The very thoughts that allow us to hurt another limit our ability to express the will of creation through ourselves. At the same time, each time we love another, we have just loved ourselves. Each time we create time for another, strive to understand another, we have just done each of these things for ourselves. When we disapprove of the actions, choices or beliefs of others, we witness through them those portions of ourselves that ask for a greater healing.
Frederick Franck turned to the door of the building, a massive wooden sculpture in the form of the sun and its rays, and pushed it open.I saw that it turned on a central axis, so that only one half of the door was open at any one time.To remind us, he murmured, that we step into this sacred space as we walk into life, alone and silently . . .I looked around me and marveled at this ninety-year-old man from whose hand had sprung everything I could see.He had carved the door, made the stained-glass windows and every other object in sight.Pacem in Terris, I realized, was one man’s act of artistic faith: a work of art outside the parameters of the art world, and also a religious statement unconfined by any religion.