The Other Catholics by Julie Byrne

Author:Julie Byrne [Byrne, Julie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: byrn16676, REL010000, RELIGION / Christianity / Catholic, SOC039000, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2016-05-23T16:00:00+00:00

5

Mix and Mysticism

Experimenting with Us Catholicism

It was a Friday afternoon in November 2007, and Roberto Foss was putting on another hat. At his law practice in a downtown Los Angeles high rise, he was literally putting on another hat. He had arrived an hour earlier in a fedora and casual clothes. Litigating mostly immigration and asylum cases, Roberto finds that few clients feel comfortable talking to a suit. Now on a break between appointments, the fedora hung on a hat rack and Roberto tied a white handkerchief over the top of his head. Paula, a colleague from law school, had asked him to consult the abuelos for her.

Paula’s father had died before she got the chance to confront him about whether he abused her when she was small. Her father was abusive in other ways and symptoms of sexual victimization plagued her life. But she could not remember anything and “there’s so much doubt,” she said. Now Paula was tormented by dreams in which her father asked her for something but she could not hear what. Part of Roberto’s work as a priest in a modern Mayan tradition—specifically an initiated Day-Keeper (ajq’ij) in the Maya-K’iche’ lineage—was contacting the abuelos, or ancestors, on behalf of their children on earth. Roberto told Paula that this was not a simple matter and he was not sure the abuelos could help. But he would ask.1

In a small, sunlit conference room, Roberto closed the door and sat across the table from Paula. He used a stone to make the Sign of the Cross. He said, “I need a question.” She said, “Just, what he wants.” Over about fifteen minutes Roberto opened a woolen bag and murmured prayers while arranging piles of beans and stones on a colorful square of Guatemalan cloth. He orchestrated the actions of his right hand and left hand precisely. He counted days of the Mayan calendar to sort the stones. He stirred the beans. He looked at the assemblage on the cloth for several minutes and penciled notes on a pink Post-it pad to one side.

Then he said, “Yes, when you were young,” and “not only you,” and “the ancestors know it.” “He went to his death with this,” Roberto said. “He’s stuck in front of the ancestors and they are very angry with him.” Paula started to weep. “The communication is cut off, not just with you,” Roberto continued, because “the ancestors shunned him. But it’s OK, he’s out of purgatory. The dreams are a final goodbye.” Roberto looked up. “Now the story comes back to you,” he said. “The seeds tell the story of his punishment and your rehabilitation. You can keep the anger and stay in prison. Or you can release it to the village. Mother Earth is powerful in her embrace of you at this moment.” Paula still wept but listened and nodded. Roberto said several more things and concluded, “That is what the abuelos are saying about that.” Then he took her hand and prayed. He gave her a stone to make the Sign of the Cross.

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