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June 21, 2004 - Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels April 24, 2004 Holy Week in Sicily Susan Lloyd recently returned from her sixth trip to Sicily to see and participate in the Holy Week rituals in Trapani, on the island's northwest coast. Lloyd was also the guide for Ashland's Peggy Rubin, former actress with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and 35 men and women from the U.S. and Europe who performed sacred theater with Rubin as they toured Sicily's Greek archeological sites. Holy Week During Holy Week, Trapani men called "portatori" carried 1-ton floats holding statues depicting the Stations of the Cross through the town for 24 hours beginning on Good Friday. In nearby Marsala, actors performed dramatic passion plays on the streets, complete with painted blood. "This is nothing," Lloyd said. "In Taxco, Mexico, men carry huge cactus loads on their shoulders to imitate Christ's cross and flagellate themselves with whips until the real blood flows." Lloyd, photographer, writer and filmmaker, was also sent to the Philippines by National Geographic magazine to photograph the crucifixion of a woman healer in Bulacan, a town on Luzon island. Lloyd has documented other Holy week rituals in Guatemala, Peru, Spain and New Mexico and rituals among the Tarahumara and Yaqui Indians of northern Mexico. Rites of passage This year in Trapani, Lloyd's son, a 2003 graduate of Ashland High School and a broadcaster on KSOR, accompanied Lloyd and helped carry the largest statue group from the beginning to the end of the procession. He joined a group of carriers Lloyd has known since her first visit to Trapani in 1984. "It was an important initiation for him -- joining 40 men of all ages as they danced the statue through the winding streets, Lloyd said. "Our sons and daughters have so few rites of passage in our culture in the U.S." His older brother, Sky, had also walked in the procession in 1988 when Lloyd shot a documentary film there. The film was awarded a Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival in 1992. Lloyd considers the Trapani community an adopted family and she herself carried the Madonna of Sorrow's statue in this yearly ritual, which doesn't normally have women as carriers. "In the procession, the Madonna is looking for her son. For 24 hours she searches for him," Lloyd said. "I identify more with her than with Christ." At the time, one of the female participants on the Sacred theater tour spontaneously walked with hundreds of women dressed in black, following the searching Madonna, she said. "The women represent the sorrowing mother," Lloyd said. "The woman in our group's husband had died and she found a way to process her grief - in Sicily, with other women, and with the Madonna." "The Passion" in another light The idea of a mother's loss causes Lloyd to cast a critical eye at Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of the Christ," in light of her experiences with Holy Week Passion rituals. "In the film and in these rites there is often a lot of flagellation and bloodshed, and in The Philippines people are literally nailed to crosses," Lloyd said. According to Lloyd, although "flagellantes" are expressing their identification with Christ, especially in cultures which have experienced colonization, exploitation and suffering, anthropologists believe that the urge to shed blood is related to pre-Christian fertility rites. Still occurring in tribal societies today, men imitate women's fertility and menses by drawing blood in order to propitiate the gods and guarantee successful crops. 'It's a male thing' Lloyd laments what she sees as a world in which sacrifice is necessary. "Its a male thing," Lloyd said I think of Henry V before the battle of Agincourt exhorting his men that 'He today that sheds his blood shall be my brother.'" Lloyd recalled a parallel to Christ's statement to his disciples: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." "All of this relates directly to the lot of soldiers in war," Lloyd said. "Ask the buddy of a fallen soldier why and for whom they died. They'll never say it was for country or patriotism. They die to protect their friends." Susan Lloyd is the author of "No Pictures in My Grave: A Spiritual Journey in Sicily" (Mercury House, San Francisco), and two documentary films. She is working on a second book, "The Day They Crucified Lucy Reyes," about Holy Week rituals in Latin America and The Philippines. DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams