Tag: pilgrimage

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Tchotchkes and pictures

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I spent the better part of today packing and repacking all the items we’re taking for family on this trip of a lifetime to Cuba. A trip a lifetime in the waiting. I can wait one more day. Tomorrow we’ll review the inventory again. Sturdy clothes for aunts and uncles and cousins. Check. Medicines. Check. Dietary supplements and vitamins. Check. These are the things on our minds as we get close to departure.

Most people don’t know that this is a humanitarian effort on top of a joyful reunion and possibilities of adventure.

While I wait, well-meaning folks make comments about seeing antique cars. I stop myself from pointing out those aren’t collectibles– they are modes of transportation that necessity and ingenuity have kept around, and have only accidentally become a strangely alluring cottage industry for those smart enough and lucky enough to have the resources to restore them for sale.

I wonder at how this image has somehow become a snapshot of a country, and feel driven to find a new image, a more fitting image that matches the stories I’ve heard and goes with the fading black and white pictures dotting the walls in my father’s office.

I suspect the truth is somewhere between the romantic nostalgia of my father’s generation and the gritty reality of hasty clean up projects in order to present a certain image to the world over the next several days. My uncle, my father’s younger brother, sensed I’m curious about this. Between stories about his own return in the last decade, and recommendations to look for certain things in secret hiding places in the house where he was born, he offered me one simple piece of advice: talk to people. Talk to everybody you meet. And listen.

Yes.

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Happy birthday, Momma Mary!

virgenToday is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The celebration of this day has grown as my understanding of the faith has grown — a little bit at a time, more often than not in baby steps, and then, pow! Suddenly I got it.

from amerciancatholic.org:

 If Jesus is the perfect expression of God’s love, Mary is the foreshadowing of that love. If Jesus has brought the fullness of salvation, Mary is its dawning.

 

I’ve commemorated this day quite differently, mostly as  a cultural observance with other Cubans and Cuban-Americans celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, the patroness of Cuba. But like I said — I wasn’t quite grasping the immensity of Mary’s life in salvation history.

I’ve gone full circle, from having a child-like understanding of Mary as a mommy, to a deeper understanding of Mary as the spouse of the Holy Spirit, and the Mother of God. To call her, affectionately, Momma Mary, my mother, too.

This is significant for me this year because I am about to embark on a pilgrimage I never believed would happen. I will be going to Cuba next week, coinciding with Pope Francis’ trip. I will arrive in the province of Holguin and  pay a visit to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity.

It will be almost 50 years to the day I left Cuba as a child. To say I am in a whirlwind of emotions is an understatement. It will be a return to family. An opportunity to see places I’ve only heard about from my parents and grandparents. It will be … something I can’t begin to imagine. But whatever it is — I know I’m going to be received with open arms by the virgencita who longs to have all her children together.

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