Tale #1 - MIRACLES OF THE MISSION

The first time I was introduced to the idea of finding an old mission that would become my place of healing and inspiration, was before I even knew I was going to Tucson. An intuitive counselor told me that I was going to the southwest… that my spirit guides were pushing me to go… that my spirituality and creativity were tied to the land. I knew in my heart that she was right but had no idea why she was saying this since I had no such plan.

“Where am I supposed to go?” I asked, because I sure as heck didn’t know.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Just get online and talk to everyone you know out there.”

It was from that initial inquiry that I got the word that this would be a vision quest for me.

“Be ready,” one cyber acquaintance told me. “Be ready to feel like you are experiencing more than one dimension at a time. I see you standing in an old adobe (might be a church or other “sacred” space) and hearing music and feeling people dancing, etc. that are from another world. It will be as if you are experiencing a shamanistic experience from a parallel life.”

So when I ended up at Myra’s house in Tucson less than one month later and she listed for me the things I could see and the places I could visit while I was there and she said something about a mission, I was all ears. That’s where we would go.

The San Xavier Mission was a stunning sight, pure white against a deep blue sky. Shadow and light played across the whole building. I was enthralled with the parts of it, overwhelmed by the whole.

My connection to this place was immediate – this was ‘my place’. When I first stepped foot into the mission interior, it was like walking into the earth itself. It was dark and cool and echoed our footsteps. Candles burned in the dimness, lighting hope for loved ones left behind. I was fascinated by the ethereal glow that connected this world to the next.

Father Kino looked down from the altar with patriarchal care. Various saints and holy men and women joined him from their perches along the walls. The place was simple, ornate, and glorious all together. With its Native influence and orthodox detail, it breathed of synthesis, compromise, finding the middle way. I was at peace.

There is a courtyard beyond the museum and gift shop areas. There were benches there and I sat, looking at yet another bank of candles spread across the porch under a tile portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I sat a long while, absorbing the energies, offering my prayers, expressing my gratitude for finding my way to this part of the world and to this place in particular. I was in bliss.

It was then that Myra drew my attention to a bird, not fully grown, sitting on another bench in a daze. Someone had filled a bottle cap with water and set it there for him to drink. I had been reading all winter about the Hawaiian Kahuna tradition of healing, which basically says we can send our prayers to our highest Help on the winds of our own breath. So I thought I’d give it a try. Somehow I knew it would work.

I opened my palm, faced it toward the little guy, closed my eyes, and began to breathe deeply and slowly, seeing him whole and well. It took only 10 breaths and I knew that’s all it would take. By the count of 8 he began to move. By the count of 9 he fluttered his wings, and at the count of 10, he flapped his wings and flew away. Myra had been watching the whole time, incredulous. I knew the feeling. We are only beginning to reclaim the readiness of healing and miracles. There was only one thing I could say. “There… now you have a story you can tell that no one will believe.” Healing place indeed!

I’ve been back to the mission many times on my return visits to the southwest and during the year I lived there… One day, as I was driving in Tucson, I had a strong impulse to go to the Mission. I looked at the clock and realized it would be closed before I even got there. But the feeling persisted so off I went to the reservation and its Dove of the Desert as it was lovingly known.

The place was abandoned, yet the door stood wide open. I wandered the grounds for awhile taking pictures in the late afternoon sunlight not sure if I should enter the building or not. When I finally mustered my courage and stepped into the dim interior, I realized why I was there.

There are fresco paintings covering the walls of the nave. On the eastern wall was a painting of the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost when the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit, like tongues of fire, descended upon them. Centered over the painting was an engraved wooden cross. The windows on the west side of the nave are high in the wall. That evening, they were alight with the rays of the lowering sun. The light from one of those windows cast its shadow onto the painting across the room. The cross pieces of the sashes created a shadow that aligned perfectly with the wooden cross centered over the painting. It was a stunning sight.

There are only two days of the year that this alignment would happen and always it would happen in the evening after the building was locked up. Yet here I was. I’m not sure that anyone had ever seen this before. I was grateful for the sight of it and the photo. In time, the shadow of the cross moved away from its prime spot, and someone came to the building to lock it up.

“I don’t know what happened here,” he said. “Someone was supposed to lock it up.”

Well, I knew what had happened. The spirit of the Mission had conspired to share one of its treasures with me. I was meant to shoot it and share it with the world.

San Xavier did become my healing place in more ways than one. I went there after my mother died and shed healing tears for her. A kind stranger, moved by my situation, offered me a package of tissues to dry my eyes. She let me keep them. The tissues were printed with colorful flowers; something I had never seen before. It was like a bouquet from my mom in heaven.

Sometimes healing resembles the extraction of a rotten tooth. I had this kind of healing too when for some reason the fates decided this was the time and place to end a struggling 6-year relationship. It happened in the front square of the mission where the food vendors set up, while in the middle of a fry bread order! I was not too happy that he couldn’t have waited for 2 days and broken this news to me in Pennsylvania. But these are mysteries we must accept.

One year later, I was able to return to that same spot with friends, salt, sage, and various other healing tools, to do some ceremony to clear the spot… and my life… of any negative energies left there from the ‘incident’. I shared fry bread with my friends that day and validated my life with the understanding that sometimes it is from the greatest sorrows that the greatest joys come! I end with the clouds.

I have been marvelously blessed to end up at the mission under some of the most dramatic skies. I don’t know what it is about this combination, but seeing that solid white form standing, strong and stable, against the ever-changing skies leaves me spellbound.

Perhaps it is the contrast of our lives I see here. Life tumbles along, but something remains steadfast. It is a church after all. A place of comfort. A symbol of Promise. “I am here. You are not alone. Come here. Find shelter for your soul. Find healing for body, mind and spirit.” Things change. Parents pass. Relationships end. Birds fly away. But always there is strength. Always, there is beauty… and solace… and a way home. The skies will change, but there is always something here that lasts. For more of Vim's mission photos, CLICK HERE!