Compassionate Hearts Along the Way

Bronze statue of Saint Kateri, Lily of the Mohawks, by artist Estella Loretto

I am walking with my friend down a lonely street in Santa Fé, New Mexico, when an older woman using a walker comes toward us.  She’s apologizing, saying that she is sorry, and she is crying.  She tells me she had an accident in the past and needs a hotel room, needs forty dollars.  Her face is contorted, despairing.  I am on a trip to see a city that I have wanted to see for so long.  It’s cold.  The street is dark and empty, and we are making our way through an unknown neighborhood to our hotel room.  I stop to listen to her, and I give her a twenty dollar bill from my wallet.  She remains with me.   

I cannot sleep for what I have seen on the journey we’ve taken, driving through the vast deserts from California, through Arizona, and on to New Mexico.  Images of broken down dwellings, some with no windows, some with no running water, miles and miles from anything, reservation lands.  These images fill my mind.  I pray.  Sleep is not my friend.  I fall asleep deep into the wee hours of the morning. 

Where do I live?

What country is this?

The landscape, so vast, empty and beautiful, the skies so clear, the open road leading to an occasional gas station or Casino; poverty is everywhere, unseen, behind darkened or windowless dwellings.  

There is a town, and the stores are all shut.  Houses have fallen into disrepair, the site of a school a shock.  The children at least have a school, I think, although this is not a reservation but a small town in southern Colorado. 

It’s early morning, and as my friend does her work in the hotel room I venture out to the main square and sit with a coffee and a croissant.  I love where I am.  I love the magic of the winter square.  I am in the place where one of my favorite authors, Willa Cather, stayed when she wrote her books about the southwest.  

I meet Lyndon, named after Lyndon Johnson and born in the same year as me.  He’s placing down a mat along with a long line of his peers in the Santa Fe Plaza, waiting to sell his hand-made jewelry.  He tells me he’s from a tribe in Montana but left the reservation to move to the southwest.  He talks about the visitors that will be in town that day, a group of women working toward sobriety.  He tells me how much courage it must take these women, and I can see that he’s feeling for them and with them.  It is the time of day when we can be two humans sharing a bit of ourselves before the square fills up with out of towners and prospective buyers.  I am not a local, but Lyndon has made me feel like one.

It is still early morning when I approach the Cathedral of Saint Francis, and then I see her,  a stunning bronze statue of the first Native American promoted to sainthood, Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680), Lily of the Mohawks.[1]  She has the most loving eyes and her hands are crossed over her heart.  She reaches out with an unworldly, loving hospitality to any human willing to imbibe the balm of her healing presence. 

She takes the old lady with the walker who is crying, and she takes the children who are doing without because they have parents who have nothing and who are living in a country that has forgotten to take care of its own.  She takes every single person who goes into the cathedral the following day, a big crowd coming to mourn the death of a 23 year old man who died in a skiing accident.  She takes all of the Ukrainians who lie awake at night waiting for the whims of a madman to unleash terror upon them.  

She takes me, and all that I want to give her on a bright, clear, cold winter morning.  I give her all that has been weighing on my heart.  She is the embodiment of unconditional, maternal love, and I need her.  I want to be a part of her, next to her, one with her all-embracing, compassionate heart.  Her loving eyes propel me into an almost ecstatic, joy-filled state of mind.  

Later, in Taos, we visit the museum of Millicent Rogers, and there I read a framed letter that Millicent wrote to her youngest son, Paul Ramos, as her life was winding down and after she had found real peace in Taos. Millicent Rogers embodied privilege in her era but suffered from rheumatic fever as a child that left her with heart and lung damage and other physical challenges.  Although she was warned against over-exertion and having children, she gave birth to three children, married three times, travelled the world, and was an avid skier and artist.  Soon before her death in her early fifties, she shares with her son a mystical experience and the wisdom she’s accumulated during a well-lived, fulfilled life:

Darling Paulie,

Did I ever tell you about the feeling I had a little while ago? Suddenly passing Taos Mountain I felt that I was part of the Earth, so that I felt the Sun on my Surface and the rain. I felt the Stars and the growth of the Moon, under me, rivers ran. … Being part of the Earth one was never alone. And all fear went out of me—with a great, good stillness and strength.

If anything should happen to me now, ever, just remember all this. I want to be buried in Taos with the wide sky– Life has been marvelous, all the experiences good and bad I have enjoyed, even pain and illness because out of it so many things were discovered. 

Life is absolutely beautiful if one will disassociate oneself from noise and talk and live it according to one’s inner light. Don’t fool yourself more than you can help. Do what you want—do what you want knowingly. Anger is a curtain that people pull down over life so that they only see through it dimly—missing all the savor, the instincts—the delight—they feel safe only when they can down someone. And if one does that they end by being to many, more than one person, and life is dimmed—blotted and blurred!—I’ve had a most lovely life to myself—I’ve enjoyed it as thoroughly as it could be enjoyed. And when my time comes, no one is to feel that I have lost anything of it—or be too sorry—I’ve been in all of you—and will go on Being. So remember it peacefully—take all the good things that your life put there in your eyes—and they, your family, children, will see through your eyes. My love to all of you. [2] 

“Take all the good things that your life has put there in your eyes,” Millicent gently tells her son, so that others will “see through your eyes.”  

Seeing the beauty and pain of this world in every hour of my travels, I bow down to the wise, deeply spiritual women who met me on my journey.  In the timeless, mystical sense, Saint Kateri remains with us.  I am grateful for the sculptor Estella Loretto (who started in the artistic tradition of the Pueblo of Jemez) for creating a statue that channels the life-giving, generative, healing spirit of Kateri.[3]  Finally, Millicent Rogers inspires us to refuse to let our challenges define our lives.

I was reminded in New Mexico that we are loved beyond what our imaginations can conjure and that we are strengthened, and accompanied, by the spirit and presences of those who have gone before us.  

We don’t make this journey alone.  

[1] This you tube video highlights the longstanding tension between the Catholic Church and indigenous tribes. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2015/11/13/november-13-2015-saint-kateri-and-native-american-catholics/27910/

[2] https://www.veranda.com/luxury-lifestyle/luxury-fashion-jewelry/a35351622/millicent-rogers-style;https://millicentrogers.org/pages/millicent-rogers-story; https://www.classicchicagomagazine.com/millicent-rogers-american-style-ic

[3] https://estellaloretto.com/about/; https://estellaloretto.com/about/