The magic of stories

Peru is stunningly beautiful. I mean, really stunningly beautiful. We visit Tipon, a famous Inca site, constructed rather like Moray, in descending terraces, but with water channels down the sides, arranged in small waterfalls, perfectly geometric, with the falls themselves arranged in two's, fours and, apparently, eight, though we didn't see a feature with eight. The Incas believed in symmetry and balance, with the earth and with their Gods and they arranged their temples accordingly. In fact Tipon was probably an agricultural site as well as a temple. As far as I can see temples and practical buildings rather overlapped. It reminds me of Bali, of that seamless integration of God with business, spirituality with daily life. It makes a lot of sense, that your God would run through everything you did, everything you applied yourself to, the way that air is present in the world, always there, always necessary. Oddly, nowadays, very few faiths achieve this, and God becomes a separate entity, living in a temple very far from your daily work and grind. I think Muslims have a clever idea in their prayer times set aside throughout the day, requiring prayer rooms in offices, gradually inching spirituality back into business.

The Inca ruins ate fascinating, and I like to step back and look quietly at them, trying to see the ghosts of that forgotten age, the answers to all those remaining questions about who they were what they did and what their buildings were used for.

Aside from that though, what really impresses me about Tipon is the landscape surrounding it. White tipped jagged mountains in the distance, lush green mountains, dotted with goats, sheep or llamas in the foreground. It's really breathtaking. The paths, where they exist, are green and verdant rather than paved or stony and the steps carved into the hillside are grassy, Inca moats continuing to run with water through the mountains. There is, we are told, a full days walk from Tipon through the mountains. We don't know where it ends up but the path looks inviting. We resist, because I am struggling a little with increasingly blocked ears, so that my whole head feels heavy and clay filled and blocked, and also because we have plans to go on to visit the church of San Pedro in Andhuayillas.

I am glad that we do. The church is covered, quite literally, in paintings and sculptures. Every wall, every archway, even the ceilings are bright with depictions of Jesus the healer, Jesus the preacher, Jesus the sacrifice. As numerous as these are the depictions if Saint Peter, in life, in death, in afterlife.

I am familiar with the stories of Jesus, and can generally identify which episodes are being painted, but I am less sure of the stories of the saints in Catholicism. I leave with an intention to look up Saint Peter, and learn more about him, along with a female saint who I think is called Carmen, and appears a lot in Spanish influenced churches, usually as a doll like figure with porcelain features.

It occurs to me that we talk a lot in England about the colourful stories and oral traditions of other countries, or of our own in the past (and the past is, as we know, another country). But we have very colourful stories knitted through our society, of saints and sinners, Gods and even ghosts. Do they seem faded to us, made grey through time and repetition? Or have we made them seem irrelevant because we have centred upon only one way to tell the stories? Do we forget that to breath life into an age old story we must continue to reinterpret it, to reimagine and make bright? It is possible to retain the central truth of a story, but find new ways to identify with its principal characters. I am reminded again of the nativity scene in the Museum of Popular Art, in which Jesus holds a flower in a nest, surrounded by birds. It is possible to change nearly everything, and yet hold onto a central core.

Of course the church has its dark side. The town of Andhuaylillas was constructed as an indoctrination centre, with the church in the middle, painted deliberately to teach the indigenous people the ways of the Spanish route to God. The paintings play on indigenous beliefs, pulling them towards the Spanish world view, so that mountain Gods become saints and Latin phrases used in the baptismal service are inscribed alongside native languages as well as Spanish. The sharing of a faith in itself is rather beautiful. Its just that in this case I am not sure there was a choice.

We should reimagine and keep alive our stories. But only a very talented story teller can capture a true interest in those who have been forced to listen.