Hey everbody!
This week we made our first foray into historical Belize! We explored the ancient temple site of Xunantanich, a minor temple of the Maya Empire. It dated to about 650 A.D. The Mayans tended to have temple plazas, where the temple was only one of various buildings and courts. Believe it or not, games that were a cross between soccer and basketball were of high religious and social importance, so the courts were quite close to the temple site. Most of you are familiar with the typical look of a Maya temple, a tall pyramid-like structure dominated by a kind of porch landing with various altars. What I learned was that the stairs were made deliberately steep and high so that supplicants approaching the priests at the top would have to practically crawl up to them. Believe me, scaling even this minor temple in the full heat of Belizean midday was no fun. Even the proudest man would be humbled as he half-climbed, half-crawled towards the dark silhouettes of priests standing several stories above him. Apparently only animal sacrifices were made at this site though; I remain unclear on whether the Mayans practiced human sacrifice like the Aztecs. I'll have to do some research.
Since the view and breeze are wonderful, we lunched at the top of the temple. A friend and I took turns reading a biography on Damian of Molokai, another Catholic missionary. It occured to me that God's grace truly is pervasive, since now here we were learing about a great saint in place that had once been embroiled by darkness. The light has not been hid under the bushel basket.
Jonathan
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