Caring Liturgies: The Pastoral Power of Christian Ritual

2. Ritual Midwives

43 2 + The way is creative ritual. Now, who should pave the third way? Who should be part of creating a rite fitting the person’s need and the church’s theology? The answer is a community. None of us is as smart as all of us, as the saying goes, and ritual work calls for wider wisdom than one person alone can invoke. Making ritual is maieutic—midwifing1 —and requires at least two or three gathering together in Christ’s name. Engaging a Caring, Competent Community for Ritual Planning Ritual makers need to understand how ritual works and be committed to enabling all the baptized to grow into the fullness of God’s intention for them: holy, God’s, Christ-like, Spirit-filled. Building upon the first step of empathic inner seeing to assess someone’s ritual need, one then begins the creative process of imagining a new rite that will be theologically and experientially effective by tapping creative and compassionate colleagues. Community is essential, for Christian worship rites are neither planned nor celebrated alone. Everyone who is baptized into Christ is connected to the ecclesial body, in joy and in need. The Christian life is a life lived in community. Ritual making is an ecclesial action, a communal event, not just in the ritual moment, but also in its preparation Ritual Midwives Planning and Leading Ritual Caring Liturgies 44 as well as in its follow-up. In Joanie and Frank’s ritual, only six people were present, and others were involved in planning and preparing, but their four witnesses represented many others who also cared for Joanie and Frank. Even in a rite of confession, or communion in a hospital room, when there are only two people present the church is still there, represented by the two people who come in good faith and intention to fulfill the Christian covenant. Joanie’s first act was to call two friends she trusted, who, with their husbands, were also members of her church and who agreed to participate with her. She also called me, an out-of-town consultant she trusted who had experience, to be a resource in thinking it through. Joanie instinctively understood this communal principle: that as one body, the church acts together and on each other’s behalf, and so she reached out to others first. Her instinct was formed in the faith where both identity and ministry arise out of community. Jesus sent the disciples off two by two (Mark 6:7; Luke 10:1). It is as a people that God saves us, not as isolated individuals. The Godhead itself is a community: a Trinity of persons in relationship as one. And in the case of creating rituals, the stakes are too high to do it alone. The work of making a healing ritual is the work of the church, and is done by more than one person, acting in unity on behalf of both the focal person and the body of Christ. Finding compassionate, competent partners who would understand about acting on the focal person’s behalf, and who would collaborate without inserting their own needs or agenda into the process, is therefore a very important principle in planning for creative ritual. The norm for planning any kind of Christian worship is the involvement of several people . Indeed, planning worship is not a one-person operation. One person cannot take enough perspectives to see and plan the whole. One person cannot have enough empathy to imagine every person and every situation needing attention. Worship is prayer by the church, and planning to enable the people of God to encounter the Holy One requires prayer by two or three gathering with Christ in their midst (Matt. 18:20). When a pastor plans Sunday worship, for example, even if she or he does it alone, the planning is still done in conversation with the author of the lectionary, the authors of the books of worship or prayer books across the centuries, the composers of the music, writers of Internet articles, and others. And even if planned “alone,” each instance of Sunday worship is one in a pattern of weekly gatherings for which each denomination and Ritual Midwives 45 each pastor has a rhythm, a pattern from last week, and personal experience upon which to draw. The planner and the process of planning are steeped in a matrix of Scripture, tradition, denominational theologies, ecclesial...