Taking my mom to Sunday Mass is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. I take her for a whole bunch of reasons. I’ll name just two. The first has to do with the fundamental conviction that there’s more to my mom than my mom. Just because she can’t think properly anymore, doesn’t change her life-long belief that she comes from God, and she’s headed toward God. So, it follows that helping her to explicitly hang out with God, gives her a weekly homecoming, maybe even a taste of a final homecoming that’s not that far off for her.
A second reason I take her to church has to do with the section of mom’s brain that’s imprinted with life-long rituals. That neurological locale, where religious rituals are stored, somehow hides beyond the reach of that pernicious memory harvester, dementia . . . at least for now. For example, at the appropriate moment, right before the Gospel selection, she still knows how to trace those tiny little crosses over her forehead, lips, and heart . . . (accompanied by the whispered part, “Your word be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart”). . . just like she’s done thousands of times over her ninety-two years of spiritual practice.
When I travel overseas, I find that Mass is a comfort. For about an hour, the non-English-speaking locals and I communicate in the common language of our spiritual tradition’s rituals. I find that going to Mass provides me a little dose of home in those exotic places. It’s kind of like that with mom when I take her to Mass. The days of intelligibly conversing with her are over. In some ways, mom lives in a land foreign to me—foreign to her as well. The familiar rituals of Mass transcend the kind of communication that requires discursive logic and a memory. In that setting of well-rehearsed rituals, she feels at home with me. I feel at home with her. We feel at home together . . . again.
Sacred rituals came in handy ten years ago, when death suddenly showed up for my mother-in-law the night before Thanksgiving. The “now-you-see-her; now-you-don’t” nature of how she passed left us all feeling a little like my mom feels these days. “Disoriented,” and “heartsick” would be the right words for it. What do you do in a moment like that? For us, the rituals and customs of our spiritual tradition put a playbook into our hands, along with teammates who knew how to lead and run those plays for us. I’m not going to say I loved “The Last Rites” administered by a priest in the Emergency Room, but it put things in a perspective that I believe was the beginning of a healing process that helped us let Grandma go. The day after her death, an impromptu Mass and reception, attended by our in-town friends, family, and colleagues put a floor of comfort under us and a table of food before us. In a kind of Catholic form of sitting Shiva, these same rituals of healing were repeated for us in my wife’s hometown in Wisconsin, as well as my father-in-law’s snowbird home in Florida.
As a counselor and resilience researcher, I know the power of ritual to confer a deep sense of meaning, connection, and well-being. Assigning rituals that fit a client’s meaning-making system is a powerful way to initiate positive momentum. That’s why I’m worried about the decades-long un-churching, un-synagogue-ing, and the un-temple-ing that has unfolded in our culture. I understand the “why” of it. In this election season, it’s discouraging to see my own spiritual tradition giving to Caesar, the things that belong to God, even when that Caesar is far more like Caligula than Julius. Far too often, my kid’s generation, and for that matter, my generation has had to see religion weaponized against the vulnerable. These things are a scandal.
Knowing the “why” of it, doesn’t keep me from worrying. When the ancient systems of wisdom go missing, the purveyors of divisive chaos are happy to fill the void and spread the chaos that breeds division, and the division that breeds chaos. I want better than that for my kids and my grandkids. I want better than that for me! Knowing the “why” of it all doesn’t keep me from wondering where the next generation will get their playbooks and teammates for the inevitable challenges heading their way. I want more for my kids and grandkids than threadbare rituals downloaded from the Internet. I want a playbook for them that’s time tested, and teammates well-versed in the rigorous disciplines of Love, Justice, and Mercy that go with that playbook.
Dialogue
In the show currently on Netflix, “Nobody Wants This,“ the rabbi character, Noah, uses the “Havdalah” ceremony to encourage his gentile girlfriend, Joanne, to embrace Judaism. He has her join him in observing the ritual marking the end of Shabbat by watching for the first three stars to appear in the sky. In this way, he showcases a beautiful and meaningful part of Jewish practice.
In your own spiritual community, are you able to take what’s good, and set aside what is not good? How do you do that? If you don’t know how, do you know of anyone who does know how? Would you be willing to discuss this with them?
Lisa and I used to take our kids to Holy Saturday, Easter Vigil Mass. We would stay just long enough for them to experience a totally dark church gradually fill up with candle light as the newly lit Easter candle’s flame was passed from hand-held candle to hand-held candle. We were utilizing the same strategy Rabbi Noah used with Joanne.
Questions
If you were to go back to the spiritual tradition in which you grew up, what rituals (or practices) spoke to you in a positive way? Is there a ritual that you would be willing to try again to see if you could experience it with a new sense of beauty and meaning given all your development since then?
What are the rituals that sustain you these days?
What were your family’s food rituals around significant holidays? Which were your favorites? Do you recreate any of those food rituals in your current life?