Stanisław Barszczak, The successful Pole.

You still know all, I am Vincent and I came home to my Annette. Now she looked through the stack of photographs spread on the desk – all of them the same size, taken with the same camera, bright and hilarious. Annette sorted the pictures into four piles and put them in a thick one cardboard envelope. When they knocked on the door, she slid the envelopes into the bulkhead desks. – Please. Come in, Eve. He has already come?The girl came to the desk before answering her. In a stronger one in the light you could see that your face was tense and your eyes shiny. – It’s some other, alien. He says he wants to see you. – Impossible, Eve. You know who is coming today. – I told him that you can not. He says he probably knows you. – What is this one? – Such a slim pole, a little flooded. He says his name is Vincent. However Annette did not move or make a single voice, Eve she sensed that something was hurting her. Annette’s right hand fingers tightened slowly, and the left stuck like a scrawny cat toward the edge of the desk. She sat motionless, as if holding her breath. Eve suddenly began shake. Her mind ran to the chest of drawers stored in a drawer boxes in which her syringe lay. Annette finally said: – Sit there in a big armchair. Sit quiet for a moment. – when the girl did not move, Annette smacked her with one in a word: – Sit down! Eve cringed and went to the chair. – Do not get your nails. Ewa’s hands hung up and tightened on the arm-chairs. Annette stared at the green glass lampshade of the desk lamp. Later she made a movement so rapid that Eve jumped up and her lips twitched. Annette opened the drawer and took out the four-fold paper. – You have! Go to your room and take care. Just do not take everything at once … No, I do not trust you. She tapped the paper bag with her fingers and broke it in two; it bent the ends and handed one half to Eve, inside it spilled out some white powder. – Now hurry up! When you get downstairs, tell John that he has stand in the corridor close enough to hear the bell, but not conversation. Make sure you do not get stuck closer to me. If he hears the bell. No, tell him … or not; let him do as he thinks. Bring to me, Mr. Vincent. – You will not need anything? Annette stared at her, and Eve looked away. When Annette left she called after her: – You can get the other half when he comes out. Now hurry up. She pulled out the right drawer of the desk and took out a revolver of a short one barrel. She opened the eardrum, checked the cartridges, slammed it in, she laid the weapon on the desk and covered it with a sheet of paper. She turned off one lamp and improved in the chair. She folded her hands and rested them before on the desk. When there was a knock at the door, she said: – Come in! – barely moving lips. Eve’s eyes were moist and she was calmed down. There is this gentleman, she announced and closed the door behind Vincent. He glanced around the room quickly before he saw Annette sitting without traffic behind the desk. He stared at her, then slowly approached closer. Annette’s hands stretched out, and she pushed her right to the sheet of paper. Eyes, cold and expressionless, were fixed on his eyes. Vincent saw her hair, scar, lips, wrinkled neck, shoulders and hands, and flat breasts. He took a deep breath. Annette’s hand trembled slightly. – What do you want? He sat on a chair next to the desk. He wanted to shout with relief, but he answered only: – Nothing right now. I just wanted to see you. Samuel, he told me you were here. The moment he sat down, the tremor of her hand ceased. – You did not hear anything before? – No. I have not heard. At first, I was going crazy after this but now it’s gone. Annette breathed, her lips smiled, showing small teeth -long, sharp and white fangs. – You scared me. – Why? – Because I did not know what you would do. – I did not know either. Vincent kept staring at her, as if she was dead. – I’ve been expecting you for a long time, but because you do not you came, so I forgot about you somehow. – I have not forgotten you. But now I can. – How is it? He laughed. – Well, I mean now, when I saw you. You know, it seems it was Samuel who claimed I never saw you, and that is truth. I remember your face, but I have never seen it. Now her I can forget. Her lips tightened and pulled together, her eyes wide the cruel eyes were cruel. – You think so? – I know for sure. She changed her tone. – Maybe you will not have to. If you do not have any reservations, we could reach an agreement. – I do not think so. – You were so stupid! Just like a child. You did not know what you needed to do with each other. I can teach you now. You seem to be already man. – You taught me. It was a bitter lesson. – Would you like something? – Yes. – I feel your breath … you were drinking rum. She stood up and left… But for a while she came in again. -World to know how great You are, You came to the world as a little child, she then mentioned something like this. -Find out how large the Milky Way is, Vincent had spoken that. As you were born in Ontario, how big was it for you to join that team? So, the wound in his most gentle Heart, he said to her: “consider the immensity of my love: if you want to […] you will ask yourself: how big are these pieces I keep […] – What are the chances you will stick around and help […] -knowing / where you are, nor how, / you return with no path, […] – Annette, thank You that You came to show us how big and powerful and loving our God is. As one Little Vincent noted, “Something about living in a big city like New York makes you miss the stuff you grew up with, and in our case it was some of these songs. -No, by the time you’ve grown up, your doctor will be able to treat you on holiday using the latest technology…-You know now that we look into our own heart and realize that time with Trumpet will truly revive us as well as the Jewish people. Now that in Your love, wisdom and might You are about to open Gilgal in order to fulfill Your Word, will we not open our heart and give Israel some extra attention therefore raising Your name before her eyes […] For thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive; and plenteous in mercy, Vincent seemed to continue…-You once said that, as an art historian, you grew up in an atmosphere in which breaking open a very specific paradigm was crucial, […] Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou [art] as a whale in the […] on you, with this virtue; you endured great trials for the sake of Our Name; and many who contradicted you were not able to break you; although from the exterior you appeared frail, I rendered you strong from within, proof that I am well within you, and that your virtue is indeed rooted in the Truth; as I have said, if you are rooted in Me, who am the Source of Divine Love, you will obtain the virtue of love, then[…] energies, for now you are being actively enlightened to discovering the unlimited potential of your emotions, your relationship with Spirit and with nature and this is how you continue to advance yourself in understanding the process of building fluid boundaries and merging all aspects of your consciousness with the great heart, mind and soul of Spirit. -Annette, You with that pure unconditional love, an energy that you are unfamiliar with in human form yet the very essence of you […] how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.- Beloved kid!? “What do you want to be when you grow up? Delinquent children are not easily intimidated no matter how big you are. You are comfortable – just like a light summer breaze, ideal for a long day in the park or at the beach, with the deuce you are best equipped everywhere. The black sole comes with a strong […] You have to prayer to Jesus now.
A son of God, we acknowledge your greatness: all your actions show your wisdom and love. We are reading your last words, a son of God; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in [… ] so that you may adorn your whole being, within and without, in robes set about with variety, adorned with virtues like flowers and with garments every bit as ornate as those of the daughter and dearly beloved Bride of the Most High King, for this is only fitting. -Annette, you create Christian space. But there are forces in each age…I’m not conscious. My country, Poland allowed me become writer. My story would be impressive always. I wanted to write something what it was peculiar in my life. This kind od prejudices like free press, something od logic enlargement. It’s a seven words by me. The world is thinking… Annette, she got a bottle and two glasses from the cupboard, and when she turned, she noticed Vincent watching her greasy ankles. A sudden surge of rage did not put out the smirk that had she had on her lips. She went with the bottle to the round table in the middle of the room and filled it rum with both glasses. “Come, sit here,” she said. – It’s more comfortable here. When Vincent approached the large chair, she noticed that she was looking at her protruding belly. She handed him a glass, sat down and wrapped her hands on lap. Vincent still kept his glass so she said: – Drink it. It’s very good rum. – He smiled at her with a smile, which she has never seen before. – When Ewa informed me that here you are, I thought at first that I would have you thrown out. “I would be back,” he replied. – I had to see you … No that I would not believe Samuel, but I wanted to prove it myself. – Drink rum. He glanced at her glass .- You do not think I’m poisoning you … – She fell silent, that it was she said. Smiling still, he was looking at her glass. Annette’s anger he repainted her face. She lifted the glass and touched it lips. “Alcohol hurts me,” she explained. – I never drink. It’s for me it acts like a poison. She clenched her lips tightly and her sharp teeth bit her lower lip. Vincent was still smiling. Annette’s rage swelled, out of control. She poured liquor into her throat, coughing, her eyes moistened, she wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “You do not trust me very much,” she said. – Not. He picked up a glass, drank rum, then stood up and he filled both glasses. “I will not drink more,” she said with fear. – You do not need. I will drink and I will go. The burning alcohol burned her throat; she felt that she was speaking again in her something that frightened her. – I am not afraid of you or anyone. She bent the other one glass. – You have no reason to be afraid of me. You can ask for me forget. But you say you have already forgotten. – He got to know the miracle sense of warmth and security; he has not been so good for many years. – I came here for Samuel’s funeral. It was great man. I will miss it… Alcohol raged at Annette. She struggled with him, and the intensity of this struggle was visible in her face. – What’s wrong? – He asked. – I told you it poisons me. I told you that it hurts me. “I could not risk it,” he replied calmly. – It’s only once to me you shot. I do not know what else you were doing besides. – What do you mean? – I heard various rumors. Oh, dirty rumors. For a moment, she forgot her will with the circulating in her alcohol and at the moment lost the battle. It caught her in her brain red, fear has fled, and instead of it appeared obscene nothing cruelty. She grabbed a bottle and filled her glass. Vincent had to get up to pour himself. A feeling was born in him completely foreign to him. He enjoyed what he saw in her. With pleasure he watched her struggles. It was good for him to punish her, but he kept it vigilance. Now you have to be careful – he said to himself. Do not say anything. Do not speak. He said loudly: – Samuel H. was a good friend all these years. I will miss him. She spilled some rum; he dripped from the corners of his mouth. – I hated him. I would kill him if I could. – Why? He was good to us. – Because he looked … he was looking at me. – Why not? He also looked in me and helped me. “I hate him,” she snarled. – I’m glad he’s dead. – Maybe it would be better if I looked in you too. Her lips parted. – You are a fool. I do not hate you. You’re just weak fool. As tension grew in her, Vincent felt a warm calm. – Sit here and chew your teeth! She shouted. – You think that… It’s free now, eh? You’ve drunk a little and you think you’re a man! It would be enough for me to nod my little finger, and you would crawl to me, lapping, on my knees! – A sense of self has become self-conscious strength, she abandoned her fox caution. “I know you,” she continued. – I know your cowardly heart. Vincent was still smiling. He drank a little, which reminded Annette to pour myself again… You were a rag. And when I stopped needing you, you tried me stop. Take off your miserable smirk…(to be continued)

Stanislaw Barszczak, The successful Pole… In a little village I was watching Lake Maggiore in the snow, lonely shore avenue, nailed the little bar. Lake Maggiore had been before me in the snow, lonely shore avenue, nailed the little bar, where I was with you so many times. I call out to the lake, I’m alone, tell me why? The Laggo Maggiore in the snow, knows what happened, but he remains silent. Lake Maggiore in the snow, oh, the memory hurts. Last traces of the beautiful time, soon they are completely snowed. I call out to the lake, I’m alone, tell me why? Lake Maggiore in the snow, knows what happened, but he remains silent… Starry, starry night: Paint your palette blue and gray. Look out on a summer’s day. With eyes that know the darkness in my soul. Shadows on the hills. Sketch the trees and the daffodils; Catch the breeze and the winter chills In colors on the snowy linen land. What you tried to say to me, Now I understand What you tried to say to me, and how you suffered for your sanity. And how you tried to set them free. They would not listen; they did not know how. Perhaps they’ll listen now. Starry, starry night: Flaming flowers that brightly blaze; swirling clouds in violet haze reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue (I sung) Colors changing hue: Morning fields of amber grain, Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand. Now I understand What you tried to say to me, and how you suffered for your sanity. And how you tried to set them free. They would not listen; they did not know how. Perhaps they’ll listen now. For they could not love you But still, your love was true. And when no hope was left inside On that starry, starry night You took your life as lovers often do. But I could’ve told you, Vincent: This world was never meant For one as beautiful as you… Starry, starry night: Portraits hung in empty halls: Frameless heads on nameless walls With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget; Like the strangers that you’ve met: The ragged men in ragged clothes. The silver thorn, a bloody rose Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow. Now I think I know what you tried to say to me, And how you suffered for your sanity And how you tried to set them free. They would not listen; they’re not listening still. Perhaps they never will… Suddenly this thought was over.

Maybe you’ll let me inside, I heard. The living room was lit by the dim light of the small spherical lamps with pink lampshades. I felt a fluffy rug under my feet. I saw gloss of polished furniture and gold frames of paintings. I experienced impressions wealth and order. A quiet voice said…

– You should have put on a raincoat. Are you ours customer? “No,” I said.

– Who brought you here? – Someone from the hotel. I looked at the girl in front of him. She was dressed for black, without any ornaments. Her face was pretty and sharp. He tried to remember what kind of animal, which nightmaid the plunderman she reminds him. It must have been a secretive and predatory animal. “If you wish, I will come closer to the light,” she said. – No. She laughed.

– Please, rest, here. You’ve come for something, right? If you tell me what you’re looking for, I’ll call the right girl. Her low voice had some precise, dry strength. She picked up words without hurry, just like the flowers mixed in a garden. I seemed clumsy to her. I am Vincent, I want to see Annette I said. – Miss Annette is busy right now. Does he expect you? – No. – Because, you know, I can take care of you too. – I want to see Annette. – Can I know what? – No. The girl’s voice took on the sharpness of the blade turned on the stone.

– You can not see her. She is busy now. If you are I do not want a girl or anything else, please leave. – Perhaps you will tell her that I am here. – Does she know you? – I do not know. I felt courage leaving me. She penetrated me again, old coolness. – I do not know. But maybe you will tell her that she would like to see Vincent. Then she will know whether she know him or not. – Oh. Okay, I’ll tell her.

She went quietly to the door on the right and opened it. I heard a few muffled words, then a man came into the room. The girl left the door open so I would know I were not alone. On the other side of the room, other suspended doors were heavy, dark drapes with on. The girl parted her heavy folds and disappeared. I sat on chair. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that the man’s head had appeared on a moment and she drew back. The private room of Annette was characterized by comfort and functionality. A room did not look like the one his neigbour had once lived in. A room had walls covered with safflower silk, and curtains of grassy color. Silk was everywhere, on deep armchairs covered with silk, lamps with silk lampshades, the depth of the wide bed with the dazzling white satin cover, on whose giant pillows were piled up. There were not any paintings on the walls, no photographs or personal trinkets. On the mahogany table top of the dressing table did not have any bottles or vials, next to the bed its glow reflected in the three-part mirror. The carpet was old, fluffy, Chinese, with a bright green dragon on a saffron background. One the end of the room was a bedroom, a center – a sitting room, and the other end -office; there were binder cabinets there, made of gold oak, large safe, black with gold lettering, and desk with a lowered flap, on it a double lamp with a green shade, behind the desk swivel chair, next to the usual chair.

Annette sat in a chair at the desk. She was still pretty. She was blond hair again, her lips small and firm, her lips bowed as always the corners up. Her silhouette, however, lost its former clean line. The arms rounded, but the hands lost weight and covered up wrinkles. Her cheeks were full, and her skin was chapped on her chin. Her breasts were still small, while her belly was slightly convex fat padding. Thighs remained slim, but legs and feet thickened so that the body over the ankle spilled on the shoes. And by the stockings were showing through the bands of a flexible bandage against varicose veins. Even so, she was pretty and charming. Her hands only really grow old; the skin on the inside of the palm and the pillows of her fingers was stretched and shiny, on the surface wrinkled and spotted brown spots. She was wearing a raw black dress with long sleeves, and the only contrast was the cascades of white lace at the neck and at the naps. Time has made his work imperceptibly. If someone were always with her he stayed, he probably would not notice any change at all. Annette’s cheeks did not have wrinkles, eyes were piercing and sharp, nose delicate, lips narrow and firm. The scar on her forehead became almost invisible…You gave the birth of a tribul child, I’ve told her finally.(to be continued)

Stanislaw Barszczak, The successful Pole… Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month at Carnaval Latino. The vibrant celebration of the National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 – October 15) ends in grand style on Saturday, October 13, with the 19th annual Carnaval Latino. The free festival is organized by the Hispanic American Musicians and Artists Cultural Association, and will have Latin music from different parts of the world, food and drink, art, and, of course, a parade. New Orleans has one of the oldest Hispanic communities in the country – which traces its beginnings to the Spanish rule that preceded the French – and all the way to the modern times, as the city is currently experiencing a robust influx of immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, and other parts of the Latin American world. The Carnaval started small 19 years ago as a way to celebrate Hispanic culture in New Orleans through music, food and art. Now it’s grown to include a parade, more food and art vendors, and the internationally acclaimed musicians from all over the world. The Carnaval attracts not just locals but visitors from outside New Orleans and Louisiana, and has become an essential part of the local celebration of the National Hispanic Heritage Month. The festivities will be kicked off with the annual Parade of the Americas, or “Desfile De Las Americas,” a fun and unique way to celebrate the city’s tricentennial and the National Hispanic Heritage Month. The pre-parade party starts at 2 p.m. in the Washington Square Park (700 Elysian Fields Ave.), featuring DJs and authentic Latin cuisine from the local vendors including Los Jefes and Agave House. The parade will form on Elysian Fields Avenue by Washington Square Park by 6 p.m. It’s only fitting that the parade will roll through the historic French Quarter, described on the festival’s website as the most Hispanic neighborhood of a country, rebuilt from the ashes of two great fires by the Spanish Governors of Louisiana in the late 1700s. Just like in the previous year, the Krewe of Quetzal will roll with about 20 floats, many with their own personalized throws. The floats will be accompanied by the marching folkloric groups and bands, all featuring costumes that celebrate national roots. Don’t miss the opportunity to check out the eye-catching handcrafted float designs and colorful pageantry representing various Latin countries like Cuba, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and more. The parade will go down Decatur Street from its starting point on Elysian Fields, making its way to Canal Street, and eventually ending in the Warehouse District at Generations Hall, a spacious event venue and a former sugar refinery built in the early 1820s. There, the festivities will continue with the Latin music concert featuring a lineup of international and local bands that will be playing traditional folk music, salsa, mambo, and more — to get the festival-going on their feet and dancing. For more information on the parade route, the Grand Marshall and this year’s Queen, as well as other special updates and tickets, please visit the festival’s website and Facebook page. Be “en ese número”! How to Spend Valentine’s Day in the French Quarter. This city’s sensual charms are undisputed, as New Orleans had been consistently rated as one of big City arround the whole world. Plan your trip to New Orleans with the official French Quarter travel site. We give you the inside scoop on where to eat, stay, and play. Join us for a good time. You can see BATTLE OF FLOWERS also in Europe, Nice. Saturday, February 16, 2019 PROMENADE DES ANGLAIS This event represents a unique show in the world, it is one of the most famous festivals of the Côte d’Azur. On each float, costumed models launch up to 100,000 flowers to the public. CORSO CARNAVALESQUE ILLUMINE Saturday, February 16, 2019 PLACE MASSÉNA – GARDEN ALBERT 1ER On the Place Masséna, the visual animations are broadcast on large screens. In the evening , all the tanks are lit, the corso then illuminates the heart of Nice…So, you imagine, twenty-seven years ago, I was at the Nice festival. But it could be quite different, another festival, let’s say it, like a festival in New Orleans etc. As I said on another occasion, I was not special in Nice. I just wanted to start living for her … Let me tell you about my meeting with Aneta, my wife in the next future. (to be continued)

Stanislaw Barszczak, The successful Pole…

Most people were good people if you just treated them well… Time, as far as my mother was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people. From time to time she patiently endured gossip and long litanies of health woes, and nodded knowingly at stories about how money was tight. Though, our stories connected us to one another, and through those connections, it was possible to harness discontent and convert it to something useful, I ponder… In my youth I watched my fellows in the flow of a sweaty game with a group of boys on the adjacent school corner. Everyone seemed to fit in, except for me. I look back on the discomfort of that moment now and recognize the more universal challenge of squaring who you are with where you come from and where you want to go. I also realize that I was a long way, still, from finding my voice… Then I saw Saint parish priest, reverend father E.Liszka. He was not like anyone we’d dated before, mainly because he seemed so secure. He was openly affectionate. He ‘told about me’ I was beautiful. He made feel good on Christian community… For every door that’s been opened to me, I’ve tried to open then my door to others. And here is what I have to say, finally: Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice… My mother maintained the sort of parental mind-set that I now recognize as brilliant and nearly impossible to emulate – kind of unflappable Zen neutrality… She wasn’t quick to judge and she wasn’t quick to meddle. Instead, she monitored my moods and bore benevolent witness to whatever travails or triumphs a day might bring… When I’d done something great, I received just enough praise to know she was happy with me, but never so much that it became the reason I did what I did… I wasn’t particularly imaginative in how I thought about the future, which is another way of saying I was already thinking about theology school… Listening to the catholic church, I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck. I was gripped all over again by a sense of how special he was. Slowly, all around me, too, the church ladies began nodding their approval, punctuating my sentences with call “That’s right!” I here knew father S.Konczyk. His voice climbed in intensity as he got to the end of his pitch. He wasn’t a preacher, but he was definitely preaching something -a vision. He was making a bid for our investment. Once day he took me to minor seminary. The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. “What’s better for us?” Father Konczyk seemed to call to me: “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?” Then as a priest I traveled abroad. Because I also wanted to make sure that when I visited a new place as a priest, I really visited it -meaning that I’d have a chance to meet the people who actually lived there, not just those who governed them. Traveling abroad, I had opportunities that father Konczyk didn’t. I woke one night to find him staring at the ceiling, his profile lit by the glow of streetlights outside. He looked vaguely troubled, as if he were pondering something deeply personal. Was it our relationship? The loss of my uncle? “Oh,” she said to me. “I was just thinking about income inequality.”This, I was learning, was how Mom’s mind worked. She got himself fixated on big and abstract issues, fueled by some crazy sense that she might be able to do something about them. It was new to me, I have to say. Until now, I’d hung around with good people who cared about important enough things but who were focused primarily on building their careers and providing for their families. Mom was just different. She was dialed into the day-to-day demands of her life, but at the same time, especially at night, her thoughts seemed to roam a much wider plane… And my tante… So far in my life, she’s been like a lawyer, she’s been a vice president at a hospital and the director of a nonprofit that helps young people build meaningful careers… And until recently, she was like the First Lady of the Poland- a job that’s not officially a job, but that nonetheless has given me a platform like nothing I could have imagined. It challenged me and humbled me, lifted me up and shrank me down, sometimes all at once. I’m just beginning to process what took place over these years- from the moment in 1967 when her husband and at once my uncle first started talking about running and finishing for the see. Some people handed over their savings and borrowed too much, ending up with a nice home but no freedom at all. This not a case of my uncle… After my parish work I was in the Convent of the good brothers of Saint John of God several years. I had spent there more than a year writing a draft of the book by Paul Ricoeur during the hours I wasn’t at one of my sacerdotal jobs. I worked late at night in a small room the Convent of brothers of Saint John of Gór had converted to a study at the rear of their apartment. I’d sometimes go in my mind in, you imagine, stepping over the piles of paper to sit on the ottoman in front of his chair while I worked, trying to lasso that with a joke and a smile, to tease me back from whatever far-off fields I’d been galloping then through. The brothers of Saint John of God were good-humored about my intrusions, but only if I didn’t stay too long… I’ve come to understand, I am the sort of person who needs a hole, a closed-off little warren where I can read and write undisturbed. It’s like a hatch that opens directly onto the spacious skies of my brain. Time spent there seems to fuel me. In deference to this, we’ve managed in the church to create some version of a hole inside every home we’ve ever lived in – any quiet corner or alcove will do. To this day, when I arrive at a parish house I go off looking for an empty room that can serve as the vacation hole. There, I can flip between the six or seven books I’m reading simultaneously and toss my newspapers on the floor. For me, the hole is a kind of sacred high place, where insights are birthed and clarity comes to visit. For my friends, it’s an off-putting and disorderly mess. One requirement has always been that the Hole, wherever it is, have a door… As a Christian I always wanted to align myself with different foundations and food suppliers to install thousand salad bars in school cafeterias and were recruiting local chefs to help schools serve meals that were not just healthy but tasty. Though this no matter, because I have had no money to fulfill the chance, no idea of that. (to be continued)

Stanisław Barszczak, The successful Pole (part 3) As you know then I went on the Parish. I met as reverend as jocular Priest there. All this inborn confidence was admirable, of course, but honestly, try living with it. My parish priest, also named Stanislaw Pytlawski, was decidedly less fun to be around, a patriarch who’d sit in his recliner with a newspaper open on his lap and the evening news blaring on the television nearby. His demeanor was nothing like my mother’s. For him, everything was an irritant. He was galled by the day’s headlines, by the state of the world as shown on TV. Then he also mumbled something to himself most often. He shouted at housekeeper in the kitchen, a sweet, soft-spoken woman and devout Christian named also Stanislawa. She cooked his meals and absorbed his barrage of complaints and said nothing in her own defense generally. I will not forget her small figure … and wooden shoes never. I had a grandmother on the parish, Mrs. Helena Giełzak. Once she could not stand it, I remember, she screamed when the parish priest took her bread from her hand. By day, in her off-hours with parish priest, she was reduced to a meekness I found perplexing, even as a young vicar. There was something about my grandmother’s silence and passivity in her relationship with parish priest that got under my skin. According to my mother, a grandmother Helene was the only person to talk back to priest when he yelled. I did it regularly, from the time I was very young vicar and over many years, in part because it drove me crazy that my grandmother wouldn’t speak up for herself, in part because everyone else fell silent around him, and lastly because I liked parish prist as much as he confounded me. His stubbornness was something I recognized, something I’d inherited myself, though I hoped in a less abrasive form. The parish priest was a holistic but very good-natured. He was also deep. For me, coexisting with Father’s strong sense of purpose – sleeping in the same room with it, sitting at the breakfast table with it – was something to which I had to adjust, not because he flaunted it, exactly, but because it was so alive. In the presence of his certainty, his notion that he could make some sort of difference in the world. His sense of Christian purpose seemed like an unwitting challenge to my own…So, there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. And you tell about them. This, for me, is how we become… Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be? It was a phrase borrowed from a book I’d read when I first started out as an organizer, a vicar priest and it would stay with me for years. It was as close as I’d come to understanding what motivated the Pope. The world as it should be. Now another thing. I can hurt you and get away with it. Women endure entire lifetimes of these indignities – in the form of catcalls, groping, assault, oppression. These things injure us. They sap our strength. Some of the cuts are so small they’re barely visible. Others are huge and gaping, leaving scars that never heal. Poland is not a simple place. Its contradictions set me spinning. I’d found myself at Catholic church. For the Archbishop had been an empathic and patient listener, coaxing each of us through the maze of our feelings, separating out our weapons from our wounds. He cautioned us when we got too lawyerly and posited careful questions intended to get us to think hard about why we felt the way we felt. Slowly, over hours of talking, the knot began to loosen. Each time Archbishop and I left his office, we felt a bit more connected. I began to see that there were ways I could be happier and that they didn’t necessarily need to come from Archbishop’s quitting spiritual politics in order to take some happier job. (If anything, our counseling sessions had shown me that this was an unrealistic expectation.) I began to see how I’d been stoking the most negative parts of myself. It was possible that I was more in charge of my happiness than I was allowing myself to be. That time I was too busy resenting Archbishop for managing to fit workouts into his schedule, for example, to even begin figuring out how to exercise regularly myself. This was my pivot point, my moment of self-arrest. Like a climber about to slip off an icy peak, I drove my ax into the ground. That isn’t to say that Archbishop didn’t make his own adjustments – counseling helped him to see the gaps in how we communicated, and he worked to be better at it – but I made mine, and they helped me, which then helped us. For starters, I recommitted myself to being healthy. This new regimen changed everything: Calmness and strength, two things I feared I was losing, were now back. So many of my friends judged potential mates from the outside in, focusing first on their looks and financial prospects. If it turned out the person they’d chosen wasn’t a good communicator or was uncomfortable with being vulnerable, they seemed to think time would fix the problem. But Archbishop arrived in my life a wholly formed person. From our very first conversation, he’d shown me that he wasn’t self-conscious about expressing fear or weakness and that he valued being truthful. I wasn’t going to let one person’s opinion dislodge everything I thought I knew about myself. Instead, I switched my method without changing my goal. Archbishop was serious without being self-serious. He was breezy in his manner but powerful in his mind. It was a strange, stirring combination. Surprising to me, too, was how well he knew Czestochowa and her thumping parishes from the very beginning. His task was to help rebuild neighborhoods and bring back jobs. As he described it, it had been two parts frustration to one part reward: He’d spend weeks planning a community meeting, only to have a dozen people show up. His efforts were scoffed at by diocese leaders. Yet over time, he’d won a few incremental victories, and this seemed to encourage him. Despite my resistance to the hype that had preceded him, I found myself admiring Archbishop for both his self-assuredness and his earnest demeanor. He was refreshing, unconventional, and weirdly elegant. I was deeply, delightfully in love with a man whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing mine… As mine the parents od mine, they didn’t own a house. I were their investment. Everything went into me. Mom, I don’t think my mother announced whatever her doubts and discontents were to my father directly, and I don’t think she let him in on whatever alternative life she might have been dreaming about during those times. Was she picturing herself on a tropical island somewhere? With a different kind of man, or in a different kind of house, or with a corner office instead of kids? I don’t know, and I suppose I could ask my mother, who is in her eighties, but I don’t think it matters… So, optics would always rule our lives. Though this was not me and never would be. I could be supportive, but I couldn’t be a robot. As a priest I was determined to be someone who told the truth, using my voice to lift up the voiceless when I could, and to not disappear on people in need. There were moments when the beauty of my country and its people so overwhelmed me that I couldn’t speak. Then once spring day it was over. Even if you see it coming, even as your final weeks are filled with emotional good-byes, see Konopiska, Rząśnia, Sosnowiec parishes, Zabkowice village and settlement in Kozłowek, Cracow. One priest’s furniture gets carried out while another’s comes in. Closets are emptied and refilled in the span of a few hours. Just like that, there are new heads on new pillows – new temperaments, new dreams. And when it ends, when you walk out the door that last time from the world’s most famous address, you’re left in many ways to find yourself again. So let me start here, with a small thing that happened not long ago. I was at home in the redbrick house that my family recently moved into. Our ‘new house’ sits about two hundred miles from our old house, on a quiet neighborhood street. We’re still settling in. In the priest room, our furniture is arranged the same way it was in the parish. We’ve got mementos around the house that remind us it was all real – photos of Mom and his child, a hand made pots given to me by wife of a parishman, a book signed by Professor Joseph Tischner. This latter, unspoken was the fact that he could just go. He could walk out the door and catch a cab to the airport and still make it to Vienna in time to vote. He could leave his mother and fretting host of the house halfway across the Mediterranean Sea and go join his colleagues. It was an option. But I wasn’t going to martyr myself by suggesting it… What was strange about this night was that a mother wouldn’t and everyone was gone. It was just me, and empty house like I haven’t known in tventy years. Everything but was not lost. This was the message we needed to carry forward. It’s what I truly believed. It wasn’t ideal, but it was our reality – the world as it is. We needed now to be resolute, to keep our feet pointed in the direction of progress. Archbishop, I wanted to believe that there was a man who’d materialize and become everything to me, who’d be solid and whose effect would be so immediate and deep that I’d be willing to rearrange my priorities. It just wasn’t the man standing in front of me right now… I knew from my own life experience that when someone shows genuine interest in your learning and development, even if only for ten minutes in a busy day, it matters. It matters especially for women, for minorities, for anyone society is quick to overlook… to be continued.

Stanisław Barszczak, The successful Pole (part 3)

Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child: what do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end. It’s no matter. My beloved George, if you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others. For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey never does end. Everyone on Earth, they’d tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance. You imagine that, for every door that’s been opened to me, I’ve tried to open my door to others. And here is what I have to say, finally: Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become. Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear. So, I write a story. My story is what I have, what I will always have. It is something to own. Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be? The latter one’s would be always my last word… I’d loved my mom. You see, relationships of any woman I will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses… swapped back and forth and over again. Mom had liked to watch television, to listen to radio. Since childhood, I wanted Poles to understand that words matter, that the hateful language they heard coming from their TVs did not reflect the true spirit of our country and that we could vote against it. It was dignity I wanted to make an appeal for- the idea that as a nation we might hold on to the core thing that had sustained my family, going back generations. Dignity had always gotten us through. It was a choice, and not always the easy one, but the people I respected most in life made it again and again, every single day. There was a motto Mom and I tried to live by. Then Mom had died. It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise find beautiful- a purple sky at sunset or a playground full of kids- and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way. Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness, I sometimes guess. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t “bad kids.” They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances… So, then I knew good men. Time, as far as them was concerned, was a gift I gave to other people. Professor of the russian language, he’d been a citizen of Warsaw. His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind. At seventy-four, he’s still in progress, and I hope that he always will be. I also had met the women, for example emotional Professor of mathematics. It’s remarkable how a stereotype functions as an actual trap. How many “Polish women” have been caught in the circular logic of that phrase? When you aren’t being listened to, why wouldn’t you get louder? If you’re written off as angry or emotional, doesn’t that just cause more of the same? When it came to the home-for holiday, I installed new boundaries, ones that worked better for me and Mom. It went back to my wishes to grow up strong and centered and also unaccommodating to any form of old-school patriarchy. We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient. In my childhood I’d stared at my neighbourhood, people of village. Hearing them, I realized that they weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different. In church of ours once day I wanted to say to them: Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. So, this may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path (the my- isn’t -that-impressive path) and keep you there for a long time. For this I battle in my mind in order to get people good. We all play a role in the Polish democracy. We need to remember the power of every vote. I continue, too, to keep myself connected to a force that’s larger and more potent than any one election, or leader, or news story – and that’s optimism. For me, this is a form of faith, an antidote to fear. As a priest I met then the Pope. I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine: It was one thing to get yourself out of a stick place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck. The Pope Francis intrigued me. He was not like anyone I’d dated before, mainly because he seemed so secure. However, the Pope and his house in Rome, he was openly affectionate. He told me never I was beautiful. He but made me feel good. To me, he was sort of like a unicorn – unusual to the point of seeming almost unreal. He never talked about material things, like buying a house or a car or even new shoes. He would read late into the night, I ponder, often long after I’d fallen asleep, plowing through history and biographies and John Paul II, too. He also would read tweeter on internet, and several newspapers daily, cover to cover, and kept tabs on the latest book reviews. He could speak with equal passion about the Polish elections and which movies had panned and why. I love people. I didn’t want them ever to believe that life began when the man of the house arrived home. So, Mom came back home after her work in factory od glass. We but didn’t wait for Dad. It was his job to catch up with us. He’d been Profesor of agriculture in Cracow, had remained so far from us… Years later, after I’d met a Catholic church, Poland, my homeland would bring to me the same questions you are unconsciously putting to me that night on this chinese stoop: Are you what you appear to be? Now you see, I exactly want to establish myself for evermore. You don’t really know how attached you are until you move away, until you’ve experienced what it means to be dislodged, a cork floating on the ocean of another place. In my blinding drive to excel, in my need to do things perfectly, I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road. But my first months at Caritas house gave me a glimpse of something that had previously been invisible – the apparatus of privilege and connection, what seemed like a network, ready to connect some but not all of us to the sky. I don’t belong under minority and underprivileged people that rise to the challenge all the time. But it takes energy to be the only one person trying out for a play or joining an intramural team. It requires effort, an extra level of confidence, to speak in those settings and own your presence in the Czestochowa diocese room. Which is why when my friend and I found one another at dinner time each occasion, it was with some degree of relief. It’s why we stayed a long time and laughed as much as we could. It’s also a sensation I’ve come to love as I’ve traveled more, the way a new place signals itself instantly and without pretense. The air has a different weight from what you’re used to. The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know. Here’s a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective, collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind. Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power. So, in different moments, I’d felt overwhelmed by the pace, unworthy of the glamour, anxious about the Christians, and uncertain of my purpose. There are pieces of public life, of giving up one’s privacy to become a walking, talking symbol of a Christian, that can seem specifically designed to strip away part of your identity. But here, finally, speaking to myself I ask you: Are you good enough? And I answer this question, at once I’m not. Another day I am speaking: Yes, you are, all of you. I told the friends that they’d touched my heart. I told them that they were precious, because they truly were. And when my talk was over, I did what was instinctive. I hugged absolutely every single Christian I could reach… My Mom, she taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word. My mother showed me how to think for myself and to use my voice. Together, in our cramped apartment on the district of Dąbrowa Górnicza, Mom, the Priests of village, Professors and their love of books, they helped me see the value in our story, in my story, in the larger story of our country. Even when it’s not pretty or perfect. Even when it’s more real than you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own. I’ve been lucky enough now in my life to meet all sorts of extraordinary and accomplished people – world leaders, inventors, musicians, astronauts, athletes, professors, entrepreneurs, artists and writers, pioneering doctors and researchers. Some (though not enough) of them are women. Some (though not enough) are black or of color. Some were born poor or have lives that to many of us would appear to have been unfairly heaped with adversity, and yet still they seem to operate as if they’ve had every advantage in the world. What I’ve learned is this: All of them have had doubters. Some continue to have roaring (sic). The noise doesn’t go away, but the most successful people I know have figured out how to live with it, to lean on the people who believe in them, and to push onward with their goals. One summer day when I was about ten, I sat on a stoop, chatting with a group of teenagers my age. We were all very young, in shorts and basically just killing time. What were we discussing? It could have been anything – school, our older brothers, an anthill on the ground. At one point, one of the boys gave me a sideways look and said, just a touch hotly, “You must get up earlier.” The question was pointed, meant as an insult or at least a challenge, but it also came from an earnest place. It held a kernel of something that was confusing for both of us. We seemed to be related but of two different worlds. “I don’t,” I said, looking scandalized that he’d even suggest it and mortified by the way the other boys were now staring at me. But I knew what he was getting at. There was no denying it, even if I just had. I did speak differently than some of teenagers my age. Though we were taught to finish off our words. Mom bought me a dictionary and a full Encyclopaedia Polonica set, which lived on a shelf in “our apartment,” its titles etched in gold. The idea was I were to transcend, to get myself further… Then mid the eighties last century my Seminary was over. I went on the Parish. I met as reverend as jocular Priest there. All this inborn confidence was admirable, of course, but honestly, try living with it. For me, coexisting with Father’s strong sense of purpose—sleeping in the same room with it, sitting at the breakfast table with it – was something to which I had to adjust, not because he flaunted it, exactly, but because it was so alive. In the presence of his certainty, his notion that he could make some sort of difference in the world. His sense of Christian purpose seemed like an unwitting challenge to my own…So, there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. And you tell about them. This, for me, is how we become…to be continued.

Stanislaw Barszczak, Bread from heaven

The European Union is a “monster”, which is deeply contemptuous of the democratic process, Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has told BBC HARDtalk. But now the EU had been created, disassembling it would not fix the problem and would throw Europe into a “terrible abyss”, he warned. “There is no way that we as Europeans can escape a post-modern 1930s if this monster of the European Union disintegrates under the weight of its hubris and discontent for democracy,” he said, adding that we need to civilise and democratise the “monster”. So, all nations will speak Polish. The purpose of my lecture is by no means academic. I notice an absence of Poles my homeland – or rather, their awareness in our recent history. The whip of God is near, the end is coming, we will die, Sister Lucia of Fatima has noticed … Polish Christianity and Europe are leaving the Glob, the center of Christianity has moved only for a moment, to the Americas. In fact, from the beginning, Christianity is an apostolate, but as if imposed from outside, not all Gentiles believed in the messiah! It’s not our blood, an orthodox Arab of the seventh century would say. Christianity was surrounded by social violence, as they believe.Fate made through the victory of French Charles over the Arabs in 732 stop Europe from new development, I think. Here the story was repeated again. Because today, Europe does not intend to develop anew, she plans to switch to a small one! And any systems supported by minimalism as a result … also kill Poland, my homeland, which was the result of divine solutions in the heart of modern Europe. We have to do our best, I think to change these situations, without any divisions on the worse and better. What saved Europe in 1683 against the flood of Islam? King Jan III Sobieski, but above all, the strength of the Allied Coalition. Why should we Poles do everything ourselves? We are to be freely fulfilled, beautiful – because that’s what God and his holy gospel wanted, we solved beings are. Then nobody will need to be good. Some Jews now say Jesus was the true Messiah. In this way, they give the assertion, as if the Bible contained a great truth! However, the truth itself is still to come … Christianity has behind it two thousand years coexistence with the civilization of landowners. It was created from very difficult necessities and also from the problems of understanding human matters. During the Third Reich of the Nazi, a Belgian Redemptorist published a book entitled “Jesus’ throat for his priest”. Beauteful book. I want to refer to him, but for a moment … Because a well-known German writer published a book for the evening of his life. He described in it “Jenseits” (in German) a new person. Raised after Christian, he does not want to get closer to the institutional church. “I do not need sacramental practice,” he says. The writer, on the other hand, builds his dignity on the statement that “Jenseits,” ie his second self, is burdened with faith. Because we believe more, as we know. Jenseits is not a positive feeling. As we know faith produces a doubt, it is a process. Let’s look at Schubert’s operas or Mozart’s Mass. Meister Stuck. Martin Walser does not consider himself a philosopher. He want to be forever a writer, and a musical one. So faith makes the world beautiful. And just as the greatness of faith is knowing (Kentniss), so the trait of knowledge is unknowing, Kiekegaard said. Credo ut absurdum. Intensely believers we are sometimes. And immediately the question arises: do you believe in primordial (Urknall) or in Creation (Schopfung). On Mars they will live, everything indicates it, pra-human. The famous Johann W. Goethe used to say about God: it is empty sounds (leere Laute). Yesterday was January 8, I would say that on this day I lived with Jesus’ words to her priest. But I also heard the special utterance of a Norwegian who was called “the real knowledge of the capture of the church of Jesus Christ.” It was December 11, 1952. After finishing reading some books lay down and fell asleep. And what he saw later he describes here: in his home in Oslo, he listens to the morning information from the radio. The announcer says that people left the house and did not return. A lot of people have been taken away in an unknown direction. The hour did not pass an hour when a woman heard in her garden, who was distraught at the street, for her daughter died. The trains were not canceled, people’s bodies were not found. People were in a panic. In the south even the Norwegian government took a voice in this matter. We say that the reason for disappearing so many people are Christians. That is why it was ordered to close the churches. The world held its breath, stood for a moment. But people are getting ready to pray in not yet closed churches, and singing songs, supplications while the other people taken in the morning to another order.How the lesson flows from this story? The world has become more sensitive to all wrong … Personally, I understood that man did not he is evil (in german Bose). But man must constantly renew himself, for the ultimate sad. The sling of power was at the dawn of the Third Reich (Macht Ilusion). The Nazis people were fortified with institutions. Auschwitz is an institution, not the already enigmatic slogan that means man is evil. For Auschwitz has no end (Auschwitz hat nicht Ende). And a man must renew himself constantly. Death has nothing, there is abstraction (hat gar nig) ht). Credo quia /absurdum. Europe is divided. No one negotiates with the European Union. This is the strange death of Europe. This is the moment when we have something too much … Too much to embrace, namely to understand contemporary economics, and from the first hand.The price of the euro is negative. Hidden Media is, quiet war. We create “good”, in the sense of “well”. But we should put value on, not pay only. Brussels condemns democratization, the national process. We need to stabilize economics, increase spending , move with financial operations, dare to invest more. The Chine people claim that the laundries have done a lot of work than the internet. The technology should be taken away economically. The basic economic contribution is necessary. And Europe has seen in abyss. Abuse of foreign costs increases. Not only are we socially dependent, but more and more as a confraternity based on money hi power. You need costs, economic attitudes of others to spend for tomorrow’s goals. Let’s support cooperation, especially we Poles, and we will save Europe for future societies, against hardened regulations of thoughtless law. It seems that we also have the opportunity to watch hell, stay in it! Therefore, my lecture also addresses the priests. I want to read the book by Josef Schrijvers, Jesus’ word to his priest and the book Otto Michellini Jesus to my priests. Thank you very much.

Stanislaw Barszczak,Vision of capacity of the church,testimony by Olaf Rodge

On December 11, 1952, in the morning at my brother’s house in Bergen (Norway) I had a vision that I was very moved. Just before this experience, I was busy reading the book and did not think about the rapture of the Church at all. However, I felt that I had to describe it. At first it did not seem to me to be something from God, so I rejected this idea in the belief that it was a product of my imagination. However, I could not find a room in agreement with these thoughts. God in prayer: “I can not recall everything in detail. So if you want me to describe it, let me experience it again.” After a week, the experience was repeated, it was 22:00. I felt it as clearly as if someone he was sitting next to me and reading news from a newspaper. I took a pencil briefly and I started to write it on the pages of the old cash register, lying just next to me. I wrote until the first night, then I could not write tired anymore, because I was already 79 years old! I asked God that I could rest, and if anything else were to be I got down to sleep and immediately fell asleep. After the next week, the vision was repeated and continued from the place where I finished previously. I believe that what I wrote can wake up some soul from spiritual sleep in current times.(Listen to me) It’s 9:00 am. Miss Anderson sits on the radio and listens to a children’s show. After a few minutes, the show suddenly stops. There is a sensational report from Oslo. The city is in a panic – says the announcer – the police are that the reason for all this is the disappearance of an undetermined number of people, adults and children. The publishers are I was asked to provide all information about the circumstances of the disappearance of their loved ones. In this way they tried to find a way to get to know this strange secret. A few minutes later, it was stated that the market square suddenly disappeared during the performance several women sellers. One of the women said she was paying for the flowers she bought and the seller started looking for the rest and he disappeared without a trace at that moment. She just heard him say, “Jesus, thank you.” She seemed to see a light mist, but then everything went away. At the same moment, another young woman running around started screaming in a shrill voice: “Someone stole my child! That was my son, he was eight months old, where is he? Where is the police?” The police were even nearby, but what could she do? How to help? Similar voices came from everywhere – great chaos and anxiety arose. Fat seller ran out of his store crying: “Help, help! They have disappeared two saleswoman directly from behind the shop counter!” Strange thing. Reports on the disappearance of many people have begun to flow in and from other cities such as Stockholm and Copenhagen, where in Oslo, a panic broke out. In every case people were told about the disappearance of people of different ages. The government felt helpless in the face of this mysterious incident. By listening to these news, she sighed, “My God, what is this?” She put in the door and went to the garden and stopped at the gate, looking at the street on which the neighbor was walking.Miss Holand held her hands in her eyes and sobbed in despair, “Ruta, Ruta,” and when she saw Mrs. Anderson, she rubbed her eyes and stopped, asking: “You did not see a stranger here, who would pass this way? My Ruta has disappeared! She was sitting in front of the house stairs while I was busy with one rose-bush and suddenly she disappeared. I call her, I shout, but no one answers me. It seems to me, however, that someone was riding down the street, but I am quite distracted and I can not collect my thoughts. How strange this is … “Ruta, Ruta! Where are you, who took you ?! “- Crying, she went on, and then Mr. Anderson came back home.”Have you come back? – asked the wife – Is it still very early, only half past ten? ” I could not stand it anymore. A great confusion suddenly took place in our factory. Many workers have disappeared. It was assumed that there was an accident at work, but we were looking for the missing people and we found no trace of them. Then one of the workers who claimed to be a real Christian and went to some religious congregation, full of terror began to cry, “It happened now? It happened now ?!” “What happened?” – we asked him, he told us that “Jesus he took his people, “and he began to cry, wringing his hands, and continued:” And I stayed here! I stayed here! “I asked him to calm down and not say such nonsense, but he was more and more distraught, it was terrible to hear this man, certainly not only he fell into such a doubt, we will work longer today to make up for the lost time.” In the city, the situation was just as tragic. Communication was blocked, because many bus, lorry and passenger drivers also disappeared, leaving their vehicles motionless. Trams and taxis stopped, leaving a long row of streets. People were running half-mad for looking for relatives and friends. Mr. Anderson and his wife entered the house and set up local radio news. “People from all over the world report that people have disappeared, calls have been ringing since the morning, reports and questions about these strange events are being transmitted, and the reports say that seafarers have disappeared on many ships too, in hospitals the staff are terrified, especially in maternity wards, where many mothers are grieved for losing newborn babies and some people are missing in retirement homes. ” At 11:00 it was reported from London that some adults and children disappeared around the UK around nine o’clock, leaving no trace behind. Nobody was found missing. All this is a great mystery. Several pastors summoned their congregation members stating that the most devout and faithful of them were missing. Several pastors and preachers were also sought after. The bishop of a larger religious group called a meeting with his pastors and preachers for the evening. Three and a half hours after the first information from Oslo was broadcast, new news from different countries and continents began to flow. From the Far East and from Korea, the most moving news comes. There the number of missing people is estimated at many hundreds of thousands. It is almost impossible to describe the events that took place in the first hours. A great number of people have been shocked. Many others ran around the street breaking their hands and looking for loved ones. The most moving is the view of mothers who have lost their children. Among the crowd there are also many who curse in all this. A man runs down the street waving his arms and exclaims, “Watch out, look out, we’ll all be taken soon!” – the poor guy lost his mind. On the corner, the old lady, folding her hands, looks at the sky and says as if to herself: “Oh no, if we did not get ready so that we could be taken, now no one else will be caught there in this state. Jesus, help us. Yes, it happened now, it happened now, I tried to lead a religious life, but I thought he would not come so soon … I did not take it so seriously … The management of the railway reported that for the time being, no disaster or catastrophe occurred. Only one train stopped on route without a manager and a conductor. A regulation was also issued so that the railway services would check on all level crossings if there were any passengers sought along the tracks who had disappeared from the trains in an unknown way. Similar information comes from the fjords, where some fishermen disappear from the boat. Only in the evening something like an explanation was given, appealing to the public to maintain peace and order. The authorities together with the police are trying to determine the number of missing people. This extraordinary situation absorbed even the minds of many scholars, and above all the forecasters who try to find out the causes of the events that took place. Information about the existence of a similar situation occurred in the USA, with the fact that there was a much greater confusion in communication due to the mysterious disappearance of many people. Many people are eagerly awaiting the morning news, which should bring a more extensive overview of this random information that has so far reached almost the entire world. It is 22:00. From the information so far, it is clear that this is not an isolated situation, but that it has embraced the whole world in a similar way. Previous information has been received only from larger cities, now information from rural areas is beginning to be received. Anxiety overwhelmed the whole earth, equally both hemispheres. None of the people wanted to go to bed that night. Numerous groups of people were discussing on the streets discussing what had happened. Some, however, begin to lead to hysterics. There are more and more voices that what has happened is closely related to Christianity and its followers. Those who knew the missing, in agreement with their families, are of the opinion that this applies only to fanatics and innocent children. One of the employees of the village brewery came to the conclusion that evening: “Yes, Eusus Olmsen is gone now. Now he will prosper, as he has often said in his sermons that Jesus will soon come and take him away.” “It’s true,” answered the others, “he was one of us, and he disappeared, and now?” The authorities will certainly take care of it, presumably they will infect everything related to religion, so that something similar will never happen again” “Certainly, someone from the group nodded, but these Christians were right, if we listened to them, we would probably be better off here than in this hellish mess, but now we have to live on, and it will certainly be much harder and worse.” – “Oh, you believed in them, actually you were to go with them when they were picked up,” someone sighed. – “I would like it to be so,” he answered and left. The next day did not bring anything new, nor any particularly sensational reports. All stations reported that this is and remains an unexplained mystery. At a meeting of preachers and pastors gathered in the evening, many of them were missing. The rest of them were nervous and gloomy. Many felt very unhappy. They did not have the slightest doubt that what had happened was the predicted rapture of the Church-Bride. Some of them said that despite gaining theological education and frequent study of God’s Word, they never thought it would happen in such a way. The new birth was something unknown and unknown to them, how much more the possession of the Spirit of God’s inheritance. One of the young pastors said simply: “We were not taught this way.” The lecturers have never told us that what we experienced this morning will happen. ” Journalists have admitted that there is a clear need for discussion, but the minds are too shaken to be able to reasonably talk about it. In response to the police appeal, that the population would report their views, most of the pastors and preachers gathered decided to make a report in line with their conviction, in which they jointly stated that what had happened could be considered the Church’s proclamation of the Church. That was all they could say to this moment. The police, however, did not make public statements of the pastors, because she was convinced that this was the fruit of a hysterical, out of balance imagination. However, the event was of such great importance that the government took over the matter, which stated that since all this is connected with Christianity, it should be closed and suspended in its activity until the better understanding of the whole matter and the explanation of this mystery. all churches and religious gatherings. Since this case concerns all nations, it is necessary to take a common position here after a thorough examination of the matter by an extraordinary international assembly. Among the many Christians there was general depression. Yesterday, contrary to the ban, all churches and chapels were full, but some lacked superiors and many members. In some religious communities very few believers gathered, but many sympathizers were standing so far from the side; they were mostly those who had been unhappy because of the loss of their relatives and relatives. All gathered wanted to listen to the Word of God, but it was also taken away. Some tried to read something, but they did not understand it. So they would give the Bible to others who in their turn said they could not read it at all. Many people began to cry, others left the assembly disappointed by the lack of any noteworthy explanations. And those who came to the meeting to seek the help of God, went away to the greatest extent disappointed and unhappy. Most of the gatherings were in chaos and confusion everywhere. Standing somewhere to one side, the man with clenched fists shouted to the preacher, “It’s your fault that so many of us have remained. You never told us that Jesus would come soon and take you home.” And you told us less about the necessity of having the Holy Spirit and Now I know and see that what stopped me here were small things, but … God, be kind … “-” Calm down, “cried the preacher -” I think that I have done my duties to you. ” They were all knocking at the door, but it was closed. It is impossible to describe this situation. People felt that they were facing a terrible future. The terror was felt in the air, all hope was gone as the door was already closed. Now, however, people who were satisfied with saying empty Christian declarations and platitudes, or the summer way of life knocked on them. Some maintained contact with Christianity for social reasons, others because of their work or designated task. All of them, however, were unregenerate, without the inheritance of God, and thus without the right of inheritance. In a word, for many of them the life of the Church was just a kind of passion or a pleasant or the most appropriate way to spend free time. Now all of them knocked on the closed door, crying, “Lord, Lord, open to us.” To make matters worse, it began to talk about the possibility of an explosion at any moment of the great world war. The problem of rapture of Christians leads to quick reaction of the authorities, which, according to international agreements, forbade completely practicing and participating in any religious rites, forbidding under the penalty of death the mention of the name Jesus. Nations and countries were to be cleansed of all traces of Christianity and of all that is in the slightest resemblance…However, despite the prohibitions, a large number of the remaining Christians still called to God. They were arrested and sent to death after being interrogated with the most terrible tortures. “If you curse Jesus and deny Him, you can save your life!” there were proposals for many of them. They were before the choice of life or death. Thousands of these people persevered and did not deny Jesus, so they died en masse. They were no longer entitled to any defense. Woe to the earth and those who live on it. Among those arrested, there were also those who could not stand this test and gave up. The prince of this world has mastered the whole earth. According to Luke 21: 16-17, the relatives gave each other away, condemning them to death: “Parents and brothers, relatives and friends will be issued to you, they will even kill some of you, and you will then be hated by everyone by name mine “(Luke 21: 16-17) This can not be described. God, however, described it to John, saying that the cry of those unfortunate was: “Lord, shorten these days,” because all opposition meant death at that time, and the above provisions concerning Christianity began in various countries with varying degrees of intensity, oppression in the history of mankind. “Dear friend, do not risk that you could be left here, stand before the Almighty God, and ask for grace. Today is still time. Today you can still be counted among the children of God’s children as the property of Jesus. As a member of the living Church, and then – on the day when the Lord comes – you will go with others where Jesus will take his faithful followers. Olaf Rodge … He was a Jew, a Jewish dignitary, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, was arrested, and he came to Jesus at night and said: Master! We know that you came from God as a teacher; for no one could do such miracles that you do, if God were not with him. Answering to him, Jesus said: Verily, verily, I say to you, unless one is born again, he can not see the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born again when he is old? Can he re-enter his mother’s womb and be born again? Jesus answered: Verily, verily, I say to you, if anyone is not born of water and the Spirit, he can not enter the Kingdom of God. For what is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised that I told you: You must be born again. (John 3: 1-7)

Stanislaw Barszczak, Wszystkie narody mowic beda po polsku.

Cel mojego wykladu nie jest bynajmniej akademicki. Zauwazam absencje, nieobecnosc Polski, ojczyzny mojej- a raczej jej przytomnosc w naszej historii najnowszej. Bicz Boży jest blisko, koniec sie zbliża, umrzemy, to zauwazyla siostra Łucja z Fatimy…
Polskie chrzescijanstwo i Europa odstaja od swiata, centrum zycia chrzescijan przesunelo sie chocby tylko na chwile, na strone obu Ameryk.
W rzeczywistości chrześcijaństwo od początku jest apostolstwem, ale jakby narzucanym z zewnatrz, nie wszyscy poganie uwierzyli w mesjasza! To nie nasza krew, powiedzialby ortodoksyjny Arab z VII stulecia. Chrzescijanstwo otoczylo sie gwałtem spolecznym, jak oni wierza. Loš sprawil, ze zwyciestwo francuskiego Karola nad Arabami w 732 roku, powstrzymalo Europe od nowego rozwoju. Tu historia znow sie powtorzyla. Bo dzisiaj Europa jakby nie zamierzyla rozwinac sie na nowo, natomiat planuje poprzestawac na małym! A wszelkie systemy podparte minimalizmem w rezultacie… zabijaja takze Polskę, moja ojczyzne, ktora znalazla sie w rezultacie boskich zrzadzen w sercu terazniejszej Europy. Trzeba robić co w naszej mocy, uwazam, aby zmienic te sytuacje, bez jakis podziałów na gorszych i lepszych. Co uratowalo Europę w 1683 roku przed zalewem Islamem? Król Jan III Sobieski, ale przede wszystkim sila Koalicji Armii Sprzymierzonych. Dlaczego my Polacy powinniśmy czynić wszystko samemu? Mamy być wolnosciami spelnionymi, pieknymi- bo tak chcial Bog i jego swieta ewangelia, uwazam (see, solved beings). Wtedy nikt nie będzie potrzebował być dobry. Niektórzy Żydzi mówią teraz, Jezus był prawdziwym Mesjaszem. Tym samym przytakuja twierdzeniu, jakby w Biblii zawarta byla wielka prawda! Jakkolwiek sama prawda do przyjecia jest jeszcze przed nami… Chrzescijanstwo ma za soba 2 tysiace koegzystencji z cywilizacja ziemian. Powstalo z bardzo trudnych koniecznosci a takze z prob poglebienia rozumienia spraw czlowieczych. W czasach III Rzeszy hitlerowskiej belgijski redemptorysta wydal ksiazeczke pt. Oredzie Jezusa do swego kaplana. I do niego chce nawiazac, ale za chwile… Bo oto znany pisarz niemiecki pod wieczor swego zycia opublikowal ksiazeczke. Opisywal w niej “Jenseits” (niem.) osoby. Wychowany po chrzescijansku on sam nie pragnie zblizenia z kosciolem instytucjonalnym. “Nie potrzebuje praktyki sakramentalnej”, jak mowi. Pisarz natomiast buduje swoja godnosc na stwierdzeniu, ze “Jenseits,” tj. Jego drugie Ja, jest obciazone wiara. Bo my wierzymy wiecej, jak wiemy. Jenseits nie jest pozytywnym odczuciem. Skadinad slamu, ze wiara produkuje lwatpienie, jest to proces. Spojrzmy na opery Schuberta, na Msze Mozarta. Meister Stuck. Walser nie uwaza siebie za filozofa. Chce zostac na zawsze pisarzem, i to muzykalnym. Tak wiec wiara czyni swiat piekniejszym. I tak jak wielkoscia wiary jest poznanie (Kentniss), tak cecha wiedzy jest niepoznanie, to powiedzial Kiekegaard. Credo ut absurdum. Intensywnie wierzacy. I zaraz rodzi sie pytanie: czy Wierze w praprzyczyne (Urknall) czy w Stworzenie( Schopfung) Na Marsie beda zyc, wszystko na to wskazuje, pra-ludzie, pra-human. Slynny Johann W. Goethe o Bogu mawial: to puste dzwieki (leere Laute). Wczoraj byl 8 stycznia, powiedzialbym, ze w tym dniu zylem oredziami Jezusa do swego kaplana. Ale tez zaslyszalem szczegolna wypowiedz pewnego Norwega zatytulowana “prawdziwe wiedzenie pochwycenia kosciola Jezusa Chrystusa.” Bylo 11 grudnia 1952 roku. Po skonczeniu lektury jakiejs ksiazki polozyl sie i zasnal. A co widzial potem tutaj opisuje: w domu swym w Oslo slucha porannych informacji z radia. Spiker prodaje, ze ludzie wyszli z domu i dotad nie wrocili. Bardzo duzo ludzi zostalo zabranych w nieznanym kierunku. Nie minela godzina uslyszal w swym ogrodzie kobiete, ktora biegla ulica zrozpaczona, bo zginela jej čorka. Pociagi nie zostaly odwolane, nie znaleziono cial ludzi. Ludzi ogarnela panika. Po poludniu nawet rzad Norwegii zabral glos w ten sprawie. Uwazamy, ze przyczyna znikniecia tylu ludzi sa chrzescijanie. Dlatego nakazano pozamykac koscioly. Caly swiat wstrzymal oddech, stanal na chwile przerazony. Ale ludzie garna sie w niezamknietych jeszcze kosciolach i modla sie, i spiewaja piesni nabozne, suplikacje. A ludzi, ktorzy rano zostali zabrani do innego porzadku nadal nie ma. Jaka lekcja plynie z tej opowiesci? Swiat stal sie bardziej wrazliwy na wszelka krzywde… Osobiscie zrozumialem, ze czlowiek nie jest zly (Bose). Ale czlowiek musi sie odnawiac nieustannie, na sad ostateczny. Iluzija sily byla u zarania III Rzeszy (Macht Ilusion). Wojne Nazistow z swiatem obwarowano instytucjami. Auschwitz to instytucja, a nie wyswiechtane juz haslo, ze czlowiek jest zly! Bo oto czlowiek czlowiekowi zgotowal loš! Dlatego, uwazam, Auschwitz nie ma konca (Auschwitz hat nicht Ende). A czlowiek musi odnawiac sie nieustannie. Smierc nie ma nic, jest abstrakcja (hat gar night). Credo quia absurdum. Europa jest podzielona. Nikt nie negocjuje z Unia Europejska. Nastepuje dziwna Smierc Europy. To jest moment, gdy mamy czegos za duzo… Za duzo do ogarniecia, mianowicie zrozumiec wspolczesna ekonomie, i to z pierwszej reki. Cena euro jest negatywna. Toczy sie skrywana wladza Mediow, cicha wojna. Tworzymy “dobro”, w znaczeniu “well”. Ale powinnismy postawic na wartosci, a nie placic tylko. Bruksela potepia demokratyzacje, narodowy proces. Trzeba stabilizowac ekonomie, zwiekszyc wydatki, ruszyc z operacjami finansowymi, odwazyc sie na wiecej inwestycji. Wtedy nikt nie bedzie pitrzebowal byc dobry. Chinczycy twierdza, iz pralnie wykonaly w przeszlisci wieksza robote, jak internet. Oczyscic technologicznie ekonomie nalezy. Podstawowy wklad ekonomiczny jest konieczny. A europa zapatrzyla sie w otchlan bledow przeszlosci. Lekcewazenie obcych kosztow wzrasta. Nie tylko jami spoleczenstwa jestesmy od siebie uzaleznieni, ale tym bardziej i wiecej jako konfraternia oparta na pieniadzach i wladzy. Trzeba koszty, postawy ekonomiczne innych spozytkowac dla wspolnych jutrzejszych celow. Wspierajmy kooperacje, szczegolnie my Polacy, a uratujemy Europe dla przyszlych spoleczenstw, przed stwardnialymi przepisami bezmyslnych regul. Wydaje sie, ze takze my mamy mozliwosci ogladania piekla, przebywania w nim. Dlatego moj wyklad kieruje tez pod adresem duchownych. Zachecam do przeczytania ksiazki Jozefa Schrijversa, Oredzie Jezusa do swego kaplana i ksiazeczki Otto Michelliniego pt. Oredzie do moich kaplanow. Czytamy w tej ostatniej, co nastepuje: 1.1 Kapłani winni być pełni życia Bożego.1.2 Kapłani świadomi swego powołania.1.3 Kapłani idą za światem.1.4 Utrata ducha nadprzyrodzonego.1.5 Odkupienie uzupełnia się! 1.6 Duchowe niesprawiedliwości. 1.7 Doskonała komunia – tajemnica Wcielenia.1.8 Tajemnica Wcielenia i Eucharystia sprawa jedyna.1.9 Królowanie Maryi nad wszystkimi potęgami nieba i ziemi.1.10 Tajemnica krzyża – ofiarowanie się Maryi razem z Barankiem.1.11 Maryja – jako wzór doskonałego zjednoczenia z Jezusem.1.12 Godność kapłańska.1.13 Przerażające odwrócenie się kapłanów od Jezusa.1.14 Główna konieczność – zjednoczenie z Chrystusem… Czego wam i sobie zycze.

Stanisław Barszczak, Pan Emil.

Biuro Wandowskiego znajdowało się w poblizu Kapuzinerberg, nad rzeka Salzach, w jednym z budynków ogrodzonych płotem z drutu kolczastego, w których mieściło się jego Naczelne Dowództwo. Na biurku czekał na niego meldunek. Usiadł, zapalił i zaczął czytać. Meldunek nadszedł z Linzu, i na początku Wandowski nie mógł zrozumieć, po co przekazano go kontrwywiadowi. Była to informacja, że jakiś patrol podwiózł idącego drogą Egipcjanina, który potem zamordował nożem kaprala. Zwłoki znaleziono ubiegłej nocy, zaraz po tym, gdy odkryto nieobecność kaprala, ale upłynęło już kilka godzin od jego śmierci. Mężczyzna odpowiadający rysopisowi podwiezionego kupił na stacji bilet do Wiednia, jednak zanim znaleziono ciało, pociąg już dojechał do Wiednia i zabójca rozpłynął się w mieście. Nie było żadnych wskazówek co do motywu. Policja austriacka i żandarmeria wojskowa zaczęły dochodzenie w Linzu, a ich koledzy w Wiedniu, tak jak i Wandowski, zostali poinformowani o sprawie dziś rano. Dlaczego zaangażowano w to kontrwywiad? Wandowski zmarszczył czoło i zamyślił się. Egipcjanin w sercu Europy. Mówi, że zepsuł mu się samochód. Bierze pokój w hotelu. Wychodzi, łapie pociąg. Samochodu ani śladu. Zwłoki żołnierza znalezione w nocy w pokoju hotelowym. O co tu może chodzić? Podniósł słuchawkę i zażądał połączenia z Linzem. Wojskowa centrala polowa przez dłuższą chwilę lokalizowała kapitana Novaka, ale w końcu znaleziono go w zbrojowni i przywołano do telefonu. – To mi wygląda na zabójstwo z powodu zdemaskowania agenta – oświadczył Wandowski. – Tak mi się wydawało – zgodził się Novak. – Dlatego przesłałem meldunek do kontrwywiadu. – Bardzo dobrze. Powiedzcie mi, kapitanie, jakie ten człowiek zrobił na was wrażenie. – Kawał chłopa… – Dostałem od was rysopis, metr osiemdziesiąt, siedemdziesiąt siedem kilo, brunet, ciemne oczy, ale to mi nie mówi, jaki on jest. – Rozumiem – odparł Novak. – Cóż, mówiąc szczerze, z początku nie miałem najmniejszych podejrzeń. Był bardzo zmęczony, co zgadzałoby się z jego opowieścią o samochodzie zepsutym na drodze, ale sprawiał wrażenie praworządnego obywatela: biały, dobrze ubrany, mówił płynnie po angielsku z akcentem, który sam określił jako afrykanerski. Dokumenty miał bez zarzutu i nadal jestem przekonany, że były autentyczne. – Co wobec tego wzbudziło wasze podejrzenia? – Twierdził, że przyjechał skontrolować swoje interesy w Austrii. – To brzmi prawdopodobnie. – Być może, ale nie wyglądał mi na człowieka, który pakuje pieniądze w jakieś sklepiki, fabryczki czy fabryki bawełny. To pewny siebie światowiec, raczej zainwestowałby pieniądze na londyńskiej giełdzie czy zdeponował je w banku szwajcarskim. To tylko takie mgliste poczucie, ale rozumie pan, o co mi chodzi, prawda? – Oczywiście. – Ten facet mówi niegłupio, pomyślał Wandowski. Co on robi w takim  Linzu? – A potem przyszło mi do głowy, że dobrze byłoby się dowiedzieć, skąd on się wziął na tej drodze… – ciągnął Novak – więc kazałem biednemu Johannowi z nim zostać pod pozorem udzielenia pomocy, bo chciałem mieć pewność, że mi nie zwieje, póki nie sprawdzimy jego opowieści. Powinienem był go od razu aresztować, wiem, ale miałem tylko cień podejrzenia i… – Nie sądzę, żeby można było mieć o to do was pretensje, kapitanie – powiedział Wandowski. – Spisaliście się doskonale zapamiętując nazwisko i adres. – W porządku. Proszę mnie informować na bieżąco, gdybyście mieli coś nowego. – Tak jest. Wandowski odłożył słuchawkę…
Minęło kilka dni. Wandowski poczuł sie w obowiazku isc pozegnac Haralda Wolfa. Tym razem zwolnił sie z obowiązku jechania do biura. Wyszliśmy naprzeciw losowi, mówił sobie, spotkaliśmy sie w zyciu moze dwa razy, przy czym ja mocno gestykulowalem, wrogowie mają to do siebie, że nie widzą dziesięciu palców u obu rąk. Powiedziałbym jednak, że byl wybitnym współpracownikiem. Podczas wojny pracowal w północnej Afryce z generałem Erwinem Rommlem. Niemcy poznali sie na nim, został przełożonym kilku wielkich przedsiebiorstw w naszym miescie. Poznał kulturę arabską. Zechcialem pewnego dnia przejąć jego wiernośc logice sukcesu. Orlej nabrawszy ochoty, uczone myslen twoich nasladowac cnoty. Wyreczaj mnie Haraldzie i daruj jesli bedziem chwalić sie po swiatu, że od ciebie wzięliśmy na ten wieniec kwiatu. Byłeś prorokiem jutra, wszędzie widziałeś iskry światła. Stworzenia, które kiedys wyda przyszłość metna, niosa kolor ich blasku lub ich razow pietna. Jaką chęć uniosla mnie opiewac morza, których nie tknely me wiosla. Bywaj mi zdrowy krāju kochany… Te lzy wyciska moj codzienny trud- nie bojazn lecz tesknota…  bylebym nazad nie plynal. Jeszcze dwoistosc w moim zyciu… Piers blogoslawiona. Skonal rok stary, z jego popiolow wykwita feniks nowy. Swiat go caly nadzieja i zyczeniem wita…Czego mnie, wam i sobie życzyć w tej chwili? Zadan dla siebie: moze chwilek wesolych, moze kochania, bo chorowalem, marzylem, latalem, i spadam; a moze przyjazni. We snie marzyc, kochac swiat, sprzyjac swiatu, choćby z daleka. To straszne być starym i wiedzieć, że zmarnowało się życie. Był odpowiedzialnym katolikiem. Wszyscy biorą z nauk Kościoła to, co im się podoba, ignorują to, co im nie odpowiada. Ludzie mający za mało obowiązków, łatwo stają się leniwi i wykonują byle jak nawet tę niewielka pracę, którą im przydzielono. Skądinąd wszyscy jesteśmy dobrzy, kiedy nam wygodnie, ale to się nie liczy. Pokładać w Bogu ufność nie znaczy wcale siedzieć i nic nie robić. Ufność to wiara w powodzenie własnych czynów. W świecie arabskim każde dzieło sztuki ma maleńką skazę, żeby nie mogło w sposób świętokradczy naśladować boskiej doskonałości. Wolf tworzył swiat bez konca. Kiedys powiedział: Jeśli Bóg nie zdoła wybaczyć lubieżnym księdzom, to w niebie będzie bardzo niewielu duchownych. Tak wiec historia jest niczym opowieść, w której jedna sprawa prowadzi do drugiej, a świat jest ciągiem niepowiązanych ze sobą tajemnic, lecz ma swoją logikę, którą można poznać i pojąć, uwazam. Człowiek, który żyje w przekonaniu, że zna wolę Boga i jest gotów za wszelką cenę ją wypełnić, jest najniebezpieczniejszym człowiekiem na świecie. Świec Boże nad dusza Haralda Wolfa. Będąc jego adwersarzem będę teraz być moze jego adwokatem gdy powiem: nie wiesz, że jeśli zaprzeczasz prawdzie o sobie, tracisz duszę. Tajemnica zawsze stanowi słabość. Aczkolwiek pewnych rzeczy lepiej nie wyciągać na światło dzienne. Harald miał wspaniała matkę, ktora mawiala: Gdzie Ty pójdziesz, tam ja pójdę, gdzie Ty zamieszkasz, tam ja zamieszkam, Twój naród będzie moim narodem, a Twój Bóg będzie moim Bogiem. Gdzie Ty umrzesz, tam ja umrę i tam moj duch bedzie pogrzebany. Rzeczywiście o tym, co jest prawdą, nie decyduje większość. Tutaj oddaje olbrzymią szansę ostatniego świadectwa o synu jego matce. Podobno Wolf mówił: Wolałem cierpieć sam, niż żyć ze świadomością, że ona znosi katusze. Jej dobro było dla mnie ważniejsze niż własne. Zwycięża matka! I ja osobiście nauczyłem się w ciągu swego długiego życia, że na tym właśnie polega miłość. Bog poprosił Abrahama o złożenie w ofierze jedynego syna. Nigdy więcej nie prosił o takie poświęcenie, bo ostateczna ofiara została dokonana. Z historii Abrahama wypływa lekcja, że Bóg wymaga od nas tego, co w nas najlepsze, tego, co dla nas najcenniejsze. A wiecie jacy są lekarze, za cholerę nic ci nie powiedzą… Jeśli się nią (polityką) nie interesujesz, to, co się dzieje, to twoja wina. Tak wiec niech nas Bóg chroni przed życzliwymi Niemcami. Skądinąd wiemy, miłość nigdy nie jest pozbawiona nadziei. Gdyby wszystko było proste, człowiek nie potrzebowałby Bożego wsparcia. Życie wcale nie jest takie krótkie, jak się zdaje. Te i inne refleksje skuły sie po głowie oficera wywiadu zdazajacego na pogrzeb Haralda Wolfa, by oddać mu ostatnia przysługę. Jakkolwiek on sam przezuwal juz popoludniiwa stype, w jadlospisie były specjalne oszczędnościowe dania jak kuskus, kasza z wieprzowych parowek i pasztet warzywny niezawierajacy mięsa. (koniec)