With the Bible

The Old Testament was too much for me. I could not take the God it presented, drowning the world and commanding slaughters and genocides. Mom and Dad and even our worse neighbor, who spanked his children and wife almost daily, were sure better then this God, I thought. Padre Nicolau, our local priest, was, also, of a God much more fun loving, forgiving and compassionate than this.
I abandoned the Bible under my bed in a palm tree leaves basket.
Ages after such, having the hibiscus blossoms renewed its strength and polished its color with kind and soft sun beams many a time, the Bible I recovered into my curiosity.
Reading the Sermon on the Mount I finally found out where God had hidden Godself in that old strange book. Jesus gained a fan. I was 13 years old by then and much more would come on this…

Can I say a prayer?

Can I say a prayer?
God, can I tell you what You already know, just for the sake of my own insecurity?
I guess I am just sending my mind a note, where it reads:
I am grateful for life and for this specific moment of life;
I am anxious for more of it; even though pain tries hard to spoil it.
And, I become a bit confused, not to say a lot confused: Gaza, Africa and my next door poor neighbor’s hungry children, make me uncomfortable with my complaints, but I am in need indeed, and it hurts.
Yet, I am calm inside; I can rest in knowing Your love, and Your love I know for sure by being known by Your Love!
When I reach to touch my wounds I feel your fingerprints carved there, and how could it be otherwise, since You still makes me!

Hunger, ours and that of others

Hunger, ours and that of others, was the most degrading experience of my existence. As an adult I would find suffering discrimination as the second worse situation.
A child can’t understand why something demanded naturally by all beings is not met by, also naturally. Food lacking blots the mind before eating the body inside out.

Finding a Bible
1972, afternoon.
Wrapped in coarse old cloth I could feel either a book or a box. Both possibilities fascinated me, since the inside of them usually carried whole worlds of its own. I already had galaxies of parts, fragments or entire books and boxes – small galaxies, I have to confess – but imagined immense ones out there, everywhere.
A moldy, old dark hard cover Bible was hidden in that wrap. Of course, it was a complete novelty to me.
Not enough kerosene, or castor oil for the lamps and I was stopped at the end of Exodus, before morning arrived bringing in its tray of lights toasted manioc flower cakes and strong coffee, fresh from the coffee trees in the yard.
Mom and morning were sisters and alike in inventing delicacies and smells.

“This is my body: take it, restore it to its grandeur and abundance”, says the world of God!
Shall we partake of this Holy Communion with all of our being?
Yeas, of course we shall!
Amor,
Onaldo

I’ve never been ambitious, but utterly curious, yes!

I’ve never been ambitious, but utterly curious, yes!
My earliest memories are of me sneaking into my mothers sewing drawers,
and being completely taken by the colorful buttons and threads.
My mother had a hard time keeping things in once piece: her sewing machine, alarm clock, medicines and kitchen utensils.
My father was driven nuts as I dug into his small shed and broke into his seed bags, axes, ropes and nails.
At the age of fourteen I had my room packed with a huge and chaotic collection of everything. This collecting and reading were my time’s all consuming business. Work, what I started at the age of five, helping my parents as the only child, in the field, was just a lapse in the important matters of life. Soon enough, thinking also became a great exercise, which I could carry on all day long, no matter what.
No electricity or running water on our dirt floor “drunk on a loose rope” house. Home, really; calling where we lived a house would be to stretch the universe of meanings away too far.
By morning my nostrils and eyelids were laden with lamp-black, I had pushed the night hours through the pages of a book or the re-reorganizing of my Babel like collection of everything.
Going to school the next morning was a must, but not a routine, as I often had to detour to work instead.