I was born and brought up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. My family
has roots in Europe: German (Bulk), Spanish (Gimenez, and my mother’s family,
Morales) and Portuguese (my father’s mother’s family, a surname that does not
show in my full name).
My mother was married when she was too young and her
relationship with my father didn’t last long. As she went back to her family’s
home, the responsibility of my education was given to my grandparents.
My grandmother came from Spain during the upheaval
experienced in the Civil War. Her brother was killed by Franco’s soldiers and
as you probably know, the Church supported Franco,
the winner in that bloody historic event. That made her into a very interesting
person, from the spiritual point of view. Although she was illiterate, a
renowned bad cook and she used to fight for anything, as time passes by, I can
recognize wisdom in her way of being.
Even though intrinsically she associated her religion with
something bad, she wanted to be a good person, have a life guided by God and
His principles, in other words, she wanted to keep her spirituality.
She replaced the religion by filling her house with
religious pictures and objects. I used to wake up with two angels looking at
me, eat with Jesus Christ’s last supper picture hanging in the wall, etc. In
her life with me, I can remember only a few occasions when she did go to church
for a mass.
In that way, she did what many people try to do nowadays: to
discern spirituality from religion… She was able to keep the
spirituality of Catholicism, which is based in doing goodness to other people,
without following the religion.
Many stories about her shows that spirituality: she adopted
one of my aunts and treated her exactly like a daughter, even though our family
did not have much money, and one day she bought all furniture from some
neighbor, leaving us no space to eat
properly, just because the neighbor was having money problem.
Her attitude in relation to religion enabled her daughters
to find their own path, free to do it. And we, grandchildren, had the same
fortune. I must be sincere that has created some kind of an “I don’t care” attitude in relation to
religion and even to God.
Personally, at the time I lived with her and the rest of my
adolescence, I did not care much about God nor did I know a thing about
spirituality. But even though, through my specialty of the moment – reading – I
started to study…
My grandmother had a very old Bible I started to read. It
was written in very Old Portuguese, almost impossible to understand, but I was
enjoying the novelty making special effort to read the Moses’ books.
Next, I was reading a small scripture – a tiny book – by Seicho-no-Ie,
a Japanese religion that talks about gratitude towards life and others, even
though they have hurt you… It was a gift by my favorite aunt.
One day, my grandma came back from a trip and she gave me a
book she bought. I thought that the person who sold her the book was the best
salesman in the world, as she was illiterate… but, of course, she got it for
me. It was the Bhagawad Gita,
which I read completely. I was 13 or 14.
Unknowingly, she started in me a process that would take to
a breakthrough of my life, with no religion but lots of spirituality.
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