Spirit is a Feeling, Not an Object

I attended mass yesterday with two of my dear buddies at a beautiful church, St. Anthony of Padua, named after San Antonio's patron saint.  The pastor greeted us and chided my friends with dry Irish humor for not having seeing them for the past few Sundays.

We sat in the front, not in the back, where my pals say people who might be ashamed for their sexual orientation often sit in church. Not us. What I love most about these men is their powerful sense of what counts, what matters in life. When they first started attending, they had "the talk" with the priest there, who said to them, "You and your partner are welcome to worship here. At this church we follow, not the letter of the law, but its spirit."

Mass was beautiful, sacred in song and ceremony, recreating the awe that living day-to-day often obscures in its many to-do's, mash up of memories and compelling goals and wishes for the future. I gave special thanks for our successful and safe travels in Spain and our safe return back home.

In recent months, reading about the Vatican and its many legal trials as well as surreal edicts against family planning and American nuns has made me retreat even further from organized religion. Yet, the joy and peace that bloomed around me in prayer, song and human-ship, bright, alive and as yellow as Esperanza itself, made me remember that the church is people, not press releases.

The irony was not lost on me of having sat recently in so many gilded, centuries-old churches, built from the riches of Spanish colonies, any of which would have easily dwarfed St. Anthony's, a concrete-block edifice built only 80 years ago for quarry workers on the edges of Alamo Heights.

The lesson for me was spirit is spirit, no matter the clothes, the jewels that surround it, those that it lacks or even excludes.

My Sis

We are a curious people, we Cuellars. Take me and my sister.

Life holds so many things for us to see and learn about, the only reason we ever sleep is because our bodies stage a sit-down strike and topple us over like Roman ruins late at night demanding equal time and rest.

First of all, the goals for me for the pilgrimage to Santiago de Campostella, were headed up by getting to spend 11 days with my sister.

I was a young girl when Elda married and left home to start her family. I longed to spend a chunk of quality time to get a sense of Elda beyond our usual scurrying about during holidays and family events. What was she like day to day? I was curious.

 Elda and her husband, Doug, come to visit their Texas clan every Spring, and we make a great week of it, with barbecue's at my brother and sister in law, Al and Mary's lake house, dinners at our house, treks into San Antonio for shopping and exploring new sights. The visit is usually during Spring Break, and we talk late into the night with my brother and sister in law from the Valley, Ari and Jo Ann, who drive up for the reunion. There are babies, kids and Mary's elderly mom from Laredo, Olga, and the whole circle of life spins noisily around us all the four or five days of her visit.

I love each visit, but when my sister and her husband leave back for their home north of L.A., I feel my heart burst and I start crying, knowing that for all the love that surrounds me, only the arms of my sister and brothers carry the memory of me as an infant, the me I used to be when our family was intact, Dad was alive, and Mom and he were heads of a whole, complete family.

The tragedy of his death at 42 was hard on us all, but my sister carried the greatest burden in some ways, hard on a girl aged 13. She organized our family's return from Arizona to Texas, and was a support to my broken-hearted mother. Mom's life was shattered, and my sister knew we would be safer nearer to Mom's mother and sister in Mexico, and Mom's girlhood friends in Laredo who helped to get our family back on its feet.

I wanted, more than anything, to spend time together with my sister, and the trip to Spain was both an adventure in and of itself, as walking on the Camino de Santiago for 110 plus kilometers in just over a week would be for anyone . The chance to spend hours walking and talking with Elda was the 'deal-maker' in the decision to save the money, train for the walk and read up on the Camino in preparation for the trip.

So who is Elda? She too is curious. About flowers, birds (she made the taxi driver stop twice to photograph storks), cooking, wines, art, language, culture, and all that is beautiful. She is endlessly energetic, friendly to everyone, and caring about other's well-being. Did I mention, really attractive? Yes, we are a lot alike:)

What did I learn? My sister is a learning machine. She has a hunter's vision for the natural world and all of humanity. She engaged a French set of pilgrims for miles, and had them singing with her and sharing grand children's photos. In one aldea (village) we passed beside a farm where an elderly woman bent over her washboard using a homemade soap bar to scrub sheets. She faced an east facing rock wall of her old home and was surrounded by dairy cows that towered over her. Elda approached the woman and asked permission to photograph her. I wouldn't have dared interrupt the busy woman. In the time it took for us to walk the length of the yard, Elda had her smiling and prettifying herself for what would turn out to be the best photo of the journey.

What else did I learn? My sister's enthusiasm does not wane and that she is fiery 24/7 in her passion for life.

If the struggles of her growing-up years marked my sister, they only served to make her resolute to live at full throttle, a todo pecho, facing the wind and ready for take-off. That helps explain the abiding love of her airline captain (retired) husband.

That's a lot to learn about, and I'm grateful for the experience this past month, and for the Camino of our braided lives since my birth, being her sister.

A Hill Country Welcome Home

Three weeks away, and what happens?

Nature takes its course, that's what. The grasshoppers, chicharras (cicadas), crickets, tree frogs and a drunken crowd of rowdy celebrants from around the insect world do what comes naturally after Spring rains. They fill the night with sounds seeking their companion, calling out, "Hey, there, listen to me! I am a great candidate for a mate. Check out my song!" "No, listen to my song! Here! From my tree! I'm the one you should have your baby (fill in the blank) with!"

Across the hills and wafting up from the bottoms there came last night wave after wave of their hello- look-at-me calls, thousands of churning, whirring maracas and castanets filling the clear full-moon sky.

Our serenata from the hill country might have sounded raucous and disorganized to the casual listener trying to sleep after 18 hours sitting upright in a speeding magical bird that old Columbus could only dream of while crossing back and forth over the ocean between Spain and the Americas.

But tired is tired, even in a speeding magical bird. Yet, laying flat, finally, back on your own bed, if you breathed deep and slowly, and listened hard, after a while, you might start to hear the melody strands of a familiar song carried on the breeze from the window facing south.  Coming in on a whim, the rhythm section brings in  ribbons of the familiar tune, Cielito Lindo. There now is the chorus, "Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta y no llores..."  Here now is the gentle trot of the opening of the song, and there, too, the lilting conclusion, "...se alegran cielito lindo los corazones." 

This non-linear rendition of Cielito Lindo came not in the logical progression, but all at once and from all directions. One hill carried the first strands of the song, the next hill the third, while from deep in the ravine below, I think I heard an old Woodie Guthrie or Johnny Cash tune trying to get untangled and join in with mariachi trumpets.

This joyous music came from insects that had not been born when we left for España.

The singers sounded like sailors glad to be home after a long journey away. Or maybe the choirs nestled in the cedars were singing for the travelers who were too weary to take up anything but their nightgowns.

The song's pieces were spread across the night sky, but my brain in that moment and at that stage of exhaustion could strangely and easily braid the pieces together as they lulled me to slumber.

The occasional chiming in from the mourning doves and whippoorwill completed the night's entertainment, and we felt all of nature welcome us back home.

Do you speak Castellano?

Growing up along the border of the U.S. and Mexico, noticing the languages people use, and when and where they use them has always interested me.

As a young child I would hear my sister and brothers converse with each other in English, then turn to speak to our mother in Spanish. The lunch table conversations bounced back and forth between languages. It was natural for us and no one minded, except Mom, when she sometimes couldn't follow the English line of ideas, and we would bring her up to speed in a quick translation. I'm not sure she was always happy with the arrangement of languages around the house, but neither am I sure she wanted to know every word of what we kids were talking about. Maybe she found some peace, if not quiet, in purposely not tuning into our chatter.

Her English improved tremendously over the years, some from adult education classes that were a part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, but mostly from the 1 hour or so of soaps she watched on TV while resting after getting our lunch together.

This gliding back and forth between languages was frowned on at school, mostly because girls from Nuevo Laredo were dominant Spanish speakers, and needed to catch up to the English required in our classes. On the playground we dominant English speakers mainly stuck to English, and the girls from Nuevo Laredo to Spanish.

In my neighborhood it was strictly English, and that bent, along with media's influence, must have affected our ideas about what was better or worse in languages as in life, and, as it turns out death. We kids watched tons of TV, some local commercials included. Funeral homes competed for business with commercials, and we kids mimicked the TV spots making fun of the scary subject of death. "Would you rather be buried by Pulido or Jackson?" I once asked Aida and Carol, my neighborhood pals. I recall we thought Jackson to be the better of the two. Based on what? That question, and others like it that cast a light on language and power, have consumed me for decades.

When the occasional person from Mexico would stop me on the streets of Laredo to ask help with directions or in need of a translation, they might ask, "Hablas Castellano?" I remember always responding icily, "Si, hablo Espanol." I somehow took offense at everything when I was eleven, and this case of Castellano was no exception. Why not call Spanish Spanish, what was this Castillian thing anyway? And was there a chance it could be better than my Spanish, grr-grr hiss-hiss, and more pre-teen angst.

Travel in Spain this year has served to help to at least partially solve this lifelong riddle. There is it turns out, Little Linda, a really good reason to ask if someone speaks Castellano instead of Spanish.

There are four official languages in Spain, as revealed on the back of the orange juice container on the table set for us by our generous and creative AirBnb host, Xevi (pronounced Chevy) Badosa:

Zumo de naranja = Castellano
Laranja zukua = Basque
Suc de toronja = Catalan
Zume de laranxa = Gallego

None of these are Spanish.

There are other languages, Chevy tells me, including Calo, spoken by the Gitanos, and Bable, spoken by 5000 or so in Asturias.

To fully solve the riddle, I would need to travel back in time to know exactly why we kids unanimously chose Jackson over Pulido for a funeral home to bury us in some nondescript and very, very distant future.

My best guess today, sitting in Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Temple in Barcelona writing this blog, is that choosing Jackson over Pulido was a decision based in part on our rapidly forming ideas about power, seen both in language and culture. The primary reason, though, would have to be not having enough information at hand about our rich cultures from both Mexico and Spain.

Thinking of it now, isn't that lack of awareness amongst Mexican Americans Aida, Carol and myself, in itself, a demonstration of how power is exerted?
I wish I knew then what I know now. But naturally, that's not the way we learn and grow.

Meet Galicia, our host on our journey

If you haven't met her yet, her name is Galicia. She's the bride of Celts, Spaniards and Romans. Her language is her own creation, and she's been the principal host to a traveling procession of spiritual seekers and other curious souls for nearly a millennium.

She's, first of all, welcoming to all the pilgrims who traverse her rich terrain.

This is of utmost importance. After living near the Alamo, Fiesta Texas, Seaworld and knowing Didneyland/World before Johnny Depp made his movies, I can smell a smile that's been forced by a paycheck.

The people here in Galicia are genuine in their welcome. She's got woods and farmlands from one side to the other, and the pilgrimage to Santiago de Campostela has placed us on her road with hundreds of people walking a sacred path that goes up and down hills and across countless streams and rivers.

Yesterday, we stopped to rest under the shade of a tall oak, leaning on an ancient stone wall. I dug deep into my light back pack to find a nearly empty bag of dried Target Stores brand cranberries. There were only a few berries left after our week of walking. I looked at the packaging, perhaps lonesome just a bit for the comforts of home, and read the cranberries bag was labelled Archer Farms. I smiled to think that the non-existent Archer Farms conjured by the Target Stores marketing minds, might have been inspired by the fertile, family-owned farms like we were surrounded by.

The same that used to span the Americas just a few short centuries ago, the wink of an eye by Galicia's clock.

'Para servirle'

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.—Emperor Charles V



The role of language in our thinking and actions has been brought to my attention recently during our walk on the Camino de Santiago.

Women and men from all across the globe, walking the 800 kilometer distance of the original Camino Frances, or a shorter version, 110 kilometers, such as for our group, pause as they pass one another to say "Buen Camino" in Spanish, to recognize our common humanity as we walk on country paths walked by pilgrims for 900 years.

As we approach the end of the road, bicyclists speed past, calling out, "Buen Camino," sometimes to greet you, and other times to warn you they are approaching from the rear at a fast clip, so 'Move over, Pilgrim', is the subtext.

My sister, Elda, is a wonderful born-journalist. She approaches people and wrangles information and photos from farmers, gardeners and people who are up to their elbows in daily chores. They are happy to stop to chat and be photographed by the charmer that is my sister. She asks each their name, and repeats it to them as she records it mentally for her daily journal.

The last woman who stopped to chat along the Camino with us was a fit and fast-moving woman who works as a sort of parks guide for the city of Lavacollas, who told us she had moved here from Mexico City, "el D-F" in the early 1980's. I can't remember her name, though my sister might.

What struck me was her sweet and very Mexican way of introducing herself by saying her first and last name, followed by the phrase "para servile" (to serve you, at your orders).

None of the hundred or so people we had met and exchanged names with during the previous 8-10 days, from countries such as Spain, South Korea, Ireland, England, Canada, Germany, France, or Austria had used a similar term such as 'para servirle' or similar terms that translate to 'at you service' or 'at your orders' when introducing themselves.

What does 'para servirle' mean in the year 2012? This falls under the category of the many mysterious ways Spanish-speaking people like Spaniards and Mexicans are alike and different.

I first noticed this on my first trip in the early 1990's, with my Mom and a tour group of Mexican Americans and Mexicans, who spoke often about the things we noticed such as lower voice tone and directness found in Spain in contrast to what at least I perceive as the more sonorous and courteous Spanish of Mexico.

What this might mean is that the woman from Mexico living in Lavacollas, Galicia, in Spain, might miss her native home and might have seen a chance to share a special bit of herself with us by using the term "para servirle." Or, that may be how she introduces herself this way out of habit, even after living here more than 20 years. Or it might mean that language illustrates the way power is impervious to the passing of time. The colonizer's dominion over the colonized might be long ago extinguished, as has Spain's influence over Mexico, except for the way 'good manners' are taught and in the way we are sometimes taught to speak, that centuries-old dominion and power live on.

After reading this post, my dear friend, Pilar Malo de Wellbaum, who I met while she taught at the San Antonio branch of the University of Mexico (UNAM) wrote me a brief note that both My sister and I said taught us something new. The terms 'a sus ordenes' or 'para servirle' take on a whole new meaning when you learn the entire phrase. Thank you, Pili. Here is Pili's note:

Thank you, Linda. If you pass by Llanes (Asturias) I have relatives there: Last name Carus (my mothers name. I was Pilar Malo Carus... A sus ordenes, or Para servirle (a Dios y a Usted).
Love your postings.

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Steady and sturdy me

I'm not sure that I've ever before realized how powerful, resilient and mysteriously strong we humans are, much, much more than I've ever known or even dreamed. We've walked close to eight miles for five days in a row, and have no ill effects save a few blisters that modern band aids seem to fix to near perfection. Yes, there are steep hills and long stretches where thoughts loop on the question 'are we there yet?' And, it's true, my maintenance does require rest, water, food, wine, chocolate and more important than all, companionship and friends, and in my fortunate case, family. But, all in all, I'm amazed at the rhythms and steady patterns of our walking together, the sounds of our boots and sticks that send our bodies forward, these elegant, mysterious tools that march confidently onward, our feet and legs. There are other surprises. The unexpected vistas and tree lined paths, streams and rivers, the perfect cafe con leche just when you need it, the frollicking lambs just beyond the road, the ladies who pause from their chores to peruse the parade of today's stream of hikers. There's also the surprise of strangers turned friends who you run into over and over. This journey is teaching me that there are people of a certain stripe, from the earth's four corners, willing to trudge, slog, hike, race, meander like us, across half of Spain, in search of something ineffable but valuable nonetheless. Our common goal of walking the Camino unites us, brings us energy to continue to Santiago de Campostela. For some, the goal is to arrive, for others it is the journey. I think along the way of what I want to do with this gift of life. I have no idea if this hike along The Way will lead me closer to any answers.Thus far on the road, I find a growing appreciation of my physical endurance, and that is gift enough for the entire experience.