DM 742 – Spiritual Practices

Y (pseudonym):
An Interfaith Spiritual
Double Belonging Guidance
Case Study

Purpose

 Western societies have been transforming rapidly because of

individualization, secularization, globalization, and pluralization process. Due
to that transformation, the religious and spiritual landscape has experimenting
significant changes.

 These changes are relevant for spiritual guidance and caregiving because
they lead to a diversity of spiritual, religious, and cultural needs, which
requires professional caregivers to deal with these diverse needs.

 In this emerging context, an interfaith spiritual caregiver needs to draw on

multiple spiritual traditions to work with anyone desiring to cultivate a spiritual
life.

 Y is one of my recent interfaith interventions in spiritual guidance to believers

who want to be nurtured and contribute by Afro Caribbean Yoruba spirituality
and Christianism.

Description of Context

 Y is a Puerto Rican woman of approximately 38 years of age and without

direct relationship with relatives of black complexion, being she of white skin.
 Single, without children.
 She works as a piano teacher at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico.
 Y comes from a Protestant Disciples of Christ family.
 She has been a Protestant since she was a child.
 She studied a Master of Arts in Religious Studies at the Ecumenical Seminary
of Puerto Rico (ESPR).
 For more than ten years, she was a music minister in various Protestant
churches in Puerto Rico and the United States.
 Y is a composer of sacred and secular music.

 I had known Y since 2011 when she was my student in a graduate course in
Social Psychology of Religions at ESPR.

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  In mid-2019, I received a message on Facebook messenger from Y telling me
that if I could give her my phone number because she needed to talk to me,
tell me a dream and make an appointment for spiritual counseling.

 I gave her my phone number and told her that I would gladly listen to her, and
as a result of our conversation, we could coordinate an appointment to talk in
person at my house.

 I must clarify that for the practitioners of religions of African origin in the
Antillean Spanish-speaking Caribbean, our house is our house-temple

Presenting Problem

 Y called me and told me a dream in which what she called her ancestors of
light told her to communicate with me that I must guide her in the search to
connect with her African ancestors.

 She also told me that she knew that I was a priest of the Afro-Caribbean
Yoruba religion.

 She explains that I would understand her because I have been her professor
of psychology of religions, a former Protestant lay minister, and an Afro
Caribbean Yoruba priest.

 I immediately told her to make an appointment to talk.

 I clarified to Y that given my multiple professional and religious functions, our

meeting would occur based on the premise that I would advise her as a priest
of the Afro-Caribbean Yoruba religion (a Babalawo) and as an interfaith
spiritual caregiver.

 She explicitly emphasizes one of the main reasons she was reaching me.
Finally, given our Afro-Caribbean Yoruba tradition, the meeting and
consultation offering would be $21. She agrees.

Spiritual Dimension of My Work

 The consultation and spiritual caregiving meeting took place.

 Y told me in more detail what she had said to me before by phone.
 She also said that since she knew that the priests of the Afro-Caribbean
Yoruba religion were empowered to consult the oracle of Ifa.
 Ifa is a millenary body of knowledge of philosophy, wisdom, and spirituality
lived in sub-Saharan West Africa and among Afro-descendants in the
Americas.
 The Ifa oracle, who interpretively describes the past and present and predicts
the future, wanted to make another appointment to consult the oracle.

 The Ifa divination system, which uses an extensive corpus of texts and
mathematical formulas, is practiced among Yoruba communities and the
African diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean.

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  Ifa refers to the mystical figure Ifa or Orunmila, regarded by the Yoruba as the
deity of wisdom and intellectual development.
 In contrast to other forms of divination in the region that employ spirit
mediumship, Ifa divination does not rely on a person having oracular powers
but instead on a system of signs interpreted by a diviner, the Ifa priest or
Babalawo.
 The Ifa divination system is applied whenever a vital individual or collective
decision has to be made.
 The Ifa literary corpus, called Odu, consists of 256 parts subdivided into
verses called ese Ifa.
 Each of the 256 Odu has its specific divination signature, determined by the
Babalawo using sacred palm nuts and a divination chain.
 The ese, considered the essential part of Ifa divination, are chanted by the
priests in poetic language.
 The ese reflect Yoruba history, language, beliefs, cosmovision, and social
issues. The knowledge of Ifa has been preserved within Yoruba communities
in Africa and its diasporas and transmitted among Ifa priests. 

The instrument for Consult the Ifa Oracle

Assessment/ Diagnosis

 From 2019 Y to the present time has made me what she calls one of her
guidance spirits on this material realm.

 Y does not want to abandon his Protestant background completely, although

he can no longer live it in the same way as before.

 At the same time, she wants to be faithful to what she calls her African
ancestors of light. Therefore, she wants to have some initiation in the Afro-
Caribbean Yoruba religion.

 Last week she wrote me a message telling me that she had her first initiation
in the Afro Caribbean Yoruba Religion.
 I congratulate her and explain that what she is experiencing is what some
religious studies experts call religious “code-switching.”

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  This metaphor refers to the fact that her Protestant religious upbringing
spirituality is like a mother tongue. And speaking or initiate in an Afro
Caribbean indigenous spirituality later in adulthood is like acquiring a second
language. As a practitioner, we become fluent in the second learned
spirituality.

Theological and Other Spiritual Reflection

 As a result of the divination process, the Odu Otura Meyi of the Ifa oracle
was one of the Odu I interpreted for Y.

 In that Odu, there is a story of Orunmila, the main deity of the oracle,
traveling to the land of the Imales or the Muslims, and learning a healing
ritual from them, and incorporating it into the Yoruba religion. Also, with
this interpretation of the Odu Ifa, I read Y the New Testament passage of
John 10:16 (NRSV):  
I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them als
o, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one
shepherd.

 The purpose was to reaffirm Y’s multiple spirituality belonging. As Y

combines both spiritualities, she envisions and knows that the Divinity
belongs to all things and peoples.

 At the same time, all peoples and things belong to the Divinity (what in the
philosophy of religion is called panentheism).

Potential Interventions and Approaches

 I still guiding Y in the process of consulting the Ifá oracle one time a
month and giving multiple spiritual belonging cares to her upon her
request.