religious ceremonies are creepy / unitarian universalism... thingies

[cimorene]

it came up today how weddings are creepy (by no means an unusual occurrence, actually) and everyone involved agreed that yes, they really are. later i said to wax i think that even without the whole "father transferring ownership of daughter to another party" element they kind of are, and this is because religious ceremonies are inherently creepy. even thinking about my favourites from my childhood, which all come from a unitarian universalist (which is to say, basically irreligious, vaguely 'spiritual') background, there's something about those symbolic acts performed on actual physical symbols which can be both moving and still vaguely, well... creepy.

• the flower communion is the historically unitarian universalist ceremony performed (in my home congregation, at least) at easter. loosely speaking, every individual in the congregation who attends (there are always guests) brings at least one flower. these range from large branches of azalea bushes to single cut florists' flowers to single wildflowers. at the beginning of the service everyone puts their flowers into a large vase or vases set up on a special table in front of the lectern. after the service, or as the final part of it, everyone present files to the front of the room and takes out a different flower from the one they brought. 



• the ingathering is the end of summer/beginning of fall ceremony; the idea is it calls everyone back into the congregation from their summer vacations, and it's also when regular services begin to be held every week again. everyone collects a vessel of water on vacation (or rather, is supposed to collect), and the ceremony - and most of the service; this can be very time-consuming - consists in each family coming to the lectern one at a time. a large bowl or vase stands on a table containing a small amount of the water saved from the last year's ingathering, and each family pours the water from their vessel(s) into it and tells where they travelled and where they collected the water. this can be very very brief or it can involve a more detailed story, or anecdotes from the vacation, as the speaker wishes. there's a strong tradition in my congregation of "symbolic water", which is water from the tap at home or even the tap in the church kitchen which in spirit symbolises the water you forgot to bring back. a portion of the water is saved at the end of the ingathering for next year.



• the candles of joy and concern are small candles lit by congregation members at the beginning of each service, when time is set aside for anyone who feels moved to do so to come forward and share a joy, a concern, or a milestone and light a candle. the candles are lit from the chalice (the symbol of unitarian universalism, which is lit and extinguished ritually as the beginning and ending of every service) and are set in a larger chalice filled with sand to burn down during the service. i've spent many many services with my head on my mother's or father's shoulder staring at the table with the chalice and the joy and concern candles, watching them burn.

then this post turned into talking a bit more about my experience of unitarian universalism and my childhood.

politically speaking, many of the tensions in my home congregation spring from the philosophical divide between the members of the congregation who approach uuism as liberal humanists and are mainly atheist (my dad and i were known as outspoken and occasionally snarky proponents of this viewpoint in my congregation), and those i derisively call the "voice within" people who can't have enough candle-lighting, hand-holding, talking about spiritual journeys, praying to the Little Voice Within, talking about what prayer really is, and hijacking perfectly enjoyable after-dinner conversation to make people stand in a circle and perform impromptu Interpretive Dance while some dirty hippie plays the guitar. (this happened in high school. i'm still bitter. and i'm still annoyed at the bitch who kicked the atheists out of the sanctuary when we abstained from Interpretive Dancing and then came out in the lobby and asked us to please whisper more quietly, because "those who had chosen to participate" could hear us and it was disturbing their spiritualism.)

as i understand it this divide has marked uuism as a whole since its official founding in the 1960s. the congregations tend to be made up in more-or-less equal degree of people who seek them for social and political reasons and people who really want to get something spiritual out of them, and these people have to find ways to coexist peacefully and, hopefully, with as little wank and other strife as possible. the atheist/liberal humanist camp is actually made up of agnostics; i don't think i've known many straight-up atheists. the agnostics tend to want to keep any spiritual voyaging they do strictly private and to certainly not want to associate it with candles or group discussions; a lot of them reached uuism through being scarred in childhood by one brand of christianity or another. the religious refugees are usually the ones who feel most strongly that the rituals and so on are creepy, while "voice within"-type people loooooooove them some rituals. the more rituals the better, is their motto.

Comments

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

Oh god, my aunt Susan is one of those "voice within" people. She has all these books with titles like "Raising a Spiritually Aware Child" and loooooves interpretive dance. "It's just so fulfilling to have a movement practice!" Ugh.

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

your icon is so fantastic. ♥

re: the actual entry: i think rituals can be awesome in a--remembering history sense. my only real sense of ritual is from when i celebrate passover with my dad's girlfriend's family, where it seems like all the rituals are there to remind you of the history of the jews. i think that's kinda cool. otherwise i'm so distanced from them except for my few extremely personal ones (that are a holdover from when i was afraid of the monsters in the closet) that i can only look on them in a perplexed fashion. "oh, look! they're all standing! hm!"

[cimness.livejournal.com]

public and private religious ceremonies are quite different because of the number of people involved and how well you know them, so a ceremony that takes place at home around your own dinner table like the channukah candles or the passover seder has a very family feeling, even though it of course symbolically affirms the connection with all other jews throughout history. so in a way it doesn't necessarily have the same creepiness, i feel. it's hard to feel uncomfortable (at least in that way) with your own family. even though it's still all about performing, it doesn't feel as performative with that audience (also generally much smaller than at a church-type of public ceremony). (although if i witness another family do one with genuine religious feeling i might still find it creepy, but that's likely because i'm an outsider and don't share it.)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

hahahha. A MOVEMENT PRACTICE. and the voice within people are so gung-ho and scary.

like the interpretative dance lady brought the interpretive dance materials to a church-wide yearly social event without telling anyone or putting it on the program and then just stood up after dinner and bullied everyone into it. she wasn't even supposed to be in charge, but she then bullied the people who ignored her out of the room and meanwhile a bunch of confused people who really didn't like interpretive dance were stuck participating and holding hands in a circle and chanting free-form kumbaya-like shit out of politeness.

[wolfsage.livejournal.com]

i agree that religious ceremonies are creepy. i was pleasantly surprised this weekend to find my cousin's wedding was completely non-religious with only vows to do with love and committment, not vows to be squished under the thumb of a scary cult. it was also done by a judge, not a religious dude. it was cool :)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

that is a relief. i'd be delighted if that happened with any of my cousins, but i don't hold my breath!

[wolfsage.livejournal.com]

is your family known to be quite religious? i guess i'm pretty lucky in that the religion seems to have phased out of mine within the last few generations :)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

yeah... well, not exactly; most of my cousins are casual catholics. you're from canada so i don't know if you have lots of those, but they grew up in Casual Catholic land. i'm pretty sure all of them are agnostic or at least questioning, but they were accustomed to going to church almost every week growing up at least. the three who are already married all had proper church weddings, but they let their spouses choose the church instead of having catholic ones, which tells you something i guess. :)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

uh, not meant to sound like one of those people who thinks you ride polar bears to school in canada, i just meant i don't know what the religious demographics are like in the part of canada you're from. *facepalm*