Ritual, RBG and (working) life
This morning I heard Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt sing El Maleh Rahamim (the Jewish prayer for the soul of a person who has died, arguably one of the most heart-rending in the liturgy) in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court. There, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is ”lain in repose” for two days before she lies in state at the U.S. Capitol. Another of RBG’s many firsts.
I believe religious ritual comes out of a human need to give order to things bigger than we are. Birth and death for two. In the case of El Maleh in the Great Hall, I don’t think ritual gets more outsize or more iconic than this.
I meant to post this article https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/business/remote-work-spiritual-consultants.html about ritual in the workplace when it came out a few weeks ago. I’m glad I waited. Last weekend’s Rosh Hashanah “celebration” was the strangest ever. I made a round Challah and cooked and ate traditional foods with family. I am fortunate in having a backyard and had a few friends from synagogue join me, safely distanced, for “Zoom” services. We lamented the inability to be with our larger community, though just having a few of us in close enough proximity to hear each other sing melodies we know deep in our psyches, was incredibly comforting.
Jewish rituals tend to be home-based (so many years of no Temple had some good effects) so there are still many, many things one can do to make markers of time. Which is, to me, the point of ritual. The rituals that I find most engaging are PHYSICAL in their manifestations. Havdalah - the ceremony ending the sabbath and starting the week - is made with light, sound, scent, and taste. It is my favorite example of a multi-sensory ritual experience.
I envy Muslims who pray 5 times a day - they stop what they are doing at prescribed times, with other people, and find their way to the earth where they can kneel, be prostrate, and REST THEIR SPINES! This physicality is one of the reasons I love floral design as I learned it in Japan. It is, first and foremost, a spiritual practice. One is making something beautiful, with natural materials and one’s hands, as an invitation to a spiritual realm. The flower arrangement welcomes one into the shrine. The creator of the arrangement must imbue their work with beauty, calm, and balance. This is not mere decoration.
Work/the workplace/workers need rituals. Kathleen McTigue, a Unitarian Universalist minister quoted in this article, describes rituals “as elevated routines, with set intention, attention and repetition.” How to do that without what Tara Isabella Burton, author of “Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World,” calls “consumer-driven religiosity.” “The idea is that what we want, what feels good to us, what we desire, that all of this is constitutive of who we are, rather than community,” Ms. Burton said. “We risk seeing spirituality as something we can consume, something for us, something for our brand.” Rituals certainly can give us some stability in these tumultuous times. But to be effective in the workplace, they must be connected to something larger than ourselves and our “productivity.”
Justice Ginsburg - a working mother - was an inspiration to so many. She had extraordinary discipline and tenacity (not to mention all her other attributes.) And I think, whether religious or not, regular practice develops an uncanny ability to focus. Perhaps that is what rituals are really all about - focus - a moment or a few minutes or an hour in time to be present. To attend. To listen. To gather oneself.
We don’t have many days left before the Election. Let us channel RBG’s tenacity and through whatever rituals we require, focus on anything and everything we can do to honor her legacy.