ICenteno

Now I understand. What publishers have been asking for, for some time now, was never an innocent suggestion. It was a warning of the world to come. Lower the tone. Lighten the language. Don’t write from what burns, but from what flows — and keeps the bookseller happy. Be more direct, more “agile,” more “relatable.” Write like those others, as if the reader were always about to close the book. Because, in truth, they are.

Then came the screen-books. The lines made to be highlighted with a thumb. Stories that don’t touch the soul but heat up data extraction. Literature as ornament. As fleeting impulse. And I, who always believed that writing was a way of resisting evanescence, now see that everything has become escape.

Even faith has turned into spectacle. Out there circulates a muscular Christ — biceps, bulging veins, a superhero jaw. They’ve taken him off the cross and made him stop landslides, rescue people from earthquakes, pose like a franchise character.

He is not the Suffering Servant of the Lord.

He does not redeem: he intervenes.

He does not love: he solves.

It’s an image without Gospel. A consolation without weight. A tranquilizing fiction for a world that doesn’t want to be saved — only entertained.

And so, I go to sleep.

I’m not complaining. I’m passing the torch. It’s time for me, too, to say farewell to certain affections, certain expectations, even certain words.

Cynicism is a twisted form of faith. Mine is not. Mine is still alive, though wounded.

I’ve lost all hope in their systems, in their flags, in their soulless science, in their technology that kills faster than it promises to save.

The human being has lost its weight.

It is not trustworthy.

I have lost all hope in him.

For years, I’ve masked my search for the sufficient cause. I dressed it up as aesthetics, as critique, as style. But the truth is my faith is held by no idol. Not in language. Not in men. Not in being known by the multitudes. Not in brilliant ideas.

I embrace the pain

and in doing so, I am freed from it.

Lead me not into temptation,

but deliver me from evil