8 Rahmat 165 B.E. (Baha'i Calendar)
Soundtrack in my head:  PFM, "Danny's Song"

This weekend I organized a Baha'i devotional service.  

For you non-Baha'i readers, a devotional service is a simple reading of prayers and spiritual texts.  Usually they are from the Baha'i Faith, but will often include writings from other world religions as well.  The Baha'i Faith has no clergy, so volunteers put  these devotional services together.  Devotionals don't usually last very long--typically 20 minutes has been my experience.  There is a somewhat of Quaker-like simplicity to them. 

It is funny though--my attitude towards religious ritual has turned almost 180 degrees.  During the years I considered myself a Pagan, the ritual was a major part of the spiritual experience.  I appreciated it then because there is a certain degree of art and beauty to Pagan ritual.  A good ritual can help evoke a mood and spiritual mindset, and I look at it as art in the service of the Divine, and using creative means to connect with the Divine. 

My attitudes towards ritual gradually changed over the eleven years that I was involved with the Sukyo Mahikari spiritual organization.  To me, ritual there began to acquire a more obligatory and superstitious nature.  While Mahikari ritual is somewhat simple compared to much of Japanese religious tradition,  I still felt that excessive energy was spent on doing things "just right." Certainly there is spiritual value in a well-crafted ritual, but only if the heart is in it.  In the worst cases, I've seen religious ritual becomes a substitute for actually doing something about an issue. 

Over Christmas 2006 I read a book on Quaker history. and I found it admirable how, amidst the crazy chaos of competing Christian sectarianism during the Reformation, the Quakers chucked the pews, chucked the priests, and instead sat in silence.  I have definitely been appreciating simple and plain religious practices more and more.  Baha'i devotionals aren't as simple as unprogrammed Quaker services, but they are still very simple compared to the average Protestant church service. 

In putting together the devotional, I use a great resource I mentioned before called Ocean, which keeps Baha'i texts and other major spiritual texts, (i.e. the Bible, the Qu'ran, the Vedas) in a condensed form and allows the use to enter key words to find passages about a certain subject across multiple spiritual texts.  For this past weekend, I decided to have a theme about summer, since there are a lot of references, analogies, and symbols for summer in various spiritual writings.  I feel pretty good about how it turned out. 

But the DJ in me is starting to think about using non-verbal means to evoke spiritual experiences, too.  Many Baha'i devotionals do include interludes of music, and I think I should try to focus on collecting and presenting music that will be relevant.  Outside of Seals and Crofts, I know of few Baha'i musical artists, and to be honest, I don't know why I haven't tried to look for more.  They're out there, I know. 

This doesn't mean that there will be a lightshow at the Madison Baha'i Center anytime soon. (And certainly no glowsticks.)   But I think maybe the pendulum in my mind is moving back towards the middle in regards to ritual.  I guess it's like eating at a restaurant.  Usually, people don't go there just for the food--the service and ambience are essential parts of the dining experience.

In general, I've been thinking more and more about the notion of employing artistic expression as a means of serving God.  We'll see what comes of it.