Morada Walk, Taos Mountain in the background, white
cross Georgia O’Keeffe painted, Taos, New Mexico,
January 2003, Tri-X black & white film print, photo ©
2003-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
gusty April winds
ruffle brambled shoots of green
Spring bounds from behind
anniversaries
separate fiction from fact
squeeze light from the dark
photosynthesis
through veins of a single leaf
gives life to the world
-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
-related to posts: haiku (one-a-day) and Nikki Giovanni – Hope at V-Tech
The first time I went to Taos (talking workshop), Natalie took us to this cross. It was January, and we slow-walked in silence. Though slow-walking would grow to be very familiar, that day and the experience is indelibly etched in my mind. When I got back to Minnesota, I told everyone about it; I even demonstrated how slow we walked. I’ve heard many people tell about their personal traditions when they go back to Taos (visiting Mabel’s grave, going to the Harwood)…mine is always a slow-walk to the cross.
This black-and-white photo is really beautiful. It reminds me of the ones Ansel Adams took decades ago.
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Teri, thank you. I’m fond of this photograph because it brings back similar memories for me. I ran into it recently when I was going back through some old photos of Taos. There is something about the black and white negative print that adds a starkness to the image. And a silence, too.
I’d like to go into a darkroom and print this image larger, burning and dodging a couple of areas to pull in a little more detail (this one was not handprinted). It quiets me to remember walking the morada. Are you familiar with the history of the Penitentes that walked there? I’ve only read a little about them.
ybonesy, I was going to ask if you had any other information about them, being from New Mexico. I only know what I have heard word-of-mouth from people in Taos or those around Mabel Dodge. But I haven’t found a solid accessible resource. There is a brief rundown in Wikipedia. But I never know how reliable the details there are.
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The Penitentes–yes. Natalie told us about them, and one of the women in the Intensive from New Mexico filled in more details.
On one of my slow-walks out there, I ran into a mother and daughter walking their dogs on the path. The mother (about 70), talked very tenderly and respectfully about their presence there and around New Mexico. Her daughter (about 50) spent a lot of time rolling her eyes and making clicking noises with her tongue. She obviously thought the whole lot of Penitentes were unimportant and irrelevant.
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QM, the black-and-white is perfect for the cross at the morada. So quiet and reverent. I’d love to see the hand-printed version of this. Just hearing you describe what you’d do, I can tell it would be something great to see.
Well, I have a few books on the Penitentes. My father’s dad was “hermano mayor” of the Penitentes of Costilla, about 40 miles north of Taos. They were (and are — some communities have active “brotherhoods” ) a tradition that is said to have started on account of the remoteness of the New Mexico colonies relative to the Spanish center in Mexico City, back when the Spaniards colonized Mexico and New Mexico. In other words, there were not sufficient formal religious institutions nor priests to minister the people in these far-away New Mexico communities, and so, it is thought, the Penitentes came about as a way to carry out Catholic teachings.
They are not a cult, as I’ve heard them described by people who don’t understand them. There are some characteristics that today seem archaic (remember, the Penitentes *are* archaic) — such as the fact that they were male only, their rituals were done in secret, they emulated the suffering and life of Christ and, therefore, involved (involve) self-flaggelation, carrying the cross, and other rituals that we really don’t know about because of the privacy.
In Spain, there are processions that you see during Holy Week and other times, which resemble the type of Penitente processions in terms of reliving the path of Jesus Christ as he was being taken to be crucified. It is thought that perhaps some of the Penitiente rituals you see in NM come from this Spanish tradition. However, it’s not really known and for the most part it is believed that the Pentitentes are uniquely New Mexico, evolved from a blending of several aspects of the Catholic faith but shaped by the circumstances of this particular place.
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QM, thank you for commemorating the anniversary of this shooting. It doesn’t seem like a year ago, does it? Remember I did that one post and immediately deleted it? It was such a horrible time. At the time it was so hard not to blog about it yet something seemed very dirty in doing so.
The one thing I heard a lot about today was the “carry conceal” campus bill that didn’t get very far — whether students should be able to carry concealed weapons on campuses. The bill was more complex than that, but that’s my simplification.
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This one jumped out with power:
“anniversaries
separate fiction from fact
squeeze light from the dark”
excellent!!
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I was also struck by the power of that one, Scot.
Excellent also was: through veins of a single leaf
gives life to the world
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ybonesy, thank you for the personal history of the Penitentes. I didn’t know it was so close to you and in your family history. I really appreciated your comment. I had read that the moradas were the community gathering places for the Pentitentes, and about the ritual of carrying the cross along this road. I didn’t know about the secrecy; it makes sense then, that we would not know a lot about them.
I was struck by your last line: it is believed that the Pentitentes are uniquely New Mexico, evolved from a blending of several aspects of the Catholic faith but shaped by the circumstances of this particular place.
I am always amazed at the power of place, the earth, the land, the people connected to the land, and the way that place shapes who we are, who we become.
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Thank you Scot and Spiritdwel. Much appreciated.
ybonesy, about the anniversary, I thought of it a lot yesterday, and that there were other school shootings after this one over the last year. I heard a staggering statistic that there are 60 shootings in this country every day. It’s hard to get the mind around that.
I only listened to one NPR interview on Virginia Tech. It was by a V-Tech Professor there. He talked about how he and his wife went away for a while after the shootings, to a quiet place, I think it was in France, because his wife was attending a conference there. He said in the peace and quiet of staring out at the Mediterranean, it hit him hard what had just happened. You could tell it was still hard to talk about.
And if you think about the reality of a grieving process, one year is barely enough time to grieve. It takes a lot longer than that.
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