Days like this I wonder if our wounded places ever really heal? We tell ourselves that we have overcome, we have risen above the trespasses against us. We have constructed a life we live in truth and we can no longer be dragged under the pain of our past. Then, you find out its all still inside you, like something insidious crouching in the corners of your soul. In that moment, you understand that damage can never be undone, only built upon. It will always be with you, forever weakening your foundation.
I spent a lot of time traveling in Mexico when I was younger. I visited all the typical tourist places and a few that were decidedly more off the beaten path. It was the churches that made the most impact on me. I learned that many of Mexico's churches, from the extravagant, gold-trimmed cathedrals to the rustic village chapels, were built on top of indigenous temple and ruins. When missionaries moved across Mexico and began to convert the native tribes and nations, it was common for the new churches to be built directly on top of the tribal holy sites. It was as if these missionaries felt they could best eradicate the old deities and pagan beliefs by driving them into the ground. They thought that by burying them under the shiny new promises of their christian churches and their new, benevolent God, they would cease to exist for the people.
It always struck me these missionaries, bent on converting the people to the new faith, failed to see what they were really doing. Instead of re-writing the narrative, maybe they were instead, forever trapping the past in the foundations of the future. In one place, far off the typical tour, one old church's foundation had begun to crumble and the earth had begun yield to the corners of the old pyramid lying underneath. In one section of the church, the ancient bricks had even been driven up through the floorboards. It struck me that those ruins were not gone, those gods and beliefs, not forgotten. It was all still there, residing under the feet of the believers. The old gods might all just be waiting, bidding their time to be excavated and brought back again.
It is days like these that I think about those old ruins. I feel like that sometimes, like that church. I feel like my shiny life with all its promises and personal gains and achievements, might have just been built on an old temple of wounds. I wonder if it is there still, just waiting, and slowly poisoning my foundation one tiny, black crack at a time.
