I just read the book Brida by Paulo Coelho. 
It’s about the quest and eventual initiation into witchhood of a 21 year old girl with a desire to learn magic. The story has a lot of religious fragments and messages – as do most of Coelho’s books – and they are nicely mixed into the neopagan storyline and combined with lessons from nature and life in general.
In one fragment Brida sits on a mountain together with Magus, one of her teachers, and they watch the sunset. During the last moments of the sunset both of them say a prayer. This is Brida’s prayer:
Lord,
help me understand
that all the good things in life that happen to me
do so because I deserve them.
Help me to understand
that what moves me to seek out Your truth
is the same force that moved the saints,
and the doubts I have
are the same doubts that the saints had,
and my frailties are the same frailties.
Help me to be humble enough
to accept that I am no different from other people.
Amen.
I love the core message of this prayer. The saints are ordinary people, just like you and I. They are not special people, they have the doubts, questions, and weaknesses too. We are the same. There may be a saint in all of us. The only way they have set themselves apart from us is by their actions.
They didn’t give in to their weaknesses or to their doubts. Their questions lead them along the path to new answers, and to new questions accompanying those answers. They had a force driving them (and you and I can find that too!), wanting to find a truth.
It is by their actions that they became special, not by who they were. They were simply ordinary people, just like you and I.
Photo by jayhem
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Good to see you posting again. How is the job hunt going?
Thanks John, the only way to get started again is by simply taking the first step I guess. Kind of ironic to first write a post titled ‘MIA no longer’, only to remain silent for another month
Life with a small baby isn’t easy, especially if they cry most of the day instead of sleep. Takes up a lot of time and energy!
The job hunt is going slow, there are jobs out there (not quite as much as it used to be though) but if you want to work part time it gets a little difficult. I’m not worried though, I know I’ll find a great job sooner or later.