Commentary: Sunday we visited La Cueva, where Giovanni Maria Agostini (“el Ermitario”) lived 150 years ago.
Giovanni apparently was born to Italian nobles, studied for the priesthood, did not take vows, and spent many years walking through Europe and the Americas. He arrived in New Mexico at 62, after walking with the wagon train of Eugenio Romero (related to J. Paul Taylor, soon to be 100) and lived on a hill (now called Hermit’s Peak) northwest of Las Vegas.
He came to Mesilla to consult lawyer Albert Fountain, then took up residence in La Cueva, up near Dripping Springs. The Barela family (forebears of Mesilla’s current mayor) warned him it was dangerous. He promised to light a fire each Friday evening to let them know he was all right. On Friday, 17 April, 1869, there was no fire. Antonio Garcia, who used to transport sick people to La Cueva so Giovanni could heal them with local herbs, led a group to investigate, and found Giovanni dead, with a knife in his back. His murder, like Fountain’s, went unsolved.
My ears luxuriated in the silence of the hermit’s cave, a healing silence in which, for the first few minutes, the din we take for granted in our daily lives reverberated in my head, expanding to fill the silent cave, then dissipating. As the silence took possession of me, I contemplated Giovanni and wished that each year we would celebrate 17 April.
“As a day of silence? A day of meditation?” my wife asked. Sure. A day of quiet. A day for reflecting on the vastness and beauty of our earth; on the many diverse paths that formed us and brought us here. On God or chance or karma. On whatever led that huge rock to settle exactly there, as many of us seem to have settled in Doña Ana County, New Mexico.
A day to appreciate Giovanni’s contemplative nature, piety, healing, and love of our natural world.
A day to honor the wondrous beauty that surrounds us here, however we choose to do so. A day to share that wonder, without carping that this one doesn’t believe everything I believe, or that that one supports political figures anathema to me. A day when we don’t divide ourselves by concerns that our neighbor doesn’t share our religious or spiritual beliefs, ethnicity, skin color, or sexual identity. A day to share our gratitude for what we have, without arguing about Who or what has given it to us.
Even if I believe you are poisoning our Earth and killing off species, and you believe I am killing nascent lives that will turn into children if all goes well – if whosever house was on fire, would we not form a bucket line? If our boat were sinking, would we not all shut up and bail? Well, our boat is sinking in a cesspool of selfishness, greed, lies, and ideological fervor. Let’s bail.
I suspect that’s what Giovanni would want us to do, so let’s pause each April 17th to celebrate Giovanni, who loved our mountains, lived and healed where we walk, and is embedded in local history. He preached Catholic sermons, but belongs to all of us.
We have plenty of passionate rallies and marches are about protesting each other. Let’s share Giovanni Day, celebrating our mountains and land and culture and silences. Together. Who knows, we might learn to like each other.