JE #7 Religious Borders

Protestant, Catholic, New Age, Oh My! This is how I was raised: in a religiously mixed family household in Mexico. My paternal grandmother and aunts are Catolicas de Hueso Colorado (which translated to hardcore traditional Catholics). Yet my father is something like a Scientologist-new-Catholic (a term I just invented). On the other hand, my maternal grandmother and half of my aunts and uncles from my mother's side are Jehovah's Witnesses veterans (a high position in their congregations). The other half of my mother's siblings are Mexican assimilated Maronites and Traditional Conservative Catholics (this is as "generic" as it gets). Yet, my mother is something like a New-Agey-Catholic-Protestantish practitioner (Strange and contradictory, and again a term I just invented). While the rest of my family members are somewhere between Adventist, Evangelical, Non-denomination Christians, Pentecostal, to some obscure and closeted Santeria practitioners. All that, plus! (yes, there is more) I attended a Salesian (Catholic order devout to St. John Bosco and St. Francisco de Sales) militarized boarding school in Tijuana. Finally, the cherry on top is my partner, a practicing Buddhist! Bam! Una mezcolanza! What a mestizaje! And I bring this up because all these vastly different, and often contradicting religious practices and philosophies have impacted to some degree my spirituality, ethic, morals, and religiosity.

I, on the other hand, have not until recently (after a near death experience.. how cliche of me!) have become an amateur devote to la Virgin del Carmen, or the Virgin of Mount Carmel and the Candomblé orixa, Iemanjá (Afro-Brazilian Yoruba-derived practice). And the reasons why I am a devotee to these two powerful female figures is because each of them have saved my life. In Catholicism, the Virgen del Carmen is believed to protect the hopelessly ailing and the travelers. Iemanjá protects her daughters and sons of the ocean (it is believed that when daughters and sons of enter the ocean,  Iemanjá will take them back with her. That is why some people cannot get into the ocean for some "unexplained" reason). On the both occasions that my life was saved, I was traveling, through water, and living very close to water, and was fatally ill. I think of both my protectors as one in the same, or two mothers. What is interesting though is that these two female figures have been, in the past, synchretized within Catholic and Afro-derived religious practices in the Americas. The Virgin of Carmen, is also known as Stella Maris, or Star of the Sea, which can be related to Iemanjá, the orixa or goddess of the Sea. The Sea, a life giving ecosystem, which can also be a destructive and dangerous place to navigate, are overseen in Catholicism and Candomble respectively by Stella Maris and Iemanjá. They are both strong maternal figures, represented by water, or the Ocean, and are interconnected through their symbolic power of life giving or life taking, as goddesses of the Sea. To me, these two female religious figures represent my own racial and spiritual mestizaje, the European and African descendant. 

The question is how did I go from Catholic, Protestant, New Age (oh my!) to a Candombleista Carmelita who sleeps every night with a Latina Buddhist? To be honest, it was  somewhat of a challenge, but in my case, having so so so many religious varieties in my own family, needless to say my friends and cultural environments, has allowed me to explore my religiosity in a more laxed way. Suddenly, being a Candombleista Carmelita in a majority traditional Mexican Catholic environment when you have a Semi-scientologist and New Agey parents and a Jehovah's Witness grandmother, isn't so scandalous after all.