Navaratri (Thank you, India.)

Navaratri, a nine-day Hindu celebration of various manifestations of the Divine Mother, began last Tuesday, triggered by the same new moon that ended Ramadan and began the Jewish New Year. There's no way I can deny that I felt my heart leap when I first discovered that this holiday is meant to honor the goddesses.

I grew up with a Father God. This Father God has a Son, who lived and walked upon the Earth inside a male body. I have even met Christians who will insist that the Holy Ghost is male, meaning that the entire Trinity can be considered -- apparently -- as just a big all-male three-way, with the unmistakable understanding that THERE IS NOTHING FEMALE ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN GOD. Period.

So, after a month of focus on the Father God of Islam... and his male prophet... and the male-dominated worship spaces at the mosques, the sense of relief and balance that Navaratri might bring felt exciting to me.

Navaratri spends nine days and nights honoring the sacred embodiment of creative and feminine energy -- Shakti.

The holiday is divided into three parts, with three nights apiece devoted to a different goddess, each of whom represents a different facet of Shakti’s divine feminine power. The three first days and nights go to Durga, a fierce warrior goddess, consort of Shiva, and the mother of Ganesha. She rides a tiger and slays demons. The second three go to Lakshmi, consort of Vishnu, and giver of physical wealth. She is also closely associated with the upcoming holiday of Diwali. The final three nights belong to Saraswati, consort of Brahma, supreme goddess of wisdom and the arts. She is often depicted as a river, or as connected to rivers or water.

When I set about finding a Navaratri celebration in my area, I quickly learned that all of the Hindu temples are in the suburbs. I found two temples from which to choose, as well as one Hindu organization planning Navaratri celebrations for various school and university auditoriums in Maryland and Virginia. I was leaning toward a Saturday night celebration at a university, when I discovered an afternoon concert planned for 1PM at the Sri Siva Vishnu Temple in suburban Maryland.

The flyer I found announced that Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam would be providing vocals, with Avaneeswaram Vinu on violin and Shertalai Ananthakrishnanan on mridangam, a type of South Indian drum.

Perfect, I thought. If gay men know how to do anything worshipful, it's how to revere female vocalists as the incarnation of goddesses. So, I will go listen to Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam sing. It will be a good excuse for me to show up at the Hindu temple for the first time, and it will connect to the theme of the holiday. Perhaps I will consider attendance at the concert to be my worship of Saraswati, and her connection to music and the arts.

Instead of biking, I chose to rent a Zipcar for the 17-mile trip.

The Sri Siva Vishnu Temple is located on a winding two-lane road accessed from a much larger suburban artery lined with strip malls, fast food, and gas stations. It is tucked away on this largely residential street behind some trees, much less obvious from the road than the houses behind their flat lawns. A sign in the full parking lot directed overflow traffic to park at the nearby Greek Orthodox church.

I did this, and then walked back to the temple on the shoulder of the road.

The temple is all white, with red doors. The basement of the temple isn't visible at the first approach, but can be accessed via a descent to the parking lot behind the building. From the front, a pedestrian can walk directly on top of this basement, onto a wide walkway with stone railings that encircles the main floor. On top of this, five tall, white, tapered peaks, inlaid with figures and carvings, set the building apart as a special kind of gathering place.

As I walked up to the walkway by the temple, I saw a sign that stated: "NO smoking, NO alcohol, and NO non-veg on premises. This includes parking lot."

The main entrance to the temple was in the rear, up a set of tall stairs from the parking lot, with the already elevated walkway around the temple leading directly to the main door. Outdoor cubbies clearly meant for shoes lined the walkway, so I shed my shoes and socks before going inside, though I missed the foot-washing station just inside the door.

The lobby just inside the front vestibule spanned the width of the temple. To the right, the walls were lined with shrines. In front of me, archways opened into the primary worship space. To the left was a small store with books and DVDs and incense, and next to the racks of retail goods stood a man behind a counter with a money box. I asked if I should buy concert tickets through him, and he directed me down a staircase to the basement.

The smell of curry grew stronger as I descended, and downstairs I found a tableau not that different from the basement of the church I grew up in. A lower-level lobby sat beneath the upstairs lobby, with doors opening into classrooms, restrooms, and a fellowship area connected via a serving window to a kitchen. Here, families sat together eating lunch from styrofoam plates.

Next to the fellowship area, doors opened into an auditorium filled with plastic blue chairs facing a stage draped with rust- and saffron-colored cloths. A chest-high goddess statue with four arms and a raised leg stood to the side of the stage.

It was here that I paid my $15 for the concert and took a seat.

When the musicians entered, they took their places on a low platform at the center of the stage set with three microphones. Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam sat cross-legged at the central microphone and faced the audience. She wore an orange and green sari, a large, bright red bindi, and a gold necklace, with her hair pulled into a loose knot behind her neck. Her male accompanists, both in kurtas, one grey, and one rust-colored, sat on either side of her and faced each other.

Without comment to the audience, Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam then proceeded to sing ragas for three hours without a break. She acknowledged applause with a namaste, but otherwise did not appear to respond to the crowd. Often, I found myself with my eyes closed, transported by the music to a place where blanking out my mind was easy. Sometimes, the more upbeat songs made me want to dance, though I noticed the audience remained mostly motionless, and I noticed that Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam herself limited her movements to keeping the beat with one hand slapping against her thigh. Less often, but frequently enough to notice it, I grew bored, with the unfamiliar words to the songs blending together and starting to sound "all the same" to my ignorant ears. At the two-and-a-half hour mark, I had to step out to phone the car company to extend my reservation.

At 4PM, a barefoot, bald man in a blue shirt and grey slacks took to the stage to announce that the concert must end, because some women needed to prepare the basement auditorium for another use later in the evening.

The man heaped praise upon Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam, three times calling her voice "melifluous." He was right. She was beautiful and entrancing. (If we have art, why do we need religion?)

"I hope you noticed how our musician today chose her ragas based on our season of Navaratri," the man said, though his thick accent and frequent use of long proper names made his speech difficult for me to follow. "Especially, I noticed her focus on Lakshmi, since today is one of her days."

The man took a few moments to praise the three goddesses of Navaratri for their gifts, and reminded us all that the primary Trinity of Hinduism -- Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu -- are nothing without their female consorts. He focused especially on the relationship between Vishnu and Lakshmi, since it was Lakshmi's day, and gave an example pulled from contemporary headlines.

"Just look at what's happening in our country now, with the economy melting down to nothing," the man said. "But what can the Protector do… what can Vishnu do to protect us without money? And where do we turn when the problem is with money? To Lakshmi."

Then a male priest in traditional dress with a grey topknot of hair and a red bindi entered the stage with a giant silver platter of fruits. The man in the blue shirt explained that the priest would now offer a traditional blessing to the musicians to thank them for their appearance today.

The priest offered his blessing, while each of the musicians touched a finger to a substance apparently pooled on the platter and rubbed the finger along their skin, around their necks and behind their ears. Then, each member of the musical Trinity selected a fruit, and took a bite.

The audience was leaving, so I went upstairs to check out the main worship space, before the reservation on my car ran out.

Rosh Hashanah/Eid al Fitr/Navaratri

Seeing the emergence of a new moon signals the end of Ramadan, but for me, at the appropriate time, the moon remained hidden by the remains of a just-ended storm.

I stood on the sidewalk outside my apartment building and scanned for lucky breaks in the clouds, but, finding none, decided that I would break my Ramadan fast the next day anyway. All the Muslims I had met during the holiday were planning for Eid al Fitr on Wednesday, October 1. Plus, two other religious groups for whom the beginning of the lunar month triggered a holiday -- Jews and Hindus -- were already celebrating by September 30, while the moon was covered. Most of my Jewish colleagues had taken the day off from work for Rosh Hashanah, and I'd heard on NPR in the afternoon about a deadly temple stampede in India where the eight-day Navaratri celebrations had begun.

We had entered the following lunar months:

Shawwal, the tenth month of the Muslim calendar
Ashwin, the sixth month of the Hindu calendar
Tishrei, the first month of the Jewish calendar

So, happy New Year. Shana tova. And happy birthday too, to the human race, since the first day of Tishrei is the day on which YHWH created Adam.

Anyway, I had thought I might convince Mohammed to celebrate Eid with me (on Wednesday), but he was too busy. I myself was too busy on Tuesday to find a temple service celebrating Rosh Hashanah, because I had non-celebrant friends scheduled for a different occasion at my own house. Still, I served fresh apples and good honey to them, in recognition of the Jewish New Year, and looked for other ways I might mark the occasion by myself.

Through reading about Rosh Hashanah, I had discovered the Jewish custom of tashlikh, a form of repentance and symbolic casting off of sins at the new year. It derives from a verse in the book of Micah that states: "You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea."

The idea is that you proceed on the afternoon of Rosh Hashanah to pray by a naturally flowing body of water, and cast your sins therein. Some observers also cast in stones or bread to symbolize the sins. I had missed the afternoon, of course, and had missed Rosh Hashanah altogether for those who hold that it is a one-day holiday. But, there is Jewish disagreement on this point, so for those who celebrate Rosh Hashanah as a two-day holiday, it was still on. I had some stale pita leftover from the Equinamadan party, so I decided to rise early on Eid (or, Rosh Hashanah, day two) and cast my pita into a flowing stream.

Luckily, I live right next to one.

I rose before the sunrise again the next day, and performed my yoga-Fajr before dressing for work, bundling the pita into my backpack, and walking downhill from my apartment into the huge urban park that stretches from the DC-Maryland border all the way to the Potomac River.

I have worked in downtown Washington, DC for nearly six years, and had always intended to rise early and experience a leisurely stroll to work through the park. I will now have to credit Rosh Hashanah with finally making that happen for the first time.

In the center of the park, Rock Creek flows south. I had envisioned standing on the first creek bridge I would come to, and casting my pita from there, but when I got to the bridge I felt exposed, and I wanted to be closer to the water.

So, I walked into the park, in the direction of downtown, following the footpath until a clearing opened up between the path and the creek. Then, I walked over to find a creek bank lined with smooth stones, and I pulled the bread out of my backpack.

Joggers and bicyclists and other walkers continued passing on the path, and for a moment I wished I had just planned to cast stones, which would perhaps look like a more normal activity than using the bread. I started quickly ripping the bread into pieces and flinging it into the creek, before I realized I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing. Also, I wasn't praying. No focus, no attention, no mindfulness to the ritual: What's the point of this, I thought.

I realized I hadn't looked up any particular Jewish prayers to have in mind, and I felt like a jerk.

So, I slowed down, and peeled pieces of the bread less frantically into the water. I held a stack of four rounds. I would break four pieces off at a time, and then drop them singly into the shallows at my feet.

I had tried to plan ahead and think about what "sins" from the past year I might place on the bread, but as I dropped the final piece into the river I realized hadn't been thinking about sin at all. The floating pieces remained uncharged and meaningless in my imagination and just sat there, bobbing, soggy.

I realized that the focus of my attention had been divided between the creek itself (listening to the water flow) and an awareness of the people on the path (wondering if they were curious about the figure by the creek ripping up the unknown breadlike substance).

Why hadn't I just chosen to throw stones!

I turned my focus to the right, where the water burbled over rocks producing a soothing sound, and I watched the sunlight trickle through the leaves overhead. The experience didn't feel religious in any way at all, though it felt like a good excuse to be out in the park in the early morning.

When I looked back to the left, the pieces of bread, which had been floating together directly in front of me when I had last seen them, were spread out in a long line down the creek, and they were all moving away from me. Some were hung up on rocks nearby and were making slower progress; others were far enough away to be on the verge of disappearing from view.

What if I had succeeded in charging the bread with my sins, I wondered. How would I feel right now?

Or…

What if those breads were to represent other things: insults I can't let go of, failures over which I might obsess, patterns of bitterness that might be unhelpful to retain.

Is bitterness a sin?

What if watching this bread float away on the water represents what it feels like to let those things go, with minimal effort, and with barely any mindfulness. Just tear them into pieces and drop them in front of you and look away and listen to the water. And when you wait a few minutes and look again, they're leaving -- not under their own power, but just through the passage of time, they flow away.

I felt suddenly emotional, and very happy I had not chosen stones.

(I walked the rest of the way to work through the park, stopping in a coffeshop by my office to purchase a coffee and a bagel -- in broad daylight! -- as my own private Eid.)