doing good -- doing better

The San Miguel education of Steve Cotton continues.


Today was Do Gooder day.


Now, I know a lot of you think of “Do Gooder” as a pejorative.  If you do, you are most likely confusing it with its genetic mutants: “Officious Meddler” and “Make Me Feel Better About Myselfer.”


Babs and I spent part of our afternoon at the real McCoy.  A fundraiser for Mujeres en Cambio de San Miguel de Allende.  The group was formed to provide middle school, high school, and university scholarships to Mexican girls in rural communities. 


Those of you who have read the blogs of parents with children in Mexican schools know of the additional expenses every family faces in keeping children in school.  For rural families, the expense is often prohibitive.  And girls are the first to lose out.

 

The function was held at Patsy’s Place.  A lovely rancho on the road to Dolores Hidalgo.


This was not going to be a soup kitchen affair.  The tables were well-appointed and the women were dressed as if attending any fundraiser in Marin County.  It was a place To Be Seen.


The meal was delicious.  And the pitch was well-delivered when everyone had finished eating.  But, as I watched the hat being passed for donations, the take certainly did not seem to match the outfits in the room.


And this lunch gave me an opportunity to see the side of the San Miguel that made me reluctant to visit in the first place.  I would estimate that 90% of the people in the room were salt of the earth people.


But it only takes one or two to create a negative impression.  The type of people who get their ideas straight for their own publications and can only speak in sound bites.  The repeated use of the phrase “I hate” is usually a dead giveaway that you are about to hear something that is concurrently conclusory and vacuous.


But It was a good cause.  And I enjoyed most of the company. 

 

On the way back to San Miguel, we stopped at the Sanctuary of Atotonilco.  It is another of those 17th century churches associated with a vision.  In this one, Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns and carrying a cross, appeared to Father Luis Felipe Neri de Alfaroion, and requested a church to be built in the desert scrub bush.


And there it still stands.  A new UNESCO World Heritage site.


The sanctuary is interesting historically and architecturally.  The history is fleeting.  But it was from this church that the warrior-priest grabbed the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe to begin his journey in 1810 to Dolores Hidalgo to declare independence -- and then on to Guanajuato to massacre a bunch of Spanish families.


The architectural interest is the interior of the church.  It is covered with paintings on the walls and the ceiling -- to the point it is often called the “Sistine Chapel of Mexico.”

 

The comparison is apt in the scope of the project, but not its artistic quality.  Much of the painting has recently been restored.  The church is built over an old spring where the Indians would bathe nude.  The humidity has caused a good deal of damage to the walls and the paintings.


What has been restored reflects the plain style of Flemish painters – the inspiration for the series of scenes from the life of Jesus.


As we sat and looked at the opulence of this little chapel, we talked about the many Indian lives that were lost in the conquest, and in the mining of the silver and gold that made these churches possible.  But, even knowing that history, busloads of their descendants pour in to this church to worship.


And that made me remember that hat being passed around earlier in the afternoon.  The peso notes would not have paid for anything in the church.  Maybe that is a parable that when we choose to do good, sometimes we need to do better.


”For where your wealth is, there your heart will be also.”