Mexico City, 2013, 13

 

Fri., Mar. 29, 2013 at 2:58 a.m.

It is la madrugada as we call it in Spanish, the dark hours after midnight before the dawn.  I went to bed shortly past eight last night and will try to retire earlier tonight in preparation for my early flight home in la madrugada of Easter Sunday.  So far so good.  This has been for me an intense, deeply meaningful and I hope life-transforming Lent while away here in Mexico City.  Some of you have commented or expressed concern of what a difficult vacation I have been having.  For me this has been only part of a necessary life-training and formation in my life of discipleship.  You see, I believe strongly now as I did when I booked my flight last fall that God was calling me here. Partly it was to improve my Spanish, partly for time to rest, take long walks, spend time reading and in my art work in cafes, but primarily to pray, think, reflect, contemplate and accept the challenges of a still unfamiliar environment as part of my own formation of my life into the character of Christ.  The risks, to my health and personal safety, have been miniscule compared to what I feel I have learned from my time here and I deeply hope that I can present to all of you when I have returned Easter Sunday and after a further transformed and renewed Aaron and I hope a more Christ-like and more loving Aaron.

 

I intend to visit the cathedral here today to witness in part the observances of Good Friday.  I am intrigued by the intense Catholic heritage of Mexico.  I also find it puzzling and somewhat bedevilling.  It has long, and remains still, my view that Mexico and Latin America in general, has been subjected to a particularly degraded and corrupt form of Christianity, the Catholicism of the Spanish Inquisition, and the absolute pillage and destruction of entire peoples and cultures that resulted have absolutely nothing to do with the One who still hangs on the cross in their churches and everything to do with those who nailed him there.  I have previously expresssed here my discomfort with being in the neighbourhood of the cathedral and the historic centre for this reason, and that for me the cries for vindication of the blood of the victims of the Aztec sacrifices are mingled together with the cries of the slaughtered victims of Spaniard soldiers and priests and their howl of outrage still sounds in the silence of this dawn of Good Friday.  It will be interesting to see what, if any steps, the church and the Mexican government will take to express repentance and offer reparation to the damage that still festers here.

Sent: Friday, March 29, 2013 4:09:18 PM
Subject: Catedral Metropolitana

Yesterday at Chapultepec Park I went into the botanical garden which is always a quiet area (who wants to look at a bunch of plants anyway?). The two resident egrets were there in the waterways.  Many of the local people seem fond and very proud of the egrets often stopping to look at or photograph them and they are very tame-seeming.  Then three young women, European tourists I think, probably Dutch or German and very tall, came striding in and walked through apparently oblivious to the egret that was standing there next to them.  Or perhaps they thought it to be a lawn ornament, or they don´t care for birds and really they´re only interested in shopping? Well, who only knows?  I almost tried to alert them to the egrets as I often do if I see something beautiful or unusual like a rainbow or what have you and the person standing or sitting nearby doesn´t seem to notice.  But it only felt like it would have been wasted on them.  They looked like wax dolls or mannequins (the three European women, I mean) and had they not been in motion I might have wondered if they were alive.

Also yesterday an American looking man asked me in North American accented Spanish where Insurgentes was so also in Spanish, without even thinking of lapsing into English I told him.

Today I had an early start and following a walk on Reforma (very quiet since this is Good Friday) I sat in one of my regular cafes to work on drawing number ten (an egret).  There was this obnoxious Brazilian I think, young man in his twenties, totally Caucasian so likely very well off, yelling again on his cell phone in Portuguese just as yesterday.  His voice filled the cafe and drowned almost everything else out.  Yesterday I put in my ear plugs to cope (I call them my orange little friends and often they are friends in need around here!) Today I noticed another couple expressing visible discomfort at his behaviour, we exchanged glances and I commented, ¨malcriado¨or very rude.  Then he began to scream at whomever he was on the phone with.  The couple quickly left and suddenly I confronted him. It was just like dealing with a client at work with challenging behaviours.  I said to him in Spanish that he is in a public place and that he should calm down.  Following a dirty look at me he became a lot quieter.

I walked to the Metropolitan Cathedral in the Historic Centre to see how they were observing Good Friday.  Thousands of other people in Mexico City had the same idea and there was a constant flow of people pouring in and pouring out.  I have mentioned before that the catherdral here is huge roughly four times the size of Christ Church in Vancouver.  To my surprise there were no services on, just people wandering around or seated in pews.  Many of the soaring columns were wrapped in dark purple velvet with silver fluting.  To a side they were sellig bunches of hierba manzanilla or chamomile as a symbol for purity.

On the way back I noticed a Hotel Canada with Canadian, Mexican, and European Union (? !) flags flying outside.