In my hometown of Tucson, Arizona there is a small shrine in one of the oldest sections of town that dates back to the 1870’s. The story of this shrine is somewhat debatable since there appears to be many variations on the story behind it. One popular story is of a young ranch hand who despite being recently married, fell in love with his mother-in-law. During one of their trysts the father-in-law caught the couple in the act and butchered the young 18-year-old man with an axe in a fit of rage. Because of the nature of the young man’s acts that led to his death, the Catholic Church refused to allow the young man to be buried on consecrated ground in the church’s cemetery. The distraught mother-in-law/lover’s only option was to bury him where he was slain, and the shine nestled in the Barrio Viejo district of South Tucson began.
I became aquainted with El Tiradito (the castaway in spanish) when I was volunteering for victim/witness with the Tucson Police. On my volunteer nights we would wait for the police to call us to a scene to assist victims of crime or witnesses to crimes who were in need of mental health support. One night I had a new partner and the moment we got in the car he told me that he has a tradition to pray before heading out and we needed to make a stop before we did anything else. He then proceeded to tell me of this little shrine that is in the heart of the city and the story behind it. While I lived in Tucson most of my life, I was not aware of this Culturally important place right in my backyard.
It has been a place where believers go to pay homage, offer prayers, and make wishes in the hopes that these will be answered by God. Because it’s existence is owed to a person experiencing extreme heartache, any matters relating to the heart are enough to make a trip to El Tiradito. The faithful believers will often bring offerings (food, pictures of loved ones, flowers, beer/liquor), write a wish on a piece of paper, stick that wish in small crevices of the brick wall, and light a candle. Folklore has it that if your candle stays burning through the night and just past sunrise your wish or prayer will come true. It is also said that what you energetically bring to the shrine has a huge impact on what happens. If your heart is open to love and forgiveness, your wish has more of a chance of success. If you come with anything other than that, you could be dooming yourself to a repeat of history (because obviously you haven’t learned your lesson). El Tiradito is also known as the Curse of the Wishing Shrine since it can go in either direction.
When we pulled up next to the shrine there must have been 15 to 20 people crowded in this small, recessed area off the street. Forty to fifty candles were already burning. I never asked whom my partner was praying for, but it was apparent that everyone there had experienced some emotional wound they wanted help with. He lit a candle, and we began our evening. He told me another story. This was a memory of a victim he helped. Her son had been shot and killed and he somehow learned that every night his mother would come and light a candle while praying for his soul to ascend to heaven. Because the life he led was full of crime, she was concerned it wouldn’t happen.
After that night it became a ritual to pray for those people we came across and helped. After we helped them on most likely the worst night of their life, we would never see them again, but often they were on our minds and weighing heavily in our hearts. Praying for their healing was all we had left at our disposal to further help them.
But this time, my visit to the shrine was for me and not any of the victims or witnesses to crime I had often prayed to recieve the healing they needed to become whole.
The last few years have filled with heartbreak and loss in a what appears to be a procession of sorts. I never knew I could cry so much or feel so deeply. It is almost as if one loss would create an opening in my soul and another, following close behind, would not allow the previous hole to close, only growing bigger and bigger with each passing loss. The magnitude of this procession of loss has permanently altered how I view love and loss and what it means to be having this human experience we call life.
Overall, I feel my changed perspective is expanding me to become a more whole and authentic person, but I’ve also reached a crescendo where my capacity to cope is overwhelmed. Asking for a little heavenly assistance felt necessary to help with healing and closure.
I pulled up in the car with my family before nightfall, so the shrine’s nightly activity hadn’t yet begun. The remnants of past believer’s foray to the shrine were still visible though with many candles completely burned and several candles at the very end of their life, still burning brightly. I internally smiled at this sight. Prayers were received for the people the previous night.
I passed out candles and paper for each of us to write our prayers. My father closed his eyes for a moment to take in the energy of the shrine before writing his prayer. Once my little family began their process, I took a moment to clear everything heavy on my heart. I was trying to find that calm clarity that resides within, containing my deepest desires. When I got here, I only knew what I didn’t want. It’s easy to identify the unwanted things in our life. These mind disturbances happen constantly and ceaselessly. It’s human nature to identify all sorts of threats to our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. I don’t want this or that. I don’t like this or that. For me, I don’t want to be heartbroken anymore. I don’t want to experience the loss of love anymore. I don’t want to be betrayed anymore. I don’t want, I don’t want, I don’t want. Etcetera, etcetera. Ad nauseum. Infinitum.
It’s a lot more challenging to stop the energetic push away of the unwanted things than to feel the inward pull of the wanted things. They need to be sorted and sifted, separated. That’s what I feel a prayer should be about. Asking from a place of love for the Universe, God, Spirit, or whomever One believes in for help in the path to the good things, to what will heal and make whole, to the intended nature of wholeness within ourselves while also incorporating love for others on our path. It took me a little while because I had been so focused on what I didn’t want and what was weighing heavily on my mind and in my body.
I eventually wrote my prayer asking for obstacles to be removed and the path to be clear in matters of the heart (among some more specific things) on a piece of paper and gingerly stuck it into the shrine wall before lighting a candle.
Once we were done at the shrine I reveled in the moment. Bringing my family here and sharing my experiences with the shrine and the story of El Tiradito made coming here one last time very special. I was surrounded by people I love and who love me. While it may not be the type of love I am asking for guidance on, it was a beautiful reminder of what I do have in front of me.
As the plane took off and I left the desert one last time, I thought about our prayers and candles we left burning. I wondered if they carried our prayers to the place where they would be heard. And I wondered if they burned through the night and past the sun’s ascent in the sky to be answered and fulfilled.
Down The Spiral 