Enjoying God’s gifts
I must enjoy all the gifts that God gives me today. These gifts cannot be saved up. There is no bank in which we can place the gifts we receive from God in order to use them when we wish. If I do not make use of these blessings, I will lose them for ever.
God knows that we are all artists of life. One day, he gives us a chisel to make a sculpture, the next, brushes and a canvas, another day, he gives us a pen to write with. But we cannot use a chisel to paint a canvas or a pen to make a sculpture. Each day has its own miracle. I must accept today’s blessings in order to create what I have; if I do this with detachment and without guilt, tomorrow I will receive more.
Monthly Archive for November, 2007
In my book, 11 Minutes, there’s the following passage:
"‘I’m the one who should feel ashamed for being unable to arouse them, but, no, they always blame themselves.’
To avoid such embarrassments, Maria always tried to put men at their ease, and if someone seemed drunker or more fragile than usual, she would avoid full sex and concentrate instead on caresses and masturbation, which always seemed to please them immensely, absurd though this might seem, since they could perfectly well masturbate on their own.
She had to make sure that they didn’t feel ashamed. These men, so powerful and arrogant at work, constantly having to deal with employees, customers, suppliers, prejudices, secrets, posturings, hypocrisy, fear and oppression, ended their day in a nightclub and they didn’t mind spending three hundred and fifty Swiss francs to stop being themselves for a night.
‘For a night? Now come on, Maria, you’re exaggerating. It’s really only forty-five minutes, and if you allow time for taking off clothes, making some phony gesture of affection, having a bit of banal conversation and getting dressed again, the amount of time spent actually having sex is about eleven minutes.’
Eleven minutes. The world revolved around something that only took eleven minutes.
And because of those eleven minutes in any one twenty-four-hour day (assuming that they all made love to their wives every day, which is patently absurd and a complete lie) they got married, supported a family, put up with screaming kids, thought up ridiculous excuses to justify getting home late, ogled dozens, if not hundreds of other women with whom they would like to go for a walk around Lake Geneva, bought expensive clothes for themselves and even more expensive clothes for their wives, paid prostitutes to try to give them what they were missing, and thus sustained a vast industry of cosmetics, diet foods, exercise, pornography and power, and yet when they got together with other men, contrary to popular belief, they never talked about women. They talked about jobs, money and sport.
Something was very wrong with civilisation, and it wasn’t the destruction of the Amazon rainforest or the ozone layer, the death of the panda, cigarettes, carcinogenic foodstuffs or prison conditions, as the newspapers would have it.
It was precisely the thing she was working with: sex."
Do you agree?
To me this book is only a reminder of a few points that I’ve already noted in his previous books especially from LIKE THE FLOWING RIVER . I still remember the same line taken from the previous book that I’ve read here. …
This article is written by OndeOnde. Please visit the blog Bookshelf to read the rest.
The first two books were: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (which was the first book of Coelho I was able to read) and Veronika Decides to Die (which I am currently reading). Each of the three books is concerned with a week in …
This article is written by Jo Josue. Please visit the blog CABAnata to read the rest.
Mine has to be ‘ The Alchemist’ by Paolo Coelho. I have read this book about 10 times and I know I will read it again. It’s a book that always From beginning to end the author takes you to a journey that helps you to realize that life …
This article is written by Fa Sy. Please visit the blog Nomore a girl, Not yet a Woman!!… to read the rest.
