excerpt
“How can they live in heaven and talk in my head? I don’t
understand.”
“Through the Spirit. If God created all this,” I said, making an
encompassing gesture, “he can talk in our . . .” I wanted to say
hearts, but the word didn’t come to me. “Heads,” I finally said,
knowing that my explanation was inadequate at best.
“What happens to those who do not want to be born again?”
“They go to hell.”
“Where is that?”
“It is a place of pain and crying, where bad people burn in fire
forever.”
“And if they don’t want to go?”
“They have to go.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s how it is.”
“Nobody can make me go. If I don’t want to go, I just don’t.”
How was I to answer that? The concept of an almighty, vigilant
God against whom we are impotent, who is directly involved in
everything we do and are, who grants and forbids, who rewards and
punishes, and with whom, on top of everything else, we
communicate was completely alien to these people.
For them nature was the ruler of all things, and their Mareoka was
the creator of day, night, fire, water. Not only was he that, but he was
also a teacher. They believed Mareoka had taught their forefathers
how to weave baskets, how to make hammocks and other practical
things like bows and arrows—in short, a God that gave them a place
to live and showed them how to survive.
Mareoka had come one day, they believed, and had asked the
people whether they wanted to be something else: and so it was that
many became tapirs, kapok trees, snakes, monkeys, whatever struck
their fancy. Hence the reverence I had noticed when they killed an
animal or felled a tree. They had a relationship with nature that was
alien to us Spaniards.
When Guacaipuro heard about a big house where only men lived
together to worship God, he was shocked. Sexual abstinence was…
Libros Libertad 