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."
Showing posts with label cross. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cross. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
Yom Kippur (Thank you, frailty?)
My friend, whom I'll call Jim, was raised Catholic. He just got engaged over the summer to his girlfriend (I’ll call her Suzi), who is Jewish. Jim and I have talked about religion a lot. I don't have anybody in my circle of friends who, as an adult, is as much a disaffected Protestant as me, but Jim probably qualifies as an equally disaffected Christian -- though my upbringing taught me that as a Catholic Jim should not be considered a "real" Christian.
Jim never attends Mass anymore, I don't think, but sometimes goes with Suzi to Shabbat services with the same young and progressive crowd as my colleague who read the poem about women's voices as vowels a few weeks ago.
Suzi invited me to her pre-fast dinner for Yom Kippur this year, starting at 4:30 on Wednesday, but I was too busy to get away from my office at that time of day, and had to miss it. I brought a full dinner to work with me that day instead, and ate it quickly at my desk at about 5:30, before rushing to make Kol Nidre services by 6PM.
The Shabbat group that Suzi and my colleague attend does not put together its own High Holidays services, though many of them join with a larger, older, progressive Jewish group in town called Fabrangen.
I have an older acquaintance who is quite active with Fabrangen, and through a tangled web of connections, I've ended up at Fabrangen's Kol Nidre for the past four years in a row. Like the Shabbat group, Fabrangen does not own a building or employ a rabbi. For High Holiday services, the group appropriates the space of a willing local church, and this year had found a space called The United Church, luckily only eight easily walkable blocks from my office.
The United Church is so named because it was formed (in the 1970s) when two different Protestant denominations, who worshipped two blocks apart from each other in downtown DC, decided to merge their services. A United Church of Christ merged with a Methodist Church, and one new "United" Church was born in the building that housed the Church of Christ.
When the Church of Christ was built, in 1833, it originally was known as the German Evangelical Concordia Congregation, and it served as something of a community center for a good portion of the city's German/Christian population at that time. The combined church still advertises German language services every first and third Sunday of the month, and the first thing I noticed as I approached the church was the tall stained glass window above the entrance, which bore a cross draped in a white sash marked with an elaborate phrase of German calligraphy.
Men and women in kippot and prayer shawls mounted the steps beneath this window, and I fell in line behind them. Inside, as usual, the Christian symbols had all been draped with Jewish art -- painted or embroidered stars of David, or Hebrew messages, or depictions of the Book of Life. I was just barely on time for the service, but I did not see any of my friends or colleagues, so I took a seat by myself in the center toward the back.
The service did not start on time, and worshippers continued to stream in, to the point that I started to feel self-conscious about being a bareheaded single Gentile with a fairly good seat, while whole families were peering around for a space to sit together. I still did not see anybody I knew there, so I rose and went upstairs by myself to the fairly empty balcony.
By the time services had started, I had relocated myself twice more to an ever-worse seat, ending up in the back row of the side balcony by an open stained glass window, which turned out to be a really interesting (and surprisingly comfortable) location for the services. For one thing, worshippers continued arriving even after services had started, such that there were people sitting in the aisles and on staircases, and spilling out into the upper and lower lobbies. This meant that the church grew stiflingly hot rather quickly, increasing the value of the refreshing breeze wafting through the open window.
Secondly, my back-balcony vantage point meant that I could not see the stage at all. I know that the cantor who led most of the service was a woman, but I have no idea what she looked like, or who else might have shared the stage with her. Her disembodied instructions on when to sit or stand, or which page to locate in the prayer book, floated up to the balcony like the voice of God. (God sings in a confidant soprano!)
Two and a half hours later, the soprano God announced that we had arrived at the conclusion of the Kol Nidre service "unconscionably early," and invited everyone back for the full day tomorrow before dismissing us. It took some time for all of the worshippers to file out of the church, which gave me the opportunity to spot Jim and Suzi and a colleague of mine I'll call Rachel in the crowd below. I gestured that I'd wait outside.
On the sidewalk, we chatted about Jim and Suzi's pre-fast meal, and everyone's plans for the next day, and Rachel asked me what part of the Kol Nidre service I liked the most. I answered with some comments about the al-chet portion of the service, a recitation of 44 types of sins, for which the congregation repents and asks forgiveness.
On a previous year, I had been quite moved by a modern adaptation of the al-chet prayer written by a Febrangener, which, as I recalled it, barely mentioned God at all, and really resonated with me as capturing the meaning of the al-chet and translating into a language easily understood by a 21st century… uh, humanist? Atheist? Gentile? (Me.)
The creative, modern al-chet also seemed like a convincing motivator for right action, couched in the sensible language of moderation, rather than the fiery language of condemnation or the moaning language of remorse. (Sample couplet: "For the sin of taking ourselves too seriously, and for the sin of not taking ourselves seriously enough." Sample couplet #2: "For the sin of demanding the power to change others, and for the sin of neglecting the power to change ourselves." If I were compiling a holy book, this prayer -- written a few years ago, I believe -- would be in it for sure.)
Glancing forward in the prayer book during Kol Nidre, I had felt disappointed by this year's al-chet that I saw coming up. Its recitation of sins seemed old-fashioned to me, and not so relevant, and a little ridiculous. It called for repentance for sins that are meaningless to me, like desecrating God's holy name, or for sins that I'm pretty sure I haven't committed, like bribery or extortion or "casting off the yoke of Heaven" (whatever that means).
However, when we got to the al-chet, the cantor did not go by the book. We sang a few Hebrew verses of the prayer, and then the cantor opened it up to the worshippers to raise their hands and volunteer a sin. With each suggested phrase, the cantor would sing it back, and then the congregation would follow it with a short section of the Hebrew prayer. After each three or five sins, we would return to the book, and sing a full couplet, and then take more suggestions from the group.
"The cantor took the personal and made it liturgical and I found that very powerful," I told Rachel. "Sin is a weird concept to me, and I have a hard time coming up with what I think my sins are, but when I hear someone else throw out 'the sin of pettiness' or 'the sin of holding onto anger,' I know I'm implicated too, and there's something really close and human and supportive about everybody admitting frailty together and making a vow to do better."
Congregants offered up the sins of "not caring for our planet" (I thought of how I don't dry my clothes on a line), of "not caring for the poor" (I can't say I'm a champ in that arena either), and two people offered variations on "holding onto anger with parents" (I guess this one's pretty universal).
Rachel asked me if I was planning to return for the full day of Yom Kippur services the next morning. I had planned to take the day off from work as one of two annual "personal holidays" we are allowed, but I told Rachel that traditionally I only attend Kol Nidre, and spend the next day in personal contemplation. Rachel encouraged me to change my plans this year.
"You don't even have to follow along through the whole thing, if you don't want to," she told me. "I bring my own readings sometimes and will sort of hop in and out of the service as I feel moved. You could bring something else, if you want."
"Well, I didn't manage to finish all of my Ramadan reading last month," I told her. "I could bring my Koran, or some of the other books on Islam that I'm reading, like No God But God, or The Muslim Jesus."
Rachel treated it as a joke, but I had been serious.
Her instant reply was that bringing Muslim books probably wouldn't be a good idea, and then there was a split second where I think it wasn't clear to either of us whether my suggestion was utterly out of the question or whether a progressive Jewish congregation with no rabbi meeting in a Christian church might happily endorse an ex-Christian reading Koran in the pews on Yom Kippur.
"Well, think about it," said Rachel. "You could at least come back for Ne'ila at the very end. It should be starting around 5:45."
"Yeah, come back for Ne'ila," Suzi chimed in, breaking off a side conversation with another congregant, and looking as enthusiastic and serious and emotional as I have ever seen her. "It's at the end of the day, and the sun’s going down, and you're so empty from the fast that it's easier to be ... filled."
"I'll think about it," I said, as our sidewalk group disbanded, and I walked back to my office to retrieve my bicycle.
Jim never attends Mass anymore, I don't think, but sometimes goes with Suzi to Shabbat services with the same young and progressive crowd as my colleague who read the poem about women's voices as vowels a few weeks ago.
Suzi invited me to her pre-fast dinner for Yom Kippur this year, starting at 4:30 on Wednesday, but I was too busy to get away from my office at that time of day, and had to miss it. I brought a full dinner to work with me that day instead, and ate it quickly at my desk at about 5:30, before rushing to make Kol Nidre services by 6PM.
The Shabbat group that Suzi and my colleague attend does not put together its own High Holidays services, though many of them join with a larger, older, progressive Jewish group in town called Fabrangen.
I have an older acquaintance who is quite active with Fabrangen, and through a tangled web of connections, I've ended up at Fabrangen's Kol Nidre for the past four years in a row. Like the Shabbat group, Fabrangen does not own a building or employ a rabbi. For High Holiday services, the group appropriates the space of a willing local church, and this year had found a space called The United Church, luckily only eight easily walkable blocks from my office.
The United Church is so named because it was formed (in the 1970s) when two different Protestant denominations, who worshipped two blocks apart from each other in downtown DC, decided to merge their services. A United Church of Christ merged with a Methodist Church, and one new "United" Church was born in the building that housed the Church of Christ.
When the Church of Christ was built, in 1833, it originally was known as the German Evangelical Concordia Congregation, and it served as something of a community center for a good portion of the city's German/Christian population at that time. The combined church still advertises German language services every first and third Sunday of the month, and the first thing I noticed as I approached the church was the tall stained glass window above the entrance, which bore a cross draped in a white sash marked with an elaborate phrase of German calligraphy.
Men and women in kippot and prayer shawls mounted the steps beneath this window, and I fell in line behind them. Inside, as usual, the Christian symbols had all been draped with Jewish art -- painted or embroidered stars of David, or Hebrew messages, or depictions of the Book of Life. I was just barely on time for the service, but I did not see any of my friends or colleagues, so I took a seat by myself in the center toward the back.
The service did not start on time, and worshippers continued to stream in, to the point that I started to feel self-conscious about being a bareheaded single Gentile with a fairly good seat, while whole families were peering around for a space to sit together. I still did not see anybody I knew there, so I rose and went upstairs by myself to the fairly empty balcony.
By the time services had started, I had relocated myself twice more to an ever-worse seat, ending up in the back row of the side balcony by an open stained glass window, which turned out to be a really interesting (and surprisingly comfortable) location for the services. For one thing, worshippers continued arriving even after services had started, such that there were people sitting in the aisles and on staircases, and spilling out into the upper and lower lobbies. This meant that the church grew stiflingly hot rather quickly, increasing the value of the refreshing breeze wafting through the open window.
Secondly, my back-balcony vantage point meant that I could not see the stage at all. I know that the cantor who led most of the service was a woman, but I have no idea what she looked like, or who else might have shared the stage with her. Her disembodied instructions on when to sit or stand, or which page to locate in the prayer book, floated up to the balcony like the voice of God. (God sings in a confidant soprano!)
Two and a half hours later, the soprano God announced that we had arrived at the conclusion of the Kol Nidre service "unconscionably early," and invited everyone back for the full day tomorrow before dismissing us. It took some time for all of the worshippers to file out of the church, which gave me the opportunity to spot Jim and Suzi and a colleague of mine I'll call Rachel in the crowd below. I gestured that I'd wait outside.
On the sidewalk, we chatted about Jim and Suzi's pre-fast meal, and everyone's plans for the next day, and Rachel asked me what part of the Kol Nidre service I liked the most. I answered with some comments about the al-chet portion of the service, a recitation of 44 types of sins, for which the congregation repents and asks forgiveness.
On a previous year, I had been quite moved by a modern adaptation of the al-chet prayer written by a Febrangener, which, as I recalled it, barely mentioned God at all, and really resonated with me as capturing the meaning of the al-chet and translating into a language easily understood by a 21st century… uh, humanist? Atheist? Gentile? (Me.)
The creative, modern al-chet also seemed like a convincing motivator for right action, couched in the sensible language of moderation, rather than the fiery language of condemnation or the moaning language of remorse. (Sample couplet: "For the sin of taking ourselves too seriously, and for the sin of not taking ourselves seriously enough." Sample couplet #2: "For the sin of demanding the power to change others, and for the sin of neglecting the power to change ourselves." If I were compiling a holy book, this prayer -- written a few years ago, I believe -- would be in it for sure.)
Glancing forward in the prayer book during Kol Nidre, I had felt disappointed by this year's al-chet that I saw coming up. Its recitation of sins seemed old-fashioned to me, and not so relevant, and a little ridiculous. It called for repentance for sins that are meaningless to me, like desecrating God's holy name, or for sins that I'm pretty sure I haven't committed, like bribery or extortion or "casting off the yoke of Heaven" (whatever that means).
However, when we got to the al-chet, the cantor did not go by the book. We sang a few Hebrew verses of the prayer, and then the cantor opened it up to the worshippers to raise their hands and volunteer a sin. With each suggested phrase, the cantor would sing it back, and then the congregation would follow it with a short section of the Hebrew prayer. After each three or five sins, we would return to the book, and sing a full couplet, and then take more suggestions from the group.
"The cantor took the personal and made it liturgical and I found that very powerful," I told Rachel. "Sin is a weird concept to me, and I have a hard time coming up with what I think my sins are, but when I hear someone else throw out 'the sin of pettiness' or 'the sin of holding onto anger,' I know I'm implicated too, and there's something really close and human and supportive about everybody admitting frailty together and making a vow to do better."
Congregants offered up the sins of "not caring for our planet" (I thought of how I don't dry my clothes on a line), of "not caring for the poor" (I can't say I'm a champ in that arena either), and two people offered variations on "holding onto anger with parents" (I guess this one's pretty universal).
Rachel asked me if I was planning to return for the full day of Yom Kippur services the next morning. I had planned to take the day off from work as one of two annual "personal holidays" we are allowed, but I told Rachel that traditionally I only attend Kol Nidre, and spend the next day in personal contemplation. Rachel encouraged me to change my plans this year.
"You don't even have to follow along through the whole thing, if you don't want to," she told me. "I bring my own readings sometimes and will sort of hop in and out of the service as I feel moved. You could bring something else, if you want."
"Well, I didn't manage to finish all of my Ramadan reading last month," I told her. "I could bring my Koran, or some of the other books on Islam that I'm reading, like No God But God, or The Muslim Jesus."
Rachel treated it as a joke, but I had been serious.
Her instant reply was that bringing Muslim books probably wouldn't be a good idea, and then there was a split second where I think it wasn't clear to either of us whether my suggestion was utterly out of the question or whether a progressive Jewish congregation with no rabbi meeting in a Christian church might happily endorse an ex-Christian reading Koran in the pews on Yom Kippur.
"Well, think about it," said Rachel. "You could at least come back for Ne'ila at the very end. It should be starting around 5:45."
"Yeah, come back for Ne'ila," Suzi chimed in, breaking off a side conversation with another congregant, and looking as enthusiastic and serious and emotional as I have ever seen her. "It's at the end of the day, and the sun’s going down, and you're so empty from the fast that it's easier to be ... filled."
"I'll think about it," I said, as our sidewalk group disbanded, and I walked back to my office to retrieve my bicycle.
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