Doesn't Fit in a Box

Someone just said to me, “I just tell them, people don’t get me.” She is wonderful, smart, passionate and multidimensional, or in other words, does not fit into anyone’s box. I think that is true of rituals and symbols. What they really are, really mean to us, cannot be completely contained and packaged neatly into an easily understood box.

            I find that true of Chapter 1 of Christian Symbol and Ritual.  The definition of rituals and symbols and how they function felt flat, especially during Sunday’s “ritual” of mass I looked at all the symbols around me, and even 2 dimensional representations in my church touch me with more depth. Take the Celtic crosses painted on the dome above the altar.  They are a cross, a circle of eternity, and a commonplace symbol in the Northern U.S., Irish-German Catholic culture where I grew up.

Adding in St. Thomas Aquinas and ‘sacramentum’ in chapter 2 helped Cooke and Macy’s discussion (37-39). For me this adds dimension, and includes what is alive in the Christian faith. Sacramentum extends the range of how we use our word sacrament. There are things and in “a human world which really can embody the divine in ordinary human actions” (38). The book is trying to capture and put into words, that symbols and rituals are more than what can be put on a page.

“A sacramentum…referred to any thing or action or person that medicates the presence of God to humans” (39). Along with symbols and rituals that vary in meaning and context over time, we are trying to communicate something that we believe is continuous, alive and life giving. It’s like still pictures. They catch and print a moment in our lives, but not the totality of that life.

This reminds me of my favorite dog. He loves to tear apart boxes. We can show him a big box, and can even coax him to sit in one. Yet nothing is going to contain this one year old. He is still too full of “puppy” for a box to withhold all that personality, energy and life.

Cooke, Bernard J., and Gary Macy. Christian Symbol and Ritual: An Introduction. Oxford:

              New York, 2005. Print.

photo: Max in a Box 3/14/15