Sacred Ground

by Barbara Wood

  “Your god wishes for you to cry all your life?”

  “St. Francis was called by God to carry the cross of Christ in his heart, to practice it in his life, and to preach it by his words, truly a crucified man both in his actions and in his works. St. Francis sought shame and contempt, out of love for Christ. He rejoiced when he was despised, and grieved when honored. He traveled the land as pilgrim and stranger, carrying nothing with him but Christ crucified. I wish to be like him. And I wish to be like Brother Bernard who, when he arrived in Bologna and the children in the streets, seeing him dressed so strangely and so poorly, laughed and scoffed at him, taking him for a madman, accepted their derision with great patience and with great joy for the love of Christ. Seeking to be despised yet more, Brother Bernard went to the marketplace, where he seated himself, and when a great number of children and men gathered round him and seized his robe and assaulted him, some throwing stones and dirt at him, Brother Bernard submitted in silence, his face bearing an expression of supreme joy, and for several days he returned to the same spot to receive the same insults until one day the townspeople grew thoughtful, and said, ‘This man must be a great saint.’

  “I wish to be like that,” Felipe cried “But to be a great saint I must have humility in my heart. How can I wish for greatness and possess humility at the same time? This is my torment! My sins of pride and vanity are going to rob me of that sublime joy.”

  In alarm Teresa thought: the sickness is not only among my people, it is afflicting the white man, too. So it was in the land and the air and in the plants and in the water, and needed to be rectified. The world must be put back into balance.

  She held out her hand.

  * * *

  Felipe went submissively. They took a mule and followed the moonlit track eastward from the Mission, past the tar pits and marshes, until they arrived at the foothills of the mountains the Fathers had named for St. Monica. Through the darkness they went until they reached an outcropping of boulders marked with ancient symbols of the raven and the moon, and from where Teresa said they must continue on foot. Feeling impelled by a power beyond his own, Felipe followed obediently, too steeped in his own pain and misery to question why he placed one foot ahead of the other.

  When they encountered a rattlesnake in the canyon, Felipe recoiled but Teresa told him to walk softly, that the snake would not hurt them. “He is our brother and will allow us to pass if we show him the proper respect.” Indeed, they tiptoed past and the snake slithered away.

  When they approached the cave, Teresa said quietly, “This is a holy place. You will find healing in here.”

  She first placed the offering of flowers on the ancient grave, explaining to Felipe that one always brought gifts to the Mother. Then she built a small fire, lighting it with her fire-starter tools. When she dropped the dark green leaves she had obtained from the garden onto the flames, instantly a pungent smoke rose up, stinging Felipe’s nose with the familiar aroma of marijuana, which he cultivated for his medicines. As the fire illuminated the symbols painted on the wall, Teresa told Felipe the story of the First Mother, as it was told to her by her mother, and by her mother’s mother, all the way back to the first story.

  Felipe listened quietly, his eyes on the strange symbols on the wall, and after a while the pain did seem to recede a little, and he felt a small easing of his anguish.

  As smoke filled the cave, and the interior grew warm and close, and Teresa, who now called herself Marimi, kept up the soft litany of her tribe’s history, reciting the myths as had been told to her, she slowly removed the clothes the Fathers forced her to wear: the blouse and skirt, the underdress, the shoes, until she stood before the First Mother in her natural state.

  The young friar was not shocked as he might once have been. As the incense filled his nostrils and head and lungs, and the healing power started to work, he began to see nothing strange at all about standing in this ancient cave with a naked Indian girl, listening to tales he would once have called heathen and vile.

  And after a while, as he listened to the rhythm of her voice, he began to feel a rhythm within himself, as if his pulses and respirations, even his nerves and muscles were responding to Teresa’s steady chanting. Without knowing that he did so, Brother Felipe began to divest himself of robe and sandals and loincloth, until he, too, stood before the First Mother in humble nakedness.

  With the shedding of the heavy wool, he felt a shedding of scales from his eyes and shackles from his soul. He experienced a sudden lightness that he had never thought possible. He felt himself start to smile.

  And then something was touching his skin, like wings, like whispers. He gazed in fascination at the bronze fingers caressing the scars of old wounds in his flesh. Teresa’s eyes were filled with tears as she saw the shocking state of Felipe’s body, the ribs and bones, evidence that in his quest for rapture he had starved himself, inflicted abuse upon himself. How mistreated these poor limbs! How battered this frail skin!

  “My poor Felipe,” she wept. “How you have suffered.”

  Her arms went around him and drew him to her warm bosom. He buried his face in her hair, encircled her with his arms, and held her to him. He felt her tears on his chest. His own tears dropped onto her head. They cried together, holding each other in the heat of the mystical smoke.

  And then something began to happen. Felipe began to drift upward out of his body. It was as if angels were transporting him, lifting him up on their wings until he found himself high up in the ceiling of the cave and looking down, where he saw two of God’s creatures, embraced in their natural state, holding each other, filling each other’s hearts with love. He saw the man draw the girl to the ground and lay her on a bed made of flowers and a Franciscan’s gray robe. The girl’s long black hair fanned out around her; there was a look of ecstasy on her face. Felipe saw the man’s bruised and scarred back, and the hands of the girl caress the wounds. They kissed, long and lovingly, making Felipe smile. And then, to his amazement, he started to laugh. His ethereal form felt warm and moist all over, a sublime sensation that made his heart rise to his throat until he thought he was going to perish with desire and joy and fulfillment. He heard the man cry out in rapture, and saw tears like diamonds glisten on the girl’s black lashes.

  And suddenly the cave was filled with wondrous bright light and Felipe saw people everywhere! As if the stone of the mountain had melted away, Felipe could see as far as the horizon, a vast multitude of humanity stretching off into a blazing infinity. He realized in blinding revelation that these were the souls of all who had lived before him and who now dwelled in the Beneficent Light of God. At the head of this great multitude stood the prophets Elijah and Moses, in resplendent robes. And between them was Jesus, transfigured into a column of light. Soaring above them all was the Blessed Mother, now a radiant dove, now a beautiful woman, glowing and luminous, bestowing her love and grace upon all below.

  Felipe gave a great shout and felt his body come apart and his soul shoot free to the heavens.

  And then the angels brought him gently back down to earth, back to the cave and the warmth and the girl, where Brother Felipe slipped into the deepest sweet sleep he had ever known.

  * * *

  When he awoke, he was at first surprised to find that he was naked. But then, remembering, he knew it was his natural state, that this was how God had created him, and all men and women, and that there was no shame in nakedness. Had not Blessed St. Francis removed his own clothes, and declared, “Our Father who art in heaven”?

  Felipe looked at Teresa, slumbering sweetly. Here was the answer he had sought, the mystery of the girl that had been puzzling him. He had watched her talk to the plants, whisper to the wind and sing to the rain. She wasn’t afraid of animals but understood them and practiced a kinship with them the way St. Francis had but that Felipe had not. She did not consider herself above nature as men did, but equal with it. This was the true definition of humility! She had been there all along to tell h
im so, yet he had been too blind to see.

  He sobbed with joy, his tears flowing as freely as those of St. Francis had once flowed. Brother Felipe had come to California to find rapture, and he had found it.

  * * *

  They reached the Mission before dawn, wordlessly, both filled with wonder and knowing that a healing magic had taken place that night. Teresa climbed through the window back into the nunnery, and Felipe went to his cell.

  But he didn’t stay at the Mission. Before the sun reached its zenith the next day, he was on the track westward, carrying nothing but a loaf of bread and a small bundle concealed in his sleeve. He was filled with awe and glory and joy. There was no pain, no more questions. Suddenly everything fell into place, and he understood.

  When St. Francis died in the year 1226 he was buried in the Church of St. George in Assisi. Four years later his body was secretly removed to the great basilica built by Brother Elias. During that clandestine reburial, a brother in the grip of religious fervor removed the saint’s little finger from his right hand and hid it away in a small monastery in Spain. Over the years, the relic was housed in various containers, each more precious and worthy than the last, until the blessed bones came to final rest in a silver reliquary fashioned into a human hand and forearm. When the Fathers prepared to set sail for New Spain to take up their mission in Alta California, the reliquary was secretly entrusted to their care, that the saint’s presence in the far-off savage land ensured their mission’s success.

  This was Felipe’s gift to the First Mother.

  Inside the cave, he stripped down to his loincloth and gently wrapped the reliquary in his robe, after which he buried it in the floor of the cave. Then, recalling the forty-day and forty-night fast of St. Francis, during which he had eaten half a loaf of bread out of reverence for the Blessed Lord, who had fasted forty days and forty nights without taking any food, Felipe left the cave with only his rosary and loaf of bread and, instead of turning downward toward the mouth of the canyon, which ultimately led back to the Mission, continued upward into the canyon, his face to the sun, a radiant smile on his lips, upward and upward until he vanished between wilderness and sky.

  Chapter Seven

  If Los Angeles had a heart, Erica thought, Olvera Street would be it.

  As she walked along the block-long passageway, she felt her spirits lifting in this colorful tile-paved street where vendors sold puppets, leather goods, serapes, sombreros, statues of saints and authentic Mexican food, while a mariachi band played a lively rendition of “Guantanamera.” Erica had just lunched on spicy chili relleno in a quaint patio restaurant that made one forget one was in the middle of a metropolis of five million inhabitants.

  She had been on her way back from the San Gabriel Mission when she had impulsively pulled off the freeway. She didn’t know why except that she needed to think. The visit had been unsuccessful. Although Mission records went all the way back to its initial founding in 1771, there was no mention in the archives of the Indians or the Fathers having ever engaged in the manufacture of such an object as Erica had found that morning in the cave and which she had hoped someone at the Mission could explain. So now, because of her impulse, she walked happily among throngs of tourists and locals who were visiting the historical places that were part of LA’s hidden, romantic soul. The Church of Our Lady of the Angels, built in 1818 by Indian laborers who hauled beams from the San Gabriel Mountains, and where, on Saturday mornings, quinceañeros were held, festivities marking the coming-of-age of fifteen-year-old girls, a high-spirited celebration believed to have descended from ancient Native American rites and which the Catholic Church was trying to suppress. The Sepulveda House, a beautiful old Victorian built in 1887; the Pelanconi House, built in 1855, the first brick building in Los Angeles; and of course the Avila Adobe, believed to be the oldest building in Los Angeles, built in 1818, thirty-seven years after the founding of the city. All vibrating, Erica was certain, with the passions and stories of the past.

  As she emerged into the sunlit Plaza, a Mexican-style park dominated by a huge fig tree, she was glad she had pulled off the freeway at the last minute. Solitude had its merits but sometimes the soul yearned for crowded places. The benches were all occupied by tourists resting their feet, or local citizens with noses deep in the Los Angeles Times or La Opinion.

  And then she saw the ghosts, transparent people in old-fashioned attire, and horses and wagons, mangy dogs, ramshackle adobe buildings, wooden sidewalks. Erica was used to seeing ghosts, even in downtown Los Angeles at the peak of noon. The dead never really went away. Archaeology proved that. She saw women with parasols, a bowlegged man wearing a sheriff’s badge, fur trappers on horseback, and tough hombres looking for a saloon. People thought Los Angeles was wild today. They should see it 150 years ago. Here was the terminus of the Wild West.

  She saw a young, modern-day Hispanic couple with their arms around each other, heads together, the look of honeymooners. Erica had never thought of Los Angeles as a place to spend a honeymoon, but the Plaza, with its ambience of Old Mexico, the flowers, the music, the good food, people in costume, and the merry atmosphere, seemed a perfect place for two people in love.

  When she spotted an Asian restaurant worker in a stained white apron leaning against a lamppost and reading that morning’s edition of the Times, she was brought back to reality. Emerald Hills was on the front page— again. This time with the word “haunted” in the headline. A supermarket tabloid had dredged up old news accounts of Sister Sarah and some of the strange goings-on in the Haunted Canyon. Sister Sarah had even declared that the idea to build her Church of the Spirits where she did had come to her when she was visited by a vision of a “woman in robes.” Erica suspected the vision had more to do with theatrics than reality. Nonetheless, the story had triggered a rash of “sightings” at the cave and workers were now claiming to have odd feelings around the place.

  There was another big story in the press. After finding the reliquary containing the remains of St. Francis, Erica had contacted the Vatican. They reported that the reliquary had been brought to California in 1772 and was listed in Mission records as missing in 1775, along with a Brother Felipe, who vanished mysteriously and was believed to have been killed by grizzly bears. Erica wondered why a Franciscan friar would bury the bones of St. Francis in a cave so far from home. In an Indian cave at that.

  The Vatican had immediately sent a representative. Erica was not surprised at the swiftness with which they had acted. It wasn’t because the reliquary was so important per se (there were thousands of them around the world) or because St. Francis was a major saint. It was politics. Junipero Serra had been beatified, the first step toward sainthood, but a lot of parties were protesting his canonization, rendering it a touchy issue. More and more of the Mission Friars’ treatment of the Indians was coming to light, and the Catholic Church was coming under criticism. The finding of a saint’s bones buried with those of an Indian raised some significant questions.

  Although the reliquary was on its way to Rome, it had received so much press that people were lined up at the Emerald Hills security fence, hoping to be allowed in to pray at the spot where the bones of Blessed St. Francis had been buried. People with sick children or loved ones in wheelchairs, reciting their rosaries as they waited to be let in. Latinos were claiming that La Primera Madre referred to a sighting of the Virgin Mary in the cave, causing the media to liken it to the cave at Lourdes. A photo in the newspaper of the protective clear plastic cover that had been put over the skeleton and the heavy iron gate that now guarded the entrance to the cave, bestowed on the cave an air of religious mystery— it did indeed look like the site of miracles.

  That morning, when Erica had driven down the hill, she had seen at the bottom, where the road joined the Pacific Coast Highway, policemen arresting two young men who had apparently erected a barrier across the road with a sign that said: Emerald Hills Excavation Site— $5.00 per person. It had made her smile. Los Angelenos were,
if nothing, enterprising.

  Bringing herself back to the modern world that hurried past her in high heels and wing tip shoes, Erica reached into her purse and withdrew a small cloth bag and emptied the contents into her palm: a homely crucifix made of tin and stamped with a date: Anno Domini 1781. “Perhaps it commemorated a special event,” the priest at the Mission had said when Erica explained that the crucifix had been buried with care and reverence, in a hole lined with flowers. “A birth, perhaps,” he said.

  A birth? But whose?

  “Were you born here, Dr. Tyler?” Jared asking when chance had thrown them together at the same table in the cafeteria. He had quickly added, “You have such a passion for California history.”

  The question had surprised her. It also surprised her that he was that observant, and she had been flattered for a moment to think that he was curious about her. But then she had thought: it isn’t out of friendly interest that he’s asking, he’s studying me, just as I have been studying him. Isn’t that what adversaries do, search for each other’s strengths and weaknesses? She had given him the standard answer: “I’m from San Francisco.” At least that was the place of birth written on her birth certificate. The truth was a little harder to explain.

  The kindly hospital social worker, saying, “So your name is Erica? Don’t you have a last name? All right, Erica, can you tell me if the man who brought you here is your daddy?”

  Erica saying, “I don’t think so.” She was only five, but even then she recognized perplexity on an adult’s face.

  “What do you mean you don’t think so?”

  “I have lots of daddies.”

  The social worker writing something down and Erica fascinated by the long fingernails with pretty color polish, and the gold ring flashing on the nice lady’s hand. “And the woman who was brought in with you, was she your mother?” Quickly correcting herself: “Is she your mother?” Because they hadn’t told Erica yet that the woman had died in the ER.