Two Mexicos, One Vision: Seeing With the Soul’s Eye

New Mexico again—the land of wide skies, long shadows, and a heartbeat that still echoes in my bones. Albuquerque was the first stop: a sweet reunion with my daughter and a night spent under the roof of the house she’s just made her own. A rental car waited at the airport, and soon the familiar road pulled me north to Santa Fe—the City Different, where a great arc of my life has unfolded.

Amy has been with family in Minneapolis–Saint Paul. Tomorrow she flies to Omaha to teach at a university, then makes her way here. Her arrival is on the horizon, and I relish with anticipation the warmth of shared companionship.

Mexico City lingers like a vivid painting—raw, layered, full of movement. The Metro became a kind of subterranean gallery: not easy to navigate, but full of life. Only one wrong turn that took me the wrong direction, which felt more like a curve in the composition than a misstep. Tickets were fifty cents—a small price for immersion. Far preferable to sitting alone in a taxi, removed from the living current.

One morning was devoted to Mercado Jamaica. It was like stepping into a kaleidoscope of scent and color—flowers tumbling from trucks, arrangements rising like offerings, petals underfoot, and fragrance heavy in the air. I wandered with camera in hand, sketching with light. Outside, a colossal mural titled Jamaica Revive—15,000 square feet of vibrant homage to Mother Earth, created in 2013. Street art on that scale always moves me; it’s public and personal at once.

The return flight north was uneventful. A final walk through the Metro tunnels, a last glimpse of the city's pulse, then skyward without delay to this familiar homeland.

Artists at the Folk Art Market

Santa Fe is alive with art just now. I attended an international art  exposition, then yesterday stepped into the great swirl of the International Folk Art Market—a place where the world gathers in handmade offerings. Jewelry, textiles, carvings, masks—each piece a doorway into another culture, another way of seeing. Yet it isn’t only the objects that astonish. It’s the people: radiant in traditional attire, standing with dignity beside their work, bearing stories and spirit.

One could feel it in the air—a deep, unspoken unity. As Bahá’u’lláh wrote, “Let your vision be world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self.” That vision was present in every handshake, every exchange, every smile and eye contact, every photograph.

Amy’s return draws closer. My daughter will visit again. Jean, ever gracious, has offered her home while she travels—a house I once built, thirty years ago. Memory lives in the grain of the wood and the angles of light.

“Make thou every effort to increase the number of thy journeys,” wrote ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “for travel hath great virtues. The traveler returneth with an enlightened heart and a spiritual mind. He seeth what the others do not see, and he heareth what the others do not hear.”