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.”

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?