TWO PILGRIMS

...How was it...

...The stones of the plaza are set in square, repeating flower patterns, and the church and steps are also made of stone...

...While my husband Tim, a Zen Buddhist, prepares for his morning meditation, I check my map one last time and head off for Mass at the Basilica de la Soledad...

...Here, now: This will be my memory," I tell him and, behind my Ray-Bans, my eyes sting foolishly with tears...

...Rosa, in her knockoff Doc Martens, wants to be a lawyer...

...What's your name...

...The story is that, back in the 1500s, a man was traveling from the countryside when he noticed an extra burro in his herd, one he hadn't started out with...

...As I set out, the light is the color of lemons, violet jacaranda blooms litter the sidewalk, and bells toll from every direction...

...From a glass case in back of the altar looms a huge statue of the Virgin...

...Do you like our country...

...Hully-wood...

...Farther back is a room lined with retablos—folk paintings on small rectangles of metal—testifying to the miracles wrought by the Virgin: the river receding, in the nick of time, from the head of the floundering swimmer: Gracias a Dios, 1938...

...Check this one out," he says, leading me to a picture of a man in a red shirt leaping to safety— with a helping hand from the Virgin, of course—just as his hapless burro pitches over a cliff...

...An old man sweeps hibiscus petals from the sidewalk with a twig broom...

...Me llamo Timoteo," Tim says...

...My name ees Marcos," he says...

...Marcos asks in Spanish...

...Where do you leeve...

...What ees your name...

...Jorge, with his mournful eyes, is studying business...

...being absorbed into mine...

...As we stand in line to receive the wafer, the angels hold their chandeliers, the saints gaze down from their alcoves, the acolyte holds a crescent-shaped salver beneath each mouth, and the priest whispers the holiest of holy words—Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi....1 take the host on my tongue and, back at my pew, kneel on the dusty plank to give thanks...

...Aqui, ahora...

...Penitents shuffle toward her on their knees, leaving little trails in the dusty tile floor, like the wavering, silvery marks left by garden snails...

...The other part is embarrassed to say how often my life feels as if I am crawling blindly forward, dragging my lacerated hands and knees toward a light that may or may not exist...

...D Commonweal 14 April 23,1999...

...the village churches of Tule and Tlacolula and Ocotlan, whose cool, hushed interiors provide a respite from the fiercely beating sun...

...We turn around to see a dozen or so teen-agers, in black-and-white Catholic school uniforms, staring at us with the kind of naked curiosity with which children might examine two bugs they have just trapped in a jar...

...Afterward, we emerge into the heat of mid-afternoon, walk to the zocalo, and settle in on a park bench to discuss the best way to get to the airport in the morning...

...We climb Oaxaca's highest hill to watch the sunset, marvel over the pre-Columbian figures in the Rudolfo Tamayo collection, take second-class buses to neighboring craft towns: Teotitlan, with its expert rug weavers, Coyotepec, home of the famous black pottery, the preColumban ruins of Monte Alban and Mitla...

...Inside, every square inch of wall and ceiling is covered with gilt scrollwork and paintings and scalloped alcoves with saints standing in them...

...When Mass begins, I follow along as best I can from my missalette, catching isolated words—"la tierra," "el cielo," "la paz...

...What is truly miraculous, I am thinking, is not so much the once-in-a-lifetime snatch from the jaws of death, not the revelatory insight that resolves every doubt, not the cataclysmic fulfillment of our desire to, once and for all, be "understood...

...Rrraiders...

...It is the daily, minute-by-minute miracle of Christ made incarnate in every eye, every hand, the complicated depths of every human heart...

...Suddenly, I see a new retablo on the wall of that odd little museum we just left...

...He admires the churches' architecture and craftsmanship, but sees the rest as amusing, over-the-top kitsch, evidence of Catholicism's shaky underpinnings...

...Magenta bougainvillea spills over tiled roofs and stucco walls painted deep gold, rose, faded green...

...and Luis, with a black fringe of pompoms pinned to his sleeve, plays cornet in the school band...

...Why are you here...

...the cries go up and, next thing we know, they are swarming around us, shouting questions, elbowing each other in the ribs, crackingup, laughing...

...The media portray all teen-agers traveling in groups as crazed, bloodthirsty gang members but, encircled by these gracious Mexican youths, I feel more relaxed than I have the whole trip...

...Everywhere we go, we visit churches: the Templo de Santo Domingo with its vaulted dome and magnificent gold altar...

...There is only the one small stain on my happiness: a pang that Tim isn't with me...

...he asks when I return to the hotel...

...It is a painting of this very scene: these gold-green mountains in the distance, this blue enamel sky, Tim and me holding hands on this bench...

...A recent convert, I've been looking forward to this for months...

...All this vibrant flesh, these flashing smiles, are melting a hard little ball of resistance and fear I hardly knew I'd been carrying...

...Was it Einstein who said either nothing is a miracle or everything is...

...I find all this deeply meaningful, but it is a little tricky to navigate with Tim, whose Zen take on the topic of, say, life after death is likely to be a murmured, "But are we even alive to begin with...

...What will be your memories of Oaxaca...

...I study the retablos carefully, imagining a young girl licking the end of a brush, a child wiping smudges from a halo, a farmer, after a day of tending avocado fields, putting the finishing touches on a line of curlicue script...

...Part of me—the part that longs to be seen as confident, rational, and sane—wants to jump in and explain it to him, but the truth is I don't quite "get it" either...

...We walk down the hot, hard, fumesmelling sidewalks to the mercado down by the railroad tracks where women sit on the ground hawking wooden combs, heaps of headbands woven in vivid reds and greens, plastic bags of pineapple cut with a machete and sprinkled with chile and lime...

...Ready for breakfast...

...the sick child in a tiny white out-of-proportion bed, the father, sombrero in hand, kneeling in prayer, the Virgin tilting in on her pedestal from a cloud in the corner: Gracias a Dios, 1918...

...Everywhere we see soaring arches, ornamental reliefs, angels and martyred saints, fake flowers, dead flowers, vases of roses and gladioli and calla lilies and, in pools of melted wax, oily Lux Perpetua candles burning in the dim, silvery light...

...The burro died just outside the gates of Oaxaca and, inside its saddle bags, the man found a beautiful statue of the Virgin of Solitude—soledad in Spanish—who became Oaxaca's patron saint and in whose honor the basilica, over the course of fifty years, was built...

...Diss-ney...

...I just don't get it...

...the Church of San Felipe Neri, which features a plaster baby dressed in a white lace gown and lying in a tiny glass casket, its hands folded upright in prayer...

...The other part cannot find the words to say how I ache to touch Christ's wounded head, the mutilated hands and feet...

...The other part cannot explain my conviction that his Passion is a paradigm for the same agonizing fear—that if I die to myself there will be nothing left—that grips my soul every waking and sleeping hour...

...As a rule, we eagerly search out common ground, are ultracareful not to tread on each other's beliefs, but finally he is Commonweal 13 April 23,1999 pushed over the edge...

...Tim does most of the talking but, between my own semester of high-school Spanish and his translating, I am able to catch most of the conversation...

...Buenas tardes," Tim addresses the boy in front, whose goofy smile and rubbery limbs brand him immediately as the class clown...

...The church is on the edge of a huge plaza off the Avenida Independencia, five blocks from our hotel...

...After Mass, I walk slowly back to the hotel, savoring the words of the liturgy, the thought of Christ's body Heather King writes from Los Angeles...

...What did he say...

...A black habit falls in a wide triangle, hiding her feet, and her tiny face peers out from a white wimple...

...The front room is filled with an odd jumble of objects: a stuffed crocodile, a bottle of scorpions in formaldehyde, arrangements of milagros—tiny silver hands and feet and legs—arranged on red velvet to form the image of Christ, his arms spread wide in blessing...

...He asked what your memories will be," Tim says...

...I yearn to share my inchoate beliefs with him, yearn for us to grow in faith together...

...In the upper righthand corner the Virgin of Solitude, with her black habit and pedestal, hovers in a mysterious cloud of light and, underneath, it reads, "American tourist experiences moment of incoherent joy: Gracias a Dios, 1998...

...someone yells from the back...

...someone yells...

...L.A.," Tim answers...

...But he yearns just as much for me to go to his temple, and having learned the hard way that neither of us is about to change anytime soon, we now nurse our respective desires in silence...

...Good af-ter-noon," a voice from somewhere says, but we aren't paying much attention...

...I ask, tugging at Tim's sleeve...

...On our last afternoon, we visit the small museum that adjoins the Basilica de la Soledad...

...Every morning I go to Mass, Tim meditates and, afterwards, we go exploring...

...He stops before the figure of some long-forgotten saint with a staff and tunic, a walker of rockstrewn paths whose knees have big chunks of flesh torn away from them...

...the would-be murderer casting aside his machete in a flash of repentance: Gracias a Dios, 1902...

...Fine," I reply blandly...

...Good af-ter-noon," we hear again, followed by a chorus of giddy laughter...

...Even the air, smelling of dust and diesel fumes, seems transfigured...

...I'm sorry," he says, shaking his head...

...I expect to find Tim rolling his eyes in a corner, but even he finds them absorbing...

...During the Eucharist, a group of Indian women, rebozos draped over their heads like cowls, stand and sing the rosary in a kind of collective guttural croak so gripping that the hairs at the back of my neck stand on end...