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Only minutes before I was crouching in a close, unassuming room, contemplating a hole in the floor. The adobe walls around me were bare, standing mute as my anxious heart thumped out wordless questions to God: Do You really heal? Will you speak to me here? In the sanctuary beside this space, the priest celebrating Mass places a small, white wafer on each outstretched tongue: This is the body of Christ, broken for you. 

I haven’t joined the celebrants—partially out of respect for Catholic theology and partially out of my own awkward sense of self. I wasn’t sure I belonged here. While they received the body and the blood, I took up a red plastic shovel, scooping loose tawny earth into a glass vial that felt too small to contain it. The repetition—This is the body of Christ—of the priest’s words—broken for you—made this scooping feel like sacrament. 

I’ve spent the past seven years making my own kind of pilgrimage to New Mexico, but this is the first time I’ve been to El Santuario de Chimayó, a holy site founded in the nineteenth century when a crucifix miraculously appeared to Benedictine monks in prayer. Since that time, numerous healings have been reported here, and the very ground is considered blessed. I buy the small vial in the cramped gift shop, unsure whether I am going to take some earth with me, unsure whether I really believe that these healings have taken place. Standing in the small hallway leading to el pocito, the little well, where those in hope of healing scoop tierra bendita, I feel cynical. Part of me wants to reach out to touch the crutches, lined like ribs against the walls. Part of me wants the abandoned casts to speak, to tell me their stories, to make me believe. 

I look into the eyes of those whose pictures plaster every square inch of space not taken up by the detritus of miracles. Smiling faces that often give no indication of why they might need healing return my gaze. A few have more obvious signs of need: a mother sent off to war, a young boy in a wheelchair. I stare at these a bit longer, asking them to hear my silent prayer: I believe, help my unbelief. The air smells like desperation and grace. 

I believe God heals—spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically. I’ve seen it enough times, both in Scripture and in my lived experience, that I can’t deny it. God heals. He does. But I’ve had a hard few years, not to mention the recent months, littered with the ugly leavings of a fallen world: heart attack, influenza, viral arthritis, physical wounds and the deaths of those I love. In the face of pain and loss, I find it easier to press into the mystery of God, rather than His healing. I find it easier to hope for Heaven, rather than restoration here in this world. I take refuge in the fact that I can’t control God, but I can say that He’s good. At the same time, I don’t nurture a belief in the miraculous when I’m tired, aching or grieving. 

This is why the unconscious movement of hand to heart after I’ve gathered my small allotment of earth surprises me. It’s a movement of hope, a hand held out toward the Great Physician. I may be marking my physical heart—muscle debilitated by lack of blood, a square inch of flesh starved of life—but I’m touching more than that. The promotional literature here is careful to make it clear that the rusty clay isn’t magical, that coating yourself with it, even eating it as the pilgrims used to do, doesn’t promise or even promote healing. God has moved here, says the brochure, but not through a formula. We believe He heals, it says between the lines, but we can’t manipulate Him into doing it on your behalf. 

Still, I carry the white-topped vial with me as I leave Chimayó, and the “holy dirt” holds both the mystery and the miraculous. I may not have been healed physically, but something in my soul has shifted, and this small relic—plain, red-brown, unassuming—is a reminder that when I place my hope in God, I don’t need to be ashamed. Not of my desire for wholeness, nor of my unbelief. And in that way, I am, indeed, healed.