Ok, so I was walking around the Hill yesterday and I heard this guy several paces behind me having a cell phone conversation. It went something like:
"How was your Christmas?....Oh, mine was ok, but....it was kind of awkward. It was the first time I've seen my mother since I admitted to having sexual desire for her."

Alllllllrighty then. Do not turn around, do NOT turn around.
posted by Lisa Moscatiello  # 10:23 AM | Perma Link   
1 comments

This is a special holiday party playlist that I made. It's about three hours long, and is designed to match the pacing of a typical party - starting quietly, building up, and then coming to a denouement. It took me about twelve hours of solid work to--in the lingo of Congress and Starbucks--craft this playlist. I'm very happy with this mix - it has something for everyone, and includes Loretta Lynn, Leonard Bernstein, the Klezmatics, Bollywood, Brandi Carlile, Julie Andrews, and the incomparable Richard Cheese. Check it out - it works! Try it at your holiday party. You'll have to come out of your bedroom at 3am in your pajamas and put on Kate Smith's "God Bless America" to get people to leave your house.

(It does require the download of a free player. I've tried it on both Mac and PC, and it should be pretty easy on either one. Email me if you have problems)

My Rhapsody Playlist
posted by Lisa Moscatiello  # 10:52 AM | Perma Link   
0 comments

Christmas reminds me that at one point in my life I was a real Christian, and that on a cellular level I probably still am one. I'm fairly certain, for example, that next time someone close to me dies, I am probably going to reach for "Amazing Grace" first and the Heart Sutra later.

I read in a book somewhere that everyone has their own personal Jesus. My Jesus was the guy in the Gospel of Matthew who preached the Sermon on the Mount. He was based on the character Ted Neely (pictured) played in Jesus Christ Superstar. Passionate, charismatic, uncompromising yet conflicted, and totally unmaterialistic.

The way it happened for me was, at a certain point I started take to heart all the stuff I was taught in Sunday School at my Presbyterian church. I was about twelve, and for the first time I experienced how much easier my life was when I didn't do everything out of my immediate selfish desires. That whole "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" thing made perfect sense to me. I read the Bible at night in bed with a candle. I almost didn't want anyone to know. Faith was easy for me, because right away I found that trying to do what Jesus taught made me feel lighter and happier.

Unfortunately I didn't read the fine print before I got on board. I didn't realize that my church was more interested in the death of Jesus than the life of Jesus, and that it taught that if you DON'T believe that Jesus died for your sins you are going to go to hell. I also discovered that, after graduating from sixth grade Sunday school, I would hear more and more what St. Paul had to say and less about what Jesus taught.

I quickly jumped into the deep end of the pool and tried to adopt those beliefs. I started hanging out with people who believed the earth was 6,000 years old, and I listened to this radio station on the far right end of the radio dial that featured a psycho-Calvinist named Brother Harold Camping who scared the living crap out of me. For one thing, he had the entire Bible memorized. A caller would ask a question about Nehemiah 2:14 or something, and he knew exactly what it was, word for word. He also taught that God picks the people who are going to believe and be saved, and that he also chooses to make other people choose not to believe and therefore go to hell (this is in the Bible, by the way. See Romans 9), and because he knew the entire Bible by heart, I figured he must be right.

After awhile my faith became untenable. I couldn't believe that my Jewish friends were all going to hell. Plus, Brother Camping and that whole predestination thing really flipped me out. Eventually I lost my faith, which threw me into a massive depression. The irony of losing my faith was that I didn't believe in Christianity anymore, but I still worried that I was going to hell. At the same time I also started to notice that I was starting to have crushes on girls, which I knew would also get you damned, so I just took it as proof that I wasn't one of the elect and that I was done for (to be continued).

Next: The Schism (below)
posted by Lisa Moscatiello  # 7:14 AM | Perma Link   
0 comments

Pictured: The Rev. John Yates, Rector, The Falls Church (Falls Church, VA)

One of the first people I came out to was a friend from church who was a mentor and surrogate mom figure. She was interested and not judgmental, but she clearly liked being straight and being a mother and wanted me to feel the same way. I don't think she ever actually accepted my gayness, because she would thereafter check in with me periodically by asking "are you dating any MEN?" Ultimately, she left the Presbyterian Church and joined an Episcopal Church called The Falls Church, which she explained was "more conservative" than other Episcopal Churches and "didn't believe in ordaining homosexuals." I never knew how to respond to these comments, which were painfully reminiscent of my own mother's discomfort with me, and in my own conflict and paralysis I let the friendship drift.

These memories all came back to me yesterday when I read that two Episcopal churches in Northern Virginia, one of which was my friend's church, had broken off from the denomination because of its official policy of allowing gay men and women to be ordained to the priesthood. In the article I read, it said that the Nigerian bishop who heads the branch of the Anglican Communion these two chruches are joining believes that growing acceptance of gay relationships within the church indicates the existence of a "satanic attack" on the denomination.

If this had happened when I was a teenager, struggling with faith and sexuality, it would have driven me deeper into the hole I was already in. I already believed that I was under a Satanic attack - I even believed crazy things, like the death of Pope John Paul I one day after assuming the papacy was somehow tied to my wickedness. In the end, my decision to leave the church saved my life. But certain events, like the return of the Christmas season every year, make me feel grief at this loss of a vital part of my identity. While I have a new faith home as a Zen Buddhist practitioner, the sights and sounds of the Buddhist liturgy and the Buddha himself remain emotionally one step removed from me. While the teachings of my Zen teacher pose no threat to my sense of reason and have tremendously changed my life in much the same way as my initial Christian conversion, when I hear the a beautiful hymn like "O Holy Night", I feel a sense of loss.

A few years ago I saw a film that perfectly articulated my conflicts. It's called Priest, and it's the story of a Roman Catholic priest serving a lower-income parish in England. This is a story of humain frailty, redemption, and community that makes me cry for two days me every time I see it. I plan to write a review of this film as part of this series on Christmas and Christianity.

Next month: Priest
posted by Lisa Moscatiello  # 4:01 AM | Perma Link   
1 comments

Since about ninety percent of all folk gigs take place in the northeast, one of the first things I discovered on the road is that a "diner" up north is an entirely different animal from the archetypal southern version you see on TV (the kind where Flo told people to kiss her grits on Alice in the '70s.) Starting at around Exit 7 of the New Jersey Turnpike and extending through somewhere near Poughkeepsie, NY, there exist these eccentric north-of-the border food amusement parks, boxy stonefront eateries where the waiters wear black vests and bow ties and you can go in and get a feta cheese omelette with an order of rice pudding and a shot of Jack Daniels at two o'clock in the morning. (see Mastori's in Bordentown, NJ).

Today, I stumbled upon little a piece of bridge-and-tunnel food heaven in my own neighborhood below the Mason-Dixon line. I work on "the" Hill (the one in DC, not Seattle) and just ducked out to do some errands along Pennsylvania Avenue when I happened upon this delightful, unpretentious restaurant called Sizzlin' Express, in the 600 Block. It's a Korean-owned wonderland of food. At this take out/eat-in establishment you can get sushi, generous helpings of baked goods, breakfast, lunch and dinner. There's a sparkling self-serve coffee area with an arsenal of spigots dispensing several flavors of coffee, a salad and cold food bar that includes at least fifty different dishes, including calamari, sesame and spinach salad, and some sort of pudding with vanilla wafers on top, in addition to the usual salad bar items. There's a festive display with a complete line of all the latest power bars, gum, candy and tin boxes of obscure little foreign made pastille type hard sweets. There's also a full-service bar with a real bartender, mirror and colorful holiday decorations. The guy behind the checkout counter was friendly and helpful, and when I was there at 11am there was a table full of well-fed DC cops happily chowing down on a hot breakfast. As I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue on this crisp December morning, with a view of the Capitol dome and my hot coffee and $5.85 Sizzlin' Express fish salad, I felt positively patriotic!
posted by Lisa Moscatiello  # 8:30 AM | Perma Link   
0 comments

Many people whose musical taste I respect a great deal enjoy this artist, but I just don't get it. I think there is a legitimate place in the world for tribute artists, and that is what Madeleine Peyroux is, phrase for phrase. She's actually remarkable - I get fooled every time! MP fans, go check out the original, starting with Songs for Distingue Lovers.
posted by Lisa Moscatiello  # 7:18 AM | Perma Link   
0 comments