More important than a definition of ritual is a sense for it.
Ritual is nothing if not a sensuous activity.
A sense for ritual arises from participation in rituals that activate the senses.
You don’t have to define the word automobile to drive one.
You don’t have to define the word computer to use a word processor.
You don’t define ritual any more than lovers define love.
You define words, “ritual” and “love,” or use images.
The quotation marks remind you to exercise humility,
to remember that you are not defining reality.
You are defining words.
Maybe you know people who cook or garden
by actions rather than by recipe or guidebook.
Even though they may, or may not,
be able to explain what they do,
they do a fabulous job
because they have a sense for it.
“How much baking powder?” I once asked my grandmother.
Her reply was tossed off predictably, “You know, just enough.”
“Where do hollyhocks grow best?” I asked her.
“Oh, you know, wherever it seems right.”
The craving for how-to manuals
attests to the lack of a sense for ritual.
If you have a sense for something,
you don’t need books.
What you need most can’t be provided by books.
The problem with do-it-yourself manuals
is that they can’t cultivate a sense for a ritual,
a felt, embodied knowledge that enables you to act
constructively in situations calling for a ritual response.
§
Maybe you’ve seen the film Babette’s Feast.
I have.
Repeatedly.
Ritualistically.
Babette, a distinguished French chef, displaced by dire political circumstances, arrives in a
northern, starkly Protestant Danish village beset with petty grievances and perpetual backbiting.
Taken in by two elderly sisters, daughters of the local religious leader, Babette cooks their simple,
tasteless food in the manner to which they are accustomed.
After years of service in this austere household, Babette comes into money and wants to express her
gratitude to the sisters by spending all of it on a feast for them and their alcohol-free communi
The village is bereft of culinary art,
but the religious community
agrees to suffer through an ordeal of French food.
It would be a greater sin to refuse.
From bafflement and barely concealed disgust at eating French turtle soup,
they proceed to delight, even ecstasy.
In eating tasty food and drinking fine wine,
confession and mutual forgiveness
flow like a river of pure mountain water.
By the end of Babette’s feast,
those who ate her lavish meal
notice the beauty of the weather-beaten faces
sitting around the table
and the fullness of the night sky.
These revelations
reveal nothing new,
only what was not seen or not tasted
before the meal.
Babette’s Feast depicts what ritual is supposed to be.
The film a ritual
that replaces ritual-as-routine
with ritual-as-attentive action.
The film implies that
religious rites are ordinary acts
attentively practised
displacing human conventions
and revealing what is most deeply desirable
most fully human
and cosmically orienting
I keenly remember a young minister in my faith community turning the sacrament of Communion inside out. She put a wide variety of food on a table. She “set” the table with a brightly patterned cloth and other items chosen for their welcoming spirit. We were invited to come up and make plates for ourselves while lively music played in place of traditional hymns. Of all the communions I have participated in this one continues to be the most memorable and meaningful. She breathed life into tradition and elevated it to ritual.
This experience contrasts a Communion taken years previous when my First Nations foster children accompanied me to church. Folks were welcoming and thrilled to meet the the children but one elder minister took exception to the youngest child reaching for and eating the bread. He took me aside afterwards and chastised me for letting the young boy participate. It is a religious scar that hasn’t fully healed…i do not think of it often but when I do I remember exactly the differences between faith and religion and how prone rigid adherence to rules interferes with the Sacred.
I was “unchurched” as a child, my father an ardent atheist, except when we visited his mother. He ensured his mother got to services in the neighbouring community (she didn’t drive) when we visited on holidays. I loved going as a child and hearing my parents sing beside me in the pew. Later my grandmother stopped attending church because the new minister changed the routine of communion for one Sunday. The offending incident had been having individuals literally break bread together, instead of cutting neat pieces ahead of time to be served on dainty plates. The minister had baked a beautiful hearty loaf and broke it in half during her prayer. The congregation had then been invited to come up to the table and break off a piece to eat in communion. She invited them to take what they needed. I still remember how hurt my Grandma was…one could almost say, scandalized. She simply could not get past what she deemed to be the audacity of the female minister. However, I also remember being intensely curious about that minister and somehow loving her despite never meeting. She stood for something I could not articulate at the time. I now believe she understood ritual while my grandmother found comfort in routine.
However, I do not either woman was wrong or unfaithful, rather, sadly divided by misunderstanding. I continue to be intensely drawn towards Grace that can bless and heal such differences. I try to attend both.
Christian rituals were fairly stodgy until the feminist and the LGBTQ+ movements. My grandmother controlled our little Methodist Church in New Mexico, even though the pastors, always male, imagined they did. My great grandmother was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. So the imagined Great Grandmother in Stone is an attempt rescue the Grands in our imagined ritual lives.
Ron, everytime you write I feel I grow, I expand. everytime you write my heart gets three times bigger. It is fascinating how after so much work and in-depth theory studies, you are able to offer us this gem of ritual definition. You keep unpacking to us what ritual is for us. It is a wonder to see your trajectory and how you have given us so much to think, to do, to sense. This rendering of ritual seems to stand like a Koan for all of your studies. But only those who know your work will fully understand that. Thank you my teacher!
Claudio, you are now my teacher. You became the clown I aspired to be. Congratuations.
Ron, Your work always conveys attentiveness to what makes us most fully human. Thank you for reminding me to see “Babette’s Feast” again, and soon. Mainly, keep on keeping on with remarks that harbor wisdom, and the always “more to come” of ritual….
Thanks, Don for responding. You are so well tuned to the “more to come.” I deeply appreciate your writing and skill with music and worship.
To comment is to connect
that I willingly do
with gratitude and love
peace surmounting
an ocean wide gap
gesture creating
a map for a moment
to meaning and memory
of longing once shared
for community of people
for balance of planet
for joy and befriending
for motion and jest
for futures as presents
from roots in a past
that is loving and searching
and finding within
what it is we are sharing
what it is we have lost
for a patient enduring
for a creation to come
Damiaan, your poetry is wonderful. Thank you for continuing to create.
Sorry clicked the wrong button.. I got tired of my church [and other church] rituals as they all seemed to emphasize routine… and reward the passive following of the audience. I enjoy watching Manchester United play football [not as good on line]; there is a community that provides constant feedback…. And I participate “as if” i was on the sideline coaching- Shouting at the players [and referees, of course] with constant commentary.
Sometimes I have to straighten up my lazy-boy to stand up to emphasize my wisdom… And be careful not to spill my drink [coffee or beer] nor dump my nachos and dip all over the floor… I know it is stupid and none of the participants are listening. [Actually, when I was the coach of many soccer teams the players and certainly the refs never listened.]
I share my comments on line with both fans and haters…. And interestingly enough… we are still friends… Thanks for letting me see this as an “Attentive Action Ritual”.
John Macaloon, University of Chicago, has written a lot about the Olympics as sport, ritual, and performance. You might look at This Great Symbol.
I will check him out…
Ron: This has to be you… I even heard you reading it with me. I understand better why I liked
Babette’s Feast…
Hey, John, either you’re magical or I am…if you could hear me reading it to you.
I have no magic, so it must be you…
Brother Grimes, Have you seen Reservation Dogs? You have to stick with it for a bit. . . but sense of ritual begins to hold it all together.
Love from Rochester, jim
I have seen it, and you are quite right, Jim.
I agree with what you write about how-to manuals (“… for Dummies”). I forced myself to read half a dozen before I started screenwriting, then concluded that they contribute nothing to becoming a writer. “Cultivating a sense” for something takes time, dedication, and a lot of patience. It’s hard!
P.S. I haven’t seen Babette’s Feast but it’s on my list now 🙂
Bram, yes, see the film. It’s out on CD too. And you’re right, it does take a lot of time cultivate a sense for anything.
What more is there to say, except: “An artist is never poor.”
My son, a musician, is monetarily poor. But I understand what you’re saying: he’s rich in spirit, rich in imagination.
This is a fine, concise, accessible appeal for attention to something the culture at large has grown lamentably deaf to.
Tim, you’re right, but you have done a lot of help people cultivate a ritual sensibility.
Hi Ron, Thank you for the above, a reminder or refresher to see and do and relate in away that is not prescribed but in just the way that is right.
Juanita and I light candles on our table for supper every night, just enough to make an occasion out of eating together.
Wesley, even the smallest thing–candle lighting, handshaking, hugging–are ritualistic ways of marking occasions.