Undefined Method Angst After Rails / Ruby / Gem Updates

I have what appears to be a problem accessing methods from within an application. I can access them from irb, but not from within the app. In other words:

    irb(main):001:0> require 'rubygems'     => true     irb(main):002:0> require 'haml'     => true     irb(main):003:0> Haml.respond_to?('init_rails')     => true     irb(main):004:0>

But in the app, similar code gives an 'undefined method' error.

    begin       require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), 'lib', 'haml') # From here     rescue LoadError       require 'haml' # From gem     end     Haml.init_rails(binding)

undefined method `init_rails' for Haml:Module (NoMethodError)

The only thing that makes sense to me is that somewhere in the app the gem path is overridden or isn't being picked up properly. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated- this one is driving me bonkers. I don't think it has anything to do with haml-- I think it has to do with the application reading the gems-- but I could be wrong.

Some more details:

rails --version Rails 2.1.0

gem env:

RubyGems Environment:   - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.2.0   - RUBY VERSION: 1.8.7 (2008-06-20 patchlevel 22) [i686-darwin9.3.0]   - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8   - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /usr/local/bin/ruby   - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: /usr/local/bin   - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:     - ruby     - x86-darwin-9   - GEM PATHS:      - /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8 [this is correct]   - GEM CONFIGURATION:      - :update_sources => true      - :verbose => true      - :benchmark => false      - :backtrace => false      - :bulk_threshold => 1000      - :sources => ["http://gems.rubyforge.org", "http:// gems.datamapper.org"]   - REMOTE SOURCES:      - http://gems.rubyforge.org      - http://gems.datamapper.org