O Fatima

 This morning when I awoke at my usual time at 1:30 am, I could hear the distant night construction in the undeveloped desert as if it were just outside. I remembered the date was May 13. So I got out of bed and made my way to the outdoor porch with my iphone, The air was temperature and comfortable. I sat in the rocking chair and opened the Youtube app on my phone, and then brought up the Fatima Live Stream. 

"Just like the old days," I thought. There was a time I did this almost every morning. That was back in 2021, when I was working the godawful job at Olive. I can say the name now that the company is out of business, having blow through a billion dollars of startup capital. That's what you get when your company is run by sociopaths, several of which made my life miserable for half a year. My workday began at 5 am, by my choice. So I would get up at 2 am just to get some peace and sanity in the calm darkness before subjecting myself to the sociopathic abuse. I had been required to watch their onboarding videos in which they described their aspiration "to be the Apple of medical data." Now their domain name is for sale.  I could buy it and be the new Olive of Nothing. 

In those days I often watched the daily live stream from Fatima. On most normal days they just have the Marian precession and the hymns. I enjoyed watching during my morning prayers. I had visited Fatima on a whim back in 2009 when I had gone to Europe and landed in Portugal.  I had my backpack and was on a tight budget. Finding cheap lodging was a must. Back then I was just young enough to be comfortable in hostels. At Fatima, it turns out that the lodging is primarily for pilgrims. It is cheap. One gets a basic room with a bed and bathroom, but not much else. Dining is all done in a common cafeteria room so you sit next to other pilgrims who come from all over the world in groups. I loved that experience.  There are many such pilgrim hotels on the edge of the plaza. 

At night I went outside and saw the candlelight procession around the plaza. I joined in at the end and followed them until they reached the little modern shelter over the wooden shack where the three children first saw the apparition of the Virgin on May 13, 1917, and continued to see it until October 13 of that year. I didn't know any of that at the time. It was just a novel experience, but it was moving to be a part of the pilgrimage. Twelve years later, the daily live stream of the mass and daily daylight procession while I worked at Olive became part of my routine, while I compared my misery to the days when I roamed Europe with a backpack, even as forty-five-year old man. I've gotten way more than I my share of that. Working at Olive felt like everything had caught up to me, and life felt bleak. The daily Marian video stream kept me going.

Today of course the plaza was crammed with pilgrims, as full as it gets. They use metal fences to allow the precession through the pilgrims who carry the flags of their nations. I was pleased to find that not only was I able to understand much of the spoken Portuguese, but that I understood it better than I remember. That's the way language learning works. Sometimes you get better by a passive method.

Happily this morning I had begun watching in time to hear the familiar Fatima hymn being sung by the crowd in unison.There were banners celebrating the life of Pope Francis and announcing the joy of having come for the pilgrimage. 

During the mass, various priests of different nations took turns reading the Gospel passage. The languages were all ones I had studied in various degrees, including Polish, where the only words I recognized was "Blessed be...",

I watched about an hour and went back to bed, thankful that I didn't have to work with sociopaths at 5 am.