“Family” Rituals

All of the world's faith-traditions have rituals.  So much so that many people recognize the importance of rituals in adopting a religious path.  And so, as we live within religious traditions, we, our families, and our friends learn and cultivate regular practices that nourish our spirits.

Of course, rituals need not be particularly religious.  The 20th-century writer Joseph Wood Krutch wrote simply yet eloquently of one particular kind of ritual.  He wrote:  "To plant a garden, a window box, or even to cultivate a house plant is to perform a sort of ritual and thereby to acknowledge even in the middle of a city, one's awareness that our real kinship is with life, not with mechanism."  I think Krutch's words are particularly important and could become increasingly valuable with time.  With more people in large cities growing dissatisfied with long commute times, and with builders designing more compact modes of housing closer to downtown areas, more of us find ourselves living with less open land around our homes.  People more often have contact with green plants in the form of a small garden plot or house plant than in the form of a large, suburban backyard.

The phrase "family ritual" usually suggests some custom or ritual that is passed on within a family generation after generation.  I think Joseph Wood Krutch has given a new possible dimension to the phrase "family ritual."  He points out that we have a "kinship" even with plants -- a "kinship... with life."  We and plants are in the same family with the last name Life. Therefore, cultivating and teaching children habits of planting a garden or tending a house plant or window box, can be ways of becoming more aware of what might be called "our extended family."

Setting aside jokes about talking to house plants (whether anybody wants to do so is their own choice), plants can truly be sensitive to influences we don't easily pick up on.  Just as is sometimes the case with human family members.  I know from my own sad experience that a room that seems to have adequate natural light to my human eyes (which can adjust to the dark) is woefully gloomy from most houseplant's point of view.

Any good ritual, however, can deteriorate into routine, becoming mechanical.  Not a good thing, especially in a world that has become increasingly full of "mechanism," as Krutch put it.  To prevent the deterioration of rituals, spiritual directors and writers give us guidance on cultivating mindfulness during our religious and spiritual rituals.  Perhaps the same thing could be done during our rituals of caring for plants.  The much loved Buddhist writer Thich Nhat Hanh has bridged the divide between Buddhists and many Christians with such practices as "gathas," or simple prayer-verses designed to be said during ordinary activities.  I suggest that we might cultivate the use of a gatha as we water that garden plant or house plant.  A gatha such as:

"As I water this plant, may it be given new life, 

and may there also be new life in me."

~~~

Does a garden, window box, or house plant add anything to your life?  What?

(The Krutch quote is from The Best of Two Worlds
 by Joseph Wood Krutch, © 1953.  p. 168.) 

Elephants on the Agenda

Is there any child that at some point does not like elephants?  Why?  I think it has to do with more than elephants' trunks (even though those remarkable appendages do provide opportunity for children's jokes about what elephants pack in their trunks).  The Disney movie Dumbo, for example, spun its story more around Dumbo's big ears than around his nose.  And in Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who, the elephant Horton's entire personality propels the story.  Although trunks are part of our fascination with elephants, I think a larger reason might be the elephant's size and capabilities.

It was certainly the massive size of elephants that motivated adults to first domesticate them. Sadly, to me, one of the main uses the animals were put to was to fight in wars (at least as far back as the 4th century B.C.E. in India).  When I was growing up, I would occasionally hear some adult make a reference to Hannibal's feat of moving an army over the Alps in the 3rd century B.C.E.  It was only as an adult that I read the elephants' tragic side of the story:  When Hannibal began his long march toward Rome, he had 50 elephants in his military force; by the time he got beyond the Alps, only 8 elephants were still alive.

Today, with our growing consciousness of environmental impacts, we are more aware of the risks elephants face from poachers desiring their ivory tusks.

relief mural in Thailand

When children advance beyond Dumbo and Horton, they are likely to learn the story of the blind men, each of whom described an elephant differently because each touched only part of the animal, none of the men being able to see the whole.  I have heard that story variously described as being of Hindu and of Buddhist origin.  One form in which that parable has been perpetuated in English-speaking culture has been through John Godfrey Saxe's 1872 poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant."  Saxe, in his final stanza, clearly showed that his target was theologians ("in theologic wars," as he put it). Today, I think rightfully, we are more likely to use the story of the blind men to remind ourselves that in any endeavor we can become blind to the whole.

Over the past few decades, we have even learned that our knowledge of the lives of elephants has been fragmentary.  We have discovered that some elephant herds in Kenya make risky periodic trips into the Kitum Cave in order to get salt to supplement their diet.  And we have now found out that elephants grieve, displaying anguish not only over the corpse of a comrade but also over the bones of a deceased member of the herd.

Laotian painting of the
Buddha's loving kindness
calming an elephant
    

Oh, and as for that matter of why children are fascinated with elephants, I will speak for myself.  Looking back on my own childhood, I have decided my fascination was because of elephants' grace and friendliness despite their massive size.  Especially as a child, the world seemed massive and overwhelming.  But, with the elephants in the zoo and in the circus, I possessed evidence that something that seemed overwhelming could be made manageable.  Even made friendly.

~~~

Do you have any recollections of seeing elephants when you were a child?

(The photo with the Buddha is used through a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

(Saxe's poem can be read at this external link:  "The Blind Men and the Elephant.")