LA IGLESIA CATEDRAL de Santa Maria de Betancuria is a must when we stir ourselves and head for a day in the sparsely populated Fuerteventuran interior. There’s no going straight from A to B in the hill country, of course. Today’s VW Polo passed muster as a mountain goat, but getting anywhere here takes time. How much more so for a 15th century bishop?

Who lived on this rocky island in the Atlantic early in the 1400s? How did they travel anywhere? What saved them from dying of starvation and / or dehydration? (We were fuelled by a cooked breakfast, a couple of litres of water and an ice cream!) And what on earth, in what must have felt like the middle of nowhere, did the episcopal occupant of the chair of Santa Maria de Betancuria DO?

I always mean to seek out a bit of the island’s history when I get back to the UK. I am keen to know who chose the location, who funded and who built the cathedral, but today I’m interested simply to observe myself falling straight back into the 21st century “doing” trap. Why so keen to ask what a Fuerteventuran bishop might DO? I wonder, is it possible, that a 15th century donkey-riding bishop of Betancuria, when he wasn’t worrying about invaders, or building and maintaining a cathedral, miles from anywhere, might have thought it important just to BE?

I’ve been reading another of Gerald G May’s wonderful books, this time The Awakened Heart. He touches on the difference between doing and being – and on why touching on the difference matters. More on this in a day or two, no doubt.

posted from iPad by BlogPress

Fuerteventura, Spain