Most of us know the feeling: the void. A quiet emptiness that no success, intimacy or indulgence quite fills. For years, I searched for a remedy in books, people, restraint and excess. I tried Buddhism, yoga, new-age rituals. I completed two vision quests: four nights alone in the wilderness, without food, water or shelter, just a sleeping bag and whatever came in the dark. Nothing held.
My father was a Catholic priest before marrying my mother. But only recently have I begun to feel a pull to the old stories, images and rituals I grew up with. The roots were there; I just didn’t know how to follow them to something grounding, something shared.
Acolytes prepare to accompany the paso of Our Lady of Amargura in Arcos de la Frontera © Laura León
The author’s support belt is tightened © Laura León
Faith, I’ve come to understand, doesn’t always live in silence or stillness. Sometimes it lives in breath, in movement, in the effort of bodies pressed together to lift something sacred through the streets. I learned this when I became a costalero – one of the hidden bearers who carry the heavy wooden platforms, or pasos, during the Holy Week processions.
