Epiphany: "Manifestation, Journey, Discovery"

The Church of the Epiphany, an Episcopal congregation located two blocks east of the White House, seemed like a good choice for celebrating the Christian holiday of Epiphany, the first explicitly Christian holiday I've blogged here, given the recent conspicuous absence of Christmas.

I visited the gym and the farmers' market in the morning before 11AM services, and planned a movie screening for afterward at a nearby cinema.

Epiphany celebrates the visit of the Magi from the East to worship the infant Jesus, after following his star -- the primary instance I can think of that allows a celestial body to hold sway in Christianity.

The church bells were playing Christmas carols ("Joy to the World," "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"as I approached on foot, noticing a sign by the door that requested appropriate attire and no sleeping on the pews. An apparently homeless man stood on the front steps, and several more homeless men sat amongst the congregants inside, managing to stand out in an already apparently racially and economically diverse bunch.

I sat on a red, velvetty, padded pew, and failed to cross myself or make any sort of bowing or curtsying motion before sitting down. I always forget which branches of Christianity make such a display customary.

The cavernous space of the sanctuary included a deep, recessed area behind the altar that seemed almost caged. A metal latticework that remained decorated with the wreaths and greenery of Christmas divided the worship space from a recessed area wherein the organist and trumpeter took up residence, and which served as one of two areas for the choir to sing. Over the arch of the cage was a slogan painted in foot-high letters: Blessing and Honor, Glory and Power Be the Lord's Forever.

The side walls bore stained-glass windows, and brown support beams crossed the stained white dome of a ceiling, which was peeling paint and openly crumbling in places.

I saw two people, a man and a woman, scurry down the aisle past me, laughing, each clutching an ornate two-foot-high golden statue of a human figure, their white robes fluttering as they passed.

Soon enough, the service began, with congregants rising to sing "We Three Kings," as a processional entered the sanctuary from the rear, leading the choir throughout the space as we all together sang all five verses of the hymn. Near the front of the processional marched the white-robed man and woman, holding their statues aloft. A third white-robed figure held a third golden man high, along with other marchers who bore banners and candles, and one woman holding a golden book above her head.

The marching of a sacred text around the space (up the center aisle, down the right side, up the center, down the left side, and up the center again) reminded me of the Torah's circumambulation of the congregants in the synagogues I have visited, and I felt myself wishing for a tallis so I could touch its tassels to the Bible being toted around.

It wasn't the only moment that recalled a Jewish service to me. At one point the pastor performed a solo a cappella chant in stitled English that sounded for all the world like a Hebrew blessing to my ears. At communion time, we sang about Jesus as our Passover, in addition to the many times Jesus was invoked (as he always seems to be around Christmas time) as the King of Israel. There was even a public prayer interlude, the most moving moment of the service, which recalled the communal al-chet last fall during Yom Kippur. At the Church of the Epiphany, congregants were allowed and encouraged to lift up public, spoken prayers, signaling that they were finished with the words "Lord, in your mercy," to be followed by the congregants chanting: "Hear our prayer."

For my sister who's battling colon cancer, Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer.
For president-elect Barack Obama, and the incoming administration, Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer.
For our men and women in uniform, Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer.
For the victims of torture worldwide and for all those involved, Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer.
For the Israelis and the Palestinians, Lord in your mercy. Hear our prayer.

This last one seemed especially poignant. The first song of the morning had included the lyric: "They will call you, The City of the Lord, The Zion of the Holy One of Israel/Violence will no more be heard in your land, ruin or destruction within your borders."

The message of the pastor, however, was not so poignant. It seemed unfortunately similar to a budget meeting at the non-profit organization where I work. The Church of the Epiphany was apparently down 170K in contributions as of September, but finished the year a little better (but still behind), around 70K down.

The pastor pointed out that the building needs restoration and the church's programs need funding. He asked everyone to pray about the situation and to fast during the week ahead for guidance about what to do ("We Episcopalians aren't so good with the fasting, but I think that's what we're called to do."). The sermon was literally all about money this week, and the hard times non-profit organizations like churches find themselves in.

For what it's worth, the sermon was effective. I rarely toss in money when I'm visiting a new church, but I tossed in two shiny golden dollars that were in my pocket -- not a lot of money, but I was reminded of the widow woman in the New Testament whose two coins were praised by Jesus as a great gift. I did not, however, choose to participate in Communion, which at this church involved stepping into a side-room for the laying on of hands and anointing with oil following the wafer and the wine.

We finished the service singing "The First Noel," and then we were dismissed with an exhortation: "Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit."

The pastor stood by the door on my way out, and invited me to the Epiphany feast, though I told him I could not stay. I was running late to catch the matinee of Milk.

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.

Sukkot: Feast of Booths

"Have you shaken the lulav yet this year, my friend?" asked the man in the blue dress shirt, grey slacks, and black kippah. He wore tiny eyeglasses and sported a scraggly, uneven beard, and he held out to me the bundle of the Four Species as I approached his sukkah.

"I have not," I replied.

"Do you want to shake it?" he asked me, waving the Four Species back and forth, and then, before I could reply, he asked a second question: "Are you of the Jewish faith?"

Of course I am not of the Jewish faith, but I had been looking for a way to observe Sukkot this week, and because I have been busy, my observations have so far all been of the mental variety. However, yesterday, on Thursday, as I was walking to lunch with a colleague, I noticed that the National Synagogue, an Orthodox congregation, had erected a sukkah in the park a block from my office building, two blocks from the White House. I did not wish to stop and visit with my colleague in tow, and we did not have time to do so anyway, but I held out hope that the sukkah would be there the next day, which is to say Friday, which is to say today -- and indeed it was.

Sukkot is a weeklong holiday that began on Tuesday, so today places us right in the middle of the celebration. For Sukkot, the faithful are instructed by God to construct a temporary house, or “booth” -- a hutlike space with a thatch-style roof for entertaining guests and observing the holiday. As I understand it, the hut represents the temporary dwellings carried across the desert by the Israelites during their forty years of wandering after escaping slavery in Egypt. The hut reminds us of God's faithfulness during difficult times, and that all things are temporary.

I find the reminder of life’s impermanence compelling, and the symbol of the hut interesting, but in actual practice, the demands of Sukkot seem culturally out of place for me as an urban apartment dweller. Just as hauling a Christmas tree into the living room seems better suited for a rural Bavarian farmhouse next to a pine forest than for my Washington, DC apartment next to a national park, so too does the sukkah seem better suited for a long-ago village settlement somewhere in the Middle East, where there is space to build, and where the palm fronds for the roof of the hut are plentiful.

As the holiday approached, I considered building my own sukkah in the alley outside my bedroom window, from whatever I myself might be able to scavenge from my own surroundings -- cardboard boxes from behind the local supermarket, perhaps, or fallen branches from the park, but I knew my free time would be short this week, and I wasn't sure the hut idea was truly meaningful to me anyway. Perhaps, I thought, I could make some temporary art instead, and I fantasized about some improbable projects like maybe a salt sculpture that would be washed away by the rain, or a Zen-garden-style space that I would rearrange each day of Sukkot.

Interestingly, when I went to scope out the alley, whether for a hut or a Zen garden or who-knows-what, I discovered a sukkah of sorts already sitting in my intended space. The apartment building in which I live happens to have some structural integrity issues, with the hundred-year-old mortar between its bricks continually crumbling out. This causes leaks into the apartments (I had soggy walls in my bedroom for a year), and over the course of the past two years or so, the management company has been replacing the mortar one section of wall at a time, with a new section tackled every few months or so.

When I walked into the alley on the first day of Sukkot, I discovered that the workmen had returned to repair a new section. They had erected a scaffolding for this task, and over top of the scaffolding they had flung a tarp. It looked like a close approximation of an urban sukkah (though it violated the rule that the roof must be organic), but I stepped inside underneath the tarp anyway, happy to have my booth appear by magic.

I went about my week, reflecting on themes of impermanence, reading the book of Ecclesiastes (already my favorite book of the Bible, and a required Sukkot text), and making plans to attend synagogue this weekend (tomorrow).

When I saw the booth in the park yesterday, I decided I should make time to stop by today, and experience the ritual apart from the synagogue. So at midday today, I wandered on over, hoping to spend my lunch break in the sukkah.

I approached from the rear and then walked around to the front, so I could apprehend the booth’s construction. The roof was made of some kind of fronds, balanced on top of a metal frame. Attached to the frame, white plastic walls with a blue stripe at the bottom hung toward the ground. The back wall contained a clear plastic window, and there was no front wall. The structure’s shape was that of a rectangle with twice as much length as witdth, about the size of a large van or a small truck cab.

It was when I had walked around the sukkah to the front that the man with the glasses and beard asked me if I wanted to shake the lulav, and then asked me if I was Jewish.

He actually pulled back a bit when I answered, “No.”

I thought he might then be interested in explaining the lulav to a Gentile, but that's not where he went next. I knew already about the lulav, from reading about it, but I kind of wanted the explanation from a practitioner. The lulav is a bundle of "Four Species": a frond from a date-palm tree, a bough from a myrtle tree, a branch from a willow tree, and a fruit from the citron tree. Some say that each of the four Species represents a part of the human body, such that binding them together represents a total devotion to God. Others say that the binding represents bringing various types of worshippers together before God.

I was curious which explanation (or perhaps a different one altogether) this fellow might give me, but instead, after asking if I am Jewish, he asked a second personal question:

"Are you religious?"

"I do not practice a religion; no." I replied.

"That's not what I asked you -- if you 'practice' a religion," the man quibbled. "I asked if you are religious. Do you believe in God?"

"No," I said.

The man holding the lulav literally jumped. He stiffened and he sniffed and he put the lulav back down on a table. Next he said, "Well, then, you will not want to pray."

"I do not know if I want to pray," I said, "What is the prayer?"

The man seemed confused and remained silent.

"Is it for guidance, or something?" I prompted.

The man launched into a hasty explanation that I did not follow exactly, but which could be summed up, I am pretty sure, as essentially the same as the five daily Muslim prayers: Thanks and blessings to God just for being God, who is great and awesome and so on, and thanks for putting together this religion for us to follow, amen.

Then the man told me he liked my beard, and said, "Good day to you; nice to meet you, my friend."

The words were spoken in kindness, but were clearly phrased as my dismissal. I wanted to talk more about Sukkot and what it means, and I wanted to understand the prayer more clearly, and most of all I wanted to be invited into the sukkah to sit on the chairs and maybe chat. I'm not always that willing to just talk with strangers, but the sukkah had a sign on it that said "welcome," and since they were in a public park, I assumed that the organizers wanted to talk to people about their religion. I assumed the non-Jewish and non-religious were being invited to learn more.

Also, a woman with a stack of six pizzas had arrived at almost the same moment I did, and she placed them on a table inside the sukkah, alongside several two-liter bottles of soda, some paper plates and cups, and a large, orange water cooler.

I did not really want any pizza (and I avoid drinking soda), but on my initial approach I had thought the man might welcome me into the sukkah for lunch.

Alas, I was wrong, so instead I just popped into a coffee shop for an afternoon pick-me-up and walked back to the carrots and dip waiting at my office.

The Five Pillars: Sawm (Fasting)

For the brand of Christianity I grew up with, fasting has been largely abandoned.

The only times I can remember fasting coming up in church was when the sermon or the Sunday School lesson would cover the section of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus teaches that those who are fasting should conceal the outward appearance of their hunger. Those who look somber while they are fasting are here termed “hypocrites,” and Jesus informs his audience that “your Father, who is unseen, and … who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Growing up, I remember this fasting passage being used mostly as a metaphor. Though people fasted “in Bible times,” we don’t have to do that these days, it was implied, but we can learn how to keep our private struggles to ourselves and wait for our reward from God.

Reading through the book that Zaki the Ahmadi had given me, I learned that some Muslims take issue with a fasting-related edit that comes later in the book of Matthew. A story about the disciples trying and failing to cast a demon out of a boy ends with Jesus telling the disciples they have too little faith. Some manuscripts record that Jesus went on to say that such a demon will only come out “through prayer and fasting,” though this is relegated to a footnote in most current Bibles. According to The Introduction to the Study of the Holy Qu’ran, this is proof that even Jesus acknowledges that faith in Him alone is insufficient for salvation, absent prayer and fasting -- two of the Five Pillars of Islam.

“This criticism was so vital that Christians found themselves unable to give any reply,” states the Ahmadi text. “The only way of escape they found was in deleting the verse from the Gospel.”
I must admit that even in my well-marked copy of the Bible, I had never noticed this footnote before. My only margin-note on this passage was to write “faith in what?” next to where Jesus tells the disciples they haven’t enough “faith” within them to cast out demons. If I follow my scrawl correctly, my reasoning was that since Jesus wasn't dead yet, the disciples' faith couldn't mimic modern Christians' faith in the resurrection -- but if Jesus was in the process of bringing a new covenant to supersede Jewish law, would the disciples' Jewish faith in the God of Abraham be enough?

What were the requirements, exactly, of the nether-faith between the Covenants? (This question had troubled me early on, as a devoutly Christian child.)

In addition to the faith question, my scrawled Bible notes here include exclamation points and underlines of the quotes that reveal a sassy drama-queen Jesus who was fed up with His disciples.

"Oh, unbelieving and perverse generation," Jesus harrumphs. "How long shall I put up with you!"

You can almost see Him rolling his eyes, and hear the dramatic sigh. You can almost see the full sweep of his robe's sleeve as he gestures the next line.

"Bring the boy to me."

Then Jesus casts out the demon Himself, and then -- snap! -- he rips on the size of the disciples' faith in this well-known passage: “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

Having not tried my hand at casting out demons or moving mountains during Ramadan, I can’t say if my fasting would have helped, though I’ve no doubt that the “faith” component in me is significantly smaller than a mustard seed. I've no more idea what "faith" should mean for me in the 21st century than I do for the disciples in the 1st.

And while the fasting of Ramadan felt like useful practice, it did nothing to increase anything I could call "faith."

In fact, partway through Ramadan, I read some news that, if anything, diminished my faith. I was astonished to read a newspaper article about how fasting is dealt with inside some Muslim-dominant societies of the world. The article focused on young Muslims in Saudi Arabia who are working to "reclaim" Ramadan, reinstituting a focus on fasting, God, and attention to the poor. I was surprised to learn that this is not the focus for Muslims everywhere on Ramadan already.

Though I have been separated from Christianity for 17 years now, I have long been appalled by the commercialization of the holiday of Christmas. I find it shocking that a religion could allow one of its holidays to be cheapened and hijacked the way Christmas has, with its plastic trees and plastic, plug-in baby Jesuses and the profligate spending of money on plastic junk for kids. No other serious religion, I once sniffed, would let such an important holiday slide into popular decline like this -- and I held onto that opinion as an indictment of Christianity itself.

Well, no longer. The way Ramadan is apparently celebrated by many means I have to admit Islam to this club, and it's a shame. It's a shame because perversions of Islam are already given quite a lot of attention by those of us in the West, as we react to the latest subway bomb in Madrid or London, or hear of homosexuals being beheaded in Saudi Arabia, or worry about the next terrorist attack emerging from the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The perversion of Ramadan is far less immediately grave in its consequences, than, say, the idea of a jihadic struggle motivating murder. But much like the birthday celebration for a charismatic leader who preached about caring for the poor has become a reason to go into debt indulging in over-consumption, so too, apparently, has a fasting holiday emphasizing self-discipline become a feasting holiday tending toward sloth.

According to the article I read, many in the Muslim world deal with the difficulty of the fast by essentially turning day into night and night into day during the month of Ramadan. Since the entire society is doing this, it causes no problems, and life can continue as normal. You can get a dental appointment in the middle of the night; your work will adjust to accommodate the shift in daily habits.

As one young Saudi put it in the Washington Post article: "We replaced the pain of hunger during Ramadan with the pain of overeating and indigestion. We've turned it into a month of soap operas and entertainment, a month of the supermarkets. ... Instead of saying hello to the month that purifies us of sin, we're saying hello to the month of samosas, entertainment, soap operas and shopping malls."

Sounds like the Saudi version of American Christmas to me.

The group of people with whom I shared my last communal iftar of the month seemed to agree. Many of them had spent time in Middle Eastern countries and talked about the vast differences between their fasting experiences there versus in the United States.

"I would get up at four o'clock in the afternoon. It did not feel like I was fasting," said one woman. "People who got up earlier than that would complain about having to go four or five hours without food."

"Over there, they think we aren't having the real Ramadan experience in the US, because not everyone is doing it," said Richard (the man who had cautioned against worshiping the sun). "They focus on how we're a minority, and the culture doesn't accommodate us. But for us, we think we're having the deeper experience, because we have to fit this focus on God into our regular lives. We have to make sacrifices to worship."

Others chimed in with their own strategies and thoughts on how to fit the holiday into their lives as unobtrusively as possible for the Christians and atheists and other non-celebrants around them.

Everyone seemed to agree that they preferred the private fast to the public feasting, and it struck me that the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount would highly approve of these American Muslims.

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.)

Ramadan, part ten (Laylat al Qadr)

Sunday was Laylat al Qadr, the night observed during Ramadan as the anniversary of Allah revealing the first verses of the Koran to Mohammed -- but I don't remember this being mentioned at the progressive Muslim group's iftar I attended.

The iftar was held in a suburban townhouse in Virginia, where I arrived with my potluck offering of steamed green beans and peppers, along with a fellow I'll call BD, who picked me up in his SUV at the Metro. We arrived a few minutes late, and the religious roundtable had already begun in the living room off the foyer. I put my bags down and quickly shook hands with a couple of men who were watching the Redskins game off the other side of the foyer on the largest television I have ever seen in my life, before pulling a chair into the circle in the living room.

The group was in the midst of going around the circle explaining what Ramadan had meant to each of them this year. As I sat down, a woman who had converted to Islam four years ago was explaining how she often brings food to her colleagues in her office, and that this year, during Ramadan, she asked for donations for the food, and would be applying those donations toward feeding the poor.

Others talked about working harder this year to make it a priority to pray with their family, about feeling closer to God during Ramadan, or about their realizations about certain aspects of their faith -- such as how Allah has planned the Fajr well, making it the shortest prayer of the daily five, so it's easy to get up and do it quickly, and go back to bed, if you want to. One man shared that his new workplace is closer to a mosque than he’s ever before, so he's been able to pray with a community more often during the week. One woman shared that her work to coordinate holiday events for others had distracted from her own observance of Ramadan.

On my turn, I shared versions of thoughts that I've already written in this blog, including the note that -- while it might seem more pagan than Muslim -- Ramadan had connected me to the rhythms of the natural world, through paying attention to each day's sun-up and sunset, and through my initial sighting of the moon that had set the holiday in motion. The leader of the group, a convert from Christianity whom I'll call Richard, piped up to say that Islam is a "natural religion" and that noticing the sun and moon is part of it, "as long as you don't start to worship the sun – worshipping created things, instead of the Creator!"

I noted that this statement echoes almost word-for-word some instructions given by Paul to Christians in the book of Romans, and that led to a short discussion of Islamic/Christian overlaps. Richard then reminded the group that he had converted to Islam shortly after September 11, 2001, while he was a Christian Marine researching Islam in order to debunk it. A gregarious man with a loud voice, big smile and a lot to say, Richard delivered his punchline: "I picked up the Koran wanting to prove it wrong... And instead it proved ME wrong!"

Next, a woman spoke who had found her Ramadan to be difficult. She found that she couldn't eat after the fast, she said, because her "stomach shut down," so then she would be unable to fast the next day due to hunger. She would eat like normal that day, and then try fasting the day after that, and the cycle would begin again. She seemed somewhat ashamed of her failure to fast, and the group was instantly very supportive, offering Islam-sanctioned alternatives, such as feeding iftar to others who are fasting, or feeding the poor. There was lively discussion about what alternatives are acceptable, with group members deferring to an agreed-up on expert in the room, a woman I'll call Alia, who went on the Hajj last year.

Alia explained a complicated bartering system of equivalent actions that can cover for a day of breaking the fast, or multiply the days that you did fast, and so on, which I could not retain well enough to repeat. There was some laughter from the group about some of the barters, and Alia explained that "When you hear it explained in English it sounds like a point system, but in Arabic the word for it is 'reward.' It's a system for setting up your reward."

(This resonated with something I recently read regarding Islam. I read that once the Ramadan fast is over, if you fast for six days in the following month as well -- though there is debate about whether the days must be consecutive -- Allah will credit you with having fasted for an entire year. Knowing that the Yom Kippur fast is coming up next week, and that fasting can be appropriate for the Hindu holiday of Navaratri that starts tomorrow, I figure I will get some fasting in during October that may count for three different religions at once!)

Soon, it was sunset, and the dates were passed around before prayers were held in the basement. I volunteered to be on childcare duty upstairs with a couple of others who weren't praying, and once the group downstairs had returned, we all broke our fast, in the most convivial atmosphere I'd experienced yet for iftar.

Over dinner, people seemed more eager and willing to discuss religion than at the previous week's iftar, so I asked Alia about her trip to Mecca. She talked about what it was like to worship with millions of people at once, and how in Saudi Arabia, when the call to prayer is sounded, people stop in their tracks and pray. She found the experience very moving, and while telling about it, she made mention that men and women pray together when the masses have gathered for the Hajj. I wondered aloud if this practice might sometime spread and become normative, if worshippers see that it is okay to mix the genders during such an important occasion as the Hajj. "I hope so," said Alia, and then she asked me when I had converted to Islam.

This was the most common question that others asked me at the iftar, and though Tish -- the hostess who invited me – had been very supportive when I clearly communicated that I am not involved in a conversion process, but in an exploration process, I found that the reactions I received at the iftar were definitely mixed, with some people registering a sort of "what are you doing here" look. Alia was not one of those, and she proceeded to ask me more questions about what I have been reading and doing, and how Ramadan has affected me.

I mentioned visiting mosques, both the primary Islamic Cultural Center, and the Ahmadiyya mosque. Alia raised her eyebrows at the mention of the Ahmadis. She listed off some of the Ahmadi beliefs, and then, referring to herself as a traditional Muslim, stated: “The Ahmadis don't think we are real Muslims."

We talked more about what the Ahmadis believe, and Alia echoed some negative sentiments I had already heard from BD in the car. "They believe that there were more prophets after Mohammed," said Alia. "But Mohammed was the last one. How can you believe there are more?"

Not having the same perspective on this issue as Alia, I mostly just nodded and asked her questions to learn more. When she got up to retrieve some more food, the woman who had been sitting next to her -- and whose name I did not catch -- leaned in to comment on my visits to mosques.

She was young and pretty and wearing a low-cut blue tunic with black leggings. She reminded me in appearance of a friend of mine with whom I waited tables years ago. She started out smiling.

"Are you going to get serious about becoming Muslim?” she asked me, her smile fading quickly into a scolding face. “Because you can't just go to any mosque you want to like some kind of religious tourist. Those people are there to pray."

She took issue with the beard I’m currently wearing, but I didn’t follow her implications of why it is offensive. She got up and walked away without giving me a chance for questions or a response, which both interested me and troubled me. I am sad that I somehow gave this woman the impression that I do not have good intentions. She avoided me for the rest of the night, so I had no further chance to ask about her thoughts. If I assume good intentions on her part, then I must accept that she felt a responsibility to protect the sanctity of other Muslims' houses of worship.

The evening went on, and I alternated between non-religious conversations and conversations beginning with the ubiquitous "When did you convert?" question. Eventually, I ended up deep in conversation with a man I'll call Basim on the topic of renewable energy and climate change. It was the friendliest and best conversation of the evening. We covered energy efficiency, solar gadgets, phytoplankton blooms as carbon sinks, tidal power, and more. Inevitably, Basim also found his way to the question: "When did you convert?"

He seemed unbothered by my explanation of exploration, and was eager to tell me teach me things he assumed I would not know – such as the existence of splinter sects with divergent beliefs.

"For example,” he said, “I belong to one of those other groups. I am Ahmadi.”

"Oh, yes, I know about Ahmadis," I replied. "I've been to an Ahmadiyya mosque. It was an accident; it's just the closest mosque to my work. I didn't even know Ahmadis existed until a few weeks ago."

Basim was smiling and delighted and twittering in that way people do when they want to tell you everything about a new topic.

He started in on explaining that Ahmadis “… believe that Jesus survived the cross and ..."

"... went on to die of old age in Punjab," I finished.

"Yeah!" said Basim. "And we also believe that Jesus' second coming was fulfilled by ... "

" ... Mizra Ghulam Ahmad, who was also the Mahdi," I finished.

"Oh my!" Basim exclaimed.

I was worried that I was being snotty by showing that I had done my homework on the Ahmadis, but Basim seemed clearly pleased that a random non-Muslim white boy would know something about his religion. He was familiar, of course, with the mosque I'd attended near my work, and the two of us talked for awhile about the book the imam had given me there. Basim's wife was getting ready to go, so eventually we had to cut our conversation short, but not before he explained why he was so happy to meet somebody who had been to an Ahmadiyya mosque.

"You see, there are all kinds of Muslims in the world," he said. "But mainstream Muslims, they reject us. They say we are not real Muslims."

Ramadan, part eight (Thank you, Alanis)

So, it's Friday again, and this week I slipped away for the Dhuhur prayer at the Ahmadiyya mosque that is walking distance to my office. Dhuhur is the midday prayer, held around 1:15, and I got there early, so I walked around the block listening to my iPod before going inside.

I can't say I've been doing such a good job at the prayer portion of Ramadan. I've often substituted yoga, of course, but only for the Fajr -- not for any of the other of the five prayers. I started washing at prayer time, based on my friend's suggestion, but I have not followed through every single time. Even at the prayer-times when I have washed, I do not have a specific focus other than my own body, in combination with the random thoughts that are in my head.

Having read through various versions of appropriate prayers for the five times of day, I haven't found any that inspired me so much as to memorize them. I do not know the phonetics of any Arabic prayers, and the English translations I have read seem -- to my mind -- to be repeating very similar praises to Allah ("glory to my nourisher," "praise to the most affectionate," "you deserve all veneration," etc.) again and again.

If I'm not wrong, most of the prayers can be boiled down to: 1) thanks and praise to Allah (with some nods to Mohammed and Abraham) , and 2) a request for guidance along the right path. The positive thoughts about guidance I understand, or can translate into something that I understand; the praise of Allah seems far too vague. If I have not felt a personal relationship with a god-figure since I was a teenager, then who is Allah to me?

Today, as I walked toward the mosque, I dialed my iPod toward a playlist of songs that seemed appropriate for walking toward worship. The first that played was a version of "Amazing Grace" by Tori Amos, followed by "World Falls" by the Indigo Girls, followed by "Thank You" by Alanis Morissette. It was this third song that caught my attention. The chorus of this song goes like this:

Thank you, India.
Thank you, terror.
Thank you, disillusionment.
Thank you, frailty.
Thank you, consequence.
Thank you, thank you, silence.

All right, I thought. I have a list of five abstractions and one geographical location, and for today, they will be my substitute mental focal points for "Allah."

I rounded the corner to the mosque while winding my iPod cord around itself, and fell into step behind three women in traditional Muslim dress -- full headscarves and flowing dresses. One of them pushed a baby in a stroller. They walked slower than me, but took up the entire sidewalk, so I slowed down, rather than rush pass them. A few paces before what I knew to be the steps up to the mosque, they turned abruptly and walked up a much narrower set of cracked and broken steps, one of them lifting the baby stroller up onto the top. They were walking toward a back entrance to the same house where I would enter by the front. I continued down the main sidewalk, and then I -- an atheist and a homosexual and no kind of Muslim at all, but a man nonetheless -- walked up the main steps and in through the front door.

Whereas last week when I came for Asr prayers there were only four of us, this week the front rooms of the house were already nearly full. Prayer mats sat rolled out on the floor of the foyer, a room toward the back of the foyer that had been dark on my previous visit was full of men, and there was red tape on the floor of the front room (the one I'd been in before) delineating the rows where the men should stand to pray.

I removed my shoes by the door and took a place on one of the red lines in the front room.

The prayers began shortly, and I was surprised to discover that nobody was leading them. Each man went at his own pace. Since I am unskilled at performing salat, I followed the movements of the man in front of me. Stand up, "Thank you, India." Hands on knees, "Thank you, terror." Forehead to ground, "Thank you, disillusionment." Sit back on heels, "Thank you, frailty." Stand up again, "Thank you, consequence." And so on.

Partway through, I thought of discarding India from the list and focusing on the abstractions, since I have never been to India, and can't really relate. And yet, I had to smile at the coincidence that occurred to me: Ahmadiyya Muslims are a splinter group. Their movement originated in Punjab, India, at the end of the 19th century. Not all mainstream Muslims consider Ahmadis true Muslims because of their beliefs about what happened to Jesus (he survived the cross and traveled to India), the existence of prophets beyond Mohammed, and other differences. So, yes, I thought, I will thank India for this afternoon's worship experience.

After the prayers were over, a man (not Zaki -- this man was older, with a gray beard and Hamid-Karzai-style hat) stood to deliver a short sermon. (Most men did wear prayer hats, by the way. Many wore pillbox-shaped hats, which I find attractive and fashionable, though I do not know their correct name. Others wore smaller, flatter hats resembling kippot, but larger. One man wore a large scarf, and some of the younger men wore baseball caps, do-rags, or went bare-headed. One very old man, who had been offered a chair, but elected to move slowly through the prayer poses, was also bare-headed.)

The sermon was bland and simple and fairly sweet. I could have easily translated it into "Christian" by substituting a few key words in the speaker's text ("Sunday" for "Friday," "God" for "Allah," etc.), and by eliminating the references to Mohammed, peace be upon him (as well as to the "Messiah of our age," a reference to the founder of the Ahmadi movement).

The speaker encouraged us all to change our lives for the better during Ramadan and to make the change stick. We were encouraged to pray and to give alms to the poor. We were reminded that the focus on Allah in the mosque should extend throughout the week, and that we should be good representatives of our faith at all times, not just on Fridays. "Love for all, hatred for none," should be our guiding principle, the speaker said. The end of the sermon was followed by a prayer request for someone's elderly aunt, who had recently arrived from Pakistan to receive medical care for a grave illness. It was all so reminiscent of a church service in my youth that I felt moved by what for a moment felt like a universality of religious practice.

After this, we prayed again in Muslim style (back to specificity of religious practice), only this time the prayers were led in unison by the gray-bearded speaker who stepped into the foyer and spoke into a clip-on microphone connected to speakers in the other two rooms.

When the service was over, we each greeted those around us, and the gray-bearded leader singled me out as a visitor, stepping over to greet me and invite me to the mosque's Saturday and Sunday iftars. I have iftar plans in the suburbs again on Sunday, and social plans with non-observers on Saturday, though I am tempted to break them to attend the Ahmadiyya iftar.

The gray-bearded leader's welcome felt very sincere, and after I stepped out onto the porch, and sat on the railing to tie my shoes, each of the men who walked out of the mosque past me paused to introduce himself and thank me for coming.

As I walked back down the steps, I put my iPod buds into my ears, and dialed around for one of Alanis Morissette's other songs: "You Learn" from her first album. I'm not a fan of hers, per se, but she has some songs that I like, and her lyrical structure for some songs seems to mimic a style of repetitive prayer. "Thank You" is one of those songs, "You Learn" is one of those songs, and "Excuses," from her fourth album, is one of those songs as well.

It occurred to me that if I were compiling my own modern-day holy book that I might collect these three particular songs together under one heading -- Prayers from the Book of Alanis. Is Alanis Morissette inspired by God? Who am I to say that she is not?

Ramadan, part seven (iftar)

By the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, I was feeling recovered from the Equinox party, though hungry for dinner.

I'd planned to make a vegetable side dish for the self-described progressive iftar in the suburbs, but there were enough dates and tabouli leftover from the night before that I decided to take them instead. Around 5:30, I slung the same bag over my shoulder that I'd carried to the Shabbat potluck, with the same big, blue Tupperware bowl inside, and headed for the Metro.

I'd found this group of progressive Muslims online, and I'd been invited to the iftar by a woman I'll call Tish. I arrived early to the apartment building in Fairfax where the iftar was to be held in the community room, so I sat on a bench and scribbled in my journal for a few minutes while the sun was sinking. A few minutes before 7, I walked into the building, and found the room I was looking for labeled with a small sign by the door, just past the front-desk of the building. The doors into the community room were glass, with glass panels on either side, so I could see into the room, and saw that maybe 30 to 40 people had congregated.

Entering, I approached a waist-high bar by the small kitchenette, where the others had deposited their potluck offerings. I placed my food amongst the rest of the bowls, and introduced myself to the Arab woman behind the bar, and to the white woman standing by my side. After a short conversation with the white woman, who was busy getting things ready, I surveyed the room. A long dining table with seating for 25 or so sat to one side of the room, with sofas and padded chairs, in a sort of generic hotel or airport style, sitting in a circle off to the side with a low, blocky table in the center. The group appeared to be mostly Arab or black or multi-racial; only one or two other obviously white people joined the group. Of the 15 to 20 women in the room, perhaps four of them wore headscarves.

One man sat on the padded furniture apart from the sparsely populated table, while others stood in groups around he room. I joined the man and introduced myself and we began to chat about the fast. His wife joined a few moments later and greeted me in Arabic, which confounded me. I felt silly having to ask her to repeat herself, and then stumbled over my apology for not understanding. She instructed me on the appropriate Arabic response to her greeting, which I repeated to her and promptly forgot, and soon others joined our small group. The conversation spun away from me and my ignorance, moving on to topics like the upcoming progressive Muslim paintball outing, and who had lost or gained weight during Ramadan.

When the sun was down, someone announced with little fanfare that we should all get something to eat, and a woman in a headscarf circulated with a tray of dates as we queued up with our small paper plates. I lingered toward the back of the room, not wanting to be one of the first to eat. Making small talk with those around me in line, I asked a man if he could point out Tish to me, so I could thank her for inviting me. The man gestured toward a white woman in a flowered skirt, who was holding a child with bright eyes and bronze skin, and talking to a darker-looking woman in a black blouse and black pants. The woman in black was Tish.

After filling my plate, I returned to the circle of furniture and sat near where I had before, though the other seats filled in with a different collection of people. My interest here, of course, was religious and theological, but I quickly realized that the focus of the dinner was social, so I felt bad wanting to quiz everyone I met about their beliefs in God, or what they do at prayer time, or how their interpretation of the Koran informs their outlook on life. "What makes you progressive," I wanted to ask everyone, "and what do you find in Islam that conflicts with your values? What do you do when you find conflicts? What makes you want to be Muslim in the first place?"

I overheard the first white woman I had met by the food counter say to someone next to her the phrase "when I converted," and I also overheard that she is a vegetarian. Quickly, I formulated a plan to bond with her over the vegetarianism and then quiz her on her religious conversion, but I wasn't close enough to strike up a conversation. I limited myself to the conversation around me: a discussion about a photography class, for example, and someone confessing to breaking the fast to go on a hike.

Eventually bored, and sitting there sipping water with an empty plate in my lap, I got up to throw my plate away, and when I did, someone moved in to take my seat. I thought I would go find Tish to introduce myself, but she was deep in conversation and surrounded, so I floated back against the wall and observed. Feeling self-conscious, I decided I had to go the bathroom. And I did have to go... just enough to justify stepping out of the room for a moment. "Maybe Tish will be less busy when I get back," I thought. "Or maybe my chair will be free again."

I was in my stall, buckling my pants and about to flush, when the door to the restroom opened, and someone came in to wash his hands. I'm shy about running into people or talking to them in public restrooms, so I decided to linger in the stall a moment longer. Suddenly, the bathroom door opened, and I heard many more footsteps come in, with dozens of voices rising in a mixture of English and Arabic, until I could tell the restroom was full of men, and I realized that ritual washing was happening -- and quickly. There was barely enough time for a rinse of the hands -- nevermind a full cleansing of face and feet -- before the stampede was gone as quickly as it came, and I snuck out of the stall to wash my hands myself.

By the time I got back to the community room, prayers had begun. I couldn't see who was leading, and the first thing I noticed was that not everybody was praying. A group of men who were not praying had stepped out onto the patio. A group of women who were not praying sat chatting (chatting!) on the padded furniture. One man sat silently next to them. Those who were praying were arranged in rows, on mats, facing east. The men had all lined up in the front, and the women lined up behind them -- all now wearing headscarves. A pile of shoes sat by the door.

I slipped in and sat next to the only man in the room. He did not speak to me, and despite the example set by the women, I felt uncomfortable speaking during the prayers, so I kept silent as well. When the prayers were over, Tish pulled off her lavender headscarf and wrapped it around her neck. The iftar was winding down, and I slipped over to introduce myself. In addition to Sunday's iftar, she has invited me to her own home for study of the Koran as well as an iftar in one week, so we chatted briefly about the logistics of how to get there, and then I grabbed the rest of my tabouli and headed back to the Metro.

Ramadan, part six (a gay man in a mosque.)

Around four o'clock today, someone from the Ahmadiyya mosque called me back. It turns out I had gone too early for the Dhuhur prayer, which occurs around 1:30PM. The caller invited me to the Mahgrib prayers (around 7:30), but I had evening plans, so I asked when the afternoon prayers -- the Asr prayers -- would be. He said they would be starting in about fifteen minutes, and then asked how far away I was. When I said I could be there in 30 minutes, he said he would wait for me.

I thanked him, and was about to hang up when he referenced something I had said in the voicemail message I had left.

"Why do you have to ask if visitors are allowed at a mosque?" he asked me. "All are welcome here."

I thanked him again and apologized for asking. I quickly finished up some work that was in front of me, and then hoofed it back over to the mosque. When I got there, two men stood in the open doorway, accepting a package from a delivery man. The older of the two men identified himself as the man who spoke to me on the phone. He wore a long yellow tunic and had white hair. I do not remember if he gave his name, but he introduced me to Zaki, the younger of the two men as the imam of the mosque. Another older man sat in a front room (Zaki's cousin from London, I later learned) waiting for the prayers to begin.

Once I had removed my shoes in the foyer and joined the three of them in the front room, the prayers could begin. The room's blinds were still drawn as they had been earlier, so no light entered. The floor was covered in off-white carpet, and the walls were white and lined with chairs. The center of the room was empty, though a podium displaying a paper sign written in Arabic stood next to the opening back into the foyer. Zaki turned his back on us and faced the podium (or, more accurately, he faced east). The three of us faced east also, with the cousin and the white-haired man standing very close together, and me a few paces away. The cousin gestured me to come closer until our arms were touching and the three of us formed a very close straight row directly behind the imam.

As the imam led the prayers, I followed the movements of the other two men: hands clasped across the middle, then bending at the waist with hands on knees, then supplicant on the floor with forehead to ground, then sitting back on heels, then doing it all over again. We repeated the movements several times, with the other two men occasionally joining in to speak. At one point a telephone rang elsewhere in the house, and I heard a woman's voice answer it. A couple of moments later, a cell phone rang in the imam's pocket, and he silenced it mid-prayer.

Toward the end of the sequence, while we were sitting on our heels, we turned to the right and then to the left, and when the cousin and the white haired man relaxed back onto their bottoms, so did I.

Zaki turned around to face us, and we shifted into sitting in a loose circle.

"So, how was it?" he asked me.

"Good, fine," I said.

"So you are observing Ramadan?"

"Yes."

"How are you fasting?"

The question didn't make sense to me exactly. "Well, I am eating before the sun comes up, and not eating again until the sun goes down. Is that what you mean?"

"Good. Good," said the imam. "You are fasting the Muslim way. Sometimes when Christians say they are fasting, they mean only that they have given up meat or bread."

"I don't eat meat anyway," I said. "And besides just giving up one thing sounds more like a diet than a fast to me."

"So, you have been fasting since the beginning of Ramadan?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Here I explained my interest in better understanding the religions of the world. I told the three of them that about six years ago I observed Lent for the first time, and found it worthwhile, and that about four years ago, I observed Yom Kippur for the first time, and found it worthwhile, and so I wanted to see what else worthwhile I might find in faith traditions aside from the one I was raised in.

They asked me if the fasting was hard for me as a novice, and I replied honestly that it is not. I mentioned that the Yom Kippur fast goes on for longer, though of course it is only one day, rather than a month, and the three of them seemed unfamiliar with the tradition. I explained that a Yom Kippur fast begins before sundown on one day, and ends after sundown on the next day, resulting in a longer-than-24-hour fast.

"And what is Lent?" one of them asked. "What do you do then?"

"You give up something," I said. "But it's different for each person."

"What do you give up?" Zaki asked me.

"Drinking," I said.

"Water?"

"No, alcohol."

Zaki and his cousin exchanged a look.

"That would not be difficult for us," he said. "We do not drink alcohol."

"Oh, I understand." I said. "Some people give up meat for Lent, and that would not be difficult for me, because I do not eat meat."

The imam moved on to a question about my personal life: "So, do you have a wife?" he asked me, glancing at my ring finger. "Or are you single, or what is the deal..." he paused "... with, uh,with that?"

"I am single," I said, pausing in my mind to wonder how I might have responded if I had a boyfriend or husband, settling quickly on the unprovocative: "I do not have a wife."

"I see." said Zaki, "Well, I have a wife and I thought if you had a wife maybe the four of us could get together. Anyway, let me get you a book, and I'll give you my card."

He gave me a book entitled Introduction to the Study of the Holy Qur'an, handed me his card, and asked me for my phone number, and then I left, saying that I will probably return for a prayer or two sometime next week. I took note of how my mind did not wander during the prayers, both because I was listening to something (Zaki's voice) and watching something (the movements of the other two men).

I did not wash at the Asr prayer because none of the others did, and nobody asked me to. Tomorrow, I will be close to home most of the day, food shopping at the farmer's market in the morning, then cleaning house and cooking for the party, so I will make a point of marking each prayer time and washing when I do so. Then, I will be able to tell my friend -- who was once herself the answer to the "Do you have a wife?" question for a Muslim man in Egypt -- that I took her advice, and added washing to my observance of Ramadan.

Ramadan, part four (Jews and Unitarians)

I walked to Shabbat services on Friday, carrying the vegetarian dish I had prepared for the potluck in a canvas bag slung over my shoulder, while listening to a sermon from my sister's non-denominational Christian church on my iPod. It occurred to me that I had heard about groups of Orthodox Jews who would forbid carrying my shoulder bag to services, and I made a mental note to investigate later what the deal is with carrying things on Shabbat.

The group I was joining for the evening is a gathering of mostly twentysomethings and early-thirtysomethings who have formed their own self-led congreation. There is no rabbi, no cantor, no ark, no giant Torah scroll. Members of the congregation take turns leading the service, or introducing the guest speaker, or leading the clean-up effort after the potluck. There is no synagogue; the congregation meets in another organization's space, which it has over time outgrown, and is now looking for a larger venue, perhaps the basement of a local Unitarian church.

I had accompanied my friend to services once before, on a night when the congregation sat in a circle, and the songs were accompanied by a guitarist. Last Friday was different; it was an a cappella service, with the chairs arranged in rows facing east. I own a kippah, acquired on a previous visit to a more traditional synagogue that required one, but I do not tend to wear it to my friend's congregation, because they are not required. A quick survey of the room revealed that about 10 percent of the men and maybe 50 percent of the women were without kippot.

The kippot issue is a good one to illustrate the spirit of my friend's congregation. They welcome all, and they also want to respect tradition. The group therefore offers a basket of kippot for attendees who have arrived without one, and who prefer to wear one. Originally, this basket was placed on the table next to the prayer books. However, my friend informs me that there were those who felt this placement might mistakenly imply an enforced pro-kippot stance on the part of the congregation, and so the basket was moved to the floor. This placement struck other congregants as disrespectful, and now the kippot basket resides on a chair next to the prayer book table.

Bare-headed, I selected a seat at the very back of the room, and my friend sat with me through the musical portion of the service, until she needed to step forward to introduce the guest speaker (a representative from a local nonprofit organization that provides low-income women of color with free child-care). My friend introduced the speaker by reading a poem written from the perspective of a woman who was present when Moses descended from Sinai. The woman had not written down her story, said the voice of the poem, because her hands were always full of children. Her voice, said the poem, is like the vowels of the Torah -- missing but implied. It is up to us to fill in her voice.

The guest speaker provided background on her organization and offered congregants the chance to sign up to provide child-care for those in need. She connected her organization’s mission to the poem, describing the child-care opportunity as a way to take children out of their mothers’ hands long enough for them to participate fully in public life in a way denied to the women at Sinai and beyond.

By chance, on Sunday, two days later, I heard another stirring sermon on themes of gender and race, delivered by a professor of Politics and African-American studies from Princeton University. I had decided to attend services alone at a Unitarian church about three blocks from my apartment, and it turned out that day that the Unitarians were also welcoming a guest speaker.

The guest preacher/professor began her sermon with these words: "I am a cradle Unitarian. My mother was a white woman who was raised as a Mormon, and my father was a black man who shared a room at Howard with Stokely Carmichael, so for our family, in the 1970s, in northern Virginia, there was no other place for us to worship, but in a Unitarian church."

She went on to preach from a children's book (Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct), after noting that one of the things she loves about being a Unitarian is "You can preach on whatever text you want!"

Her message was what I have come to expect from a Unitarian service -- a blend of social justice exhortations, encouragements toward optimism in the face of despair, a reminder of the Unitarian commitment to embrace everyone, and a few somewhat understated liberal political messages, including jabs at current conservative leaders and candidates, and props for the current hope of the Democratic party.

I know that I have heard Unitarian ministers talk about God before, but I do not recall the guest professor invoking a deity in her sermon. The core of her message, it struck me, was deeply humanist in its outlook, and this message was underscored by her sermon's structure. Periodically throughout the first 2/3 of the sermon, after describing a human-caused tragedy that reflects negatively on our nature as people (the public whipping of an innocent black woman in turn-of-the-century Ohio, the failure of government response after Hurricane Katrina, etc.), the professor would utter a string of negative pronouncements, such as "Democracy is dead" or "There is no benevolent spirit of love and life to answer our prayers."

When her sermon turned a corner toward a more hopeful outlook, she modified those negative pronouncements from earlier, making them more positive. "What if democracy is only bruised," she asked, for example.

When it came time to reverse the assertion that there is no benevolent spirit to answer our prayers, she phrased her modification like this: "We are the ones who are here to answer each others' prayers."

I enjoyed her sermon immensely but was feeling shy when services were over, so although the professor and the church's minister both stood together on the outside steps to shake hands with the congregants as they exited -- he in his black robe and sash, and she in her sleeveless hot-pink shift dress and three-inch pink heels -- I slipped out a side door and avoided them.

Ramadan, part three (community)

As the ten of us sat in our silent Quaker-meeting circle in the Agatha-Christie-style parlor on Sunday, I did not find it difficult to sit still, but I did find it difficult, in my mind, to tamp down my desire to interact with the others. This was quite the surprise because I consider myself far more naturally introverted than extroverted.

And yet, there I was, scanning the room, feeling a bit amused and frustrated by the lack of connection I felt between the ten adult humans sharing this space together. Most of the others in the room had their eyes closed, and as I scanned the room, and met each face, I realized that I would probably feel a twinge of shame for my lack of inwardness, if I should meet another pair of eyes. But I did not meet another pair of eyes. All eyes were closed or downcast.

At points, I closed mine too, but they would not stay that way.

I wanted to ask the man sitting across from me if it was hard to hold his hands they way he did, curved upward in front of him, knuckles facing each other and almost touching, hands elevated off his lap. I wondered whether the older woman in the red armchair would appreciate a nudge when she fell asleep and began softly to snore. I felt moved to bond over a love of the nearby farmers' market with the two women who came late and tucked their vegetable-filled shopping bags underneath their chairs.

After about thirty minutes of silent thought, I was surprised that more than anything I found myself wanting to treat the meeting room as a space for performance art. I've been taking some acting workshops over the past nine months or so, and have found the rehearsal space to be space of (for lack of a better word) magic. I began to feel as if gathering ten people into a rehearsal space might make for a more transcendent Sunday morning than this hour of shared silence, and I felt a wholly inappropriate desire to burst out and confront the Quakers with a bold gesture or advance, just to see what reaction they might give, to which I might then react myself.

I was reminded of a question that emerged with an actor/director friend of mine once over a late-night bottle of vodka: "If we have art, why do we need religion?" Neither of us could provide an answer.

As I left the meeting, somewhat disappointed that my old housemate was too busy to go have a chat and reflect on the morning, I wondered how it might have been a different experience if I already had a sense of community with the others in the room. If some of us had been serving soup to homeless people together the Saturday before, or served together on the finance committee for the meetinghouse, or something, would silent "worship" (as my housemate pointedly called it) in the parlor have felt different?

Similarly, I realized that a sense of community is the dominant lack in my experience of Ramadan right now.

So far, I have broken each of my fasts alone, or with friends who were not fasting and did not know that I was. Each night this week was a repetition of that theme, until Thursday night -- last night -- when I broke the fast with my friend Mohammed.

A refugee from a religious Islamic upbringing, Mohammed had decided to observe Ramadan this month again for the first time in many years. Earlier this week, we discovered that we are both observing, and so decided to take iftar together at a West African restaurant located midway between our two apartments.

I asked Mohammed if he had a take on how I might make the five prayers meaningful, and he did not, but seemed approving of the yoga-substitution for the Fajr. I asked him to tell me about celebrating Ramadan growing up in Saudi Arabia, and he told me he did not always participate growing up, because children are not always expected to fast. He compared the first Ramadan fast for a Muslim child to a bar mitzvah or a First Communion, and told me about how children at his school would compete to be the most holy -- and tear each other down for their lack of piety.

"Other kids would make you stick out your tongue," he said, reflecting on the beginning of a schoolyard challenge, which would be followed by a bogus claim that the tongue showed proof of sneaking food on the fast. Then the instigator would run to a teacher or other grown-up shrieking: "Mohammed ate! Mohammed ate! Mohammed ate!"

"Was there that same type of competition to be most holy in your Christian upbringing?" he asked me.

It was a good question that I had not been asked before, and I gave an honest answer.

"There was not, at my church," I said. "Maybe sometimes at church camp there was, when everybody was new and jockeying for position. But in my own church, I have to admit to feeling piously confident that I WAS the most holy child there, and I probably just felt that I did not have competition. I knew my Bible, could quote it from memory, and followed all the rules. I knew how much I loved Jesus, and as a child, it was probably inconceivable that anyone could love Jesus more than me. So, no competition."

I smiled, a little embarrassed at the answer that had tumbled out.

"I mean, I suppose I was insufferable," I said. "If I had grown up to be the logical outcome of my childhood, we would not be having dinner right now, and you'd probably hate my guts."

Mohammed laughed, and we moved on to comparing the Koran and the Bible, talking about the role of money in religion, and pondering what a fractured Islam would look like if it had been split into as many different brands as American Christianity has in the 21st century.

I continue to search for more observers with whom to break fast over the next 19 days of the holiday, but in the meantime, tonight, I am invited to Shabbat services with a friend, where I will break fast at the vegetarian potluck afterward -- the largest community I will have been amongst at mealtime since the start of Ramadan.

Ramadan, part two (prayer and meditation)

I do not pray.

I had not taken this into account when deciding to observe Ramadan this year. I'm nearly a week into the month, and I have continued to put off adding the five daily prayers of Islam into my practice.

So, on Saturday, I set out to learn what kind of prayer should be said in the following morning. I decided I would start slowly, and on Sunday I would say only the salat al-Fajr, as accompaniment to my morning meal. Then, I thought, I might add one prayer per day until complete.

I did of course assume that any prayer I might find would be addressed to God.

While this conflicts with my atheism, long association with my religious family has taught me to translate prayers into a language that makes more sense to me, which is what I assumed I would do with the Fajr. I speculated that as a morning prayer, it might likely take the form of thanking God for the day, which I would translate into generalized gratitude for the start of the morning. Or it might ask God for strength and courage to go out into the world, which I would translate into a rumination on the strength and courage I might find within.

However, what I found while looking for sample Fajr prayers is that the subject of the Fajr prayer is largely God himself. Allahu akbar, and so on. "Glory be to You, O Allah!" "Yours is the praise and blessed is Your name." "I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan." Etc. Etc.

I do feel somewhat like I am being untrue to the spirit of my intention to explore the world's religions when I reject elements that don't ring true with my worldview, but that's exactly what I did.

I came across a drawing of a man saying his Fajr on a prayer rug and noticed that his pose looked very similar the “child's pose” in yoga. Because yoga is as disciplined a practice as prayer, I felt I had found a compromise, and that yoga would be a suitable substitute. I told myself that if I were to find, while doing yoga, some sort of desire to "pray" or "meditate," then I would, but I would not force myself.

So, on Sunday, I rose early, consumed the early meal, and did fifteen minutes of yogic stretching while listening to "Speaking of Faith" on NPR.

The guest was Dr. Esther Sternberg, a scientist of Jewish heritage who studies the connection between stress and disease, as well as the opposite of that -- the connection between belief and healing.

When the host asked Dr. Sternberg, "What do you mean by belief?," my ears perked up. “Good question,“ I thought. “Belief in what, Dr. Sternberg?"

But Sternberg punted and rambled and did not answer the question.

I finished my yoga without praying or meditating, and dressed for Quaker meeting.

I was to meet my friend, an old housemate of mine, in the garden next to the Friends meetinghouse, about a 25 minute walk from my apartment. I arrived early, so I could read a sura from the Koran while I waited.

When my old housemate arrived, she showed me around the building, and explained that there are three services held there: the early, smaller, silent meeting that we would be attending; a larger meeting that is also largely silent but punctuated by "spoken messages;" and a "special welcome" meeting for gays and lesbians, which my friend had never been to.

She showed me into a small room called "the parlor" where the small, silent meeting would take place.

The room was furnished with antiques, and the walls were lined with bookshelves. Two windows showed tall hedges outside and did not let in light. A mantelpiece was topped with a small ticking clock. An older woman in a sweatsuit and sneakers sat on a crimson chair with wooden arms. An older gentleman in a suit with a T-shirt and shiny, polished black shoes sat at one end of a narrow sofa. I said hello to them, and felt very loud when I did. They nodded their greetings back.

My friend took one end of another narrow sofa, and I sat in a matching crimson armchair. It was 8:59. Another older woman entered and sat next to me just before 9AM, and five more Friends trickled in during the first five minutes of Meeting, bringing our number to a gender-balanced ten. The last to arrive was an old man with restless legs who shook the books on the shelves when he trotted his knees up and down.

Other than the fidgety old man and occasional crossing and uncrossing of legs by others, there was no movement. The sounds were of the ticking clock and the birds outside.

What is everybody thinking about, I wondered.

Are they ... praying? Meditating?

I find it difficult to clear my mind of thoughts, and so my mind ranged widely across topics, most of which were no doubt improper for the Friends' meeting: my schedule for the week, my schedule for the day, the physical appearances of the others in the room, speculations on the others’ thoughts, speculations on the schedule for their days, questions for Dr. Esther Sternberg, yoga, sex, Ramadan, food, imagined conversations with friends and family, imagined instructions to myself to still my mind, reflections upon the furnishings and mood of the room.

In the church I belonged to growing up, time for silent meditation was brief and targeted. It occurred immediately following the taking of communion, and lasted for the length of one hymn on the organ. At Meeting, I let my mind recall the feeling of taking communion as a child, and how surprised I had been, around age ten, when my Sunday School teacher informed me it is a sin not to think about Jesus and his sacrifice during the organ music after consuming the wafer and the grape juice.

I had been baptized at age nine, and not all of my peers were baptized yet (meaning they could not take communion, and therefore did not have to worry about this sin), and I remember taking note that I had a potential sin in front of me that they did not. I remember being a child whose mind would wander after communion, only to be yanked back to Jesus as soon as I realized it, along with a quick and fervent prayer for forgiveness from Him of my wandering-mind sin.

Is there any particulary topic toward which I should yank my mind right now, I wondered to myself in Quaker meeting.

At around the forty-five-minute mark, a happy random thought about my sister and my childhood caused me to break out in a smile, which I instantly wiped away, feeling excessively emotional. I'd perceived no other signs of feeling in the room. Ten minutes later or so, some sad thoughts about lovelessness and betrayal caused two fat tears to well up and then to fall, one from each eye. Sitting silent in the peacefulness of the Friends' parlor, I felt like maybe a manic-depressive for such outbursts of emotion.

Moments later, my friend called the meeting to a close. At 10AM sharp, she spoke: "Good morning, Friends," and we all rose to shake hands with one another, me with two wet spots on my shirt that appeared to go unnoticed. My friend made a few small announcements, and we were dismissed.

I wanted to talk to her about what Quaker meeting means to her, but she had a brunch to go to right away, and besides I am fasting, so I hope to attend one (or probably both) of the other meetings, and corner my friend (who was reared without religion at all) about her choice to throw in with the Quakers.