Sunday, August 13, 2006
Les Nains de Jardin
Being clearly and unacceptably detached from reality, I learned only today that there exists a "Front de Libération
des Nains de Jardin" (Garden Dwarf Liberation Front), founded no less than 5 years ago or so.
This organization, in its Italian incarnation (called "Movimento Autonomo per la Liberazione delle Anime da Giardino", a name aptly stressing that the soteriological act affects the souls of the garden creatures, and not just the body), hit the news today when 4 adepts were caught by the police while trying to remove 14 garden dwarfs. According to the news report, the liberation procedure usually contemplates bringing the creatures in the woods and smashing them so that their soul could be set free.
One is easily tempted to make fun of these things. Well, sometimes temptations should not be resisted. But perhaps these actions have great theological and political significance. For, are we not all dwarfs waiting to be saved from a garden where, having been nailed to the ground to live in idleness and exposed to unclement nature, the gardener treats us with contempt and dogs dare pollute us with unclean substances?
No, we are not. But let's hope that bodies and souls: ours, and of those adhering to this and other "Liberation Fronts", be liberated nevertheless, from the meaninglessness caused by the loss of true human identity. From that, Libera nos, Domine.
This organization, in its Italian incarnation (called "Movimento Autonomo per la Liberazione delle Anime da Giardino", a name aptly stressing that the soteriological act affects the souls of the garden creatures, and not just the body), hit the news today when 4 adepts were caught by the police while trying to remove 14 garden dwarfs. According to the news report, the liberation procedure usually contemplates bringing the creatures in the woods and smashing them so that their soul could be set free.
One is easily tempted to make fun of these things. Well, sometimes temptations should not be resisted. But perhaps these actions have great theological and political significance. For, are we not all dwarfs waiting to be saved from a garden where, having been nailed to the ground to live in idleness and exposed to unclement nature, the gardener treats us with contempt and dogs dare pollute us with unclean substances?
No, we are not. But let's hope that bodies and souls: ours, and of those adhering to this and other "Liberation Fronts", be liberated nevertheless, from the meaninglessness caused by the loss of true human identity. From that, Libera nos, Domine.
