[Out there #14] Whispers of the Divine in stones, prayers, and words
"A letter on the birth of words and the weight they bear."
Solitude and search. These were the dominant emotion and action during my first week in Portugal.
Alone, driving through northern roads, in search of a new home and school for the children. I already knew, in a way, what awaited me.
But I hadn’t imagined that so many landscapes—mountain ranges and stone buildings beneath the relentless summer sun—would connect to memories that the mind insists on inventing, just to trigger reveries in the middle of the night.
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Dawn. The day has yet to be born. And yet, I’m already awake. A long day on the road lies ahead. I want to sleep more. I can’t.
Restless in bed, I turn to an old childhood trick. I close my eyes, focus on my breathing, and begin to pray.
“Where are you going, little Saint Anthony, barefoot and without a hat?”
That was the first prayer my Portuguese grandmother taught me. I must have been four or five years old. She, a devout Catholic, was the one who first set me on the path of faith.
“I’m walking the Way of the Cross, which is the path to heaven.”
Little Saint Anthony’s answer set my imagination alight. I pictured the boy following a winding path of rough stones, barefoot, under the sun — for what other reason would one ask about the hat?
After little Saint Anthony, I now realize, all my imagined paths began to have curves and stones.
In my childhood drawings, the houses always had a path leading to the front door. It was winding, paved with stones, and lined with bushes of wildflowers.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”
My grandmother taught me that one must pray every night. Preferably kneeling beside the bed — but she was far too kind. She’d let me pray already tucked in, nestled beneath the covers.
“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy wo…”
I would almost always fall asleep before finishing the prayer. The next morning, I’d wake up worried. Would God be angry? Grandmother would reassure me:
— What matters is the intention. God knows everything.
To this day, I still don’t know. Was it the idea of an all-knowing God that enchanted me — or frightened me?
Did He know that forty years later, in the only house I would ever build, there would be a winding stone path leading from the street to the front door?
Was it He who whispered the idea into the landscaper’s imagination — not only including the path, but lining it with shrubs, even though I never once mentioned little Saint Anthony, childhood drawings, stones, curves, or wildflowers?
Where are ideas born? In the same place where words arise?
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”
Because of what happened to me in childhood, I began to use prayers as a lullaby. When anxiety steals my rest, I pray to clear my mind and return to sleep.
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
It doesn’t always work like it used to. I’m no longer that child.
Besides, there’s the long journey. Science is clear: the body is in Portugal, but my system still lives on Bali time — eight hours ahead.
Or is it His will, the one who knows all, keeping me awake so I can begin to write this letter?
My mind plunges into the deepest abyss of my existence, a time when I prayed with truth and purpose—not merely to find sleep.
I am back in the hospital playroom. Around me, children laugh, play, and have fun, as if tomorrow does not exist. How can they be so wise, when they are still so small?
Tomorrow does not exist. Today is all we have.
The present moment in which these children face the deadliest of illnesses without losing their smiles.
Still in the same hospital, it appears on the paper before me. The little house with orange-tiled gabled roof, red brick walls, a brown door, and two small windows. A well on the left side, a tree shading the right. A winding stone path leading to the door.
— “Wow, Dad, you draw really well!”
Beside me, my son Caio looks at the sheet and pulls me out of my daydreams.
I’m an adult now, but I’m still drawing the same house, so many years later.
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.”
Of all prayers, the Creed is the one that enchants me most as a writer.
“And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.”
It’s like a film playing before the eyes of the mind.
“Who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.”
The complete biography of the greatest religious leader in human history.
“He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.”
A man whose existence has never been proven, yet whose ideas—distorted through millennia—are followed by more than 2.4 billion believers.
“He descended to the dead, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven.”
An entire life told in seven sentences, nothing more. An enviable power of synthesis.
Who wrote this prayer? Who invented this character?
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
That one I know who wrote. John opens his gospel with it.
A rare moment of honesty, admitting that after all, it was always just this?
A matter of narrative? Of Word?
The Word, our object of devotion — we, writers — as the first manifestation of the Divine.
Memory returns to the road, the day before.
After another curve, I spot tall stone walls. A gabled roof, a discreet cross at the summit.
I pull the car over. The sign reads: the Monastery of São Pedro de Roriz.
A temple built in the year 1070. A concrete proof of the power of the Word.
There were still 58 years to go before the birth of Portugal when men and women carried each of those stone blocks up the hill to build this place of devotion to the Word brought by the Romans, along with their sharp weapons of domination.
Spears and swords broke. The Word remained.
It has lasted more than a thousand years.
Where is the word born? From what depths does it spring, filling itself with meaning before coming to life on paper or glowing screens?
I know, science explains it — in the human mind. But if the brain is similar in all humans, why are my words different from yours?
Where does the inspiration come from that touches and illuminates each of us in a unique way?
Is the Word God, as John writes?
Or maybe I just need more hours of sleep, and soon none of these wild thoughts will survive the magical light of another day beneath the relentless sun of the European summer?