Dzogchen Center

We met up with our liaison, Juliet, in Harvard Square at a little cafe called Veggie Planet. The serendipity started there. Veggie Planet is owned by the woman who wrote my favorite vegetarian cookbook of all times, Vegetarian Planet. So, first we got to sample a recipe and see how it was meant to taste, not the way it tastes after I get through with it. What fun. Then we walked through a ridiculously cold night over to the Quaker meeting house (oh the irony) for the service. (When I say ridiculously cold, I mean Mother Nature was just over the top. Why so cold? Why?) We sat right in the center of the meetinghouse on these burgundy pillows and I was a bit unsure what to do. Being in the center, naturally I suffered a little bit of performance anxiety - would I stand right? Would I hold my hands right, bow right, chant right? I just followed along and aside from being half a beat behind, and having strange foot cramps that I don't want to remember, I think I did okay. Luckily, no one was judging. As a matter of fact, Tibetan Buddhists don't really go for the whole judging/labeling thing which I find very soothing. If there's any place to perform ungainly acrobatics in order to shake the cramp from your foot, the center of a Buddhist service would probably be the place.

East Baptist

East Baptist - I smile as I type it. The church is clean, even in the sandy, gray bowels of winter. Clean lines - brick and white, iron and granite, polished floors and vacuumed runners. The men still wear ties and sportcoats, the women still dress up... ah. Perhaps my memory romanticizes it but I recall that every single person I met there not only smiled but hugged me. And boy can those Baptists get down. At one point half the congregation ran up to the front of the church, picked up an instrument and went to town. My liason, Cait (who introduced me as her friend! Oh she's so sweet!) played the baby grand. There was a guitarist and an electric bassist, three singers, a drummer and a bongo player from Africa. And just what do you think the others did while the band was rockin out? Do you think they just sat there, idle spectators? Not in a Baptist church. No, no, no. Those folks were on their feet just clapping and dancing and singing along. And, if there is a Mr. Doubtfire, the pastor there would be him. Not to say he looks like Robin Williams in drag - not at all. Quite the opposite. But his Welsh accent and his energy - exactly who I think Mrs. Doubtfire would have chosen.

This is a picture of the Friends (Quaker) Meetinghouse we visited on the 6th. You walk in through the little green door at the bottom of the hill and then you take a right, go through a smallish room that has a ladder hanging from the ceiling and a table that will, with any luck, be filled with cheese and crackers and cookies, then up the stairs into the Fellowship Room where you must be very, very quiet until the Spirit moves you to speak. It's hard to be very very quiet, for me at least, and it's hard to be around other people who are being quiet. And stomaches don't always obey the quiet rule, which makes it even harder for one's mouth to refrain from giggling. We were fortunate enough to attend on the first day of the first week in the new year, or First First, which is Quakerese for the first Sunday. That may be the first time I've used the word first so many times in one sentence (tee-hee). We also hit the Quaker lottery when we were invited to stay for their Threshing Session, or moderated discussion, on (ironically) gambling.

PS to my beloved editor: I took that picture. That's right. How ya like me now?

PPS That little black sign on the front? That says "Torture is Wrong." (FYI)

First of all, thank you to Cait from East Baptist Church for inviting me and welcoming me and sitting with me and guiding me through the service. And thank you to Pastor Kevin Adams. And a belated thank you to the people over at the Quaker Meetinghouse, you were all kinda blindsided by our appearance...but you rolled with it.



So, I bid you welcome. Since this is the inaugural post, and since this project is still in it's infancy...just a weensy little baby of a project...I'll begin by telling you a bit about why I sent you the link to this blog. For the next 50 weeks (two have passed already) I am accepting invitations to other people's churches. The other day at the East Baptist Church, a man asked me why? What am I trying to reason out here? I thought about it for a moment and realized, I don't really have a thesis. I'm not out to debunk anyone's faith. I'm not out to prove anything. I don't want to promote religion...I guess I just want to find a common thread. There are many roads that arrive at the same place -I want to travel down them. I want to see what you see, I want to feel what you feel. I want to cut behind the mystery. (Little Robbie Robertson reference, in case you didn't notice) And I want to write a book about it. So, let's go, shall we?