It was 2019 and I had heard through some random person that a group of men had gone up Sandia Mountain and blown shofars. I was curious about who and when, I later discovered that it was around 2002 and that Dr. Denis Otero was one of those men. As a matter of fact it was him that initiated the event. I spoke with Dr. Otero about it and he confirmed that he had taken a group of men from his then Maranatha church up the mountain.
Fast forward twenty years, and I receive a call from Joseph Torres to join him, his wife Miriam and others on a trek up Sandia Mountain to blow the shofar, pray and make some declarations. How could I pass it up when it was already burning in my heart to do so.
It was one of the most powerful events I have ever been apart. What I witnessed on that mountain is nothing less than prophetic, wonderous and miraculous. I took with me one of my board members brother James and of course my Rams horn. We joined Yosef and Miriam Torres, Patricia Arenas, and others.
The group was diverse: Sephardim, Natives, Germans, African American. And this dynamic group prayed in a dynamic and spiritually potent way. Binding the spirit of Abortion, praying healing for the land, praying against the forces of darkness, forgiving and praying for the various ethnic groups who had committed various atrocities in the past. Speaking to the land in ways that only those who come from this land can.
It became clear to me that the natives of this land have been more than gracious, they have been benevolent hosts to this wretched and lost group of peoples known as Hispano and Latinos. To this day the majority of the Hispano peoples are ignorant of their Sephardic heritage. They are, for lack of a better word, squatters. They came here in the 15th century and have been hiding out here ever since. They were exiled from their homeland in Israel for worshipping idols, and sadly to this day nothing has changed. The few of us who know of la Herencia are also native, so there is much to learn.
There was this native sister there, who forgave the white settlers for the evil things they did in the past, forgave the Spanish conquistadors for the evils they did. And there was this German women who got down on her knees and repented for her people. I also found myself repenting for the things my Spanish/Portuguese ancestors did to the native population here. And because she was a women I found myself repenting for evils perpetrated by violent men, violent foreigners to this land.
It was a Shemita year, a time of release in so many ways. I write about his event a whole years later, during the Jubilee year. It's the month of Elul, so the Jubilee will be ending in only a few days. Then the shaking begins.
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