I borrow a cranny at high noon, busily making it a hut, a smoky, damp abode of one whose speech is silence. A guest, I make myself at home. I huddle, back tight against a cool column, a tree of marble whose boughs arch into a cathedral. Sitting ravenously the ears continue to…
Consuming Ritual
19 August 2023
Ron Grimes
bodyfilmfuneral, commemorationgender, sexualitygesture, posturepassageperformance, play, entertainmentrites of passage
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Sacred Rites and Rituals, a forty-five minute film produced by FilmRoos for A&E’s Ancient Mysteries Series helped shape public attitudes toward ritual. These attitudes are now echoed by other media presentations of ritual. I was one of the scholarly consultants for the film and know the process that lies behind the production. I kept…
Exorcising Exorcism
On January 17, 2020, the BBC reported on an exorcism in Panama: They were performing a ritual inside the structure. In that ritual, there were people being held against their will, being mistreated. All of these rites were aimed at killing them if they didn’t repent their sins. Inside the makeshift church, officers found a…
Crowbait
4 April 2023
Ron Grimes
apocalypsearms, guns, weaponsbodygender, sexualityhealinghumormetaphor, symbolreligion, spiritualityviolence
2 Comments
by Ronald L. Grimes Shirley snapped the pearl buttons on the cuffs of her ragged western shirt as she stepped out of her Airstream into the dark at Spirit Hill Trailer Park. The gravel crunched under her boots. A flutter of wings. She stops. Listens. Peers over a clump of scrub oak bushes. Whispers, “Angels…
A Pack a Day
2 December 2022
Ron Grimes
aging, childhood, adolescencebodydeath, mortality, the deaddiseasefamilyfunerals, cemeterieshealingillnessmemoirreligion, spirituality
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I In the beginning lush San Diego was the Garden of Eden. At the end, when the tall steel gates closed behind them, Nelda said, “Let the Great Serpent have that dreadful place.” She was a riveter. Her husband Miles was a welder. Consolidated Aircraft had terminated their jobs at the end of World…
Why the “White Man” Can’t Dance
3 February 2021
Ron Grimes
bodyethnicity, racism, multiculturalismgesture, posturehealinghumormemoirmoving, mobilitymusicritual, festival
3 Comments
When I was turning 50, I signed up for an African dance course in Boulder, Colorado. Some of the dances, the teacher said, were “social,” some “sacred” or “ritualistic.” One afternoon during class I shorted out. The feet and hips couldn’t remember their assigned movements. The ass wouldn’t shake, and the drummer’s fine rhythms refused…
Scouting the Horizon
I’m always scouting. I have a propensity to watch the horizon. What is it you do when you “scout?” It’s hard to shake grade-B cowboy movies out of my imagination. Scouts rode ahead, over horizons, then back to the wagon train—usually with bad news unless San Francisco was just over the mountain. White Cavalry Scout…
Intimacy and Exposure
Friendship in the Covid Era Amigos por siempre The year is 1970. I’ve just finished a PhD. This is my first academic position. Hugo and I are teaching at the same university. He is teaching Spanish. I am teaching religious studies. One morning I hear an articulate stream of Spanish swearing echoing down the hall….
Troubling the Waters
Preface The United Nations declared 1981 as the International Year of Disabled Persons. “Troubling the Waters” is a play I wrote to mark the occasion and enable students to study ritual and performance by exploring a story in the Gospel of John. Since the characters are caricatures of students in the course, I have removed…
Reading Gestures
From left, Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. raise their hands to answer a question Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019, during a Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by ABC at Texas Southern University in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) If you read gestures, as ritual…
Liturgical Supinity, Liturgical Erectitude
On the Embodiment of Liturgical Authority This article was published quite some time ago, in 1993. Buried in an important but obscure journal, Studia Liturgica, it was rarely read. After the recent papal council on clergy sexual abuse, debates about gender, celibacy, and the priesthood are emerging in the media. It seemed the right time…
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