Within our Unitarian tradition we are free
to create the marriage ceremony that fits the needs of the individuals. There
are of course certain words that must be said within the service, for it to be a legal
wedding, but beyond that the ritual is open. I recall there were one or two
issues over the first wedding I had the pleasure to conduct for two women. They
had to make their vows to wife and wife and one was a little uncomfortable with
this, but there was no bending there legally. That said the rest of the
ceremony allowed us to shape the service that they wanted.
I recently met a couple one of whom engages
in Viking reenactments. With this in mind we are going to ensure that we include
some of this tradition in the ceremony. This will include a particular ritual,
namely a Viking guard of honour as the newly married couple leave the chapel,
Covid restrictions permitting of course.
Obviously due to the circumstances of the
last year or so our rituals around rites of passage and worship have had to
adapt to a certain degree. I was thinking of this as I invited people forward
to share readings, last Sunday. People are asked to sanitise their hands and
remove their masks to speak. Other rituals have had to adapt too, such as how
we greet one another. We do not hug and or shake hands as we would have done in
the past. We have found other ways to greet and show affection. I have adopted
the Eastern tradition of bowing, I like it and wonder if I will continue it
once we finally get through all this.
This all got me thinking about rituals in
general. We all engage in them, even if we are not aware of it. Life in so many
ways is made up of rituals. Just think about your daily and weekly activities,
they involve oh so many rituals. Just think about how you have had to adapt
them over the last year or so.
There are of course formal rituals that
take place in a time and place, such as wedding ceremony or an act of worship.
Think of an act of remembrance or a funeral. There also less formal rituals
that we engage in too. Are these rituals any less sacred or important? I don’t
think so. The social anthropologist Edmund Leach has argued that ritual ought
to be understood as existing on a spectrum, stating:
“Actions fall into place on a continuous scale. At one extreme we have
actions, which are entirely profane, entirely functional, technique pure and
simple; at the other we have actions, which are entirely sacred, strictly
aesthetic, technically non-functional. Between these two extremes we have the
great majority of social actions, which partake partly of the one sphere and
partly of the other. From this point of view technique and ritual, profane and
sacred, do not denote types of action but aspects of almost any kind of
action.”
The suggestion is that every activity, even the seemingly mundane is a
kind of ritual, if treated in that way. What makes it ritualistic, it would
seem, is the pace and intention of the activity; it is about the attention and
symbolism adopted; it is about the meaning we make in conducting the activity; it
is about the meaning that we put into the activity and object, it is about
intentionality; it is about recognising the sacredness of what we are doing.
If you think about some of the rituals we have adapted and adopted this
last year or so, surely they have been done in recognition of the sacredness of
life. In engaging in them we are paying
respect to each other, in love and consideration. They are deeply religious activities,
they have a deep love and spirit flowing through them. The cleansing we have
engaged in has become deeply ritualistic. They are not merely habit though, they
are done in love and consideration of others.
I suspect that some of the cleansing rituals that are part of many
religious traditions began for similar practical reasons. Yes, they are about
respect for the Divine, but also one another. When I bow to others I am recognising
their sacred uniqueness, I am doing the same when I cleanse my hands when using
the equipment in the gym or wearing a mask when going food shopping at the
supermarket.
I observed some fascinating rituals when sat in the barbers chair a couple
of weeks ago. I visit this barber regularly and I almost know exactly what he
will do next and how he will do so as he cuts my hair and shaves certain
elements, including ears and even a trimming of the eyebrows. Some elements are
more difficult at the moment due to the wearing of masks, especially around the
ears. As he comes close to finishing I observe him putting a new blade on the
razor as he shaves around the loose hairs and around my ears and hair line. It
is a marvel to watch the attention to detail, a craftsman at his work, all completed
in silence. I like him because he doesn’t speak as he works. There is care and
attention, there is deep intention, it feels like a sacred ritual is taking
place. Ok he is paid for the work, but there is more going on in this ritual.
It is a deeply religious activity in my eyes. To this man the work really
matters.
How we are in the world matters and the way we act toward others really matters. We can do so recognising the sacredness of each other and all life or we can do so without any care or attention at all. I suspect our little moment by moment rituals of living help us to do so with love and attention and with deep intention, a bit like the barber I go and visit every few weeks.
Ritual is
about repetition, but it also about the care attention that we put into the
repeated action. When such repetition is done through the spirit of love, those
seemingly mundane activities become sacred action and in so doing we begin to
sanctify life.
Sport is one area where you witness all kinds of ritual. Whether it is a
golfer perfecting their swing, or a batsman his forward defensive stroke or in
more modern times the reverse sweep. Or the different warm up rituals that
teams go through before a game and again at half time. There also the other
rituals that take place before the game begins as the team meet and honour one
another. One that has stood out over the last year has been the taking of the
knee, in acknowledgement of racial intolerance, again an act of love
recognising the sacredness of life. It is response to the fact that some life
is not treated equally due purely to the colour of someone’s skin. Something
else that we humans ought to have evolved out of by now, sadly we have not yet
done so.
Everything we do in life can be done
ritually and thus can become meaning filled. Even the most simple basic task can be done reverentially and thus can become
meaning filled. We sanctify life, if we live reverently. If we see life as a
deeply sacred thing. If we bless it with our true presence. The real beauty of
life lays in the ordinary, in observing and experiencing the meaning of life in
the seemingly mundane. By so doing the great moments are created.
Ronald L. Grimes captures this near perfectly
in “Marrying and Burying: Rites of Passage in a Man’s Life”
"Ritual practice is the activity
of cultivating extraordinary ordinariness. It is necessary, because human
activity has a kind of entropy about it; life, like love, runs down. Things get
tiresome and difficult. Body and soul cry out for something different, hence
the impetus to ritualize. But if the ritually extraordinary becomes a goal or
is severed from ordinariness, it loses its capacity to transform, which, after
all, is what rites of passage are supposed to do."
To live spiritually alive, is to recognise the sacredness of the ordinary, the seemingly mundane. To do this all we need to do is pay attention to the world and the people around and truly inhabit the space in which we live and breathe and share our being. All we have to do is to pay attention, to live in such a way as to recognise the sacred in everything.
There is something very powerful about coming together in love; there is something very powerful in opening ourselves up to one another and recognising what connects us what makes us wholly human, by living ritually we can begin to do so. Worshipping together is one way to do so, but it can happen in all aspects of life. It can occur in deep encounters with others, when love and attention is paid.
The congregations I serve gather together seeking something, as we engage in the ritual of worship and other activities spiritual and secular, something that has been challenged over the last year or so. People come for a variety of reasons, some are not sure why they come, but if they don't they feelt hat soemthing is misssing. When we congregate for worship we attempt to create through words, music, silence, imagery and more a sacred time and space that will enable us to open our hearts and connect to the Greater mysteries of life, to the web of being, to know the spirit of life and love, to experience the Divine and for this to impact on how we live our day to day lives.
In this sacred space at the sacred time where generations have worshipped we opened their hearts to the greater mysteries of life. In so doing we begin to connect to the greater realities and mysteries of existence. It is this time that can help us to open up the lives we find ourselves in and to pay attention to the life around us and to touch the people we meet in our daily living. In so doing we make all life sacred, by blessing it with our presence.
The hope is that
when folk leave this time and space that they are touched in those deeper aspects of their humanity and that they bless the world
with their sacred humanity by recognising the sacredness of each person they we
meet and bless life with their loving presence.
Here is a video devotion based on this "blogspot"
