The Appeal of Mystery

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - I love a mystery as much as anyone does; they are weird and wonderful, but I also enjoy the thrill of discovering that what I once believed to be mysterious truly isn't. For there are mysteries we believe to be, only because we have been told they are.

There was a time when it was dangerous to question religion , and the punishment was so severe it was safer to accept our givens [that which by habit and tradition has passed from one generation to the next as undeniable truth] than to be exposed to the consequence of non-belief. It is now safer for individuals to distinguish between the opinion of others and what each independently determines to be true, but not entirely.

We must overcome the power of myth, the force of habit, and the fear of psychological retribution if we go against tradition and deal honestly with facts. We needn't banish from our lives mysteries we know are myths, any more than Santa Claus should be excluded from the celebration of Christmas. But, neither should we become so enthralled by myth that we refuse to acknowledge it as an understandable mystery.

The Middle Age - roughly1500 to 1800 - was the age of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation during which religion reigned supreme and Catholicism claimed infallibility at the level of the Holy See whose decisions guided the Church’s course. Popes are the Active Voices who express the will of the Passive Voice, willingly or not. In American Politics Presidents are the Active Voices of Party Politics, especially the Passive Voice of the Republican Religious Right currently in control.

The Conservative base of the Republican Party holds true to Christian givens passed down through centuries, and dutifully accepts as Gospel what it is told by Priests or Evangelists without question. Believers consider themselves to be part of an homogenized whole subject to Christianity’s Apostolic Oneness. Democrats tend more toward the Age of Enlightenment that began in the Middle Age but came to fruition near its end, and accommodates rather than submits to the restraints of conformity. They want to seek and find truths for themselves, and having found them, live by them.

Mexico and the Spanish villages of New Mexico, as well as the Pueblo Indians of the Rio Grande, live habitual lifestyles going back to the 16th century. Each eventually compromised religious commitment with accommodation and today peacefully co-exist. Spanish villages of New Mexico claim to experience wonders because it proves their commitment to Spanish Catholicism. Pagan deities painted on the interior walls of the Catholic Church in the Zuñi Village [others, too?] are there because the Church and Zuñi choose to accommodate religion by allowing the Indians to preserve their traditions while honoring Catholicism. Hence, the Kiva, used in Pueblo communities for ceremonial or formal meetings, co-exists in all Pueblos of the southwest with the Catholic Church where initially Spaniards cruelly insisted on a conformity they could not enforce.

Yet, many southwest dwellings have window frames and doors painted either blue or turquoise, colors representing heaven, the realm of God, as defense against witches [or evil]. I painted the gates of my home in California turquoise, and by golly, it worked.

Near the village of Chimayó in New Mexico is a small Catholic church known as El Santuario [The Sanctuary] a shrine that presumably possesses sands of miraculous or super-natural power. To the left of the altar is a small room with an opening in the floor from which the faithful take small quantities of sand as a curative for ills or injury.

On a nearby wall are displayed small representations of body parts presumably left by persons who hope for, or as testimony of, a miraculous-healing The mystery of the sand derives from the belief that sand removed during the day, returns to grade as if by magic.

The logical truth is that someone adds fresh sand to the hole each night. But in the spirit of hope, or persuaded by the display of others, pilgrims continue to test the sand..

The Shrine of Guadalupe, Mexico's Patron Saint in Mexico City, is another such edifice of Faith. I used to read to an elderly and blind [ciega] Mexican lady in Spanish who, when she learned I was going to Mexico, asked me to purchase a mass in her behalf.

At “La Villa,” as the shrine is called, I located the antechamber at the right side of the Sanctuary where nuns were selling masses as fast as they could be recorded, and a receipt issued showing the time the mass was to be said. Another pilgrim noticed me, and graciously invited me to go ahead of him where I explained my mission to purchase a mass for la ciega. The $5.00 was taken and a time was recorded - fifteen minutes was allowed for the mass - and a receipt issued that I gave to the lady, the result of which I never learned.

The income for the Church must be large, all things considered, for prayer and faith logically affects just the psyche, not things. But who can deny the psychological benefit of belief as supportive even if it fails to cure completely? As in New Mexico, a wall was covered with miniatures body-parts, but in Mexico, they were of silver.

For some sinners seeking forgiveness, penance consisted of walking on one’s knees fifty yards or more across pavement to the sanctuary where, adding to the physical manifestation of regret, the final act of contrition was performed, and a welcome conclusion to the ordeal it must have been. For in spite of the aid of a plaited Mexican blanket laid lovingly by a mamacita to ease the pain of each forward move, the passage surely was agonizing, and I wonder how many well-intentioned persons actually complete the trial.

The attempt alone must have earned some measure of absolution, far more deserved I should think than that of wayward Evangelists and politicians who preach one thing but practice another and who, when caught, pretend to ask for and receive without penance, forgiveness from God, wives and family, plus constituents.

The appeal of mystery is so strong that decades after my most memorable Easter, during the depth of the Depression, I asked mother how the basket I found at my bedside when I awoke got there; I was just four that Easter, and ill, and it never occurred to me to ask until then. The night before she had told me the Easter-bunny would not come [we were desperately poor]. She now she pouted and didn’t want to tell me, but after some coaxing, mother confessed ladies from church brought it by when I was asleep.

That Easter was a moment of wonder to mother, a mystery she cherished and was reluctant to reveal., while I felt I had experienced a rite-of-passage from mystery to truth.