We stood on the dusty street at sunset, Roberta, her son Nick, and I. Up the hill rode a thin fellow on an elegant salt-and-pepper horse with fine silver-tipped wooden stirrups. He was on his way to another Peruvian town over the mountains, to be a competitor in a horse exhibition. He was visiting a friend in the town of Chetilla, where Nick serves in the Peace Corps. The friend urged the horseman, whose name was Erasmo, to give us a show of his skills.
Erasmo, a gaunt-faced man with unforgettably intense eyes, nodded at us gravely and proceeded to guide his steed through its stepping-horse paces, prancing precisely up and down the dirt road as puffs of dust diffused the rich light. Making tight turns, then leading the horse into a nearby pasture, Erasmo masterfully rode as we followed. Dismounting, he made his horse rest its hooves one by one in his hands, then with gentle but firm coaxing to kneel on its front legs on the grass. He ordered it to roll over, rise, and then allow him to pass between its front and back legs. Then he mounted and in the pink-purple glow reflecting from the mountains looming beyond, he guided his high-stepping horse around the pasture again.
Erasmo’s face burned with the beauty of man and horse moving as one. His seriousness of purpose was as magnificent as the animal through which he channeled it. I was awestruck as the world around him took on a hyper-reality, refracted through his passionate, one-pointed intention.
It was the awe that strikes whenever I am in the presence of one who is fully present where he is, fully engaged in what she does, fully invested in what he creates, fully absorbed by what she sees and hears, empty of distraction. This intense engagement is contagious, releasing me from all else, overwhelming me with wonder.
After hearty applause from the handful of us who watched him ride in that remote mountain village, Erasmo took his leave with a solemn bow and we went back to Nick’s house in the gathering dark. The show had been unannounced. There had been no tickets to purchase. This may be the only review of the performance to find its way to print. Yet the three of us knew we had seen somebody, seen something, distinctly significant. Ordinary time had been suspended, replaced by a holy, eternal moment, as Erasmo rode before us on that grassy field.
Perhaps it was the field of which Jesus spoke in his enigmatic parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Matthew 13: 44) Erasmo in his joy had given up all else for the treasure of that moment, guiding his stepping horse in the setting sunlight. He delivered to us, in a flash of hooves, the divine realm itself.