Cult Following
How I learned to embrace my girlfriend's ridiculous religion.
by Emily Deprang
July 14, 2008
It was late morning, and the New Mexico sun was bleaching the shadows off the ground. I'd been staring out the car window at desiccated scrub brush for two days; it was like watching a loop of a Tom & Jerry chase scene without Tom or Jerry. So my heart leapt in my chest when my girlfriend, Sam, said quietly, "We're here." I was thrilled, because I really had to pee, but I was also nervous.
We turned up a long driveway and the ashram came into view. It was a small adobe compound with exposed beams, decorated by winding rock paths and xeriscaping. Parking attendants in white robes and sandals directed us to a spot on the crunchy grass. Most of the other cars had bumper stickers featuring a lotus or the symbol for Om, or the words "Jai Jai Ma" or "Visualize Whirled Peas."
I started to make a snarky comment, then stopped myself. Sam was visibly buoyant. She was bounding up the hill, overjoyed, and this was from a stone butch who doesn't bound. I fumbled around in the dark of my brain, trying to find my cynicism dial and turn it down as far as it would go. This is serious, I told myself. These are her people. She's sharing something important with you. Be nice. But as we neared the ashram's open doors, I could hear chanting. And there was no one with whom to exchange a glance that said, "Seriously? Chanting?"
Like many people, I had issues with religion. But I didn't always. Growing up, my mother was the organist for the local Methodist church, and when I turned ten, she started letting me scamper around the church grounds alone while she was at choir practice. That meant for two hours every Wednesday night, I attended the Church of Me, where I made the rules and enjoyed a direct line to God. I believed He and I were on uniquely good terms, and that, as a sign of our secret pact, he allowed me to control the flickering of the candles during Sunday service.
I cultivated a comprehensive personal dogma. People from other religions would definitely go to Heaven — anything else didn't seem fair. (In fact, as a congenital bleeding-heart liberal and moral relativist, I suspected God was a tough-talker but secretly a softie, and that nobody was going to hell.) The Old Testament was some sort of primitive beta version of the whole God-human relationship, and became obsolete as soon as Jesus broke onto the scene. Women and men were equals, divorce was a necessary option and homosexuality was both innate and, for reasons unclear to me at the time, awesome. Abortion was sad, but mostly for the mother, because it was like finding a Saint Bernard puppy when you live in a studio apartment — it's not that you don't love puppies, it's just that you can't keep him. The baby was okay, in my line of thought; it just went back into the shining, cloud-upholstered waiting room and was born in another place where it could be received with unadulterated joy.
When I went to college, I auditioned a few churches, but I never found one I liked as much as the Church of Me. So I carried around my faith in my heart, as my secret. I still felt that God and I exchanged secret winks as we lovingly tolerated other people's bumblefuckery of His divine will.
Then came Sam. When our eyes met for the first time, I didn't just fall in love — I was clocked by love. TKO. I'd never felt about anybody like I felt about her, and I was so na•ve that I thought everyone would be happy for my happiness. I told my mother, the organist, right away. She withdrew. She was embarrassed and angry. She didn't want to talk about it.
But strangers wanted to talk about it. When I went to PrideFest to eat roasted corn and listen to mediocre bands, strangers stood across the street holding posterboard that said, "Leviticus 18:22. Homosexuals burn in hell." This didn't count as persecution by a long shot, but I knew that among my new friends, Christian meant that guy with the sign. I stopped telling anyone I was a Christian. It took too long to explain.
I told myself my faith had just retracted into safety, like a hermit crab into its shell. But really, it was eroding. What if the Jerry Falwells are right? I thought. What if God really gives people's bodies these delicate, needy parts and their brains these ferocious desires, and then punishes them for seeking satisfaction? And what if my new friends were right? What if God the Father was a tool of the patriarchy propagated to replace and destroy pagan worship of the Mother Earth?
Both answers sounded absurd. But then, so did my Church of Me, when I thought about it. What are the odds that the almighty and actual God, assuming there is one, has positions on political issues like gays and abortion, or that, if He does, those positions align with the hopeful musings of an eleven-year-old in Pearland, TX? Hadn't I just made up the answers I wanted to be true? Was anybody else doing anything more?
Sam had her own answers to these questions. Like me, she'd been religious from an early age, but we searched for God in slightly different ways. I became a district representative for my youth group; she dropped acid in cornfields. As a teenager, she hopscotched through the best rehab facilities of the Midwest and, along the way, met a therapist who became her mentor. In time, the mentor asked if Sam would like to meet her guru. Sam said hell yes.
Sam's guru's name is Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, which means "Mother of Absolute Bliss," but she goes by Amma, or Mother. In the West, she's known as the Hugging Saint because, in addition to heading one of the world's major charities, Amma spends most of her time giving hugs. Her hugs are her blessing, and they supposedly communicate her complete, divine, maternal love for her children, a.k.a. everybody. Her birthplace and home are in India, but she spends part of each year in the United States, visiting convention centers and hotel ballrooms where she hugs thousands of strangers, one after another, for hours at a time. Her website, Amma.org, estimates she's hugged twenty-five million people.
Amma sounded wonderful in theory, but when Sam asked if I wanted to meet her, I balked. As long as Amma was hypothetical, I could remain pleasantly neutral about her. I could hear stories about her without judgment or commitment. But if I met her, I'd form an opinion whether I wanted to or not. What if she just seemed like a nice lady — or worse, struck me as a fraud? And what were the odds that she could possibly seem otherwise?
Still, we'd been dating for about three months, and were at the point in the relationship where our ideas of one another were beginning to settle into reality — where, "she loves dogs" becomes "she lets the dog sleep between us." Asking me to meet Amma was risky on her part; agreeing to was risky on mine.
Two women in white greeted us at the door to the ashram. One handed me a number like the kind you take at a bakery. She explained that when the time came for Amma to give hugs, I would watch for my number range to be displayed, then I'd line up. "Is this your first time to meet Mother?" she asked me.
"Um, yes," I said. She grinned and stuck a yellow sticker on my shirt. She beamed.
"Don't lose that ticket," Sam said. I pocketed it. "And take your shoes off," she added. A salmagundi of shoes and sandals filled the shoe racks against the back wall and spilled onto the floor. I kicked off my Chucks and looked around. The back and sides of the room were filled with tables topped with science-fair-style displays, which were covered by bed sheets. In the middle, a dense crowd was seated on the floor. Many were wearing billowing white or khaki, or pastel yoga garb, but some were dressed like me, in jeans, like spectators rather than participants.
Then I saw her. I wouldn't have known or even guessed it was her if I hadn't seen pictures in Sam's room of the Divine Mother, sitting just like this: on a small pallet in the middle of a stage, wearing a white cotton sari. She was little, round and brown, with chipmunk cheeks and her black hair pulled back in a plain bun. She was adorable. I smiled almost involuntarily.
We tiptoed across the grounded crowd and wedged ourselves into semi-adjacent puddles of carpet. I could fold my bony ankles under my thighs or sit up straight, but not both. Sam, however, who shuffled and slouched through life, whose posture invited eyes to keep moving, was sitting up perfectly straight, like a meerkat wearing a seatbelt.
Amma's worship service was much like any other service I'd visited. There were songs that everyone else knew and I did not. There was prayer in the form of meditation. And there was a sermon. To my surprise, Amma delivered it flatly, speaking fast in a voice coarse from overuse. It was all one rolled R to me. She was speaking in Hindi, which her swami — sitting to her right, wearing saffron robes and a long-suffering expression — interpreted. Like every good Texan pastor I'd ever had, she told modern parables with little jokes and exhortations along the way. I don't remember its content; only that it was palatable and seemed geared toward beginners.
After that, the swami released us. Devotees scattered to the bathrooms or their cars, and the people minding the tables pulled the bed sheets off their wares. They were vendors of everything Amma: framed and loose pictures of her, books about her, tapes and CDs of her singing, collections of her sermons, calendars, notecards, clothes, keychains, bumper stickers, jewelry, nutritional supplements, incense, bath supplies, stained-glass Om suncatchers and porcelain nightlights. This is what people did while they waited for their free hugs: they shopped. There was even a table selling things Amma had worn once, or bottles of perfume only slightly used. These were expensive because they were imbued with Amma's holy energy, the vendor explained to me. I nodded gravely as all hope drained from my chest.
I didn't want a hug anymore. I didn't care that this was how Amma funded her charities. I'd come because Sam asked me to, but also because I wanted Amma to be the real thing. I believed in Sam enough to begin to believe in Amma, too, or at least in the possibility of a non-denominational, non-cynical church like the one I used to have in my own head. But my concept of God did not come with souvenirs. I was pissed at Amma for selling out, but also for putting me in a position to fake my approval of her for as long as Sam and I dated.
A mere four hours later, it was hug time. Our numbers were up, and Sam and I got in the line that crept toward the stage. Sam took my silence as meditative anticipation. At the base of the stairs, a woman noted the yellow sticker on my shirt and said, "You may have trouble standing after Amma hugs you. Don't worry — someone will guide you off the stage."
"I don't think I'm going to have trouble standing," is what I would have said if I hadn't been drawn up by Amma's helpers just then, up the stairs and onto my knees, close behind the devotee leading me. One person handed me a tissue with which to wipe my face while another extended a basket to hold my glasses. Then I was there, at her feet, and the man in front of me was limply engulfed in her arms and bosom. She kept talking to one the swamis as she was doing this. (Amma always answered questions, gave advice and got interviewed while hugging). But for a moment, she tucked her head down, shut her eyes, and murmured into his ear. Then she rocked a little, petting his back, and then took him by the shoulders and lifted him up, face to face with her, with the delighted expression of a mother playing peek-a-boo with her babies. As soon as he stood, a devotee pushed me forward, and I was plunged into darkness.
The first thing I noticed was that sound was muffled, like it is underwater. Also, it was darker than closed eyes usually are; no light projected my veins onto my eyelids. But I didn't miss these senses. I felt lighter without them — undistracted. My thoughts seemed to be moving slowly, but there were also far fewer of them than usual. Or maybe it was that there was time for all of them. I couldn't tell how much time had passed, but if I had to guess I would say it had slowed to a crawl, or even stopped. Then Amma murmured in my ear: "Moom moom moom moom moom."
She squeezed me and rocked me back and forth, then went on talking to someone in Hindi. Sound receded again. A few years passed. I didn't think about Sam. I didn't think about God. I didn't think about anything.
Then, with a bracing return of light and sound, Amma raised me up by my shoulders and looked into my eyes with a mighty grin. There was the wink. The wink God and I had shared for years. The one that said we got each other, that we were best friends forever. Someone raised me up and half-carried me to the side of the stage where I collapsed. Sam joined me moments later and we braided our arms together and I clung to her, sobbing exhausted sobs of relief. n°
©2008 Emily Deprang and hooksexup.com