{"id":2800,"date":"2021-08-14T11:54:18","date_gmt":"2021-08-14T11:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetalkshop.in\/?p=2800"},"modified":"2021-08-15T10:20:40","modified_gmt":"2021-08-15T10:20:40","slug":"to-bro-whom-freedom-embraced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetalkshop.in\/blogs\/to-bro-whom-freedom-embraced\/","title":{"rendered":"To Bro Whom Freedom Embraced"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dear Br Charles, How did you receive the news of you being declared a saint? I ask this since your thinking and being went beyond the conventional ways. I am also aware of the fact that the official church did not respect your last will and transferred your remains to a Christian cemetery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You had renounced the title of \u201cP\u00e8re\u201d<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>(father) and preferred \u201cFr\u00e8re<\/strong><\/em>\u201d (brother) even though you were a priest. In Algeria, people called you a Christian marabout<\/a><\/strong><\/em> but you proved to them that you were their brother by receiving everyone especially the marginals in your abode. Revising the rule you wrote for the envisioned congregation, you cancelled the word \u2018hermit<\/strong>\u2019 and replaced it with brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Br Charles with freed slaves<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The zest for universal fraternity made you go extra mile to protest slavery. In spite of that, did you allow yourself to be a pawn in the hands of political powers with hidden agenda? Did you have a different plan though you had to take their support? Or is it that you were docile to the Master planner who outwitted you always? In any case it is evident that you gave up the military translator and took guidance of an expert linguist Motylinski to return to the basics of learning. You seemed to have been consumed by a love that cleared a new path of fraternalizing. You were in for a new adventure to the inner landscape of the blue people listening to their proverbs and songs. 10 years of your labour with metal nib dipped in camel urine on paper, brought to birth a dictionary, grammar and a book of poems in Tuareg<\/a><\/em> language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Little Sisters staying in a hut at Madiwala slum, Bangalore, introduced me to your prayer and biography in 1984. The abstract texts on the philosophy of the other I was grappling with those days became palpable for me thanks to your life! The dream of universal fraternity had been sown in me by a one-act play Brother Wolf<\/a> by Laurence Houseman from my college days. Lupo\u2019s transformation from a man of violence to peace by the brotherliness of St. Francis tugged me away from my ambition of a career to truth seeking! The trace sketched by that story in my heart got a face when I understood how you went alone to live among total strangers in an unknown land of hostile conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your discovery of the taste for prayer among those who did not share your religion and culture confirmed for me the human capacity to relate to The Presence<\/em> beyond name and form. Disenchanted with the church ceremonies, it was the solitude under the starry night sky that kept this precious gift alive in me. The vastness of universe glimpsed in total darkness left me in awe! Was it not the same infinite expanse that caught you unaware and turned your life upside down during your expeditions in sub-Saharan Africa?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pilgrimage to the land of Jesus took you to an intuition that became a compass in your journey. I had my chance to get a peek into what you could have gone through during an International meeting of Franciscans at Jerusalem in October 2011. Bored up with talks and the guided tours, I took time out to soak in the ordinary daily life of people there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n