Ritual -- it's not just about how to eat a hot dog

"Ritual is the way you carry the presence of the sacred.
Ritual is the spark that must not go out." Christina Baldwin

When my oldest son was about three years old he developed a ritual for eating hot dogs. I could not give him the hot dog already placed in the roll with a condiment already on it. He needed to construct this masterpiece himself as if he didn't trust my ability to do it right. First, he had to carefully open the roll, then he had to place the hot dog inside, the he had to cover the whole thing with spaghetti sauce - not ketchup, not mustard, spaghetti sauce. As he ate the hot dog it would slip further and further back in the role with each bite, eventually leaving him with all dog and no roll. Then the utensils would come out, because every three-year-old knows you can't eat a spaghetti sauce covered hot dog with your hands! (Except his younger brother who, at the same age, would have used it as a paintbrush.)

Most mothers will share similar stories about kids and ice cream cones, kids and mashed potatoes, kids and pudding, and a host of other delights, because children seem to know instinctively that people are creatures of ritual.

Author Gertrud Mueller Nelson tells the beautiful story of her three year old daughter who had crafted a banner of old cloth scraps and a discarded pole so that she and her mother could have a "prescession." That way she was sure God would come down and dance with them. Nelson writes: "This small primitive allowed me to witness a holy moment, and I learned all over again how strong and real is that sense of wonder that children have - how innate and easy their way with the sacred. She had all the necessary elements for a religious ritual: a thing and an action. Here, religion was child's play. I had to wonder what happens in our development that as adults we become a serious folk uneasy in our relationship with God, out of touch with the mysteries we knew in childhood, restless, empty, searching to regain a sense of awe and a way, once again, to 'dance with God.' "

One of my favorite poets and writers, Kahlil Gibran, also wrote of this intrinsic desire of human beings to find ways of expressing, through symbol and ritual, their sense of oneness with God. Writing of a temple near Lebanon, where paintings of Ishtar, goddess of love adorn one wall and that of the Crucified Christ and Mary on the other, Gibran says, "Such a sight carries the poet to a world far away from the one in which he dwells and convinces the philosopher that men were born religious; they felt a need for that which they could not see and drew symbols, the meaning of which divulged their hidden secrets and their desires in life and death."

Before all things there was God, and deep within the recesses of our soul we know it, we feel it, and very often find ourselves restless and searching for that something we know but can't fully comprehend. That is how symbols are born and rituals begun.

In our own Church, where we come to know God through Christ, rituals and symbols rich in meaning become part of who we are, part of how we worship and offer thanks to our Lord, part of how we live the significant moments of life - and death - within the womb of our Creator. The sacraments bring us into the life of the Church and into communion with each other through the pouring of water, anointing with oil, through prayer and the laying on of hands.

Together these things bring us all into communion with the Lord - and there is nothing better for body or soul than dancing with God.

_______________________________

Mary Morrell is the author of Angels in High Top Sneakers from Loyola Press, a syndicated Catholic columnist and spiritual writer of more than 200 columns and articles in addition to several reflection journals.

Contact

Diocese of Metuchen
http://www.diometuchen.org NJ, US
Mary Regina Morrell - Associate Director, Office of Religious Education, 732 562-1990

Email

mmorrell@diometuchen.org

Keywords

ritual, sacrament, dance, God

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