One Night in Panjim

... makes a hard man humble. Or, makes an Alicia reminisce about her days in Latin America. This town looks almost exactly like a town somewhere in say, Guatemala, probably because of the distinct Iberian-peninsula influence that both places share. We've been here a single night and today are shipping out to Mumbai. We went to visit the basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa and checked out the tomb of the incorruptible body of St. Francis Xavier. It's a miracle! His body never decayed!

Reading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek last night really tainted that visit for me. Ordinary things around us everyday are so deeply miraculous, I can't help but feel it is absurd to look for "miracles" anywhere else - be it a piece of toast or a tapestry of roses or an embalmed evangelist. Like Annie says, think about how improbable it is that something as ridiculous and horrific as a praying mantis would ever come to exist; or that while we fall in love over sunrises and mountains, our world is simultaneously spinning at imperceivable speeds and rock is shifting beneath our feet and stars who exploded and died a hundred years ago are still appearing in the sky overhead and quadrillions of ants are quietly recycling the world's organic matter over every square inch.

This kind of contemplation makes it difficult for me not to find the incorruptible body of poor St. Francis a laughable matter. Like a joke, I peer into his tomb and feel like giggling. Of course, this is wrong. I refrain. Just not in the right state of mind, I guess. Any other day I might appreciate meditating on the things that St. Francis believed in and stood for.

The other thing I quickly noticed about the Bom Jesus basilica was an altar whose front clearly depicted Jesus with disciples John and Matthew. My first thought was, "what does it say about the type of Christianity practiced in this church that Luke and Mark are conspicuously absent?" I started coming up with theories about Christ the Spirit vs. Christ the Man and the church's stance on aggressive evangelism. Then I saw them around the edges on the sides. Ah, of course. All in all, I think my reactions to this church describe me as ... too skeptical for Catholicism. In Mumbai we'll visit some ancient Buddhist cave art, see how that goes. :)