‘The Right On Shūsaku Endō/Even if He had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of Him’
After reading the 1966 novel ‘Silence’ by Shūsaku Endō. “Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.” (p.114)
The silence of God and the dryness of prayer. It is something I encounter often. Shūsaku Endō‘s novel explores these things, and the nature of suffering and the nature of Divine Love. The Mystery. I wanted to include traditional Japanese images in this piece in the same way that Endō does in the novel, to explore the relationship between the local and the universal. What are just the fragments of this time and what is of The Kingdom? Why is it so painful never to be sure and why is God so often silent? Endō concludes that even in HIs silence God in Christ is near us, suffering with us. We must take up our cross and take others down from theirs. To work for love and justice not with guarantees and insurance policies but with faith. As I closed the book it felt so liberating to agree. Hallelujah.
“Everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love” (p.257)
