the innocence of ceremony is drown'd
Jun. 23rd, 2009 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishWhen I was in fourth grade, Dad was assigned to a battalion in the 320th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment [you read that right; they drop very large guns out of airplanes]. That fall, for reasons that remain murky, the parts of the 320th that were under the 82nd Airborne Division were changed over to be part of the 319 AFAR.
This necessitated a big formal ceremony in the middle of the afternoon, with lots of marching and speechmaking and all. Dad, as an officer, had to be there. Mom, as an officer's wife, had to be there. I have no idea why I had to be there. I got pulled out of school and taken over to sit on a metal chair under a green camo tarp in the hot sun, read my library copy of Howard Pyle's Robin Hood, and wonder why anyone cared.
I'd been dragged in early enough to see a rehearsal, before the actual ceremony. It looked pretty good; these guys were professionals, after all.
Shortly after the ceremony proper started, I thought, "Why are they doing this? They did the ceremony already. This is just for show. It's totally meaningless to the people involved." The act of the ceremony meant nothing in terms of the process, so why bother with it? The answer "Because the people watching want to see it" felt wrong: they want to be fooled into thinking they're witnessing something valid and momentous?
I've never been able to shake that sense that ritual and ceremony have no inherent meaning. Over time that's metastasized into a general distaste for all over-rehearsed, over-formal celebrations. I want no part of mouthing the words, of going through the motions. Of faking it.
Weddings are the worst offenders. Not only do you rehearse rehearse rehearse, you're following a script that's so overdone as to have had all the meaning sucked out of it. Often it's religious, and I think I've been to perhaps one wedding where that meant anything to either the bride or the groom. And if I never hear 1 Corinthians 13 again it will be too soon.
When my sister got married the first time, I didn't escape the church fast enough, so they dragged me in for Family Pictures. This meant I got to hang around watching the wedding photographer restage the entire ceremony, with pauses so he could snap pictures. This did very little to bolster my sense of the authenticity of weddings. But hey. I'm sure it looked good.
This necessitated a big formal ceremony in the middle of the afternoon, with lots of marching and speechmaking and all. Dad, as an officer, had to be there. Mom, as an officer's wife, had to be there. I have no idea why I had to be there. I got pulled out of school and taken over to sit on a metal chair under a green camo tarp in the hot sun, read my library copy of Howard Pyle's Robin Hood, and wonder why anyone cared.
I'd been dragged in early enough to see a rehearsal, before the actual ceremony. It looked pretty good; these guys were professionals, after all.
Shortly after the ceremony proper started, I thought, "Why are they doing this? They did the ceremony already. This is just for show. It's totally meaningless to the people involved." The act of the ceremony meant nothing in terms of the process, so why bother with it? The answer "Because the people watching want to see it" felt wrong: they want to be fooled into thinking they're witnessing something valid and momentous?
I've never been able to shake that sense that ritual and ceremony have no inherent meaning. Over time that's metastasized into a general distaste for all over-rehearsed, over-formal celebrations. I want no part of mouthing the words, of going through the motions. Of faking it.
Weddings are the worst offenders. Not only do you rehearse rehearse rehearse, you're following a script that's so overdone as to have had all the meaning sucked out of it. Often it's religious, and I think I've been to perhaps one wedding where that meant anything to either the bride or the groom. And if I never hear 1 Corinthians 13 again it will be too soon.
When my sister got married the first time, I didn't escape the church fast enough, so they dragged me in for Family Pictures. This meant I got to hang around watching the wedding photographer restage the entire ceremony, with pauses so he could snap pictures. This did very little to bolster my sense of the authenticity of weddings. But hey. I'm sure it looked good.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-24 03:08 am (UTC)Also, we were married by our community. Certainly, we had a high priestess who actually said the "you're now handfasted" words. But, two good friends who were a couple welcomed Air and two good friends who were a couple welcomed Fire, etc. One of my best friends welcomed the Goddess. One of grimclown's oldest friends (whom we didn't know was pagan until years later) welcomed the God and all of that was part of the ceremony (and I loved loved loved how people personalized what they were saying/doing. JCooper, for example, was part of the couple who welcomed Fire. Once anigma_i had said the words to welcome Fire, he lit up some flash paper [which rocked]. It was personal. It was poignant and it meant so very much to us that everyone took part and helped us begin to walk this new path.
Ritual is important to me; it always has been. Ritual doesn't have to be big or ornate, but it does have to have meaning for those participating and it can be infused with a lot of meaning, reverence, and often laughter. Certainly, that's what I strive for when I officiate at weddings, and other rites of passage, etc.
The same rote wedding words/actions didn't have meaning for us (especially because neither of us is christian) so we changed them to something that would. Ultimately, that was what mattered.