By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept
A few days ago while reading online I came across the book “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. Immediately afterwards I searched for quotes by the author and posted one as a result. Yesterday while roaming around Barnes & Noble on a quest for inspiration I caught myself in the Spanish section and saw the book again. I decided to find a copy in English. In the section for Fiction & Literature I found a collection of various books by Coelho and was drawn instead to a different book entitled “By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept, A Novel Of Forgiveness”. It’s a beautiful message about faith and love. Below is an excerpt from the author’s notes. Thank you to the author for sharing this story with the world.
All of us have had this experience. At some point, we have each said through our tears, “I’m suffering for a love that’s not worth it.” We suffer because we feel we are giving more than we receive. We suffer because our love is going unrecognized. We suffer because we are unable to impose our own rules.
But ultimately, there is no good reason for our suffering, for in every love lies the seed of our growth. The more we love, the closer we come to spiritual experience. Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all of the inhibitions and preconceptions of their era. They have been able to sing, to laugh and to pray out loud; they have danced and shared what Saint Paul called “the madness of saintliness.” They have been joyful - because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender…
Thomas Merton once said that the spiritual life is essentially to love. One doesn’t love in order to do what is good or to help or to protect someone. If we act that way, we are perceiving the other as a simple object, and we are seeing ourselves as wise and generous persons. This has nothing to do with love. To love is to be in communion with the other and to discover in that other the spark of God.
