Give us this day, Lord, our daily miracle : Paulo Coelho

Today , I read the new Paulo Coelho book : Manuscript Found in Accra.
I will keeep this book very next to Khalil Gibran's 'The prohet' in my bookshelf.
This is a book that has to be read and re-read.
This is a book gracefully spilled with biblical images and expressions.
trying to read it from cover to cover may be a less satisfying endavoure.
Go slow!

Here is a citation from the book:

....................

Give us this day, Lord, our daily miracle.
Just as there are many paths to the top of a mountain, so there are many paths to achieving our goal. Help us to recognize the only one that is worth following: the one on which Love is to be found.

Help us to awaken the Love sleeping within us before we awaken Love in other people. Only then will we be able to attract affection, enthusiasm, and respect.

Help us to distinguish battles that are ours, battles into which we are propelled against our will, and battles that we cannot avoid because Fate has placed them in our path.

 (miracles) transform the wheat into bread through work, the grape into wine through patience, and death into life through the resurrection of dreams.

Therefore, Lord, give us this day our daily miracle.

Bread: Paulo Coelho

Bread is the nutritional cornerstone of all the civilizations that handle the growth of cereals and the art of baking.

The Egyptians knew for instance 40 different types of bread and of cakes and they would commonly use the words “bread” and “beer” during their rituals. These two essential types of food would be the present in the afterworld.

In ancient Orient, bread was never cut but always “broke” which meant figuratively that “many would eat together”. Gradually this food was considered in the symbolic sense and the twelve bread shown in the Temple (Ancient Testament) are the symbol of the food for the spirit.

In the New Testament, reference is made to the fact that “man cannot only live of (material) bread” and so, during the Eucharist, men receive with the wine, the bread of life, which is the food for the soul.

The cycle of transformation of the cereal can also be transposed to the life of man: being planted, then mown and cooked. This way the soul would also be prepared for the divine feast.

So now you take the floor : what do you associate with Bread?

The Cloud and The Sand Dune: Paulo Coelho

The Cloud and The Sand Dune
(From Paulo Coelho's "Like A Flowing River")

“As everyone knows, the life of a cloud is very busy and very short” writes Bruno Ferrero.. And here’s a related story. A young cloud was born in the midst of a great storm over the Mediterranean Sea, but he did not even have time to grow up there, for a strong wind pushed all the clouds towards Africa. As soon as the clouds reached the continent the climate changed . A bright sun was shining in the sky and stretched out beneath them, lay the golden sands of the Sahara. Since it almost never rains in the desert, the wind continued pushing the clouds towards the forests in the south. Meanwhile, as happens with young humans too, the young cloud decided to leave his parents and his older friends in order to discover the world. ‘What are you doing’ cried the wind. ‘The desert’s the same all over. Rejoin the other clouds, and we’ll go to Central Africa where there are amazing mountains and trees!’ But the young cloud, natural rebel, refused to obey, and, gradually, he dropped down until he found a gentle, generous breeze that allowed him to hover over the golden sands. After much toing and froing, he noticed that one of the dunes was smiling at him. He saw that the dune was also young, newly formed by the wind that had just passed over. He fell in love with her golden hair right there and then. ‘Good morning’, he said. ‘what’s life like down there?’ ‘I have the company of the other dunes, of the sun and the wind, and of the caravans that occasionally pass through here. Sometimes it’s really hot, but it’s still bearable. What’s life like up there?’ ‘We have the sun and the wind too, but the good thing is that I can travel across the sky and see more things.’ ‘For me,’ said the dune, ‘life is short. When the wind returns from the forests, I will disappear.’ ‘And does that make you sad?’

 ‘It makes me feel that I have no purpose in life.’ ‘I feel the same. As soon as another wind comes along, I’ll go south and be transformed into rain but that is my destiny.’ The dune hesitated for a moment, then said: ‘did you know that here in the desert, we call the rain paradise?’ ‘I had no idea that I could ever be that important,’ said the cloud proudly. ‘I’ve heard other older dunes tell stories about the rain. They say that, after the rain, we are all covered with grass and flowers. But I’ll never experience that, because in the desert it rains so rarely.’ It was the cloud’s turn to hesitate now. Then he smiled broadly and said:’if you like, I could rain on you now. I know I’ve only just got here, but I love you, and I’d like to stay here forever.’ ‘When I first saw you up in the sky, I fell in love with you too’ said the dune. ‘ But if you transform your lovely white hair into rain, you will die.’ ‘Love never dies’, said the cloud ‘it is transformed, and, besides, I want to show you what paradise is like.’ And he began to caress the dune with little drops of rain so that they could stay together for longer, until a rainbow appeared. The following day, the little dune was covered in flowers. Other clouds that passed over, heading for Africa thought that it must be part of the forest they were looking for and scattered more rain. Twenty years later, the dune had been transformed into an oasis that refreshed travellers with the shade of its trees. And all because, one day, a cloud fell in love, and was not afraid to give his life for that love.

universal language and a shepherd

What I still remember from the Alchemist….

“There is a universal language, understood by everybody, but already forgotten. I am in search of the universal language, among other things, that’s why I am here. I have to find a man who knows that universal language - an alchemist.”

“They wanted me to be a priest, but I decided to be a shepherd”

Paulo Coelho: Remembrance and Search for God

Coelho writes in Maria’s Diary:

“In all the languages of the world, there is the same proverb: “what eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.” Well, I say that there isn’t an ounce of truth init. The further off they are, the closer to the heart are all those feelings that we try to repress and forget.If we’re in exile, we want to store away every tiny memory of our roots. If we’re far from the person we love, everyone we pass in the street reminds us of them.

The gospels and all the sacred texts of all religions were written in exile, in search of God’s understanding, of the faith that moves whole peoples, of the pilgrimage of souls wandering the face of the earth. Our ancestors did not know, as we do not know, what Divinity expects from our lives – and it is out of that doubt that books are written, pictures painted, because we don’t want to forget who we are – nor can we”

(eleven minutes)

Devoured by the Ants...

Paulo Coelho writes

The slayer of dragons

Zhuangzi, the famous Chinese writer, tells the story of Zhu Pingman, who went in search of a teacher in order to learn the best way to slay dragons.
The teacher trained Pingman for ten whole years, until he had honed to perfection the most sophisticated dragon-slaying techniques.
Pingman spent the rest of his life looking for dragons in order show off his skills: to his great disappointment, he never found a single dragon.

The writer of the story comments: ‘We all prepare ourselves to slay dragons, but end up instead being devoured by the ants of the details that we never bothered to look at.’

we shall begin with a story.....The missing brick

Let me tell u a story by Paulo Coelho:

Once, when I and my wife were travelling, I received a fax from my secretary.

‘There’s one glass brick missing for the work on the kitchen renovation,’ she said. ‘I’m sending you the original plan as well as the plan the builder has come up with to compensate for it.’

On the one hand was the design my wife had made: harmonious lines of bricks with an opening for ventilation. On the other hand was the plan drawn up to resolve the problem of the missing brick: a real jigsaw puzzle in which the glass squares were arranged in a higgledy-piggledy fashion that defied aesthetics.

‘Just buy another brick,’ wrote my wife. And so they did and thus stuck to the original design.

That afternoon, I thought for a long time about what had happened; how often, for the lack of one brick, we completely distort the original plan of our lives.