By now virtually everyone in the world with an Internet connection has watched the amazing Sister Cristina perform at The Voice Italy. In case you didn’t, or wish to watch it again (and that is so worth it!), here is the video:
Beyond Cristina’s extraordinary voice, energy and personality, that really got my jaws drop, like so many, I am fascinated by J-Ax’s reaction. I mean, the guy is a tough-skin, all over-tattooed rap singer, and he is overwhelmed by emotion. He fights tears back during the whole segment, performance and interview, and finally weeps for a moment. He is so enchanted that he runs to the stage and hugs her in obvious respect and awe. Wow.
J-Ax is to me the second person of interest in that event. I have been wondering what happened to him, why his reaction to Cristina’s performance has been so powerful, and I think it’s because despite the outside differences, he very strongly relates to her. In fact, they are the same person. Only she is giving him the gift of a lesson.
Sister Cristina shows him, shows us, what is authentic rebellion. Fighting the system is not true rebellion. Looking and behaving different is not either. Living out of the system is not being a free rebel, authentic, nor unique.
True free spirit is what Cristina is and does. She genuinely ignores the system and its norms. Not in a rebellious, angry kind of way. She is not trying to express her uniqueness, she lives it. She doesn’t define herself relatively to the norms. She is on another plane. She is genuinely free because she is totally herself. She is both a nun and a singer, and she lives it. She gives it all, in her unglamorous nun outfit. And the world comes to her and embraces who she is.
That is, I think, the epiphany that J-Ax is having live. And that is the great lesson Suor Cristina is giving us.
