CPT and the Bells of Chiapas
by Muriel T. Stackley, Kansas, 20 July 2000
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS--The Christian Peacemaker Teams house here on Marzo Street forms the third point of a triangle with two massive church buildings--the Church of Santo Domingo and the Cathedral. It was CPT that brought ten of us for ten days from Canada and the U.S. to this beautiful southeastern state of Mexico and to these bells. Punctuating each day, the tolling from these two churches remind and inform and summon.
Yesterday I noted the time as soon as the bells began. At 6:50 p.m. I counted 40 bongs of the always-deep-throated bell, followed by a pause and then a final one. Ten minutes later it was 35 bongs followed by three slow, final ones. It would appear that the first ringing is the sign to start walking, that in ten-or-so minutes you'll be on time for prayers. Do the various endings tell you which of the two churches is announcing worship?
Today I began two days of living without a time-piece (recovering from a sinus infection while my watch-wearing colleagues went as planned to "the campo," the villages around San Cristobal). In the silence and solitude I found myself waiting, waiting for the bells. At dusk they rang three different times. First, 60 bongs. Silence. Then--about 10 minutes later--30 bongs in regular staccato followed by two slow and final ones. About half an hour later came 28 bongs followed by three slow ones. Yes, they are "the angelus." Yes, they remind and summon.
My ten colleagues on this July "delegation" to Chiapas were at this point miles away, out of reach of "the big churches." The bells of San Cristobal summoned me this evening to pray for them: for servant-leader Duane; for Grace and Murray who were coughing a bit when they left this morning; for Fred, seasoned back-packer, carrying an unusually heavy pack; for Alan, equipped with a filter-pump to prepare potable water for a group; for Shirley and Matt and Len and Ron; for Doug who in leading this morning's worship said, God makes things new; for CPT (long-term) team member Lynn, in his second year in Chiapas. Also, the bells say, pray for the indigenous communities receiving these 11 people--a sizeable "company" for anyone to host, but especially for folks who have been repeatedly making room for refugees in recent years.
On Saturday, team member Anne and I will join the group in the campo, the countryside, along with four visitors. We are spiritual refugees from North American affluence, sitting at the feet of people who live with suffering. We who claim 475 year of Protestant historic peace church history are learning from a Roman Catholic community--las Abejas, "the Bees"--who in the 1990s came to understand that God was calling them to live without weapons in their dangerous, violent world. They made this decision public in 1994 and it has seen them through malignment and massacre. We listen to them in their tonal language, Tzotzil--at times bell-like, as the upwardly lilting word "ba-ton" in response to a passing greeting. The words of this Mayan community remind and inform and summon us anew to follow Jesus.