Miguel Aranguren on Jesus Poveda
Sunday, January 17, 2010 @ 7:15 PM
Before adolescence asks for sourer tests from us, sweet parenthood brings with it a little of a quit every time one of our small ones demands, at intemperate times, the extraordinary service of bringing to him a bit of water, to release a physiological need or to scare – what do they think we parents are! - the monsters who have taken over the room. When they shout my name in the quiet hours of the night and I walk to their aid shaken by the clouds of sleep, it beats inside me that Gospel´s aphorism when Jesus himself makes it possible for even the worst father to offer a bit of bread to his instead of a snake. Fatherhood, motherhood, drink directly from the divine to become good all men and women who are not good already.
Some people carry on their shoulders an universal parenthood as they understand others in all their limitations. Some people spend their lives dissipating the violet smoke of monsters in the homes of frightened people, in the home of wounded and even in the home of those wh are stuttering their last throes. This is the case of Jesus Poveda, with his floral shirts and colorful american jackets. Poveda is a festival like Father , joyful, who takes death so it stops the dreams of the weak people.
I remember him watching out the "monkey" of a drug addict, telling jokes to a recently widowed woman, chopping up a batch of frozen chickens for beggars, redirecting the years of a teenage orphan, dressing up as a Wise King the Christmas of unbelievers, explaining the dignity of their future patients to medical students, giving a hug to he same police who had locked him with handcuffs and taken to jail for sitting at an abortion slaughterhouse , pulling the laughter of John Paul II in a university festival, receiving with open arms to a sorry mother who has been fooled by the fanatics of death and looking for godparents to children born through any of their "rescue operations".
Although the world is indebted to him, Poveda is never going to charge it.