Ramadan, part six (a gay man in a mosque.)

Around four o'clock today, someone from the Ahmadiyya mosque called me back. It turns out I had gone too early for the Dhuhur prayer, which occurs around 1:30PM. The caller invited me to the Mahgrib prayers (around 7:30), but I had evening plans, so I asked when the afternoon prayers -- the Asr prayers -- would be. He said they would be starting in about fifteen minutes, and then asked how far away I was. When I said I could be there in 30 minutes, he said he would wait for me.

I thanked him, and was about to hang up when he referenced something I had said in the voicemail message I had left.

"Why do you have to ask if visitors are allowed at a mosque?" he asked me. "All are welcome here."

I thanked him again and apologized for asking. I quickly finished up some work that was in front of me, and then hoofed it back over to the mosque. When I got there, two men stood in the open doorway, accepting a package from a delivery man. The older of the two men identified himself as the man who spoke to me on the phone. He wore a long yellow tunic and had white hair. I do not remember if he gave his name, but he introduced me to Zaki, the younger of the two men as the imam of the mosque. Another older man sat in a front room (Zaki's cousin from London, I later learned) waiting for the prayers to begin.

Once I had removed my shoes in the foyer and joined the three of them in the front room, the prayers could begin. The room's blinds were still drawn as they had been earlier, so no light entered. The floor was covered in off-white carpet, and the walls were white and lined with chairs. The center of the room was empty, though a podium displaying a paper sign written in Arabic stood next to the opening back into the foyer. Zaki turned his back on us and faced the podium (or, more accurately, he faced east). The three of us faced east also, with the cousin and the white-haired man standing very close together, and me a few paces away. The cousin gestured me to come closer until our arms were touching and the three of us formed a very close straight row directly behind the imam.

As the imam led the prayers, I followed the movements of the other two men: hands clasped across the middle, then bending at the waist with hands on knees, then supplicant on the floor with forehead to ground, then sitting back on heels, then doing it all over again. We repeated the movements several times, with the other two men occasionally joining in to speak. At one point a telephone rang elsewhere in the house, and I heard a woman's voice answer it. A couple of moments later, a cell phone rang in the imam's pocket, and he silenced it mid-prayer.

Toward the end of the sequence, while we were sitting on our heels, we turned to the right and then to the left, and when the cousin and the white haired man relaxed back onto their bottoms, so did I.

Zaki turned around to face us, and we shifted into sitting in a loose circle.

"So, how was it?" he asked me.

"Good, fine," I said.

"So you are observing Ramadan?"

"Yes."

"How are you fasting?"

The question didn't make sense to me exactly. "Well, I am eating before the sun comes up, and not eating again until the sun goes down. Is that what you mean?"

"Good. Good," said the imam. "You are fasting the Muslim way. Sometimes when Christians say they are fasting, they mean only that they have given up meat or bread."

"I don't eat meat anyway," I said. "And besides just giving up one thing sounds more like a diet than a fast to me."

"So, you have been fasting since the beginning of Ramadan?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Here I explained my interest in better understanding the religions of the world. I told the three of them that about six years ago I observed Lent for the first time, and found it worthwhile, and that about four years ago, I observed Yom Kippur for the first time, and found it worthwhile, and so I wanted to see what else worthwhile I might find in faith traditions aside from the one I was raised in.

They asked me if the fasting was hard for me as a novice, and I replied honestly that it is not. I mentioned that the Yom Kippur fast goes on for longer, though of course it is only one day, rather than a month, and the three of them seemed unfamiliar with the tradition. I explained that a Yom Kippur fast begins before sundown on one day, and ends after sundown on the next day, resulting in a longer-than-24-hour fast.

"And what is Lent?" one of them asked. "What do you do then?"

"You give up something," I said. "But it's different for each person."

"What do you give up?" Zaki asked me.

"Drinking," I said.

"Water?"

"No, alcohol."

Zaki and his cousin exchanged a look.

"That would not be difficult for us," he said. "We do not drink alcohol."

"Oh, I understand." I said. "Some people give up meat for Lent, and that would not be difficult for me, because I do not eat meat."

The imam moved on to a question about my personal life: "So, do you have a wife?" he asked me, glancing at my ring finger. "Or are you single, or what is the deal..." he paused "... with, uh,with that?"

"I am single," I said, pausing in my mind to wonder how I might have responded if I had a boyfriend or husband, settling quickly on the unprovocative: "I do not have a wife."

"I see." said Zaki, "Well, I have a wife and I thought if you had a wife maybe the four of us could get together. Anyway, let me get you a book, and I'll give you my card."

He gave me a book entitled Introduction to the Study of the Holy Qur'an, handed me his card, and asked me for my phone number, and then I left, saying that I will probably return for a prayer or two sometime next week. I took note of how my mind did not wander during the prayers, both because I was listening to something (Zaki's voice) and watching something (the movements of the other two men).

I did not wash at the Asr prayer because none of the others did, and nobody asked me to. Tomorrow, I will be close to home most of the day, food shopping at the farmer's market in the morning, then cleaning house and cooking for the party, so I will make a point of marking each prayer time and washing when I do so. Then, I will be able to tell my friend -- who was once herself the answer to the "Do you have a wife?" question for a Muslim man in Egypt -- that I took her advice, and added washing to my observance of Ramadan.

Ramadan, part five (a gay man in a mosque?!)

I am more familiar with the Unitarian church near my house than I am with probably any other house of worship in town. I have attended Sunday services maybe 10 times over my seven years here, I have shown up for plays and concerts there, and I have staffed a table with a friend who once participated in a responsible gift fair held at the church. A few friends of mine used to attend somewhat regularly, though they have all since moved away from DC -- to Portland, Oregon; to Chapel Hill; and to Sudan.

I remember going to the Unitarian Church on a Sunday afternoon four and a half years ago, after hosting a party with my housemates in my shared apartment the night before.

It was a Sunday in February, and the party had been meant to celebrate Mardi Gras, though it was a few days too early. (It was the third year I had hosted a Mardi Gras party, and the second year I had observed Lent.) One of my housemates at the time was a beautiful Jewish boy, with whom I had unwittingly fallen in love, though his identity as a heterosexual made such a love impossible. He and I were cleaning the house the day after the party, but we put down our brooms and sponges and walked over to the church at mid-day to watch two of my friends perform in a production of the musical "Free to Be You and Me."

My housemate looked adorable walking to church with me in his long-sleeved yellow T-shirt under blue-jean overalls, sandals with socks on his feet. The auditorium was full of families with young children when we arrived. I looked for other friends in the crowd, but, seeing none, my housemate and I took two seats by ourselves toward the back, leaving empty seats toward the front for the children. The row in front of us was completely empty, though shortly a man with two sons came and sat directly in front of us.

They settled in, and the man, perhaps identifying us as visitors, turned around to flash us a big smile and say hello. He extended his right hand in greeting, and I noticed his wedding ring on his left. He identified himself as Alex, and he and I started a conversation that meandered toward the divulging of our religious backgrounds. I confessed to being a refugee from evangelical Fundamentalist Christianity who does not worship, but who has a continued interest in religion. Alex told me that he grew up Presbyterian, but found the Unitarians more welcoming. When my housemate identified himself as a secular Jew, Alex's smile grew even wider.

"My partner's Jewish too," he told us, enthusiastically. "I think you'll find this church is a very embracing environment for mixed couples. He can be Jewish, and I can be Christian, and we can teach our kids about both our traditions. It's nice."

Alex's partner didn't arrive until after the play had started, but Alex introduced us all to each other after it was over, and it was clear he viewed me and my housemate as a sweet young couple -- which felt so charming and so sad all at the same time. Neither my housemate nor I provided a correction.

It's true that the Unitarian church is very embracing of gay men and lesbians. In fact, this particular Unitarian church is led by a gay senior pastor and a lesbian associate pastor. And on a separate visit to the church for morning worship, I once, by chance, encountered a sermon by the associate pastor that focused on nothing but the need for churches to bring gay men and lesbians (and couples and families) into the fold. It was terribly moving for me to hear such a viewpoint articulated from a pulpit -- a viewpoint so very different from that of the church in which I grew up. And yet... that sermon bothered me that day, and bothers me still.

I felt a bit pandered to and singled out at the same time. I didn't feel like I was sitting in a sanctuary with a unified group of Unitarians, but rather in a group separated into straight and gay, with the gay people being counseled how to get over their childhoods, and the straight people being informed about the special needs of gay people. I don't feel like I have demographically based special needs. I have my own personal version of universal human needs -- just like everybody else -- and I hadn't come to church for special gay counseling that morning. I feel kind of the same way about discovering that the Quakers offer a "special welcome" for gays and lesbians, though in the future I do intend to visit that version of the Quaker meeting.

In the meantime, I need to get myself to a mosque before Ramadan is over. Today is Friday, the day of the week that my workplace offers a flexible schedule, so I came in to the office early this morning, and then left a while later to walk to an Ahmadiyya Muslim mosque for the second prayer of the day, the Dhuhur. I had not been to this particular mosque before, and when I got there I discovered it is basically a large house on a very nice street, three stories tall with a small porch. There was a plaque on the front of the house with the words "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet," along with the name of the mosque.

The windows of the house all had their blinds drawn, and it seemed dark, but I walked up onto the porch and tried the door anyway, only to find it locked. Perhaps I got the prayer time wrong. I had the phone number for the mosque in my pocket, so I dialed it on my cellphone and got voicemail. I left a message asking if the mosque is holding prayers during Ramadan, and asking if visitors are allowed. I asked for someone to call me back and let me know before Asr, the afternoon prayer, and then I walked back to my office.

I have only informed a few friends that I am working on this blog, and I don't intend to share this with everyone. However, yesterday, I got some feedback from one friend of mine whose opinion I respect. My friend is Jewish (though not observant, I do not believe), and she has been married, at various points in her life, to Muslim men. My friend got the vapors about the idea of me, as an atheist gay man, going to mosques, which is something that does not trouble me at all -- I have been to a mosque once before -- and she also asked me if I am washing ritually at the five prayer times. I have not been ritually washing, and in fact I never followed through with my intention to add the prayers sequentially to my day (though I've kept up with the Fajr/yoga).

So, today, denied the opportunity to add Dhuhur within a community at the mosque, I returned to my office and ritually washed my face, hands, and feet in the shower room my office provides for bike commuters. If I don't get a phonecall back inviting me to Asr at the Ahmadiyya mosque, I'll do the washing again this afternoon. I won't be sharing iftar or Maghrib (the evening prayer) with anyone today, but tomorrow my current housemates and I will be hosting a combination Equinox/Ramadan party beginning at sundown, and on Sunday I have plans to travel to the suburbs and share iftar with a local Muslim group that self-describes as progressive -- the first time during Ramadan that I'll be breaking the fast with an actual community of observant Muslims.