The Missing Brick

Once, when I and my wife were traveling, I received a fax from my secretary.

“There’s one glass brick missing for the work on the kitchen renovation,’ she said. ‘I’m sending you the original plan as well as the plan the builder has come up with to compensate for it.”

On the one hand, there was the design my wife had made: harmonious lines of bricks with an opening for ventilation. On the other, there was the plan drawn up to resolve the problem of the missing brick: a real jigsaw puzzle in which the glass squares were arranged in a higgledy-piggledy fashion that defied aesthetics.

“Just buy another brick," wrote my wife. And so the did, and thus stuck to the original design.

That afternoon, I thought for a long time about what had happened; how often, for the lack of one brick, we completely distort the original plan of our lives.

Alone On The Road

When things get hard, let us not forget that - independent of race, color, social situation, beliefs, or culture - everyone has experienced exactly the same. A lovely prayer written by the Egyptian Sufi Master Dhu'l-Nun (d. AD 861) neatly sums up the attitude one needs to adopt at such times:

O God, when I listen to the voices of the animals, to the sound of the trees, the murmur of the water, the singing of the birds, to the rushing of the wind or to the rumble of thunder, I see in them evidence of Your unity; I feel that You are supreme power, supreme knowledge, supreme wisdom, supreme justice.

O God, I also recognize You in the difficulties I am experiencing now. God, let Your satisfaction be my satisfaction, and let me be Your joy, the joy that a Father takes in his child. And let me remember You with calmness and determination, even when it is hard for me to say: I love You.

On My Way To Chicago Bookfair

I was flying from New York to Chicago to attend the book fair held in the American Booksellers Association. Suddenly, a young man stood up in the aisle of the plane and announced:
"I need twelve volunteers each willing to carry a single rose when we get off the plane."

Several people raised their hands. I did too, but wasn't chosen. Even so, I decided to follow the group. We landed, and the young man indicated a young woman in the arrivals hall at O'Hare Airport. One by one, the passengers presented their roses to her. At last, in front of everyone, the young man asked her to marry him, and she accepted.

An air steward said to me: "I've been working here for years, and that's the most romantic things that has ever happened in this airport."

Paulo Coelho

The Devil's Pool

I'm looking at a lovely natural pool near the village of Babinda in Australia. A young Aborigine comes over to me.

"Be careful you don't slip," he says.

The small pool is surrounded by rocks, apparently quite safe to walk on.

"This place is called the Devil's Pool," the boy goes on. "Many years ago, Oolona, a beautiful Aborigine girl who was married to a warrior from Babinda, fell in love with another man. They fled into these mountains, but the husband found them. The lover escaped, but Oolona was murdered here in these waters. Ever since then, Oolona thinks that every man who comes near is her lost love, and she kills them with her watery embrace."

Later on, I asked the owner of the small hotel about the Devil's Pool.

"It must just be superstition," he says, "but the fact is that eleven tourists have died there in the last ten years, and they were all men."

--- PAULO COELHO

In San Diego Harbour, California

I was talking to a woman from the Tradition of the Moon - a kind of initiation path for women that works in harmony with the forces of nature.

"Would you like to touch a seagull?" she asked, looking at the birds perched along the seawall.

Of course I would. I tried several times, but whenever I get close, they would fly away.

"Try to feel love for the bird, the allow that love to pour out of your breast like a ray of light and touch the bird's breast. Then very quietly go over to it."

I did as she suggested. The first two times I failed, but the third time, as if I had entered a kind of trance, I did touch the seagull. I went into that trance state again with the same positive result.

"Love creates bridges where it would seem they were impossible," said my white witch friend.

I recount this experience here, for anyone who would like to try it.

----Like the Flowing River, Paulo Coelho.