Caring Liturgies

The Pastoral Power of Christian Ritual

Susan Marie Smith

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780800697365
• eBook ISBN: 9781451424454
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Ministère chrétien

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Creative Rites

Assessing Pastoral Ritual Need

We begin by taking up the challenge of perceived conflict between the great story of creation and redemption and the person’s story, and presenting creative rituals as the way to make a deeper and effective connection between those stories. There are two kinds of effectiveness. First is the theological/doctrinal, which is how the great story has been interpreted institutionally. Next is experiential/operational effectiveness, which is how persons have or have not been able to deepen in faith through ritualizing their stories. Both kinds of effectiveness can be honored through competently creating rituals that are spiritual and ethical. The starting point for doing so is care for persons whose stories render them spiritually vulnerable.

In their engaging book Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, a teacher of pastoral care, Herbert Anderson, and a teacher of liturgy, Ed Foley, make the point that stories and rituals go together.1 Sometimes there are rituals without stories (thin or empty rites), but other times there are stories without rituals (ritual absence). For stories to be celebrated and made real, they need rituals. But not just any ritual; they need the right rite, an ethical rite, the spiritually appropriate rite. They need a rite that interprets their story in light of the great story.

Indeed, creative pastors across the generations have understood it to be their spiritual pastoral role to bring the liturgical worshipful resources of the churches to bear upon the needs of their people, from retirement and empty nest to illness and loss of every kind. There have been official and unofficial rites and supplemental services, privately and as part of Sunday morning worship. Done in the Russian Orthodox Church, they are called moliebens;2 in the Roman Catholic Church, sacramentals3 or blessings;4 in the Episcopal Church, occasional services5 or pastoral offices;6 in other Protestant denominations, rituals of pastoral care7 or liturgy in the gaps.8 Since the second half of the twentieth century, such rites have been done by women for women in what has been known as “women-church,” feminist liturgy, and the women’s liturgical movement.9 And in the twentieth-century radical renewal, begun in the openness of Vatican Council II (1962–65) and continuing in new worship books in major Western denominations, there has been an awakening to the need for spiritual support of all the baptized toward fullness of their lives and ministries. The church’s liturgical wisdom, when turned toward ritual action beyond Sundays, can mediate the ongoing grace of God unleashed at baptism.There is a quiet yet growing sense that rites in the churches are one important means to enable the baptized to grow fully into the likeness of Christ and to carry them over the stiles of “stuckness” into transition and across the pools of pain to healing.10

Rites of healing and transition, then, are not a new idea. What’s new is the awareness that the rites in official worship books are insufficient. There can never be enough books of rites to cover all the occasions when rituals of healing and transition are needed, both for groups and for individuals. What’s new is the awareness that if churches really want to engage the authority of the laity in ministry, they must support their maturation in every way possible, including with ritual. Conversation, therapy, and desire are important means to a person’s growth, but sometimes they are inadequate to enable persons to really change; a ritual is necessary to enact the change. What’s new is the awareness that creating particular rites for specific circumstances requires a skill set, a gift for ministry, and a call that may or may not be synchronous with ordination. Typically, those educated in rite making and rite leading are the ones assigned to do that work: clergy. However, not all clergy are gifted or called to engender life-giving, healing rites for others, but some laypersons are so called.

It is the role of the churches to learn, teach, and practice the conducting of both corporate and personal rites with life-giving competence. This book is specifically focused on personal rites, offering principles so that called and gifted persons who have the skills and desire will be better able to generate and conduct rites needed to support the fullness of life and ministry of all those baptized into Christ (and others as well).

So here begin six ritual-creating principles intended to help spiritual leaders make rites in relationship to personal stories that need to be acknowledged and honored. My goal is to awaken ritual awareness, invite ritual competence, and build practical theory, which are needed both for carefully planned rites as well as for quickly determined improvised rites. My intention is to awaken a liturgical spirituality with an application in pastoral ritual practice.

But because ritual as a spiritual-pastoral practice is not new, yet has been largely latent, and because the need is so great now as the churches are edging out of Christendom (with its privilege but also its cultural syncretism), it is important to step back and take a fresh look at how good rites are made, and what process is needed to assure that unintended negative consequences do not arise. Some leaders will see the value of intentional “custom-made” rites as a source of spiritual healing and growth, but may not have the ritual competence to carry them off. Others are not inclined to attempt this ritual work, so that people with a spiritual-ritual need find themselves bereft.

This chapter begins the process of addressing both groups by opening the way for composing rites consciously and competently, the way music-theory books open the means for composing beautiful and satisfying music. Books of rites are a bit like musical scores: they are not the music; they do not convey the hoped-for spirit of a rite. This book instead offers transferable principles to guide the making of rites with a fitting “feel” or spirit. Supporting the practice of spiritual care through rites of transition and healing is of crucial importance in the contemporary challenges of the life of the church. The rhythm of principle and story intends to engage the mind and heart of spiritual ritual practice.

One story in particular will unfold chapter by chapter. It is about Joanie, who faced a devastating divorce. Her painful situation involved both transition and suffering. The primary actors in this ritual situation have given permission for me to recount their story (although their names have been changed). Joanie is the one who requested the rite.

This story is not a “case study,” but an illustrative ritual that really happened. It is not an idealized ritual. It is, in fact, different from the ideal in some ways because there was no official presider, there was little time to prepare and some elements one might usually plan (such as an ending) did not occur. However, I have selected this ritual for two reasons. First, although it does not include all of the principles expounded here, it exemplifies many of them very well. Second, it demonstrates real-life circumstances and challenges that any ritual leader may have to face. For example, in my experience, it is not uncommon for someone to realize at the eleventh hour that one is set to participate in a rite for which one does not know what to do, which was the case with Joanie. I have had many last-minute telephone calls seeking ritual coaching (for example, “My father’s funeral will be in two days; I have the place, the flowers, the reception planned, and the ritual leader booked—we just don’t know what to do”). As in other urgent situations, one must offer one’s best in the moment. Further, there are times when persons want to ritualize an occasion and they do not seek the guidance of a professional. They muster what resources they have and “just do it.”

Ritual, after all, is a human language, and anyone may attempt to “speak” it and conduct one. Without guidance, however, sometimes a ritual misses an opportunity or falls short or can even be harmful. However, one reason for offering what I have learned about ritual making is so that people will have more resources, readily available and further in advance, in order to be more prepared for such circumstances.

In Joanie’s case, my role was as an out-of-town friend who was invited to assist over the telephone with suggestions, questions, care, and prayer. Let’s tune in.

Joanie’s Story

The telephone rang. It was my friend Joanie calling from across the country. But it turns out she wasn’t calling just to chat. She had news—sad news.

“The divorce is finally, really going to happen, Sue. And Frank’s coming with the truck next Saturday to take half the furniture.”

My mind reeled. Divorce! I knew this had been a difficult marriage for years. I knew how many workshops, therapists, counseling sessions, and prayer vigils Joanie had attended, and I had some idea of the tears she had shed, the strategies she had tried, the struggles she had endured. I did not know Frank’s struggles so much, but I knew he had them. Yet each time they’d had a crisis, they somehow had always come through it. But something had happened; a decision had been made. The marriage struggles were ending. Now there would be divorce and a different set of struggles. My heart longed to support her. But all I could utter was, “Oh, Joanie! Oh, I’m so sorry to hear this news. You’ve worked so hard and so long for this marriage.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she replied in a subdued tone. “But after all this, if I’m honest with myself, I have to acknowledge that it really is over. Something else has surfaced, Sue, and what we have now is not a marriage. I’ve been so afraid to let it go. Who in the world would I be as a single woman? But now, I’m finally beginning to claim the possibility of an identity as myself, apart from all the links and dependencies of marriage.”

This was a huge step for Joanie. I was struck at the level of self-knowledge she had gained and her ability, in the midst of the pain and loss and failure of this marriage in which she had invested so much, to see the bigger picture. How emotionally and spiritually mature she had become, and was becoming, in this crucible of relationship and heartache! She had wanted this marriage to work so very, very much. But one person cannot make a marriage.

“He’s moving on. He has an apartment already. I guess that’s why he wants to take his things, and some of our things. It’s sad, and it’s really difficult. But there’s one good thing here that I want to talk with you about. Remember how I’ve asked over the years for us to ritualize some of our transitions?”

I knew very well. Joanie and Frank were from a liturgical tradition, so that the language of ritual was one in which they were both fluent. Yet, for whatever reason, Frank had not agreed to ritualize any of the various steps and turns they had taken over the years, nor would he celebrate renewed attempts to stay together in new commitments through many trials.

“This time, he said yes! So next Saturday, before we divide up the house and he takes his belongings, we’ll be able to ritualize the end of our household, and—I guess—the end of our marriage.”

Even as I realized how emotionally draining it would be to ritualize the death of their fragile and hard-kept marriage, I felt a certain relief that the ritual could take place. In the back of my mind, I had been trying to imagine—to empathize with—what Joanie would feel waking up on Sunday in “their” house with all its memories, only to find it half-empty, pain visible everywhere. A ritualization, however laborious in the near-term, might make it possible to contain th...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Worship as Ritual: Understanding and Claiming Ethical Christian Ritual
• 1. Creative Rites: Assessing Pastoral Ritual Need
• 2. Ritual Midwives: Planning and Leading Ritual
• 3. Metaphors and Symbols: Linking a Person’s Story to the Christian Story
• 4. Ritual Honesty: Holding Truthful Tension
• 5. Holy Sacrifice: Mediating the Labor Pains of Change
• 6. The Paschal Mystery: The Crux of Caring Ritual
• Notes
• Index