God, community and nature from the Rarámuri experience
When we are threatened by a world of war and destruction, we can draw on the wisdom of the native peoples who offer us seeds of hope and reconciliation. In this article I share with you some insights that the religious life of the Rarámuri[1](or Tarahumara people) can offer us in the West, specifically from the fundamental experience of building community.
Community and salvation are strictly connected through the religious life of the Rarámuri people. Building community or pueblo forges the Rarámuri as pagótuame, that is, as a baptized person. The pueblo is created in each Yúmari[2], where the community reharmonizes its relationship with Onorúame -God-, with others and with nature. The founding experience of belonging to a community is, for the Rarámuri, salvation.
[1] The Rarámuri people, also known as Tarahumara, have lived in the mountainous region of the Sierra Madre Occidental in northwestern Mexico for approximately 1,000 years.
[2] The central rite of the Rarámuri culture is the Yúmari, also known as Rutuburi -dance of the owl-. The purpose of this rite is to feed God, returning to him all that he has given us to live. It is the traditional rite performed by the Rarámuri in order not to forget God (Cfr. F. Espino B., "Piri ta gite ke we'kawa Panina Betéame [How do we do not to forget God]" (July 29th, 1990).
The Rarámuri people seek, through their religious life, to recover the original harmony of creation and cooperate with God against the evil that destroys fraternity. When there is a rupture in the relationship with God, this is recovered through feasts and rites. There are two great cycles of feasts: those of winter, linked to the harvest and Christmas; and those of Easter, linked to sowing, and to the death and resurrection of Jesus. There are also smaller feasts that are celebrated at the family level. The main rite that takes place in most of the feasts is the Yúmari, in which people help God by offering life and receiving life from Him, including the whole community.
The Kingdom of God can be experienced by incorporating everyone, especially the most fragile, and it is lived by sharing in community. In multicultural diversity is present the project of the Kingdom, which aspires to the unity, fraternity and reconciliation of peoples. “Life exists where there is bonding, communion and fraternity”[1]. To build community, to build a pueblo, is to build the Kingdom of God; it is “rise to the challenge of envisaging a new humanity”[2].
[1] Francisco, Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti, n. 87.
[2] Ibid., n. 127.
To share ourselves and the world is one of the indigenous values that can help the survival of our common home. The mission of the Rarámuri on this earth is to take care of the world that God has entrusted to them. To take care of this world is to share fraternally in everything and in this way recover the original harmony, which is God’s dream for humanity. The Rarámuri recognize themselves as sinners and at the same time collaborators of the Kingdom that is present among us.
God works daily in and for the community. Religious experience is not separate from daily life. We experience God when we are in contact with others as a community. When daily relationality is lost, we move away from the experience of God. The daily action of God is found in the sharing of the Rarámuri community in every feast, in every offering in front of the cross.
In addition to receiving baptism in the Church, the experience of community is central for the Rarámuri to recognize themselves as pagótuame or baptized. The feasts generate an experience and an attachment to God and to the community. The fundamental experience of being pagótuame is to be truly Rarámuri; to build a pueblo, to work together, to celebrate, to take care of the land and the people, to not be aggressive. The fundamental experience of building a pueblo or community in relationship with God and nature makes the Rarámuri into a pagótuame. To be Rarámuri pagótuame means to believe in Onorúame -God- and in his salvific will, making us a pueblo.
Salvation consists in belonging to and belonging in a pueblo or community. In today’s world we face the temptation of accessing salvation on an individual basis. However, God did not want to save us individually, but by creating a pueblo, by creating community[1]. Salvation consists, therefore, in being sons and daughters, and seeing ourselves as brothers and sisters; in constantly remaking the community, in recovering in every feast the harmony broken by sin when we are not communitarian [2].
[1]Cfr.CELAM, Aparecida, n. 164.
[2] Cfr.J. R. Robles O., «Anexo I. Análisis de la parroquia de Norogachi» [Annex I. Analysis of the parish of Norogachi] in Field Notes, Unpublished (May 1992), p. 760.
By Enrique Mireles SJ
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