Traditions, customs, and rituals

Traditions, customs, and rituals have brought people into community since the caveman days. It creates a sense of belonging in which emotional and historic truths can be appreciated and shared. Funerals, weddings, and rights of passage are all examples of ritualized emotional expression, often combined with the larger community's involvement in things like legal issues.  Rituals also can be symbolic of the history of the community. 

Religious rituals can be symbolic of the history of how the community sees its relationship to God or illustrative, in part, of how they see God and the world. The Easter egg, for instance, is a symbol taken from the egg eaten at Passover; a symbol of creation, new birth, new hope and spring as part of a larger story of salvation. Rituals are also a way of involving the human form with the God. According to Karen Armstrong who wrote the wonderful book, "The History of God", people personalizing God through ritual is a way of "expressing their affinity with the unseen and the world around them". Religious rituals are called the cultus of the religion, not to be confused with cults where things are hidden and kept secret.

According to my minister, the pageantry at church can also be thought of as a set design with costumes and prompts and a director, that elicit a show. My minister says that while people think that what goes on in the front of the church is the show, the show is actually what goes on inside of you as individuals. What priests do elicits the show inside of you. The show is your relationship with God. Some churches elicit the show with rousing gospel hymns, some with great ritual, some with silence. We each respond to different ways of creating that show within ourselves.  

There are many ways of experiencing God. Actually "The mystery" of God actually does not mean a mystery to be solved. In this context it means experiencing God. You can have this experience in many ways, intellectually, emotionally, physically, with burning bushes, and in other ways harder to define.  

Experiencing God outside of church is wonderful, but can be limiting. People often see God in beauty and nature but rarely find God in pain or in the cities where God also dwells. It is also easy to make yourself the center of the universe where your own morals take precedence and you, yourself, become the great arbiter of right and wrong.  It is certainly easier to rationalize your own behavior when not held up to the light of a community or some greater standard. Do you hear things you don't want to hear when looking at the ocean or a sunset? 

It is also difficult to understand the nuances of moral behavior when there is no feedback or discussion. Things can become black or white when the various shades of gray result in a more sophisticated, complex and mature outcome. It is also easy to forget about self sacrifice and the great promise of being known and loved which makes us all more secure and more able to give.