My mother is doing a ten-day tour of the Holy Land in a couple of weeks.  She called last night to tell me where she's hidden her will. 

I don't fear for her physical safety, but I am a little worried for her nonetheless.  I think she would like to have what some call a religious experience.  I think she is thinking she will have one there.  I think she is trembling in anticipation of that, and I am hoping she'll be disappointed.

My mother comes from the phlegmatic rather than the flamboyant side of the family, so I don't think she's going to get lucky in Jerusalem. 

But I do sort of understand the feeling. 

When I was terrorizing the town at seventeen, I went on a lark one school night with a couple of friends to an all-black pentecostal church in the inner city that was having services.  We're talking snake healing and speaking in tongues here. 

We didn't have the internet back then, so I had never seen anything like it.  But the sense of sheer belief in that church was so seismic it really was revelatory.  I was too cool to admit it, but it affected me deeply.  I felt for the first time that I was aware of the desire to believe in things I did not believe in, the desire to be completely transformed by them into someone who could believe in things he couldn't believe in.

We were sitting way in the back, my three skinny white friends and I, and the preacher actually called us up — it was sort of like Blue Man Group.  It's why ever since I have refused to go to those kinds of shows, where they "break down the fourth wall."  We managed to stay put and then slip out through the narthex during the snake healing.

Now, I never went back to that church.  So for a long time the experience remained something singular.  At least until I went to my first gay club, which was in some ways surprisingly similar.  I probably could have gotten past it a lot sooner had I simply gone back to that church a couple more times. 

I would then have seen the regulars, gotten to know each one's routine, started to see the elements present in all social interaction revealed in all manner of petty intrigue amongst the parishioners. 

"Oh, there goes Barbara, babbling again and thinking she's fooling anybody that she's speaking in tongues!"

"There's old Eddy — been cured more than a honey ham!"

You know, that sort of thing.

I'll tell ya, I was very lucky to grow up in a totally undisciplined household.  And my mother has benefited greatly from a natural lack of fanaticism.  Either that or the rest of us have been lucky she's too shy to express it.  Of course, there are always ways that curious sorts like myself can get carried away (not to reveal my trade secrets, but have you tried Soy Vay?) without having to go the full Messiah.  But the desire to lose oneself in a crowd can be pretty powerful. 

And the apocalyptic personality is disinclined to be satisfied with life's little moments of transcendence. They're looking for the Big One.  That's what happens to some American — overwhelmingly protestant — tourists on these Holy Land Tours, who fall victim to the Jerusalem Syndrome, and wander the streets thinking they're someone they've read about in the Bible.

My hope is that should my mother find this brand of transcendence on her Holy Land Tour, she will rock out as Mary Magdalene.  I mean, if you're gonna be someone from the Bible, why not at least enjoy it, right?