Metaphysical Interests of the Spiritual Bank
"Woe to him who touches one of these little ones who believe in me..."
"Give me beginner's luck, Holy Father, for it is a good omen for what I begin today," Violeta prayed to God repeatedly, like a mantra, as she prepared her cart for the first time, gleaming with its thermoses, Tupperware containers, cups, and napkins.
That same day she had been fired from the school she had cleaned for over 30 years, and that very night she embarked on her own business. She could have sold ice cream, energy drinks, or newspapers, but avoiding conflict, she opted for the peace of solitude; she would be just another street vendor in the "Little Silver Cup," Medellín. An informal but blessed and honest occupation that provides so much economic relief to those at the lowest levels of the weak economies of emerging countries.
She still had two years of contributions left to retire, and she had also promised her daughter she would pay for her nursing degree. Those were her two personal goals, the reasons she was starting this new venture at 55.
The cold hit her face as she stepped out into the street at dusk. A self-proclaimed "hater" crossed her path, and demons urged him to curse her, urging other demons to carry out the curse. And the hateful man said:
"Look at that poor old woman, like a rat, out to work at this hour, selling her meager belongings. I hope she doesn't sell anything and that everything she's sold gets stolen..." A saint was also passing by on a bus, and angels urged him to bless her, urging other angels to carry out the blessing. And he said:
"Look at my heroine, Holy Father. She's almost 60 and she goes out to work, surely to feed her children. My warrior, protect her from thieves by surrounding her with guardian angels and grant her good sales. In Jesus' name, amen and amen."
God answered:
"I'll give them to you if you earn them, even though you've already earned them."
The monk repeated God's words:
"I'll give them to you if you earn them, even though you've already earned them. With God, everything happens at once," he said, meditating.
Fifteen minutes passed, and she hadn't made a single sale. She had mapped out a circuit of the main parks in the city center: Berrío Park, Bolívar Park, Boston Park, San Antonio Park, and she had almost covered them all, completing the hour, but she hadn't sold a single cup of coffee. But she, tougher than Botero's statues in San Antonio Park, remained tenacious and resilient, just as she had been from the very beginning. There would be many coffee pots and few customers that day. She kept repeating her mantra even when her "beginner's luck" was almost gone. A cold drop fell on her hand, a wider one on her face, and several thicker drops made her stop and pull out her raincoat.
As a swift downpour began, she covered the car with a large clear plastic bag, protecting everything, and put on her full-body raincoat. She could have stayed under an awning waiting for it to pass, but the stress was eating her up, so she decided to keep walking. With a keen sense of marketing, she said,
"This rain makes people crowd at the gas stations, and this little snack encourages them to have a coffee. I'm going to find one to offer, see if I can sell at least the first one and get a head start..." But not knowing the area well, two hours passed and she hadn't found one. Despite everything, her faith didn't waver; she kept encouraging herself not to give up and assured herself that she would have good sales.
From far away, a car flashed its lights at her. She thought, "It can't be for me, it's too far away, or those are lights from something else..." As she approached, she began to hear honking horns and caught a glimpse of an arm sticking out of the window, signaling her to come closer. "If it's me, I can't believe it," she thought. Sure enough, the car was stopped at a gas station.
"Good evening, ma'am, what do you have?" the young driver asked.
"Everything, honey: coffee with milk, tea, herbal tea, hot chocolate..."
"And to eat?"
"For lunch, I have a dozen mortadella sandwiches, and a dozen ham and cheese sandwiches."
"Give them to me, all twelve."
"And what do you have for dessert?" the young woman in the passenger seat asked.
"For dessert, I have coconut cake, freshly baked by me."
"Give us the whole thing," the girl said.
A male voice from the back seat, who had ordered the hot drinks, exclaimed:
"Let's order five coffees with milk for the sandwiches and five hot chocolates for the cake."
"Great," said the driver, "and we'll throw in five fritters so you don't run out. Ma'am, we're not going to save your life, you're going to save ours. We're keeping watch for someone at the hospital, we couldn't find anything open around here, and we were starving."
"At your service, honey," said Violeta, starting to hand the items to the five people in the car.
Suddenly, the same young man from the back seat stared at her and exclaimed:
"But you're the doorman at Loyola..."
"Yes, that's me. And who are you?" she asked, handing him the package with all the sandwiches. The driver turned on the car's interior light and said,
"We all went to elementary school at San Ignacio, but none of us went to high school there."
"Oh, yeah! I remember you," he said to the young man in the back seat. "You were the one who broke the steering wheel window."
"No, I was in the group, but I wasn't the one who broke the soccer ball. You once defended me from bullying on the bridge."
"Really? I don't remember, but maybe, because I hate bullying. I stopped countless attacks at school; it's like God put me there. In fact, the teachers would joke among themselves when there was a bullying case, saying, 'This happened to Violeta' or 'Call Violeta and see what she says.'"
"And are you all siblings?" he asked them.
"The four of us are," the driver replied, pointing to the three passengers in the back. "We're siblings." But she's a family friend...
"Liar, you jerk!" she said, giving him a light tap on the forearm. "I'm his girlfriend, ma'am, and I've been for over a decade, and he doesn't want to get married. How can I get him to marry me?"
"Learn to cook," Violeta replied curtly, and everyone seemed to freeze.
"What a great idea!" the young woman said. "Because I already won him over with his mind at first, then with his heart, and now I need to win him over with his stomach. I'm going to take a course."
"Why don't we ask him?" the man in the back said.
"Yes, let's ask him," the two girls with him chorused.
"Yes, ask him, Alejandro," the girlfriend told the driver.
"What do you want to ask me?" Violeta inquired.
"Look, ma'am, we're keeping an eye on Amparito, who was our housekeeper for over 30 years when our parents were alive." “But she’s already passing away,” he said, taking the crucifix that hung from the small mirror. “She’s in her eighties, and we urgently need a new housekeeper. Wouldn’t you be interested…?”
“Yes, maybe… Today was my last day because I was fired. They’re going to hire an outside cleaning company just two years before my retirement, after so many years of service. And me, with my daughter in school, I had to start this on my very first day.”
“We pay you a full salary, pension, everything on the books. Whether you want to live in or live out, that’s up to you.”
“No, thank God, I own my own home, and I have my daughter. And when are you available?” she asked enthusiastically.
“Yesterday! The house is a mess, we all work and study, and we don’t even know how to fry an egg. We need you to take care of the kitchen and the yard, which is full of dog poop.” "Stop, you're going to scare her," his girlfriend joked.
"Don't worry, I'm a jack-of-all-trades. I'm up for anything," Violeta smiled. Alejandro paid her with a 50,000-peso bill, as if it had just been printed, and said the phrase most beloved by vendors: "Keep the change," which meant the tip was more than the fare. They exchanged contact information and agreed to meet at his house the next morning for the new job.
Violeta was overflowing with happiness at the contrast with the two deserted hours without any sales. With just one transaction, on her first day of work, not only would her whole night be sorted, but the blessing would last until her retirement.
"God willing," she added, pondering this fortunate encounter.
Two thugs had watched in astonishment as she was handed the large bill and had their sights set on snatching it as soon as she was alone. She had to walk toward them, still inside the gas station awning. Innocent, but overflowing with light and gratitude, she repeated in response to the first mantra:
"Thank you, Father, for hearing me." She repeated it with every step she took toward them. With each advance, the men's heart rate seemed to be "ten points" for the robbery, but by the time she reached them, they were already defeated, their faces contorted with grief. Moreover, when Violeta's aura brushed against theirs as she had to pass between them, they both felt a very unpleasant jolt. She continued on her way confidently, and one said to the other:
"Shall we go to church or what?"
In that context, it seemed like she was saying, "Let's go to church to redeem ourselves," but in reality, they spent their time on the church steps planning their robberies. But who knows... God works in mysterious ways. The saint's blessing was more powerful than the hater's curse, but Violeta's grace was earned through resilience in the present, and at the same time, she had already earned it long before. Because God weaves and interweaves the destiny of his servants.
Later, in the car, Martín told the others that the liberation he had experienced from her in the past had been no small matter: he was riding his bike to the hardware store to run an errand when two thugs cornered him on their bikes in the middle of the bridge. They were saying, "What are you doing here? You're rich, you should be in the rich people's area." They even threatened to take him to the woods to beat him up "like he deserved" for trespassing.
Swallowing hard, Martín invoked God in his mind, and at that moment Violeta appeared. She rode by on her bicycle and, taking it all in for a second, knew what was happening. Making a U-turn, she returned with her sandal in her hand, but holding it backward, the heel as a weapon.
"What's going on here?" she said, ramming them with her bicycle.
Martín didn't wait for any formalities and began to retreat as she confronted them:
"What were you doing to that boy?"
The two boys went white and said, "Nothing, nothing, ma'am," as they walked away. From a distance, she shouted at them, pointing her sandal at them like a gleaming sword:
"Don't forget I know where you live... you scoundrels!"
"Whoever touches you touches the pupil of my eye," Violeta said then, quoting the God Martín had invoked.
"Whoever touches you touches the pupil of my eye." For this reason, at school Martín always greeted Violeta, thinking she remembered the incident, but she didn't; it had been a natural gesture for her, without much consequence. Her left hand didn't know what her right hand had done, and she didn't even remember it.
Violeta's animosity toward bullying had been with her since childhood, but not as a victim, rather as a perpetrator. Once, when she was the oldest, she was left in charge of her five younger cousins while her mother and aunt returned from shopping. Since the children were misbehaving, she locked them in the bathroom, and all five burst into tears while she laughed herself silly. When her mother arrived, she gave her a good spanking and locked her in the bathroom until lunchtime. It was the first and last time she was punished like that, and the lesson was deeply ingrained. Because God, too, punishes those He wills.
That night, Martín went to sleep with a big smile on his face because he had almost fulfilled a dream, albeit in a dyslexic way. He had always loved the story of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, where a boy, for doing a good deed, much later receives metaphysical interest from a spiritual bank. The story was coming true for him, but in reverse: he was the benefactor, not the beneficiary.
Violeta got along very well with the family. The property was a large house, almost a mansion: six bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, a study, a gallery, and a garden. There was hardly any need to teach her anything; practical and empirical, she seemed to know the house like the back of her hand, and the children laughed about it. She soon became almost like a surrogate mother, and even Tom, the dog, loved her.
Before long, they also hired her daughter, but only for a few years, because Martín was the first to get married after getting his girlfriend pregnant, so he took her with him as a full-time nanny so they could work at the travel agency, which they had inherited from their parents. He offered her that if she could study and work at the same time, he would pay for her entire degree—not nursing, but medicine.
When the young woman told her mother, Violeta's eyes filled with tears.
“My daughter, the doctor! How proud I am!” she exclaimed. “If you were already a nurse, having you now is like touching the sky.”
This happiness led Violeta to a moment of enlightenment. At that moment, she paused to reflect on Alejandro's prophetic words from the day they met at the gas station: “Ma'am, we're not going to save your life, you're going to save ours.”
Violeta saw the entire relationship as a recurring cycle, where the beneficiary was indistinguishable from the benefactor. And now, her daughter was going to take care of Martín and Ana's baby, but they would pay for her medical school. And what would she do in the future? Save lives! And it had all started with God correcting someone who had taken a wrong step.
As the saying goes, Violeta concluded her profound thought: “God is love in action.”
THE END
It is better to give than to receive: JESUS
