Dia de La Virgen (Luke)

December 15, 2008

This newsletter comes at a deeply profound time of the Christian calendar. As I write this,
many Mexicans here are returning home to rest from their celebration and reflective pilgrimage on December 12th, which was the first appearance of La Virgen de Guadalupe back in 1531.* The Christian community remains in the midst of the anticipatory season of Advent, preparing for the birth of the Christ child. For this reason, I would like to share with you an experience I had recently in Mexico City which, for me, touches on the faithful response, hope, patience, celebration, expectation, renewal, and challenges through God incarnate that come during this time of year.

I share my experience at the Basilica in Mexico City on the day before La Dia de La Virgen de Guadalupe, keeping in mind my work with No More Deaths and providing humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the brutal Sonoran Desert and U.S.-Mexico border.

A group of ten people – seminary students, pastors, professors, and I – traveled to the Basilica on December 11th to witness the faithful act of millions of Mexicans. As one local paper reported, the faithful pilgrimage to, and celebration of, La Virgen is to not to make requests, but to remember everything that La Virgen has done for the people. Upon our arrival to the Basilica grounds, the profound meaning of La Virgen de Guadalupe became apparent.

The day that we made our visit, 250,000 people were expected to make the circuit. On December 12th the crowd was expected to swell to 2 million faithful pilgrims. The experience became deeply personal, yet global for me once we passed through the Basilica building and made our way up the hill to the chapel. I found myself shoulder to shoulder with several dozen people within the mass of 250,000. The sights and sounds connected directly with the hundreds of Mexican and Central Americans whom I encountered during my time as a volunteer with No More Deaths, and reminded me of the hundreds of thousands who continue to make the trek to El Norte annually.

As we collectively walked up the hill, it was hard to miss several people making their pilgrimage on their knees. We walked up cement stairs – about 15 stories in all – and along the way people remained on their knees. The grimaces from the pain reminded me of the faces of migrants in the Sonoran desert with deadly blisters on their feet and cactus spines embedded in their skin.
Some of the faithful pilgrims had large framed glittered pictures of La Virgen strapped to their backs with rope, some carried wooden crosses, others carried candles, others carried their small children, while still others carried backpacks strapped with rolled up blankets and food supplies. At first I thought many of the items were simply symbolic, especially the food stuffs. After a brief conversation with a gentleman from Puebla, Mexico, however, I learned that many people walked for days before arriving at the Basilica. The man from Puebla explained that he and his six companions had left two days prior and walked the entire way. The travel, along with the supplies chosen for this pilgrimage mirrored those found in the desert: people tired from traveling for days on end, empty water bottles and cans of meat, dirty diapers, blankets, backpacks, and small images of La Virgen in the form of wallet-sized photos and rosaries.

From atop the hill outside the smaller chapel, people rested and looked down into the crowd, watching as the mass slowly flowed through the sacred space. On the slow walk down there were areas where people had set up camp. Families rested together – ten to fifteen to twenty in a row – sharing blankets and tarps. The images of the families reminded me of the powerful moment of finding a group of migrants in the desert in the midst of their long journey. Often times these groups were lie in arroyos, dry river beds, covered not in blankets, but black plastic garbage bags, seeking to stay hidden and warm.

A final comparison to the borderlands that I noted during my walk through the grounds of the Basilica were the faces in the crowd, especially the people resting. As I walked and observed the faithful I noticed the looks I received. People stared at me, wondering what I, a gringo, was doing at a Mexican holy observance. The looks and eye-to-eye contact reminded me of the same wide-eyed looks of migrants who were face to face with a gringo in the desert.

These were the images the struck a deep chord with me. There were other aspects to this experience that were not seen, but felt. Many times in the desert, especially while working with migrants in distress, there is a great sense of fear. Fear of the travel, fear of an encounter with the very people that they are trying to hide from, fear of what might happen next along the rough terrain.

There was no fear involved in this journey to remember La Virgen’s activity in the lives of many. The time at the Basilica was full of another sense for these people making their pilgrimage. The bags, blankets, crosses, pictures, and grimaces were not out of necessity, but out of love, joy, faith, hope, and gratitude.

Just as in speaking with migrants crossing the desert, there was a palpable sense of profound faith in the crowd of 250,000 people this early evening. A migrant’s faith carries them into the desert and into the land of unknown. The presence of faith remembering La Virgen seemed to be one out of response to how God has been, and is present, in people’s lives.

This advent season we prepare by hearing the prophetic words of Isaiah and the coming Immanuel, God with us. We prepare, just as the Mexicans do on their holy pilgrimage, to remember how God has been, and is present, in our lives. We celebrate the Christ child who came not as a king, but as the child of a family seeking refuge. We celebrate the promise of a new year and go forward. We are renewed by our faith to face the challenges ahead, and to anticipate how God will be present on our journeys.

* For a full account of the appearance, please visit, http://www.mexconnect.com/mex/guadalupe.html, http://www.laprensa-sandiego.org/archieve/december06-02/virgin.htm, or any decent history book about Mexico.

The Fish Fair, Coatetelco (Andrea)

The Fish Fair includes lots of fish to eat (naturally), lots of local artisans selling their wares, and an indigenous Nahua ritual of thanksgiving to the Mother Earth, facilitated by our friend, Felipa.

Eating fish (whole fish - fried, cooked in tamales, or cooked
in spicy broth) and drinking ginormous beers

Heidi, acting very professional after just finding out that she would be
participating in the thanksgiving ritual to Mother Earth.

We offered rice...beans...

...cookies...wrapped candy!

One of the young dancers makes her offering

The finished offering

Canoes on the lake

Afterward

Bienes Raices; Good Roots (Andrea)

Real Estate. I understand the concept, but I had never thought much about the phrase. I know a few realtors. I get annoyed when people misprounounce “realtor” and say, instead, “reel-a-tor.” But I had never thought much about the phrase “Real Estate.”

Until, that is, we needed some. Luke and I arrived in Cuernavaca with 4 suitcases, 2 carry-ons, and the expectation that we would find ourselves a place to live. Dave & Sue, Presbyterian missionary friends, were gracious enough to comb through the classifieds. Heidi, the woman whose job we’re stepping into, was gracious enough to spend an entire day house-hunting with us.

Most of the places we considered were simply being rented by the people who owned them. One house, however, was being rented through a real estate agency. I didn’t realize this at first. Part of the reason may be my lack of real-estate-specific Spanish vocabulary, but part of the reason might also be that the Spanish term for Real Estate has nothing, really, to do with the housing market.

It’s Bienes Raices.

Literally, Good Roots.

I’ve thought a lot about that phrase since then, and not only because we did indeed rent that house. The phrase makes sense to me. Bienes Raices…Good Roots. It’s more about a place to call your own than about the physical property; more about a home than a house.

Bienes Raices…Good Roots. The phrase makes sense to me, because I’ve always understood myself as someone who could make just about anywhere feel like “home,” and in a very short period of time. But somehow this time was different. The problem, it seemed to me, was our distinct lack of “stuff.” Everywhere else I’ve ever been – whether it was a room in a dormitory or a cot in a shelter or a sleeping bag in a tent – there was some stuff: a bed, a dresser, a chair. Even if it wasn’t my stuff, it was a place to start, and I could add bits and pieces of my own. We had a house in Mexico, but we didn’t have any stuff.

The deal with the church went something like this: find a place to rent and then, because you could only bring what you could carry, go out and buy the stuff you need. This sounds fun, right? My mom thought so. My mother-in-law thought so. I thought so, too. We were about to furnish an entire house from scratch. Ready, set, go.

So we began. The first day, our neighbors (who also happen to be our landlords) took us to Ocotepec, where local carpenters craft muebles rusticos (rustic furniture) in a very traditional manner. We bought a table and 6 chairs, a bookshelf, a desk, a coffee table, and 2 nightstands. The carpenters piled every last piece into the smallest pickup they could find, and tied it all down for the ride back to our house.

“This will make all the difference,” I thought. “Now we’ll have some stuff.” But I was wrong. It still didn’t feel like home. The stuff didn’t matter.

The problem was, when you can only bring 4 suitcases and 2 carry-ons for a new life in a foreign country, you bring a profound lack of “useless” stuff. You bring important things, like clothing and shoes and computers and toothbrushes. You don’t bring artwork or candles or comforters. Basically, you don’t bring anything that makes your house feel like your house; anything that makes your house feel like your home.

This occurred to me, that night, more in a visceral way than in an intellectual one. Standing there, at 11pm, staring at the unfamiliar kitchen table and the empty bookshelf, I knew I couldn’t go to bed until something changed.

We had brought one small carry-on of books and framed photos. It was heavy. It was upstairs. The staircase is spiral, and it was 11pm. But it mattered, and so Luke carried those books and photos downstairs so I could arrange them on the bookshelf. I slept well that night (in my sleeping bag, next to Luke in his sleeping bag, on our air mattress, because we had yet to find a bed or a blanket). I slept well that night, because our Real Estate was beginning to feel more like Bienes Raices.

It’s been slow-going. It does sound fun to furnish an entire house from scratch, but it’s really only fun in theory. It meant that we were on a mission almost every day for weeks. You can buy pots and pans, but you can only really use them if you have dishes. You can buy dishes, but you can only really use them if you have a drying rack and dish towels. You can buy plants and flower pots, but you can only really use them after you find potting soil.

This is not to sound ungrateful; don’t get me wrong. The church is abundantly generous in providing for its mission personnel, and the fact is not lost on us that we’ve been spending more in a week in “setting up camp” than most Mexicans make in 6 months. It is to say, however, that “stuff” has its place in putting down good roots. It’s also to say that all the stuff in the world isn’t enough to make a house a home, if the people inside can’t make it their own.

We had a party a few weeks ago. That was the turning point for me. That was the night when we opened our door to the people who will become our family here. That was the night when our house came alive. That was the night when I knew that we had indeed planted Bienes Raices; Good Roots. They may not be deep yet, or strong, but they’ve begun to grow.

We still have a few more things to get, in order to have the “stuff” we need for living. But I’m not worried anymore. We’re done with Real Estate. We’ve planted good roots, and they will undoubtedly spring forth new life. That’s the next part of the journey. We don’t know what will grow next.