I was thinking about this idea that I had during the "Rhetoric as Equipment for Living" conference in Ghent, Belgium, where I presented a paper on Kenneth Burke's use of the concept of "role" throughout his works; I thought about the relationship between proverbs and "forms" or "genres," between "law" and the spirit of the law, between the method for making laws and he method for making proverbs.
In post-Enlightenment, post-Protestant Christian thought, ritual is too often dismissed as superfluous, as mere "law," as unnecessary performance and as a left-over of a bygone age before Man's spiritual maturity in Christ--however, those who dismiss ritual in this way are, I think, only seeing specific rituals without treating the idea of ritual in essence, ritual as a method for knowing or experiencing.
God has always used rituals when he has revealed truths. He employed rituals when he revealed the old covenant to Moses; he employed ritual when he revealed the new covenant to his Apostles (holy supper; baptism; laying on of hands; washing of feet).
Be they as mundane as one's "morning ritual" or as significant as the investiture of authority that comes with swearing in a President, rituals are engaged in not only by every human being, but by every human society. What is it that makes this method we call "ritual" so universal? What causes us as human beings to return to ritual again and again? And if the ritualizing of action is so universal, so natural to human beings, doesn't it make sense that God would continue to talk to us and teach his children through this method as he has in the past? Modernist man thinks he has grown beyond the need for such silly things, and post-Enlightenment religion has been especially dismissive of ritual. But what manner of knowledge are we dismissing with our dismissal if this ancient, and apparently universal, human methodology?
Seeing ritual as more than merely primitive and magical, but as another method for acquiring knowledge, should change our perspectives on ritual: the specifics of ritual are not as important as the idea of ritual as a method of knowing and experiencing. The specifics or particular rituals may belong to particular places and times and situations, but while these specifics can themselves become parts of a larger tradition that connects human beings across generations (we are doing the exact same thing that the ancients did), these specifics are also malleable as the need for change arises (consider the Christian appropriation and revision of the ancient submersion ritual, and the ancient laying on if hands ritual by which royal authority and approbation and grace was transmitted). But people--both critics and adherents of ritual--become overly focused on the specific rituals and not on the idea of ritual as a method itself.
9 June 2013
In preparation for partaking of the sacrament of the holy supper in the Glendale ward of the LDS church, we sang a hymn: "God Loved Us, So He Sent His Son." There is one line from a verse of the hymn that we rarely sing, that suggests a direction for this line of thinking about ritual as a method for learning and knowing:
"Partaking now is deed for word/ That I remember him, my Lord."
Ritual is an attempt to convey knowledge by employing the whole body; the Enlightenment (as with many ancient philosophical traditions) attempted to dis-embody knowledge. Ritual is an embodied and participatory language, an opportunity to practice or perform belief and thus acquire or reinforce knowledge in an embodied sense, not through mere communication of ideas, but by participation in acts.
Perhaps there is something necessary to the human soul about engaging physically with ideas in this way.
Be they as mundane as one's "morning ritual" or as significant as the investiture of authority that comes with swearing in a President, rituals are engaged in not only by every human being, but by every human society. What is it that makes this method we call "ritual" so universal? What causes us as human beings to return to ritual again and again? And if the ritualizing of action is so universal, so natural to human beings, doesn't it make sense that God would continue to talk to us and teach his children through this method as he has in the past? Modernist man thinks he has grown beyond the need for such silly things, and post-Enlightenment religion has been especially dismissive of ritual. But what manner of knowledge are we dismissing with our dismissal if this ancient, and apparently universal, human methodology?
Seeing ritual as more than merely primitive and magical, but as another method for acquiring knowledge, should change our perspectives on ritual: the specifics of ritual are not as important as the idea of ritual as a method of knowing and experiencing. The specifics or particular rituals may belong to particular places and times and situations, but while these specifics can themselves become parts of a larger tradition that connects human beings across generations (we are doing the exact same thing that the ancients did), these specifics are also malleable as the need for change arises (consider the Christian appropriation and revision of the ancient submersion ritual, and the ancient laying on if hands ritual by which royal authority and approbation and grace was transmitted). But people--both critics and adherents of ritual--become overly focused on the specific rituals and not on the idea of ritual as a method itself.
9 June 2013
In preparation for partaking of the sacrament of the holy supper in the Glendale ward of the LDS church, we sang a hymn: "God Loved Us, So He Sent His Son." There is one line from a verse of the hymn that we rarely sing, that suggests a direction for this line of thinking about ritual as a method for learning and knowing:
"Partaking now is deed for word/ That I remember him, my Lord."
Ritual is an attempt to convey knowledge by employing the whole body; the Enlightenment (as with many ancient philosophical traditions) attempted to dis-embody knowledge. Ritual is an embodied and participatory language, an opportunity to practice or perform belief and thus acquire or reinforce knowledge in an embodied sense, not through mere communication of ideas, but by participation in acts.
Perhaps there is something necessary to the human soul about engaging physically with ideas in this way.
25 June 2013
Obedience as Method
Obedience is an interesting concept. In our age, disobedience has emerged as a principle virtue, but disobedience is, ironically, only obedience on disguise. As the proverb goes: there is nothing new under the sun (I know that's in Ecclesiastes and not proverbs, but it is a proverb nonetheless).
There is often the critique that obedience (often dismissed as "blind obedience" no matter how conscientious it may be) makes one an automaton, but the negative industrial connotations of that metaphor notwithstanding, one of the things obedience can teach us is to make action automatic, to make virtue automatic--that is, natural. There is a level of thoughtlessness that might go along with that, but such thoughtlessness need not be negative (and let's be honest, even the most conscientious person does many, many things everyday thoughtlessly, in obedience to this or that ingrained virtue or vice).
I think the real tragedy of the villainization of the virtue of obedience is what might be lost, is how we have replaced thoughtless obedience with thoughtless, reactionary disobedience, to our possible detriment. What was obedience meant to teach us? What knowledge does the act of obedience impart?
This same thing could be asked of ritual.
I was thinking of Elisha and Naaman. Naaman was told to go wash in the Jordan and his leprosy would be healed. The ritual itself seemed ridiculous, but what did it teach him? What insight did it give him into the ritual of obedience? What did he learn that he would not learn in any other way?
Obedience is an interesting concept. In our age, disobedience has emerged as a principle virtue, but disobedience is, ironically, only obedience on disguise. As the proverb goes: there is nothing new under the sun (I know that's in Ecclesiastes and not proverbs, but it is a proverb nonetheless).
There is often the critique that obedience (often dismissed as "blind obedience" no matter how conscientious it may be) makes one an automaton, but the negative industrial connotations of that metaphor notwithstanding, one of the things obedience can teach us is to make action automatic, to make virtue automatic--that is, natural. There is a level of thoughtlessness that might go along with that, but such thoughtlessness need not be negative (and let's be honest, even the most conscientious person does many, many things everyday thoughtlessly, in obedience to this or that ingrained virtue or vice).
I think the real tragedy of the villainization of the virtue of obedience is what might be lost, is how we have replaced thoughtless obedience with thoughtless, reactionary disobedience, to our possible detriment. What was obedience meant to teach us? What knowledge does the act of obedience impart?
This same thing could be asked of ritual.
I was thinking of Elisha and Naaman. Naaman was told to go wash in the Jordan and his leprosy would be healed. The ritual itself seemed ridiculous, but what did it teach him? What insight did it give him into the ritual of obedience? What did he learn that he would not learn in any other way?
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