She dances with the single-minded intensity of the divine. On her head she balances a solid granite boulder, symbol of her mortal burdens. Round and round in syncopated steps, her open palms fluttering up and down in tireless supplication, she strives toward ecstasy. On and on she circles to the soft crooning of "Mariam, Mariam, Mariam," bending and rising in private communion; the heavy stone never wavers. Suddenly she halts and smiles with such sweetness that the Virgin must surely have answered her prayer.
This is the faith that moves mountains. At Christmastime in Axum, ancient home of the Queen of Sheba, reputed sanctuary of the Ark of the Covenant and heart of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, such devotion is commonplace. Nothing has ever succeeded in crushing the simple rituals of piety that have been practiced here since the 4th century--not the communist ideology that ruled Ethiopia for much of the past two decades, not the cynicism of the modern age, not the latest plagues of civil war, famine, poverty and AIDS.
Once a year or once in a lifetime, on the Feast of the Virgin by the Julian calendar (Nov. 29 this year), pilgrims flock by the tens of thousands to the Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion, the holiest of holy churches in their faith. The continual chants of "Mariam, Mariam, Mariam" bear witness to the high esteem, higher even than that accorded Jesus, in which Ethiopia's Christians hold the Mother of the Saviour. One woman says this is the day Mary was miraculously transported to Axum. Another says no, this is the day Mary stopped here on her flight into Egypt (a long detour, indeed). It doesn't really matter; the pilgrims believe she is here now.
Few Westerners know this kind of faith--idiosyncratic individual devotion at its most physical. There are no glittering ceremonies or grand processions, no public professions, no dramatic visions, only 10,000 acts of private veneration, prayer, supplication. What the stranger sees is the collective reverence of the like-minded in direct contact with the spiritual, and the awesome testament of comfort received, etched on their faces.
Ethiopian Orthodoxy is a curious amalgam of Judaic and Christian practices, African and European rituals. It is manifestly a man's religion: only males may enter the inner sanctuary where it is claimed Moses' Ark is hidden. No one knows anyone who has actually seen it, but the pilgrims are certain it is there. "They don't have to let people see it for us to believe it," says a gnarled elder. "That's the mystery." Women, he adds, are excluded because "God made the rules for mankind and women broke them."
Still, women come to Axum to speak directly to Mary. They dance to beg for help. They approach the gateway to the inner shrine to genuflect and kiss its stones. They stand in lines along the outer walls offering silent prayers. "If we have a problem--lack of rain, poor harvests, infertility, illness--we need to go to her and she will listen," says a young supplicant, "more than Jesus or God. If we are here, by our presence, she knows it even though we can't be in the church."