Issue nº 230

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Friends and Acquaintances

John and the Visions of Hell

"Perhaps Jesus sent some of His apostles to Hell to save souls,” said John, "even in the worst of torments, not all is lost.”

The idea surprises me. We are chatting in one of the few bars in Los Angeles. John is a firefighter, and today is his day off.

"Why do you say that?” I ask.

"Because I have experienced the same torment here on earth. I enter buildings in flames, see desperate people trying to get out and have often risked my life to save them. I am just a particle in this immense universe, forced to act like a hero in the middle of fire and despair. If I, who am no one of importance, can manage to act in this way, imagine what Jesus can do! For sure, some of His apostles are infiltrated in Hell, saving souls."

In the Huelgas Monastery

Sister Begona Miguel of the Huelgas Monastery says, "San Juan de La Cruz teaches us that silence has its own music; it is silence that enables us to see ourselves and the things around us. I would like to add that there are words that can only be said in silence, odd as that may seem. To compose their symphonies, the great geniuses needed silence – and they managed to transform this silence into divine sounds. Philosophers and scientists need silence. In the monastery, at night, we practice what we call The Great Silence. In the absence of speech we can understand what lies beyond.”

The Language of Dreams

Australia is basically a vast central desert with cities along the coast. Although the white man found it difficult to brave the interior of the country, the primitive tribes, the Aborigines, always managed to cross the entire country.

"We are a people who believe in dreams," says Sam Watson, an aborigine, "in certain tribes the elders gathered every morning to discuss what they dreamed the night before. Only after that did they decide the best path to follow that day. We are never left without water or food. Through the dreams of our holy men we achieve the same things that the white man does with his satellites and complicated apparatuses for geological exploration.”

The Singing Tree

A reader of my books met me at an afternoon book-signing in Bilbao, in the Basque Country.

"You always speak of symbols,” she tells me, "I want to show you a symbol that you have never seen.”

The next day she picks me up at my hotel.

"I don’t know how this started,” she says, "but legend has it that an old Jewish alchemist claimed that these trees could sing. The mayor of the town said that if he could not prove what he claimed, he would be killed. Ever since then, every year a tree sings in Soria, symbolically saving those who feel that everything is possible."

We reach Soria and go to a square. Little by little, people begin to gather and all of a sudden a complete band with all their instruments climbs the gigantic bi-centenarian elm tree in the middle of the square. Each musician occupies a branch.

Under the command of an invisible wand, a tree sings in Soria.