The Rucksack Letters - Slightly Bent

New York now leads the world's great cities in the number of people around whom you shouldn't make a sudden move.
- David Letterman

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another.
- Jonathon Swift

October 26, 2001 - New York, New York
The last week has truly been a flurry. I left Rowe last Monday to arrive at the Sivananda Yoga Ashram just after dusk. I was given a map to my room with twenty minutes to spare until the evening satsong, where we were to chant and meditate to end the day. I found my room on the third floor of the Ananda Kirtan, leaving my sandals on the downstairs porch, as requested by numerous signs and notices. When I returned to the main building, and again left my sandals at the door, shuffling on the wood floor in wool socks, a pretty blonde with a beautiful South African accent introduced herself as Sindari. She welcomed me to the ashram, we engaged in some small talk, and we went in for satsong where we meditated silently for half an hour in the dimly lit temple, an octagonal room with plate glass windows on six of the walls and an altar full of pictures and symbols I will probably never understand on the seventh. Sindari OMed us out of meditations and into the chanting - Sanskrit reckonings of thanks and worship to gods and goddesses that will guide our paths and bless our lives. I chanted along with them happily, finding Sanskrit much easier to read and pronounce than the Thai of the monastery in Georgia.

Sindari gave us the rundown on who Swami Sivananda was and how he had come to start the ashrams in America and Canada. She read a portion of his writings, and before we turned in for the night, we were each offered some fruit that had been sanctified on the altar by the gods, who had coated them in honey and coconut. I really like these Hindu gods.

I slept well on a meager mattress and plywood frame to be awaked by the first bell at 5:20 in the morning for satsong at 6:00, where we repeated the ritual of meditation, chanting, and eating the food the gods passed on. We then took a field trip to a state park where I first practiced the asana of yoga on a grassy field, stretching myself in ways I have never imagined. After a lunch of hummus and cucumber sandwiches, we explored the cliffs over the lake. I kept mostly to myself this first day, which seemed to set the standard for the days to follow. Each time the bus started, the group chanted a Sanskrit prayer about twenty stanzas long, and I just stared numbly ahead, feeling a bit out of place in a group of such focus.

The room and board were taken care of similarly to that of Rowe, and after morning satsong and asana the next day, we all went about our various jobs. I was working with a New Yorker named Mike, bundling cardboard boxes for the recycling pickup. We talked a great bit about yoga and Hinduism. He told me that he had started the practice of yoga a few years ago due to pinched sciatic nerve, which had amazingly cleared right up, but didn't truly consider himself a Hindu, though he'd studied it quite in depth and was able to clear up many of the questions I had.

Wednesday afternoon, I found my way to Siva's temple, one of two temples on the ranch, and allowed myself in to confer with the unknown deity. I bowed slightly in respect, again leaving my sandals outside beyond the small wall which surrounded the tiny cinder block temple. I introduced myself to the altar set directly in the center of the room as a searcher in hope of a direction, but the cold concrete floor seeped up through my feet despite the thickness of my socks. I lit a stick of incense, placed it in the gravel floor of the altar, and told Siva my story as I sat in the half lotus. And then I was quiet, meditating for what seemed like a much longer time than it actually was, as the cold temperature seemed to slow down the clock.

Though I planned to stay a week, I felt as though I had done what I needed to do, at least that's the way I rationalized it to myself. Truth be told, I just wanted to go. The climate was too cold for me, in temperature and in mood. Perhaps I wasn't properly oriented, or perhaps I didn't orient myself, but there was an overwhelming feeling that I didn't belong there. Maybe it was the confusion over Sanskrit gods and goddesses or the meager communication between my hosts and myself. Whatever the reason, I felt in my bones that I needed to move on. The only question was to where.

At brunch the next morning, after satsong and two hours of mind-restless yoga, I ate a meager meal of soup and salad. The two girls who shared my table were both from New York, a filmmaker and an aspiring songstress on her eleventh year of making it in the big city. We talked about the city, the bombing, the anthrax, and that life must go on. After September 11, one of my first thoughts had been to go to New York. I put the idea on hold, thinking it irresponsible at the time. But since I had recently gotten emails from two friends who live in Manhattan; and since it was so far removed from my current circumstances of meditation, chanting, and yoga; and because I was really jonesing for a cup of coffee and a cigarette, I now had a destination. I put in a call to Vincent and met him in Times Square that night.

I met Vincent years ago, working in the crisis stabilization unit of Sarasota, Florida - basically a short-term sanitarium, where, regardless of our actual job descriptions during the graveyard shift, we spent most of our energy becoming prolific at card games. I was often thankful that nights were quiet at the hospital when the only ones working were two nurses, the wire-framed Vincent, and me, who was no more excited about taking down an out of control patient than the rest of them. I was glad to see that Vincent, who gets a great kick out of the fact that he now lives just around the corner of Seamen and Cumming, hadn't changed. But I realized over the next few days that I had never really known him at all.

There is this entire other life of spiritual exploration that Vincent had not made apparent during his hours at the hospital. Months ago, he started a spiritual evolution group which met on Saturday afternoons in a rented studio on the Upper West Side. With a varied background in Buddhism, Wicca, and Shamanism, Vincent blew me away with the knowledge of all things spiritual, and he led us as we spent our few hours putting together our personal animal totems.

The way the animal totem works is - and realize this was my first experience with shamanism, so don't hold me too accountable - you pick some animals that hold some kind of meaning to you. Perhaps you've been dreaming of orangutans or hit a moose with your car, or, as in my own experience, had a duck named after you. So you get a list of animals, put them in whatever order you feel driven to, and place them in various places on the totem shield. Each place on the shield represents an aspect of your life; the aspects of the animal represent either how you react to it or how you should react to it, asking the spirit of the animal to guide you. I won't go into detail on what my totem means to me, but I found it interesting that the duck, representing migration and intuition, was to serve as my counselor on when to speak and when to listen.

Six of us had dinner at a local deli after the meeting when one of the girls, whose path was the practice of Santaria and who was finding a great deal of grief over the ritual of sacrificing a chicken, asked me about my spiritual path.

"Well," I said, "I used to be on the Christian path, then a few years ago, I tripped, rolled down a hill, and found myself on an entirely new path."

"And which one is that?" she asked.

I stammered for a moment, wondering how I had explained it to Vincent, when he chimed in, "Personal Spiritual Evolution," with a great, big smile. I wonder if I can get tax exemption for that.

I find that I am continuing to come across people of various paths of faith, old and new, each of them finding their own personal idea of God or gods, as the case may be. And, of course, it is all the more apparent after the tragedy of terrorism and our nation's search for hope amid despair. Sensing this need people must have for peace, the Christians were out in droves, sharing what they have come to accept as the only true source, the gospel of Jesus Christ. As I walked the perimeter of what was once the Twin Towers, it seemed that at every corner, I was handed a pamphlet or tract, which explained in mere pages how I could be saved from an eternity in hell by simply confessing with my mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. After receiving more than a handful of these messages of hope, I began to politely decline them, assuring the well-meaning evangelists that I had already met Him. Most of them were friendly, compassion glazed over their eyes, youths in red vests proclaiming that prayer changes things, making me wonder if the Taliban, or whoever actually performed this heinous deed, prayed too.

But I have to say that I was rather proud of my Christian heritage. As I watched New Yorkers walking the sidewalks with paper dust masks on their faces and smelled the lingering asbestos and concrete in the air - that stagnant smell of decimation as a constant reminder that you, too, could have been in that building - I was proud that these people came to this area, miles from their homes, to share a message that has offered them hope through their struggles. It's quite beautiful actually - a loving expression of faith to those who may be suffering. That is, until one of them spoke.

I had been walking for blocks, on the fringe of the spectacle, past orange barricades, every road cordoned off by the boys in blue, seeing glimpses of the wreckage I had previously only heard of on the radio and read about in magazines. This was Ground Zero. This was where the world had changed, and America was forced to grasp for hope wherever She could find it.

The crowd grew thick in a certain area, as tourists snapped photos and raised hand-held video cameras over their heads to better capture the travesty turned attraction, and a loud voice rose from the crowd.

"The only hope for America is the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not believe in false prophets. Jesus is the way. Mohammed is not the way. Confucius is not the way. Buddha is not the way. These are all false prophets. The only hope for America is through the Holy Scriptures of Jesus Christ, our Lord."

There was more, but only the same said differently. And my pride in the mercy of those who cared was vanquished by shame in the pride of the proselytizer because I knew full well that I had played the role of both. And as I saw the looks of disgust of those around me at the arrogance of the prophet, I knew that every pamphlet of love they held in their hand was no longer worth the paper it was printed on. This one man, in a boisterous show of aggressive campaigning, nullified all good work that the others had done, assuring that no sane mind who heard his voice wanted anything to do with a religion that would breed such a contemptible display in the face of adversity. It was the very difference between the popular notions of a follower of Christ and a modern day Christian. Those who came to tend to the sick, those who saw others as equals in need of real help- fellow players in this game of life who are just trying to figure out the methods of play. Those who care as Jesus did, who follow his example and meet the needy where they are, carrying them along with a still, small voice, these are the followers of Christ.

And those who have become so regimented in their beliefs, who saw this trip to Ground Zero as the ordained opportunity to prove that they were right and that their way to personal fulfillment was indeed better than everyone else's, who saw this tragedy as a way to fill pews and raise membership, as the perfect chance to let the world know that the Lord is vengeful and to follow a path to peace that you may have been following since you were a child is most assuredly wrong if your dogma does not match his, this is what is all too often known as a Christian.

And, often, there are subtle blends of the two.

As the prophet roared on with his cautionary tales of doom - the assurance that what he had come to agree with was most absolute truth, and whatever other ideas or beliefs some might find to bring peace to a weary heart are misguided and wrong - he continued to enrich the stereotype of the religious right. And I was humbled to notice that I, on many occasions, more than I've yet come to admit, have been exactly like him. And, often, I still am.

I don't want to call these people Christians. Many people who I love call themselves Christians and don't want to be associated with this type. Let's call this breed - the soap box preachers, the ones most consider hate mongers, these anti-Christians - let's call them "the unfocused followers." Or we could just call them jerks.

So I, like so many others around me, tuned the jerk out for someone more hopeful, a local street artist who, with a few cans of spray paint, some saucers, and newspaper, created a ten dollar work of art in just under five minutes - a reverent reminder of the lives that were lost, and a great souvenir of your trip to the Big Apple. And as people whipped tens out, he had a stack of paintings ready, paying his rent in less than ten minutes. That was my lesson on life in the city. This survival-of-the-fittest mentality that has most every shop in this city selling posters and memories of the towers that were and the tragedy that took them, capitalizing on tragedy because you've got to be strong.

It's the energy I felt when I drove down Broadway, as lights flashed through Times Square - the bustle of the subway and the hustle of the streets. The harsh truth is that in a city like this, there is not much time to heal from even the most catastrophic of injuries. There are jobs to be done. There is money to be made. Life must go on. We must continue to create. We must continue to make a living. And sometimes, no, every time, we must make the most of a bad situation. Healing must come quickly, for there's just not much time to mourn. Dry your eyes fast 'cuz the devil won't wait.