June 16, 2006
I woke well rested to my first full day in Santiago. A little yoga, a little free breakfast (I love that free food thing!), a quick check of the emails and I was off. I wandered the city streets awhile making my way to the Cathedral where it was suggested tourists attend the high noon mass. There is an amazing energy in the air here in Santiago. Something of joy or maybe it is just an aliveness I haven’t seen many other places in the world. I entered the old town through the Arco de Mazarelos, the only gateway that has been preserved from the old city walls, and entered the University area. With young twenty-somethings drinking coffee at little outdoor tables, running around with books, and sitting on benches talking deeply about the important matters of life, it was filled with the same vitality any university area anywhere in the world seems to have. The youth carry such hope – of life ahead, of loves to come, of all the many possibilities that lay before them. Whenever they are gathered together in the pursuit of learning (as opposed to drinking), there is a certain energy that permeates everything around them. Santiago was no different in this regard.
The difference is that you continue walking, wandering through stone streets that weave like tangled yarn, staring wide-eyed at each new façade of the Cathedral that you come upon, feeling that energy all the while until suddenly you realize the energy is the same but you are no longer surrounded by students. Everywhere you look there are people in their 50’s and 60’s and even 70’s with backpacks and walking sticks - some alone, some in groups, some on bikes, some laying prostrate on the pavement, but all of them there, sharing a camaraderie, a spirit, a sense of having done - of having made the pilgrimage to Santiago. It is truly an amazing sight. I have never seen so many older people with such excitement and energy and enthusiasm. Every ounce of spirit that pervades university areas filled the air of Plaza Obradorio but with the occasional exception of a lone solo pilgrim like me, I would say the average age in that square was at least 55.
I made my way with these hundreds, if not thousands, of happy folk into the cathedral. Words cannot do the Cathedral justice, from neither the outside nor in, and I shall not try where Hemingway and others have failed. I can say that the energy, the excitement, the very essence of life was palpable as predominately older people sat in benches, on confessional steps or the edges of the many columns, and even kneeled or sat on the cold stone ground waiting for the mass to begin. An ancient nun came out and asked for silence, a request relatively well met for a cathedral filled with excited people from all over the world, and began to sing in one of the most angelic voices I have ever heard. It was a full mass with song and prayer. Some parts were translated into other languages but most was in Spanish. I was beginning to get a little restless by communion and so wandered off to kiss the mantle of St James as hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have done before me. I was about to leave, figuring whatever I had heard about some incense burner being swung through the air - to cover up the smell of those hundreds of thousands of (can you imagine) unbathed pilgrims who had hiked cross country for days generally timing their arrival for this mass - couldn’t be that impressive. Fortunately, I followed the advice of the guide book and stayed. Wow.
It doesn’t sound like much, but this was an impressive sight indeed. The priest finishes the mass then eight men in traditional monk robes take up these large ropes suspended from a pulley mechanism in the ceiling that looks just like the ones you saw in your second grade science book when you learned how inventions like the wheel and the rope and pulley changed the life of man. Attached to the other end of the rope is a beautiful silver larger than man-sized incense burner. The men pull on the rope, hefting the incense burner that is now spilling over with smoke and the light smell of incense (I unfortunately didn’t recognize what kind) and begin pulling so that it swings from side to side. Not that impressive. Then just as you are about to yawn, the burner extends past its centrifugal point (I think that’s what it is called). Remember the way the swing would drop when you went higher than the bar as a little kid? Now imagine this gigantic silver incense burner falling straight at you out of the rafters in what looks like a free fall then suddenly catching the rope and swinging off in the other direction to do the same thing on the other side. Now remember that you are in one of the greatest and largest cathedrals of all time. Imagine the immensity, the height of the rafters, the sheer impressiveness of the building from the inside and then picture the size and length of the rope and distance it can travel – far enough to require eight men to control it! I was impressed. Everyone was impressed. As the sweet smelling silver urn plummeted toward you and your fellow travelers there was a sensation much like riding the Wild Claw at the carnival – you just know you are about to die when suddenly the laws of physics sweep you out of harm’s way. You know that exhilaration you feel when you get off one of those rides? That’s what you feel inside the Pilgrim’s Mass. I’ll bet you never thought a Catholic church service could be exhilarating!
I love this about traveling – not just the chance to have these experiences, see such things, but the experience of camaraderie that naturally grows around them. Mankind is, I believe, at his best when engaged in sharing the spirit of joy, of accomplishment, of common experience. This is an everyday reality in the little town of Santiago de Compostela. I feel blessed to have been a part of it.
Comments