Worship, Gotham!

For the last two hours, I've been suffering from what I think may be my first-ever migraine. Advil hasn't worked and I hate bright light right now. But, through the pain, I received an email that got me excited and, if only for a few seconds, made me forget my pain.

My friend Adam Who-Is-Hopefully-On-The-Path-To-Becoming-a-Rabbi, sent me the following email:

Dude,

We've gone to Hare Krishna prayer worship, I've taken you to
Reformed temples, you've taken me to Catholic and Lutheran Church. Now
that I've got some free time (and I feel like I need to learn more about
different religious services since I am reading my History of Religion book and
don't understand the differences between religions), do you want to do a tour of
the most impressive houses of worship services in NYC? I figure we should
re-hit Catholic and Reformed Jewish (just for St. Pats and Temple Emanu-El), but
I am more curious about other religions and denominations of Christianity.
The Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Ba'hai and the like will take some time to research,
but just off the top of my head we will need to go to Trinity Church for
Episcopalian, Jewish Theological Seminary for Conservative Judaism and Society
for the Advancement of Judaism for Reconstructionist Judaism.

Let me know if you are interested.

Adam

This is the kind of email that makes my day.

I long for the days when I had easy access to various religious services, leaders, and scholars. When I was a student at NYU I was the Vice President of the Newman Club at the Catholic Center. In addition to the regular Newman Club meetings and Sunday Mass, I had access to the Islamic Center just across the hall, met a few times with the Rabbi at the Bronfman Center, hung out and talked religion with Ba'hai friends, went to Buddhist meditation days, attended ecumenical services with other Christian groups, and broke bread with the children of Abraham.

Adam sent a follow-up email saying that perhaps going to the "impressive" houses of worship may limit our experience and I agree. We should go to the places where the rabbis, imams, pastors, gurus, etc will spend time with us, teach us about their religion, and let us ask questions.

This will probably require arranged meeting times, etc. But, if you happen to be a religious leader and are reading this, your services would be greatly appreciated as we set forth to explore the religions of NYC.

Worship, Gotham! <-- that's what I've decided our series is going to be called. I could see this becoming a great television show, a sort of lay God Squad. If only we had access to a camera and production studio . . . .