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.

Diwali: Festival of Lights (Lakshmi Puja)

I had celebrated Diwali one time before this year.

Four years ago, a deaf friend of mine who is married to a deaf Indian man (neither of them identifies as Hindu) invited me to a combination Diwali/Ramadan celebration hosted by the Greater Washington Asian Deaf Association.

This was before I was truly competent in ASL (I had a hard time following the details of the skit depicting Krishna's slaying of Narakasura), and also before I understood how the Muslim calendar works. I didn’t get up to speed on the Muslim calendar until last year. I had failed to attend a combination Yom Kippur/Ramadan break-the-fast to which I had been invited, and I thought to myself, "I should have gone, but hopefully I will find a combination celebration next year."

Nope.

While both the Muslim and Jewish calendars follow a lunar cycle, the Jewish calendar adds a leap month every four years or so, to keep roughly aligned with the Gregorian calendar. The Muslim calendar does not do this, and loses therefore about 11 days per year, sliding backward along the Gregorian calendar, spiraling its holidays throughout all of the seasons. Though Yom Kippur and Ramadan overlapped last year, this year is a Jewish leap year, so the holidays separated. They will not again overlap until 2038, when I will be 64 years old.

When I attended the Diwali/Ramadan four years ago, the new moon that meant Diwali had arrived was the same new moon that signaled the end of Ramadan, but since the Hindu calendar also follows a leap-month strategy, the two holidays won't be linked again for another 27 years. In 2035, Diwali’s new moon will fall on Halloween, and will trigger the beginning of Ramadan the next day, on Samhain/All Saint's Day.

This year, Diwali’s new moon happens this coming Tuesday, October 28. We'll be entering into the Hindu month of Karttika, the Muslim month of Dhu al-Q'idah, and the Jewish month of Chechvan. Also, Diwali and the new moon mark the Hindu new year, so... Happy New Year... again.

When I started looking for a Diwali celebration this year, I discovered that the Hindu (and some Jain) temples in my area were all cooperating together on a collective Diwali Mela, to be held on the Saturday before Diwali (yesterday) at Mariner Arena in Baltimore. The event was scheduled from noon to 10PM, so I decided to attend in the afternoon, and then use my Diwali trip as an excuse to visit a Baltimore friend in the evening.

I caught a combination of Metro, bus, and light-rail to Baltimore on a very windy and slightly drizzly late Saturday morning and arrived at Mariner Arena around 1:30.

I paid my $5 for a ticket at the downstairs box office and followed my nose upstairs to where I could tell lunch awaited. Lining the corridors where vendors normally sell nachos and hot dogs and beer sat tables overflowing with vats of biryani and chana masala and dal. Platters mounded high with pakoras and samosas sat next to giant bowls of mint chutney and tamarind. The food was selling for a flat fee of $5 for any two menu items on a plate. Starving, I bought a double for $10 and took a seat in the arena to chow down while listening to the musicians playing bhajans on the stage.

Mariner Arena can hold 11,000 people. It is home to Baltimore's soccer team, but more often it hosts shows like Disney on Ice, Motocross, or Ringling Brothers' Circus. Inside, three levels of stadium-style seating, in a U shape, look down on the large, sporting-event-sized floor, with a wide stage at the flat end of the U.

On the floor, about thirty or forty rows of chairs provided prime additional seating for watching the stage, and behind those rows were assembled fifty to sixty booths made of blue curtains and metal piping for vendors to sell their wares. Several hundred people filled the arena, some sitting in the stadium seats like me, plates of food balanced on their laps, while others milled about the booths or lined the seats on the floor.

I wore a dark flannel shirt and jeans and felt that I did not look terribly out of place among the men, who ranged from low-end casual to business suits, with only the very occasional kurta. The women, on the other hand, skewed toward maybe 75-percent traditional dress, which, seen from the height of the stadium seats, presented a delightfully classy and colorful sea of humanity.

After bolting my food and pitching my plate, I made my way down to the floor to see what I might see. In addition to the predictable booths for saris and jewelry and Hindu art, I saw booths for life insurance, blood pressure testing, and services for wiring money to India. Booths for kids offered the chance to fill in black-and-white lotus drawings with glue and colorful powders, as well as children's picture books about the gods and goddesses, and dolls manufactured by Mattel labeled "Barbie Goes to India."

Other booths offered vast arrays of Bollywood films and music, cosmetics, oil lamps, the services of traditional wedding decorators, and back issues of a magazine called The Indian American that has placed Barack Obama on the cover of its current issue. I thumbed the literature on the table of the Vedanta booth, reading short sections of text about how to interpret the Upanishads to reach self-realization and cosmic consciousness. The man staffing this booth never stopped talking on his cell phone while I stood there, but I took note of a banner overhead that linked the booth with someone called Swami Chinmayananda, so I made a note to follow up.

Elsewhere on the exhibition floor, I looked amongst the assorted god and goddess figures for a Lakshmi.

I have a small silver Ganesha statue that a friend gave me for Holi in the spring, and I thought I might like to place a matching goddess of wealth next to him, as America gnaws its collective nails over the economy. Alas, all of the Lakshmis were painted in garish colors that I didn't like, though I did see some attractive Buddhas fashioned in silver (which was a surprise to me).

The cultural program began around 2:30, with each of the temples allowed about fifteen minutes of stage time for a performance. Each temple took its turn presenting choreographed dances, often dedicated to a god or goddess (Ganesha, Shiva, Lord Nataraja the God of Dance), with some described without a god-reference ("a Gujarati folk dance," "beats from the State of Punjab"), and one described as "a hymn to God, the Divine Life that is our best friend in every way."

After about three temples' presentations, I noticed that either by design or by happenstance, the performances did not seem to involve men, boys, or older women. Only girls and young women were taking the stage to sing and dance, and I reflected that if I were a young Hindu boy I might likely feel jealous. The highly stylized choreography looked fun to perform, and the fanciful costumes looked fun to wear. Most of the pre-recorded music was loud, fast, inspiring, and exhilarating -- with a heavy beat that wouldn't have been out of place in a nightclub.

Later, during the time I slipped out to purchase a dish of masala chai ice cream, a boy-performer did take the stage. He was the drummer for a female dance troupe, and when I returned with my sweet treat, he stood at the microphone praying. The boy called God our creator and our sustainer, but did not mention any names like Brahma or Vishnu. And when he called on God to give us prosperity in the new year, he did not mention either Lakshmi or Ganesha, with his connection to auspicious beginnings. He asked God to guide us all down the noble path.

After a few more dances, a man in a suit took to the stage to announce the start of Lakshmi Puja.

While he spoke, several others -- men in suits, one man in a saffron-colored kurta, a woman in a rose-and-white sari -- began to transform the stage. They brought out two large images, about the size of college dorm-room posters, framed in gold, and leaned them against a long table covered in a gold cloth that was already sitting to the rear of the stage. The image on the left showed Lakshmi, two arms raised, two arms outstretched, standing on a lotus flower with a white elephant emerging from a river behind her. The image on the right showed a pink and white Ganesha.

Between these images, the men and woman placed a huge pile of bananas, and then they rolled out a red cloth on the floor before the images. At the corners of the red cloth, they rolled out two more red cloths, forming an inward-slanting rectangle with its arms open toward the audience.

The man at the microphone asked for all of the board members of the Association of Hindu and Jain Temples to come to the stage, along with two children from each temple. The adults who came forward knelt on the first red cloth, facing the images. The children knelt on the two other cloths, facing the audience. While the man at the microphone spoke about Lakshmi and Diwali and the New Year and thanked various people, the other men and the woman provided the kneeling worshipers with various objects -- cups of water, and red plates covered with I knew not what.

When the man at the microphone was finished, a different unseen man began reciting prayers in Hindi. His words triggered actions among the worshipers on the stage. They touched or moved things on their plates, or raised their hands above their heads.

Occasionally, the praying man would give a partial instruction in English ("now the rice and flowers," "now the mango leaves," “run the rice through your fingers"). He paused to give voice to drawn-out ohms occasionally, and every now and then, from somewhere, a bell would ring. This went on for nearly forty minutes.

Whether Hebrew or Arabic or Hindi, Latin or Greek or German, there is possibly no other boredom in this world like the boredom of listening to never-ending prayers in a language you don't understand.

I know this is my fault for not knowing another spoken language, and I know I'm totally in the wrong for thinking this, but as much as I wanted to enjoy and learn from the worship of Lakshmi, I found it irritating. “Enough, already,” I thought, as the prayers grew repetitive and monotonous, “I'm sure Lakshmi gets it.”

I selfishly wanted the program to return to the dances ("Entertain me!"), and to top it off, my phone kept vibrating with my Baltimore friend apparently trying to contact me about our evening plans. I felt like a jerk for not answering my friend's call as I outwardly respected the ceremony taking place on the stage, and like a bigger jerk for inwardly barely respecting the ceremony at all.

When a bell started ringing non-stop, I hoped fervently that it might signal the end of the ceremony.

It did. The adults rose and warmed their hands over oil lamps situated on the table behind the two images. The man in the saffron kurta began tossing flower petals over everyone, and then the children rose to warm their hands as well. The stage began to clear, as the man in saffron moved the oil lamps to the edge of the stage. Men and women from the audience drew near to the lamps, placing their hands above the flames, then touching their faces, running their fingers through their hair, and bowing with a namaste.

I should have at least offered Mariner Arena my own namaste before rushing outside to call my friend back, but I did not.

Ramadan/Equinox (Mabon)

Timing my meals to sun-up and sundown these past few weeks, I had been especially mindful that we were heading toward the Fall Equinox, as both suhoor in the morning and iftar in the evening have been creeping toward 7 o'clock.

I understand that Equinox goes by the name Mabon for many Wiccans who celebrate eight sabbats (or solar holidays) per year, but I did not manage to find a Wiccan celebration in my area. I will, however, put some energy into finding one for Samhain, the sabbat holiday that falls on Halloween/All Souls' Day, in between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice.

Even without a Wiccan or other religious connection, I have been interested for some time in celebrating the turning of the seasons. My interest began with the Winter Solstice, which I have celebrated for the past six years by hosting a brunch at my house.

At first, it just seemed a pleasant way to strip away the in-your-face cultural trappings of Christmas (and respect the religious traditions of my non-Christian friends) while opening my home for a gathering around the "holidays." I have tended to prepare a large bowl of eggnog, and occasionally to hang mistletoe, but otherwise to avoid seasonal references at the Solstice brunch. It's nice simply to celebrate the lengthening of the light in a secular way before boarding a plane to go back home and celebrate Christmas with my family.

Once I had started with the Solstice brunch, I had always thought I should stretch the tradition throughout the year, and this past spring I discovered a very good reason to do so. At the Spring Equinox, it turned out we were facing a truly amazing religious pile-up, so I convinced one of my housemates that a pan-religious springfest would be in order.

Six months ago, Friday, March 21, 2008 represented the convergence of six different religious occurrences. It was: a full moon, the Equinox (Ostara for Wiccans), the Jewish holiday of Purim, the Hindu festival of Holi, the Zoroastrian New Year (Norouz), and Good Friday. I was observing Lent at the time by not drinking, so I decided to break my Lent with the Equinox party – specifically with the Purim part of that party, since Purim actually requires celebrants to drink.

I was out of town during the Summer Solstice this year, but my housemates were on board when I suggested an Equinox/Ramadan occasion in our house this fall to continue marking the seasons with a display of hospitality and conviviality.

Guests were invited to arrive at sundown for iftar, and invited to stay as late as they liked to celebrate Equinox.

We prepared and served a mix of mostly traditional Middle Eastern food (tabouli, dolmas, falafel, baba ganouj, and so on), and I purchased some organic dates from the market, because I had read that dates are a traditional break-the-fast food for Ramadan.

Because I find the Equinox parties to be a good excuse for some sort of festive dress or change in appearance, I found myself thinking of what to wear as the sun was going down. At the Spring party, I had strung together a couple dozen tiny roses on a thread and tied it around my neck as a festive spring garland. For the Fall party, I selected an orange shirt from my closet to represent the changing colors of the leaves, and I wore it with jeans. I was lacing my sneakers when I was inspired by a memory of the cherry red toenail polish I saw one of my housemates wearing a day or two earlier.

I wandered down the hall to check what other colors my housemate might have, hoping I could match my toes to my bright orange shirt. She handed over a couple of colors that she thought might blend well together to become orange, and in fact they did. I ditched the sneakers for flip flops, and my toes were a shiny orange by the time our first guests arrived.

We had a gathering of eight for iftar, with most guests arriving much later; none of the other early guests had fasted. An Iranian friend (who is not Muslim, and who is more interested in pagan spirituality) arrived late for the iftar, having chosen to fast for one day in honor of the party. Mohammed arrived even later in the evening, having broken his fast at an iftar in the suburbs.

By midnight the apartment was full, and dancing had broken out in the living room. Mohammed had brought a bottle of fine scotch, which was shared amongst many guests who had already imbibed two bowls my housemate's rum punch -- as well as the various varieties of wine and beer on offer.

We closed up shop around 4:30 in the morning, less than an hour before devout Muslims would be showing up at the mosque for Fajr. One housemate had gone to bed hours before, and after cleaning up the house a bit with my other awake housemate, I stumbled intoxicated to my bedroom and slept until noon.

The next day was the first time I'd missed my early meal since Ramadan began, and the first time I'd missed my Fajr yoga session since I started it a few weeks ago. Though I had resolved to myself to wash at each prayer time on Saturday, after accepting the challenge from my friend, the former Muslim wife, I realized that I had missed both Maghrib and Isha on Saturday, as well as the Sunday Fajr.

I got out of bed at midday and did some more cleaning, feeling a slight hangover, and wishing I had remembered to eat a fortifying helping of leftover party food while I was putting it away in the wee hours. I wouldn't be eating again until iftar (at which point I planned to meet up with a group of progressive Muslims I met through Facebook).

An hour later I went into my bathroom to wash for Dhuhur. I soaped up my face and hands while standing before my sink and mirror, focusing on making myself come back to life after somewhat overdoing it the night before.

Then I stepped into my shower to wash my feet and surprised myself when I looked down and remembered my orange-painted toes. There are Muslim men the world over performing this exact same ritual today, I thought to myself. Are there any others who are chipping colored paint off their nails as they wash?