Paper short abstract:

In this paper, a legendary narrative on a travelling saint, homemaking, and collective guilt will be interpreted. It will scrutinize the way in which sacred space and place, invoking and making a sense of home, are symbolically adopted and created through pilgrimage ritual.

Paper long abstract:

In a remote Maya community in Guatemala's mountains, a legendary story is narrated. During the civil war, a group of soldiers entered the church and violated the patron saint of the community. The saint was disappointed and he decided to move away. As a pilgrim, he reached another community and requested accommodation; the day after, he turned into a statue and was moved into the temple in which he began to be venerated with others saints. After that, the former community started to make pilgrimages to the new saint's home.

In the world of the narrative, not only people, but also saints make pilgrimages in which they strive for home. This fieldwork-based paper will discuss how the experience of feeling at home is created through sacred places such as temples, dwellings of saints, or mountains. These entities represent key religious and ritual symbols, in which the sense of home and community is founded. They symbolize dwelling, protection, and safety. This fact, however, cannot be seen as something static, unchangeable, or taken for granted; rather, homemaking is a process, social practice of veneration, sacrifice, and pilgrimage. As the narrative says, immoral human treatment of sacred places and beings may result in their leaving, thus changing sacred geography of the region. These immaterial attitudes, intentions, and acts are materialized in venerated statues and sites; furthermore, the new distribution of sacred space and place is created through pilgrimages. Finally, the narrative tells us something very important about guilt, collective trauma, and collective memory.