The way to Our Lady of Guadalupe was no more or less than what he had come to know of Mexico City: block after block of cheap brick and concrete buildings and deeply stained cement streets and sidewalks, all suffering from various degrees of corrosion and corruption. On and on it went, the Via to the shrine and Tepeyac Hill now all-urban, the crumbling buildings engulfing what was once shrub and cactus wasteland. Juan Diego, the Aztec who Mary deigned to reveal herself, had once had to walk seven miles from this hill through rugged countryside to reach the bishop in Mexico City. Now we could drive that distance in the comfort of our tourist bus, although in a time not much less than Juan’s walk because of the congestion.
Then we arrived. The near-rubble of the city lighted up into carnival colors due to vendors of religious items who sold everything from statues to beads to pendants to candles, right up to the short steps that would bring us to the large acreage that surrounded the shrine itself. It was here where all the mess and rubble and commerce ended. Just like that, we stood agape in a broad and clean plaza. In front of us and to the right was the original church that the bishop had built at the insistence of the apparition of Our Lady way back in 1531; to the left of that was a greater church built, if I remember correctly, in the 1600’s; and to the left of that was the new church, built circa 1970, in time for Pope John Paul II’s memorable visit. In that last church, the tilma, or cape made of cactus fiber worn by Juan Diego, was now kept for popular viewing. It was this little man-sized cape that we were there to see, not the churches and other buildings despite their antiquity or grandeur.
We have all seen the image, whether we realize it or not. It is of a young lady dressed in flowing robes with rays of light beaming from behind her. She stands on an odd set of black horns (the eclipsed moon, we were to learn) which are supported by a feisty young man with red, white and blue wings. Her smile is more enigmatic than Mona Lisa’s, although her love and tenderness are quite clear. She is looking down on us, not in condescension, but as if she was trying to bring us up to her.
If that is all we knew of this image, we would look at it briefly and move on to the weekend football scores. But there is so much more, much of which has already been discussed here and elsewhere. What the facts behind it insist, and there can be no doubt, is that the image we saw and can see today is a living miracle. It defies every scientific explanation. It should not exist as it is on a simple cape of cactus fiber; the cape should have rotted long ago, and the symbolism of the entirety would have been beyond the knowledge of the people of that era. Even in the eyes of the image is a miracle: microscopic analysis has shown that they contain reflections of the persons to whom the image was revealed, each reflected image no larger than the width of a hair. It is exactly as if she, our Lady, had actually been there, alive and on the spot nearly 500 years ago.
The tour ended after only five days, but we were Oaxaca bound for the next eight days. The state of Oaxaca contains Puerto Escondido, a beach haven that I had visited forty years before and will never forget for both its beauty and the savage undertow on the southern end. It is also home to the eponymous Oaxaca City, in which we had rented a house. We were there because our friend Sally had fallen in love with the city from afar due to its artwork and crafts, much of it derived from the surrounding Indian (Mixteca, Zapoteca, among others) communities. It was in these neighboring communities where the mushroom ‘psilocybin’ was rediscovered in the 1950’s by Western society, its use having been kept underground but alive and well since the Spanish Conquest. The colors and images of the arts and crafts might very well be influenced by the effects of these mushrooms.
Perhaps some of the allure of Oaxaca for Sally was hidden in the magic of the mushrooms. According to more immediate thoughts, however, we were now to live in a modest house with a small courtyard because of her desire to witness the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca. The central location of the house assured us that we would be close to the arts and crafts of the area, and that she, two weeks later, would have the celebrations of the dead as close to her as possible.
The Day of the Dead, or Dia de Muertos, occurs on our All Saints Day, or the day after Halloween (extending into All Souls Day, a day later). They (Disney) have made an excellent animated movie of it, and with more and more of our nation’s population having Mexican roots, it is almost impossible to avoid some aspects of it. Largest among the emblems of this event one encounters is the grinning human skull, the stark reminder of our own death. Finding a human skull in our garden or basement or inner wall would absolutely freak us out, as would a sudden discovery of our Uncle Elmo’s skeletal remains, but on the Day of the Dead, nothing could be more amusing. In Oaxaca, the skull can be found on anything from tee-shirts to lollipops to just about any artifact. Baby formula packaging? Why not, for in Oaxaca in particular and southern Mexico in general, the Day of the Dead is a family event, where relatives who have ‘passed’ are remembered and honored. That skull of Uncle Elmo becomes not a morbid reflection on death, but a dear reminder of the living Elmo. The horror is taken away by the life memories given to the dead. Death, then, does not separate us anymore than moving to another state or country might. Better, the once-a-year trip to visit the dead does not involve massive expense and the horror of airports. Rather, one gathers at the graveyard with other family members bringing little presents for the dearly departed along with the dead’s favorite food and drink, which is usually shared with the living. The family gathering becomes both a reunion and a feast.
All this is well and good in a land that has witnessed staggering loss of life. In the days of the Aztecs, war and bloody sacrifice were a constant reality. With the arrival of the Spanish, about half of the population of the former empire died from European diseases. Some twelve years after the visions of Mary to Juan Diego, as much as 95% of the remaining population of about 8 million died from a mysterious illness that puzzles archaeologists to this day. Following that were centuries of abuse of the peasantry and numerous wars and revolutions both big and small. Mexico has long known death, and did not recover the original population of pre-Hispanic Mexico until well into the 20th century. Death is no abstraction to them to this day. We can only think that they have found it better to celebrate the inevitable rather than to curse it and make it their greatest fear and enemy.
All this seems well and good, that is, until real death hits home, at least here in the USA. While we were in Mexico, we received news of a death of a friend who had recently had a stroke. Just six months before he had been his same old self, and just two months before, at the age of 64, he had suffered the stroke. I visited him shortly after, and while he had been deeply affected, both myself and others assumed that he would make the slow, painful journey back from stroke to a new place of relative normalcy. At 64 and with so much former energy, we had thought that he could not possibly die, not here in the heartland of America. The blow was stronger than I would have anticipated, because I simply did not anticipate it. It was a gut-punch. It just couldn’t be.
Death, then, is no familial thing to me or to most Americans. We might gather together in remembrance of a relative, but we would not bring skulls or skeletons along, or bottles of drink and food for a spirit we do not think could have anything to do with such things. We leave the reality of death largely to children who make a game of it on Halloween, with no real death attached to it. Death is not our friend, nor is it simply another land that we can visit now and then with a bottle of mescal. It is, rather, a horror to be conquered.
Death certainly does not have to be a lingering horror with Edgar Allen Poe highlights, but it is no light thing for us either. Uncle Elmo will not come and visit us, and if he does, he will no longer be one of us. There is a real sting to death. Those we once knew are gone forever, at least as they were. Death reigns, as the Bible repeats again and again, because of the consequence of sin. From a human perspective, it should not and cannot be. It is shock and awe in its most elemental form. We learn to live with it, but that does not come easily or without consequences. In the end, death damages not only the dead but the living in profound and usually very negative ways.
There is a flip side to this. Death may not be joyous or light, but it teaches us that this world is ephemeral. It tells us that nothing of our earthly desires or social cares or status ever will amount to anything. They disappear along with us in a very short time, proving their banality. We don’t know for certain what exists beyond our mortal sphere, but whatever does exist is most probably not like the world we live in with flesh and blood. And with this, we also come to understand that our greater picture of reality is simply wrong. We might get the details right, but our world view cannot adequately incorporate the all-important fact of death into it.
In large part, then, we live a lie against our wills. During Halloween we have fun with it, dress it up, make candy skulls and printed tee shirts of bones and goblins, but this is not for real. Death remains for us as deep and dark as the depths of the ocean, and as terrifyingly present as a rotting corpse. We know that there is a greater power, and we hope that "IT" is our friend. We hope. Until then, we carve pumpkins and watch as our family and friends are carted off to the depths one by one, each death coming closer to our own.
Were it not for miracles, all this would make us despondent, but they do exist. The Virgen of Guadalupe is present on the tilma against the laws of nature, laws that we know to be incomplete. Miracles tell us that there is another world that compliments and completes our own. More than that, miracles rip through the veil of our reality to expose us to the potential of immortality. If we were to believe fully in miracles as many traditional Mexicans do, we would understand that the spirit world is real, alive and present at all times. Maybe it is this powerful belief that allows them to play with death while recognizing its reality. Maybe it is this powerful belief that can make the sad joyful, and give hope to the hopeless. Perhaps with a full acknowledgement of miracles in our lives, we could make the foolishness of Halloween into a festival rather than an escape.
The way to Our Lady of Guadalupe was no more or less than what he had come to know of Mexico City: block after block of cheap brick and concrete buildings and deeply stained cement streets and sidewalks, all suffering from various degrees of corrosion and corruption. On and on it went, the Via to the shrine and Tepeyac Hill now all-urban, the crumbling buildings engulfing what was once shrub and cactus wasteland. Juan Diego, the Aztec who Mary deigned to reveal herself, had once had to walk seven miles from this hill through rugged countryside to reach the bishop in Mexico City. Now we could drive that distance in the comfort of our tourist bus, although in a time not much less than Juan’s walk because of the congestion.
Then we arrived. The near-rubble of the city lighted up into carnival colors due to vendors of religious items who sold everything from statues to beads to pendants to candles, right up to the short steps that would bring us to the large acreage that surrounded the shrine itself. It was here where all the mess and rubble and commerce ended. Just like that, we stood agape in a broad and clean plaza. In front of us and to the right was the original church that the bishop had built at the insistence of the apparition of Our Lady way back in 1531; to the left of that was a greater church built, if I remember correctly, in the 1600’s; and to the left of that was the new church, built circa 1970, in time for Pope John Paul II’s memorable visit. In that last church, the tilma, or cape made of cactus fiber worn by Juan Diego, was now kept for popular viewing. It was this little man-sized cape that we were there to see, not the churches and other buildings despite their antiquity or grandeur.
We have all seen the image, whether we realize it or not. It is of a young lady dressed in flowing robes with rays of light beaming from behind her. She stands on an odd set of black horns (the eclipsed moon, we were to learn) which are supported by a feisty young man with red, white and blue wings. Her smile is more enigmatic than Mona Lisa’s, although her love and tenderness are quite clear. She is looking down on us, not in condescension, but as if she was trying to bring us up to her.
If that is all we knew of this image, we would look at it briefly and move on to the weekend football scores. But there is so much more, much of which has already been discussed here and elsewhere. What the facts behind it insist, and there can be no doubt, is that the image we saw and can see today is a living miracle. It defies every scientific explanation. It should not exist as it is on a simple cape of cactus fiber; the cape should have rotted long ago, and the symbolism of the entirety would have been beyond the knowledge of the people of that era. Even in the eyes of the image is a miracle: microscopic analysis has shown that they contain reflections of the persons to whom the image was revealed, each reflected image no larger than the width of a hair. It is exactly as if she, our Lady, had actually been there, alive and on the spot nearly 500 years ago.
The tour ended after only five days, but we were Oaxaca bound for the next eight days. The state of Oaxaca contains Puerto Escondido, a beach haven that I had visited forty years before and will never forget for both its beauty and the savage undertow on the southern end. It is also home to the eponymous Oaxaca City, in which we had rented a house. We were there because our friend Sally had fallen in love with the city from afar due to its artwork and crafts, much of it derived from the surrounding Indian (Mixteca, Zapoteca, among others) communities. It was in these neighboring communities where the mushroom ‘psilocybin’ was rediscovered in the 1950’s by Western society, its use having been kept underground but alive and well since the Spanish Conquest. The colors and images of the arts and crafts might very well be influenced by the effects of these mushrooms.
Perhaps some of the allure of Oaxaca for Sally was hidden in the magic of the mushrooms. According to more immediate thoughts, however, we were now to live in a modest house with a small courtyard because of her desire to witness the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca. The central location of the house assured us that we would be close to the arts and crafts of the area, and that she, two weeks later, would have the celebrations of the dead as close to her as possible.
The Day of the Dead, or Dia de Muertos, occurs on our All Saints Day, or the day after Halloween (extending into All Souls Day, a day later). They (Disney) have made an excellent animated movie of it, and with more and more of our nation’s population having Mexican roots, it is almost impossible to avoid some aspects of it. Largest among the emblems of this event one encounters is the grinning human skull, the stark reminder of our own death. Finding a human skull in our garden or basement or inner wall would absolutely freak us out, as would a sudden discovery of our Uncle Elmo’s skeletal remains, but on the Day of the Dead, nothing could be more amusing. In Oaxaca, the skull can be found on anything from tee-shirts to lollipops to just about any artifact. Baby formula packaging? Why not, for in Oaxaca in particular and southern Mexico in general, the Day of the Dead is a family event, where relatives who have ‘passed’ are remembered and honored. That skull of Uncle Elmo becomes not a morbid reflection on death, but a dear reminder of the living Elmo. The horror is taken away by the life memories given to the dead. Death, then, does not separate us anymore than moving to another state or country might. Better, the once-a-year trip to visit the dead does not involve massive expense and the horror of airports. Rather, one gathers at the graveyard with other family members bringing little presents for the dearly departed along with the dead’s favorite food and drink, which is usually shared with the living. The family gathering becomes both a reunion and a feast.
All this is well and good in a land that has witnessed staggering loss of life. In the days of the Aztecs, war and bloody sacrifice were a constant reality. With the arrival of the Spanish, about half of the population of the former empire died from European diseases. Some twelve years after the visions of Mary to Juan Diego, as much as 95% of the remaining population of about 8 million died from a mysterious illness that puzzles archaeologists to this day. Following that were centuries of abuse of the peasantry and numerous wars and revolutions both big and small. Mexico has long known death, and did not recover the original population of pre-Hispanic Mexico until well into the 20th century. Death is no abstraction to them to this day. We can only think that they have found it better to celebrate the inevitable rather than to curse it and make it their greatest fear and enemy.
All this seems well and good, that is, until real death hits home, at least here in the USA. While we were in Mexico, we received news of a death of a friend who had recently had a stroke. Just six months before he had been his same old self, and just two months before, at the age of 64, he had suffered the stroke. I visited him shortly after, and while he had been deeply affected, both myself and others assumed that he would make the slow, painful journey back from stroke to a new place of relative normalcy. At 64 and with so much former energy, we had thought that he could not possibly die, not here in the heartland of America. The blow was stronger than I would have anticipated, because I simply did not anticipate it. It was a gut-punch. It just couldn’t be.
Death, then, is no familial thing to me or to most Americans. We might gather together in remembrance of a relative, but we would not bring skulls or skeletons along, or bottles of drink and food for a spirit we do not think could have anything to do with such things. We leave the reality of death largely to children who make a game of it on Halloween, with no real death attached to it. Death is not our friend, nor is it simply another land that we can visit now and then with a bottle of mescal. It is, rather, a horror to be conquered.
Death certainly does not have to be a lingering horror with Edgar Allen Poe highlights, but it is no light thing for us either. Uncle Elmo will not come and visit us, and if he does, he will no longer be one of us. There is a real sting to death. Those we once knew are gone forever, at least as they were. Death reigns, as the Bible repeats again and again, because of the consequence of sin. From a human perspective, it should not and cannot be. It is shock and awe in its most elemental form. We learn to live with it, but that does not come easily or without consequences. In the end, death damages not only the dead but the living in profound and usually very negative ways.
There is a flip side to this. Death may not be joyous or light, but it teaches us that this world is ephemeral. It tells us that nothing of our earthly desires or social cares or status ever will amount to anything. They disappear along with us in a very short time, proving their banality. We don’t know for certain what exists beyond our mortal sphere, but whatever does exist is most probably not like the world we live in with flesh and blood. And with this, we also come to understand that our greater picture of reality is simply wrong. We might get the details right, but our world view cannot adequately incorporate the all-important fact of death into it.
In large part, then, we live a lie against our wills. During Halloween we have fun with it, dress it up, make candy skulls and printed tee shirts of bones and goblins, but this is not for real. Death remains for us as deep and dark as the depths of the ocean, and as terrifyingly present as a rotting corpse. We know that there is a greater power, and we hope that "IT" is our friend. We hope. Until then, we carve pumpkins and watch as our family and friends are carted off to the depths one by one, each death coming closer to our own.
Were it not for miracles, all this would make us despondent, but they do exist. The Virgen of Guadalupe is present on the tilma against the laws of nature, laws that we know to be incomplete. Miracles tell us that there is another world that compliments and completes our own. More than that, miracles rip through the veil of our reality to expose us to the potential of immortality. If we were to believe fully in miracles as many traditional Mexicans do, we would understand that the spirit world is real, alive and present at all times. Maybe it is this powerful belief that allows them to play with death while recognizing its reality. Maybe it is this powerful belief that can make the sad joyful, and give hope to the hopeless. Perhaps with a full acknowledgement of miracles in our lives, we could make the foolishness of Halloween into a festival rather than an escape.
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