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.

The other crisis

Le Monde today, Tuesday, June 30, has a special section on the other f-crisis: the food crisis. This year, 2009, the number of hungry people on this planet grows beyond the 1 billion mark. Le Monde titles: The world in recession neglects the food crisis. Certainly the G-8 meeting coming up in a week's time, will again address that crisis, say heavy words and make big promises. As we know from experience, little happens thereafter. Le Monde reports that just about 10% of the promised aid was delivered since the last G-8 summit a little over a year ago.

Little is being done to correct the wrongs that create a financial world crisis. The financial villain gets jailed for 150 years. A strong sign that fraud is to be punished. Likewise, little is being done to correct the world's food crisis. The G-8 meet in Aguila where the recent earth quake happened. Symbols are important, so is the media effect.

What strikes me is that 50% of the world's hungry people are farmers, peasants. They are the ones close to the source, no? What can we do to reinstate the beauty and the pertinence of sustainable farming, both in the North and in the South? Sure, it was the war that destroyed subsistence farming in Southeastern Europe in the early 90s. Now it is the world's economy and obsession with fast profits that makes reconstruction of sustainable agriculture in the region impossible.

I grew up farming and I feel the vulnerability of the farmers around the world. Today, as I work in church bureaucracy and find out my project budget is slashed for the second half of the year, being reminded of the other crisis puts things in perspective. What to do?

UNESCO World Heritage: Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds

Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds are cities just above the 1000m altitude and in Geneva it is common to ask someone who is planning on going up there whether they have mounted the snow tires. It's not that bad, actually in winter it's beautiful because there is real white snow and it's often above the fog level. What made the two cities - Le Locle being smaller but older - make it onto the list of UNESCO's world heritage sites is their history - and legacy - of watch making. It's the cradle of watch making and thriving until the time when the Japanese took over with the transistor technology and Quarz watches. The Rabbi of La Chaux-de-Fonds told a catechism class I took to the local Synagogue some years ago that the Swiss watch was invented there but it was the Jewish community that took the watches around the world which made their reputation. Both the Jewish community and the watch making have become rather small. The city's international watch making museum is a fascinating place to visit.

La Chaux-de-Fonds has another interesting side to its history: the socialist and the pacifist movements were very strongly rooted there. Both Karl Marx and Mahatma Gandhi had connections and make references to La Chaux-de-Fonds. It seems both socialism and pacifism had, just as watch making, some golden years in the area. Churches and the media recognized the reality and significance of these movements. Elie Ducommun, born in Geneva and 1902 Nobel Peace Laurate, had his origins in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Louis Chevrolet, the founder of Chevrolet cars was a child from La Chaux-de-Fonds, and his father was a watch maker. Le Corbusier was from La Chaux-de-Fonds, and according to legend, the inventor of the apéritif Suze, may have been from there as well, or, still according to legend, the apéritif got its name from the little river that has its spring in the valley just below La Chaux-de-Fonds. Fernand Moureaux, the founder of the company that makes Suze and which began in 1889 is said to have promised that the apéritif would flow in France just as la Suze in Switzerland. As far as I'm concerned, I like both, walks by la Suze and the drink. Suze, by the way is based on gentiane, which grows on rocky pastures in the area. And this year, 2009, Suze celebrates its 120th anniversary, along with the Eiffel tower, which features on the label of the first bottle of Suze, in honor of Gustave Eiffel - Santé! I just wish pacifism were as famous and common today as watches and Suze!

A victory for the climate and for Obama

So Obama won a crucial vote in Congress - narrowly, but he won and that makes his future possible and it's a boost for the future of the environment: reducing CO2 emissions by 17%. It's a victory for Obama's approach, vision and program, and it's a victory for the climate, for the world, and - to the contrary of what Republicans and Democrats who were opposed said, a victory for a more sustainable economy.

I have not followed this closely, nor am I an expert on the subject. What made me curious and what told me this was a crucial struggle, was the arguments the opponents brought forward: that this bill meant the end of the American economy, that it was going to create massive unemployment, and that it was entirely unpatriotic. Upon hearing such stuff I know Obama is right on and what at stake is essential.

Yet today, after this very significant development, CNN's home page is all about Michael Jackson. I had to go to BBC to find a headline about the bill on limiting emissions. That too says a lot about how much the environment and sustainability matter to the mainline media. The real good news are not easy to come by in today's media culture....

Impulse Solar

Today is the unveiling or presentation of Solar Impulse. It is an impulse indeed, and an inspiration, as it is meant to be, to a lot of people. Of course, Bertrand Piccard is for a good part the one who inspires with gentle, visionary and up-beat charisma. Yes we can applies very much to Piccard. Obviously the project, fabulous and fascinating as it may be, is not meant to show off the future of aircraft propelling, but precisely to inspire, to motivate and to raise awareness. For me, even though I know full well no aircraft I will ever travel in will be fuelled by solar power captured while on-flight, I find the project one of beauty and elegance.

Pierre Veya in Le Temps points out that birds - who everybody recognizes are way ahead of humans when it comes to flying - don't get their energy from the sun directly. Birds eat grains and use energy from sun and earth produced in sophisticated processes and stored in amazing crumbs.

Perhaps the most profound and teachable lesson of Solar Impulse is that we have still a long way to go until our aspirations, our entertainment and our business all are sustainable.

Meanwhile Switzerland's - and Europe's - plans and spending still banks on nuclear energy, which is an aberration of any sense of sustainability. Major international corporations invest mig time in projects to produce solar energy in the Sahara and sell it to Swiss mountain farmers and city dwellers.

There is one lesson nature teaches us, and it seems that investors, manufacturers, policy makers, and consumers aren't getting it: produce or capture energy where you are going to use it. That is, decentralized, local, small, sustainable. The future's blowin' in the wind - and in the sun.