I stirred awake and attempted to find a more comfortable sleeping position on my sleeping pad.
An eerie, unusual silence met my ears, primarily because rural, Mexican nights can be likened to a veritable barnyard carnival.
Dogs and annoyingly unpunctual roosters spend their nights socializing verbally across the city.
But in a single moment, all was calm.
I rolled over and tried to return to sleep, slightly frustrated that my sleeping mat was not making this task any easier.
Three kinds of flooring are available here: asphalt for the main roads, concrete flooring for those that can afford them and a mixture of stone, rock, dirt and clay that covers every other surface.
Crudely constructed benches or plastic lawn chairs are used around tables or in church.
Hammocks are a common sleeping arrangement to maximize the possibility of coaxing a breeze through the open air windows.
For those who have beds, they would likely be unjustly referred to as mattresses as the slabs appear to fight against any cushioning of the body as one reclines.
Shoes are almost always sandals or hard soled boots.
Even the jungle rejects a softness with the overgrown foliage robbing a passerby of the opportunity to sit or lie in a grassy patch of earth.
There is no furniture to speak of except in the wealthiest of estates and even that leave the pampered American something to be desired.
The men work hard in the fields and carry their meager harvests on their backs for miles at a time along the roadways.
The women slave away tirelessly cooking, cleaning, building, mothering and scrubbing their abodes with abandon.
In short, life here is not comfortable.
It is hard, abrasive and unforgiving.
Yet, none of this has compared to the state of the people´s hearts in Arroyo Palenque.
The dominant
Catholic presence here has produced (and rewarded to some degree) a carnality that mirrors the hardness of the Mexican lifestyle.
A disturbing contentment with mediocrity and religiosity has put the community to sleep.
Long they rest, unaware of the slow sublimation of their souls.
The few individuals that comprise the city´s remnant have seen this communal hardness of heart and weep over it.
Those awakened experience the liberating, unusual sensation of softness and comfort as Christ melts their stony hearts into vibrant, life giving vessels.
This rebirth functions as the only comfort and softness in their world.
It´s a softness and comfort I would not trade for anything.
It´s beautiful.
