A SHOP CALLED 'GENESIS'

The shop for pilgrims that I opened in Arzúa, 40 kilometers before Santiago, not only offers food, but also food for thought. The three main panels in my shopping window associate ‘walking the camino’ with philosophy. The first offers 10 proposals for Santiago (I have worked for many years as a guide), the second, called ‘Travel Broadens the Mind’, holds quotes from famous writers and philosophers (‘Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.’ Mark Twain), and the third holds what I believe to be the most important lesson mankind has to learn. And this is…

When today we reflect upon mankind’s evolution it’s easy to come to the conclusion that a society that doesn’t live in harmony –like ours– is eventually bound to destroy itself: weapons continually become more sophisticated and once there are weapons of mass destruction it is only a matter of time before they are used. Not living in harmony means struggling for the resources and because of that an always smaller percentage of people gets hold of an increasing percentage of all available resources, putting that way more and more pressure on the relations between the different groups of people and between people and their environment.

The third panel starts with the text: “In the Information Age, ignorance is a choice. An ignorant is not an idiot, but someone who, often deliberately, ignores certain information.” Whereas politicians, scientists, philosophers and theologians ignore this crucial lesson, Genesis, the first book of the Bible, recognizes this reality: people once lived in harmony, they put an end to it by eating a forbidden fruit, and ten generations later they almost completely destroyed themselves. We thus see that this work, which was written thousands of years ago, can today help us avoid our self-destruction. Asking why we have conflicts with the other people and with our environment is indeed the same as asking what the forbidden fruit refers to.

Since Genesis says people once lived in harmony, all people who long for a better society should be interested in reading this book, but they are not. Why? The idea that it holds the word of God made that religious authorities didn’t question that work and thus came to erroneous interpretations –Genesis, for instance, does not say that Adam and Eve were the first human beings on earth–, and these  have scared many people away from this book.

Understanding Genesis is a million times more difficult than understanding the Ulyses of James Joyce.

Genesis is full of myths, but these are not fables, but stories that invite the reader to ask certain questions whose answers lead to new questions, and this process eventually leads to a better understanding of the themes they deal with.

Inside the shop the following panels invite people to reflect upon religion:

FOOD FOR THOUGHT 

-Do you question own ideas (beliefs) as much as you do other people’s ideas (beliefs)?

-Has religion had a positive or negative influence on our society?

-Is science bringing us salvation or self-destruction?

-Have perhaps all religions and philos­ophies safeguarded important values?

-Do you believe in God because your parents do, or do you not believe in God because your friends do not?

-Would you be an atheist if you lived in a communist country and a Buddhist if you lived in a Buddhist country?

-Are heaven and hell (purgatory, re­incarnation, etc.) only for people who believe in them?

-If the founders of our religions came back, would they recognize their work?

-Imagine Jesus came back. Would he be a Baptist, a Catholic, a Greek Orthodox...?

 THREE INTERESTING IDEAS 

1) Calling the Bible a ‘sacred’ book originally meant to recognize that it holds secrets. The idea that it contains the word of God and tells the truth came later.

2) The word ‘religion’, which comes from the Latin word ‘relegere’ and means re- reading, refers to reading the Bible time and again to discover its secrets.

3) According to an old tradition, someone enlightened is able to cre­ate a mystery that reveals itself many generations later. This is the case of the Bible.

Are you ready for the secrets in the Bible? Are you willing to dis­cover its hidden wisdom?

When people have read these panels they are ready for a philosophical circuit that starts with: “There is fast food, but there is no fast wisdom.” and ends with: “A healthy body and mind require a healthy diet. Drugs are like medicine. Instead of taking them we should ask what makes us sick.”  I have put these panels on the highest shelves so that only spiritual pilgrims notice them.

These are the different panels:

When I notice  someone who is  interested in these texts, I offer additional information, because what they think they say is of course not necessarily what I try to express with them…

'Travel Broadens the Mind' 

‘Not all those who wander are lost’. J.R.R.Tolkien

‘The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.’ Saint Augustine

‘The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.’ Lao Tse

‘A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.’ Lao Tse

‘Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.’ Mark Twain

‘Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.’ Flaubert

‘We may sit in our library and yet be in all quarters of the earth.’ John Lubbock

‘It is good to have an end to jour-ney toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.’

Ernest Hemingway