Adam and I enter the little plaza adjacent to the Santuario. The lights are brighter here chasing the remnants of the yellow orbs of the candles of the altar from our sight. There are about twenty people standing, sitting around talking and resting. Walkers? Maybe. But it is almost Good Friday Eve and the locals will be coming at all hours now to hear mass.
I see the little cafe on the edge of the plaza is open. Offering coffee, hot chocolate and food for sale to the people. We head to the front of the church. I limp along even though I have my cane. We stand at the main entrance. I see canes and walking sticks leaning against the wall by the front door. Not sure what this means. Are people with walking problems to be healed? Or is it bad form to take a stick inside? I keep mine so I can make it down the wide flagstone steps that lead to the main sanctuary. The darkness outside is soon eclipsed by the bright, warm, yellowness of the interior.
Crude wooden pews line either side of the aisle many of them filled up with people here for the mass. The ceiling above us is almost two stories high with dark, wooden beams supporting it. Primitive images of saints on wooden placards form the altar and
accentuate the walls. This church has been here in one form or another
since 1810. You can feel the history sink into you. I find it impossible
that anyone being here could fail to be affected by the mystery of this
place.
There are statues of saints hidden in niches. Red, black and white, and the dark color of the wood, is the color scheme. A medium sized crucifix hangs central above the altar a few feet up. It is a broken Christ figure. He sags more than hangs upon the cross. His flesh darkened by the smoke from many candles.
This smoke carries the prayers of the faithful, the hopeful, the needy, upwards. Adam and I scoot into
an unoccupied pew. I struggle. My legs don't want to work. We sit down and now see the priest whose voice we heard amplified outside. He is sitting down up near the altar table.
He holds a microphone. He speaks with a spanish accent that is formal
and classical in its sound. He leads the congregation in the prayer
"...Hail Mary, full of grace....." repeating it over and over again. I
keep hearing the phrase "...now and at the hour of our death...". Adam and I sit and pray, heads bowed for a few minutes. We look up and gently, quietly, stand to take our leave. Although this has always been a most welcoming place, we are still strangers in a way.
It is an international shrine but this church belongs to the people who
live here in Chimayo. For in spite of the presence of such sacredness
this village has a lot of troubles. Drugs mostly. They have been sold
hereabouts for decades. There has been violence and death from the wars
fought over the drug trade. Yet this church still stands as a symbol of
that which transcends the flesh.
Now Adam and I make our way to the front, heads bowed, and walk through the little doorway that leads to a side room. It is here where the miraculous resides. There are homemade shrines to
El Nino. The child Christ. People leave baby shoes for him as offerings
and gifts. The walls are covered in the photos of loved ones but also
in discarded crutches and canes hung neatly on horizontal wooden rods.
They offer testament to a faith I cannot begin to fathom. Do all of
these crutches represent a healing of failing flesh? I don't know.
Adam and I wait now outside an even smaller doorway inside this room. It
leads to a tiny room where El Pocito is. The "little well". Pilgrims
wait their turn to enter to be where the holy dirt is kept. We squeeze
inside when our turn comes. The room is about five feet by five feet in
size. There are some altar shelves, more religious images, and a few
candles that light and heat the room with their little flames. People
are kneeling and gathering a brown, fine, silt like soil from a frisbee
sized hole in the crude concrete floor. Ziploc bags and baby food jars
are filled with the dirt. It has, according to belief, curative powers.
Rub it on an affected body part and be healed. I have read of those who
make it into a mud poultice to apply and still others who eat small
amounts of it for its power. Whatever it does or doesn't do, this ritual
always moves me. In the end it is about faith in a thing larger than
ourselves and this world. It is a symbol of a mystery.
Adam and I make our way outside into the cool darkness. We don't talk
much. We are still taking in the meaning of this wonderful, mysterious
thing we will never understand.
Now we go into the little cafe. Besides fresh hot food and drinks, they
sell small bags of Chimayo's famous, red, chile powder. I buy some to
give to friends at home. Adam tosses a small hand wrapped cellophane
package of biscochitos (cookies) onto my pile. The young girl behind the
counter rings up our purchase. I gaze at the images hanging around the
cafe. Then Adam says "Dad. Quick buy something else. Anything." I turn
to look at the total listed in black and white numbers in the window of
the old cash register. It reads 6.66. I grab another package of
bisochitos and the chicana, oblivious to our alarm, rings it all up.
Wow. Satan's number. What did that mean? An odd, darkly poetic,
coincidence? I have no idea but Adam and I laugh about it as we walk
back down into the darkness to our car. There are more pilgrims arriving
now. It is past midnight. The stars turn above us. The creek talks. We
are both weary, but happy, in this moment. Soon this place will be the
center of the world.
Quietus.
-Jeff Falk
