It is common, when traveling through southern Brazil, to find old wooden houses.

These are not houses that have been listed by the historical patrimony, for any reason, but simply old houses.

The aged wood, the clay tiles blackened by bad weather and the rolling years, the somewhat faded paint.

In some, the empty cans of kitchen oil, opened, neatly hung, full of flowers persist.  Improvised vessels that withstood time.

While the car is covering the miles, we remain observing, which leads us  to wonder how many loves have lived there.

How many lives were born among those walls, how many children sang, played, shouted, had fun, running back and forth, out of the front door, around the garden and into the back door.

How many parents watched their children leave, watching them until they disappeared on the road curve, there, from the gate, also made of wood.

Children who have not returned home, because they have reached international roads, conquered laurels. Or because they entered the spiritual world, carried away by death.

How many couples have grown old together, watching progress take over the crops, the roads, the world.

How many dramas have supported those walls, which stand, defying the years that add up, that multiply.

Some, somewhat abandoned, present themselves taken by the ivy that embraces them, as wanting to retain there all the love that had been lived, all the laughs and the joys experienced.

The wood is obscured by the green that insists on taking over the spaces, more and more, as if to say: If no one here resides, I shall make this house mine.

Or perhaps because, in discovering the richness of the life still present, one wishes to nourish itself and preserve those happy vibrations, among the spreading branch.

*    *    *

Old houses. Old houses.

Looking at them, we begin to reflect on how, sometimes, we stress, we worry about so many tiny, unimportant things.

We fight, we quarrel because we want to impose our wills. We discuss why the painting should be hung on this place and not on that one.

We create a tense mood because we do not approve the color of the paint others have chosen for our home.

We cry because the living room couch was stained, the delicate porcelain broke, the vase shattered.

And yet, life goes by so quickly. And all that is material and which we strive for is left behind.

Someone, after we leave, will take over this heritage and change it at their pleasure.

They will watch over its conservation or pass it on, or abandon it.

Or we may not even really have anyone to bequeath all that we jealously kept, and that we do not even use properly, so it will not waste, tarnish.

Let us think about it and learn to enjoy the material goods that Divinity allows us to possess.

They exist in order to give us pleasure, comfort, coziness, protection.

And, truly, let us strive to hoard treasures of the soul, the only ones that we will carry with us, when death comes to invite us into Spirituality, again…

Let us think about it, now.

Spiritist Moment Team.
October, 17.2019.