This has been a scholastic week. I had to turn in my rough draft of my research paper. I have discovered that I am thoroughly out of practice at school work and while I suspect the fact that I am going to have plan and execute in advance will be a good skill to have developed in the future, my current inability to successfully cram is annoying.
The class title is “Writing in the Social Sciences” and the emphasis this quarter is on Sports & Society. Not my dream topic, however it is a wide topic. Our professor was very much right that the trick is to find the right size project and he rejected many of my ideas as “excellent books”. Though I’m now finding my current topic on transportation for the 2028 Olympics Games in LA could also probably be an excellent book. It’s a hard balance to strike.
We’re now 10 days into wellbutrin land and just started the “normal” dose. I don’t know if I feel different yet. Maybe a tiny bit? But that could also be elation at having turned in a rough draft which I was very stressed about. It’s supposed to take longer than this anyways, so we’ll see.
Since I had a very stay at home week, I thought I’d share the growing collection of photos I have of the Our Lady of Guadalupe, also referred to as the Virgin of Guadalupe. She’s a distinctly Mexican representation of the Virgin Mary as she appeared to Juan Diego, an indigenous peasant, in the 1500s.
The story goes that Juan Diego first encountered her apparition in 1531 when she appeared glowing atop the hill of Tepeyac (now in Mexico City). She introduced herself and requested that he build her shrine to share her love and compassion. Lacking the means to do so himself, Juan Diego visited the Archbishop Juan de Zumarraga to make the case. The Archbishop doubted Juan Diego and hesitated to build the shrine.
In her second apparition, the Virigin tells Juan Diego to try again. This time the Archbishop requested a sign before he could approve construction of a church. She appeared a third time to receive this message from Juan Diego
In her 4th apparition, she told him to climb the hill and pick some flowers to present to the Archbishop. Despite it being the dead of winter, at the top of the hill he encountered an abundance of flowers he’d never seen before. The Virgin collected the flowers and tucked them into Juan Diego’s cloak. Juan Diego presented them to the Archbishop who recognized them as Castilian roses from his homeland and found a colorful imprint of the Virgin herself adorned the inside of Juan Diego’s cloak.
She’s distinctly Mexican, differentiated by mestizo features and skin tone, a turquoise cape (a favored color of Aztec royalty), and is always depicted with a sunburst behind, as though she is emerging from the sun. She was a symbol in the rebellion against Spain and again during the Revolution against Porfirio Diaz. She is for the people, a crusader for social justice and has been the patroness of Mexico in 1746. In some ways, she represents all the differences I find in Latin American Catholicism and the version practiced in the US, the living practice of religion here, it’s emphasis on “do unto others”, rewarding the meek and downtrodden, and always and selflessly on the side of right. And she’s ubiquitous here.
Under protest, Juan Diego was canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II at the Basilica de Guadalupe which sits on Tepeyac hill. The complex holds three chapels, the first being Capilla de Indios & Capillo del Cerrito which sit on the top of the hill in the original site of apparition. This is where the chapel was built by the Archbishop, although the one currently there was built in 1649. Located north of the historic center, you can climb a somewhat exhausting set of steps to get up there. It’s a lovely view of the city too.
The second is Templo Expiatorio a Cristo Rey, which is also called the old Basilica of Guadalupe. It was built in the early 1700s and is perhaps the most dramatically obvious evidence of Mexico’s slow sinking that I’ve ever seen. In 1921, during the Revolution, a bomb exploded on the steps of the church. Despite massive damage, the original cloak and its image of the Virgin Guadalupe, remain completely unharmed. It is a lovely old church in a European with Mexican flair. It opens into Plaza Mariana, one of the largest areas for religious gatherings in the world.
The New Basilica of Guadalupe also opens onto the plaza. This New Basilica was built in the 1970s and is the current home to the original cloak image ensconced in glass.
One of the other ways the Virgin shows up is in “nichos” which are somewhere between our shadowboxes and the little, adorable free libraries that litter Portland. These are about every third block and are always little bright spots with fresh flowers and a gentle presence of a benevolent deity.
While it’s never crossed my mind to develop a religious streak, it does feel expressed here so differently than in the US, as an active and constant in the way of life, which feels more palatable, less like lip service than so many religious enterprises in the US. And it does have me contemplating spirituality more seriously. I mean, that plus that my life got flipped a bit upside down and as I renegotiate it I’m thinking more intentionally about how to hold space for these different pieces.
Anddddd…. the rainy season in Mexico. This is basically the drill every day sometime between 4pm-7pm.
Year One Project 
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