‘TO LIVE LIKE THAT’ in Arantzazu

I doubt there is a more appropriate building than the Arantzazu Basilica to offer and enjoy the concert “Horrela Bizitzeko” (To live like that). But much courage was needed to organize that concert there, because certain things are still too hard on the ears of the Church. A lot of courage was needed, and the friars of Arantzazu showed it when they opened their Txillida-designed doors to the work of Asier LI, a composer from Beasain, under the protection of the fourteen brave apostles carved by Oteiza. My congratulations to the franciscan friars of Arantzazu.

The musical project “Horrela Bizitzeko” is a poetic, musical meditation in six parts about the wounded human being of surprising depth and creativity, its lyrics and music composed by Asier LI. It is a distressing description of torn human relations, sung a capella by clear and melodious voices. A harmonious and, at the same time, discordant recitation in which paused declamation turns into delicate melody, and the singing becomes rhythmic declamation. A cry and an imploration, a sonorous protest and a silent word of love. Everything sounds hard and tender, firm and serene, painful and peaceful at the same time.

Part IV was offered and recorded on March 13th in the Arantzazu Basilica, a space so warm and wide, so intimate and open at the same time. The afternoon sun was setting towards Mount Andarto and, through the invisible front window and the lateral stained-glass windows, it spread a soft, golden and bluish light down the apse, the stone walls, the wooden vault and choir lofts, embracing the upward moving shadows, soothing roughenesses, mitigating tears and sorrows. The two of us, all of us, were impressed and touched, united with everything through the senses, eyes and ears wide open. Wellbeing.

And what in all that could be transgressing and hard to listen to for the ecclesial institution and many members of the Church? I’ll tell you even if it is incomprehensible for you: in his narratives, reflections and poems, the author takes on sorrows and impotencies, lacerations and wounds due to being a woman, to a given sexual orientation and gender identity. He expresses all these feelings with great determination and strength, but exquisite finesse, with no provocation or controversy, without pointing condemnatory fingers to anybody but to the situation as such. And he brings in contributions from Hildegard of Bingen, a philospher, scientist, physician, writer, composer and mystic benedictine nun from the 12th century, from Simone de Beauvoir, Marta Nussbaum, Wittgensteinm Jung….. very diverse universes all in one. Yet, these questions are taboo for many, for too many.

Is it so difficult to live like that? wonders Asier LI Let them speak, raped, abused, sold and bought women, underpaid but overworked women, subordinated and marginalized women in so many institutions and religions –particularly in the Catholic Church. Let them speak, lesbians and gays who have to live their love in guilt as if it were a disease, or else deny it and hide it. Let them speak, those who feel they are women in a man’s body or men in a woman’s body, those whose identity is torn between what they feel and what they are forced to feel, those who are considered a wronged person… Let them speak, those persons led to think that their bodies were impure and dirty until they were nauseated with themselves and felt ashamed of themselves. They are abused and torn human beings. And the Church has a lot to do with those abuses and sorrows. Just a few days ago, the Vatican Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a document, expressly approved by the Pope, clearly and severely teaching that it is unlawful to bless homosexual unions and relationships. This is terrible. And the reason it gives is even more terrible: “God cannot bless sin”. So, Rome declares that the love of lesbians and gays who love fully according to the way they are is cursed. How difficult it is to live like that! It is us who make it even more difficult, who hurt life.

As, with great strength and sweetness, the naked and vibrant voices of the twelve members of the IKEA Vocal Group recited singing in the Arantzazu Basilica the sorrows of those wandering human beings that we are, I imagined that Mary’s cry standing by her son’s dead body on the highest part of the entrance frontispiece filled the whole basilica, and that Mary’s tiny image of the large apse also joined in KEA’s singing from the heart of the universe, and that her tender and permanent smile illuminated all shadows and anointed all sorrows with balm. And it also came to my mind the silent valley of Iturrigorri, shady and brilliant, where Itziar and I strolled before the concert in the Basilica –Iturrigorri! where 57 years ago, as a boy seminarian in Arantzazu (how many inner and outer worlds have since gone by within the same world!), life became play and dream twice a week-, it came to my mind, as I was saying, that the melody of the beech forest and the tales of the brook, dancing among the stones, were also part of the same concert and spread the same good news: everything is One, all beings are One, we are all intertwined with one another, our health and salvation is in that which is Everything, and happiness resides in goodness.

What is there that is larger than the universe or the unlimited multiverse? What is there smaller and more fragile than a human being, with all its beliefs and superstitions, its supposedly divine norms and prohibitions? What is there more offensive and heartbreaking than Mary’s painful cry shouted from her torn motherly heart to the Infinity against all killer powers, standing by the bleeding body of her crucified son on the naked frontispiece of Arantzazu, alone between heaven and earth? What is there sweeter than the tender smile of the small image in the apse as if coming from the heart of the Infinite? One implies the other one, hoping that we all will become One, on the path to communion, goodness and universal peace.

Arantzazu, “place of hawthorns” and flowers, you stand witness to the hope of “living like that”. Carry on, Arantzazu, even in your frailty, opening doors to today’s society and culture, to all walking and wandering pilgrims. Carry on freeing light from shadow. Carry on blessing all forms of love, over and above all hurting prejudices, prohibitions and stifling limitations. Carry on providing water, always new and fresh, like the fountain and brook in Iturrigorri, renewing and updating beliefs and languages from yesterday, being a place to breathe anew, beyond all creeds. And, let the people continue writing the poem of Arantzazu.

Aizarna, March 20th, 2021

Translated by Mertxe de Renobales Scheifler