Pilgrimage is a duty in Muslim and Christian religions, do you think that’s the plan of God for human beings to actually travel in their souls ?
We are all on a pilgrimage whether we like it or not and the target, or goal, the real Santiago, if you like, is going from birth to death. You must get as much as you can from the journey, because – in the end – the journey is all you have. It doesn’t matter what you accumulate in terms of material wealth, because you are going to die anyway, so why not live? When you realize that you can be brave and that is the first tenant of any spiritual quest – to take risks.
a bit like the missionary bit, I believe in that.
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa74
Saint Paul.
Love,
Thelma
Is it a blessing or shall we light a candle for St. Paul, who had visited Cyprus..?
It is Paulo Coelho’s Blog and we have three ..Paul : Paul Chou from Korea, Paul ?? and Paul from Austria! God bless you all.
Love,
Thelma
The Labyrinth is considered to be the equivalent to going physically on pilgrimage when done with prayer and deep contemplation. It also uses up less “airmiles”.
I think that reading books may be another type of pilgrimage. Recently I’ve read your ‘Alchemist’ three times repeatedly. While reading, I seem to be a pilgrim for my own.
Also, I realize there so many ‘Santiago’s in the world, including me,if you permit it.
I would give my very very thanks for you and your ‘Alchemist’.
P.S This Tuesday, I bought six books that are Valkyries, Eleven Minutes, The Devil & Miss Prym, The Zahir, The Witch of Portobello, Veronika… . I’m sure that these helpful for me to find out my Personal Legend ; my forgotten dream.
- Paul from Korea
Quote “you are going to die anyway, so why not live?” Unquote
Such a profoundly true statement… yet how many of us live life to the full &… alive?
I am no less guilty than anyone else… always waiting for the perfect momemt… which of course does not exist…
I will walk to Santiago from Vienna one day soon… before it’s too late…
Love, and let’s keep walking together, Paul
PS: Thank you Paulo for being such a good “path companion”…
Thank you dear Savita, you are one of my favourite teacher (I mean it).
Love,
Nelson
a bit like the missionary bit, I believe in that.
Whole our life is pilgrimage. As Arab word says: “We come frome God, and we return to God.”
When my grandmother was in better health and able to get out of the house, I used to take her out to the cemetery when I would come to visit. The cemetery is on the same road she lives on, a long and winding, country road that used to be the main road between two small towns, the only road, back before the highway built. My grandmother has lived on this road all of her adult life, since she was married at the age of thirteen. First in a log cabin, and then in a small house – the house she still lives in today – she raised eight children, many of whom grew up and built their own homes along this same road. Over time, she has watched this road turn from a sparsely populated dirt wagon-track to a blacktop with a house every hundred yards or so.
When I would pick her up to take her to the cemetery, the trip would always be the same. She would meet me at the yard gate, a bunch of plastic flowers from the Dollar Store in her hand. On the ride, we would roll the car windows down and she would sit with the flowers in her lap, her ankles crossed, looking very much like a little girl. As we rode, she would talk: “Oh, look at that house – what a shame! The Pearson’s used to live there. They worked so hard to make that place pretty. He built that house with his own hands. Of course his son helped him a little. That was before he got on those drugs. She used to plant sunflowers in those pots right there every year – grew the prettiest flowers you ever seen. Now look at it! All grown up in weeds, the roof caving in. You’d think that boy would sell the place if he didn’t want it. They say he didn’t even show up to his mother’s funeral. What a disgrace!”
Then, a little further on: “Now ain’t that a pretty place? Just look at that. And those people – what’s their name? Effie May told me but I done forgot – they only moved in there last spring, and look at all the work they’ve done. Must have spent a fortune repairing fences and building them barns. Big barns! Look at that! And that brand new house. Wouldn’t love to live in a house like that one day? I just love those little dormer windows up top and that big porch. Looks like somethin’ you’d see in a magazine – the whole place does. And weren’t nothin’ but a dump when they moved in and started buildin’ and fixin’. That’s where the Moss’s used to live – Edward Moss, Jiles’s fifth cousin. You never knew him. He died when you were young… wife too. It was a pretty place when they had it too – not as pretty as these new people made it, but pretty, country folk pretty, you know – but they didn’t never have any kids and, so, when they died, it just fell apart. The old house finally rotted down. These folks had a dozer brought in, pushed what was left of the old house up into a pile and burned it before they laid the slab for this new one. Well, good thing they bought the old place. At least somebody’s gonna do something with it.”
Then a mile or so further on: “Look, that’s Reeves’ old place. Remember Miss Reeves, used to work with me down at the hospital for those many years. (I nod.) Sure do miss her sometimes. D’you remember – she used to grow the best butter beans around, and the tenderest, juciest sweet potatoes you ever tasted. Used to bring ‘em to us by the bushel barrel full. All that whole patch out there – that was her garden. Worked the whole thing herself, and with just a little bit o’ help from those boys that lived next door. Used to pay ‘em in vegetables and what extra coins she collected. She kept the cleanest, pretties yard you ever seen. Raked the whole thing clean as pin – never a leaf or a weed in sight. And she always had the prettiest little flower beds, and four o’clocks, she always planted four o’clocks along beside the road here. Every spring the whole place was just full of color, like a rainbow, it was.”
As we pass, I look at the house where Miss Reeves, my grandmother’s best friend, once lived. It is a small trailer house with a porch added on. It is now little more than a den for spiders and rats and the occasional stray house cat. The field where once there was a bountiful garden is now grown up, head-high, with weeds and saplings. Soon it will be a forest again. The roadside where the four o’clocks were planted shows no sign of the little colorful blooms. Without replanting, the seeds have expired. The yard that once was “as clean as a pin” is now a shambles, hardly a yard at all. What used to be flower pots are now all overturned and broken. The remnants of a white picket fence is strewn along the roadside, its rotting pickets sticking up at all odd angles.
Every time I took my grandmother to the cemetery, the experience was the same. All the way there she would talk, unprompted, about all the people who had come and gone in the seventy years she had lived on and traversed this road. She would talk of all the fine places they had built, and with what effort and against what hardship, as well as point out new places, recently purchased or newly cleared from the surrounding forest – dreams just beginning to take shape. The thing that I learned, above all, from listening to her monologues – the one lesson that stood out – was just how futile our efforts are to “make something” tangible in this life. No matter what we build, with time it will fall. No matter how nice we keep our yard, how beautiful our garden, how clean and well-kept our house – no matter how grand our creation – we will still one day die and when we do, we can neither take it with us, nor guarantee its preservation. When we die, the physical creation we have worked so hard to shape dies with us.
So what does this mean? That we should just give up, sit back and do nothing? No, not at all. Certainly we should dream our dreams and work to make them manifest in this world. However, we should also strive to keep everything in perspective. The chances that we will make any lasting physical imprint on the world when we die are very very slim. The things that most of us build and strive so hard to see realized will perish either when we perish or shortly afterward.
All I’m saying, really, is that the next time you’re out there working in the yard, or even working late at the office to make extra money to buy that next new toy on your list, you better make sure that you are loving what you do – doing it for the love of it and not because you feel that building or buying this thing is going to increase your importance or lasting significance in this world. And certainly, the next time a friend, or your child, or your partner asks you to join them in a little “pointless fun” and you say that you can’t because you are too busy, think twice! Consider carefully how you are using each moment you are given, as well as your own motives behind this division and use of your time. NONE of this is going to last. No matter what you build here in this life, you cannot take it with you, and it will eventually perish along with you. As Paulo says, ultimately, there is only the journey. So, just be sure that you are fully engaged in that – fully aware of and enjoying the journey (both the good and the bad), every second, every step of the way. Do not let the journey pass you by unaware, maybe while you are raking the leaves or mowing the grass, determined that your house – your place – should be the finest and the prettiest on the block.
Love to all!
Savita
To take risks, adjusted to the …hour and time!!!;]
Love,
Thelma