Trans-Atlantic musings

I am en route to Nairobi and at this point am somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean hurtling toward Zurich where I have an hour to gather my bags and to catch the last leg of my voyage. Once there, I will have arrived where this journey will begin! The lights are dark; my fellow passengers are asleep, or like me, in a silent state of refection. Perhaps they are ruminating over what they have left behind, or quietly anticipating, as I am, what lies ahead.

So, I am thinking about women, ritual and community healing – as I have been for months. And I wonder . . . how do we communicate ritual? How do we pass along the knowledge from one generation to the next?

Ritual is specific to occasion, to culture, to religion and to gender. For instance in West, the colour white is worn in the Christian practice to symbolize purity. My experience has been that, at first weddings the ritual is that a bride is dressed in white. Here I need to explain that I make reference to brides at their “first” wedding as I have been witness to several second and third time brides who, after the first wedding, tends to wear whatever colour she wants - I suppose as we presume she is no longer “pure”. The time that leads up to her marriage ceremony is filled with rituals that involve being surrounded by her female friends and relations. She is preened, offered something blue, borrows something old, and only after this, is her father allowed to greet her and “give her away” . In contrast, white is used very differently in eastern religious practice. The Japanese believe that white is a symbol of death and sadness, not purity and celebration.  Muslims use white to drape a deceased body. When I was in a village at the edge of the Saharan desert I was witness – albeit from a distance – to the passing of a man in the village. The men of the village gathered at this house, and from what I could see, had laid him out on a bed in the middle of his living room. He was draped in white cloth and his male neighbours and relations were keeping vigil, watching over his passing. No woman was permitted to attend or witness this passing. This ritual was for men alone.

So sometimes ritual is gender specific and at other times, generally cultural. But how do we pass on this ritual from one generation to another. How does the next generation know when and how and what rituals are appropriate for specific occasions? I suppose it is like learning a new language. We listen, we watch, we imitate, emulate and make decisions about what we will absorb as our own. So rituals change as cultures progress.