Hosanna in Excelsis

We made our way into the city yesterday, walking with some of the extended Williams family, and stopped at a cafe where I ate a delicious raisin pastry, and followed the yellow arrows through the suburbs until we turned the corner and there it was, ornate stone spires and the crumbling majesty of a jungle temple, Angkor Wat in the middle of a sandstone Spanish city, and somewhere a man began playing bagpipes, and we saw Tim and Ariana waiting for us in the plaza with wide smiles, and it was Ariana's birthday, and we took pictures, and we walked around proud cathedral walls that seemed to never end until we arrived at a small opening, and up the wood stairs we went, trembling and tearing, until the kindly British lady in a blue t-shirt directed us to an open window, and we filled out our names and birthdays and points of origin, and suddenly there it was in our hands, our first names hastily translated into questionable Latin, the acknowledgment of the magnitude of what we had just done: our compostela -- and then we were down the stairs lugging our backpacks one last time (though Mariela in her determination for conclusion nearly forget hers) to the little hotel where we were staying, and we unpacked -- unpacked -- and then we were told we must come, Susan and Nancy are in the plaza! and we went and hugged and took more pictures and made plans for later, and went to get the rest of the Williams family and Emmy and Erica from their hotel, and Tim left to walk to Finesterre, and soon it was time for noon mass, the whole group trickling little by the little into the stone-walled, white-ceilinged, gold-altared cathedral, taking up four pews plus a few standing (which was lucky, since the aisles swelled with people), and mass began via loudspeaker call for silence since "you have plenty of time to talk together later," and we listened to the muffled Spanish and hummed to the music, and I made a mad dash to the back for a rather disorderly distribution of Communion, and we were all sitting, tired and restless, when two priests started pushing the huge incense burner (which had been taunting us all service, hanging stone still in front of the altar) and suddenly it was swinging, up, up, up so high we could only see the rope nearly touching the ceiling, and then plummeting like death and then rising again, as if for one moment gravity had disappeared and all things could fly.