that’s Christianity. Do I want to find peace of heart and mind? Let’s take it from Buddhism… Do I have a strong sense of law? Voila, it’s Judaism! And we could continue.
Thus we arrive at the supermarket of religions: we only buy what we like; or that perhaps it is on special offer (I have a relationship of my own with God! Practitioners of spiritual DIY often say that they build an inner world by taking a piece of here, a piece of there.)
The Path of Blessing is far from both the relativistic mentality and its exact opposite, absolutism (Only my God exists, only my Nothing does not exist, everything else is hoaxes).
So?
How do we square the circle?
Simple. Let’s go back to the starting point. To our Monteverdi madrigal.
Indeed, let’s take a leap much further back, let’s go straight to the time when sacred cosmogonic texts such as the Upaniṣads or Genesis were written. These texts – like many others – describe the creation of the cosmos using an imaginative and direct language, very understandable by the people who lived in those remote times. Regarding Genesis, for example, it is said that, before the creation of anything else, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. Therefore, according to the First Book of the Jewish Torah, the waters preceded the Big Bang. First the waters of fire, to translate it into money.
Put like that, it’s simply laughable.
It is more than evident that the anonymous editor – and all those who wrote the venerable and ancient texts of all religions – knew nothing about astrophysics and, above all, they didn’t care to know anything about it. For him/her, communicating a message was fundamental. Which, using that type of highly poetic writing, reached the objective straight like a dart: that is, telling Man that the world as a whole was the creature of an omnipotent and omniscient Creator.
Here, this is the only way we have to reach the Absolute: understanding that he communicates hic et nunc, here and now, using the linguistic tools suitable for whoever is listening to him in that moment. The only way to have a fruitful dialogue.
If, for fun, we imagined an astrophysics book dedicated to the Big Bang and written in scientifically impeccable terms one thousand three hundred years before Christ (“And God, starting from zero mass and infinite energy, caused an enormous explosion, which in 10- 13 sec expanded to a radius comparable to that of the average distance of the planet Mercury from the Sun”) it is clear as… the Sun that no one would have understood anything and that those precious sheets would have ended up in a very short time wrapping the fish of some archaic market . With many regards to the editing of yet another Sacred Book.
We’re joking, of course. But it is clear that the problem of knowledge and – even more so – that of truth clashes with these details (details?) that are difficult to deny. What credit can be given to a Book that claims to be the bearer of Truth, and which begins by stringing together a series of gigantic scientific errors? We can perceive it as a ramshackle exercise in fiction ante litteram; or, we can change our perspective. It is possible to perceive the scent of Truth, even if told in obsolete terms, allowing oneself to be enchanted by the poetry with which all cosmogonies are imbued. We will thus get to the heart of the message. Perhaps discovering singular similarities between the various texts.
At this point, we can really return to our Monteverdi Madrigal.
So, are sopranos or baritones more important?
The answer is always the same: both – obviously – have the same importance, even if they cover extremely different roles.
Here: this is the perspective with which the discussion on mutual spiritual understanding must be approached. The mystery of the Absolute – the divine principle, but also its most absolute negation – is so complex, dense and impenetrable that to get at least a little closer to it it is necessary to sing in chorus. All voices are necessary, because they illuminate different gray areas. All voices have equal dignity.
Just like in the choir, sopranos must sing like sopranos, trying to do it as best as possible; you don’t imitate those close to you, you don’t go down a notch, you don’t look for shortcuts or easy agreements, apart from the consonances foreseen by the author.
Are you a soprano? Sing as a soprano, and try to be the best soprano you can be. Do you sing like a baritone? Behave exactly the same way.
However, understand the other voices as well; realize that their beauty also becomes your beauty, just as your virtue will reflect on theirs. Harmonize with them, follow their time, don’t bully and expect not to be bullied.
If other singers sing well, sopranos will not become baritones: they will simply become even better sopranos. And they will be amazed at the skill of the tenors or contraltos.
All this has nothing to do with the Low Cost relativism heralded – under a thin coat of pacifist paint – by false prophets. And it is also the most total denial of its exact opposite, that religious absolutism (fundamentalism) which over the centuries, at the most diverse latitudes, has produced nothing other than suffering and death.
This blessing attitude is a new path – in reality it should be natural, therefore very ancient… but things up to now have not gone in the best way – which leads to understanding others, mutual enrichment and definitive peace.
May peace be the final objective of all our actions.