Thursday, July 31, 2008

To Speak of Great Mystery

i’m going to be honest… before i get to the actual business of writing this update… i feel like you need to know that i am sitting at Pastor Tito’s house… and the TV is on… and i’m listening to music currently, so i didn’t hear the dialogue… but the man in the Uncle Sam costume—complete with dollar store hat… elastic string under the chin? Oh yes…--just went off on the two men in the clown costumes. And this is a serious show. A very serious show. i can tell you that the girl in the orange vest is the good little girl who gets caught up in all kinds of trouble (after about two minutes of occasionally glancing at the screen) precisely because she is wearing an orange vest that is not so fantastic by most modern American standards… kind of the “Not-in-Prada-but-still-looks-cute” effect… the Princess Buttercup image, if i may. The girl with the small mole a couple inches from the corner of her mouth is obviously the deceitful, manipulative arch-villainness, because she has a mole a couple of inches from the corner of her mouth. And the guy who stuck a revolver in his pants is nothing but trouble.

i just thought that you needed to know what was up in the world of Peruvian television tonight—but don’t worry… i assure you that Revolver Man is well-intentioned… he probably wants to protect Cute Innocent Girl’s honor, but it’s all going to backfire because Gandhi wouldn’t stand for such methods.

So all that said… it looks like the Great Mystery referred to in my title is not Peruvian television. Which is kind of a shame.

Instead, i am… temporarily? permanently?... indefinitely, to be sure, reverting from my leap into the realm of fresh material to old stuff… where in this case old means pictures taken five weeks ago. Admittedly… some of the last pictures that i have taken… but… that is certainly much more my fault than their’s.

No, but the mystery is indeed profound. For i am speaking of Christ and the church.

Am i at times inflammatory in my posts? This may be one of those posts that is potentially inflammatory. Hear my heart stronger than my words, i ask.

Which is a long way of saying… i do not know the extent of my readership very well… and perhaps some of my readership does not know me very well. i caution all to not take this post as my overall opinion of Catholicism, or as a generalization that describes an attitude that i take towards all Catholics, but rather as a description—and yes, a criticism—of a particular form of Catholicism that i encountered on a particular day in a particular place, namely June 26, 2008 in Choco, Castilla, Arequipa, Peru. If, based on my statements here, you think that i would criticize some other manifestation of Catholicism that you can think of… well… i probably would, and i am unashamed of that.

The day was June 26. It was a Thursday.

i had been in Choco since Monday.

i started slow… i needed some time to adjust to the new culture of the secluded, more closed village that Choco is… but after some adjustment i began to take pictures much more prolifically than at any other point previously in my trip—and certainly more prolifically than any at any other point successively in my trip. i usually spent my morning reclined against some rocks as John Piper brought the heat through my mp3 player before returning to town for some lunch and the pursuit of some activity with which to fill my afternoon.

This day i was kind of short on ideas. i was still kind of tired from all of the change that i had been subjected to over the past week… so i wanted to do something fairly sedentary and local.

As i sat against the wall of the City Council building in the town plaza, i heard the unmistakable sound of the Choco band. Imagine a drunk middle school marching band with instruments made out of tin. But maybe more exciting than that. If anything could possibly be more exciting than that. The percussion marks time ad libitum and molto rubato… if i may do such harm to the word rubato. And i sometimes wondered how much libit-ing they were doing and how much it was purely unintentional.

But it is the Choco band, and we love them when we’re not trying to sleep. They’re usually more drunk than normal at 1:30am, and that makes their music even more… endearing?

But it was the Choco marching band… so something exciting was happening. Because nothing happens in Choco that isn’t exciting. And i’m trying really hard not to use really dark examples. Especially since Jami Layman isn’t a regular reader of this blog.

But it was the Choco marching band… and they came into view. And behind them the men were in suits. The women were in the beautiful and elaborate traditional Quechua dresses that i have found nowhere but in a few villages near Cabanaconde.

A solemn procession it was. First into town hall for a few minutes… and then towards the cathedral. And the doors opened.

i lived in Choco for a month in 2006… and really wanted to find a way to get into the cathedral. i never succeeded.

But here was my chance.

i’ve never fancied myself to be a wedding photographer. i shot one wedding last summer… Chad McMath and Emily (formerly) Reagan… and while they don’t seem to hate me now, meaning i probably didn’t do an exceptionally horrible job… i know that weddings are probably not my forte (although if you need a wedding photographer you just might be able to talk me into it these days… if i ever end up with a working lens again). But this day—from the back row, because i wasn’t feeling very assertive—i was a wedding photographer. Get excited.

i’m going to present my documentation of the wedding in two parts. This update will include the ceremony and the procession, and the next update (that i devote to old pictures) will include the reception.

Does that structure sound surprisingly western for a small village in the middle of the Andes? It did to me, too.

His name was Abrahan Vilcape Quiquea. Her name was Victoria Monica… and she had a last name, too. But i don’t remember it.

His father was one of the preeminent men of the town. That is why the wedding took place in the cathedral and was officiated by a priest—who had to be paid to come in from Arequipa, six hours of driving and seven miles of walking distant. i believe that most marriages in Choco are more along the lines of common law marriages… perhaps there is a smally ceremony of some sort within the community… but basically the man and the woman move in together and everybody recognizes them as married. Choco is not a very religious village… but i think that there is a lot of prestige associated with having been married in the church.

So i stepped into the cathedral… and gave my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dim light. To my right were a few rows of pews and an elaborate altar that occupied the entire back wall, as well as many smaller altars along the other walls. To my left was a dusty storage area. The whitewash hadn’t made it that far.

The doors of the cathedral are only opened two or three times i year, i have been told.

The ceremony began with the ceremonious (fitting, eh?) signing of several papers as the assembly sat solemnly and quietly.

As this happened, i shot a few pictures of the interior of the church… such as this.

Perhaps i will be criticized for using this word… but i do not quite know what else to use, and i am unashamed of using it… but this would be one of the several idols found along the walls of the cathedral.



Besides the obvious fact that this is an idol in what presumes to be a house of worship to God… this pains me for another strong reason as well. And obviously this reason is vastly subordinate to the robbed worship of God… but i think that it is relevant nevertheless.

You’re not going to find anybody in Choco who looks like this man. Not remotely.

Wait. i lied. If i’m in Choco… then you will. i am kind of a spitting image of this man, in fact. He’s a bit more obviously Spanish, whereas i am perhaps subtly Swiss… however… this is a white guy with a beard. He has more facial hair than all men and women of Choco combined.

And what have the Spanish been to these people but oppression? Condescension. Mockery.

As the liturgy of the service progressed, the people mumbled through rote prayers and statements of faith with reluctance and hesitation that i have never remotely seen in an American church… and i have seen very reluctant and hesitant American churches.

These people were not talking to their God. The god that they were talking to was white. He has a beard, just like the idols of the saints. The god that they were talking to speaks Spanish. The god that they were talking to hates their Quechua language and encourages them to pretend not to speak it so assertively that they had me fooled for the whole month that i spent with them in 2006. The god that they were talking to wants their money. That way he can have gold-plated altars in locked up cathedrals. The god that they were talking to was not their God. The god that they were talking to was not my God. The god that they were talking to was not any sort of God. The god that they were talking to was dead, was the hellish spiritual reality manifested physically in five centuries of Spanish oppression.

Would that at least they had a conception of a God who cared about people who have dark skin, too.

But the service began, all the same.

The priest, as i said, had been brought in from out of town. He was a big-city priest. Probably about as conservative as they come. So if you take what he had to say and add hundreds of years of isolation and the variation that comes with such isolation and the syncretism that is characteristic of local people… then you will have the typical religion of local people… when they care enough to think about religion at all. Which honestly is not very often for the people of Choco.

“Before we begin this holy service of matrimony, let us confess our sins” said the priest.

i was floored. This was more orthodox theology than i have ever encountered in Catholic Peru before… and we had hardly even started.

“Pray with me.” He said.

“Dear saints, dear blessed Virgin Mother, we have sinned. Make us good people, so that we will sin no more. Amen.”

Nevermore will i be able to hear a Peruvian tell me that they don’t pray to Mary or the saints. i have strong enough objections to any sort of concept of praying “through” Mary and the saints or asking them to pray for us… very strong objections to such a practice… but there is no way you can paint what happened to open this service—with a very conservative priest from the big city, mind you—in such a light. That prayer was to the saints and to Mary, it asked them to bring about an end.

And what was that end? A righteousness of our own. This is not the gospel. This is not Christianity. Christianity is this: yes, we have sinned, and that God demands of us a righteousness that is not our own, and that we are utterly incapable of offering such a righteousness, and so we are under His wrath and fully deserving of hell at this very moment. But against this desert of wrath and hell, the righteousness of God is revealed… a righteousness that is not our own is given to us, not that we might attain to merit or that we might prove good enough to counteract the immense weight of sin, but that the righteousness of Christ is counted to us and our sin is counted to Him and we are made new beings. If we are going to be confessing sin, we would be well advised not to ask that our flesh would yield works of righteousness. If you want apples to come from where a fig tree is planted, you’re going to have to do more than ask the fig tree to give you apples. You would be wise to kill that fig tree and uproot it and dispose of it and plant an apple tree in its place. The whole organism has to change… and there will be no boasting by the fig tree or by the soil that now you have your apples. No… the gospel of which i am not ashamed, the gospel for which Paul was in chains and for which i may one day be given the honor of joining him there, the gospel that all who have received have been commanded to share is one of grace and not of works of the law. If you want to work for your eternal reward apart from faith, then by all means do so… but i warn you that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin, the wages of sin is death, and to him who works, his wages are not counted to him as grace, but as wages… so you will get those wages for which you worked, and those wages will be death.

But to him who does not work, but who believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith will be counted to him as righteousness. Fall on Christ. Don’t ask yourself or Mary or saints or even Jesus Himself to help you earn a righteousness of your own. You will just be collecting filthy rags.

i would call that a lengthy aside… but the gospel of Jesus Christ is never an aside.

But i know that it is time to get back to the wedding (this is going to be sosososo long… do you see why i decided to break it into two updates?).

And so this is some people kissing. Wahoo! (?) (eek… i’m sorry.)



Had i mentioned the Choco marching band? Well check it out! Here they are standing in the back of the cathedral, randomly playing when they are not supposed to play and randomly not playing when they are supposed to play!



i think that people in Choco hate birds.

After the ceremony, Abrahan and Monica worked their way toward the door of the cathedral. As they donned their bread breastplates (please comment with your opinion of what a bread breastplate at a wedding symbolizes, if you are bold enough), the kind people of Choco unloaded on them with large quantities of rice. i stopped my 50 down to f/. 10 and contented myself with shooting them instead of assailing them with bird-killer.



And from the cathedral they walked in regal procession across town to somebody’s house, where the reception took place. The bird extermination program continued fervently.



And with that i think i am going to conclude this update… five and a half pages is enough, don’t you suppose?

A spot known, a claim absurd, a tree grown, it thus was heard, face of stone, the chosen word.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

the cathedral... wow.
i like the picture of the marching band guy.

Anonymous said...

I was going to attempt to be witty and write something significant about the bread breastplate but unfortunately, creativity escapes me at the moment. Instead, I will comment and affirm that while I love the pictures and wit, the lengthy aside was, by far, my favorite content in this post. Jesucristo is pretty phenomenal...

P.S. Sorry I missed your call. Your bet was right on the money. ZZZ... :)

beersville said...

First I must say that I am not going to use anymore lame excuses for not posting a comment on your blog. What special timing to get to attend a "traditional" wedding in Choco. And your blog about their perception of God makes me ask myself what impression of God do I leave with people who know me. A great thought to ponder and take to heart in how I live before God and others. Loved the pictures and thanks for posting the critter pictures. You know the llamas and crabs.... Looking forward to your return home.

christy said...

i love your funniness and your insight samwell.

the bread breastplate- perhaps to guard the newlyweds against 3 day old flying hard sourdough rolls hurled in anger during their first fight.

or perhaps not.

i am leaning toward the not



we love you and look forward to your return and hearing your heart.... that is AFTER you have showered :)

christy said...

i re-read and have to say that i love your theology :)

surprise, huh?

ha! seeing as how we have only had the honor of having you in our home as we all work past the "forms" to the root of what we believe.

it saddens me greatly to know that many people in the world are twice the sons of hell by well meaning people who think they are making disciples. i truly cried until i was sure tye would be embarrassed by me on sunday with the very thought of the millions- wait billions- who know not Jesus.

thankfully, he was not ashamed of me, nor did i receive any negative comments by those who surely wondered what was wrong with me in the service.

but i truly feel at times like, how in the world could i possibly make an impact?

grace



every thing is grace

we have a new favorite sermon by giglio for you to hear when you come back. soon. :) yay.


may the joy set before you cause your heart to overflow with love and compassion- and a clarity of your next steps. and you know the joy before you. for all others reading, if you know sam you also know that this joy is not the joy of returning to american soil, rather an eternal joy of knowing Christ...

tell tito hi from us

blessings
again

hope you dont mind two comments

christy

Anonymous said...

I read this again...thank you.