Merton on a pilgrimage . . .
In Camagüey I found a Church to La Soledad, Our Lady of Solitude, a little dressed-up image up in a shadowy niche: you could hardly see her. La Soledad! One of my big devotions, and you never find her, never hear anything about her in this country, except that one of the old California missions was dedicated to her.
Finally my bus went roaring across the dry plain towards the blue wall of mountains: Oriente, the end of my pilgrimage.
When we had crossed over the divide and were going down through the green valleys towards the Caribbean Sea, I saw the yellow Basilica of Our Lady of Cobre, standing on a rising above the tin roofs of the mining village in the depths of a deep bowl of green, backed by cliffs and sheer slopes robed in jungle.
“There you are, Caridad del Cobre! It is you that I have come to see; you will ask Christ to make me His priest, and I will give you my heart, Lady: and if you will obtain for me this priesthood, I will remember you at my first Mass in such a way that the Mass will be for you and offered through your hands in gratitude to the Holy Trinity, Who has used your love to win me this great grace.”
The bus tore down the mountainside to Santiago. The mining engineer who had got on at the top of the divide was talking all the way down in English he had learned in New York, telling me of the graft that had enriched the politicians of Cuba and of Oriente.
In Santiago I ate dinner on the terrace of a big hotel in front of the cathedral. Across the square was the shell of a five-storey building that looked as if it had been gutted by a bomb: but the ruin had happened in an earthquake not so very long before. It was long enough ago so that the posters on the fence that had been put up in front of it had time to get tattered, and I was thinking: perhaps it is now getting to be time for another earthquake. And I looked up at the two towers of the cathedral, ready to sway and come booming down on my head.
The bus that took me to Cobre the next morning was the most dangerous of all the furious busses that are the terror of Cuba. I think it made most of the journey at eighty miles an hour on two wheels, and several times I thought it was going to explode. I said rosaries all the way up to the shrine, while the trees went by in a big greenish-yellow blur. If Our Lady had tried to appear to me, I probably would never even have gotten a glimpse of her.
I walked up the path that wound around the mound on which the Basilica stands. Entering the door, I was surprised that the floor was so shiny and the place was so clean. I was in the back of the church, up in the apse, in a kind of oratory behind the high altar, and there, facing me, in a little shrine, was La Caridad, the little, cheerful, black Virgin, crowned with a crown and dressed in royal robes, who is the Queen of Cuba.
There was nobody else in the place but a pious middle-aged lady attendant in a black dress who was eager to sell me a lot of medals and so I knelt before La Caridad and made my prayer and made my promise. I sneaked down into the Basilica after that, and knelt where I could see La Caridad and where I could really be alone and pray, but the pious lady, impatient to make her deal, or perhaps afraid that I might get up to some mischief in the Basilica, came down and peeked through the door.
So, disappointed and resigned, I got up and came out and bought a medal and got some change for the beggars and went away, without having a chance to say all that I wanted to say to La Caridad or to hear much from her.
As with any pilgrimage--whether to a cathedral or Walt Disney World--the build-up is generally better than the actual experience. The mind has a way of gilding everything with gold. Merton has waited several days to make it to the the shrine of the Queen of Cuba. Has thought about what he was going to say and do. Instead, he finds himself hounded out of the church by a poor woman trying to make a few cents.
I have not been on a pilgrimage these last seven days. Several times, I have sat down with my laptop to tap out a blog post, and instead I found myself waking up at one o'clock in the morning with a blank computer screen glowing in my face. Best laid plans. However, I have not simply been napping on my couch.
For the last several months, I have been preparing for an appearance by two-time U. S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey at the library where I work. Trethewey has been one of my favorite poets for a very long time. Ever since I read her first book--Domestic Work. One of the first things I did when I was hired at the library was draw up a dream list of authors. Authors I respected and loved and obsessed over. Trethewey was at the top of that list.
Then I sent an e-mail to Trethewey. A polite, gushing, fanboy e-mail. That was last October. After a couple months, I received a response from Trethewey's agent, saying that Natasha (yes, I can call her Natasha now) had gotten my message and was interested in doing a reading. I nearly fainted.
After negotiating terms, doing some fundraising, and about 500 more e-mails, I found myself this past Saturday in a Zoom meeting with Natasha, talking about teaching and weather and politicians and poetry. If Merton, on his pilgrimage to the shrine of the Queen of Cuba, was tragically disappointed by his experience, I was transported by my encounter with Trethewey. It was almost religious for me. I'm not kidding.
Even now, four days past the event, I still feel like I've just returned from Lourdes or something. Just basking in the memory of Trethewey's words and spirit. She said profound things about race and gender and memory and language. And today, on the eve of Derek Chauvin's conviction for the murder of George Floyd, I am experiencing the power of Trethewey's message even more strongly.
Traveling through a country stitched together with racial violence and injustice. Trethewey gives me hope tonight. So does the Chauvin verdict. And isn't that what pilgrimages are all about--hope?
Maybe Saint Marty is a pilgrim.
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