Imagine, if you will, Glaucon . . .

March 29, 2010

Last night Lynn and I returned from visiting two of the Jesuit missions in the Chiquita region near Santa Cruz: San Javier and Concepcion.¹ They represent different stages of mission work by members of the Catholic Church and also the dedication of the Bolivian people in preserving them.  Popularized outside of South America by the 1986 film The Mission², the mission towns (called reductions, in that they gathered in people for protection) were organized by18th century Jesuits who tried to reestablish social stability for indigenous peoples living in the areas now known as Bolivia and Paraguay. Fragmentation of traditional tribal society for people in this region began with invading Spanish conquistadors and some accompanying clergy in the 16th century.  The reductions were a safe haven for indigenous people against the continual need for slaves to work in the growing farming and mining efforts to accumulate wealth through forced extraction. In the reductions they could produce wares for sale and practice their own way of life.  They were also exposed to Christianity and to the baroque tradition of music and art from Europe. The Jesuit missions represented a later effort to bring Christianity to the indigenous people but by blending Catholic ritual with the tribal traditions and beliefs of the peoples surrounding each mission site. Their success at this may be gauged by the growth of their own influence and by the animosity this generated among landowners in the region.  In 1767, nine years before the thirteen American colonies declared independence from Britain, the Jesuits were ejected from Bolivia, and the mission towns became the property of the remaining residents.

The mission churches in the Chiquita region survived.  They were cared for by the local inhabitants, and members of the Franciscan order became responsible for the services conducted there.  After almost two centuries, as paint faded and wood rotted, the mission churches that survived were in need of repair and renovation.  This came under the direction of Swiss architect and theologian Hans Roth who completed most of the major renovations before his death in 1999.

The churches themselves would be striking to anyone who loves color, contrast, detail and symbolism, but this was made all the more remarkable by their location--in a region filled with natural beauty but no great manmade structures other than hotels for travelers like us, or the dam at the lake by Concepcion.  The improbability of their location heightened their impact on our senses as we entered.  These are not museums but living churches, and our best experience of this, I think, was in Concepcion when we accompanied the townspeople on their Palm Sunday procession from the edge of the cemetery to the plaza and into the church.  It was a hot day in a hot, humid climate, and the procession was packed with people carrying garlands woven with palm fronds. I thought I must be offending some by walking along the edges of the column, stopping to take photos as I went--a gringo gawker--but I wanted to share pictures with everyone who couldn't be there with me.

By the time we reached the arch of palm fronds before the great doors of the church entrance, I was sweating. In an arc over the great doors were painted the Spanish words for "The house of God and gate of heaven" (Gen. 28:17). I felt like I was one of the congregation and that I too could take a seat in the packed sanctuary, if I could find an empty one. There were none, and so we stood by an open window in the back.  This proved lucky for us as the temperature rose and we had a breeze on our backs. Throughout the service we heard hymns sung by a youth chorus accompanied by violin and guitar. For the benediction I decided that I had to get a closer shot of the celebrant, Bishop Antonio Bonifacio.  Of course, I expected this to be one more offense as I seemed to flip-flop from worshipper to photographer. However, as I stood beside one of the massive columns, one hand resting in the deeply carved folds, and the other poking my camera lens through the fronds of a palm leaf, I felt a tap on my shoulder.  The woman standing beside me at the end of the pew smiled and stepped out, offering me her place so I could take the shot.

We were reminded again that Jesus was going to see it through to the end, inviting us to do the same. Following the recessional, we spilled out into the plaza and the thick red dust of the streets.  The sun was bright and hot. One child after another offered to sell me woven crafts. I didn't mind.  It felt good to be there, occasionally understanding a few remarks, sharing the joy of the people.

Cooled by the breeze passing over my own sweat, I remembered how I had felt a few years back when our family, Lynn, Emer, Norbert, and I, were at the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey in Scotland, a Norbertine monastery closed and confiscated by Henry VIII. It was beautiful and serene, but I was sad that the community had been destroyed. And now so far away in time and space I was seeing how a similar disenfranchisement had escaped destruction. I thought of Paul's remarks on faith in Hebrews 11-13.

______________________________
¹Our guide, Mercedes, explaned to us that chiquitano is one of those "lumping together"words that occurs when one group of people tags another group as all being a certain way, in this case as being shorter than the invading group, apparently based on the diminutive doorways they constructed in their traditional dwellings, and that feature in reality being more to protect themselves.
²Written by Thomas Bolt, this is a beautiful film for cinematography, acting, narrative, and considerations of moral dilemma. Bolt is also the author of the award-winnng play and 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, one that Lynn and I used to teach during discussions of film and writing. It felt good to draw physically closer to one of Bolt's subjects again (just as when we visited the grave of Saint Thomas More in Canterbury) if only for a day or so.
³Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J., identifies utopianism as a factor in the early drive toward mission in Latin America, and cites Vasco de Quiroga as having been directly influenced by Thomas More's fictional work Utopia, written in 1516, when he tried to organize two ideal communities in the area now known as Mexico. Fr. Klaiber is author of The Jesuits in Latin America and other works on the role of the Church in the economic and political history of the Latin America.

VIA CRUCIS

On Wednesday, March 3, Lynn and I accepted an invitation to attend Mass and a stations of the cross ceremony in our neighborhood.  The invitation appeared on a photocopied sheet of paper posted on the outer door of our host family's home. To be sure we would arrive on time, we decided to find the house a day ahead of schedule so we followed the directions to the  address on the invitation and came to the door of a house only about a block away.  The houses here are surrounded by high walls and have locked gates or doors.  This one was no different, but a similar photocopied invitation indicated that we were in the right place.

On the following evening we returned at 6:30 and pressed the doorbell.  A middle-aged man with a kind face soon greeted us and led us in.  He was dressed in plain clothes, but we soon learned that he was Padre Tito and that this structure behind the high walls was a house of study for seminarians. The chapel was a large room just to the right of the foyer.  About fifteen people were already there--some seated, some standing close and chatting.  In the back were three young men, two holding guitars.  All seemed to be in good spirits, and soon a second priest, Juan, was welcoming us in English about equal to the Spanish we used to thank him for the invitation. No importante because our limited words were only a part of our communication: he could tell we wanted to be there and we could tell that we were welcome.  Juan introduced us to a neatly dressed woman and withdrew to prepare for celebrating the Mass. This woman turned out to be the mother of our host family's father.  In a moment we were laughing together and sharing the news we had heard of her recent birthday and how her three of her children--our host Henry, his brother and sister--had celebrated her birthday by hiring a mariachi band to stop by her house (just two houses down from ours) at midnight and serenade her. It was good to  get to know the person who lives on the other side of the wall we pass each day on our way to Spanish classes at the Maryknoll Language Institute, the wall covered with cascades of flowers I probably mistakenly call drops of gold. It was good to learn that before retirement she had been a professor.  She was energetic and observant, and when she welcomed us to the neighborhood, she did seem to speak for the entire neighborhood.  Others I recognized in the congregation were the Franciscan Sisters who lived together in a house two blocks from us, among them the one from Italy who greets me with a smile when I jog past her sometimes in the early morning.

Through words and song we drew closer during the course of the Mass and shared the body of Christ.  Our common beliefs united us.  Following Mass we were all invited in to the social hall to drink cups of api, eat empanadas, and share information about ourselves.  Most people were from the neighborhood, but several were from other Latin American countries, and Lynn and I, the only two from the United States, were welcomed again. The three young men of the choir were seminarians. Gradually people began to drift out of the social hall.  Lynn and I presumed they were returning to the chapel for the stations of the cross, but when we returned there we saw that no one was there. Confused, we thanked Padres Tito and Juan and left. As we started walking along the dark street back home, we wondered how we could've misunderstood about the stations of the cross and wondered if maybe we had missed something because of our limited Spanish.

On our way back we saw a light ahead at one of the doorways and saw several people gathered around. We stopped and had our answer about the stations of the cross.  Here at the gateway to this house the family was preparing one of the stations: a table covered with a white table cloth, images of Christ, Mary, angels, a wooden cross, candles, flowers, water, salt.  As we looked up and down the street we saw other stations being erected and learned that the fourteen stations were arranged at the gateways of fourteen homes at intervals around the block on which we lived.  We followed others to the first station and walked and sang in procession with them and the seminarians with guitars, stopping at each station for the announcement of Christ's sufferings and for the benediction.  To our surprise the gateway of our hosts' home was the final station.  (A neighbor took a photo of Lynn and me with our hosts, Henry and Lily.) This blessing seemed to complete the blessing of houses with the koa fires honoring Pachamama during Carnaval.

I suppose a block party can bring about good spirits among neighbors, and it would be wrong to idealize the faith of all of the participants, ours included.  We were not trooping around the block in lock-step bliss.  But it was beautiful to see this ceremony reverencing Christ's acceptance of sufferings extended from the church and into the homes and lives of the people nearby.  And it was beautiful to see so many people voluntarily join together in a peaceful ceremony of shared belief to express their faith.

Sorrow and Joy

Rantastic #1: "Anybody that thinks we're not born losers in a game of attrition is just kidding himself."  I'm quoting one of my own bleak attitudes when circumstances seem to take life in the wrong direction for no apparent good reason.  In my best-of-all-possible worlds people who intend to help others do so and their efforts are on the mark and the ones who are helped get better somehow and they're really glad about that and so they thank the people who helped them and then they begin trying to help other needy people with their own efforts that are on the mark or even if they've already been helping others, one by-product of the help they received is that somehow now their own perceptions and efforts are sharpened so that the quality of their help gets even better and so in this vision (I usually glaze over with joy while I'm locked onto this one) the whole universe starts dancing with 'no-problemo' harmony. And despite whatever age of aquarius reverberations flake about in this snow-globe vision, I think it's still healthy despite that nagging attitude on the sidelines, that raw aftertaste in a fabulous too-good-to-be-true dish:  maybe this just precedes something terrible happening to rebalance life into an inscrutably gray mediocrity of random chaos. In fact, it's always there at the feast, that devilishly complex postre of when-bad-things-happen-to-good-people dish, and we struggle to recover from our own hard knocks or watch and try to help others struggle to recover from theirs. That too is mission, and that was the pie on my face when I heard recently that one of our compañeras at the Maryknoll Language Institute here in Cochabamba had taken a hit.

Damnificados: So what could be more absurd than a nun on mission getting mugged while walking to Mass on a celeste Sunday morning? Okay, how about the probable take--one black bag containing an umbrella and a Bible. (True, there's priceless stuff there, but you gotta know how to work with it or it just gets all over you, and it probably will get all over you anyway.) Or better, how about the method for this intended property transfer--a snag from behind bag-jacking in which one guy drives the car and his buddy leans out to grab the shoulder strap. Or even better, how about the outcome--enmeshed Sister (bag is strapped courier-style from shoulder to opposite side) is whacked on the head but struggles to keep pace with accelerating car, falls against the car and then elbow down into the gutter, bag still at her side as the white taxi (it's always a blanco taxi they say here) speeds safely off toward...what? But, of course, there's always the impact on the victim--eleven days in the hospital to deal with cuts on the head and elbow requiring stitches, bruises and road rash, five broken ribs, one of which punctures a lung, necessitating a drain tube to evacuate the blood, and, of course, that's just the physical stuff.

It's no surprise that after further healing she will complete her Spanish language training elsewhere. I'm amazed that she still plans to serve on mission in El Salvador.  I hope that when she feels better she will lead others with her clear voice as she did when she concluded our prayer service with the City of God:

Let us build the city of God. May our tears be turned into dancing!  For the Lord, our light and our love, has turned the night into day!

In the quiet times between my amoeba infestations, between earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, I think about these things.