Monday, January 26
Today was a wonderful day with the exception of the return of my altitude sickness. Embarrassing to leave class to throw up! Otherwise, the sky was blue, the clouds fluffy, the mountains appeared more than usual through the clouds in all their green glory.
Each of us had a productive lesson this morning, walked home for lunch (mine was chamomile tea), I rested for an hour, then we walked back up the hill to school. It takes about 40 minutes for just under a mile because of the altitude. As soon as I had emptied everything I had ever eaten or drunk in my 69 years, we went out with Carlos to tour the city and learn about its history. Carlos is an amazing teacher! He loves to share his city with others, and to learn about other places as well. He's been a mechanical engineer for a year (no le gusta), studied theology ( also no le gusta) and now is a teacher in the Simon Bolívar school. Married about two years, he explained that of the 600,000 people in Cuenca, because of migration to the U.S., only 100,000 of them are male. I think China and Ecuador should have a population swap. In the museum yesterday we learned that (at least that display creator thinks so) Ecuadoreans and other native peoples here originally came from Asia, so that might work.
We asked if he was happy in his situation, and he replied he was ecstatic with her. She is from Norway. He says if you have a girlfriend, it is almost mandatory that you marry her, she can't be just a friend. When she says she is introducing you to her parents, that's it, the end, the chain goes on. He is an energetic, smiling, philosophical young man--Vincent sang his praises all the way home. Don't get me wrong, I was impressed with him, too, but you know how enthusiastic Vincent is! Carlos is a great teacher, and that gets Vincent excited. It was also his balance, the way V says it, Carlos is living inside the box, but he thinks outside it. He sees both the gifts and the disadvantages of everything, and that appeals to both our perfectionistic selves. He showed us the famous cathedral where the geological survey team began the triangulation to map out the equator. There's a very ironical sign there that this cathedral is more famous than the pyramids of Egypt. He felt that was very presumptuous. He also noted that the cathedral, the old one, was situated exactly on top of the temple of the moon belonging to the Cañari people, which was first exactly aligned to view the solstices, and that unwittingly, these modern engineers were following in the footsteps of the ancient scientists.
He also noted that the Inca conquest of the first people was very well planned out. After many years of warfare, during which they were not able to overcome Cañari resistance, the Incas arranged a marriage between an Incan prince and a Cañari princess. The resistance died away as the Incas began to incorporate Cañari culture into their own. The Incas worshipped the sun, from which all life on earth derives. The Cañari worshipped the moon. When the Incas conquered Cuenca, they included the moon in the Inca pantheon along with the sun god. Silver and gold were important to these people as symbols of their deities, gold for the sun because it was the same color as the sun and very shiny, silver for the moon. Their biggest treasure was the shell of the sea creature Spondylus, because it was so hard to get. They live only on a limited part of the coast of Ecuador (claims by Peru notwithstanding), and many people died to get them. They would tie a big rock to one leg and plunge to the bottom of the sea, grab the Spondylus and cut the rope. Carlos said it was a fatal mistake to lose the knife on the way down. So the rulers only could wear Spondylus shell. Gold and silver was for the priests and nobles, etc. When the Spanish came, they learned of this, went to the coast, harvested the shell and brought it back to trade for gold and silver. Both were happy because both treasured different things.
The Spanish friars developed the Feast of Corpus Christi to transition the faith of the people from the sun-god (represented by the large gold monstrance carried in the procession) which contained a loaf of consecrated bread. This procession was held on the 21st of June, the vernal equinox, which was a big celebration for the worshippers of the sun because it is the longest day of the year. They brought all kinds of food and treasures to offer to the sun and buried them in a big pit. The Spanish added the fillip of offering free bread and other foods (termed "dulces" or sweets here) and so the transition was accomplished little by little. On this feast, all over the world, you can see the success of this "recasting" of the sacred story. At least it was non-violent, as so many of the other efforts were not.
It was very inspiring for me to talk with Yadira, my instructor, this morning about the ecological crisis, and the "active hope" that is required of each of us. I told her the 100th monkey story in Spanish and that if I was successful in telling it, she had to give me a star. She laughed, but I did succeed in explaining it. There is always hope, because reality is always more than we can see or sense. She says, and I agree, our hope is in teaching our children better ways to live in the world, to experience the unity and harmony of all creation, to see ourselves as part of it, not lords, to conserve resources rather than to squander them to impress each other.
An inspiring day, as we touched the hem of the sacred once more, seeing how we are all "mezcla"--mixed together--our cultures, our basic humanity, our religions, emotions, and our DNA. In this mixture, it is possible to recognize the other as like ourselves, not a threat, but a helper in the healing of the earth, which desires more than ever to be one body at peace with itself.
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