“At the Rimini Meeting I was with my teacher, George Smoot, the Nobel Prize Winner for Phy

“At the Rimini Meeting I was with my teacher, George Smoot, the Nobel Prize Winner for Physics this year. He was very surprised by all the wealth of life that he saw around him, but what struck him most is that all this pivots on the free, gratuitous offer of so many people, young and old. One evening, we went to San Marino for dinner. A boy from Rimini was driving the car we used. As we came back–it was very late–he wanted to pry further: ‘Who provides the cars and the drivers?’ so I confirmed, 'The drivers are all volunteers.’ So he said, 'O dear, so we are making someone suffer who could be at home.’ I translated Smoot’s remark to the boy and he replied at once, 'No, for me it is a joyful suffering.’ I translated his observation to Smoot, who was dumbstruck. A 'joyful suffering.’ I was thinking of Smoot with all his genius, all his tension and his restlessness, incapable because of his history, to see so clearly what that boy saw. One can say 'joyful suffering,’ as Ercole did just now, only in relationship with the Mystery. What is greater–from the point of view of what a man is, that is, of the realization of human life–the genius of a Nobel Prize winner or the simplicity of a person who recognizes the Mystery? It is like having to see again what makes life worth living. One can give his body to be burned, but without this link with the Mystery he cannot be satisfied.”– Unknown [Head in Black and Green, 1913 - Alexej von Jawlensky] * Since 1980, the Rimini Meeting has been an encounter among persons of different faiths and cultures. A place for friendship… More: https://ethicscenter.nd.edu/events/2016/08/21/the-rimini-meeting/ • Alexej von Jawlensky was a Russian Expressionist painter who gained a strong reputation for his portraits and for the abstraction and stylisation of facial features. More: https://baillygallery.com/en/artistes/presentation/91/alexej-von-jawlensky-1864-1941  -- source link

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