Surviving Sundays

Our Sundays have gotten increasingly exciting. We miss our St. James United Methodist family and want to visit the Methodist Church in Puebla. But during our first month here, we met many new people, adjusted to a lot of new things, and we weren’t quite ready for a congregation.

Instead, we ventured to Parque Ecologico, only about a mile and a half away from our apartment. Many of the streets on Sunday are closed so that families can walk together, including the street circling the park which, when we arrived, was filled with runners and cyclists. We entered the park gate and found a walking path next to a cycling path.

A family on roller skates skimmed past us. On the grass, what looked like a church group cheered on children in the middle of a tug-of-war game. The tree-lined path took us down a hill, showing us the snow-capped Matlalcueitl (I think it was Matlalcueitl), one of the three main volcanoes surrounding Puebla.

We wandered to a little lake. “Look at the Mexican ducks,” Langston said.

“Langston,” I responded, “just because we are in Mexico, you don’t need to modify all your nouns with ‘Mexican.’”

He pulled out his phone to show me that the ducks were, indeed, the species called Mexican duck, which happen to be appropriately located here in Mexico.

We crossed a swinging rope bridge.

Scattered throughout the park were playgrounds and exercise areas. These exercise areas for grown-ups are common throughout our part of Puebla and are fun to use.

Visiting Parque Ecologico was just the right kind of worship for us in our first month here.

The historic center of Puebla has so many churches, beautiful churches. Every block seems to have another impressive church on the corner. The Templo Conventual de Nuestra Senora del Carmen, built in the 17^th century, towers on one side of our plaza. When my dad was visiting, he suggested that we try a service there.

The church does not have a website, and no hours were posted outside the gates. When my dad and Simone got fresh bread from the pandaria near our house, the gates were open, and they found a little sign with the service times.

The moment we walked through the huge wooden doors, we were immediately quieted by the majesty of the sanctuary. Gold edging highlight the elaborate cupolas in the ceiling. Enormous bouquets of white flowers and trailing greenery line the sides of the sanctuary beneath enormous paintings. In one painting, angels reached towards Jesus’ outstretched hand.

The pews were mostly full, but we found space near the back of the sanctuary.

Although we could not see the musician, a guitar played meditative cords from the front of the sanctuary. The church bells rang, and the rich aroma of incense wafted towards us.

I grabbed my jacket and smacked it over Marie’s face. She has had an anaphylactic reaction to incense, and, like most mothers, I take my role of keeping her alive very seriously. She whispered beneath the jacket, but this was not my time to budge. The incense lingered, and Marie kept trying to communicate something. I finally realized that I had given her a bloody nose. By now, the sanctuary was packed, and blood was streaming out of her nose. I put the jacket back over her face and tried to navigate between the people lining the edges of the sanctuary.

An abuela handed me a package of tissues. Gracias, muchas gracias.

Finally, her bloody nose abated, and we made it back to the pew for the prayers, the short powerful homily about the beauty of the word of the Lord, and the lifting up of the sacrament. At the front, Mary, holding Jesus in one arm, stretches out her other hand to us, her blue and white robes flowing around her. She is in a circular gold colonnade with both a crown and golden halo.

And all the mothers in the congregation, including myself, know she has suffered the worst a human can suffer and ask her, please, help me care for my children.

“I liked that service,” Simone said after we left the church and entered the plaza. “Even though I couldn’t understand all the Spanish, I knew what the priest was saying.” The beauty of a shared liturgy throughout time and space.  

“I didn’t,” Langston said, “I go to church to get spiritually fed. I can’t get spiritually fed if I don’t understand the sermon.”

“Well,” said my dad, “when you are my age, even when you can’t hear very well and don’t understand everything, there is something meaningful about being together in a beautiful place to worship. But I know we are in very different stages of life.”

I was going to write about our experiences at Iglesia La Vid Puebla with the exuberant welcome, the drums that somehow felt as if they beat right in my heart, and the giftedness of the preacher, but this post is getting very long. We, more specifically I, hope to visit the Methodist church this Sunday.