In this week’s “Living Joyfuly,” I describe a recent trip to the San Xavier Mission in Tucson, AZ. Does this meeting place of many peoples offer a glimpse of possibility for all of us to live in greater harmony?
I turned off the freeway on my way to Tucson this Sunday, drawn to visit the famous San Xavier Mission, whose luminous white dome had beckoned me many times before.
As for my relationship with Catholicism, “it’s complicated.” But I felt oddly drawn here just the same. A festival atmosphere surrounded the grounds, on this Sunday after Thanksgiving, with a Mariachi band playing noisily outside, and many native O’odham artisans in the square in front of the mission chapel, selling their wares in booths roofed with long twigs of mesquite.
Inside, thousands of votive candles dedicated to the saints lit the hand-carved wooden icons, their flickering lights sending shadows across the frescoes on the ceiling and walls.
The statues of the saints showed signs of both love and familiarity. Each had special, festive clothing on, over the carving, their name plaques worn away from the touch of many devout fingers, asking for a blessing, tracing a gratitude.
On many of the figurines, the saint’s fingers were worn away; in some cases just stubs remained, blackened or burned.
Were their burned fingers an emblem of the pitfalls of empire? The mission itself, hewn into the heartland of the native desert people, claimed by New Spain, then Mexico, then the U.S., watched over silently by the stars above, the stoic mountain stones?
In Medieval times, damaged and worn statues such as these held special reverence. Surely the saints could better understand the agony of life, having themselves been burned by fire, and having survived.
What can we hold onto, after all…
Above the mission stands a small mountain. On it’s north side, a grotto, sacred to Mother Mary, earth mother, mortal, mother of the divine. In many places where Christianity was inflicted at the point of a sword (by our ancestors), the cult of Mary provided the indigenous peoples (also our ancestors) with a means of staying connected to the feminine power of rebirth, renewal, nurturing, the indomitable life force. Just south of modern Tucson, she watches over the San Xavier reservation mission, forgiving much, loving the land, the people, the animals.
A sign has been placed here: Please respect this sacred place.
Could we place this sign everywhere? Somehow carry it always, lovingly, in our hearts?
As the poet Adrienne Rich writes,
…When it all stands clear you come to love
the place where you are…
You learn to live without prophets,
without legends,
to live just where you are
your burning bush, your seven-branched candlestick
the ocotillo in bloom
What’s sacred is nameless
moves in the eyeflash
holds still in the circle
of the great arid basin
once watered and fertile
probes outward through twigbark
a green ghost inhabiting
dormant stick, abstract thorn.
What’s sacred is singular
out of this dry fork, this
wreck of perspective
What’s sacred tries itself
one more time
(Time’s Power: Poems 1985-88)
Namaste,
Erin
