(português) (Nederlands)
“What are you actually writing about this week?”
“Nothing yet. But I’m thinking of explaining in great detail what God is or what that word means.”
“You know, don’t you, that whole books have been written about that.”
“Yes, I know. Do you have a better idea then? Just name a word and I’ll write about that.”
He looks around the kitchen, sees a freshly picked bunch of parsley and says:
“Parsley?”
“That’s good. You know that in French cuisine garlic is almost never used without parsley.”
“Yes those French have of course known for a long time that parsley neutralises the smell of garlic. At least, that’s what they think. Some people are so afraid of smelling out of their mouths after eating garlic that they immediately eat raw parsley. By the way, do you know that in the stories of Asterix and Obelix, the Romans always put parsley in their ears when the Gallic bard started singing?”
I laugh.
“Actually, it doesn’t matter what I write about”, I say later. “I always end up with God anyway. I have to make an effort not to end up there. That’s why I think I can contribute something. And certainly to you and all those millions of people who also believe that God is an old evil man with a beard who lives on a cloud and that this evil man has devised a religion, a hell and a heaven so that people continue to behave according to the moral compass of church rules. A kind of totalitarian leader. A Stalin.”
I have been thinking about such topics as God all my life and only recently did I start talking about them after the yoga classes I teach. As soon as I share something of my own experiences on the spiritual or consciousness plane, I feel my listeners become silent. I don’t see them because I have my eyes closed while telling them. Those stories come from afar. They are inside me, but not in my thinking. I trust what falls into my mind and the rest follows naturally. It is that trust that everything in life is about. So is trusting parsley. For years I sowed it in pots. Never did those little plants last the whole year. One day I complained to my esteemed housekeeper. A woman from here. Raised in nature and working in the fields from the age of 12. Summer and winter, all kinds of labour. She is tough and intelligent. No books were involved in that. A week later, she stands at the door and calls me out. She scatters the seeds she has brought with her on the gravel under the orange tree and the olive tree close to the kitchen door.
“The closer to the kitchen the better. You can pick all year round soon.”
I still dare to doubt how that could possibly grow. In those places. Of course she is right. It is people like her who make me know that God lives in parsley and in us.
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