One Day, Two Churches

Cultural Events #3 & #4

My friend Ryan called me this morning and asked me to go to the Kriya Yoga Temple with him this morning. It’s only 3 blocks from my house, so why not? It was a pretty low-key religious affair: The leader (Swami? Guru?) spoke for awhile about learning to let go of things in our life that are not important to us, and then we did about a ½ hour of guided meditation. I learned the mantra “Om nama Shiva ya, Shiva ya nama om.” This is supposed to dissolve anything which is hanging in your mind and causing “emotionality” (I guess negative emotions). She also said that ideally you should never do anything you don’t want to do (i.e. you should have a strong purpose in your life and not let anything distract you from that purpose). Hey, I don’t want a job, and I think the Yogi is right, I shouldn’t get one.



In the afternoon I drove to Wilmette to hear the Lawrence University Choir perform at the Bahá’i Temple. I was in choir for 2 years while at school there, so wanted to revisit my past, I suppose. The concert was good – I was impressed by one piece in particular, a modern piece in Estonian (they performed it memorized – no mean feat for a choir. Remember, most vocal students are musically illiterate). It was a very dramatic and almost frightening piece. Towards the end someone’s cell phone went off. I was suddenly reminded why I never go to classical performances anymore – besides the usually prohibitive cost, I haven’t been to one in the last 5 years that wasn’t ruined by some moron’s cell phone. It makes me want to fucking slaughter people! Anyway, the performance was only 40 minutes long, but worth the drive… nice to see the temple again too.