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Ceremony and Ritual
The world of ceremony and ritual, while undoubtedly a wonderful world, replete with possibility, rich with meaning, effervescing with emotional intensity, is far too wide and deep a subject to address in one article. However, that’s not stopped me before, so I’d best crack on...We all like ceremony and ritual. Look at religions; at freemasonry; tea ceremonies; obsessive compulsive disorder. This love can be hidden, though. This is because we love ceremony and ritual in the same way we love poetry and formal dancing: We love it when it’s done right, for us, when it’s accessible, personal, bespoke – but too often, when offered in a traditional one-size-fi ts-all, take-it-it’s-good-for-you, trustme-I’m-an-expert way, it doesn’t do it for us. It’s dull, stuffy,and worst of all, meaningless. We can take any amount of dull stuffi ness if, at the heart of it all, there’s meaning. If it moves us, takes us to a place inside and holds us there. I’ve sat through so many dull and lifeless ceremonies in my time. Yet the truth is there isn’t one I would willingly have missed because they’re better than nothing. There’s something in there for us. The fact of engaging with ritual, even if it’s one we don’t really relate to, or agree with, that confounds and perplexes us. Even better is something with life, life that refl ects your life, that distils and amplifies, reflects and respects, deepens and depicts. We need to tell people we love them. We need to say Hello, Goodbye, God Bless, in deep, nontrivial ways. We need to do this together, to support and be supported, to hear and be heard. We need to bear witness to grief and joy, to the passing of years, the shedding of tears, the making and breaking of bonds.
by mh
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