I spent this morning in a Catholic Church, for the funeral of someone I had never met. (Someone who had lived a very long and very happy life.)
This was the first time I had been to mass since a cousin’s wedding over ten years ago. And before that, I guess it had to have been sometime in high school. I don’t remember.
The Church has many rules about who can receive communion and who can’t. I haven’t tried to count the ways, but it’s pretty clear I am disqualified for a few reasons I can think of using my foggy CCD-memory (side note: I never knew what “CCD” stood for, and in elementary school we just made up raunchy jokes about it…anyone?)
So no, I’m not Catholic any longer. Though I do appreciate the general ethos in a Joseph-Campbell-y (yes, that’s an adjective, why do you ask?), universal-truth sort of way.
But it was totally moving and powerful to be there, in that place with those people.
Even tough they weren’t my people and it was no longer my place.
Part of it was the muscle-memory. I heard words and smelled smells from childhood, so it pulled on a string.
But another part was just being anywhere with people who have a shared intention.
The building, the books, the music, the prayers. The incense and candles (mmm, candles.)
The things that say, here is our purpose.
This.
Now.
What do we do when the rituals we were born into don’t fit us any longer?
It’s tempting to play them by rote, going through the motions. Even if they’re not quite right, they do pack a powerful nostalgia hit (which is totally legitimate in its own way, of course.)
It’s much harder to create intention for ourselves.
When I got married, we sat down to write our ceremony and it was pretty much terrifying to realize that we were starting from scratch.
Like, who are we to do this? We’re just going to make this up?
But after the panic came the slightest glimmer of exhilaration, which kept growing until it was this sort of enormous, expansive freedom.
Hell, yeah. We’re us. And we are so totally going to make this up.
I don’t know where I’m going with this other than to say: Rituals. I’ve been thinking about ‘em.
The biggies that get all the attention, like marriage and death.
But also the small ones, the everyday things.
One of my current favorites is lighting candles before we sit down to dinner every night.
It originally started because we didn’t have power in our dining room during a homebrewed electrical project. But now it’s just the thing we do before we start dinner.
Where we say this, now.
(Although come to think of it we still don’t have power in the dining room.)
Anyway…what rituals have you totally made up?
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{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Twitter: AmberStrocel
December 21, 2009 at 8:42 pm
I have two children, so we make up rituals all the time. There is a song that I sing when we go upstairs for bed, and a different one for brushing teeth, and another for getting dressed. There are bedtime rituals like night lights and stories. Kids love routines, which is sort of just another word for ritual. And I am flying by the seat of my pants and inventing all of them on the fly.
Amber´s last blog ..(In)Adequate Supervision
Twitter: elizabethhalt
December 22, 2009 at 9:41 pm
I love the small ones the most. Come to think of it, lots of them involve the pup. Interesting. But here are two: Whenever I leave Atlas at home and head out, I say, “Goodbye, little puppy, I love you, be good, I’ll be home soon.” After I do a reiki session, I touch my heart and say “thank you”.
elizabeth´s last blog ..here comes sinter klaus
I had a similar experience recently as my (now) husband and I planned our wedding. We’re both Jewish, but didn’t want a strict Jewish wedding. I haven’t been to synagogue in years. And although I don’t agree with a lot of the beliefs, I find comfort in some of the traditions and rituals. I sometimes say that we had a “choose your own adventure” kind of Jewish wedding. We chose what we wanted included in the wedding and found some symbolic gestures from outside the religion that meant something to us.
As we enter our fourth month of marriage, it’s interesting to see new rituals popping up in our daily lives, like pouring one water and one soda for dinner so that we can share each other’s drinks. Rituals form out of habit and familiarity, it seems. I can’t wait to see what rituals form as we move forward…
Thanks for this post. It got me thinkin’!
darrah´s last blog ..view 17 :: the simple life
Twitter: pearlmattenson
December 23, 2009 at 2:01 am
creating intentionality and purpose resonate very much with ritual for me. In my life I had always had many rituals that were associated with religious practice. And then we had kids, and they are ritual junkies. Almost anything we did once became a ‘ritual’ becasue they loved it and wanted it again. So now our lives are chock full of rituals.
And I think rituals are like an eternal camera- taking snapshots of the meaningful moments
Pearl Mattenson´s last blog ..12.22.09
This time of year I have a baking ritual. I love baking, but this is about the only time in the year that I do it in any sort of volume. I bake and bake and bake and then I give it away. I love it. Baking calms me right down, mixing in the eggs and sugar, butter and flour into all sorts of different creations creates a now to this season that I love. It also is done in much loving memory of my grandmother who used to be a baking goddess. Now she is gone I’ve taken on the mantle and do the Christmas baking. Love it.
Wormy´s last blog ..The Turning Point
Great post –
I love ritual and have created lots of it in different situations – I really believe that the symbolism of ritual acts can be amazingly powerful – in everyday rituals, yes, but also in larger ones.
To me, it’s too bad when we just let the tradition totally dictate what we’re going to do, without learning about why we do it, and having the opportunity to form it in a way that’s most significant to the people involved.
A couple of years ago, I was honored to be asked to officiate at the wedding of a dear friend – partly because she wanted me to create a ritual that would meet their desires to have something that was meaningful to them, and yet would not be excessively uncomfortable for their families, some of whom have very conservative beliefs.
It was an amazing journey for me to research, write and perform that ritual. I was honored to do it.
Be well!
Andy
http://binauraljourneys.com
Andy Dolph´s last blog ..Music that moves me
what rituals have I totally made up? well, pretty much all of them, Eileen!
kinda like belief systems…you know, B.S.
and what to do when they don’t work anymore?..get rid of them and adopt a new one that does!
thanks for the thoughtful post,
Mtn Jim
Mtn Jim Fisher´s last blog ..Time, Freedom, and Choice
Love this post! I resonate with so much of it…from the not knowing what CCD stands for to the liking the shared intention of a group gathered together in ritual. While I may not want to be part of that particular group, I do see the value in rituals and would like to create some for myself. I suppose I do have some now that I’m thinking of it…like doing Art Every Day Month for the last 7 years. That’s an every November ritual. But I’d like to have some for holidays, some with the hubster, some for seasons maybe, some smaller ones for my home. Something to think about for sure!
Leah´s last blog ..Honoring the Dark, Welcoming the Light
This is wonderful Eileen.
I’m very pleased to have the encouragement to look at my rituals.
If I’m home when the sun sets, I sit down and have a moment of spectacular natural beauty all to myself.
I’m considering organising client session times next year so I’m available for the sunset.
Before my gentlemanfriend and I start to cook together, we put on some music, pour a glass of wine, have a little ‘ching’ of the glasses then start shuffling and chopping away. We love that.
And, this afternoon, at 3pm, as I am every year, I will be sitting with a glass of (so dry it’s almost salty) sherry, feeling all expansive and a little teary as the Kings College Cambridge choir soloist starts the concert with Once in Royal David’s City.
I’m not religious in the slightest but the church organ and whole choir singing is so incredibly touching and rousing.
I’ll be thinking more about this for 2010.
Pauline Esson´s last blog ..It’s coming….
i love this post too, eileen.
my ritual is cleaning up the kitchen before going to bed. i love getting up in the morning to a clean kitchen – puts me in a great mood every time.
when i have something to brew on, i usually find something to clean as a way to think it through.
there is a lot of comfort for me in the traditional jewish stuff i grew up on and also a growing realization that there are other ways of meditation and prayer that feel more comforting to me which i rely on more often than my traditional judaism.
your post makes me appreciate different parts of my life that i’d previously overlooked.
thankss.
char brooks´s last blog ..How The Littlest Things Can Make The Biggest Difference In Your Life and In Your Health
Twitter: alightheart
December 30, 2009 at 12:09 pm
This. Now.
Totally beautiful!
Thank you – made my head go quiet.
Andrew Lightheart @alightheart´s last blog ..How to make sure you fight at Christmas
I loved your post here and relate to the comments posted about big and the more earthly rituals. I also find meaning and hope in cleaning the kitchen before bed, and this ritual sustains me more than the bigger rituals I’ve done, but sometimes you have to make big rituals, too.
Like… my dad died, and he hadn’t been the nicest person to me, but my mother shut me out, and there was no funeral, and I was so glad my dad was released from his illness, but I still grieved about so much stuff from the past, so I made my own funeral for him. I went to the coast and let go of a lot of hard, concrete things into the water and also let some flowers be captured by the waves.
It was hard to do. My stomach was in my throat because I was so aware of the power of what I was doing and didn’t want to screw up for him or for me. I just tried hard to focus on releasing him and releasing myself.
I did really well. The ritual helped me so much, and I haven’t been slowed down in my grieving of my father. I feel free to feel whatever I need to feel because I have done right by his place in my life — and that is something that a regular funeral wouldn’t have been able to do.
Twitter: evalazza
December 31, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Oh, Cathy what a moving story. I feel like grief is one of the more important times for ritual–like, it is so easy to ignore it or self-medicate or whatever. To say “this, now” to grief is so scary and uncomfortable. And yet it’s the only way through, I think. Thanks for sharing this.
And thanks to everyone for sharing your rituals, I feel so lucky that such thoughtful people are here