Desarmamento e fraternidade no último sorriso de Francisco
O Papa que se despede enfrentou tsunamis de ódio, e deixou lições amorosas. Seus conselhos foram breves e profundos.
Tempo previsto
22/4/2025
Sgarbe's intimate letter explores existential angst, grief memories, and seeking meaning amid pain.
Stiff gates, paths guided by impassive pines, such ambiguous silences, and a cold moon. I arrived at Limoeiro six years after my first visit, barely remembering how much this displacement is capable of embracing me, of harvesting me.
I've lost count of the words that have ceased to express me in these years. So many years have passed since the enormous precaution I took in securing myself with words. Today, I secure myself with nothing. A certain running alongside all things gives me the sensation that I remain alive, with some pulsation outside my body. But always in that way.
It rains heavily, all the windows stream in that way, half sad, half tacky. I have no signal to guarantee the transit of my ridiculous epiphanies. In fact, the ridiculous, the traversing of the ridiculous, has been a particular theme. God spoke to me about this at the beginning of the week, making a pact with me.
Always living hidden, loving hidden, as if my nature were not appropriate. Now. How can nature not be appropriate, if natural, if nature? This constant, immutable, invincible struggle against the permanent condition had come to an end. It was when I realized that so many convictions had come to an end. The struggle itself was an engineering for life, something I had clung to in order to live and that had now fallen apart like an old wagon. It was possible to hear the sound of the parts piling up on one another in the irrecoverable symphony of calamity. The time had come to definitively die to those false expectations of transforming the world or the world within me. I was definitively tired, having concluded that a plan to die in the flesh would be more useful than a plan to live in the soul—although previous attempts at both had failed before, now a kind of resignation about life and determination about death followed me continuously. I was willing to put an end to all of that, as indeed I did.
At 30, reality had proven frighteningly harsh to me, because any unsuccessful daydream would bring terrible consequences. It was necessary to think morbidly, focusing on complete destruction, without damaging the surrounding structures. A kind of implosion. Difficult to achieve when you are a communications executive and a correspondent for international news. Having conceived of this text as an autobiographical, testimonial fantasy has drastically diminished the dramatic quality of this account. Instead of recounting the blatant anguish of these days, I did what I was clinging to in the last hours, counting titles and tasks in order to forget the main reasons. Moreover, it is after them that I hurled myself in the face of all the miseries I wore, that I fed on, that I spent the night with. It is behind the reasons that I have been greater and lesser, it is where I am now. It is behind a reason that I died. My mind was disturbed when it finally lay in bed, saw itself alone again, remembered that it intended to write a little before dying. It remembered that its desire is to die. That death lurks and God watches closely, guards, saves, one day will give a sign. Yesterday or today, it repeated, an answer is on its way.
The answer will find me prostrate. Even holding onto the Eternal's arm, I feel the delay in rising. I miss the day I was called a woman. When they made me feel like I was something other than this. I will hide nothing from the Eternal, that is my agreement with him, so he will keep a new pact with me. At the same time, this devastates me, silences every signal I might emit. It makes me dead. It makes me, above all, want to die.
The anguish returned, but transformed. Analyzed, combed, clean, barefaced. Before, it presented itself intoxicated, legs tangled, suggesting foolishness. Now it comes alone, like a sober widow on the morning of the funeral, without masks.
It was necessary to locate all of that, since the main prisons had been established. I mean, the time was established, the most irreversible condition, the most stable – worryingly, most worryingly stable – was established. So the norms of description applied from the inside out, from top to bottom. It was possible to see the Portuguese teacher standing before me, gesturing slowly, in an effort to make me a less stupid writer when it came to drawing the exact location of my sadness. She would certainly have some compassion for me, good as she was, upon discovering that I was swallowed by the mediocrity of the simplest attempts, and that I hardly risked saying that the heart of my tragedy pulsed from a stolen kiss.
I hadn't yet realized how my recovery was going, or if there was even any recovery going on. In fact, terms like that, recovery, were the last things that interested me. So many relapses – indeed, a succession so bitter, recurrent, and tiring that it had left me for dead – had taken away any prospect that I was still living to live. It was as if I were playing just to finish the season, knowing relegation was imminent. I never liked soccer and I have no idea why I made this poor analogy with a sport that doesn't interest me at all.
From the day I buried Aunt Josmara I remember few details. I had kept little in the foreground, so that superficiality would be that very appropriate kind of anesthesia. It was the way to endure a Catholic funeral. Initially, I tried to avoid going, but civic obligations got me out of bed around three in the morning. My brother's voice tore through the cold night, saying with headline euphoria, "Aunt Josmara died”. How lucky I am not to have her fate, to be without anyone who loved her at that moment. We got out of bed and made a memorial, a photo and birthday candles floating on the shallow, slow water of a decoration. That ritual would have been enough. But it was necessary, not for me, but for the lives of others, that I suffer publicly. It wasn't long before my father came to pick me up. He didn't want to go with me. Then, her coffin dragged across the floor of the grave, making a heavy sound, the last of the inert body. Wood rubbing against cement, earth, sand. That's how I learned the sound of death.
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O Papa que se despede enfrentou tsunamis de ódio, e deixou lições amorosas. Seus conselhos foram breves e profundos.
Francisco foi um excelente pai para a Igreja. Chamo-o assim, pelo primeiro e único nome, porque deixou em seu testamento que deveria ser a inscrição em seu túmulo: “Franciscus”.
Escrito na metade de 2022, o texto oferece o “sofrimento que esteve presente na última parte” da vida do Papa ao “Senhor, pela paz no mundo e pela fraternidade entre os povos”. Infere‑se que, desde então, a despedida esteve em suas preocupações.
É coerente sentir estranheza diante de um líder que telefonava para o pároco de Gaza, e que não se esquivou de pedir o desarmamento e o fim da guerra. Naquilo que chamava de “globalização da indiferença”, os homens passaram a consumir os horrores da natureza violenta sem tomar qualquer providência.
Certamente ele foi atingido pelos tsunamis de ódio que cobriram a comunidade humana nos últimos anos. Nesse sentido, nunca vi tanto descompasso entre católicos. Porém, não me surpreende em nada. Afinal, quem não está perdido?
O riso de Francisco vai fazer muita falta. Seu jeito simples de oferecer conselhos, e de ensinar a dar conselhos. Para ele, um sermão não deveria passar de oito minutos. Que respeito aos ouvidos, e ao tempo dos outros! “O senso de humor é um certificado de sanidade”, defendeu.
Pergunta-se, com razoável preocupação, o quanto as lições de caridade ensinadas por ele estão aprendidas, quanto internalizadas. Para que nenhuma geada queime a lavoura de novos cristãos, os cardeais têm agora o trabalho de escolher um Papa que nos ame.
Uns dias antes de morrer, no fim do ano passado, meu avô Jorge ouviu Ravel comigo. Dedico essa memória.
A sleepless night, rambling reflections, and a dash of humor on the dissonances of modern life.
I repeatedly fail. Even now, I failed in my intention to go to bed at 9:30 pm. For some reason akin to “what the hell! I don't sleep more than four hours anyway,” I surrendered to the drift of darkness. I fear a stern authority will weep to discipline me: “it’s not time to go to the bathroom.” Activities in general. The late-night chats have ended, covered in sand, disintegrated by a shock, incinerated. It’s a little sad. All that chaotic literature that brought me so many friends has gone mad, and speaks to itself in Mark's posts.
The book Maku sent me is well-written, of course, but it's read in super slow motion. The character begins to reveal herself through a desire to die. You don't find such honest people easily. Like toast with cream cheese and red fruit jam. It was the box, the jar. I switched to whipped cream. Whipped cream is foolproof.
This fractal, then: death and life explaining themselves poorly, speaking quickly and loudly, like Brazilian tourists with red lipstick and crossbody bags enchanting the world with smiling rudeness. My analysis, which follows, is sophisticated.
There are life’s discordances that are, it must be repeated, forces of nature. Discordances, in this text, are metaphorically Meryl Streep portraying Florence Foster Jenkins in the cinema, or any instrument that should vibrate a sublime "ooowooowooow," but ends up materializing Grandma Jephinha venturing off-key, without melody.
I like water because it doesn't waste time with stones or walls; it deviates, accepts a good tunnel, but, if necessary, breaks through everything. Water takes for itself lands that didn't even have a vocation for a swimming pool, resting there as a calamitous flood.
The regions of the world that are about to disappear need intellectual support to resolve issues of property, repatriation, and the return of predictable bureaucracies. You cannot erect an island on top of a two-story house; not even Japanese drainage cathedrals make a difference in the ocean. Such dangers equate our intelligence to nothing. Nature is one of the three notable sources of displeasure in Freudian psychoanalysis.
“And from all this out-of-tune instrument I was never an apprentice.” There's this verse in a Gabrielle Seraine lyric. And in her music too, when she sings “[out-of-]tune,” when she sings exactly “deceased,” the harmony shatters for a moment, like a little shit blowing a plastic flute. It's the valley before the peak, the “dark before the dawn.”
When the out-of-tune individual — the "medium" (of media, not of speaking to the dead) — emits noise, communication becomes clearer. Let's use the word "communication" as a future synonym for "spirit," a beautiful conception of Flusser's.
In the religions that deal with "spirits," note the similarity in the conduct of intentions: doors are opened and closed, people are stimulated to move their psyches, and even banal requests that are nothing more than predictable bureaucracies. One asks, promises, thanks, expels, infuses — all through the conjuring of human and intelligible words.
Accepting Jesus, renouncing Freemasonry, declaring victory, taking possession of the blessing, doing macumba for Dona Ida to die (children are very inventive) — all this requires speaking. From the spell of the Greek Father to the Seven Knocks on the Door of Grace prayer chain from Janine's people. Communication. Speech. Listening.
In some evangelical cults, faced with unsatisfactory communication, someone is likely to take on the role of the demoniac for the benefit of the group. The Catholic mass has so many communication resources that part of the sermon ends up being saved.
"Spirits" are an ancient, primitive subject. It was a way of keeping the dead nearby. Later, these dead became demons. History records in anthropological terms; I have here an original Frazer that I received from Luca. My point is: if spirits "are born" from domestic dead, it is natural that, before committing to events outside the home — speaking of spiritualist meetings, making wind — they are available in the family inventory.
There is power in psychoanalysis, in Transactional Analysis, in Narcotics Anonymous. But these endeavors require much more time, specialization, and opportunities for mistakes than can be achieved in a family, when a family is available. Family, of course, should be understood broadly.
A family that has understood the permanence of love, that has left the struggles for recognition for community practices, has a better chance of success in invoking powerful spirits.
The powerful spirit of the creator, for those who believe thus, has to make some difference. Is God dead? Don't be fooled. I write about communication. About conjuring, invoking, good communication. In the last line of the noise, "taking possession of the blessing," as well observed by Nina.
In Portuguese, "spirits" have been communication at least since 1976, when Cartola composed: "From each dead person, one will inherit only cynicism." From my tensioning, Flusser offers us a simplification: it's a lot of "spiritual battle" for little "talking like people."
Let's return. The relationship of the out-of-tune, the deceased — properly the word in question, noise, this thing that disturbs sleep — with clarity is not only poetry. The physics and computer engineering that support image generation proceed from the use of two very basic stages that do not harm each other.
To improve someone's skin in a photograph, you first need the caress of blurring, like a hyperope without glasses. Then, you have to add noise, something like an old TV without a signal. And then you can see better.
Thus, my suggestion for the group — laughter — is an appreciation of noise, along with a careful observation of the content of the disturbances. When this battery runs out, with more clarity, let us be arrogant in our pretensions of dignity.
Only I was going to write about something completely different. I'll make another post.
