Angelus
in a parking lot
I spot an acorn falling
from nothing at all
I used to live in Mexico City. About 1984 or 1985, I went to Tepeyac on December the 12th, the Feast Of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Tepeyac, which is now a part of Mexico City, is the hill where Our Lady appeared to St. Juan Diego.
Never before nor since have I experienced religious ritual with quite this combination of the devotional and the bizarre. Jugglers. Bishops. Fire breathers. Deacons and nuns. Aztec dancers in feathered headdresses yards across. Someone is reciting a litany. Union workers carry a banner, “The Sewer Workers Of Azcapotzalco Salute La Virgencita”. It’s like a circus, only with rosaries.
Just outside the shrine, within sight of Juan Diego’s tilma, the great relic, there’s a commotion. Right next to me, the crowd parts for a woman, a peasant who has crawled on her knees all the way from Cuernavaca, maybe one-hundred miles. Her son is assisting her. I ask the son, “What is her prayer?” And he answers, all of this is in Spanish, “The chicken.” That’s when I notice the bird in her arms. Her son explains, “Her prayer is for more eggs.”
Beside me, slightly out of sight of the son, smartly dressed young man, educated no doubt, rolled his eyes and spits the word, “Naco.” “Peasant.” As for me, I’d give my decades of education for one-tenth of that peasant’s faith.
when I was a child
I wrote a note to myself
on how to find faith
I’ve since traveled the world
in search of that note on faith
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