At the parish hostel in Granon, everyone helps. The two hospitaleros, young men hardly older than myself, handed out vegetables and cutting boards and assorted knives. In a few different languages and with a myriad of hand gestures, they indicated that we were to make salad and dice the stew vegetables. And so, 20 people began chopping.
"I am not helping yet," said a tall blond man across from me. "Perhaps you give me half your lettuce, and I will chop. Maybe will be more efficient yes?"
"Oh Jesus, you must be German," said my delightfully mouthy friend Jess from a few nights back.
She was right. Though I have noticed people are often poking at the Germans. The Irish did it too, said the Germans are too militant about their walking schedules. And on the first night, when a German man suggested we all, "Find ze discoteque," the Hungarian across from him just shook his head.
"Oh jeez, such a German word. No one uses this word anymore, this 'discoteque.'"
In Granon, the tall, polite German sliced lettuce and tomato, and so did his tall quiet friend. And so did the rest of us — and parsley, squash, onion, boiled egg, peppers and carrots.
It's part of the tradition, in a hostel where the price to stay and eat there is whatever you are able to give. Everyone makes dinner, goes to mass, fetches the bread, eats together, does the dishes, puts up the tables and chairs.
Fetching the bread required the lot of us, about 45 people, to gather up and walk down the street en masse to the bakery. The Italian hospitalero quickly trained two guitar players in the prefered song, and we walked and sang, "Esperanza, esperanza, solo sabas barar, cha-cha-cha," until we gathered, dreamy and a little confused, around the bakery door.
(Shaky translation: Hope, hope, all you need in life is to dance, cha-cha-cha.)
When we arrived, out popped Annalita, the baker who heard us coming. And I have to wonder how many days in a row she has met this procession.
Annalita demanded a song from each country represented in the group, which was many. When it was the USA's turn I suggested a song no one knew, so we sang a different one. When she was satisfied, she sent us off with armloads of bread for dinner and breakfast.
I'm having difficulty explaining how different this place was from any other I've stayed in. How special.
Not the best night's sleep I've had, but the only place I had to make myself leave, regrettfully, dragging my feet and catching my breath.
It's something about the young men and their quiet leadership around the ancient building.
It's something about the concept of donated funds and shared work over fees and services.
It's something about the presence of music.
It's something about a washing machine perched at an angle on the fourth floor, on top of a rubble heap from some long past part of the structure, now just a pile of stones against the north wall.
And it was something about this final tradition, which cannot really be told but I'll try.
Just before bed, the hospitaleros invite us to share a moment in the church, which this building is a part of. We are ushered toward a skinny door in the back of the second-floor dormitory, and suddenly we are in the choral balcony, high above the pews in the dark hall. Someone has lit candles between the carved chairs that line the walls, whose armrests reach to the sitter's shoulders, so that the little candles glow on all our cheeks.
The stone arches of this centuries-old place are strong, graceful lines high above our heads. And before us, across all that open air and all those rows of wooden benches down below, is the golden, three-story altarpiece with its carved figures and tragedies and triumphs. What does it represent? History? Man's struggle for God? A religion's conflicted dominion over humanity? I don't know. The story-work alone is illuminated, and all the way over and up in the choral balcony, we are lit still by only candles, and the dimmest glow reflecting off the round, stained-blue glass behind us.
The altarpiece (above). Daytime view of the choir loft, from the altar (below.) Not my pictures.
One hospitalero, a thin, kind man with an Eastern European accent, lights a large candle and explains the tradition. He invites us to pass the candle, and to in turn say or sing something in our own language, a prayer of any religion, of no religion, a song of home, silence — all is welcome.
In such a place, even words spoken quietly rise up and carry out. They are lifted from the lips like a parent lifts a child — a kind, acoustic architecture meant to carry prayers. And so it goes, as each person lifts the candle and speaks, the cadence of their native tongues thrumming through a nearly empty cavern, voices rolling against stone in more languages than I can identify, earnestness unmistakable above all other shades of meaning.
When it's my turn my heart is a troubled, rumbling thing inside my chest — no one else had sang. But I do anyway. A verse of my favorite sea chanty, Scottish in origin I think, and one that I think reflects the journey we are on.
When the wind is wild with shouting
And the waves mount ever higher
Anxious eyes turn ever seaward
To see us home boys to Mingalay.
I do not sing quietly. But I do close my eyes, and I offer up my short song to the stone and the pilgrims and the past. I've always thought it such an unfairness that lovely things so often make me sad. That after singing a beautiful song in a dark church, surrounded by kind people, I can still be sad and lonely. Right alongside the joy and hope. They are old feelings as common as my eyelashes. But I am starting to think that just means I am alive. That at our best we are mostly a kind of hopeful, heart-aching mess. And that's a thing I can be grateful for. A good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment