Soon after the lost emerged from the jungle the talk at the Tucan Verde and among the resistance to the evangelicos at Communidad Laconja turned to the Baluum Ceremony, the most Gnostic of the Lacondon Mayan traditions.
During the full moon the Lacondon Mayans go to their god houses in the jungle and drink their most sacred medicine - baaxche - and become gods and goddesses in the fullness of their divinity in the fullness of the moon.
The ceremony was to be conducted by a 90-year-old shaman who had been forced by the evangelicos to live on the far outskirts of the village. The ceremony was to be help in blatant defiance of the tyranny of the evangelico minority. It was to be open to all - everyone at the Tucan Verde.
There was a full house at the Tucan Verde. There were few people at the other campamentos. All travelers were conspicuously going to Ishmael's.
As the February moon began coming into it's fullness the pastors began stridently condemning Ishmael, the old shaman, and all that were intending to come to the ceremony as the bitches of El Diablo. One pastor predicted that if the ceremony were to be held God would make it rain on Chiapas for 40 days and the weight of the water would make Chiapas and Communidad Laconja sink into hell.
On the night of the full moon - it rained. The ceremony was postponed until the next night.
The next day was cloudy. But around sunset it began to clear. All prepared to go into the jungle to the old shamans clandestine god-house. But then there came a message from the shaman.
He had a vision - had seen that the evangelicos were sending a spy to the ceremony - to find the location of the god house - so that they could burn it - perhaps the shaman too.
The ceremony was cancelled.
About a week later as I was taking a walk in the pueblo, I heard a joyous sound - beautiful singing, percussion, dancing. I walked to the sound with my harmonica.
It was an evangelico meeting. Just when I arrived the music and dancing stopped. The pastor - a young 20-something Lacondon Mayan - began speaking.
When he saw me, he seemed to know who I was - or at least that I was from the United States - and he had a place cleared for me right in the center of a group of about thirty mostly women and children.
He spoke in a very precise, clear Spanish. I understood at least 95 percent of what he said.
He started by quoting the New Testament about in my fathers house there are many mansions. He told about how the Americanos were spending billions of dollars to establish homes on the planet Mars. But that it was not necessary to buy with money the real estate in the sky - you just had to pay with your belief.
He said that the good news - the gospel - was that God so loved the human that he gave his only son to be killed on the cross to redeem dirty, stinking, sinning humanity from their dirty, stinking sin.
He saw the look on my face. My questioning about there being any good news in the orthodox gospel. He stopped talking. He then spoke directly at me.
He asked me - true or false - there is only one way to God.
I shouted no. I shouted false. I said there are many mansions in the house of God. As many ways to God as there are individual people, with their individual spark of divinity.