a salvage job
if you do not stop
to give the penny
what blessing
are you missing
If I hadn’t taken the river walk through one town, instead of the main street route, I would have missed the artist drawing a river scene. I asked if I could stand near him and see. His pencil scratched delicate and lovely lines onto thick paper in the man’s sketch pad spread open across his lap. He slowly added shadow into the trees on the hill, and underneath the bridge arches.
Darkness is the illustration of depth. We must add contrast to give dimension; deep shadow allows the surfaces touched by light to rise, come forward. All this the artist did, effortlessly.
The river walk was a boardwalk along several stretches, paved sidewalk along others. The boardwalk stayed damp and slippery, however, so some ingenious worker had added a mat of chicken wire over the boards, creating traction. The design was fascinating, and I could see old rust marks from earlier layers of wire mesh now worn away.
The pressure of touch is a contrast of forces, and can easily slip away, or leave a mark, if the forces are out of balance. Sometimes, both. All this I knew, only too well. Effortlessly, now.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
By eleven in the morning, my day had already been intense, moving and transcendent.
At 4am, the older man in our room at the Oviedo albergue had a stroke or heart attack, slowly falling from his bunk in total darkness, unresponsive to his partner as she called his name over and over into the unrelenting black. Michael. Michael.
We snapped on the cruel overhead light, and found him curled up, slumped on the floor. His partner called for emergency assistance. The albergue staff were all gone for the night. I told her no food or water, and went to open the locked gates for the ambulance crew. I assured them the partner spoke Spanish as I led the way up endless narrow stairs.
The albergue appeared to be part of an old prison or an old monastery, a wedded complex of multiple buildings. Earlier in the evening, the church next door was filled with singing, in Latin and Spanish, hymns and simple folk tunes of faith wafting from their open windows, lulling me to sleep beneath mine.
Now Michael was on his way to the hospital. The girl from Mexico had been badly scared by the whole event, so we talked a bit afterward. I reassured her that he was in the best hands now, and her shaky breathing eased, so that we lay down and slept again until 8am. At 9am, readying to leave, we found out he was out of the hospital, as his tests had all come back fine. He was deemed okay for discharge, according to his partner, even though neither the girl from Mexico nor I thought he was really okay. His partner had told the girl that Michael wanted to continue walking. The girl was upset at this idea; however, we finally settled on a truth we could both immediately acknowledge: each person chooses his own Camino.
I had planned to crash the Sunday morning mass at the Catedral de San Salvador, the Oviedo Cathedral Basilica on the central plaza, just for the experience. Now I felt like I needed it. I figured my pilgrim’s backpack and walking stick ought to get me in, plus “no hablo Español.” It wasn’t like Catholics were card-carrying or had a secret handshake at the speakeasy door; surely a showered peregrina could attend.
Just before 10am, I entered the main doors. Leaving everything I owned behind, my backpack tucked in a shadowy corner of the narthex, and leaning Saint Thomas beside it for protection, I stepped forward into the cathedral itself to see the main altar.
Designed to illustrate the Bible for non-readers of the early 1500’s, it was gilded, floor to ceiling, filled with outlined biblical scenes in a three-dimensional quilt of painted relief sculptures.
For me, after a long night watching Life and Death haggle over the price of a man, it shone. Not the illustrated Christian stories themselves, or the Bible per se, and certainly not the Catholic Church’s long and terrible history of conquest and oppression. The altar was simply about some human being, some man, alive centuries ago, making a creation of beauty with his warm, living hands.
The Virgen de Covadonga, patron saint of Asturias, stood serene, front and center in her turquoise and white, as all of humanity’s struggles, triumphs, and agonies played out behind her turned back. Michael shakily stepping off again on the Camino, the girl from Mexico breaking in her new boots as she started her journey, me heading inland, inward, into the oldest heart of the Camino.
San Salvador means “Holy Savior.” One definition of a savior is someone who salvages what they can. I thought of a beachcomber after a shipwreck, pulling cargo and gear, survivors and the unlucky, ashore. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell which is which. You’re too busy saving what you can to sort it out in the moment.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I learned a useful distinction in my 20’s, and had been repurposing it for decades ever since. Sometimes, in the still quiet of utter darkness, you hear something, a song, words, your own unassailable voice from the center of your heart. When you hear it, you must listen. These will be words to live by.
Back then, sitting at my dining table, hands flat in front of me, feet flat on the floor, back tall and square in my chair, I held myself in a posture of alignment with Fate, the copious handful of pills I had swallowed already beginning to take effect by producing the most solid calm I have ever experienced.
And that was when my own mind spoke to me: I don’t want my life to end. I want THIS life to end.
In those dark days, I had believed lies, lies upon lies, that I was damaged, defective, ruined. A beautiful wreck that could not be salvaged, slowly sinking into oblivion beyond the shore. But the truth was light, rising above the storm, here in the mind’s eye. Deep shadow allows the surfaces touched by light to rise, come forward.
Eye of the storm; eye of wisdom.
When you know you have heard the truth, decision-making becomes easy. Slurring into the phone, I calmly called for help. And lying in the emergency room, swallowing a tube to pump my stomach, I felt fine, listening to my own breathing, in and out, around the plastic lifeline that saved me from lies.
Recovering in the intensive care unit, I felt bad only because I knew I did not need to be there. The hospital’s young psychiatrist was sweating nervously when he met with me, but I reassured him that I was feeling better and would follow up on his counseling recommendations; relieved, he left quickly.
The older hospital chaplain and I had quite a longer talk. I hadn’t converted or found God or seen a beachside apparition of the Virgin Mary (yet). I was just a Buddhist who hadn’t believed the core tenant of Buddhism, because I hadn’t really experienced it: basic goodness. That Life is, at its essence, a constant energy for good. The chaplain and I agreed, too: shit happens. Doesn’t mean that Life Itself isn’t good. Contrast gives dimension, sometimes beautifully, sometimes shockingly, sometimes tragically: it’s a matter of where you choose to focus your gaze, what you allow to rise.
It’s not about ignoring; it’s about how we decide to spend the time we get. Stripped of all our assets, skills, talents, then focus is ultimately all we have; caring attention is what we can give.
“How did you come to this place, this frame of mind, today?” he asked me.
“I woke up. And looking out that window, I know it sounds, trite…cliche…but I was…amazed, at the blue, blue sky. Amazed. It was so blue. And I thought: this day would have happened, with or without me. I would have missed it, this morning I want to remember forever. And that’s when I realized that I’d never made a commitment to be here. You know? I was always kind of one foot in, one foot out, hating my life. So I decided. I’m going to be here, no matter what. I’m going to live, every single day, until I die.”
He looked at me funny, probably trying to see if I was serious, or lying, or trying to appease him, or just weird. “Barbara,” he said, finally, “you’re gonna be all right.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Holy Savior’s Cathedral in Oviedo was a collection of tiny chapels added one by one onto each other, holding together, growing in faith as it became a great basilica. The original starting point of the original Camino dating from the late 700s-early 800s, it became a required detour in the Middle Ages for pilgrims. It was said,
“Who goes to Santiago, but not to Salvador,
visits the servant but not the Lord.”
For me, the Lord was Life. And Life had many servants – Joy. Compassion. Love. As I thought about Michael’s fall in the night at the albergue, I felt the sobering weight of the reality that our lives end. They do. I remembered all the homeless people I had met over my years of work, hopeless and defeated, considering the very choices I had made, to keep that formal date with Fate, to slip away, to fall in the darkness and not return.
And then I remembered all of those people I had sat with, one by one in my office, hoping to give time and attention to their stories, wanting to hear them out. When I was patient, and lucky, they sometimes gave me the gift of their trust, letting me have a peek into their lives.
I had been given a gift as well, to share in exchange with them: those words. After all the story had been told and I thanked them for telling it, after men grown battle-hardened and street-weary had cried into their dirt-lined hands, when the space between us had once again become still, quiet, I would finally ask, “So…do you really want your life to end? Or do you want THIS life to end? Which do you think it is?”
Words to live by. For me, and now for countless homeless men and women. I felt so lucky, to have a low-down, gritty commonality that mattered in that moment. I felt grateful to the pills, and to the stomach pump. I never told my story; I just passed along the words that had kept me living.
And they kept living. Many decided to change their focus. Many changed their lives.
They certainly changed mine. They touched me, deeply. I understood what they were saying, and in turn, I finally connected, with other human beings. A child without a safe home is a homeless child, whether they still live in that house, or not. You can carry that house with you for a long time, still homeless.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
While I stood before the great altar, I noticed people ducking into one of the side chapels. Another couple. An older man. Tourists, locals. Intrigued, I followed.
It was the 10am mass, in a smaller, more intimate chapel that was still breathtakingly beautiful. Old stone arches rose above us in our humble wooden pews, windows high above streaming filtered morning sunlight down upon us. The service was in Spanish.
I understood snippets of the words of the Lord’s Prayer, our pan de dia, and thought of peregrinos along the Camino breaking baguettes of bread to share with one another.
We stood and offered each other peace, shaking hands across bench backs and aisles, turning to shake hands behind me as well. Communion was offered, and I thought this might be the best time to leave, slip away. But watching a line of the faithful slowly moving forward up the center aisle, I heard a voice.
Somewhere behind me, a woman began singing. An operatic voice, clear, sweet, gorgeous. I turned ever so slightly to look, and saw that it was the young woman I had just shaken hands with, smiled with, offering each other peace.
Now, she gave us this gift. She sang two songs, one I did not recognize, but one I did. “Ave Maria.” Hail Mary. Crying Out to The Great Mother of Mercy. She Who Hears The Cries of The World.
I just sat, transfixed, like everyone else who did not go forward. I would have missed an experience I wanted to remember forever. A voice that brought tears to my eyes, and did again as I was writing in my notebook over coffee, reliving the moment. Life affirming, transcendent. This feeling of the sacred worth, the basic goodness of Life – this was why people created religions, and why others created art.
And why some sit in small offices, talking to homeless people about the meaning of life. It’s all a Hail Mary, this existence…a beautiful, holy salvage job.
Hail Mary, Full of Grace
God is with thee
Blessed art thou amongst women
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, JesusHoly Mary, Holy Mary
Pray for us sinners
Now and in
The hour of our deathAve Maria