Words, words, words

Following my post about the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words, I stumbled on this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s actually about citizenship ceremonies, but you’d never guess it from the way I’ve plucked the extracts:

Traditionally, ritual, including rites of passage, is embedded in our religious culture. And it is true that religion seems to have a competitive advantage when it comes to this stuff. Religions have been practising their liturgy for a long time. The godly are very good at all of the non-verbal aspects of ritual from bells and smells to crazy cozies to speaking in tongues. Great ceremony is about an absence of speeches and many faiths get this.

Moreover, the godly have the advantage that they feel that they are consecrating their rites in the presence of their transcendent God. That ineluctably gives an ineffable power to the ceremony. The godless will obviously struggle to match that attribute of faith. And we need to get better at the non-verbal stuff. We atheists can talk the leg off a chair but we can’t sing or chant or dance the leg off an amputee.

Now a real rite of passage doesn’t just rejoice in change. It is the change. A ceremony which merely celebrates but doesn’t cause the change is not strictly a rite of passage. Graduation ceremonies from university are rites of passage because you don’t get the damned piece of paper without enduring the ceremony. On this definition, school graduations strictly aren’t rites of passage because the exam marks after the ceremony are the life-changing event, not the school graduation or valedictory service. So funerals aren’t strictly rites of passage because unless you’re a time traveller, your funeral won’t end your life, just celebrate it.

We, of the secular world, often fail to employ those non-verbal rituals that make a ceremony. You can easily cock up even the most moving event by speeches. During my days of municipal service, these ceremonies meandered between inspirational and pedestrian. The pedestrian bits were inevitably the speeches. The best bits were non-verbal – the Mayoral handshake, the familial hugging, the singing of the national anthem, the presentation of the symbolic wattle and the giving of certificate. All of these had no words merely music or actions.

Religions don’t have a monopoly on rites of passage but they do them better than us. The secular world needs to learn more about celebrating without speeches. We need to have rituals we perform together and not passively watch. I think we are still a century or so away from really learning these skills.

At the heart of great ceremony is performance that is not normal. Normal is pedestrian. Words are dull. We need transforming ceremony and that requires anything but speeches.

Read the whole article here.

Norm

I don’t know if you have ever discovered Norm, humane, genial and wise, over at either of his blogs, Extraordinary Expectations or When Death Breaks in… The latter is suspended, now, or fulfilled. On EE, be sure to click all three tabs at the top.

Here’s a taste of Norm. I hope he won’t mind. These are some beautiful words he spoke at the funeral of a man with Down’s Syndrome:

He helped us understand in new ways.

He gave people a new view of patience.

He helped us feel compassion for others.

He made people rethink their priorities.

He helped us realize God’s love for the overlooked.

He reminded people of their frailties.

He cautioned us of our pride and dependence on material things.

He taught people how to love simply and unconditionally.

And now, he has taught us the truth of “ . . . the last shall be first.”

The ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words

Interesting, thought provoking piece about Irish funerals in today’s Irish Times. The writer, Marie Murray, makes this observation: The extent of funeral attendance in Ireland often bemuses our neighbours in England.

She says: Funeral attendance is a statement of connection, care, compassion and support. It encircles those who grieve and enriches those who attend because it connects each person there to the profundity of living and the inevitability of death. Funeral attendees witness the raw emotions of grief and the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to love.

And: Traditional Irish funerals have their own tone, history and vocabulary well documented in Irish literature, verse, story and song. They have their past and present rituals. They are comforting in their predictability.

And: There is consciousness in that line of sympathisers of the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words.

I like that bit about the ineffectiveness of words. So many of our secular ceremonies are wall-to-wall words.

And: The funeral is the place where the details of the death are recounted, where memories are revived and connections made.

Lastly, There is psychological reason, social solidarity and cultural cohesion in funeral attendance

Read the entire piece here.

My Way sucks? No, it KILLS!

 

I am indebted to Pat McNally for this. And while I might have added it to my post about My Way, I feel it’s too good to bury.

Over in the Philippines, it seems, karaoke is a popular pastime. According to the New York Times, after a hard day’s work, there’s nothing a weary person likes more than to find a bar, glug a beer and belt out a classic or two.

This is not a matter of audience indifference. You’ve got to be good or you get stabbed: In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads.

One song is strictly off limits everywhere. Simply too dangerous. My Way. The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling My Way in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

Why?

Butch Albarracin, the owner of Center for Pop, a Manila-based singing school that has propelled the careers of many famous singers, was partial to what he called the “existential explanation.”

“‘I did it my way’ — it’s so arrogant,” Mr. Albarracin said. “The lyrics evoke feelings of pride and arrogance in the singer, as if you’re somebody when you’re really nobody. It covers up your failures. That’s why it leads to fights.”

The song never leads to carnage at polite British funeral. But I wonder if it leaves a subliminal bad taste in the mouth?

Read the entire New York Times piece here.

The Good Funeral Guide
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