aturday, December 4, 1993

The place where the conference was held was more formal than I had imagined it, and there were more people there than I had expected. How had all this come about?

He must be famous. I thought. He'd said nothing about this in his letters. I wanted to go up to the people in the audience and ask them why they were there, but I didn't have the nerve.

I was even more surprised when I saw him enter the room. He was quite different from the boy I had known—but of course, it had been twelve years; people change. Tonight his eyes were shining—he looked wonderful.

“He's giving us back what was ours,” said a woman seated next to me.

A strange thing to say.

“What is he giving back?” I asked.

“What was stolen from us. Religion.”

“No, no, he's not giving us anything back,” said a younger woman seated on my right. “They can't return something that has always belonged to us.”

“Well, then, what are you doing here?” the first woman asked, irritated.

“I want to listen to him. I want to see how they think; they've already burned us at the stake once, and they may want to do it again.”

“He's just one voice,” said the woman. “He's doing what he can.”

The young woman smiled sarcastically and turned away, putting an end to the conversation.

“He's taking a courageous position for a seminarian,” the other woman went on, looking to me for support.

I didn't understand any of this, and I said nothing. The woman finally gave up. The girl at my side winked at me, as if I were her ally.

But I was silent for a different reason. I was thinking, Seminarian? It can't lie! He would have told me.

When he started to speak, I couldn't concentrate. I was sure he had spotted me in the audience, and I was trying to guess what he was thinking. How did I look to him? How different was the woman of twenty-nine from the girl of seventeen?

I noticed that his voice hadn't changed. But his words certainly had.

You have to take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

Every day, God gives us the sun—and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist—that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists—a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.

Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment helps us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments—but all of this is transitory; it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride andfaith at the journey we have taken.

Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won't suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow. But when that person looks back—and at some point everyone looks back—she will hear her heart saying, “What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful of losing those talents. So this is your heritage: the certainty that you wasted your life”

Pitiful are the people who must realize this. Because when they are finally able to believe in miracles, their life's magic moments will have already passed them by.

After the lecture, members of the audience rushed up to him. I waited, worried about what his first impression of me would be after so many years. I felt like a child—insecure, tense because I knew none of his new friends, and jealous that he was paying more attention to the others than to me.

When he finally came up to me, he blushed. Suddenly he was no longer a man with important things to say but was once again the boy who had hidden with me at the hermitage of San Satúrio, telling me of his dream to travel the world (while our parents were calling the police, sure that we had drowned in the river).

“Pilar,” he said.

I kissed him. I could have complimented him on his presentation. I could have said I was tired of being around so many people. I could have made some humorous remark about our childhood or commented on how proud I was to see him there, so admired by others.

I could have explained that I had to run and catch the last bus back to Zaragoza.

I could have. What does this phrase mean? At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have happened but didn't. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything.

That's what happened to me just then. In spite of all the things I could have done or said, I asked a question that has brought me, a week later, to this river and has caused me to write these very lines.

“Can we have coffee together?” I said.

And he, turning to me, accepted the hand offered by fate.

“I really need to talk to you. Tomorrow I have a lecture in Bilbao. I have a car. Come with me.”

“I have to get back to Zaragoza,” I answered, not realizing that this was my last chance.

Then I surprised myself—perhaps because in seeing him, I had become a child again… or perhaps because we are not the ones who write the best moments of our lives. I said, “But they're about to celebrate the holiday of the Immaculate Conception in Bilbao. I can go there with you and then continue on to Zaragoza.”

Just then, it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him about his being a “seminarian.” He must have read my expression, because he said quickly, “Do you want to ask me something?”

“Yes. Before your lecture, a woman said that you were giving her back what had been hers. What did she mean?”

“Oh, that's nothing.”

“But it's important to me. I don't know anything about your life; I'm even surprised to see so many people here.”

He just laughed, and then he started to turn away to answer other people's questions.

“Wait,” I said, grabbing his arm. “You didn't answer me.”

“I don't think it would interest you, Pilar.”

“I want to know anyway.”

Taking a deep breath, he led me to a corner of the room. “All of the great religions—including Judaism, Catholicism, and Islam—are masculine. Men are in charge of the dogmas, men make the laws, and usually all the priests are men.”

“Is that what the woman meant?”

He hesitated before he answered. “Yes. I have a different view of things: I believe in the feminine side of God.”

I sighed with relief. The woman was mistaken; he couldn't be a seminarian because seminarians don't have such different views of things.

“You've explained it very well,” I said.

The girl who had winked at me was waiting at the door.

“I know that we belong to the same tradition,” she said. “My name is Brida.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course you do,” she laughed.

She took my arm and led me out of the building before I could say anything more. It was a cold night, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do until we left for Bilbao the next morning.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the statue of the Goddess.”

“But… I need to find an inexpensive hotel where I can stay for the night.”

“I'll show you one later.”

I wanted to go to some warm cafe where I could talk to her for a bit and learn as much as I could about him. But I didn't want to argue. While she guided me across the Paseo de Castellana, I looked around at Madrid; I hadn't been there in years.

In the middle of the avenue, she stopped and pointed to the sky. “There She is.”

The moon shone brilliantly through the bare branches of the trees on either side of the road.

“Isn't that beautiful!” I exclaimed.

But she wasn't listening. She spread her arms in the form of a cross, turning her palms upward, and just stood there contemplating the moon.

What have I gotten myself into? I thought. I came here to attend a conference, and now I wind up in the Paseo de Castellana with this crazy girl. And tomorrow I'm going to Bilbao!

“O mirror of the Earth Goddess,” Brida was saying, her eyes closed. “Teach us about our power and make men understand us. Rising, gleaming, waning, and reviving in the heavens, you show us the cycle of the seed and the fruit.”

She stretched her arms toward the night sky and held this position for some time. Several passersby looked at her and laughed, but she paid no attention; I was the one who was dying of embarrassment, standing there beside her.

“I needed to do that,” she said, after her long adoration of the moon, “so that the Goddess would protect us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The same thing that your friend was talking about, only with words that are true.”

I was sorry now that I hadn't paid closer attention to the lecture.

“We know the feminine side of God,” Brida continued as we started to walk on. “We, the women, understand and love the Great Mother. We have paid for our wisdom with persecution and burnings at the stake, but we have survived. And now we understand Her mysteries.”

Burnings at the stake? She was talking about witches!

I looked more closely at the woman by my side. She was pretty, with hair that hung to the middle of her back.

"While men were going off to hunt, we remained in the caves, in the womb of the Mother, caring for our children. And it was there that the Great Mother taught us everything.

“Men lived through movement, while we remained close to the womb of the Mother. This allowed us to see that seeds are turned into plants, and we told this to the men. We made the first bread, and we fed our people. We shaped the first cup so that we could drink. And we came to understand the cycle of creation, because our bodies repeat the rhythm of the moon.”

She stopped suddenly. “There She is!”

I looked. There in the middle of the plaza, surrounded on all sides by traffic, was a fountain portraying a woman in a carriage drawn by lions.

“This is the Plaza Cybele,” I said, trying to show off my knowledge of Madrid. I had seen this fountain on dozens of postcards.

But the young woman wasn't listening. She was already in the middle of the street, trying to make her way through the traffic. “Come on! Let's go over there!” she shouted, waving to me from the midst of the cars.

I decided to try to follow her, if only to get the name of a hotel. Her craziness was wearing me out; I needed to get some sleep.

We made it to the fountain at almost the same time; my heart was pounding, but she had a smile on her lips. “Water!” she exclaimed. “Water is Her manifestation.”

“Please, I need the name of an inexpensive hotel.”

She plunged her hands into the water. “You should do this, too,” she said to me. “Feel the water.”

“No! But I don't want to spoil your experience. I'm going to look for a hotel.”

“Just a minute.”

Brida took a small flute from her bag and began to play. To my surprise, the music had a hypnotic effect; the sounds of the traffic receded, and my racing heart began to slow down. I sat on the edge of the fountain, listening to the noise of the water and the sound of the flute, my eyes on the full moon gleaming above us. Somehow I was sensing—although I couldn't quite understand it—that the moon was a reflection of my womanhood.

I don't know how long she continued to play. When she stopped, she turned to the fountain. “Cybele, manifestation of the Great Mother, who governs the harvests, sustains the cities, and returns to woman her role as priestess…”

“Who are you?” I asked. “Why did you ask me to come with you?”

She turned to me. “I am what you see me to be. I am a part of the religion of the earth.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I can read your eyes. I can read your heart. You are going to fall in love. And suffer.”

"I am?

“You know what I'm talking about. I saw how he was looking at you. He loves you.”

This woman was really nuts!

“That's why I asked you to come with me—because he is important. Even though he says some silly things, at least he recognizes the Great Mother. Don't let him lose his way. Help him.”

“You don't know what you're talking about. You're dreaming!” And I turned and rushed back into the traffic, swearing I'd forget everything she had said.