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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
LESSON FROM GRACE: THE IMPORTANCE OF RITUALS 2003-10-13 Yesterday, surrounded by her parents, brother, grandparents, great grandparents and friends, and wearing the christening gown her mother wore almost 34 years ago, Grace Ellen was baptized. And officiating at the ceremony was the priest, fortuitously visiting from Ohio for the weekend, who married her parents six years ago. After the ceremony we returned to the house for pictures, cake and friendly conversation. Grace's mother showed everyone pictures of her own christening and everyone oohed and aahed over how much Grace resembles her mom (except for her red hair, of course, which is a lovely contribution from Grace's father). Grace's christening was an important ritual for her as well as her family and friends, a day we will all remember, a memory we will always cherish. Baptisms and christenings, blessings and dedications are important religious rituals that welcome infants and children into a Church community. They celebrate a new spiritual birth to go along with the recent physical one. They remind us all that we are dependent on God as well as each other and they celebrate an important milestone in life. But all rituals are not religious ones. Primitive societies had more rituals than modern ones as tribes were small and survival was tenuous. On a daily basis people saw death and disaster and so they structured their hunting, eating, mating, birth and coming-of-age rituals to reinforce their dependence on each other and a higher spiritual presence. Today, modern technology affords us so many ways to ward off danger that rituals may seem less important. But even though modern medicine and technology have extended our life expectancy, we still endure the human condition, with its joy and pain, its hopes and fears. Even in present day America, rituals are important reminders that we all need each other to celebrate with and offer comfort to each other. No matter how much we Americans espouse the idea of independence and self-sufficiency, the fact is that we all belong to the human community and we all need each other. Rituals remind us that we all pass through the same stages, we all experience the same joys and tragedies and that we can both enjoy and endure the human experience in a much more meaningful way when we do it together. Rituals also tie the generations together so that we feel connected to each other as well as to deceased family members with whom we once shared traditions. Weddings, funerals, baptisms, confirmations and bar mitzvahs are important rituals that bring us together as a human family to honor and recognize important events or rites of passage, but rituals do not have to be once in a lifetime events. We are entering, for example, the season of annual rituals that bring families together and offer us important reminders: Thanksgiving, the ritual of gratitude and shared abundance, and Christmas and Hanukkah, the rituals that, in addition to their religious significance, remind us how joyful it is to give. There are also daily rituals we can establish. The nightly family dinner is one such tradition that ought to be preserved in every home. It is a way for busy families to connect and share conversation at least once a day. Having dinner together every night helps parents stay in touch with their children and children learn from their parents. Studies show that having dinner together as a family even helps prevent teen drug usage. This shouldn't surprise us. When parents connect with their children, children have a place to go, other than to drugs, when they need help. Every family is different and so are family rituals. Many parents have a nightly reading ritual with their children. Some families have unique birthday traditions. All families have their own holiday customs. Children love these rituals and look forward to them. As they grow into adolescence, they sometimes balk at participating, but most still treasure the family traditions in their hearts and often repeat them with their own families when they are grown. The ritual we celebrated yesterday is over but the memory of that precious baby girl in her flowing baptismal gown will remain with us always. One day, perhaps, we will be lucky enough to celebrate another ritual with her, one in which she walks down the aisle in another flowing white gown to begin a family of her own, a family which may someday include another precious little girl who wears a tiny white baptismal gown once worn by her mother and grandmother. |