Excerpts from Brida!

Yes, I thumbed up Coelho again. He is so very philosophical, and wow. Like to read him once in a while, but really just once in a while. I fear that too much of him would turn me into an elusive hermit in search of the meaning of life. Anyway, here are a few excerpts that I appreciated from 'Brida'. Although not one of his best-sellers, it was a popular book. [PS: Wish I could also share my notes from Alchemist and Eleven Minutes, only if I knew where they were now!]

# You can't renounce love in order not to suffer. Its like putting out your own eyes in order not see the bad things in life.

# Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

# Sometimes, certain of God's blessings arrive by shattering all the windows.

# Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride he knew, because it was the most destructive way of being different.

# Nature is God's signature.

# "I have spread my dreams under your feet,

Tread softly because you tread in my dreams." - Poet WB Yeats

# About the transformation of the holy cross as a symbol of Christianity, and the altered significance of sex!

"A Roman would never enter a building with a cross on it. He would think it was a house of torture ever invented by man. The cross might not have changed, but its meaning certainly has. In the same way, when mankind was closer to God, sex was the symbolic means of communion with the divine, a reencounter with the meaning of life."

# When we are in bed with someone, we're giving permission to that person to commune not only with our body but also with our whole being. The pure forces of life are in communication with each other, independent of us, and then we cannot hide who we are.

#"Right now, while we are eating, ninety-nine percent of the people on this planet are, in their own way, struggling with the question 'Why are we here?' Many think they've found the answer in religion or in materialism. Others despair and spend their lives and their money trying to grasp the meaning of it all. A few let the question go unanswered and live for the moment, regardless of the results or the consequences. Only a few are aware that the only possible answer to this question is I DON'T KNOW.

The answer might, at first, seem frightening, leaving us terribly vulnerable in our dealings with the world, with the things of the world, and with our own sense of our existence. Once we've got over that initial fear, however, we gradually become accustomed to the only possible solution: to follow our dreams. Having the courage to take the steps we always wanted to take is the only way of showing our trust in God.

As soon as we accept this, life takes on a sacred meaning, and we experience the same emotion the Virgin must have felt when, one afternoon in her otherwise very ordinary existence, a stranger appeared to her and made her an offer. 'Be it unto me according to thy word', said the Virgin. Because she had understood that the greatest thing a human being can do is to accept the Mystery."

# God is in the word. God manifests himself in everything, but the word is his most favored methods of doing so because the word is thought transformed into vibration; you are projecting into the air around you something which, before, was only energy.

# Finally 'Devil is in the Detail'.