Dispatch 005: A COUNTRY WITHIN MYSELF
An explosion heard in the distance but felt in the ground, which we had been walking on before the sun crept over its peak, sparked a joy long forgotten. Geology describes the layers of the earth, of the dirt, of the rock, of the compression, of the heat, of the liquid fire beneath. The abstract rarely comes to fruition, but against the backdrop of night the fiery magma demonstrates what lives below the surface.
Beyond the volcano were the people. However short lived they were, they provided depth beyond the crust of the earth. People opening barely enough, as much remained hidden within the layers. Though everyone carried a cross into the fire.
A young British man wore Saint Christopher around his neck for protection but was not religious. Over coffee, he shared his divorce from a woman he loved for many years. An old camera hung from his neck. One that required knowledge of the refracted state around us.
He captured the earth as it was, the old dogs who had never known the warmth of a home, of the sun that shone down from the heavens. Sharing them as the fire flickered, he unassumingly spoke in a hushed tone about how emotional it all was.
I made a joke. Nothing serious. We laughed. But the moment passed. I felt him inviting me to more than his outward appearance led me to believe.
In our climb, a boy out of university walked behind me, describing his journey to this moment. Over the last few years his life had been steeped in sin. Aging himself at a rate unsustainable for the fullness he wished.
His friends challenged him over the last few months to turn himself around. In doing so, they accompanied him here. It was his first hike in life. He had dragged himself from the fires of hell to the flames of rebirth.
But in our rebirth we focus on ourselves, forgoing those deeper connections, particularly with those we love. We shield our souls. Couples from different parts of the world, each forgoing marriage. Those who rejected the covenant of marriage. Or those believing the years they had spent together were not enough to discern if life should be spent together. Seeing the youth ahead of them instead of seeing the growth they would share together. They forgo the sacrifice.
Though I saw myself in each of them. I recognized my own fears in them; the eternity of a covenant, the years past against the years to come, the youth of today for the wisdom of old age. I reflected on what marriage requires of me every day. To love.
English has a multitude of words to describe the mundane aspects of life. To walk, to trot, to meander, to stroll. But to love, there is only that, nothing more. Thus, how are we to know what love requires of us? In Greek, there is agape. And that is what we are called for. To love, to will the good of the other.
In our twenty years of marriage, we have grown into that love. That in the pains we have caused one another over half a lifetime spent together, we desire to will the good of the other.
Though as I stood watching the lava roll down the volcano with my lungs on fire from the altitude, I began to recognize our littleness. In the middle of the night, alone outside, Fuego silent, the Milky Way overhead, I recognized creation and pondered the first mover.
Days had gone by. My wife and I recovered in Antigua. Sat in cafes, sipping coffee with the taste of a country that had been steeped in war. Guatemala does not hide its scars. A land of heavy, mythic realism, where colonial ruins lean against our modern disparity. Where people move with a quiet, enduring dignity, as the soil underneath their feet fortified them from blood and ash. A defiance against the amnesia of the modern world. A country within myself.
Away from the rush, deep in the mountains, my wife and I sat in a temazcal. Stone, dark, and alone. Steadily increasing the heat by pouring oil infused water onto the wood heated drum. Low ceilings kept the steam close. Sweat beading and dripping with the recitation of prayers, seeking a moment of clarity with God in our purgatory state.
In the burning, sightless stone room, our minds conjured our first days here, kneeling within the high vaults of the Iglesia de San Francisco el Grande at the tomb of Saint Hermano Pedro. The Nicene Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be. Confession. Communion. The sacraments as gifts, but here they offered us a plenary indulgence.
Our vices cleansed but not felt, for the virtues overwhelm from above as they enter the soul. Time has no meaning during purification. For an hour, a thousand days, or a thousand years could have gone by. When we emerged from the darkness into the light, we were free. The weight of the world we held alone was removed. We sat with the wind, the three of us together as covenant.
