by Tilden Edwards

My wife and I sat in the front pew of the simple "Santuario" in the small New Mexico village of Chimayo as a constant stream of people passed by, often touching or kissing the homely statues of Mary, Jesus, and various saints and praying awhile on their way to the side chapel. There they scooped some dirt from a hole in the adobe floor that they would take home for themselves or someone else to use for healing purposes. They were a mix of women, men, children, Hispanics, Native Americans, Anglos, and according to the Roman Catholic priest there, people of many religious traditions. They had come because people had claimed to be healed here--healed for centuries--healed when it was a Native American holy place, healed when a Hispanic or Pueblo farmer allegedly found a cross on the spot duplicating a famous cross in a Guatemalan healing shrine, which also had been built over a Native American healing ground. On Good Friday many thousands of people walk on pilgrimage to this shrine.

The simple faith and hunger for God of many of those passing before us helped open our hearts. I felt empowered to let go of my old critical mind that didn't like cheap plaster statues or credulous acts. I also saw the petty worries and grasping of my mind fall away. I felt available to the healing presence of those people's faith and of the One they had come for, who seems to show up most vividly in the presence of simple trust. My wife began to cry as she sensed a sudden powerful invitation to come closer to God. The early history of brutal exploitation of Native Americans by the Hispanics and later the Anglos that I had been reading about was somehow redeemed in this place as everyone laid their differences at the door and came hungry for the One who shows our lives as loved and connected. Only signs of the divine love of the past lived here, not the human exploitations. These signs included the many hope-- and thank-offerings of little saints' figures, rosaries, and hand-written notes stuck on the walls, along with thrown-away crutches.

Simple incarnate signs of present divine love could be felt at Chimayo, too, especially in its caretakers. Despite the waves of pilgrims daily, we were treated with the kindness due rare visitors. The gift shop lady after a long day of customers opened up for us well after closing time and treated us as friends. We gave her a copy of the day's local newspaper that recounted the story of the 83-year-old woman who each day for decades had devotedly swept and straightened up the shrine. The lone priest we approached generously took us around the church as though we were the first visitors in days instead of probably the five hundredth already on that day. As he recounted many unheralded local healing stories, he paused briefly many times to lovingly bless people and candles brought to him. The security guard wandered around unobtrusively with a smile that silently seemed to say, "I'm glad you're here. I want to respect and encourage your prayer."

Forgiveness and new beginnings are enhanced in a hospitable place like this. It's as though God always insures that there will be sacred spaces where we can find hope for the future and reprieve from the despairing cycles of human sin and fragmentation of the past. The symbols of faith at Chimayo were primarily from one religious tradition, but there they felt not so much sectarian as symbols of a divine loving reality to which we all belong.

In that sanctuary I sensed some parallel with our Shalem contemplative groups where people gather with a yearning for God, leaving much of their sophistication at the door in favor of a "second naivete," as Paul Ricoeur once put it. A simple trust of the reality and goodness of divine presence is the bottom line in those groups, through whatever practices and talks a leader may offer. The common willingness for such simplicity and the encouraging hospitality attempted by the group's caretaker can be very empowering of real openness to God.

People often come to contemplative groups seeking some kind of healing, too. They may come with some particular healing in mind, as people often do at Chimayo, but if they sit wanting God even more than they want a healing, they open to an even deeper healing, that of their relationship with God. As God offers that healing, they are freed more and more from the past, freed to embrace the fresh grace of the living moment. They show more signs of the radiant, compassionate souls they're meant to be. The contemplative group offers stimulus and support for this mysterious expansion of the spiritual heart. In a less self-conscious and more sustained way, I suspect that such a deeper sense of healing and spiritual nurture shows itself often at Chimayo, as well.

Most of us need special places and special groups where the clutter of our cultural and personal egos can lighten and we can see the divine again. In finding such support we discover an amazing array of companions. The least formally educated and theologically sophisticated person may well become our best inspirer. The most sophisticated may rely less on their knowledge and be open for simple trust. Persons of all kinds can be discovered as true soul-kin. Spiritual hunger and trusting willingness to be opened beyond what we know or understand can be the deepest human meeting ground, the place for the most hope for our fractured human family.

I believe God always is shaping such meeting grounds for us. Some of them are one-of-a-kind meetings that happen surprisingly amidst other things in our daily life. Others are more regularly planned and intentional. None of them is immune from temptations to exploit or misappropriate human spiritual hunger, so we need to be discerning in our responses, but these are worthwhile risks in our search for the real gold of spiritual place and companionship. Authentic spiritual meeting grounds are seedbeds of our true humanity and community. In them we learn to live humbly by the daily miracles ceaselessly flowing from the divine hand, shared with one another.