No one ever says how scared Mary must have been. Depictions of her are always calm, serene, accepting, even grateful. She is the ultimate symbol: relax child, everything will be fine. But she was just a girl, she must have been terrified, beyond terrified, no one’s faith is strong enough for something as extreme as what she was supposed to have gone through not to be terrifying. She was…human.
Perhaps that’s why, whenever I find myself in a Cathedral, I seek Mary out. After all, if she can survive her ordeals, I can surely survive whatever the world may see fit to throw at me on any particular day.
It has been a long time since I genuinely cried in a church. They normally touch the art historian in me more than they touch my soul, and in some cases they even go so far as to make me ever-so-slightly angry with their opulence. But there was something about the Cathedral at Malagda that was different. For some reason I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the stain class.
I wish I believed it all. I wish I had the confidence that seems to radiate from that kind of belief. But then what has that confidence really gotten the world I wonder? And how much of that confidence is real, and how much is swaggering, desperate defiance against the dark?
After all, is that not what cathedrals with all their grand structure and soaring beauty, are all about? In all their glory, are they not the result of a million flawed and fallen angels dancing madly against the darkness: look how strong we are, look at what we can build, what we can give, who would dare to pull us down?
None of it makes any sense to me…except Mary. Mary who was human, and scared. So it is her chapel I sit in front of as the thoughts all tumble through my brain like so many pieces of a lock trying to fit itself together.
Outside the cathedral, in the bright, noisy sunlight, Spain is a riot of colours and culture. From the horse and carriages to the buildings themselves. I dragged my parents over to the street artist (thankfully my Mum noticed him, I hadn’t realized what he was doing until we had almost passed him), who was creating tile art: miniature masteripieces painted with a fingertip in under three minutes. When the painting is complete, he clipped a glass protective covering on it and propped it on a nearby stand, ready for sale. Ten euros got us three tiles, one for each of us, money well spent.
The cobblestone streets are too narrow for cars, but they are crowded with people. Tourists, hawkers, beggars, carts, and bicycles, lots and lots of bicycles.
Everywhere we looked from our table at the tiny corner café where we sat eating cold salmon and trying to decipher Spanish menus, there was colour. Everywhere your eyes light there is life. Picasso was born here, his house is just down the street from where we were sitting, every group that turns the corner is hurrying somewhere, a wedding, a funeral, a birthday, who knows. The place breathes history even in its tourist-ridden corners.
After lunch, and after finding my required gelato (yes Amras, I bought gelato without you, but it was Spain, so it doesn’t count), we ambled back the way we had come, through the narrow sun drenched streets, past what seemed like at least three separate wedding parties (you could tell by the small children trotting along in overly starched Sunday-best party dresses), trying to decide what to do next while also not wanting to split up.
Ultimately, Mum headed back to the ship, while Dad and I went on to the ruins of the fortress that had once protected the town. It was quite a hike, but the view from the top was definitely worth it, especially since we got in for free as a local power outage had rendered the ticket machines out of order!
As I stood there looking down at the view of the ship from the top of one of the battlement walls, I came to a long forgone conclusion:
I am tremendously proud to be Canadian, but, despite that, Europe owns a piece of my soul.