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Dear Shawn,
This is more than a present! Thank you very much!!
You do not know how I am felling now about this present…Specially coming from you. Now I will begin to understand your way of thinking from your point of view (and your friends too) .For me it is very important to read the original and not only the commentators. I did this with Plotinus. First I read his treatise and later the commentators.
I am sure this will change myself in another way. Besides my work on Plotinus I am now reading Gregory of Nyssa as ‘lectio divina’ and he had Origenes’ influences. I do have a special place for Origenes near me.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
Now I could understand what happened with the emails you forwarded from Edward and Andrew. As you sent them with another username it was in another place and I could not see it. Today I found them and could read it. I think we are talking not only by email but in “other ways” because when we think things happens.
Thanks for hearing your inner voice, it is easier for me to read in French and I appreciated your effort to find the book on the French Amazon site. You can not believe… Today I found the card of a French teacher I meet last summer at my club. As I had to write an e-mail for that Greek professor I remembered how difficult is it for me to write in French, then I decided to ask her help and I decided to begin French classes to prepare myself for the congress. French will be the official language there. Almost at the same time you sent me this email asking me if it is better to write in French I was talking to her.
As you see I can not write even in French yet. So I will try to write in Portuguese, then I will translate into English. It will be a good exercise for me and I will ask my English teacher to correct it. This will take time until I would write directly on the website but I think it will work. I don’t want to show him our particular conversation, but the other one it will be OK.
I think it is good idea to invite John Spencer for the discussion. What is his interest for?
Have a good week!!!
Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
I could not understand what you said about the email you forwarded from Edward and Andrew. Was it on the email you sent telling it was yours? I haven’t received any another email.
I am happy I can participate on your discussion. When I said that I was not able to do it is only because I think I don’t know enough English to write for them. They don’t know me and I am afraid they will not comprehend and accept my poor English. With you I feel more confident and I am not afraid making mistakes. Perhaps you can introduce me and explain this for them. What do you think about this?
I would like to tell you my feelings but I can not. It is nothing with you, it is with me. As I told I had had a strong experience at the monastery and it continues here. Plotinus always says that we can only tell the experience once it is finished and this is not what is happening now.
For me it is important to be connected with you. I do not know why, but it doesn’t matter.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
I don’t know what to say. Yesterday I read your email but did not have time to answer it. I had a wonderful day, and after my class at the University I went to an organ concert. I was in heaven until I arrived home when I had bad news from a patient, she lost her baby, the baby had died. You know I work with pregnant woman and this never happens before, bur this is a really complicated history.
I talked to her now and she said everything is OK. Today is her birthday and she has another daughter to take care. I think probably her daughter will help her to pass this moment. I want to stay near her and pray for her and her family. Perhaps you can do the same. Her name is Anna Flávia, and the baby’s name is Clara.
When I read your email I thought after reading your writings that I would like, one day, to participate on this conversation. Perhaps it is not time yet… I am here waiting for the right time.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
I am curious what you are talking about with Andrew and Edward. It is winter here and this year the weather is colder then others. In the Monastery (it is in the south of Brazil) it was colder then São Paulo. I prefer hot weather when we can wear less clothes, bare foot, and so on.
These days I am very sensitive. My experience at the Monastery was so strong I can not talk about it yet. I discovered something really special. Perhaps one day we can talk about it.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
How are you? I hope you are OK…
I have arrived yesterday. Now I am working hard because it is the end of our winter’s holidays. I will begin my classes at the university today and I just want to say that it was marvelous at the monastery. Every time is new. Later I will write you more.
Here we have one single word to express when we miss someone. It is “saudade”. People say that this word exists only in Portuguese.
I felt “saudades”.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
It was a pity I was not at home when you called. I am also busy but not to write you some words.
You said you were sad. Like your daughter I don’t want you to be sad. Some times we can not avoid these feeling, then it is better to recognize and when we can do it things goes better.
I hope we can be near again and this can help us in our ways.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
I had just finished this email when you called me. I am so happy I could talk with you before traveling!!! I was again at Constanças’ house with her friends and I came home to make my suitcase and write this email for you. I have no words to say more… Now you can read what I wrote before your call.When I woke up this morning I was very happy! I was in peace. Not only because I had had a good evening with Constança and his friend, Moutsopoulos, but because I understood that everything is OK and in the right place. It is difficult to explain this feeling.
I remembered also that today it makes one month we first talked in Liverpool. I feel we are each day closer and this makes me also feel happy. I don’t have words to express these feeling in English.
I was trying to find our emails from the beginning and now I realize what you said about organizing them on your website. Sure it would be easier to read it whenever we want to. Thinking about this I understood that your website is as “your house” and you invited me to come to your “house”, to your place, first when you asked me to send my paper and later when you propose to write there. It was difficult for me to enter on this space but now I think I am prepared to do it. So I am sending my paper in English and Portuguese. If you would like to organize our correspondence there, please, do it. I don’t know how to write there, you can teach me or perhaps we can write on the outlook and then you can copy on the website. I would like to have access to them as you propose. Please, do let me know what to do about it.
I am going to the Monastery tonight. It is far from São Paulo so we have to take a bus at 23:50 and we shall arrive there about 8:00 in the morning. I will stay there for a week – four days with my research group from the University and three days alone. I just want to walk, contemplate, pray, and make handicraft. But I do have to prepare my PhD Project for the 13th August, then I hope I will read what a need to write the project.
You will be there with me in my heart and in my prayers. If you want you can send me a fax and I can answer by fax if you send me your fax number. The phone number there is 55 41 6281264. They will answer in Portuguese so, you have to wait until the end of second tone for the fax.
I hope you and your family will be fine. Have a good week!
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
Of course I want to talk with you!!! You can call me whenever you want. I just arrived home now and I could not look my emails today because I was at the office and the computer was broken there.
Tonight I will have a dinner at Contanças’ house. She is my neighbor and also a philosopher. She is receiving his friend from Athens, Prof. Moutsopoulos, a great philosopher who had written an important book about Plotinus. I have heard a lot about him, and tonight I will meet him. It is very strange because I thought I would meet him only in Greece in September but now he is here. Later I will write more.
I just want to say that I would be here and you can call me.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
These days I am very sensitive and intuitive. I am working on my PhD Project and this is more than an academic work for me, working on Plotinus is a “innerwork”. If you would be near me on this process you would see, or hear from me. It really touches my soul and changes it. That’s why I work on Plotinus.
I love hearing from your daughter Shana and from you!
I learn from your words and now I am just thinking what you said today.
Is Andrew the doctor from Liverpool? I would like to talk with him too. When I tried to find him he was gone, remember? Perhaps you can tell me what you are talking about… Or even we can talk together? Or I can send him an e-mail?
I am thinking about my soul-mate. Once I found him, I don’t know if I told you about him in Liverpool. I am happy just hearing his voice on the phone. I’ve just called him and answered the electronic secretary: I am happy to know his is alive, he is here on earth near me at the same time Well, it is a long story… His name is also João. He lives in Rio de Janeiro and we know we are soul-mates but each one has to live their own life. It is a very strong feeling. It is difficult to live so near and so far from him. Then I can also say I had had the pleasure of knowing that my soul-mate exists, and as you said “that is a huge gift in it self.
Thanks for remembering me about my soul-mate and also for the photo. Is that place near the Parthenon? I am going to Athens on September to another congress and of course I will go there, site there and contemplate remembering what you told me and you will be there with me.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
I think you are right in what you said about cancer. I just want to explain that fortunate I did not have a cancer. I had only a myoma which is not a cancer.
I can’t believe what you are telling me! I thought the same you said today when I read your e-mail yesterday about your daughter. Thinking about your relation with her I asked myself about my relation with Thiago and today when I woke up in the morning I realized that Thiago is always protecting me. I want to tell you one thing:
I was preparing myself to go to Easalen in California to study massage in 1983 when I discovered I was expecting a baby and I decided to have the baby, and to get married and so on. I was 22 years old. One day I thought that if I had gone there perhaps I would get a disease like AIDs because it was the beginning of AIDs and I don’t know how I would live my sexuality there. Then I realized (not yesterday, but once) that he protected me from myself. I was so young and had a family life when my friends were having fun, traveling, etc. I think at that time he was also protecting me.
It is difficult to accept the fact that he is always protecting me and made the decision to sacrifice himself in order to protect me before and after that surgery. He went with me to the hospital and slept with me the night before the surgery. I was alone, my mother was not there and when I enter to the surgery he was there and alone too. I think it was too much for him. He wanted to stay with me and we prayed that night and that morning together. I was afraid of loosing my uterus which was so important for me and he was afraid of loosing his mother. We were both together and alone. When I arrived home I needed a rest and he decided not leaving me sleep. And all had begun. I could not stand his reaction and he could not stand looking me on the bed.
Of course he was not well before the surgery while I was getting worst, ill. We are really close to each other but this is difficult for me to realize. He had lost the year at school and he was a good student but he could not wake up in the morning and then he had so many absences at school that he lost the year (could you understand? I don’t know how to say in English). This was very difficult for him. After this I got ill and had to make the surgery.
You are helping me so much. I think you say things nobody had courage to say until now. I didn’t have courage to say this to myself either.
I have much to think about…
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
You are totally right! I don’t know if you can see behind my words what is implicit and I could not perceive or if I am so explicit that you see the obvious I had not noticed. It doesn’t matter. The question for me now is not if I am married with the church, and I do think I am not, or if I want to live (as individual) like these great people from history have lived. I want to live only what they taught us.
The most important thing for me now is that I am thinking about it. When you said “Do not give up hope on love. It still has much to teach us and can widen our perspective so much!”, it hurts me. I do not even know why we are talking about this. If you have patience with me I will discover one important thing which is hidden. If not I will do my way and discover by my self.
I have just realized I invented too many stories to escape from this. I am telling this because today I went to my gynecologist and when I was coming there I remembered the cirurgy I did four years ago (mioma). Well, five days or one week after the cirurgy Thiago has his first crisis and everything began. I did not loose my uterus and I am alive, but do I lost something. Perhaps I lost this hope on love.
I am sorry if I am telling you such difficult things. Please, tell me if I am inconvenient. Be sure you are helping me. Your words always make me think and I trust you. I remember what you said about woman. Well, for me it is very difficult to trust a man and I don’t know why but I trust you. I can’t stop crying. My hurt heart thanks you.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
I couldn’t undersand what you are trying to say. Could you explain better? Specially about Paul…what was his stance for marriage?
I don’t know why but I felt strange when you said: “Do not give up hope on love. It still has much to teach us and can widen our perspective so much!”
Perhaps tomorrow I will understand.
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
I thought you would not answer my question and you gave me more than an answer. I do not know the way I understand you, but believe, I can do it. I do not know what happened when you were a child but I am happy you could overcome it, and you are where you are because you could do it. This shows you were never alone. I don’t know why I am always trying transmit you good words, good feelings… that’s what come from my heart.
We all have the chance to learn from our past, and you did it. I am happy you can live with Suzanne as you live. Now I prefer living alone and this is a choice.
As I told you I am thinking about women/men relationship in a totally different way now. That’s why I asked about Origenes and your answer makes me sure that we are talking the same. As you said Origenes and Socrates did not have any interest in women in a sexual way. I loved knowing this because if you remember I am not only trying to accumulate knowledge but to live the way of life they lived. I don’t want only to know what they knew, for me this is not enough. And you gave me a clue. Thank you very much. This is the way of life I am trying to live but people could not understand me. Have you ever read Gregory of Nissa? I have learnt a lot with him on this. And last time I went to the Monastery I talked a lot with Father Bernardo on this issue and he also understands me and incentive on this way.
I am really happy we can understand each other. Perhaps one day I will have words to tell more. Last Saturday I talked about this with Sister Eliana and she said me words I can not repeat yet. I have to have them within myself, in my heart, later I will find the words to share it with you. I could not do it even in Portuguese.
I am so happy you are near me!!!!
Love Gabriela
Dear Shawn,
I can see that your are doing what you should do. It is difficult to wait because while we are waiting to do something we think, and our thoughts go faster then action. I hope you understand what I am trying to say. This is the way things happen. I think this dialog is the beginning of something you should do. Our work, the work we are intended to do is not big as we think or expect to be and when we realize this we can recognize our real size. What we have to do is enough for Him even if we feel we are doing nothing.
When I feel small I become happy even if I am sad. I am worried when I feel every thing is fine and I am doing my best. This is the way to be proud of ourselves and this is really dangerous.
I think I could understand what you said about Suzanne, especially in the end, but I couldn’t understand what you mean when you said “Suzanne was the only women that I knew with whom I did not have a physical sexual relationship with. From the beginning we were friends, and we still are.” I am asking this because I imagine what you are trying to say, but I am not sure about it. You don’t need to explain me if you do not want to. Perhaps we can talk more about this, I am thinking about relations in general and I would like to know what Origenes says about this.
Love Gabriela
