Community Ritual: what is found there
Our needs, our challenges, our deprivation even, our solutions for those pre-industrial/pre-rampant-capitalist issues made us work together. Similar to received forms in poetry, sometimes stricture can be beneficial to expression. Sometimes.
And there lies another problem: we love pithy phrases and simply stated truths to distraction. We don't want to think things work only sometimes, we want things to work all the time, and preferably in black & white. Our capacity for the unknown or paradoxical or complex has withered. And with it, our capacity for play and intimacy and joy. The comfort and complacence we sought in the last century only exacerbated the trend towards separation. I've got my own washing machine now, so I don't have to deal with things and people who don't fit easily into my world view. I am protected from them.
And yes, we were still new (as a nation) and all about innovation and growth, and our land was big enough to accommodate that..., till our brilliance spun out of control. Our inventions, without a common sense of ethics--personal accountability being an important one--began to have startling, disturbing results. We could discount entire populations as not worthy of our concern and care. We began to use the differences we could no longer bridge as a way of passing sentence. Everyone should have their own washing machine. People who use coin laundries are less than I am, and possibly dangerous. They should be removed to a place where I don't have to see them and they can't harm me or mine.
We have become an extremely hypocritical nation: lauding diversity, but doing everything we can to avoid encountering it face to face, unless under controlled circumstances. Diversity plus separation is not a good combination; it's a good way to instill fear. And our market-driven society is more than willing to fuel that fear and sell new product. I need special detergent to ensure that my washing machine is keeping me and mine safe from new, resistant forms of bacteria. Better yet, there's this new machine with a sterilizing cycle....
I'll stop describing why we're rather a mess, and talk about the subject: Community Ritual. This idea has been growing in my mind for a few years. It's why I have founded all the groups I've founded, and why I practically give away time in our building to groups like tai chi and ecstatic dance. It's why I've love certain aspects of Japanese culture, which have helped me identify analogous features in my own cultures (U.S., Korean, Norwegian), and inspired me to attend/participate in/create vehicles for local community ritual.
For 17 years I have attended Yaqui (Yoeme) Easter Ceremonies, not fully knowing why I was so drawn to them. It's not like I'm Yaqui or Catholic (or a practicing Christian, for that matter). It's not like I belong to that community or feel in any way that I participate in it except as an outsider and observer. I speculated that being raised with Koreans, and coming from the east coast, where the populations are more diverse, I just liked hanging out around a bunch of dark-haired people for a time. That was my somewhat snide, self-deprecating explanation. In the last few years, I've come to understand that what draws me is how the community members not only create the ritual, but become wholly absorbed into it themselves. The participants enter the zone, features of their daily life and their own sense of self fade into the tapestry of the event, and the values and ethics and belief that bind the community together come forward boldly, living and breathing, full of life and color. I am drawn to that kind of full-being engagement, that dissolution of ego, that communal purpose. It's why I love taiko.
I acknowledge these are sacred times/spaces, and I wouldn't want that kind of engagement all the time..., as if anyone could survive such a thing. By their very nature as sacred, the ceremonies are transitory, a time-out-of-time from which you must return to the mundane.
I am content to attend the Yaqui Easter, and watch. It's not my community, not my religion, not my ritual. Instead I focus on arts community happenings, and creating opportunities for communion there. And events that are open to participation by non-community members, such as the Waila Fest and obon festivals. Lately, more and more, I feel the All Souls Procession is where I want to put great energy, and the creation of seasonal celebration/ceremonies led by arts groups, because what ritual does not have its song and dance and story?
Even without the spiritual aspect, community events serve us. When people encounter each other in a safe environment, they will (because we are social creatures) interact, learn about each other, discover differences and negotiate those differences in order to maintain the safe social setting. In that, they increase tolerance, acceptance and understanding. It's hard to hate a person if you're standing in the snow cone line with them. They might believe in things you find distasteful or ridiculous, they might have practices that turn your stomach, but in the setting of community gathering and ritual, you have more in common in that moment than you have to feel conflict over. You both found this particular event meaningful enough to have taken the time and effort to come, you both like snow cones (or have loved ones who love snow cones and you're buying them one) and you are both willing to forego whatever else is happening to stand in line and wait, money in hand. A hundred decisions brought you together, you have that much in common, and so, that much you can trust about each other.
Gently revealed, we can accept most things about each other as individuals. Most of us are not naturally inclined to want to harm others. The vast majority of us wish each other well (in principle at least), are non-violent and prefer harmony to discord. You'd think that would be a recipe for understanding, but it's not. Mainly, I think, because we so avoid discord that we end up not being particularly honest. And that's just another kind of separation.
But if you remove most kinds of interaction, and focus on a central purpose or action, discord becomes a moot point. The possibility of conflict decreases astronomically if people stop talking and start dancing. it decreases even more if everyone is doing the same dance, allowing the myth of individuality to take back seat. If the goal is to all do it the same way, what's there to fight about? As with received forms in poetry, as we adapt our unique personal expression into a general, accepted format, we are no longer burdened with having to distinguish ourselves. Our egos fade away and we are simply moving. Ironically, we often learn an incredible amount about ourselves in those moments, just as otherwise inexpressible ideas may begin to emerge from between the regimented lines of a villanelle or sonnet. But what we learn are not the kinds of things that we'd get annoyed at each other for. We learn about common, human traits; we learn compassion.
So, this is my focus now. As much as I'll work to be a better person, always, and a better taiko player; to run the group more successfully, to reduce hardship and make meaning, I want to be part of creating sacred spaces/times for people to commune without agendas and egos, where the goal is so simple anyone can attain it. That's what things like obon, All Souls Procession, the Asian Pacific Heritage Festival are to me. And Rhythm Industry, the space where the architects of these moments can thrive.
I was thinking about need vs, service, and how, for someone like me, they are more like points on a gradient. It's the Mars in Leo in the House of Servants thing. And I don't see much difference between the giver and receiver. But this is possibly another blog entry.
Even without the spiritual aspect, community events serve us. When people encounter each other in a safe environment, they will (because we are social creatures) interact, learn about each other, discover differences and negotiate those differences in order to maintain the safe social setting. In that, they increase tolerance, acceptance and understanding. It's hard to hate a person if you're standing in the snow cone line with them. They might believe in things you find distasteful or ridiculous, they might have practices that turn your stomach, but in the setting of community gathering and ritual, you have more in common in that moment than you have to feel conflict over. You both found this particular event meaningful enough to have taken the time and effort to come, you both like snow cones (or have loved ones who love snow cones and you're buying them one) and you are both willing to forego whatever else is happening to stand in line and wait, money in hand. A hundred decisions brought you together, you have that much in common, and so, that much you can trust about each other.
Gently revealed, we can accept most things about each other as individuals. Most of us are not naturally inclined to want to harm others. The vast majority of us wish each other well (in principle at least), are non-violent and prefer harmony to discord. You'd think that would be a recipe for understanding, but it's not. Mainly, I think, because we so avoid discord that we end up not being particularly honest. And that's just another kind of separation.
But if you remove most kinds of interaction, and focus on a central purpose or action, discord becomes a moot point. The possibility of conflict decreases astronomically if people stop talking and start dancing. it decreases even more if everyone is doing the same dance, allowing the myth of individuality to take back seat. If the goal is to all do it the same way, what's there to fight about? As with received forms in poetry, as we adapt our unique personal expression into a general, accepted format, we are no longer burdened with having to distinguish ourselves. Our egos fade away and we are simply moving. Ironically, we often learn an incredible amount about ourselves in those moments, just as otherwise inexpressible ideas may begin to emerge from between the regimented lines of a villanelle or sonnet. But what we learn are not the kinds of things that we'd get annoyed at each other for. We learn about common, human traits; we learn compassion.
So, this is my focus now. As much as I'll work to be a better person, always, and a better taiko player; to run the group more successfully, to reduce hardship and make meaning, I want to be part of creating sacred spaces/times for people to commune without agendas and egos, where the goal is so simple anyone can attain it. That's what things like obon, All Souls Procession, the Asian Pacific Heritage Festival are to me. And Rhythm Industry, the space where the architects of these moments can thrive.
I was thinking about need vs, service, and how, for someone like me, they are more like points on a gradient. It's the Mars in Leo in the House of Servants thing. And I don't see much difference between the giver and receiver. But this is possibly another blog entry.
