On Friday night materials are being staged for the upcoming carpet creations.  Here are a bunch of large bags of different colored sand, and below, one of my neighbors is sifting and working through some sand to make it as fine as possible.

Inside the church, up towards the front was a carpet and this display of spirits.  I don’t honestly know what it all meant but someone worked very hard on it.  It was so packed in there that there was no chance of getting up to see the carpet.

Then it was time to eat some of Dona (pronounced donya) Luki’s great food, and find some treats for desert.

Below are buenuelos.  They are very much like a popover and they are served with a warm syrup that’s mostly honey, cinnamon, and cider.  Oh man!

To the right of the buenuelos is mole.  I think that’s how it’s spelled and it is pronounced moe lay.  Fried plantains in chocolate.  Below, Sammy is trying to decide between churros, on the right, and some caramel apples she spotted earlier.  The churros are essentially sugar donut sticks with chocolate sauce poured on.  Oh man, again!!!

I think I’m gonna like procession weekend in Santa Ana. 🙂

Before I came to Guatemala this time, I knew I was going to return to Santiago, and I knew I wanted to write about Fr. Stanley Rother.  I pictured myself laboriously penning this long dissertation  that people would marvel at.  It would be filled with information about the man, his family, the priest, and the death of the priest.  But look at those eyes. Can’t you just hear this man saying to me, “Eric, thank you, but that’s so silly.”  So, realizing that that was more about me than about him,  my novelette has been cast aside in favor of a simpler attempt at tribute.

I sat alone for a long time in the room where Fr. Stanley was murdered.  I read things around the church grounds about this place and this man.  The violence of the early 80s that took his life also orphaned my friend Renato and his older brother Mario.  They were just small boys.

In recent days I’ve read about, and thought a lot about, what I wanted to write to honor this man.  Those of you who have followed my writing from the beginning, know that I avoid taking  photos in worship spaces.  And that it’s hard for me to take pictures in places I consider hallowed ground.  I tell you that as prelude to the first thing  that speaks to me about Fr. Rother.

Stanley Rother wasn’t doing well in his first seminary.  Recognizing his passion, the Rector of that seminary asked a friend from another seminary if he would accept Stanley for another chance at achieving ordination.  While he should have been studying, Stanley Rother was fixing things and doing things that needed to be done.

The exquisite altar area inside the church in Santiago is largely the work of Fr. Stanley’s hands and supervision.  Stanley Rother grew up on a farm, and thus had all of those skills of do-it-yourself and self sufficiency that we’ve come to know most farmers have.  During the course of his seminary years and throughout his priesthood, especially in Guatemala, Fr. Stanley was carpenter, confessor, electrician, homilist, bull dozer driver, teacher, plumber, pastor, nurse, neighbor, dentist, mourner, mason, and man of God.  And he was all of those things in an atmosphere of unrest, and during a time when his parishioners would just disappear.  Or tortured bodies of people he knew would turn up in the streets.  We can’t begin to imagine.  When all of this was happening I was expanding my suit wardrobe and deciding what color my company car should be.  I know, suit wardrobe?  Go figure. 😉

While he was with us, Fr. Stanley never stopped doing things that needed to be done.  For his parishes, for his parishioners, for his Church, for his neighbors, for hundreds of school kids, for what was right.

Secondly, I could not write about Fr. Stanley without including the fact that he was safe at one point.  In January of 1981, learning that Fr. Stanley had been put on a death list, The Church had pulled him  out of Guatemala determining that it was just too dangerous to leave him there.  Made sense.  But not to Stanley Rother.  Believing, and living the example, that the shepherd does not leave his flock, he prosecuted a campaign with his superiors, and in May of 1981 was granted permission to return to Guatemala.  Before July ended, he was dead.

This photo is looking across a small garden area to the entrance, (in the corner), of the room where Fr. Stanley was shot twice in the head.  It’s in the area on the church grounds of the original school and rectory.  In the early morning hours of July 28th, gunmen forced their way into the rectory.  The story of three men is the final thing I want to share with you, because their story is emblematic of not only the violence of civil war, but also the politics of power and corruption.

Three men were arrested for killing Fr. Stanley.  One other man and one woman were brought in for questioning concerning the murder.  Eventually it was announced that the three men confessed, saying they broke in to the church to commit robbery and killed the priest when he interrupted them.  Many of the people, if not most, that were familiar with all of the circumstances, never believed that the three men killed Fr. Stanley.  Instead the convictions were a set up, and a cover up of paramilitary involvement in what was in a truth an assassination.  Due to pressure from the US Gov’t, and the church, the convictions were eventually vacated.  No one else was ever charged with the murder.

It’s right now well after midnight and I realize I have no idea how to close this post.  Stanley Francis Rother and Fr. Stanley have been parked in my head for days.  Putting together these few simple paragraphs has taken me hours and hours ’cause I so wanted to be brief and do him justice.  I feel like it would have been an honor to know him.  The love that is felt for him and his memory is still very evident in the place where he lived and died.  A young girl that was working in a small memento shop, locked the door and led me to the room when I inquired about it’s whereabouts.  My sense is, that in keeping with the man, it’s location is understated.  When I left, she was standing by the garden a ways down the corridor.  She had tears and said, thank you for coming.  It was an amazing moment that only later came to full register.  I mean hundreds of people come to visit this place and Fr. Stanley was killed long before she was born.  I have my own small understanding of his love for this country and it’s people.

And so, I’m going to exercise a closing technique I’ve used before.  When in doubt, just stop.

There is no bigger weekend than this for Santa Ana.  It’s absolute preparation chaos for the starting point of this week-end’s procession.  I’m glad to be here to witness it.  As you can see the village is in full muster.

The procession today starts in Jocotanengo which is a ways out from Antigua.  It also means that the procession won’t reach the main part of Antigua until later in the evening.  Too late for me to be walking home, and I didn’t know whether it was realistic for me to hope to catch a ride.  But these photos are mostly procession related.

These people are walking along a street outside the Church of San Francisco called Calle de los Pasos.  Literally translated it means street of steps.  The Catholic translation is Stations of the Cross.  The first station is on the grounds of San Francisco and most of the stations are all along the Calle de los Pasos. The last two are on the grounds of El Calvario, a church about mile away.  These two photos show the outside and inside of one of the stations.

Here is an area where much of figures and floats used in the processions are stored.  The processions build in size so a lot of these are not used until the last ones.  Here’s favorite of mine; the supper table in the Upper Room with the Apostles arguing amongst themselves.

Remember a photo from a few posts ago of a vendor meeting outside the Church of La Merced?  Here’s what it looks like in the little park in front of the church on a precession Sunday.

And always the carpet work before the processions.

Evening back home up on the roof.  I am well and hope you all are too.

The Church here in Santa Ana has a small school.  On Saturday the kids from the school had their own La Procesion.  Here are a few photos of a big day for them.  Next week is a very important weekend for Santa Ana.  It will be the inicio, the starting point, for the procession to and through Antigua.  I’m thinking it’s going to be hard to get anywhere in Santa Ana, even on foot.

The float they are carrying is a smaller replica of a larger one that features Jesus carrying his cross and his Mother Mary.  The sign on the front says, happy are they who believe without seeing.

I think I alluded to this coming event in a previous post.  On Friday I visited the family of my sponsor kid, Edgar.  It was a birthday lunch for his younger brother Ericson.  I’ve become very attached to both of these boys and their family.  They are very active in their Evangelical Church and they are all just nice, nice people.  I love witnessing the relationship the boys have with their mother.  I have met, but rarely see, their dad because it is necessary for him to always be at work.

We had papillon for lunch.  Papillon I can best describe as a chicken stew.  It is made with whole pieces of chicken, potatoes, and carrots, and is traditionally served with rice in a bowl.  It is often very spicy.  This version had some great zing to it, but my hostess teased me and admitted she went easy on the peppers in deference to her gringo friend. 🙂  Before we ate Ericson stood and said a prayer.  I later learned by asking that it was not a recited prayer but spoken in his own words.  I suspected as much because during the prayer I heard my name spoken twice.

And of course there was the cake.  That was my contribution to the festivities.  Here Ericson is literally licking his lips staring at his cake.  Ericson has a sponsor who lives somewhere in California, but she has not been able to travel to Guatemala, so he has never actually met her.  He showed Renato and I a birthday card he had received from her.  He’s quite a sensitive, emotional kid and was very touched that his brother’s sponsor would bring him a cake and celebrate his birthday.  It was my pleasure I can assure you.

Here’s Ericson and his mom enjoying the candle moment.  That’s Renato who almost made it into the picture.  Also in attendance were Alma, the social worker in San Miguel Milpas Altas, and of course Edgar.  The lunch was great, the cake was great, and the laughter plentiful.

I was sitting on a small balcony inside a coffee shop when these kids sat down on the curb outside to eat their lunch.  I was enjoying a mango smoothie and my latest book but became fascinated by these kids.  I just sat and watched them for a long time, but they were never aware of me.  The pictures are a little fuzzy ’cause I was on full zoom and holding my phone as steady as I could.

Here is my mostly speculated narrative.  The two younger kids were the younger siblings of the girl on the left and it was her day to watch them.  Maybe that’s everyday.  They had the look of siblings and as the younger kids would get antsy and start to wonder off, it was her that called them back.  Sometimes with a kind of pretend authoritative sternness that was adorable.  The two older girls may be related but not sisters.  They did not look at all alike.

If you look closely you can see that the girl on the left has a green blanket tied across a shoulder.  There was an infant in that cocoon.  No way of knowing if it was hers or another younger sibling.  There are babies having babies all over the world.  As I watched, I was thinking about the contrast between the millions we spend in the US on the safety testing of baby carriers and seats, and the literally millions of toddlers and infants throughout the world who survive and thrive having ridden around in a sling fashioned from just a simple blanket.

You can also see, next to the small girl, tablets of lottery tickets.  This is what brings these two older girls to the street to try to make a little money.  I don’t really know anything about the lottery other than it exists.

As I was leaving I stopped and asked them how much they had paid for their lunch.  Three small styrofoam plates, with a small piece of chicken and some rice, and two orange drinks shared amongst the four kids.  19 quetzals, $2.55 US.  The orange drinks were more expensive than the food.  I gave them a 20Q note and did my best to explain that I wanted to buy their lunch for them.  The quizzical smiles on their faces were worth ten times that. 🙂

I am well and hope you all are too.