Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Like millions of other people, I was moved by the news of the Pope’s passing this week. It is always interesting to me after a famous person dies, the documentaries that show “the big picture”. We do not have that gift of perspective while “life happens” as it is obfuscated by the “day to day”. For those people who are implementing change, how long can they withstand the pressure of things being shifted and convoluted? Are we able keep the faith that it is all going to “work out in the end”?

This is not about Pope Francis, this is about me and the thoughts that came to me as I watched the world mourn. This is not about taking sides, as it was clear to see that some people thought he went too far and others thought it was not far enough. This is about having this human experience we are all going through and having to stand somewhere knowing a lot of people might not like it. Can we stand tall and with conviction, yet open to allowing our perspectives to change as we grow in connection to others?

My mother’s family knew Bergoglio when he was a young man in Santa Fe. My grandfather owned the Ritz of Santa Fe in Argentina and he would sometimes donate his hotel for the different events that the Jesuits organized. Bergoglio must have been in charge of organizing those events at that time. While I was growing up I remember my grandmother cherishing a heart felt letter he had written them when her son, my uncle, passed away in his early twenties. Those stories that were told around the dinner table while I was growing up, stories like Bergoglio giving my uncle rides in his moped.

I sat the other evening watching this documentary, about the Pope, about Argentina, putting all things into some context. What was happening in Argentina at the time, what was happening to the Church. I was born in 1975 but I never felt I was living in a military dictatorship, but I was, or better said, my family was. A few things jumped out at me, how Bergoglio was sent to Cordoba for two years, basically to do nothing. This documentary showed the little room where he stayed. They talked about this time there being a time of transformation for him.

I wish I could know what was going through his mind at that time. So many gifts that he must have known he had, yet he had been “sent away”. How many of us have felt at different times in our lives that we have been relegated to a place we did not choose? I know that he never wanted to be Pope, but during those two years, did he question where life was taking him? From that tiny room in Cordoba, did he ever think he would later on be touching so many people’s lives?

The other thing that struck me from the documentary was how his life changed after those two years. How as it is for most of us, sometimes the foced retreat from our reality gives us a chance for transformation. And how someone in the Church wondered why the heck this talented man was not being “put to use” and gave him a chance to shine. We are all interconnected and most of us at some point, have the opportunity and power to change someone’s life. Do we see talent and try to help it grow or do we see it and become threatened by it? It is up to us what we do with our lives, but without chances, we might never get to find our light and our true potential.

These are just my observations about a human being, about his life, or at least about what I understood after watching his documentary this week. I might have gotten it all wrong, but for some reason those were the questions that came to my mind, for some reason those things resonated in my heart. Can we withstand knowing we might be on the right path even when things are not working out the way we want them to or the way we have envisioned? Can we build each other up and see each other’s gifts? Just because people at a certain point in history or in a certain environment or culture do not perceive our gifts does not mean we do not possess them. Beauty was we have all heard, is in the eye of the beholder…….