By The River Piedra, I Sat Down And Wept

I have read this book years ago, and since I was reading Paulho Coelho's collection and this book is thin as well, I took it to re-read again.

“By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept” is another novel by Coelho that proves that love is not an obstacle to materializing one’s dreams, but a force urging the lovers to conquer their dreams and thus find God. Coelho has once again used his successful formula when writing this novel: poetic prose, symbolism, an air of mysticism, and his usual “follow your dream” theme.

Just like “The Alchemist”, “By the river Piedra…” is a story about a journey symbolizing the route towards self-discovery. “By the river Piedra…”, however, could more easily be described as a story of love, as it strives to show that “true love is an act of total surrender”. At a deeper level, Coelho also gives the message that as there are no rules when it comes to love, there are no rules when it comes to worshiping God: “to love is to be in communion with the other, and to discover in that other the spark of God”.

This is the story of a love between a young man and a young woman, who have known each other as children and never quite managed to forget each other. But when they meet again she is now a student, straight on the path to have a normal regulated life with a job and a family and he follows his own path. On the other hand, he is very religious, a seminarian who preaches about the feminine side of God. But he needed to see her, he felt like he couldn't be the best priest he can be with her still stuck in his head and so they go on a journey to Lourdes and get to know each other again. She doesn't want to fall for him although she is fascinated by the mystery he poses - but she knows that loving him would mean pain, an uprooted life, a change that she is afraid of.

Basically its the story of how she can find the joy in the life he leads. The journey from wanting to do what is expected of her, to do what she wants, to become the haven the man she loves needs. He, on the other hand, thinks he’s faced with the dilemma of staying with the woman he loves and abandoning the life that fulfils him, or venturing on his planned mission to change the world. In the end he discovers that a choice need not be made: to love a woman is to love life itself.

The love between the couple is one that develops, and it goes through many levels: the childhood love, love hidden behind the bars of inhibition and oppressed feeling when they reunite, the liberated love whereby Pilar regains her “faith” and changes her philosophy on life, and whereby her lover decides to deny his nature and sacrifice his “gift” to have a normal life with Pilar, and the enlightened love which allows both lovers to conquer their dreams.

Just like fear of failure prevented some people from achieving greatness in “The Alchemist”, fear of rejection prevented the lovers from expressing their love in “By the river Piedra…” The expulsion of this fear is vividly symbolized with the deliberate breaking of a glass at a restaurant. This gesture shows that to surrender to love we must break through our fears and break all the rules and formulae. Also, to convert to the faith of the Goddess, which is seen as heresy by many, one must see beyond everything one’s parents taught one about religion and the limits of life.

When the glass is broken and the two lovers are liberated from all inhibition comes the kiss, the description of which is an excellent example of Coelho’s poetic style: “a kiss born by the rivers of our childhood when we didn’t yet know what love meant…in the moment of that kiss were years of searching, disillusionment and impossible dreams”.

At an age when everything has been discovered, Coelho suggests that there are greater discoveries to be made: those of the spirit. The two lovers have made the discovery that all people can speak the language of angels and perform miracles. Now their mission is to let the whole world know, “and experience the agony and ecstasy of pioneers”.

This book is about the importance of that surrender. Pilar and her companion are fictitious, but they represent the many conflicts that beset us in our search for love. Sooner or later, we have to overcome our fears, because the spiritual path can only be traveled through the daily experience of love.

Thomas Merton once said the spiritual life is essentially to love. One doesn't love in order to do what is good or to help or to protect somone. If we act that way, we are perceiving the other as a simple object, and we are seeing ourselves as wise and generous persons. This has nothing to do with love. To love is to be in communion with the other and discover in that other the spark of God.