My first ever Kirtan; will there be more?

In order to tell you about my first ever Kirtan, I have to back up a bit.

During my recent trip to Italy, or maybe shortly after I returned, I found myself wondering what had happened to my spiritual side. This is a common occurrence for me: I will suddenly realize that I’ve left something by the wayside (ceramics, cooking, praying) and I need it back. One of the recurring themes in my life is my search for a new way of living and seeing through spiritual practices (church/meditation/prayer) and/or reading books by Christian mystics like Thomas Keating, or self-help gurus like Deepak Chopra, or Buddhiist teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh.

So it was in this frame of mind that I somehow ended up with a book entitled Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, which turned out to be a lot more entertaining and educational than I thought it would, and a DVD called Sacred Activism by Andrew Harvey, which blew me away - the man is powerful - and a newsletter from the San Francisco Food Bank, with an article by Sara Miles, about her conversion and subsequent founding of a Food Pantry at St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Episcopal Church. Just a few days after I read the article our office was closed (exactly on the day the Food Pantry is open), so I went down to volunteer and met Sara and all the wonderful people who make the food pantry happen, as well as the hundreds of lovely people it serves.

Two days later I enrolled in an icon painting (actually it’s called icon writing) workshop the church hosts on Sunday afternoons, taught by Betsy Porter. One week after that I attended my first service at St. Gregory’s. I went to the more sedate early morning service, where they do a little less dancing and singing around the altar than at the later service (I’m a little shy about hugging strangers and dancing in public if I haven’t had a drink or two, and Communion wine does not count). By the way, the church is incredibly beautiful, of a completely different beauty from what we saw in Italy, and adorned with larger than life images of dancing “saints” who circle the upper perimeter of the walls, dancing all around you. These figures, who for the most part are not your traditional saints, are the work of iconographer Mark Dukes.

OK, I’m almost at the Kirtan part.

At the service I was given the monthly newsletter with all the upcoming church events. For some reason “Give Thanks Kirtan with Krishna Das on Friday, November 9th” caught my eye. I had never heard of a Kirtan and I had never heard of Krishna Das, but I wanted to go. I found out it had to do with chanting and I bought my ticket. Last year the same event was held at The Mission Dolores, a Catholic church, and was initially scheduled to be held there again, but ended up being moved to St. Gregory’s. My lucky year. As I waited on the church steps Friday night and talked with a few people around me, I learned more about the form of worship called Kirtan, the devotional call-and-response chanting of the name(s) of God, and about the much loved Krishna Das . The woman next to me, who had attended many Kirtans led by Krishna Das, had driven 2 1/2 hours to be there that night and couldn’t say enough good things about him. When she heard I had come without knowing what I was coming to, she told me that God had brought me there and that I would be transported to a different place.

As the church filled with people who obviously were very familiar with KD (as he is also known) I can remember feeling, even though there was a sense of expectation in the air, how safe, tranquil and friendly the space was, not a common sensation in a crowd of strangers. I also enjoyed the fact that I, unlike most of the people there, did not know what I was waiting for.

Well, I loved it, and I loved him.

He has a warm voice and a warm personality, is totally unassuming, casual, and has a sense of humor. For two and a half hours he chanted and played the harmonium, while other musicians played the tabla, a violin and a cello, and we responded. A few danced on the side lines, while some sat on cushions on the floor in front of the musicians. Everyone was happy and smiling. It was all very simple. It was just like he said before starting to chant, when he was chatting with his audience. “Nothing much is going to happen here. I’m going to chant, you’re going to respond. If you find yourself thinking, just go back to the chanting. No problems are going to be solved tonight.”

One other thing he said that impressed me and has stuck with me since that evening, the sort of thing that you roll around in your head to see how it sounds from different angles, was this. He told us how he went to India with Ram Dass and spent several years there studying with Maharaj-ji Neem Karoli Baba, and when they asked their guru how to meditate, the guru answered “meditate like Christ”. When pressed to explain what that meant, how did Christ meditate? the guru answered “He lost himself in love”. This is the sort of statement that can give you an “ah-ha” moment, and the next moment mean nothing at all. It just dawned on me that maybe this is like a koan.

Anyway, while I did not really feel “transported to another place”, which I was actually relieved about, I was shocked when I looked at my watch and realized how long I’d been there. I left wishing it were not over and thinking “I could do this every week!”.

And guess what? Just when I was bemoaning the fact that I would not be able to see Krishna Das again in person for a year or more, until his next visit to San Francisco, and I was looking online for other Kirtans in town, what did I find but a workshop, right here in town, next Sunday, with Krishna Das! And it wasn’t sold out.