© 2024 Jean-Claude Romeuf
© 2024 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| I AM and the Principle of Causality | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 107 — September 2024 | European Meeting 2025 |
John Claude Romeuf
April 14, 2024.
Four days after landing at José Martí airport in Havana, I was longing to see my friends from Trinidad again. Last year Dayani and her daughter Roxane had rented me the first floor of their casa particular at 79 José Menéndez Street, a street that everyone calls Alameda.
There, for two weeks, on the shaded terrace reserved for me, I wrote a few poems.
Sometimes there are real mental flashes of love between men and women that go beyond what we can call a simple thunderbolt; there are places, houses where we want to return. I was also longing to see my amigo pequeño of two and a half years, for whom I had brought back a stuffed dog from France.
So early on the morning of March 6, Daily and I left Viñales in a compartido taxi to reach my friends’ house in Trinidad.
Last year, every evening a little before nightfall, I went up the Alameda, when most of the inhabitants open windows and doors to let the cool of the evening into their apartments. And when, from the top of the large central square, salsa, rumba, and bachata come to make you dance and warm your heart.
Everyone had seen me pass by. They had finally recognized me. We exchanged a Hola, a smile, a buena noche. Then we stopped, we chatted.
Calle Alameda had become my garden.
In a socialist republic like Cuba, we prefer to see the flag flying than to kneel before the relics of a saint! However, rosaries are hung from the rearview mirrors of cars. People are eager for spirituality even if it is most of the time linked to superstitions or shamanism.
They ask themselves questions, they like new ideas and not always those of the local priest, identical to the one who supported the dictator Fulgencio Batista against whom their parents fought by getting involved in the Revolución, often losing their lives.
The national hero is Ché Guevara.
Viva la Revolution. Viva el Ché!
So I, in the old town of Trinidad, sowed seeds of God in the corner of a window, at the edge of a door, on a step of a staircase, all the while chatting to one or the other about the rain or the good weather, often along Calle Alameda which goes up to the central point of the Ciudad, but which no one knows by its real name, other than by this name, although it does not appear on any map.
It was often not much:
— Do you believe in God?
— Of course!
— He is my passion. I can talk about him for hours.
Then I continued on my way.
The next time, I knew if the look I was getting was an invitation to stop and provide more details: otherwise I would give the same greeting as I passed and continue on my way.
It was the little waitress from the restaurant located at the top of the rectangular square following the Alameda who was the most curious. She asked lots of questions to which I answered according to her expectations, without rushing her.
I was speaking above all of a little light reflecting the goodness of God, which came during childhood to inhabit the hearts of human beings; which accompanied us throughout life and with which we would be united throughout all eternity, if such was our desire.
I told her that in private, with tenderness, I nicknamed her my little seed of God. Someone had to sow her in me for her to grow.
While I was eating lobster, camarones or ropa vieja, drinking a beer or a mojito, the little waitress never let me leave without coming to sit next to me for a while, so that I could talk to her about her seed.
She understood that like me, she had one germinating in her heart.
I never threw The Urantia Book in her face to convince her to read it.
It is also partly because of this girl, as frail and light as an autumn leaf carried by the wind, that I returned this year to Trinidad with Daily.
I had promised to bring him the same mochilla as mine, a little backpack that he wanted.
But the autumn leaves carried by the wind do not all survive the winter! Perhaps, at the moment of offering her fragile soul to God, and letting her little head bow for a last breath of life, she will remember me by saying:
— I’m sure he loved me! It will be true.
I would like it to be engraved on the tomb where only his bones will remain:
—Here lies a dead leaf, a young girl who lost her life only slightly!
That will be true too. I have no worries about his future.
Of all the seeds of God that I had sown, I do not know if a single one of them germinated, because in the stony street of the Alameda, paved with pebbles, where high heels are not recommended, and where it is prudent to take crutches for broken legs, I did not meet a single famous person.
It seemed as if the window shutters remained closed to hide the ancient treasures of the Conquistadors.
And the half-open doors of last year no longer let in the cool of the evening, because Trinidad was living today to the rhythm of the winter season.
As for the little waitress, she was sick and couldn’t visit me, but I called her.
She was happy to know that I had kept my promise and regretted not being able to travel.
So I left the mochilla with the owner of the restaurant, so that she could give it to her, because I learned that they were cousins.
Although I don’t know if the seeds I planted along the Alameda have sprouted, what I am sure of is that a little seed of God, when it has germinated in someone’s heart, quickly becomes a flower, then it rises up to Heaven to flood it with its perfume.
| I AM and the Principle of Causality | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 107 — September 2024 | European Meeting 2025 |