Samhain, part two: When the Veil is Thinnest

The entrance to the worship space was flanked by two shoulder-high candlesticks with fat pillars burning in them, and twinkling jack-o-lanterns at their bases. By the left candlestick stood a woman in a black cloak with the hood pulled up. In one hand, she held a skull, and in the other hand, burning incense, which she waved as the congegants filed past her into the space.

One half of the stone circle was bounded by 33 huge, flat stones standing up on end and embedded into the dirt. The stones stood higher than the people, and at the base of each sat a flickering candle in a paper bag. The other half of the circle was bounded by bagged candles, but no stones. The space had not been completely cleared of trees, which grew from the dirt at random intervals. In the middle of the space sat a waist-high stone table crowded with objects: papers, candles, a chalice, trays with small paper cups.

I made my way into the space in single file with the others, curving around to form a circle around the crowded table. Also within our circle sat a low metal drum with logs burning inside, and a second, much lower and wider stone table where a few more dripping candles sat embedded in their own wax. Off to the side sat an altar with a sculpture of a man's head on it, its mouth and eyes opened wide in shapes that mirrored the curls of his hair and beard.

Four figures, two men and two women, stood waiting in the space when we arrived, each representing one of the four directions.

The woman with the cauldron entered the center of the circle we had formed, and urged us to pull in tighter.

She and the woman with the skull joined a third woman in a black dress and no hat around the central stone table, though only the cauldron woman spoke. She began the ceremony with a prayer to the crone goddess and the horned god. She invoked the ancestors and then as a group we began to call the corners.

The four people who were waiting in the space when we arrived led this part of the service. We started with East/Air, then South/Fire, West/Water, and North/Earth, and each invocation somehow acknowledged the ancestors. East asked for the air to bear our ancestors' messages on the wind, for example, and North acknowledged that the Earth holds the bones of our ancestors and will one day hold our bones as well. We called the ancestors into our space from each direction with a hearty “Hail, and welcome,” spoken by the entire congregation.

Then the cauldron woman began to talk about the new year. (Yes, Samhain is the new year too. This is the third new year since the beginning of September.)

She walked around the circle, encouraging us all to learn from the past and to do better in the future. She told us to think about the message on our papers, and about what we need to leave behind in order to move forward and to grow. She listed the various messages from the cauldron, the printed suggestions of abstractions we might wish to leave behind: judgments, addictions, regret, expectations, and the need to control others.

She spoke about each of these things in turn, giving a sermon not all that different from some of the new year messages I heard from the stage at Diwali between the dancers' segments, or at Yom Kippur, when the congregants named the sins they wanted to leave behind them. At two points, the cauldron woman summoned the attendants representing the four corners into the circle to help her.

The attendants divided the circle into quarters. First, they handed out stones, each of them approaching one quarter of the people in the circle. North managed my portion of the circle. He was a young man a little shorter than I am, wearing gold-colored robes, a long blond wig, and horns.

The cauldron woman told us to place our fears into the stones.

Next the attendants made their way around the circle with chalices of water. They dribbled water over our outstretched hands as we held the stones, washing away the fears we might have about letting go. The cauldron woman was still talking about judgments, regrets, and all the rest.

"You should be more afraid of holding onto these things than of letting them go," said the cauldron woman, walking again around the circle.

She began to repeat herself, walking faster with her step and with more determination in her voice. "You should be afraid of holding on."

"You should be afraid of holding on."

"You should be AFRAID of holding on."

Then someone else spoke:

"Enough!"

A woman in a white blouse and white skirt, with a white net over her hair, stepped out from the circle and addressed the cauldron woman.

"They know what they have to do," said the white-clothed woman, gesturing theatrically around the circle. "You have your own work to do; back to the outer circle with you!"

The cauldron woman joined the circle, and the white-clothed woman offered words of hope for growth, change, and the future. When the white-clothed woman allowed the cauldron woman to rejoin the center of the circle, together they walked the circuit past each worshiper with a large, round basket. We placed our papers and our rocks in the basket, and just when I thought the cauldron woman would turn over the basket and empty the papers into the fire, she dropped the entire basket onto the logs and it was consumed.

As the flames licked up the sides, and the basket sunk inward, losing its shape, the group began to sing:

The blood of the ancients
Runs in our veins
The forms change
But the circle of life remains.

We repeated this chorus maybe 25 times, so it was easy for me to pick up the melody and sing boldly.

At the end of the song, it was time to toast the new year, so the attendants returned, each picking up one tray covered with paper cups from the stone table. The horned and bewigged attendant served me, and I held the cup until the cauldron woman spoke the toast. I sipped cautiously, not sure what was in the cup, and found it to be apple juice.

Next, all of those who had lost relatives within the past year were invited to step forward and leave a talisman on the altar with the sculpture of the man's head.

Finally, we were all invited to pull a rune from a basket to learn what's coming next in the new year. My rune looks like an X, with the top and bottom closed, and I do not know what it means.

We closed by uncasting the circle, meaning we moved backward from north to east and said our goodbyes to the spirits we had conjured earlier.

"Go if you must,” we said to them. “Stay if you will… hail and farewell."

Samhain, part one: The Day of the Dead

Last year, in 2007, over Memorial Day weekend, I went on a gay men's spiritual retreat with a friend of mine who objects when I call him Buddhist.

"I practice Shambhala," is his preferred formulation, but whichever way, on retreat, most of the men were neither Buddhists nor Shambhala-practitioners. They were mostly pagans, Wiccans, or nothing in particular, like me. There was one Jewish couple, and an older man of Ukrainian descent who identified all at once as pagan, and also with both the Jewish and Eastern Orthodox halves of his ancestry.

When I set out to find a Samhain service to attend in DC, I looked up one of the pagan-leaning men from the retreat who lives here in town, to see if he might point me toward a local group. He suggested instead that I hit the road and observe the holiday at Four Quarters, an "Interfaith Sanctuary of Earth Religion" in south central Pennsylvania.

So, I called up Four Quarters and reserved myself a spot. They had a whole weekend of activities planned, and I carved out time for the Dumb Feast of the Dead on Saturday evening, followed by the main Samhain service itself. A snafu with my Zipcar reservation delayed my departure from the city, but I still managed to arrive at Four Quarters in time for the meal.

Legally organized as a church, Four Quarters is physically laid out like a large camp, located on 150 acres in the Alleghenies, bounded on three sides by a hairpin curve in a mountain stream. Visitors access the camp down a dirt road lined with cow pastures and orchards and McCain-Palin yard signs. I signed in at the farmhouse at the entrance to the property, where the man at the desk verified my payment, and then I drove further in to a grassy parking area a short walk from the dinner tent and the stone circle for the Samhain service.

I noticed in the parking lot that the celebrants drawn by Samhain seemed more attracted to multiple bumper stickers than perhaps your average motorist:

"God wants spiritual fruits, not religious nuts."
"Conform, go crazy, or become an artist."
"She who laughs lasts."
"Polyamory: Love shared is love multiplied."

Men and women, some of them in cloaks, were walking down the dirt road toward the dinner tent. A long-grey-haired man in a T-shirt and jeans pulled his SUV in next to my Zipcar. He made an ashamed comment about his choice of vehicle and its impact on the environment, and he praised my car-sharing when he saw the Zipcar logo on the passenger door. A group of women with a guitar sat in a circle by the side of the road singing "Down to the River to Pray," a song I have sung at the Unitarian Church before. Their next song began with the lyric, “We all come from goddess, and to her we return…”

Feeling needy of food and light-headed from the drive, I walked down to get in line for a hot plate from the commercially outfitted on-site kitchen. Dinner consisted of salad with vinaigrette dressing, applesauce, a black-bean side dish, colcannon (cabbage and potatoes together), yeasted rolls, ginger-stuffed pork loin for the omnivores, and a choice of vegan or non-vegan squash soup. I chose everything except the pork loin and balanced my vegan squash soup bowl over my mulled wine cup on my way to find a seat.

At the entrance to the dinner tent a woman in a black dress with a pentagram necklace said to me: "Please observe our silence in memory of our Honored Dead."

I entered a two-room tent with seating for maybe 250 and took a place on one of the benches. The tables were set with tea lights inside tiny carved-out pumpkins, which provided the only light. Not only was everyone completely silent, but they seemed to be avoiding all eye contact as well, with me and with each other.

Some people blessed their food with a waving of their hands over the plate and bowl before they began to eat. Some wore cloaks and some did not. Men tended toward beards and long-hair, tattoos were prevalent, and ages ranged from infant to elderly. I noticed no obvious gay couples, though there had been lesbian bumper stickers in the parking lot.

I felt that the silence made me eat more slowly. I found myself mostly singing songs in my head when I wasn’t observing the downcast faces or thinking about the food. The songs in my head were upbeat, so I felt off-center, as if I wasn’t connecting to the common purpose which felt very somber.

As the dinner drew to a close, an unseen woman outside the tent read a plaintive and wistful poem that began with the words "I miss you most upon each Samhain, when the boundary turns to sheer..."

She invited the spirits of our ancestors to walk among us throughout the evening. By now, the sun had gone down, and there was to be a gap of maybe 30 to 45 minutes between dinner and the worship service. After exiting the dinner tent, I chose to take a walk down the gravel road looking upward at the stars, shining bright in the clear, warm night, as they do not do in the city. The sliver of moon must have been low in the sky, hidden by the surrounding mountains.

I walked past tents and fire pits and parked RVs. Some people were staying at Four Quarters for the weekend; others who are members of the church itself camp there for longer periods of time.

By the time I turned around and walked back toward the stone circle where the ceremony would be held, night had fallen hard and it was very dark. I could hear other footsteps in the stones on the gravelly road, but could not see any other walkers until I was close upon them.

I passed single walkers and walkers in pairs, and up ahead, I heard voices talking in low tones. I could not see how many people or where they were, but I guessed maybe ten or twelve, and then suddenly I was upon the group.

We were standing directly outside the stone circle, and as I stepped into the crowd, their dark shapes took form before my eyes, revealing people who were very tall and shaped like cones. I realized with a start that I was the only person I could see who was not wearing a voluminous, long, black cloak and a very tall pointed hat. Most were also carrying a staff.

Wow! I had never felt out of place for not being dressed like a witch before!

The feeling actually hit me really hard, as I registered two kinds of sharp fear, each followed by shame.

The first was a completely shocking fear of witches. I am not afraid of witches. I have known and associated with self-described witches before. But something about the darkness and the cultural associations with the hats and cloaks and the feeling of being surrounded produced an unbidden panic I could not have anticipated.

It subsided as quickly as it came, but I felt properly and terribly ashamed.

The second fear was the fear of standing out for not being properly dressed. I was wearing two T-shirts, short-sleeved over long, blue jeans, and green canvas sneakers -- and feeling a little like a slob.

My fears about my appearance, then, triggered shame for not having prepared correctly to observe the cultural norm. If I remove my shoes at the Hindu temple, and cover my head when required at the synagogue, then I should be prepared with a cloak at Samhain. I overheard one woman walk up bemoaning that she had left her cloak at home, so I knew soon enough that I would not be the only one, which was some comfort. Then, as others gathered on the road to wait for services to begin, it became clear that street clothes were going to be in the majority, and that the full-dress witches were the early-birds. I breathed something of a sigh of relief.

Shortly, a woman in a black dress and pointed hat began threading her way through the crowd with a an iron pot in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

"Reach into my cauldron and find out what you need to leave behind tonight," she said to each of us, before shining her light on the small printed papers we withdrew.

Mine said: Let go of your judgments.

When we all had a paper, someone rang a bell somewhere, and the woman with the cauldron told us to take a deep breath.

"You all have hard work to do tonight," she said, and started walking off the dirt road toward the stone circle. “Follow me.”

Halloween: What Are You Supposed to Be?

My friend Samm held a giant party with her housemates on Halloween.

I had planned ahead for this, purchasing my costume well ahead of time. The Monday after I attended The United Church, I was feeling inspired by the clerical collars of Rev. DeGroote and his younger colleague. I had needed to purchase a black suit for myself back in June, when I served as an attendant in a friend’s wedding, so I thought I could easily add a black shirt with the square patch of white showing at its collar, and I would have an instant priest's costume.

I looked online and discovered that I could purchase a relatively inexpensive short-sleeved official priest's shirt from a company in Maine. Because some of the fields were optional on the online order form, I did not have to name my “seminary” or “congregation,” but the denomination field was mandatory, so I checked "other."

At Samm's party, most everyone assumed I was costumed as a Roman Catholic, but in my mind I had clothed myself as an Episcopalian. I would say this out loud, when someone would make a mistake and ask me how many "Hail Marys" I wanted them to say, or (more often) approach me and ask, "What are you supposed to be? A child molester?"

Mohammed was at the party, dressed in traditional Arab garb -- a long, floor-length tunic, sandals, and Saudi headdress. I demanded that he teach me the Arabic phonetics for the Shahada so that when party-goers would ask me to pray for them I could mix it up a bit. We got as far as the phonetics for "I attest that there is no god-entity but the Allah god-entity..." before getting distracted and not returning to the task.

Rachel was at the party too, dressed as some kind of product advertisement. She told me I looked strangely "right" in my priest's outfit, and I confessed that it actually felt kind of right -- very comfortable. We were standing in the backyard talking, and shortly I excused myself to go back into the kitchen and refill my glass of wine.

While I was pouring from the bottle I had brought, a drunk milkmaid I had never met before wandered up to me with her tits up to her chin and her empty glass waving back and forth under my nose.

I thought she might have tried to give me a sexy look, or something.

Pausing from my own glass, I quarter-turned and filled her glass for her.

"Thanks," she slurred, "What are you supposed to be?"

Puzzled that it wasn't obvious, I inclined my chin, in case my beard was obscuring my collar. I pointed to the square of white at my throat.

"Oh," she said, "You're a gay priest. That's funny."

Then she walked away.

The idea of me as a man of the cloth wasn't always so preposterous. I didn't grow up in a denomination that employed priests, but I took other types of godly men as my role models when I was a child -- various ministers, or the evangelical missionaries who would visit my church and church camp to talk about their work in Korea or Jamaica or Papua, New Guinea.

One of my earliest long-range forecasts for my future involved me and my best friend from church becoming missionaries together in Africa. I planned this out when I was probably 14, and Jonathan would have been about 16. The way I figured it, we would each marry a girl from the church and then the four of us would work as a team. The girls got swapped around in my imagination, but the idea of doing good work for God together with Jonathan remained a constant.

Missionary work would not be an option for a gay man according to how I grew up. Priests and ministers and missionaries are role models, right? And gay men? We just aren’t.

That’s why we shouldn’t be teachers or Boy Scout leaders or parents either. In fact, it would be hard to imagine a gay man in any role that could be considered admirable. All of our accomplishments are tainted because of our gayness.

The purpose of this life is to follow Jesus, and being gay is not following Jesus, so our lives are doomed until and unless we get serious about repentance and redemption. Who could admire the gays’ stunning refusal to address their sin? And who could want someone like that in a leadership position in a church?

Moses’ commandment to stone the gays to death doesn’t apply anymore, said my church, because Jesus brought the new covenant and freed us from the total insanity of Jewish law. But read Leviticus again, they would say. It definitely shows what God thinks of the gay folk, if under the old law He wanted us dead, right away, with impunity for the community that drives us out of the camp, pelting our bodies to pulp in the desert sand.

Moreover, though Jesus was silent on the gay menace, the New Testament nonetheless backs up the Old, with Paul assuring the Romans that men who flame with lust for one another will receive in their bodies the due penalties for their perversions.

In a letter to the Corinthians, Paul supposedly condemns gay men a second time, but as with Koheleth’s musing on his or her ephemeral life, the shades of meaning change depending on the translation you read. Of the four versions of the Bible on my shelf, you can choose between condemnation of:

1. The effeminate and abusers of themselves with mankind,
2. Male prostitutes and homosexual offenders,
3. Adulterers and homosexual perverts, or
4. Those who use and abuse each other and those who use and abuse sex.

At Christmastime, in 2003, after Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to recognize same-sex marriages, I sat in the pew at my parents’ church in Kentucky.

The preacher read Paul’s verse from Romans about the due penalty for perversion, and then he compared the situation for Christians in first-century Rome with the situation for Christians in 21st-century America.

He shouted: “It was a wicked world in ancient Rome. Wicked! Idolatry! Christian persecution! All manner of perversion! But with this thing in Massachusetts, it's just dark here in America. I don’t see how it could have been any worse in Rome than it is right here, right now.”

This was met with a chorus of amens from the men, and judgmental tsking sounds from the women, which was and is typical there -- but at least my parents’ church doesn’t produce a Hell House.

What's a Hell House? Hell Houses are the evangelical alternative to haunted houses on Halloween.

They work like this: Instead of witches stirring pots or zombies popping out of coffins, the scenes played out inside a Hell House depict all kinds of modern blasphemies and affronts to the evangelicals’ god -- as well as the tortured afterlife that the perpetrators of such blasphemies and affronts can expect to suffer for eternity. The theory (sort of a one-night reduction of what a lifetime of Sundays can teach you as an evangelical) is that if you are terrorized enough, that sometime before the end of the walk-through, you will have resolved to accept Jesus Christ and avoid the torment.

The Hell House model as an evangelical alternative to a possibly-Satanic Halloween has gotten popular enough to support a cottage industry by the New Destiny Christian Center in Colorado, which continues every year to sell its pre-packaged version of a Hell House kit to churches across the country.

The kit includes props, instructions, and scripts for the actors to follow. And it's not just the useless, futile, tragic lives of gay men that are depicted. New Destiny encourages including young women who choose abortion, drunk drivers, domestic abusers, and teenaged ravers on drugs. Visitors watch the tragic consequences of the wasted lives -- women bleeding to death after killing their babies, promiscuous girls getting raped and committing suicide, and gay couples wasting together of AIDS -- all while being mocked by the demons who are transporting them to Hell.

"We don't do it to scare people,” one pastor at a church in Texas told his local CBS affiliate last week. “The scary part about the Hell House is the reality that we portray. That is the scary part."

That’s not what’s scary to me.