Every grain of sand

     We seem to have hit upon the perfect compromise this holiday. the three Blondies love the beach. I hate the beach. I like sitting in cafes and peoplewatching. They hate sitting in cafes and peoplewatching.

     So what's tended to happen is that they establish a base camp on the beach, and I set up a command post in the nearest cafe or bar, commandeering a table for four. They spend their day getting sandy (sorry, brief pause whilst I retch, discreetly), and I spend my day peoplewatching, twatty blogging, and arsing about on twitter.

     Yesterday was a bit different. We went down to the port for the first time, and being the nosy cow, that I am, I decided to poke about in the absolutely HIDEOUS Iglesia Nuestra Señora de Loreto (Church of Our Lady of Loreto). Trust me, it's um... it's very there. Because of Xabia's history of fishing and sea trade, it was designed to look like a boat, cresting a wave from the outside.

     No, me neither.

     There were a few things I liked about the church. The attempt at graffiti on an outside buttress that some horrified parishoner had tried to deface (Xabia suffered terribly in the Spanish Civil War, as it was then a small, but strategically very important fishing village)

     The cloisters (look at the wall on the right. I LOVE the idea of priests shooting some hoops after a Confirmation).

     The ceiling of the interior of the church, designed to look like the hull of a boat (apologies for crapness of the photo, I would have lain down on the floor to get a better shot, but there were Other People there, already wondering what the hell I was doing).

     But mostly, I just wandered around, trying to make sense of it all, feeling more than a little overwhelmed.I don't go inside Catholic churches very often, and I'd forgotten what an assault on the senses it can be. The recordings of mass, played on a constant loop. The scent of incense so powerful it made my head swim. The simplicity of the Capilla de la Adoracion. The statues...

     I thought it was old churches that had the emotional pull on me. I thought it was the weight of history pressing on my shoulders. I thought it was that sense of being in limbo, between now and then. Certainly, some of it is still. But it's more than that. It's the people. The couple who crept into the church after me, and were praying quietly in a pew at the back. The man waiting nervously to enter the Confessional. The priest having a cigarette break and looking troubled. This.

     Can you see it? At the base of the second statue? Someone has written a prayer, folded it up, and left it there. It starts 'Oh Holy Father, I beseech thee...' Someone so desperate for help, for guidance, and solace, they left a prayer in the folds of a statue's robes. What despair did they feel to reach such a point?

     In the time of my confession,

In the hour of my deepest need.

When the pool of tears around my feet

Drown every newborn seed.

There's a dying voice within me,

Reaching out somewhere,

Toiling in the danger

And in the morals of despair

     I have no faith. Not in religion, not in other people, not even in myself. So I am forever intrigued by those who do, and the mystery of it. To offer up words of your darkest, deepest, bleakest moments, the times of your greatest need, when every second is too much. When every grain of sand runs against you. To place your future hope and faith in an an unseen, unknown, and unanswering deity. I hope they derived comfort from it. I hope the darkness passed over them without damage. I hope they found peace from the turbulence they were facing. 

     I didn't read their prayer. Too much of an intrusion into someone else's distress.  There is too much darkness in this world, too much anger, too much hurt. So I did the only thing I could, as an atheist, as a person, as one individual wanting to reach out and share the burden of a stranger. I lit a candle, I pushed back a little of the darkness. And went back out to the sunlight, to the beach, to the grains of sand.

I hear the ancient footsteps

Like the motion of the sea.

Sometimes I turn, there's someone there,

Other times it's only me.

I am hanging in the balance

Of the reality of man.

Like every sparrow falling,

Like every grain of sand.