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Process and Ceremony —
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Keith Eric Grant, Ph.D.
The following material is compiled from several postings I made to the Body Work email list in 1997-1998. Partly, these postings were motivated by some periods of intense discussion and partly by my own ongoing ponderings on the creation and role of community.
19 May 1997
The issue of community is one of my personal topic areas. As I've written to several on the list, the lack of a cohesive community just outside my own doorstep (i.e. the traditional village) is one of the losses of modern life that I've acutely and intuitively felt. Having a colleague visit the tufa cave-dwellings and cottonwood lined stream of Bandelier N.P. last week (my suggestion), brought to mind and imagination again the facets of community we too often lack. While my own massage and dance communities contain many wonderful people with whom I can share much, the members are spread all over the greater San Francisco Bay area and beyond. This is a community that requires active energy to maintain — far from walking out ones door to the the town center.
Too few of us, I believe, have models of community that guide us in the solution of problems and the dynamics of working out consensus. As a consequence, far too often the discussions and disagreements necessary to build community trigger excessive anger and polarization. Sometimes what can't be accomplished by direct admonition can happen via the use of story and metaphor. There are some good books on community building such as "In the company of others by Whitmyer (editor) and "Creating Community Anywhere" by Shaffer and Anundsen.
In a posting last August, I made the following comment on what we have created via this list. In a sense, we've reestablished part of the "oral tradition" via which traditional societies pass on their accumulated wisdom from person to person rather than just by formal seminars and one-directional print and broadcast media. As we sit around the fire, the "talking-stick" passes from person to person. Each in turn tells of the success or frustrations of the hunt or of the humor of the mud puddle into which they so vividly planted their face. Out of the process, learning and humility occur.
18 May 1997
There is a sudden quiet in the center of the village. People wait in anticipation, some gathered in the streets and others gathered on rooftops to observe. Small children hold onto carved and painted cottonwood dolls, symbolic of what is to come. Dolls that have been given to them so that they can learn about and identify the figures they are about to see.
Suddenly, they appear. The Kachina dancers, with the colors of their masks symbolic of the directions from which they appear. The Kachina spirits are supernatural intermediaries representing the animate and inanimate objects in the natural environment. They may bring rain, fertile crops, animals, punish transgressions, or cure disease. They represent the aspects that must be in balance for life and culture to continue. During the six months they are on earth, the Kachinas manifest themselves in physical form.
Particularly relevant to what I want to say here are the masked men who dance they various Kachina roles, for a time losing their personal identities and being imbued with the spirits of the beings they represent. The onlookers to a Kachina ceremony realize that each role is important for cultural life to continue, yet equally, each role must remain in balance. The different Kachinas embody aspects of the web of life, allowing onlookers to examine each aspect and to further understand the interrelations and balance between them.
Similarly, those of us posting to the bodywork list take on different roles at different times so that by our discussions and examinations we can strive for balance and congruence in the culture of bodyworkers. However much and however strongly we may strive to present and argue our current position, the more vocal among us also realize the importance of the other roles and viewpoints being expressed. As with the Kachina ceremonies, each role is important if balance is to occur and awareness is to be increased.
To an onlooker or lurker it might seem for a time that we are truly in conflict; that it is thus appropriate to demonize and flame those that take on for a time the less popular and more difficult roles. Nothing could be less true. We are able to individually argue passionately for one side because we know that someone else whom we deeply respect will be willing to point out equally passionately the weaknesses of our arguments. Thus balance occurs. You are Hamlet today? Then I will be Polonius, lurking behind the curtain and dying upon your dagger when I am discovered. And you, yes you, lurking heretofore in the background. What role are you willing to assume before your fellows?
When one of us rants on the importance of secure boundaries, it is important. Without boundaries our physical and emotional lives as individuals would be in chaos. Yet boundaries can also betray us. Too strong boundaries can choke the vigor and essence of human life. If no one cared enough about us to cross our boundaries without our own active initiative, we would soon wither and die from our isolation. Sometime it is the mark of deep caring to intervene even when unwanted -- to keep someone intoxicated from driving or to restrain a friend from suicide until they can cope with the loses of life. Sometimes the mark of compassion is the expression of an uncomfortable truth. And yes, the manner and timing of the expression is important.
As with the onlookers of a Kachina ceremony, please be considerate and respectful of those on this list who take on the various roles by which we all benefit. Passionate argument and heartfelt sharing are part of the process by which massage therapists strive for congruence and balance and community. Vilification and messages of hate to those who embody the different roles are not a valid part of this process. Before you hit the send button, examine what it is within yourself that is reacting. Is this why you entered the domain of massage? Is this the part of yourself you wish to enhance to convey to your clients?
(The images described in the above paragraphs were partly inspired by descriptions in Tony Hillerman's American Southwest mystery, Sacred Clowns)
21 April 1998
"Centuries before the present, there was a people who carved their dwellings from the soft tufa stone in a picturesquely secluded gorge called in the Queres dialect Tyuonyi, and in Spanish "El Rito del los Frijoles."
"The Rito is a beautiful spot. It is a narrow valley, nowhere broader than half a mile; and from where it begins in the west to where it closes in a dark and gloomy entrance, scarcely wide enough for two men to pass abreast, in the east, its length does not exceed six miles. Its southern rim is formed by the slope of a timbered mesa, and that slope is partly overgrown by shrubbery. The northern border constitutes a line of vertical cliffs of yellowish and white pumice, projecting and reentering like decorations of a stage, now perpendicular and smooth for some distance, now sweeping back in the shape of an arched segment. These cliffs vary in height, although nowhere are they less than two hundred feet. Their tops rise in huge pillars, in crags and pinnacles. Brushwood and pine timber crown the mesa of which the fantastic projections are but the shaggy border."
"Through the vale itself rustles the clear and cool brook to which the name of Rito de los Frijoles is applied. It meanders on, hugging the southern slope, partly through open spaces, partly through groves of timber, and again past tall stately pine-trees standing isolated in the valley. Willows, cherry-trees, cottonwoods, and elders form small thickets along its banks. The Rito is a permanent stream-let notwithstanding its size. Its water freezes in winter, but it never dries up completely during the summer months."
— Adolf F. Bandelier (1840-1914) -- The Delight Makers
We have learned much in the game of civilization, yet I expect that few of us feel the sense of integration and community experienced daily by those who once dwelled along the banks of the Rito. I sometimes think of what it might have been like, living among such a people, collecting and drying medicinal herbs and working as a binder of wounds and worker of soft tissue. For all we have gained, there is much we have lost along the path towards progress and civilization.
More on the pueblo way of life can be found online at the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Kernals of Truth, and within the pages of Adolf Bandelier's book The Delight Makers.
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© Keith Eric Grant — The RamblemuseSM, 07 March 2003. All rights reserved.