Holiday Heat

Some people think real holiday heat would be having the heavens open and choirs of angels descend. Still others think it would mean a beach in California or the South. Many think snow and cold in Northern climates or mountains are best.

I can’t claim to have experienced the first. The others — beaches and mountains, hot or snow and cold — I’ve done. Even the unexpectedly odd, such as the seventy-plus degree Christmas at eight thousand feet in the Rockies.

There’s a different kind of heat that’s rarely considered. Such as Hispanic cooks in New Mexico introducing me to the mind-numbing heat of foods liberally laced with chilis. New Mexican food is different in New Mexico than anywhere else. The chilis are fresh and the cooks are extraordinarily heavy handed in adding just a few more chilis to the pot. Every pot

As in, Making cheese for nachos? Let me cut up a few more jalapenos to throw in.

This is the first year in a while where I will miss the office Christmas parties in New Mexico. Both because of moving two thousand miles away and because the coronavirus closed the state. There are no chili-laced office Christmas parties in Biscochito Land this year.

The holidays came early for millions of people this year. The heavens opened. Choirs of angels sang. Those who heard the angels’ voices had already made their decisions. They went Home with the angels to heaven.

Larger numbers than predicted by demographic statisticians left this world. Typical mortal diseases from diabetes to pneumonia to those unknown and undiscussed (not caused by Covid-19) gave more people than usual their way out of this world.

From a nonspiritual perspective, from the point of view of scientists and other lay people, this is a disaster.

It’s a disaster because this was not their plan. It was not how they planned this year.

That’s what happens when you don’t pay attention to God and acts of nature beyond human control. You get what you are supposed to get. Not what you tell God and nature what you have decided life ought to be.

If I’d gotten my plan, it would never have been necessary to leave Biscochito Land. New Mexico, according to my original plan, was where I’d chosen to grow old and die.

The spiritual heat — the chilis to spice up my life — were missing from my New Mexican plan.

Where was the spiritual heat in my thinking? Where is it when we ignore spiritual realities in favor of our own, very human desires?

The fact is that we’re wrong. We’ve observed hotheads of all hue and stripe around the world wailing long and loud about the realities of life in 2020. As the old Hispanics taught me long ago, no cojones.

Snap out of it.

Straighten up your moral and ethical spine.

God never gives us more than we can handle. Who are we to be so ungrateful as to complain about this strange gift of a year?

Get into the middle of the heat. Step into the fire of life.

Go eat fresh picked Hatch chilis. Put a newly picked jalapeno in your mouth, chew and swallow. Without a milk chaser. If you’re nowhere near New Mexico, call up your favorite Szechuan Chinese restaurant, order their hottest meal and ask for triple hot peppers with hot chili sauce.

That will help you move nearer the middle of the heat.

We humans like to tell ourselves that we are in control of our lives. We pretend to ourselves that we can decide when a friend or relative will die. We think we’re supposed to know the exact cause and time another person decides to jump Earth’s ship for something better.

It’s never been that way. It never will be.

We all need to toughen up and face facts.

And that is perfect. That is the way we knew life would be before we were born. During the season from Thanksgiving through the month of January more people take the Heaven Express than at any other time of the year. They know when they are ready. There will be many more people choosing to leave this life for something far better over the next few months.

The year 2020 A.D. is absolutely extraordinary. It is our gift to observe how many people have chosen to move beyond this mortal pale.

It is a gift of Light.