​NORTHERN NEW MEXICO BLESSINGS

“Thank you, God, for letting me have another day,” says Amarante Cordova at the opening of the film The Milagro Beanfield War.  I say these same words every day because it is so good to wake up each morning in Northern New Mexico.  I am a transplant from Illinois who has sunk roots into the Abiquiu soil right alongside my born-here neighbors, who welcomed me and made room for me.  I want to live and die in the Land of Enchantment.  My friends and neighbors share my awe about our state.  We are indeed conscious of just how lucky and blessed we are to breathe such clear air as we gaze at our steadfast mountains and brilliant skies.
 
Blessings descend in various guises and from many sources.  Sometimes when I am just too overcome to try to explain my blessings adequately, someone else expresses the same point of view.  That itself is a blessing.
 
There is no hesitancy here to bless everything in sight.  At El Rancho de las Golondrinas, the outdoor living history museum five miles southwest of Santa Fe, a priest says three separate blessings before the annual Harvest Mass the first Sunday of each October.  Attendees assemble on top of the hill overlooking this vast agricultural site to accompany the carved bulto of San Isidro Labrador, his oxen and angels, to its regular place in the chapel in the Golodrinas Placita at the bottom of the hill.  This statue spent the summer in the Oratorio de Isidro, the morada on this height, so that Isidro, venerated saint of farmers, could oversee and bless this enterprise’s crops, workers, and volunteers.  As the procession wends its way down the hill, a stop is made next to a large field so that the priest can bless the many crops grown that summer.  The next stop is on the bridge over an acequia where the priest blesses the water that nourishes crops, animals, and their care-takers.  The third stop is at a corral of farm animals, some of which are led out to be blessed by the priest.  Interestingly, one year a reluctant mule quickly calmed down when blessed.
 
Also blessed, beside my home and its horno (see previous Abiquiu Anecdotes), are the new Abiquiu clinic building and a bridge over a creek—because all of these items are perceived as blessings to the community.  I have heard of acequias being blessed when cleaned out in the Spring before their gates are opened to let the precious water flow into dry fields.  In Albuquerque, hot-air balloon pilots are known to ask the morning sun to bless their balloons with its warmth.
 
May all my friends and neighbors in Abiquiu be blessed in this holy season of blessings.
 
Hilda M. Joy
 
December 18, 2018