In Estella, when I first met the Lebanese women, they told me that they’d spent a few
The Retablo
days traveling with a man who had recently lost his son. “But tomorrow was the son’s birthday,” one of the women told me, “and I think he wanted to be alone.”
In Los Arcos there is a cathedral, the Iglesia Parroquial de Santa María de la Asunción,
The cupola and retablo (Mary at lower left)
that was built over a period of 600 years. It betrays a mélange of styles, from Mannerist (~ 1530s to 1600) and Baroque (late 1500s to early 1700s) to Churrigueresque (late 1600s to early 1700s) and Rococo (1700s). We walked through all of it and I took the pictures now on Facebook. We sat down near the back of the church. It was quiet. There were perhaps eight people in it.
Suddenly, from behind and above us, from the choir, we heard a magnificent voice. We turned to see a small, white-haired man, in a blue shirt and shorts like swim-trunks,
Mary in the central retablo
with his arms spread before him, perhaps toward Mary in the retablo, and he was singing “Ave Maria”. I immediately turned on the video of my SLR camera.
For ten minutes, he sang three haunting versions of “Ave Maria” – Schubert’s, Gounod’s, and one we didn’t recognize – as the handful of us in the church simply sat motionless, aware that we were in the midst of something rare, powerful, and beautiful. “My heart was beating so fast,” Julio would later say. He sat on one side of a pew behind me, and Mom sat at the other end of it, wiping away tears.
The amazing cupola
By the time he was finished, I had walked with my camera up to the choir. Again and again he reached his hands out over the bannister at which he stood, in supplication. He reached the end of his last “Ave Maria” and turned around, drained, and made his way to a pew where two of his friends sat. He sat down briefly, and then they all stood up and walked past me. “Grazie,” I said. He nodded at me and walked out the door.
Our group went outside into the quiet and light of the cloister, still emotional, and then
I change the mood by pointing out that Mary´s pose makes her look a lot like the Buddha
he was there too, like a magnet, but also looking frail, spent, and awkward, with tears in his eyes. Seeing Mom’s own tears, he leaned toward her and said, in Italian, “I sang to remember my son.” Marie Anne translated this, and Mom reached for him and hugged him. He seemed to receive this awkwardly. We were all crying.
Marie Anne and Julio thought he was Italian. Julio thought he heard the day of his singing was the anniversary of his son’s death, perhaps even the third, rather than his birthday.
He would sing again that night, after mass, from the front of the church.
The next morning, he and his friends passed us on the Camino trail, in the dark. His two friends walked on either side of him, and one step back.
CP, Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
Never ceases to amaze me: Amidst all the pain that Life offers up, there is always beauty if one looks enough. In the early 2000s, I created a concert series called “Beauty Found in Unlikely Places”, which toured cancer centers across the US over the course of 2 years. The disparity between the cold machines and the music and anecdotes pouring forth from the composer I represented of course compelled the name, which came to mind just now, reading this and watching this video. That Inge’s challenges and approach to them compelled her to walk the Camino, which led her and you here to this church, to witness – and capture! – this man’s homage to the son he lost reminded me once again there is always beauty to be found. Always. And where it seems to be absent, we can always create more, right then and there, nearly enough to fill the chasm of those who left us, and certainly enough to go on just one more day, and then another, and then another…and then another. Thank you for posting this.
I wish I were there. Thanks for sharing. This is so beautiful!