#19: Where words can’t take us.
Ritual and the human need to relate.
Hello dear reader! I’m in the middle of a whirlwind week of travel (New Orleans to Jacksonville to Cuba) and trying a bit of a shorter post. Fewer personal anecdotes but same amount of love! I would love to hear what you think of the (slightly) abbreviated format. On to the post…
Last week, I attended the interment of a combat veteran in Arlington National Cemetery.
Walking along the winding cemetery roads, we followed the horse-drawn caisson through row after row of white headstones — a different name, a different story, a different life engraved on each.
As the ceremony went on, I felt myself, my Sue-ness, relax and release a little: the playing of taps, the body-jolting 21-gun salute, the chaplain’s words, the otherworldly precision of military members in perfect unison. White gloves, crisp uniforms, majestic horses. The American flag. Standing among family and friends, I felt myself melt into them. We were sharing a moment beyond words. (There’s an “I” in community but it doesn’t run the show.)
At the end, the hugs were more meaningful than anything we could have come up with to say. So we didn’t really bother.
When I was younger, ritual, ceremony, and tradition seemed like things that kept people in the past, reminiscing about the “good ol’ days.” I was a modern woman, juggling a blossoming career with taking care of blossoming kids. I had stuff to do, productive stuff to do. So I bulldozed my way through life, too busy to notice what the lack of ritual meant for myself and my family.
Until Mike died and mystery entered my life.
“Ritual does not make mystery happen. It helps us see and experience something which is already real. It does not create the sacred, it only describes what is there and has always been there, deeply hidden in the obvious.” - Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom.
I have many rituals now that I treasure dearly:
Monday night caesar’s-salad-catch-up dinners with my daughter Kendall.
Sunday night belly-laugh-and-advice Zoom chats with my pal Juile.
Saturday morning newspaper reading on my screen porch.
Weekly pilgrim walks where I hike six-ish hours without headphones or conversation.
Some are seemingly more “sacred” than the others. But in their own ways, they all make space for what is “deeply hidden in the obvious” to come to the surface of my consciousness where I can properly appreciate it.
Bird songs. Dappled sunlight. The rough yet soft rustle of newspaper pages. The irreplaceable comfort and goofiness of a decades-long friendship. My daughter, soon to go off to college, telling me about her heart. The preciousness of the here and now.
But many of these traditions are solo or duo. Just me and someone close and the present moment.
Arlington opened up a new dimension of ritual for me: how it connects you not just to the present or to yourself or to those you already know… but to total strangers. And turns them into people you trust.
While merging onto the highway after leaving the funeral, an article I read years ago popped into my head: “How ‘The Simpsons’ became a shared language for my generation” by Tom Whyman. (You’re thinking, Arlington National Cemetery and The Simpsons?? Stick with me and it’ll make sense!)
Whyman explores how The Simpsons created a new form of “language” among the early Millennial generation that could communicate with few or no words, while instantaneously creating a shared bond, intimacy, and compassion out of seemingly nothing.
For me, decidedly not an early Millennial, this happens when I learn that someone I just met went to the same Presbyterian church as me growing up, or swam the distance events (500- or 1000-yards) in similar small-town high-school swim meets, or has also watched every episode of M*A*S*H. Suddenly they become four-dimensional. I can relate to them, I feel like I know them, I can be myself around them. I see them. I trust them. I have compassion for them. I share inside jokes with them.
They aren’t just a background character moving through the TV show of my life, disappearing as soon as they move off screen.
They have a life of their own, full of joy and grief, love and loss, rituals and traditions just as I do.
I still hardly know them but I feel a kinship with them. I feel a resonance between our shared experience, shared humanity.
Quoting The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han, Whyman explains, “Rituals, [Han] writes, ‘bring forth a community without communication’, by allowing participants to recognise one another through certain symbols. This, Han implies, is required for real communication to take place: without rituals, our lives lack structure, and we are unable to recognise one another as shared participants in life, in the world.”
I have been working with veterans and active-duty military daily in my defense contractor job for years. I would say I understand them well thanks to sheer quantity of time spent together. And yet, after attending the ceremony at Arlington, I see them more clearly.
I see their devotion to protecting ordinary Americans. I see their sense of duty and honor. I see their loss — the friends, brothers, sisters that didn’t make it back.
I see what they give up to serve.
I see their hearts.
There are some levels of connection we just can’t achieve without sharing something beyond words. I can’t believe that I, Sue The Connection Junkie, didn’t see this sooner! Rituals make community out of strangers.
And in a world where everyone is talking, writing, tweeting, memeing (myself included!), it feels more important than ever to reconnect with the rituals that take us deeper, into the parts of ourselves that either we can’t or don’t dare to express through all. that. talking... Our vulnerability, our history, our mortality, our humanity.
As Emina Melonic puts it, “To be human is to have an interior life and a soul that, like any life form, needs tending and care. Rituals — be they festivals, or of a religious nature, or simply sitting down with family and friends and sharing a meal — are a way to not only connect but to relate. Every time we engage in a ritual, we affirm that human beings are relational and that our relationships transcend the chaotic impositions of the current times.”
In other words, to be human is to have an interior life and a soul that needs witnessing. Needs acknowledgement. Needs connection.
Needs to stand side-by-side with another soul, hip-deep in the roiling river of life, wide-eyed and wordless, taking it all in, knowing the other is with them, experiencing it too.
Right next to you,
Sue
Enough about me! What about you?
What are your treasured rituals? Can you look at them with renewed appreciation and notice how they deepen and enrich your life?
What is a shared ritual (watching a TV show, doing crossfit, going through communion, having a bar or bat mitzvah, burying a loved one) that immediately connects you to someone?
Mourn a ritual you have lost over time, and reflect on what you miss about it.
What is a ritual you would like to create? What do you hope to get out of it?
Very well done.
Awesome post… My ritual is to send pictures to family members so that they see what I see… It’s always fun to get them in return… That way you can see it right where they are at that time at that place… And share that moment with them, no matter where you are in the world…