You Owe Me, Lady

Rachel Fitzgibbon

January 25, 2013

Photo Credit: Mary Agnoli

You Owe Me, Lady

Faith: the journey of my life, a search for God and an attempt to make sense of the human experience. It has led me far and wide, over oceans and rivers, and now I’ve discovered its true definition for me, for the Maya, for the Catholic Church.

Somehow fate finds me crossing myself with holy water before Mass in Río Dulce, Guatemala. “En el nombre del Padre, el Hijo, y el Espíritu Santo. Amen.” Immediately peace floods my heart. Although the clay-jar candles and tropical flowers in the open-air Church are new to me, I feel at home. Despite the fact that Guatemalan religious ceremonies “carry a pre-Columbian, native flavor in the rituals and symbols, in the veneration of ancestors and in the linguistic mixture of Mayan-Spanish languages,” i I understand it; the Mass is everywhere the same. I listen to the words of the sung Prayer of St. Francis hovering like mist over black and blonde heads – “make me a channel of Your peace” – and pray that I will do just that in my service here in Guatemala.

We leave the comfort of San Antiono de Padua Parish behind and now I’m sweating in the hot sun somewhere between Río Dulce and Semachaca, fully conscious of every movement of the grass as critters go about their business around my feet. I realize my hiking sandals, “breathable” with open sides, don’t offer much protection – or peace of mind – from the threat of foreign bugs. Great. Welcome, diseases! Nice to meet you. The green of the surrounding plants and trees, precious shade from the life-giving sun, amazes me; yet I look down at my filthy feet, careful to step just so, fearful of the natural creation of which I am a part.

Hiking through the jungle to catch a glimpse of the source of the parish water project, I nearly lose sight of our goal. When we finally reach the cool stream, I breathe. It is clear. It is fresh. It is necessary for life. I look up and see the light streaming through the palm trees, creating dancing diamonds on the stream: God’s handiwork. I remember the words of Hector, our

laughing, lovable guide with melted-chocolate eyes, and begin to “see with my heart.”

That very notion – seeing with the eyes of the heart – reflects a central aspect of my life. My lifelong journey of faith began on May 16, 1993, when, utterly unaware of the significance of Baptism, I entered the Catholic Church. I received the waters of salvation in one swift splash across my tiny forehead. In that instant, I was marked for God and changed forever. Ever since then I have pursued a quest to discover what my initiation into the Church actually entails.

My spiritual journey grew into a physical journey to Latin America, one that started in the early years of my life in the gathering space outside Sacred Heart’s sanctuary. Thus began my fascination with Latin America: drinking in the bright colors – reds, oranges, yellows; colors of the sun – that made up the backdrop of the Youth Ministry bulletin board and my fantasies of this place I would surely love. I could hardly wait to join the Mexico mission team.

The time came, and with it an even deeper love for Latin America and, more importantly, for service. I had a fairly egocentric concept of “service” before my first trip to Monterrey. I had some understanding that I would not “save the world” in my week spending time with orphans and working on building projects. But I naively believed that what I did held tremendous, life-saving importance for the orphans – and not the other way around. They taught me to appreciate friendship, family, faith. Their happiness amidst severe poverty and abandonment and hardship jolted me awake, like a splash of icy water across my face, obliviously burning under the hot Mexican sun. I left Monterrey with a sharp sense of my own selfish ingratitude. The orphans cleared the murky waters of my heart, one smile at a time. A cleaner heart returned to Iowa.

This mission to Mexico paved the path to my current journey, one even more exciting and intriguing: Guatemala.

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Fighting our way through the thick jungle, we finally emerge at a resting point: a village. Sandy-blonde sticks of straw top the huts of the Mayans. I walk past three smiling niñas sitting on a bench on the road into the village. Their mother peers shyly from the shadows of a hut. I grab my camera and snap a picture of the girls, now giggling – nervously? – and hiding behind each other. The light of the sun catches the shiny silver of the cross around the mother’s neck. What meaning does that cross hold for the Mayan mother? What does it hold for me? What values do our unique faiths share?

Onward we go, now with the sweet luxury of a truck. Fourteen people in the bed of the truck – sunburnt-red and sweaty arms, cramped legs – a tangled mess of discomfort. The great beast groans and whines, wheels spinning furiously to fight the soppy road. Come on, truck! Almost there. Cries of “sí se puede” fill the air. And over the mud we go, with silent “Hail Mary” refrains and whispered prayer.

Villages blur into jungle blurs into more villages. Tanned women and children in brightly colored, traditional woven clothes wave and laugh with the goofy gringos calling “hola” from the back of the truck. Finally we reach our destination: Semachaca. After settling in – and attempting (failing) to sleep among endless rooster cries and dog-fight yelps and heat and cold and

heat again – I have my first experience with the Maya expression of faith: Maya hoc.

Early in the morning while the air remains still cool and the breeze constant, I find myself sitting cross-legged on the ground, thatched roof above me and raw red clay below me, my heart open to the wind blowing through the hut. In the center of our circle, pon rises to the heavens. This incense smells unlike anything I know, yet my mind connects it with Mass – hours sitting in the chapel, breathing in its sweet smell and imagining my prayers rising to God with the smoke.

“Now we will pray the Maya hoc.” Suddenly I return to the moment at the sound of the voice of Padre Javier, a priest with a modest scruff of beard framing an honest mouth.

We begin by concentrating on the air. I feel its coolness at the tip of my nose at the inhale, a cool stream of life-giving oxygen. Padre Javier reminds us that without air, there is no life. “We thank the Creator for air.”

My focus moves now to the earth upon which I rest. I feel its support. I think of the third of my life I have spent sleeping, indirectly resting on the earth that holds up my house. A world without earth is no Earth at all. “We thank the Creator for earth.”

As we begin to focus on the light given by sun, I realize I have started to see with my heart. Eyes closed, I gratefully receive its warmth, its nourishment. I praise the way it soaks up rain and turns mud to dirt. Listening to the yelps of dogs, the buzzing of bugs, I make peace with creation. “We thank the Creator for sunlight.”

At last we have reached it: “Now draw your mind to the water.” The rushing of the wind through the palm branches sounds much like the gentle whoosh of flowing water, and I enter a deeper state of meditation. The holy waters of my baptism mix in my mind with the clear Guatemalan streams from the day before. Together, the waters draw my mind to God, whose Spirit I see in both. “Thank You, Creator of water.”

Padre Javier reminds us that we, too, make up this creation. We are one in air, earth, light, water. It seems that for the Maya, the Catholic Social Teaching principle of “Care for God’s Creation” takes on an additional element: peace with God’s creation. An essential aspect of Catholic worship – gratitude – found in middle-of-nowhere Semachaca, Guatemala. In a Maya ritual as led by Catholic priest.

Suddenly it clicks. This meditation, this prayer in nature – this is inculturation, “an effort to recognize the presence of God inherent in Mayan culture throughout history and to valorize the ways in which Mayan cosmovision has honored and continues to honor God’s presence.” ii My faith expands to include the Maya hoc; my heart expands to embrace the Mayan people. The words of prominent Maya leader Rigoberta Menchú echo in my mind: “We felt ourselves to be very Catholic because we believe in Catholicism; at the same time we feel ourselves to be very Indian, and we are proud of our ancestors.”iii I begin to understand that openness to all that God created, and all the ways human beings have devised to praise Him since the beginning of time, strengthens the search for Him.

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The start of the week in Semachaca brought more to give thanks for than I realized at the time. That was before the rain. Before the mud. Before the scraping of heavy red clay from the bottom of boots, unsuccessfully. Before the load of lodo weighed down my spirit.

That was before the sunshine and good health disappeared behind a sky of solid gray. Back when the word “clean” could be reasonably applied to my person. Little did we know we had lived like kings in the dirt – Lord, the dirt! – before it melted into a sea of mud. For four days I could not see

my toenails. For four days my toes resembled syrup-covered French toast sticks, perfectly golden brown. The mud claimed my feet and my sanity.

Despite the rain, we had come to Semachaca for a reason – and we saw it through. I painted. The dirty stone salón transformed into a green sanctuary one roll at a time. Each time I climbed the rickety tree-branch ladder and (nervously) felt its sway, I wondered what difference this coat of

paint

actually made to the people of Semachaca. Did they really need it?

Semachaca answered my question with illness. In three days I learned to rely on other people. In my darkest days in the hammock of the cement-floor building we eventually (appropriately) termed the “death house,” I never felt alone. Because of the others who suffered sickness in solidarity, I grasped hope and held on with all my might. Service never guarantees a safe pass. When we serve, we put aside our own needs so that we can understand the needs of others by experiencing them. I remember the words of a Maryknoll Sister who worked with the Mayans of Huehuetenango – establishing a medical clinic, just like us: “You live the fact that there was no medical care available… You were very aware of just the lack of basics. The people had no water, no light … no drainage, no sanitation. You lived that for a very short time and you start asking why and then why leads to another why leads to what should we do about it?”iv Service requires solidarity; solidarity requires sharing.

I shared the fear of impossible access to medical care. In that fear I found the reason for the paint: these people need community. They need to gather in the green salón, that heavenly sanctuary from the relentless rain I had grown to hate. They need the shoveling of dirt into the medical clinic’s foundation to find peace in their bodies through good health. They need the acknowledgement of the greater global community that their experience of life – with its own unique problems and joys – matters.

This emphasis on community, on the hope that comes with it, has its source in the Mayan version of Catholic faith – a version which emphasizes reliance on nature, on God, on each other, all as necessary components of peace. I experienced the research I conducted before my trip: “At the most basic level, Mayanized theology attempts to reconcile Christianity with the three central elements of Mayan spirituality: peace with the natural world

that sustains life, peace with other people (including the dead), and peace with the deity.”v Despite the war raging through my body, despite the extreme weather that nearly killed my faith, I began to find peace in Guatemala.

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Extreme weather didn’t keep us from mid-week Mass. Just four times a year do the people of Angel Ja celebrate Mass. A little rain – and a lot of mud – could not, would not, stop us from joining the party.

But it nearly did stop us. Every step required enormous effort, constant concentration, perfect placement of feet. Despite my best attempts I emerged from the miles-long trek a muddy mess. The top of the endless red hill validated the struggle. An entire village dressed up in their Sunday best on a Thursday for Mass. They created a living, breathing arrow to the door of the Church. Their brightly colored cortes beckoned, “come in, sit down, join us.”

The Mayas do Mass in the best way. Every response becomes true praise in the form of song, dancing boys clapping along to the pure joy blasting from the speakers.

At the offering, pots of cooked chicken, smoking pon, and flickering candles marched up before the host and wine. A whole string of women, skirts swirling like the colored beads of a rosary, danced up the aisle. Just as the last one passed, a wrinkled and wise Mayan woman touched my elbow. I turned. I took in her bare feet, dusty but clean. She took in my five-pound clumps of mud, not quite hidden under my no-longer-blue poncho. Our eyes met. She took my hand and sat beside me.

At intercessions, the rosary beads became a field of flowers growing around the altar, illuminated by countless candles. In three languages we

asked for God’s help: three streams pooled back to the same source. My whispered questions evaporated right along with the hundreds of others all floating back up to the Creator of rain. I saw that the Church truly did incorporate “other integral material elements of Mayan culture as utensils of worship,” including “pine-resin incense, colored votive candles, pine branches as liturgical decorations.”vi The nature-focused Mayan spirituality began to infuse my own.

Two days later, we crawled out of the mud and emerged in dry Antigua, an historic and vibrant city nestled between the protection of three volcanoes and one giant cross. Every few steps along the cobblestone streets presented ever-growing danger to the quetzals-laden tourists. Mayan women, burdened with yards of woven souvenirs, attacked with incessant bargaining. “Just for you, amiga, I do cientoviente quetzales – for tú mamá? – how much you pay? – noventa quetzales?” Each step away lowered the price another dozen quetzals. Antigua taught me to barter.

One particularly dangerous doña sat on the steps of the largest shop

along the walking mall. She caught me eyeing a gorgeous blanket of

sunshine yellow

and went in for the

kill.

Photo Credit: Sarah Anderson

“Dosciento quetzales, just for you. You like, no?”“Sí, but I can’t buy it,” I explained. “I don’t have the money. No thank

you.”“No thank you” backfired. Back and forth we bargained, I insisting that

I couldn’t pay and she nearly threatening that I had to. Mild panic slowly spread. I just barely escaped – after mostly false promises to return – but her parting words haunt me still.

“You owe me, lady. You owe me.”Do I?I do. I owe her because we are one in Christ. When one cries, each

face dampens with tears. When one smiles, the joy and peace spread faster than the plague of Semachaca that claimed at least six of us for days.

What I really owed her wasn’t the purchase of a blanket but an effort to spread peace in her country, for her people. And this peace spreads through service that attempts to bring about justice. In the words of Pope Paul VI, “if you want peace, work for justice.” I do owe her. I owe her justice – and not the economic equality that we associate with justice in the U.S., but a Guatemalan brand: a fair shot at a peaceful life with good health, land ownership, an ability to live without fear of persecution. The justice of freedom to live without fear of anyone but God.

The Church in Guatemala works for justice. In 1968, three years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, the Latin American bishops met in Medellín, Colombia to respond to the new call to be a “church of the poor.”vii The bishops’ resulting statement speaks powerfully about the point of service: “We wish the Latin American Church to be the evangelizer of the poor and one with them… We must make their problems and their struggles ours. We must be critics of injustice and oppression.” The consequence of my baptism, my faith, is justice. Not my own concept of justice – tainted by American values of independence and materialism – but the justice I discovered in Guatemala, the definition of which I could only understand by

truly allowing the Guatemalan people to influence my faith and tell me their story.

You cannot understand a problem until you have lived it; you cannot understand a people until you have become one of them. And not just one in the way of “here we are, ready to live next door while we help you” – but one in the way of “here we are as fellow human beings eager to learn what life means to you.” In that sharing of life we discover the need and the solution.

The solution may not always be the paint and the mud hole, which make little difference once we’re gone. No, they didn’t need that green paint. The Mayans needed to see us applying it. Even if we nearly fell off the ladder and got more of it on ourselves than the wall. Maybe they needed to see that, too – our ridiculous lack of skill. Those gringos don’t know everything, do they? We sure didn’t know how to walk in that stupid, sticky mud, either.

But we didn’t have to, because they taught us; they laughed with – at? – us as we learned. Our failings forged relationships, the real point of service. I began to embrace the words of Pope Paul VI in Evangelization in the Modern World, encouraging the baptized to “show their capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and destiny with other people, their solidarity with the efforts of all for whatever is noble and good.”viii What a wonderful philosophy for the Guatemalan Church and for service – truly sharing life with others, offering to them whatever you have to give and willingly accepting what they offer in return (even if it means eating questionable chicken an entire village cooked for your group of 24), as you both attempt to understand the human experience we call “life.” Best seen through the eyes of the heart.

Even though our lives differ, I found our faiths the same. Even though our gifts differ, I found our service the same. The second reading at the last Mass in the bright and airy cathedral of Antigua fleshed it out for me: “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.”ix

I offered them my life; they offered me theirs. We exchanged experiences. We served each other in an expansion of justice through personal understanding. Baptized in the same Spirit, nourished by the same life-giving water of God, we lived out the call that had been poured upon us. We led each other to peace.

We all seek peace, though the means to it may vary according to our location on God’s earth. Maybe the people of Semachaca asked for different specifics than I did as the pon rose to God, but I’d be willing to bet their needs had to do with a search for peace in themselves, in their families, in their communities.

I recall Padre Javier’s explanation that not only is the pon used to give thanks; it is used also to ask God’s intercession. Two elements of Catholic worship – gratitude and intercessions.

Maybe faith always includes asking, then giving thanks for the answers.

I thank God for Guatemala, where I found my peace.

Works Cited

Behrens, Susan Fitzpatrick. "Maryknoll Sisters, Faith, Healing, and the Maya

Construction of Catholic Communities in

Guatemala." Latin American Research Review 44.3 (2009): 27-49. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Jan. 2013.

Evangelization in the Modern World, Evangelii Nuntiandi. Pope Paul VI, December 8,

1975.Garrard-Burnett, Virginia. “God Was Here When Columbus Arrived.” Resurgent Voices

in Latin America: Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change. Ed. Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004. 125-153

Jacobson, R. Daniel, and William N. Holden. "The Roman Catholic Church: Committed

to the Poor in Guatemala." Canadian Geographer 54.3 (2010): 378-380. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Jan. 2013.

Klaiber, Jeffrey, S.J. The Church, Dictatorships, and Democracy in Latin America.

Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1998.Medellin Conference of Latin American Bishops. Latin American Episcopal Conference,

September 6, 1968.Shea, Maureen E. Culture and Customs of Guatemala. Westport: Greenwood Press,

2001.

i Maureen Shea, Culture and Customs of Guatemala, 31.ii Virginia Garrard-Burnett, “God Was Here When Columbus Arrived,” 140.iii Jeffrey Klaiber, The Church, Dictatorships, and Democracy in Latin America, 225.iv Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens, “Maryknoll Sisters, Faith, Healing, and the Maya Construction of Catholic Communities in Guatemala,” 46.v Garrard-Burnett, 137 – 138.vi Garrard-Burnett, 142.vii Daniel R. Jacobson and William N. Holden, “The Roman Catholic Church: Committed to the Poor in Guatemala,” 379.viii Evangelii Nuntiandi 21.ix 1 Corinthians 12: 4 - 6