Mythic Abbaye de Bellelay

The monastery Bellelay was founded in the early 12th century. Legend has it that in 1136 Siginand, provost of the Moutier-Grandval was hunting wild bore in the area and got lost. He pledged to build a monastery in the case he made it back safely to Moutier. The monastery is the place of origin of the Tête de Moine and has a remarkable history. It is documented to have had an organ in the early 1600s and got a Bossard organ in 1720. The abbaye was occupied in 1797 by French military and has since suffered all kinds of uses, misuses and neglect. The furnishings were sold off. Since the 1960s the sanctuary is being used for exhibitions during summer but in 2008 a replica of the 1720 Bossard organ was inaugurated. I heard it today in a concert by Bernard Heiniger who played some of Bach's well known organ works on this fabulous instrument in this awesome place.

The power and beauty of generic sound, not amplified, by a hand-made instrument and in walls that go back almost 1000 years, is not only impressive. It is pure magic. Siginand, Bach, and Bossard, like other geniuses of all ages, used the means available at their time to make visible and audible the spiritus creator.

On seeing heaven

Yesterday Jane Stranz told her encounter with a tree, or more precisely, the beauty of a tree. And, really, not just of that tree. It's one of these instances when a life's moment takes on the quality of eternity and we are given a glimpse of heaven.

Beauty is not always visible to us. When I don't see it I easily conclude it's not there or not real. When I do see it, I know it's everywhere. It is beauty that overcomes violence, as a friend told be years ago when I asked her how she thought violence could be overcome.

It is in nurturing our capacity to see beauty that this world becomes a better place. That I'm sure about.

Virtues for a better world

The German Publik Forum Edition has published Leonardo Boff's 2006 trilogy Virtudes para um mundo possivel under the title Tugenden für eine bessere Welt. I have not come across an English version of this. Boff sees several virtues taking clearer shape and gaining profile around the world: hospitality, living together, respect, tolerance, eating together, a life in peace. It may be tempting to translate "convivência" with community, however, the French equivalent "convivialité" points to something else: being at ease with each other. Perhaps Boff points to what Jean Vanier describes as "fooling around at the dinner table". The three terms hospitality, living-together, eating together, all are closely related. Eating together (I like the German word "Tischgemeinschaft") is really what communion is all about, but Boff is not talking about the ritual as a sacred gesture. He is talking about world hunger and our relationship with food and with each other, or our relationship with each other over food. Hospitality has quite a lot to do with food, so does living together and food is essential to eating together as is relationship.

The other virtues Boff reflects on are respect and tolerance. Respect is being used today as a particular approach to violence prevention. Tolerance has come to be recognized today as perhaps not as primordial as it was seen in the 70s, but together with respect and care it makes for peaceful living.

Boff's book is a good reminder that the virtues that make for peace are not primarily to be preached but to be lived and to be discovered and celebrated in the imposing-demanding mix of performance, pleasure, profit and profiling.