Templo de San Cayetano de la Valenciana--Guanajuato, Mexico

     I'm going to try to post sometime a picture of the cathedral in my calendar whose name is the title of this post. The picture I have on my wall shows how this church was built out of bricks taken out of the walls of a pre-Columbian temple that was there before by Indian slaves. A friend of mine, Angel, once asked me, "Do you know why we are born? I know why we are born. Do you know why we are born?" I gave some mealy-mouthed comfortable answer and he said, "No. I learned from my ancestors why we are born and this is it: We are born to die." He then proceeded to tell me the other thing he got from his ancestors, according to him. He said in Mexico there were churches built by slave labor by bricks taken from native temples, and he said the locals had a name for the slaves that did the work. They called them "Living Ancestors." Now is that profound or what?
     I sometimes aspire to be a living ancestor when I appropriate a bit of the bad around me and try to turn it around into food for the embryo of a better world I hope is forming. As for being born to die, I watched a Time/Life video a few years back called "Aztlan," in which historians said many of the indios the church encountered in what is now Mexico were actually enthusiastic when they heard Jesus had died for the sins of the whole world. Their native religion had forever commanded them to cut themselves and slaughter prisoners and have open heart sacrifices just to have a harvest and a sunrise and victory and basically just to keep life at the same crummy level it always is. The native religion had recognized the impossibility of an individual's ever repaying the debt of what has been given him and her and the message of Jesus was the piece that was missiong and everyone was initially ecstatically happy. What is so very tragic is how the conquistadores and the Church and then later the French and the US and the various revolutionary governments proceeded to take such advantage. What is interesting is most modern Mexicans and US citizens of Mexican descent still don't want the old gods back in quite the same way they had been here before. Most are fiercely anti-Church, but just as devoutly Catholic, in what can only be called a "Mexican way." One woman I used to go out with was convinced she was going to Hell, but she still loved God with all her heart. I kept telling her she was crazy as if that was going to help anything, but now I find that paradox beautiful. She was being a Living Ancestor. I wish all religious people could be so courageous and good.