The Five Pillars: Hajj (Pilgrimage)

It has been almost one month since I posted on my blog, because I have been on a four-way Hajj.

My primary Mecca was San Francisco, where my work sends me every year in November. Whenever I can, I stay afterward to enjoy some free time in the Bay Area, and also to make a secondary pilgrimage, to the home of my cousin Doris, who lives on top of a mountain in Saratoga. My third destination this year was Berkeley, where one of my old housemates lives, and finally, I paused in Kentucky on my way back to the East Coast, to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving with my family.

My travels and my work and my inattention to this blog project meant that I skipped four Bahai holidays in November, and overlooked the beginning of Advent for liturgical Christians on Sunday, November 29. The moon waxed full on the first day of my travels on the West Coast, and it was new again by the time of Thanksgiving in Kentucky. This new moon brought with it the beginning of the Jewish month of Kislev, which will end with Hannukah; the Hindu month of Agrahayana; and the Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah, the final month of the Muslim year, and the month of the Hajj.

HAJJ #1: SAN FRANCISCO

My trip to the Bay Area coincided, uh, by the grace of God, with the nationwide protest against California's passing of Proposition 8, the anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment. For me, and my Hajj, the gilded dome of San Francisco City Hall stood in for the Ka'aba, and two handsome local activists kissing behind the speakers' podium stood in for an imam's call to prayer.

The fight in California, of course, was not irrelevant to the subject of religion, with the "yes" side arguing strenuously that gay marriage leads to religious discrimination and sanction for punishment against denominations that preach against homosexuality. Personally, I don't think these arguments wash, of course, and yet pro-gay-marriage advocates don't always do all they can to disabuse the evangelicals and the Mormons of these false notions. There were protesters at the rally carrying signs that said: "Destroy the Mormon church," "Fuck Mormons," and the word "mormons," with a slash through the second "m."

Other protesters took on the religionists much more tactfully and intelligently, by praising the Biblical relationships between David and Jonathan or Naomi and Ruth, for example, or pointing out what traditional marriage really means for those inclined to read the Bible literally. These signs reminded us of Jacob and his two wives, or King Solomon and his 700 wives, supplemented with 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). If I had brought sign-making supplies with me, I might have followed this theme and condensed a story told in the book of 1 Samuel about how King David added to his harem of 12 wives by slaying 200 Philistines and slicing off their foreskins as a dowry presentation for his new wife's father.

HAJJ #2: DORIS

Eighty-four years old, widowed, energetic, thoughtful, passionate, creative, and kind, my cousin Doris lives alone in a house on a mountain overlooking the village of Saratoga, and -- in the distance -- San Francisco Bay. She has oranges and avocados growing around her house, and when she found a dead deer on her property a year ago, she enlisted a neighbor to help her with the task of dragging its carcass into the woods. She is independent and fierce, and I look up to her the way I never have to one of my elders since I was a child. She sent regular birthday letters to me in Kentucky until I was 18, and then we lost touch until I started making regular trips to the West Coast in my thirties.

Doris founded the first Presbyterian church in Saratoga, and has been one of its elders for more than 40 years. She attends church every Sunday, makes food baskets for the poor, and recently lamented to me that she does not think she should go on her church's upcoming mission trip to Guatamala because of her age. Also, Doris voted against Prop 8. When I first came out as gay to her, she told me she thinks I am wonderful, and then she asked me why I don't have a partner yet. She asks me that every time she sees me, just like a Grandmother who wants a grandson to settle down with a nice woman and start a family. It's not annoying. It's kind of a pleasure.

Like me, Doris has differences with the religion she was raised to believe. She has strong words for Southern Baptists (her parents' denomination), and she doesn't shy away from her vocal opinion that my Fundamentalist Christian parents, in their late fifties, are too old to change their views. She and I disagree on that point. Her liberal attitude and free spirit and mistrust of Baptists notwithstanding, Doris also continues to speak the language of the Christian church. She places dilemmas "in God's hands," talks about "God's will" for her future, and when she is at her most outraged about the church's disapproval of homosexuals, her hands begin to shake as her eyes flash and she shouts: "Jesus died for all of us! He died for all of us!"

HAJJ #3: DAVID

Ah, beautiful David, with that energy, that smile, those legs, that way around a kitchen, that joy of living (and that long-distance girlfriend who remains in Washington, DC). Doesn't he need a concubine to complete that picture? Doesn't he know that's traditional? The shared source-text for our two faith traditions says so!

On the walk from the BART to his apartment, David told me about his first Yom Kippur experience in Berkeley. "It was so different from what I was used to, growing up in Philadelphia," David told me about his Berkeley High Holidays. "Usually, when they talk about the gates closing, it's fearful. You want to make it through, and you're afraid they're going to close on you. But these people out here... whoa! It wasn't like that. They were dancing in the aisles. They were singing at the top of their lungs. It's like the gates were closing, but they didn't care. They were going to storm those gates."

I thought of asking him if he'd be interested in going there for Shabbat while I was staying with him, but we both ended up having other plans Friday night. Still, on Saturday, with David I had the most religious experience of my West Coast journey, as we spent the day in the beautiful natural diversity of Marin County. We started the day in the tidepools, investingating the orange and rust-colored starfish and the crabs and mussels and snails. We climbed rocks to watch the waves crash, and then we climbed a mountain up into a redwood forest. By the end of the day we emerged on a bald hill overlooking the ocean, from which we could scan a 270-degree panorama, watch the fog roll in, and witness the sun sinking fast into the Pacific.


HAJJ #4: THANKSGIVING

My mother sat at the head of the table, and announced the Thanksgiving tradition of going around the table and naming one thing for which we are thankful. This tradition began when Thanksgiving was just me and my sister and my parents as a group of four. In recent years, we've morphed into more of a motley collection of single or widowed cousins or friends of my parents -- compensation for the fact that my grandparents are dead, my parents are both only children, and my sister and I are childless.

This year, we had ten people around the table, including my sister's new boyfriend, who had never gathered for Thanksgiving before. The "thanks" that each of us spoke aloud largely centered on being thankful for the group of people assembled, and for the health of a hospitalized cousin who just beat prostate cancer. On my turn, I followed suit, naming the same things. I had other ideas in my head, such as thanks for all the workers involved in getting the food to our plates, praise for my mother's work in the kitchen, thanks for the turkey who gave its life, a recognition of the white settlers' unfairness to the native people, and gratitude for the Obama win -- but I tend to censor myself in my parents' home.

At the end of the go-around, my father concluded with a formal prayer to God, in Jesus' name. He repeated the thanks for the cousin's cancer dodge (my dad had a cancer scare of his own this summer that he didn't mention), and for the family members who had gathered. He thanked God for the food that God had set before us, and he asked God to be with those who do not have enough to eat. He asked that God's will be done in all things, and he compared us to the food with favorite phrase of his asking God to "bless this food for the nourishment of our bodies, and us for your service. All these things we ask in Jesus' holy name, Amen." This is the way he prays.

The Five Pillars: Shahada (No god but Allah...)

When I came up the stairs in the Hindu temple from Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam's concert, I was running a bit late to return my rented car, but I wanted to see inside the worship space. I hadn't even peeked in before, while I was asking the man in the lobby shop where to buy my concert ticket, so after reading a couple of posted signs to try to ensure I wouldn't be breaking any rules by entering, I stepped from the lobby into the worship space.

The Muslim worship spaces I have experienced are empty, with rugs on the floor for praying. The Jewish worship spaces I have experienced have tended to be furnished with rows of chairs with arms, like a theater, with great variation in the style of ark situated in the front. Christian spaces, of course, have pews, with or without a baptismal pool or font in the front. The Hindu worship space surprised me in its difference.

Whether rugs, chairs, or pews, the monotheistic spaces are designed to arrange the worshippers in rows, facing forward, toward one thing: the ark, the East, the cross, whatever. The Hindu space (as perhaps I should have predicted, but did not) had no single focal point. Rather, the space contained shrines to 16 different named gods. The space was not quiet. People were talking and children were running around. Some people stood or bowed before particular shrines, others were simply sitting on the floor in lotus position, not apparently focused on any shrine in particular.

My instinct was to walk through the space and investigate each shrine one at a time. I walked up to Vishnu's space, because his was one of the largest, and because the depiction of the figure inside was different. Whereas many other shrines depicted a seated, standing, or dancing figure, the object inside the Vishnu shrine looked more like a corpse, or more specifically like a sarcophagus. There were flowers and bananas left on the stairs up into Vishnu's space and a sign at the top of the stairs reserving the inside of the shrine for priests only.

Next to me, a woman fell to her knees before the shrine of Hanuman (a god who symbolizes devotion to selfless service and humility), and pressed her forehead to the floor. This shrine also bore a sign reserving its inner space for priests, and the figure of Hanuman sat in a recess behind a curtain that could be closed. Next to the woman on the floor, another shrine, to I know not which god, had its curtain closed, and a living figure -- presumably a priest -- was moving around inside.

The rebuke from the woman at my last iftar rang in my head: "You can't be a religious tourist. Those people are there to pray."

I questioned my instinct to walk from shrine to shrine, wondering if treating the worship space like a museum might be unkind. Then I thought the better comparison might be to a Catholic, walking the stations of the cross -- something I have never done. I let the pressure of the car reservation make my decision for me, and after admiring only about a quarter of the shrines, I went back outside to collect my shoes from the cubby.

What would even the progressive Muslims of the suburban iftar have made of this temple, I wondered.

I have heard Christian sermons condemn Hindus for praying to "idols," and at the suburban iftar, I heard Richard (the convert from Christianity) criticize their polytheism as well. He mentioned it in the context of criticizing Christians for being "like the Hindus" in their worship of a three-part god.

"How is that monotheism?" Richard was asking a small group that had formed around him. "You've got Jesus, and you've got God, but Jesus is also God, and then there's this other thing, a ghost, and then you've got the Catholics, and they've got Mary all up in it too. And what's up with Mary always looking like some white woman from the Middle Ages? It's like, when somebody go all crazy and see Mary pop up her face on a piece-a toast or something, it always look like some white woman. And she’s a part of God too? What's up with that?"

The Trinity made sense to me as a child, but as an adult, I do feel like Richard has a point. I don't agree that the Hindus and Christians necessarily have it wrong somehow because their theism isn't as absolutely mono as Richard's, but I do see how being able to conceptualize God in three parts should put Christians in a bind to explain how they reject others who see even more parts to God, whether Catholics who add on Mary or the Saints, or Hindus who split the concept of God -- by some reckonings -- into millions of parts.

At the Kol Nidre service, we prayed to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Rebekah, the God of Jacob, the God of Rachel, and the God of Leah. I had done this before, but this year, for the first time, I heard the cantor explain her understanding of why we repeat the words "God of" each time.

"It's because each generation -- each person, really -- encounters God in his or her own way," the cantor explained. "We're not praying to this God of... a whole big group of people who always agreed on everything. We're praying to a God who was real to Isaac, and real to Rebekah, and to the rest, and we're honoring each of their encounters with the Eternal, as well as our own encounter."

So, by my count, that was seven gods at Kol Nidre. Or maybe a few hundred, if I'm counting the God of Jim, the God of Suzi, and the rest of the congregation celebrating High Holidays in the United Church.

When I went back to the United Church (aka Die Vereinigte Kirche) the following Sunday for Christian services, I wondered which God would be there. The God who just closed the gates in that same space on Thursday night? The God of the soprano cantor? The God of the woman who looked into my eyes and blessed me? The God of the Rev. Peter DeGroote, who would be preaching that morning? All of the above?

The giant banner depicting the Torah scroll had been removed from the cross at the front of the sanctuary, and on Sunday, the crowd was much smaller. Maybe 40 or 50 people attended services, most of them senior citizens and most of them women, including a returning pastor named Rita Horstmann, who was visiting from her home church in Cologne, having served as Die Vereinigte Kirche's German pastor in 2003 and 2004.

Rev. DeGroote was welcoming and kind, greeting me as an obvious visitor amongst the sparse crowd, since I was both male and off the average age by about thirty years. He and a younger pastor (who was about my age) wore black suits and clerical collars and no wedding rings. The younger man led us in song and prayer; the older man delivered a sermon based on the book of James (or Jakobus, as it was called in Der Bibel from the pew in front of me). The older reverend led us in some prayers as well.

We prayed to God, and we addressed one recited-in-unison prayer to "the Holy One," and we also prayed to Jesus, sometimes calling him Jesus Christ. We sang a song addressed to the "Spirit of the living God," which I had sung before at the Unitarian Church near my house. The song calls for the living God's spirit to "fall afresh on me ... melt me, mold me, fill me, use me" -- a very similar message to the "thou art the potter" hymn from my upbringing, and the God-as-potter song from Kol Nidre.

We also prayed pointedly to a Creator God (Brahma?), and we finished with the Lord's Prayer.

I know the Lord's Prayer. I have sung it and recited it hundreds if not thousands of times, sometimes with the language of “you“ and “your,” sometimes with the language of “thou” and “thine”… sometimes with "debts" and sometimes with "transgressions."

When I glanced at the upcoming text, printed on my church bulletin, I saw that Die Vereinigte Kirche addresses the Lord directly on the debts/transgressions line, using the phrasing "forgive us for wronging you” (no capital Y).

But that wasn't the only fresh aspect of their translation.

When Rev. DeGroote, and Rita Horstmann, and the senior citizens, and I, and the young, unmarried pastor all raised our voices to recite the Lord's Prayer to God, we said:

"Our Father and Mother in heaven, holy is your name."