The second time, it was a hot, humid day, and I was looking for a grocery store to buy a bottle of water. He was in a shop which sold masks and textiles. I looked away and then I looked back at him. He was clearly staring at me.

"I see you like him," said the shopkeeper.

I nodded tentatively.

"Here," he said, and he handed Maximon and his chair to me. You see, Maximon was less than a foot high, and he was made of wood.

"Would you like to have him?"

I opened my wallet and then hesitated.

"I'm . . . not sure."

"He may not be here later," said the shopkeeper.

"Well . . . I'll have to take that chance. I can't really decide now."

"Can you tell me about him, please," I whispered to a Guatemalan man who had come for a healing.

"He's a god, but he likes to smoke and drink like the rest of us."

It was hard for me to understand this. A wooden god who smokes and drinks?

"Where does he come from?" I asked the man.

"Santiago Atitlán," he answered, and so I went there.

On cement benches that lined the wall facing Maximon, Maya people waited patiently and whispered in their K'iche' language. When it was their turn, they made a cash offering of quetzals (Guatemalan currency), burned candles (different colors represent different favors that are requested), put cigarettes in Maximon's mouth, and donated small bottles of alcohol. Some of the alcohol was poured into Maximon's rigid, open mouth, and when the liquor began to dribble, the guardian lovingly mopped up the figure's chin and neck.

A guide entered the room with a few Japanese visitors in tow, and we began to speak. He told me that Maximon is revered by Maya and many other people, and he may be the reincarnation of Maam, an ancient Maya god of the underworld. His name may come from this god, or perhaps it derives from "max," which means "tobacco" in the Maya language. Alternately, his name may signify "bound with string or rope."

More people arrived, offering more candles, more to drink, more to smoke--single cigars and cigarettes or whole boxes. The atmosphere got noisy, hazy, permeated with the smell of alcohol. The more people I questioned about Maximon, the more confused I became. He was a saint. A devil. The godfather or grandfather of the village who protected the inhabitants from evil and witches. A doctor. A trickster. A potent miracle worker and healer. An ancient Maya god synchretized with San Simon, or, perhaps, Judas Iscariot. A Maya leader who was hitched to a chair and burned by the Spanish in the middle of the sixteenth century. Pedro de Alvarado, the brutal conquistador who ravaged the Maya culture and people.

Maya supplicants bowed low in front of Maximon or got down on their knees praying. They implored him for food, health for a family member, crops, a safe voyage, success at selling in the market. Red candles were lit for love, white to protect the children, pink for health, and yellow for the elders. Some people spoke briefly, some for a long time. To them, Maximon was not a wooden figure--he was holy, someone in whom they believed, a miracle maker, a granter-of-wishes, an intimate god they could turn to in times of need.

"Did you make a donation and request something?" a woman asked me.

"I don't have quetzales, I replied.

"Maximon takes dollars too."

I reached into my wallet, but I hesitated, as I had done in the store. I wasn't ready to make an offering to Maximon because I didn't really understand him. And then a man from Guatemala City came into the room. His English was almost perfect, he worked as a guide, and he had a Canadian couple in tow.

I listened carefully as he told them about Maximon.

"He is a divinity, but one who is very revered because he understands human vice and sin. He enjoys smoking, drinking, and carousing, just like people do."

"Why do they worship someone like that?" asked the Canadian man.

"He forgives and offers hope to people, even to those who have done desperate or terrible things," he answered. "Because he himself is a sinner, he is able to forgive."

It was precisely the information I'd hoped for. Like every other human, I had done things wrong. Acted thoughtlessly. Missed opportunities when I could have done better. I had asked The Big One in the sky to excuse me, I had felt bad, guilty, remorseful over the course of my life. But I never had a chance to request absolution from a god with alcohol dribbling down his chin and rolled tobacco protruding from his mouth. I placed money in the offering box, lit a candle, and looked at Maximon. "I am sorry for anything I have ever done wrong," I told him. "Can I sort of ask for global absolution instead of enumerating every petty error of the past?"

I looked up. Was it possible? I saw a twinkle in Maximon's right eye, and I somehow knew I was forgiven, and I could go forward with a clean slate in life.

"Enjoy your booze and cigarettes," I told him, as I exited the room. And I walked into the sunny outdoors, feeling like a better, lighter, happier person.

I told him about the wooden god in Guatemala who drank and smoked, and how I learned in his shrine that perfection is a crazy dream, an ill-conceived illusion. To inhabit a human body is to be imperfect.

"Maximon thinks all of that is cabbage!" I said. It came out of me so suddenly that I was surprised. "You have vices and so does he. He accepts people the way they are: imperfect, trying their best but not always succeeding. I can understand why he's a god in the Guatemalan pantheon. He's willing to help anyone who asks him, without judgment. He's not holier than thou and he doesn't hold up a standard humans can't achieve."

My friend exploded in laughter. "Maybe I should keep my eye out for Maximon the next time I'm in a bar," he said. "He'll probably order a whiskey and light up a Cuban cigar."

I recently heard that my friend has sworn off drinking and using again. Far away in Guatemala, Maximon, who is certainly swilling, is also smiling. And if this little-known god can forgive human error, I'm willing to wager that whatever God you pray to can too.