Monday, December 24, 2012

Churches

Leon Podles posted a link to this lovely video of the old colonial Spanish churches in New Mexico

video link



I worked in New Mexico, but in the Southern mountains (ski Apache anyone?) and we attended the local church that was built with the help of the local Apaches (One of my patients told me the story of how her father helped to get the stone and cut it to bring to build the church). Video HERE. 
a good show of the church, but it is boring.



Father Braun was the founding pastor, long deceased when I was there, but when I asked why an Apache church had a monument to the Bataan death march, I found he (and two of the local Apaches) were veterans who had been there along with the NMNG.... Father Al's photo is at 9:21...

And no, they aren't letting pagan idols into the church. Even though the local resort is "The Inn of the Mountain Gods", the spirits shown in the pictures on the wall are the spirits of the ancestors that teach girls how to be women in the famous puberty ceremony on the mountain tops every year. And no, I didn't go to watch the ceremony: too busy running the ER at their very very understaffed IHS hospital.


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