You can’t go anywhere in New Mexico without running into another miraculous historical building or energy vortex. It’s a challenge to pick which ones to visit, but checking out this church was a must for me (the last one for a while, I swear!). Because this church isn’t just any old church, it’s a church built on miraculous dirt.

I first heard about Chimayo through a family friend, who made a pilgrimage there in the 1980s, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She headed there like so many others, in search of the holy spirit that would receive her prayers and aid in her recovery. The magic worked. She beat the cancer, and swears that the reason she’s made it into her 80s is because of her pilgrimage and the miraculous dirt she took home from Chimayo.

Last week, my friend took a bad fall and is now in a rehab hospital. When I heard this news, I decided to make my own pilgrimage to Chimayo, just north of Santa Fe, to get some more of that magic dirt to send to her.

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When you visit New Mexico, whatever you do, don’t get New Mexican culture confused with Mexican culture. The two are very different, and the locals will let you know it. For starters, the Mexicans I know never eat Sopapillas like this one I had in Albuquerque.

But it goes deeper than the culinary differences. As a California Mexican, I always heard about New Mexicans who insisted they weren’t “Mexican,” they were “Spanish.” Even in my own neighborhood, some fair-skinned kids came from families who preferred this label. I don’t know if their parents came from New Mexico or what, but it didn’t matter; we insisted that by preferring to call themselves “Spanish,” they were in denial about their ethnicity, ashamed to be linked to the Mexican Indian blood that many western Latinos share.

It’s a complicated issue, but ultimately, whatever label we Latinos choose to use, the fact is, we all have our unique ancestral histories, some that we relate to more than others.

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You might have guessed by now, that I’m not the churchiest person. Spiritual, yes, churchy, no. But, as anyone born into Catholicism can tell you, once you’re in, you’re in for life. You can run away from it, but it never leaves you. Just when you least expect it, you’ll put up a velvet Last Supper painting above the TV, and stick a dashboard Jesus in your SUV.

As a recovering Catholic, I love checking out old churches. Maybe I’m subconsciously facing my fears, but the more realistic Saint statues and lit up candles they have inside, the better.

In Santa Fe, I had no shortage of Catholic churches to choose from, but the Loretto Chapel was first on my list. Briefly, the story about the Chapel’s Miraculous Staircase goes:

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