Jose y Raquel los peregrinos

In which Raquel, la peregrina, knows in part

Iglesia

Young, thin girls twirling madly, calling out, being slain.
After they pick themselves up off the ground, motherly hugs descend around their shoulders.
One girl--12 or 13, with arms and legs like twigs, with large and hungry eyes--is especially dramatic. What do they mean, the eyes of the girls?
Do they find Jesus in the slaying?
Or perhaps in the motherly hug?
"Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me."

At the island church, I watched two geckos dancing across one of the high windows.
"Arise my soul, Arise."

I think of the man and his megaphone on a corner in crowded city center,
yelling in Español angry, angry words.
I hear "Palabra" repeated again and again--the Word.
Is he John the Baptist?
Does he love the souls at which he screams?
How does the Word speak?
"Shake off thy guilty fears. The bleeding sacrifice on my behalf appears."

The children perch on kneelers at the front of Zion Methodist,
circled around the towering figure of their preacher.
They wiggle and squirm.
His large brown hands rest upon each head in turn,
and words of blessing quiet each wiggler for a moment.
The street kid darted through the open sanctuary doors just before the benediction.
I caught a glimpse--thin, dirty, tattered, matted.
His shrill phrase in Spanish hung in the air--a curse? A demand for help?
"With confidence I now draw nigh,
and Abba, Father, Abba cry."

She has a voice like an angel.
Not a sweet, pink cherub voice, but the piercing, resonant voice of a bronzed being.
The voice echoes up to the high ceiling and spills out the church´s 20 open windows,
tumbling to the street, to the ocean, to the reef.
She sings with the richness of love in her voice.
The fish must be dancing.
The people in the street hear her voice.
Does the Word make their hearts dance like fish?
"I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."