Speaking of going nowhere fast. Duty calls, and I'm off to Vienna. I think it's only fair to remind you, that these jaunts are anything but vacation.
OK, OK, I'll make a confession. Our meeting ended a bit earlier than scheduled, so I had a couple of hours to myself. And I did what any self-respecting tourist in Turin would do: I went looking for the Shroud. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against what anybody believes. I truly believe we are allowed to believe what we want to and everyone should simply respect that. As long as what you believe isn't hurting anyone, it's fine. It's your belief. Go ahead and believe. As for me, and for everyone who knows me, well, I'm a bit more skeptical about what a lot of people believe, including myself. The things I do believe, I believe because those beliefs are the result of long, intensive and skeptical investigation and reflection. For the most part, I keep them to myself. After all, why should I think anyone should believe what I do? Belief is a personal matter.
Be that as it may, I made my way down the Via XX Settembre looking for the Turin Cathedral. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you could walk right past it without noticing. It is anything but one of those flashy, gothic, over-powering pieces of architecture. It is an understatement in and of itself. Inside, of course, it's old, and well traversed, full of wood, dark wood, hard benches, but it is quiet, sedate, unimposing, but not necessarily welcoming. It's not as threatening as some.
I say threatening because a Chinese friend of mine once told me that after visiting a number of dark Spanish cathedrals and seeing all the brutal crucifixes on display, he had nightmares for weeks. I doubt that was the intent of the sculptors, but he has a point. Touchingly, the only crucifix I encountered was humanely placed off to the side in a small chapel niche in the right-front of the church. It was worthy of its Spanish counterparts, but anything but in-your-face.
The Shroud itself is opposite this display on the front left. A prayer bench is in front of the massive (plexiglass?) window, behind which is a large box covered quite tastefully in a symbolically worked cloth, with a stylish wreath and centerpiece of thorns. Above the box, suspended majestically is a photo-enlargement of the face on the Shroud. It's a simple corner of the church that invites reflection.
But, before you get into the corner to meditate, you have to pass this massive flatscreen that is showing a continual subtitled presentation of the history of the Shroud. It wasn't the fact that the subtitles were in Italian. I doubt I would have sat long watching. No, it was the fact that there in this house of worship, steeped in the Middle Ages, there is, well, this garish, modern, high-tech display. It was almost an event. Not quite. But almost.
I don't know if the Shroud is real or not. I don't even know if it's really there, or not. It really doesn't matter to me, because I was there to sit quietly and reflect ... on what the Shroud may be, what it may mean to some, why it might be important or insignificant ... but I really couldn't. The ever-changing, ever-moving, ever-flashing of the heartbeat of modern media simply distracts your attention.
Once again, information, not inspiration, is writ large. And, as always, we're the poorer for it.
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