Contemplation and the Construction of Identity

I learnt to gaze at the skies when I was very young, thanks to my mother. On warm summer evenings I would sit on her lap and together we would contemplate the night sky. The view was of an open field on which stands the chapel of Holly Mary of Porto Salvo. Story tells that after a shipwreck, a group of sailors were adrift at sea and had a vision of Mother Mary, who told them that if they prayed with faith, she would guide them to a safe harbour. That’s how the sailors arrived at the place now known as Porto Salvo, a parish in the municipality of Oeiras. They then built a chapel in honour of Holly Mary as a way of giving thanks. Despite my mother’s strong Catholic roots and the materialisation of a miracle in front of the window, we looked up at the sky and it was the stars and the trees, whose tops competed with the second floor where we lived, that served as our altar and fed the sincere flame of a spirituality that was both a political and social act of rebellion against the model established by modern spirituality:  <a href="https://medium.com/@aalpande/the-contemplative-relation-in-the-construction-of-identity-3f1e2d3fb722">Read More</a>