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.