Ayigiri

Every year, many Hindus celebrate a holiday dedicated to various forms of The Mother, and every year I love it. Mostly, in my personal practice, I simply focus my worship on my preferred face of the Mother as She currently lives on the earth – which is to say, in the form of Mata Amrtanandamayi Ma, also known as Amma, The Hugging Saint. She’s an avatar of Shri Durga, who goes by another name: Mahishasuramardini. Mahishasura was a “buffalo demon” who was practically invincible and after nearly every other feasible attempt at conquering this monster had proven unsuccessful, everyone besought The Divine Mother for help.

Mata Amrtanandamayi Ma

A quick study of the symbolism employed in Durga’s image will explain why She proved so capable. Superficially, She seems to carry some weapon from nearly all the other major gods, which to some will imply that She combines their powers. However, in truth She is the underlying power that makes any of the others possible. Because of this inherent truth, this holiday is one of my favorite sign posts of the Faith.

Coming from a divorced family, and having both a birth mother and a step-mother, I know the many faces of motherhood and the value that women and mothers hold to society and humanity. Sometimes a mother plays a fierce role – either to protect her offspring or to scare them from foolishness that might place them in harm’s way. Sometimes a mother has to play the role of security, and provide the grounding force in the lives of her offspring, giving them a place of origin to reference and reset their compass when they accidentally steer off course. And other times still, the mother has to provide support in the form of nurturing the offspring and thus help to facilitate much-needed healing.

For each of the days of Navratri, which Hindus are currently celebrating, a different face of the Mother is focused on and honored. Temples everywhere are having their own celebration programs – my own local temple has programs put on each night by people from a different parts of India, all focusing on the particular face of Mother for that evening. At the end of the holiday, we’ll be holding a Durga Visarjan.

In my home, I don’t celebrate the Mother’s different faces each respective day, at least not like I would if I were to adhere to tradition. I simply honor the face of Mother I most closely connect with, which is Shri Mata Amrtanandamayi Ma. As witnessed in the actions and life story of Amma, we are all nourished and protected and loved by our shared Mother. She serves as an inexhaustible source of love, service, courage and sacrifice – a perennial example to all.

Whether during Navratri or at a local home satsangh, the worship and adoration of Amma includes singing Ayigiri or Maheshasuramardini. I have virtually the whole thing memorized. I’ve attached a video of it below for your viewing / education. I usually prefer to share three-part versions of things that include the devanagari, the transliteration, and the translation. This video only includes the transliteration, and I think I found an issue with verse nine, but whatever. It’ll still give you the bulk of what I intend to share. I absolutely encourage anyone and everyone to learn this devotional song to our Mother.

As the 2013 Navratri holiday progresses, I want to wish each of you all the best and to each of you the strongest, most healing, most protective and most protected relationships with each other and with The Mother. Jai Mata Di!

Aum Mahaganeshaya Namaha
Aum Shanti

Advertisement

The Mother of the Universe is a Male Cat

For virtually every day of the week, excluding a period of just over 24hrs each weekend, I do puja a minimum of twice a day – at dawn and dusk. My lunch hour is also very often filled with sadhana-ish events like memorizing scripture or mantras. Much of this, all spirituality aside, is rather mundane. As predictable as the seasons, pretty much.

Since my beloved and I travel together to work, I usually bathe in the morning before he does, and then when it’s his turn in the shower I sneak off into my temple room and do the day’s first ganeshapuja. Each afternoon when we get out of work we go to the gym for around 2hrs. Then we come home and take care of a few miscellaneous tasks, including dinner. Invariably, after dinner he heads to the couch to catch up on the evening’s shows as well as stuff he’s DVR’d, while I go to my temple room to hang out with God. Then as I mentioned, sometime around dusk I begin the day’s final puja (to Ganesha, as in the morning).

My cat, Darel, loves evening puja. Literally.

I sit before my mandir, light a wick in ghee or a tea light candle, and begin with an invocation to my ishtadevata. At this early point in the puja, even before incense is lit, if my cat isn’t in the room he’s meowing like a madman to be let in. Throughout the entire puja -including the bhuns/bhajans at the end – he’s purring so loudly. He’s also rubbing up against me in typical, affectionate, cat fashion. Interestingly, he’s a fan of doing this roll/dive/butt-flop maneuver he seems to have mastered. It’s a kind of somersault really, only while simultaneously pressed against my seated form, that results in his rear end flopping to the ground with a thud – usually somewhere very close to the burning incense or the flame used in aarti.

As much as he loves this, this annoys me.

But not for long.

Every ever-lovin’ time, whether I like it or not, I’m reminded of a story I read once about Ganesha, His Mother, and a cat. The digest version is that Balaganesha was outside playing one day when a cat came near. As any typical little boy might, Ganesha began rough housing with His new-found playmate, getting too rough in the process and causing bruises and scratches on the cat. Soon enough, the cat ran off and didn’t return. Eventually, Ganesha returned home and after entering, He noticed His Mother in the kitchen with some minor scrapes and bruises. Very concerned, He ran to Her inquiring what had happened to cause this. She gently explained to Him that She is in all living things and when He was too rough with the cat, He was actually hurting Her. The story ends, I think, with Ganesha vowing to never hurt another thing ever.

So here I sit in padmasana, getting my puja on, and Darel is testing my patience. I’m not thrilled that he flops so close to something that could burn him or the carpet. When he thumps against me, because of his size it audibly disrupts my vocalization of the chants. So many facets of this scene bug me… but only briefly. Soon, very soon, I remember that my own Mother resides not only within the murtis into which I’ve temporarily invoked Her Shakti, but also within Darel.

With his next thump into my torso and the resultant shake in my voice, I can only smile and thank Mother for loving me and allowing me to receive Her affection in so many ways. Om Shri Ganeshaya Namaha

Om Shanti

Mata pita cha

Is it odd that I’m proud of my parents when someone compliments me?

Lest y’all think I’m overly vain or arrogant, I’ll spare you details, but suffice it to say that often enough -for one random thing or another – I’m complimented. I should admit that I have a fairly confident outlook and a really developed sense of who I am, which makes being true to myself easy -even when myself is constantly dissolving and evolving.

Oddly enough, whenever someone compliments me I immediately think of my parents. I’ve been clear enough in past posts regarding what amazing humans I perceive my parents to be. They’re surely incomplete without their own, very human, flaws, but beyond this I adore them. And no matter what someone says about me, my mind recognizes the compliment and immediately attributes it to one of four components: My father, my step-mother (my mom, before now often referred to as my mother), my birth mother, or any combination of these.

Someone says something nice to/about me and BAM – I get that from my mom. Someone else is impressed with something else and my mind immediately identifies that I inherited that trait from my father. Occasionally, I’ll encounter a mixture. For instance, some friends call on me to “win” debates they find themselves in on Facebook. For the record, when arguing or debating anything you can be sure two things will happen: I’ll not hesitate to jump in (stupid? brave?) and try to shred my “opponent,” (my unfortunate birth mother’s influence) and I’ll win (my mom should have been a lawyer and taught me well!).

These mixtures have helped form a number of “rules and observances,” my own personal yamas and niyamas, that now govern my life. One is never to ask anything of anyone that you yourself aren’t already giving, or aren’t willing to give. Another is to leave every person, place, or thing you encounter better than before you interacted with it. (I actually LOVE that personal observance because it can manifest in literally every move you make; every breath you take. Ask me and I’ll share more about this.)

Recognizing the sources of the patches in my life’s quilt is super humbling to me and makes me incredibly grateful nearly every time I turn around. This perpetual “attitude of gratitude” keeps me going some days. I know not everyone comes from a background they can be as proud of as I am mine. Still, no effect is without a cause -whether we label that cause pleasant or unpleasant is irrelevant. Be grateful for the causes that contributed to the effect that you call yourself at this moment.

Om Shanti

Nigh upon 1997

Today is National Coming Out Day, and I think it’s auspicious tha the date is a clean 10/11/12. I think it’s fitting to tell my coming out story. Ready?

I was born.

No joke. That seems a bit ridiculous but that’s about where the whole thing begins. Of course, from day one my family knew how spectacular I was/would become. My birth mother says that she always knew I am gay. Always. I think my dad has always, too. I know, through the years, a number of other family members from both my paternal and maternal sides have told me that they knew (or could have guessed) from the time I was a very young age. I think if there was any doubt while I was still young, my infamous My Little Pony birthday party would have cleared things up, as well as my exhaustive My Little Pony collection (which included Seaponies, Flutterponies, etc…) some of which I still retain. I’d liked to have been able to post a photo with this entry that proves the party was a success, but alas, that evidence is filed away (with thousands of other photos taken through the years) in the family’s many-multi-tome Family Photo Album collection.

Truth be told, after the point of my birth, my coming out is fully a three-part experience. Keep reading.

At one point, not super long after diving into Christianity head first, and after getting my driver’s license, I found myself at the family computer with my father suddenly sitting next to me. He asked me a few lead-in questions like if something is wrong or …I forget what else he asked. He used my behavior at a recent family birthday get-together as an example. You see, it was my habit to disappear. I’d always bring a book or cassette/CD player, and then wander off into another part of the house, preferring seclusion.

I attempted to answer as vaguely as my young mind knew how. I recall saying something like, “Well, maybe there’s a lot going on in my mind right now and I can’t talk about it.” The truth here is that there was a lot going on in my mind. I’d already figured out that I’d never marry a woman, and was beginning to tackle how I’d approach my newest love, the Baptist Church, regarding who I am. I’d also just read a number of alarming stats on youth homelessness, and learned that an overwhelming majority of homeless youth are homeless because their parents kick them out for being gay. It was after I gave that first response, my father replied with the question, “Well, are you gay?” Suddenly feeling my heart in my throat, I looked down and didn’t answer immediately. Since I had stalled, my father stepped back into the conversation and said, “‘Cause if you are, get over it. Sex is great, but it’s not something that should rule your life.” I later answered him in the affirmative, still not realizing how sagely his advice was, but was very glad he hadn’t threatened to un-home me.

That’s part one -the most important part in my story. There’s never been a moment in my father’s life where he didn’t put his children above his own self. From the time I and my brother, Justin, were born -all through a marriage that was crazy and doomed and into a second marriage and ceaselessly for the last thirty years – he’s never shown anything except love to my siblings and me. The very same is to be said of his second wife, my real mom, Connie.

Part two, naturally, comes after part one. Feeling somewhat more stable knowing I wasn’t verging on homelessness, the next person I needed to know was my then-best friend, Sara-with-an-H Kidd. I recall writing here this LOOOOONG letter and asking her to meet me at the church we both attended. She did. We found our way up to the balcony in the sanctuary, and suddenly terrified, I gave her the letter to read right in front of me. Umm… but then because I feared she’d read a different tone than the one I’d written in, I took the letter back, and insisted that I read it to her, instead. I recall her being a little perplexed (after all, why not just tell her my words instead of reading them to her?), but she obliged. And so I read. And she listened. And when I was done reading/coming out to her, and asking her not to tell anyone yet, she said, “Oh Joshua, I love you and your secret is safe with me,” while opening her arms and squeezing them around me. Thus concludes scene two.

I had no idea when I came out to my best friend in the church balcony that the next big thing I’d do would be to come out to my church. I think to a lot of people, the weight of this is lost. I grew up in a very small town. At the turn of the last century, it still hadn’t reached even 20,000 inhabitants. In that town, two groups of people were just about the most influential: the farmers and the churches. Obviously a lot of overlap between the groups exists. In my hometown there were three main bodies of believers. There were Catholics. And then there were two quasi-mega churches, which were kind of really the same congregation that had split over an argument about money. These were the Baptists. There was Calvary Baptist Church and Baptist Temple. I always liked the name “Baptist Temple” better than the other, but the other is where I attended due to some band camp karma my freshman year of high school.

After I knew it wasn’t likely I’d be homeless, and after my best friend hadn’t (yet) shunned me, I decided tackle the church. The long-and-short of this is that rumors began to spread -not that I was gay, but that I was spreading “false doctrine.” This false doctrine was, of course, that I not only don’t feel the Bible condemns gays, but also that there’s proof of the contrary within it. Before I knew it, I’d been called to the home of my youth pastor, Dudley. He’d just built a really great home for his family and everyone loved being there. I don’t recall whether I knew why I was being called there or not, but I remember having a McDonald’s vanilla milkshake with me (the only thing I could keep down at the time, because of being upset due to a recent break up). After I arrived, we went into his library. I sat on the couch and he sat at his desk chair. He started right off with the accusation of spreading false doctrine. I explained that I thought it was neither doctrine, nor false. He disagreed and for only a few minutes we back-and-forth’ed on it all. Finally, he stopped us and asked me, “Do you consider yourself a homosexual?” I confirmed this. His response was, and I am quoting, “Well, there’s no place in the youth group, or anywhere else in the church, for someone like you.” As with my father, I looked down, only this time I wept. Honestly, I don’t recall what he might have said after that. In my memory, I can still see my feet and the McDonald’s cup that was beside them as I looked down crying as quietly as I could. At some point I just nodded that I understood, arose, and left.

I remember driving away that day with this dual feeling of immense pain and simultaneous relief. I had no idea what ordeals the following year would bring, both with the church and just about everywhere else. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say it was a time of “therapy,” loss and loneliness, and of strengthening.

Were it not for this window of time in my life, I certainly wouldn’t be who I am today. I think I’ve always been a bit independent and came here with a pretty finely tuned compass, but experiences like this offer a great opportunity to learn and grow. Indeed, that is the intent of all forms of pain. And not to sound arrogant or conceited, but each day reminds me that I’m about as awesome as I’ve ever been, and helps me look forward to the new awesomeness I’ll reach someday soon.

My heart sings a little when I think of how things were and what I went through, and how things are now and where they’re going. I’m so happy at what the youth of today are able to do and how they’re more able to truly and honestly live. They’re benefitting from the brave people of our past, and generations yet to come will benefit from the brave people of our today. Regardless of what our battles might be, bravery and honesty can’t be cheapened or downplayed. We owe it first to our own survival to be brave and honest, and also to the survival of those walking here after us.

Om Shanti!