a town square, a seventeenth-century church of
six-foot-thick adobe walls newly whitewashed for
Semana Santa, church bells pealing the daily rythms
of the townspeople
a richly textured, three-dimensional world—brightly
colored shawls, swooping skirts like moths and
butterflies, woodsmoke rising from thatched roofs,
market stalls, crowded buses with huge bundles on
top, flowers that grow by the grace of God—and
processions, always religious processions, with
images of the saints whose history is mixed with the old Mayan religion
Calvario—a pilgrimage chapel on a mountain top,
the street from the church in the town square to
Calvario, our house along that street
Semana Santa—Holy Week, larger-than-life statues
of Jesus carrying the cross, Jesus on the cross, Jesus
in the coffin, images of the Marys and the various
saints, hundreds of penitents bearing these images
over carpets painstakingly designed with colored
sawdust, pine needles, and flower petals
we rushing out our front door at every sound of a
procession coming, we finally settling on chairs with
cups of coffee in our front garden, watching for hours
on end, we climbing on rooftops, trees and ladders to
take pictures
processions all day and all night on Thursday, Good
Friday, and “Sabado de Gloria,” incense, chanting,
singing, brass instruments playing a dirge,
snare drums, church bells, candles, we feeling depression
Sunday morning—after the rending dirge, we
expecting unbridled oboes, and wildly improvising
trumpets; everything quiet, thousands of people who
line the streets yesterday now at rest—no singing
woodwinds, no marimba, no trumpets, no dancing in the streets
While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war.
But let’s not mistake it for calling.
The surprising argument that Saul of Tarsus was born into bondage.
