By The River Piedra I Sat Down & Wept

I didn't say anything, and he took my hand. 'Forgive me for my intolerance.'

I kissed his hand and put it to my cheek.

'This is what I'm trying to explain to you,' he said, smiling again. 'I realized, from the moment I found you again, that I couldn't cause you to suffer because of my mission.

I began to feel worried.

'Yesterday I lied to you. It was the first and last lie I've ever told you,' he continued. 'The truth is that instead of going to the monastery, I went up on the mountain and conversed with the Great Mother. I said to Her that if She wanted, I would leave you and continue along my path. I would go back to the gate where the sick gathered, to the visits in the middle of the night, to the lack of understanding of those who would deny the idea of faith, and to the cynical attitude of those who cannot believe that love is a savior. If She were to ask me, I would give up what I want most in the world: you.'

I thought again of the padre. He had been right. A choice had been made that morning.

'But,' he continued, 'if it were possible to resolve this awful predicament in my life, I would promise to serve the world through my love for you.'

'What are you saying?' I asked, frightened now.

He seemed not to hear me.

'It's not necessary to move mountains in order to prove one's faith,' he said. 'I was ready to face the suffering alone and not share it. If I had continued along that path, we would never have our house with the white curtains and the view of the mountains.'

'I don't care about that house! I didn't even want to go in!' I said, trying not to shout. 'I want to go with you, to be with you in your struggle. I want to be one of those who does something for the first time. Don't you understand? You've given me back my faith!'

The last rays of the sun illuminated the walls of the cavern. But I couldn't see its beauty.

God hides the fires of hell within paradise.

'You're the one who doesn't understand,' he said, and I could see his eyes begging me to comprehend. 'You don't see the risks.'

'But you were willing to accept those risks!'

'I am willing. But they are my risks.'

I wanted to interrupt him, but he wasn't listening.

'So yesterday, I asked a miracle of the Virgin,' he continued. 'I asked that She take away my gift.'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

'I have a little money and all the experience that years of traveling have given me. We'll buy a house, I'll get a job, and I'll serve God as Saint Joseph did, with the humility of an anonymous person. I don't need miracles in my life anymore to keep the faith. I need you.''

My legs were growing weak, and I felt as if I might faint.

'And just as I was asking that the Virgin take away my gift, I began to speak in tongues,' he went on. 'The tongues told me, 'Place your hands on the earth. Your gift will leave you and return to the Mother's breast.''

I was in a panic. 'You didn't…'

'Yes. I did as the inspiration of the Holy Spirit bade. The fog lifted, and the sun shone on the mountains. I felt that the Virgin understood—because She had also loved so greatly.'

'But She followed Her man! She accepted the path taken by Her son!'

'We don't have Her strength, Pilar. My gift will be passed on to someone else—such gifts are never wasted.

'Yesterday, from that bar, I phoned Barcelona and canceled my presentation. Let's go to Zaragoza—you know the people there, and it's a good place for us to start. I'll get a job easily.'

I could no longer think.

'Pilar!' he said.

But I was already climbing back through the tunnel—this time without a friendly shoulder to lean on—pursued by the multitude of the sick who would die, the families that would suffer, the miracles that would never be performed, the smiles that would no longer grace the world, and the mountains that would remain in place.

I saw nothing—only the darkness that engulfed me.

Friday, December 10, 1993

On the bank of the River Piedra I sat down and wept. My memory of that night is confused and vague. I know that I almost died, but I can't remember his face nor where he took me.

I'd like to be able to remember all of it—so that I could expel it from my heart. But I can't. It all seems like a dream, from the moment when I came out of that dark tunnel into a world where darkness had already fallen.

There was not a star in the sky. I remember vaguely walking back to the car, retrieving my small bag, and beginning to wander at random. I must have walked to the road, trying to hitch a ride to Zaragoza—with no success. I wound up returning to the gardens at the monastery.

The sound of water was everywhere—there were waterfalls on all sides, and I felt the presence of the Great Mother following me wherever I walked. Yes, She had loved the world; She loved it as much as God did—because She had also given Her son to be sacrificed by men. But did She understand a woman's love for a man?

She may have suffered because of love, but it was a different kind of love. Her Groom knew everything and performed miracles. Her husband on earth was a humble laborer who believed everything his dreams told him. She never knew what it was to abandon a man or to be abandoned by one. When Joseph considered expelling Her from their home because She was pregnant, Her Groom in heaven immediately sent an angel to keep that from happening.

Her son left Her. But children always leave their parents. It's easy to suffer because you love a person, or the world, or your son. That's the kind of suffering that you accept as a part of life; it's a noble, grand sort of suffering. It's easy to suffer for a cause or a mission; this ennobles the heart of the person suffering.

But how to explain suffering because of a man? It's not explainable. With that kind of suffering, a person feels as if they're in hell, because there is no nobility, no greatness—only misery.

That night, I slept on the frozen ground, and the cold anesthetized me. I thought I might die without a covering—but where could I find one? Everything that was most important in my life had been given so generously to me in the course of one week—and had been taken from me in a minute, without my having a chance to say a thing.

My body was trembling from the cold, but I hardly noticed. At some point, the trembling would stop. My body's energy would be exhausted from trying to provide me with heat and would be unable to do anything more. It would resume its customary state of relaxation, and death would take me in its arms.

I shook for another hour. And then peace came.

Before I closed my eyes, I began to hear my mother's voice. She was telling a story she had often told me when I was a child, not realizing it was a story about me.

'A boy and a girl were insanely in love with each other,' my mother's voice was saying. 'They decided to become engaged. And that's when presents are always exchanged.

'The boy was poor—his only worthwhile possession was a watch he'd inherited from his grandfather. Thinking about his sweetheart's lovely hair, he decided to sell the watch in order to buy her a silver barrette.

'The girl had no money herself to buy him a present. She went to the shop of the most successful merchant in the town and sold him her hair. With the money, she bought a gold watchband for her lover.

'When they met on the day of the engagement party, she gave him the wristband for a watch he had sold, and he gave her the barrette for the hair she no longer had.'

I was awakened by a man shaking me.

'Drink this!' he was saying. 'Drink this quickly!' I had no idea what was happening nor the strength to resist. He opened my mouth and forced me to drink a hot liquid. I noticed that he was in his shirtsleeves and that he had given me a wrap.

'Drink more!' he insisted.