Paper 1-930337-02-7
6 x 9" / 128 pages
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Pacem in Terris: a love story

By Frederick Franck

Thirty years ago, Frederick Franck, author of The Zen of Seeing, Angelus Silenus, and a dozen other books, began work on a property he and his wife Klaske had acquired in Warwick, New York. Originals of his world-renowned sculptures found their home on the grounds. The sacred nature of his artistry has attracted the attention of pilgrims of all walks in life and from all continents. Pacem in Terris has become the meeting place of many wisdom traditions, all in search of what Franck calls "the all-too-human."

In Pacem in Terris: a love story, Franck relates the remarkable history of his monumental undertaking — to create a sacred site open to peoples of the world — from its impoverished beginnings to its triumphal present. The material obstacles and artistic challenges of this true story of human love remind us of the forgotten power of a personal search for meaning and the extraordinary help and recognition that are drawn to a simply human effort.

I seem to be, by birth, a borderline case, a life-long jumper across borders--national, cultural, religious, and linguistic frontiers that are not denied but made suggestive, inviting to be joyfully crossed. I experienced very early in life that people across the border, whatever their beliefs, whatever their ways of frying potatoes, are as human as I am, and as mortal, and that each one has an inner life of his own.

Pacem in Terris jumps across well-guarded borders, describes itself as "transreligious," which falls outside the categories of both "interfaith" and "ecumenical." It is even less a syncretistic scrambling together of symbols, concepts, and rituals of the various religious traditions. It fully respects each one of these traditions, its beliefs, its symbols, its liturgies, but is rooted in an inner experience in which these traditions converge; the word-walls that divide them become permeable on a level of that inner life that language lacks the tools to express. Here insights that clash in the chill of the brain seem to fuse easily in the warmth of the heart and beget a religious orientation to life as such, to Existence as the Mystery of Mysteries.

--from Pacem in Terris: a love story

 

Frederick Franck's sculpture and artwork are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, and other public and private collections. He is the author of over thirty books, including The Zen of Seeing (Random House), and the award-winning Pacem in Terris: A Love Story (Codhill), as well as an editor of What Does it Mean to be Human (St. Martin's Press), recently translated into Spanish and Chinese. He was recently honored with the World Citizenship Award by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and at over ninety years of age, he continues to be actively engaged in art, writing and the search for meaning in this world.